Chapter 179 F-F-Fuck

You wouldn't just forget it if someone ran you down in a back alley, threw some punches at you, then bit a cloth off of your shirt.

I clapped my hands at him and told him he was right. I was called a crazy retarded bastard again. The man interrogated me further with his intimating dagger moves. I might have been lucky, he said, when I sneakily assaulted him earlier, but I was just a crazy lad who thought I could get away with everything.

He held the dagger at my throat, from a distance, laughed and blabbered about how it was time for the lad to spit the reason of my visit—come to think of it, I was from the "place o' the rich," so what was I doing here—and walked up to me. When he looked me straight in the eye from very up-close and spoke, his brown-rotten teeth showed, and his foul breath damaged me more than his dagger ever could.

I always liked to stay passively standing in front of people at times like this. It allowed me to observe the subject of my curiosity more and scrutinize the depth of their souls better. Still, it was time I got my job done.

The cold of the dagger's blade spread around my throat. With a sharp movement, I seized the hand that held it, snatched the dagger from the individual, kicked the man away with as sharp a kick, and stabbed the dagger in the wall behind my back.

"Anything you know about the thief-guild of Roerden?"

"Th-Th-The hell d'ya waaant?! What's that 'bout them thieves t'do with me?!"

After the man understood he had just been swept away by he who he underestimated, his limbs quivered with rage, he promptly got on his feet, yelled at the top of his voice, and made a rush to me. The floor trembled and creaked heavily. The tools and stuff on top of his desk and shelf were swept down to the ground.

The man connected with me with a punch to my gut; I took it like a champ, grunted, and sent it right back to him. He grunted, too, then had his left foot broken by my stomping foot. I held the man by his collar before he collapsed to the ground, and my other hand was placed on his throat.

"I'll break it."

"W-W-W-Wai—"

"The thief guild."

"I-I dunno nothing 'bout them thieves—"

"Where to find it?"

"...I got nothing to do with thieves or assassins or killers, young mister!"

"..."

The grip I had on the man's throat tightened. A helpless groan was squeezed out of it. In the man's eyes, tears of rage accumulated. I saw how badly he wanted to beat me senseless. But I shook my head and let the man's collar go. He fell down on his flank and quickly tried to see what was wrong with his foot. "W-What'd ya do t'my f-f-foot?! Fucking retard!"

Again, I asked him about the thief guild, or whatever he knew about it. If that wasn't clear to him by now, I told the man I had some business with them. The thief guild of Roerden, I called it, but who knows how I had to refer to their organization, if it even existed.

My interrogation was still ongoing: As heavily as I could, I stomped on the other healthy ankle he had. The floor shattered through. I might have put too much strength into that. The man's foot was half-dug into the old wooden tiles. Blood started to pour out. "You want to apply some pressure on that wound now, man," I shrugged. If he wanted to live and get it treated fast, he had to speak to me.

The man's eyes went blank after that, though. The frown of intense rage he had dug deeper and deeper into his features. At the same time, panic was starting to settle in, however. The man jerked about, on the ground, with trembling hands, as he tried to take care of the wound I severed in his leg. He wouldn't die so soon with his wound, so I didn't worry about it and decided not to let the man rest.

Circling him around, I was thinking about how to go about it as I did it. If I wanted to make it last long, I had to inflict repetitive non-deadly pains on the man. My eyes settled on his hands. Forcefully, I seized one of his hands, then one of his fingers, and broke it.

Again, I asked him about the thief guild and where to find it. The man was desperate to tell me how he didn't know about anything related to whatever I asked him about, but I ordered him to think about it more carefully. I told him that he knew, but I honestly was as ignorant as he was. At any rate, the Ha ha ha version of my old man told me that was more or less how a military interrogation had to go. So I kept at it.

One finger after the other, I broke all of one hand. Whether he knew anything or not, he didn't speak. Just for the sake of it, I had to try one last time. The tortured soul was desperate to get the hell away from me, as far as the South could be away from the North, but, unfortunately for him, he was right in front of me still. That's where he had been when this started, and that was where he would be when he died.

One last time, I interrogated him. I kicked the man so that he was on his back, then pinned his arms down, sat on his stomach, and coldly looked down at his face from above.

Crying, he asked me what my grudge against was him. My face lit up in surprise and I laughed. I really didn't think this through at all. The poor guy must have tried to think up all sorts of theories and explanations about who I was and what the hell I wanted with him, and how it was related to that moment when I stole a cloth from him, but there was no reason at all. He just happened to have been probably linked to the thief guild, as a criminal, at the wrong time.

But he couldn't know. I sighed, leaned closer to his face, and seized him up by his hair. "You don't have to know that. That's too unimportant to you, right now. …Listen," I held one finger up like a lecturing teacher, "the only thing you have to know, right now, is the location of the thief guild." My icy, unblinking eyes bore into his soul, and I suddenly tilted my head. "So? Your life's on the line, so you do remember… Don't you?" My hand seized his throat again. "I'll really break it."

"I… F-F-Fuck—"

​ I twisted it. The man passed.

"F-F-F-Fuck…" I mimicked the man's stuttering and desperate face, "...whom? Me…? Ha-ha."

Nine more torn pieces of cloth from criminals to go.

I got up, dusted off my clothes, and broke out of the run-down house.