A Trash Novel's Only Reader-Chapter 55: Think About It

Sua watched the stranger from the corner of her eye while pretending to stare at the table edge, her fingers gripping the wood until her knuckles hurt but she didn’t care because the pain kept her focused, kept her from doing something stupid like trusting this guy just because he walked in with a nice voice and a clean shirt

’Jin is so naive,’ she thought, jaw tightening while her brother kept thanking the man for the hundredth time, ’he always does this, finds someone who looks strong and immediately starts hoping they’ll save us’

She had seen it before, the last hunter Jin trusted took their emergency food money and never came back, the one before that promised medicine and delivered nothing, and now this Shu guy shows up looking like he stepped out of a different world, all healthy and confident, and Jin was already folding like wet paper

Her eyes moved over Shu’s bat, then to the little girl holding his hand, then back to his face, and something about him felt wrong in a way she couldn’t name, not the wrong of a scammer though she was ready to believe that too, but something darker, like standing too close to a fire that didn’t make noise

’Dangerous,’ she thought, the word coming up from her gut without asking permission, ’this man is dangerous’

She caught her mother’s eye across the table and saw the same worry there, though mom was too polite and too tired to say it out loud.

Sua tilted her chin a little trying to send a message with her face, ’don’t trust him,’ but mom just gave her that look that meant ’be nice’

’Be nice,’ she thought, her stomach twisting, ’be nice while some stranger sells us hope we can’t afford? Mom is not going to believe his bullshit, right? She knows there’s no cure, we’ve been to three camps, four clinics, and every healer who would still talk to poor people, they all said the same thing, my body is failing and nothing fixes that’

The seizures would keep coming, the pain would keep getting worse, and eventually one of the attacks would take her and that would be the end of it, she had accepted that months ago somewhere between the third and fourth time she woke up screaming with her bones feeling like they were being pulled apart

’So what does this guy want?’ she thought, staring harder at Shu while he talked to Jin about ’stabilization’ and ’core integration’ like those words meant something real, ’nobody helps for free, nobody, he wants something from us and Jin is too desperate to care what it is.’

Shu paused mid-sentence, his eyes moving to her face, and she flinched before she could stop herself, suddenly aware she had been glaring too hard.

"You okay?" he asked, his voice flat

"I am fine," she said, looking down at the table

The silence stretched for a few seconds, heavy enough that even Jin stopped talking, and Sua kept her eyes on the wood grain, waiting for the man to push harder or get angry that she wasn’t falling for whatever this was

"Alright," he said, and she looked up in surprise as he was standing up, dusting off his pants, "you need time to think about this, I get it"

"What?" Jin asked, his face going confused, "but we don’t need time, we need help now, my sister is—"

"She doesn’t trust me," he cut in, jerking his chin toward Sua, "and that’s fair, this is a lot to drop on someone"

Sua stared at him, her brain stalling for a second because that was not how scammers acted, scammers pushed harder when you hesitated, they leaned in and offered discounts and got emotional, but this guy was just leaving.

"I have to do something right now anyway," he said, already heading for the door, "give it a day, talk it over, whatever you need, if you want my help after that, find me at the hunter hall, if not then good luck"

"Wait," Jin started, stepping forward

Shu stopped at the door and looked back, his hand on the handle, while Nari glanced at Sua with something that looked almost like understanding, which annoyed her more than it should have

"Your sister thinks I’m going to hurt you," he said, his voice dry but not mean, "she’s not wrong to think that by the way, I’m not... normal, she picked up on something real"

Sua’s breath caught because hearing him say it out loud made her chest tighten in a weird way

"But I’m also the only person in this city who can actually fix what’s wrong with her," he continued, nodding toward Sua, "so take your time, decide if that’s worth the risk, I’ll be around"

He opened the door and walked out without looking back, and Nari gave one last small wave then followed him into the hallway

The door clicked shut and Sua finally let out the breath she had been holding, her hands shaking she realized, pressing them flat against the table to make it stop

"Sua," Jin said, his voice hurt and confused, "why did you have to look at him like that? He was trying to help"

She looked at her brother, at the hope still sitting on his bruised face, and felt something crack inside her chest, "because there’s no such thing as free help," she said, the words coming out sharper than she meant, "and that man is lying about something, Jin, I can feel it"

"He’s not lying, he saved me twice, he didn’t ask for anything—"

"He didn’t ask yet," she snapped, looking toward the door, "but he will, they always do, and you’re too desperate to say no when he names the price"

Her mother let out a slow breath from the table, the sound of someone too tired to argue but trying anyway, "Sua," she said softly, "we don’t have many options left"

"I know," Sua said, looking down at her own hands, the trembling had stopped but the fear hadn’t, "I know we don’t, but that doesn’t mean we should run toward the first person who promises a miracle"

She thought about the way Shu had looked at her, calm and direct like he could see through her suspicion and didn’t even mind, the way he admitted she was right to be scared of him, the dangerous quiet that seemed to follow him like a shadow

’He’s not a scammer,’ she thought, the realization dropping into her stomach like a cold stone, ’scammers want you to trust them, he doesn’t care if I do or not’

That was somehow worse

"Give me tonight," she said, looking up at her brother and mother, "let me think about this, please"

Jin opened his mouth to argue but mom reached out and touched his arm, "one night," she said, her voice thin but firm, "we can afford one night"

Sua nodded and turned back toward the wall, her mind racing through every possible angle, every hidden trap, every way this could go wrong

Because in a world like this, things always went wrong, and the only person who got to survive was the one who saw it coming