A Trash Novel's Only Reader

Chapter 56: One Camp Down

Shu and Nari walked through the camp in silence for a while, passing tents and makeshift shelters while the smell of smoke and unwashed bodies hung in the air. Nari stayed close to his side, her small hand wrapped around two of his fingers, eyes moving over everything with that quiet curiosity she always carried.

He glanced down at her, then back at the path ahead.

’Right,’ he thought. ’I never actually asked.’

"Nari," he said, keeping his voice casual so it wouldn’t sound like a big deal. "What are your parents’ names?"

She looked up at him, blinking once before answering. "Mommy’s name is Hana," she said softly. "And daddy’s name is Minjun."

He nodded and stored both names in his head, then looked around the camp again. The place was packed, but that didn’t mean much. Most people here looked half-dead already, and the ones who could still talk were too busy surviving to care about names.

"Alright," he said, squeezing her hand once. "Let’s ask around."

The first person they found was an old man sitting on a crate near a water barrel, staring at nothing with hollow eyes. Shu crouched down in front of him and kept his tone respectful.

"Excuse me," he said. "I’m looking for two people, Hana and Minjun. They would have come in with the first wave of evacuees. Have you heard those names?"

The old man stared at him for a long second, then shook his head slowly. "No," he said, his voice dry and cracked. "Don’t know them."

Shu nodded and stood up, guiding Nari to the next cluster of people.

A woman washing clothes in a bucket looked up when they approached, her eyes moving over Shu’s clean clothes with open suspicion before he even spoke.

"Sorry to bother you," he said. "Do you know anyone named Hana or Minjun? They would have arrived early, probably with a child."

She shook her head without hesitation. "Never heard of them."

They moved on.

A man carrying a crate of supplies, two women sitting outside a tent, a teenager guarding a supply pile, a group of kids playing with sticks near a fence, one by one, Shu asked every person they passed but every answer was the same.

"No."

"Doesn’t ring a bell."

"Never heard those names."

"Sorry, can’t help you."

By the tenth person, Nari’s grip on his fingers had tightened enough to hurt. By the fifteenth, she had stopped looking at the people they asked and started staring at the ground instead.

He felt it happening, her steps slowing, her breathing shifting and her small shoulders curling inward like she was trying to make herself smaller.

He didn’t say anything yet. He just continued asking, moving through the crowd, scanning faces while the hope drained out of the girl beside him one rejection at a time.

The twentieth person was a guard near the outer fence, leaning against a post with his arms crossed. He looked down at Nari, then at Shu, and shrugged.

"Hana and Minjun?" he repeated, scratching his jaw. "Nah, nobody by those names came through here. I would remember if they did."

Nari’s hand went limp in his.

Shu thanked the guard and turned away, but he didn’t make it two steps before he heard it, a small, broken sound that barely qualified as a breath.

He looked down and Nari was standing perfectly still, her eyes fixed on the ground, and lips pressed together so hard they had gone white. Her chin was trembling, and the hand that had been holding his fingers was now hanging at her side, balled into a tiny fist.

"Nari," he said quietly.

She didn’t answer.

Her shoulders started shaking next, small movements at first, then harder, and by the time she finally looked up at him, her eyes were already wet.

"Mister Shu," she whispered, her voice cracking right down the middle. "Nobody knows them."

The words came out so small, so fragile, that something in his chest tightened in a way he didn’t expect.

"They’re not here," she continued, tears spilling down her cheeks. "They’re not anywhere."

He watched her face crumble, watched the last bit of hope she had been carrying since the day he found her finally give out, and for one second he had no idea what to say.

’What am I supposed to tell her?’ he thought, jaw tightening. ’That her parents are probably dead? That this world eats people like them for breakfast?’

He looked at her standing there, so small, so scared, crying in the middle of a camp that smelled like shit, and something twisted in his gut.

’No,’ he thought. ’Not that.’

He crouched down in front of her, one knee touching the dirt, and waited until her wet eyes met his.

"Hey," he said, keeping his voice steady. "Look at me."

She sniffled and tried, though her face kept crumbling every few seconds.

"This is one camp," he said, holding up one finger. "One, out of how many in this city? You think your parents would just be sitting here waiting for us to walk in?"

She stared at him with those big, red eyes, not answering because she didn’t know how.

"There are other places," he continued, his tone firm but not harsh. "Other shelters, camps, and safe zones, we haven’t even started yet."

Her chin trembled again, and a fresh tear rolled down her cheek. "But what if they’re—" she started, her voice breaking before she could finish.

"Don’t," he said, cutting her off gently. "Don’t finish that sentence."

He reached out and wiped the tear off her cheek with his thumb, then let out a slow breath through his nose.

"You know what I think?" he said, tilting his head a little. "I think your parents are tougher than you give them credit for. People who raise a kid like you don’t just disappear."

She blinked at him, sniffling again.

"So we’re not stopping here," he said, standing back up. "We check the next place, and the one after that, and the one after that. We keep going until we find them or until we run out of places to look."

He held out his hand.

"Deal?"

She stared at his hand for a second, then at his face, and something in her expression shifted. The tears were still there, the red eyes, the shaking shoulders, but underneath all of that, a tiny spark flickered back to life.

She reached up and grabbed his fingers.

"Deal," she whispered.

He gave her hand a small squeeze, then bent down and picked her up with one arm, settling her against his side. She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her face into his shoulder, still sniffling but quieter now.

"Alright," he said, adjusting her weight and starting to walk toward the camp exit. "Next stop, Saint Mia church basement."

She nodded against his shoulder without lifting her face.

They were almost at the gate when five men stepped into their path, all armed, forming a loose line across the exit. They didn’t look like guards, more like enforcers, the kind of people who kept order through fear rather than rules.

Shu stopped walking and Nari lifted her face from his shoulder, her fingers tightening against his shirt.

"Problem?" Shu asked.

None of them answered right away, they just stood there watching him with confidence. Then someone stepped through the gap between two of the men, older, maybe mid-forties, with a thick beard and a scar running along his jaw. His clothes were better than the others, cleaner, and the way the men parted for him told Shu exactly who was in charge.

The bearded man stopped a few feet away and looked Shu up and down, his eyes lingering on the bat, then on Nari, then back to Shu’s face. "You’re the one who came in with Jin," he said, not a question.

Shu said nothing.

The man’s mouth twitched into something that wasn’t quite a smile. "I heard you’ve been asking around, looking for people."

"Is that a crime here?" Shu asked.

"No," the man said, taking another step closer. "But walking out of my camp without paying for what you used, that is."

Shu’s eyes narrowed. "I didn’t use anything."

"You walked through my camp," the man said, spreading his hands like it was obvious. "You breathed our air, took up space-" The man stopped after he noticed Shu laughing.

"Do you have a death wish, old man?" He asked, his aura flaring.