Juna kept three steps behind Hajin through the capital while she watched him as carefully as she watched the strangers pressing past her on both sides.
'He smells strangely nice,' she thought, with the annoyance arriving before the thought had finished, 'so does that mean he is not bad?'
She flattened her ears under her hair and glared at the back he left unguarded in a street full of armed men.
'Do not be stupid,' she thought, matching his pace without deciding to, 'you only keep watching because humans always show themselves eventually.'
The public guild sat near the middle of the city under a crest big enough to read from the far end of the street, where adventurers stood around the doors laughing at something she could not hear.
Heads turned the moment the two of them came through, then the turning stopped on her, and the whispering started at the front tables before it reached the back.
Old ale, weapon oil and too many unfamiliar bodies came at her nose together.
Feet struck the floor from every direction, so the room felt narrower to her than the forest ever had.
She marked both exits, then the two windows by the stairs, then every hand in the hall sitting close to a weapon it could reach without standing up.
Years of running had taught her to find the way out before she listened to a word anybody said.
"Is that a slave?" a man asked his friend at the front desk, without troubling to lower his voice.
"Why is she dressed like that?" another one asked, looking her over from the hem upward, "somebody should take the blanket off her and check."
"Forget the clothes, look at her face," a third said from a table she could not see past, "she would be fun in bed."
[ ShadowMage44: ] protect the wolf girl at all costs
Juna pulled the blanket closed while the old urge came up through her, the one that said teeth first, then blood, then the door.
'I knew it,' she thought, with her stomach turning over on itself, 'humans are the same wherever you put them.'
Hajin reached back before any of that got as far as her feet, so his hand settled on her shoulder while he went on studying the desk.
"We should sell these first," he said, giving the bag at his side a small shake, "then we can find you an outfit that is not somebody's bedding."
She stared at him without answering, because nothing in his voice matched the room she was standing in.
Part of her wanted the hand gone, while the rest of her could not work out why it was there at all.
'What is wrong with him,' she thought, her pulse unsteady now for a reason she did not like, 'why does he keep acting like this?'
"Okay," she said, so quietly that it barely cleared the noise of the hall.
Her own voice surprised her more than his hand.
Hajin looked back at her a moment longer than the question needed, then something crooked pulled at one side of his mouth.
"You are like a little kid sometimes," he said, patting her shoulder once before he took the hand away.
Her ears twitched under her hair.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] nah she is too cute for this
'Excellent plan,' he thought, carrying the bag toward the counter, 'start a brawl in the capital and get buried before lunch.'
The talk behind them picked up again the moment he moved, which did nothing for the mood he was already carrying.
He set the two Shards on the desk in front of the clerk, then gave the man behind it a short nod that came back to him as nothing at all.
"Morning," he said, laying one hand flat on the counter, "I want to sell these."
The clerk looked at the Shards, then at Hajin's clothes, then past his shoulder at the girl in the blanket, and he took his time over the third one.
Whatever he settled on in that order of looking, he did not trouble himself to hide it.
"Adventurer card," he said, putting out a hand he plainly did not expect to be filled.
"I do not have one," Hajin said.
[ NewViewer_02: ] wait you need a card to sell things? where does he even get one
"Then it is the public rate," the man said, pushing a pouch across without a second look at what he was buying, "six silver for both."
'He is robbing me by half,' he thought, weighing the pouch in his palm without opening it, 'though arguing with a clerk in a room full of armed idiots costs more than the difference.'
[ LurkerNoMore: ] do not take that, walk out and sell them somewhere else
He turned for the door and got two steps before Juna went stiff behind him.
A man had come in from the side and taken hold of her arm above the elbow.
"Why does she not come with me instead?" the stranger asked, keeping the grip while he smiled at Hajin over her head, "what do you say, friend, can I buy her off you?"
His fingers tightened while his eyes went across her face and down the blanket.
Hajin's expression did not change, though what came up behind his eyes arrived cold and did not stop there.
He wanted to take the wrist apart at the joint, so he closed his hand into a fist at his side and left it there.
'Calm down,' he told himself, with the edges of his vision going red, 'you are one day into the capital, and a brawl here puts you in a cell before you have a room to sleep in.'
He made his face agreeable, crossed the last of the floor between them, then stopped a hand's width short of the man.
"Excuse me," he said, with his voice pitched for an ordinary market transaction, "but I would appreciate it if you let go of her now."
The man looked him up and down.
Then he tightened his hold on Juna's arm, purely so the room could see that he was able to.
Juna felt something cold settle through her chest, and she recognised every part of it on the way down.
His politeness turned her stomach worse than the hand did, since it matched what she had expected of him from the start.
'He is the same as the rest,' she thought, her eyes narrowing while she stopped looking for a way out, 'kind while it is cheap, then gone the second it costs him anything.'
She waited for the apology, or for him to find something on the far side of the hall worth looking at, since that was how the rest of them dealt with anything already decided.
Some part of her was relieved that her opinion of humans had survived the week intact.
Then the scent she had been getting off him for days went out of the air, replaced by something sharp that made the inside of her nose burn.
She could not put a name to it, though it felt as if the air in the hall had been drawn to an edge.
She looked up at him in alarm.
He was still smiling, but the smile had stopped short of his eyes, where nothing was moving at all.
Whatever was looking out of him at the hand on her arm had finished asking for things.
[ DarkBlade: ] and there it is, this is the episode where it turns
The man noticed none of it, still holding a room he believed he owned, so Hajin came in another half step and dropped his voice to something meant for two people.
Laughter died at the nearest tables while the older adventurers in the hall worked out what they were feeling.
[ DarkBlade: ] that guy has about four seconds left
Chairs went backward across the floor in ones and twos until a small island of empty space stood open around the three of them, with nobody in the room willing to fill it back in.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] chairs moved. chairs never move
"I will ask you one more time," he said, with his eyes holding the man's and nothing behind them moving, "let go of her, or you never use that hand to touch anything again."
[ ShadowMage44: ] the wolf girl looks more scared of him than of the creep now