A Trash Novel's Only Reader

Chapter 57: surrounded

The man’s mouth stayed open for a second.

"...What?"

He really did look confused at first, like his brain needed a moment to catch up to what Shu had just said. Then the meaning landed properly, and the confusion on his face twisted into something uglier.

"Did you just ask me if I have a death wish?" he said, pointing at himself with one hand. "Me?"

The men around him reacted right away.

"Watch your mouth."

"Who the hell do you think you’re talking to?"

"Disrespectful little shit."

They started closing in from both sides, boots scraping over the dirt while their hands shifted closer to their weapons. Nari stiffened in Shu’s arm and grabbed a fistful of his shirt, her face pressing back into his shoulder.

He only adjusted her weight a little and kept looking at the bearded man.

’Ah,’ he thought, his expression staying flat. ’So this is the part where the ugly extras start barking too.’

One of the men on the left stepped in harder than the others, clearly trying to impress somebody. "You walk into our camp, mouth off to the chief, then act like you’re the dangerous one?" he asked, looking Shu up and down with open contempt. "Do you know how fast people disappear around here?"

Shu looked at him for one second, then back at the old man.

"If the trash around you keeps yapping," he said, voice calm, "I might find out."

That made two of them surge forward at once.

"You little-"

"Chief, say the word."

The bearded man lifted one hand before they could get any closer. "Enough," he said, and the sharpness in his tone stopped them way faster than their earlier bravado suggested.

The men still looked pissed, but they backed off half a step. One kept glaring at Shu like he wanted to rush him anyway, while another muttered under his breath and spat into the dirt.

The old man kept his eyes on Shu the whole time.

’Interesting,’ he thought, taking in the way the younger man had not flinched once. ’No shaking, no backing up, or trying to smooth things over. He really meant that.’

He should have been angrier than this. In his camp, people lowered their heads when he spoke, and the smart ones started apologizing before he even finished a sentence. Getting talked to like that in front of his own men should have made him slap the boy’s teeth out on the spot.

Even so, the insult only held him for a moment before his curiosity pushed past it.

’No,’ he thought, looking harder at Shu’s clothes, his posture, and the child in his arm. ’A kid like this doesn’t stay this clean by luck.’

He exhaled once through his nose and smoothed the irritation off his face.

"Calm down," he said without looking at the others. "All of you."

One of the men clicked his tongue. "But chief, he just-"

"I heard him," the old man said. "And he’s still standing, isn’t he?"

That shut them up properly.

The bearded man looked back at Shu, and this time his tone came out calmer, almost polite, which only made it feel slimier.

"Let’s start again," he said. "You’re bold, I’ll give you that. Too bold maybe, but I can respect a man who doesn’t piss himself just because he’s surrounded."

Shu said nothing.

That did not bother the man much. If anything, it looked like he had already moved on from the insult and latched onto the part he actually cared about.

"Tell me something," he said, folding his arms. "Where is your base?"

The question landed so directly that even Nari lifted her face a little from Shu’s shoulder. He looked at the man for a second and felt the answer settling into place all at once.

’There it is,’ he thought. ’So this was never about me "using" the camp.’

The guard from the gate flashed through his mind right after that, the long stare, the fake flat voice, the way his eyes kept moving over Shu’s clothes and Nari’s face like he was counting something.

’Yeah,’ he thought, jaw tightening a little. ’That bastard ran to his boss and reported exactly what he saw.’

The old man saw the shift in his face and smiled faintly, as if that silence had already confirmed enough for him.

"See, now we’re getting somewhere," he said. "Because let’s be honest here, you don’t look like somebody sleeping in rubble."

He pointed at Shu’s shirt first, then at Nari, then finally at the bat resting against his shoulder.

"Clean clothes," he said. "Healthy skin. The kid’s washed, fed, and not wearing rags. Even your weapon looks maintained." His eyes narrowed a little after that. "That means one thing, you’ve got a place."

The men around him started smirking now that the direction of the conversation had turned into something they understood better.

"Knew it."

"Told you he had a hideout."

"Look at the little girl, bro. They definitely got food somewhere."

Shu slowly shifted Nari higher with his left arm and let his right hand rest near the bat.

’Amazing,’ he thought. ’These idiots really saw a clean shirt and immediately started dreaming about looting my house.’

The old man kept talking, his voice patient in the way greedy people always sounded when they thought the prize was close enough to touch.

"A man carrying supplies in this city is one thing," he said. "But a man staying this clean with a child beside him? That means stored food, water, maybe medicine too."

He tilted his head a little and let his eyes drag over Shu again, slower this time.

"Maybe power as well," he added. "Would explain a lot."

One of the men behind him laughed. "No way he’s got power."

The old man did not laugh with him.

"Maybe not," he said, still watching Shu. "But he has something."

That much was obvious to him now.

The boy was too calm, the kid was too clean, and neither one smelled like camp smoke, gutter water, or days of sleeping in filth. People only carried themselves like that when they had somewhere safe to go back to.

’And if he has somewhere safe,’ the man thought, a slow greed settling deeper in his chest, ’then he has more than the fools in this camp.’

He spread his hands in a fake easy gesture.

"Relax, I’m not asking for your life story," he said. "I just want to know where you’re staying. A camp like mine has a lot of mouths to feed, and a man with extra supplies should know better than to keep that to himself."

Shu stared at him.

The words were dressed up nicely, but that was all they were, dressed up.

He had heard this kind of tone before, from bosses trying to sound reasonable before dumping extra work on some poor bastard, from office people smiling while they asked for something they already felt entitled to, and from the sort of men who called theft cooperation as long as they had more bodies behind them.

’Haaa,’ he thought, feeling his mood drop even further. ’I really left my house to help people and somehow still ended up dealing with camp bandits.’

Nari’s fingers tightened against his shirt again. He could feel her watching the men now, small and quiet but not stupid enough to miss what this was turning into.

"If you think this is about fairness," the bearded man continued, "then you’re wrong. This is about order."

That actually got a reaction out of Shu, making him laugh, but the sound barely left him before a horn blast ripped through the camp hard enough to turn every head toward the outer fence.

A second blast followed right after, louder this time, and the screaming came with it, spreading between the tents while people started running in every direction and somebody near the wall shouted about a breach.

The bearded man’s face changed at once, annoyance getting crushed under real alarm, and even the men around him lost their swagger when a deep crashing sound rolled in from outside the camp, heavy enough to shake dust from the nearby roofs.

Shu’s eyes narrowed a little after that, because those footsteps weren’t coming from one monster, and a guard’s terrified voice tore across the camp before the thought fully settled.

"Chief! We’re surrounded!"