Chapter 81: Strongest
"Don’t smile at me like that."
The old man suddenly wrapped one arm around Fin’s head, dragging him swiftly into a tight headlock, his underarm swallowing Fin’s face before the boy could even react, the motion so fast that water splashed up across the surrounding stones.
"You’ve been telling people my business, huh? You think I’m easy to bully?"
The old man relentlessly drilled his knuckles into Fin’s scalp, grinding down with enough force to leave the skin underneath flushed bright red almost instantly, ignoring the muffled protests coming from beneath his arm.
"I didn’t know you were here! I wouldn’t have said anything otherwise!!"
Fin struggled desperately against the grip, flailing without much success, his voice coming out strained and half-muffled against the old man’s side, one hand slapping uselessly at the arm locked around him.
"Is that better? So you’d do it behind my back instead? What’s the point of being called Mister Mysteries when your story gets told everywhere you go by some hoodlum who happens to know you?"
After thoroughly roughing Fin up, the old man finally released him, letting Fin stumble backward while he settled into an exaggerated pout, arms crossing over his chest.
He carried the title Mister Mysteries largely because of his tendency to vanish without warning, appearing and disappearing at will with abilities that struck most observers as something closer to supernatural.
That reputation had only deepened over the years, feeding into the legend that followed him wherever he went, whispered about in hallways by people who had never actually met him face to face.
"Ethan, yes? If you have any questions, feel free to ask me directly."
Sighing through flared nostrils, the old man turned toward Ethan, forcing a smile onto his face that didn’t quite reach the rest of his expression.
’You shameless old man. Taking the opportunity to fan your own flames right after beating me up.’
Fin cursed silently under his breath, glaring at the old man from the corner of his eye, still rubbing at his tender scalp.
The old fart was the most shameless person he had ever met, forget his status, this man had cheated Fin on several occasions, allowing him to fan his own flames was the same as allowing Ethen to fall for a scammer.
Naturally however, he couldn’t quite force the issue since shamelessness and strength were two different topics.
And pay no mind, he was indeeed the strongest person in White tower.
"Okay, who are you?"
Ethan asked the most obvious question available, though the response that followed offered little in the way of an actual answer.
"Well, first of all... how do we even determine what a man truly is? Is he simply the accumulation of all his deeds, or is he innately something preprogrammed from the start, shaped before he ever had a choice in the matter..."
He gestured vaguely with his spoon as he spoke, scrambled egg forgotten momentarily, his eyes drifting somewhere distant as though the question genuinely mattered to him more than the conversation at hand.
From beginning to end, the old man circled endlessly around the subject, never once confirming or denying the claim Fin had made only moments earlier. His answers spiraled outward into increasingly abstract philosophical tangents that seemed to lead nowhere useful at all.
Eventually, he abandoned the pretense of answering questions altogether and began posing his own instead, firing off increasingly strange inquiries one after another without pause, some of them barely connected to anything Ethan had actually asked.
Ethan could do little but endure it, offering whatever answers felt safe without revealing more about himself than he intended to.
"Good. You’re mentally strong."
The old man finally smiled, nodding with clear satisfaction as he rose from the bath and began walking away, water dripping steadily from his robes with each step.
"Huh?"
Confusion settled naturally across Ethan’s face, though all he could really do was watch the old man’s retreating figure, noticing only now that several others scattered throughout the bath, everyone besides himself and Fin, had somehow drifted into deep, motionless sleep at some point during the exchange, heads tilted back against the stone edges without so much as a stir.
"He’s testing you. That’s his whole thing. Just keep your head down and expect more strangeness."
Fin shrugged his shoulders, already reaching for another cup of hot water as though nothing unusual had happened at all.
He’d been harassed by the old freak plenty of times before. None of this registered as particularly new to him anymore. Ethan, however, was a different matter entirely. He didn’t strike Fin as someone who would tolerate that kind of shameless treatment easily, which made the whole exchange somewhat more interesting to witness, especially wondering how long that particular restraint would actually hold.
"Let’s finish our bath. No need throwing a tantrum over something neither of us can control."
Fin added, scooping another cup of steaming water and pouring it slowly across his shoulders, settling back into the warmth without another word on the matter.
,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Meanwhile, outside the bathing area, inside a quiet cafeteria tucked along the facility’s edge, the old fortune teller sat alone at a corner table, working through a modest meal of scrambled eggs and cheese, steam still rising faintly from the plate in front of him.
He didn’t seem particularly focused on the food in front of him, though. Instead, his attention kept drifting toward a brief, unassuming sheet of paper resting beside his plate, his brow furrowing slightly each time his eyes passed over it, the lines across his forehead deepening with every read.
"Always so dramatic, those ones."
He muttered the words quietly under his breath, shaking his head faintly before returning his attention to his meal, pushing the matter firmly to the back of his mind for the time being, the folded sheet slipping quietly into a pocket of his robe as though it had never mattered at all.
Of course he knew that it mattered, it mattered all too well. But the kids also deserved a time off, maybe in a couple days.
Besides his contact was not here yet.
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