-Vol 5: A New Life-

-Falunting Status!-

“Mistake? What do you mean mistake? Is the cleanliness is something like a chore to you guys? Huh?” Kenshin’s voice rose in octaves. Since he had decided to play the part of an arrogant hunter, he would play it to the end. He would make this act as much believable as possible.

Taking this chance, he would also vent the anger for Mrs. Yui. That wound on her head, he couldn’t overlook that n!o matter what.

“I am really sorry sir, I didn’t know such a thing would happen. I will call the manager immediately” the poor waiter could only make a face like a bitter gourd and say that. In his heart, although he felt a little regret and guilty, Kenshin had already decided on this act, he couldn’t back out now. For this reason, only, he didn’t back away from using a girl’s situation to get some info out of her. Although he had compensated her handsomely, it's still one of the ways of manipulating by the rich.

For the safety of his loved ones, he isn’t afraid to hurt others; that’s the kind of man he was. He wasn’t like that before, or more like he didn’t dare to hurt others for his happiness, but with the increase in his strength, the need to protect also rose. The repeated attack to Mrs. Yui, to whom he had a soft for, like an elder sister, Kenshin realized the importance of protection. He realized that now his little family had also extended to this mother and daughter duo. Despite him closing off his heart to others, eight years of involvement had left a pretty deep mark of them into his heart.

But he didn’t find it annoying, on the contrary, he found it quite endearing and addictive. The interaction this morning, and all the time they spent together while Akari was still a little kid, somehow deep down in his heart, he craved those. Due to that, it became increasingly easy for him to answer Mrs. Yui question of the previous night. He didn’t come to a decision after staying up all night, but, at that time when he saw the interaction of Ellie and Axel. Their smiling faces, he suddenly felt the urge to protect that. And for that reason only, he changed the approach of today’s plan on the spot. Instead of going the hard way, which would have only solved the problem at hand, he used the soft approach that would eliminate all the future nuisance.

As his face changed to a determined one, he unconsciously started to exude a special type of charm. The one that would usually be exuded by those so-called heroes. But, he was no hero, at most, he would be an anti-hero. A hero won't use such methods to deal with trouble, but Kenshin would. This charm he gave off, began subconsciously change the atmosphere around, turning everything into his favor.

The waiter soon came back with a tall but fat man, wearing a black blazer which looked quite expensive. His face was sweaty from stress as he hurried along to the room.

“Sir, I am the manager of this place. I firmly apologize for our incompetence, please quell your anger.”

Kenshin threw a glance at the man and compared it to how Ellie explained the man present there, finding that they match, he frowned with a gleam appearing in his eyes. It seems Ellie was being mistaken, the guy who had gone there was a manager of this establishment, not the owner. Well, it also made his work all the easier, since he didn’t have to deal with annoyance attached to a rich man.

“Who are you?” his tone was very arrogant, befitting of a second generation rich guy.

“Sir, My name is Habiki…and I am the manager of this establishment. I heard you have encountered some problems…sir!” while still sweating, the manager was very polite with his speech. He inspected the man who caused all this ruckus and tried to determine his status. He wasn’t a normal man by anyway, he had been mingling with people with all the hierarchies and gained an ability to discern them with just a glance.

The conclusion he came with was that Kenshin was in no way a nouveau rich person, at most, some small time character with too much money. His posture changed instantly, and he was filled with boundless confidence. He had dealt with many of such characters all through his life, dealing with another was just adding a name to that ever increasing list.

“So you are the manager, then what’s the meaning of this? Why is there a spider cob in my food? Are you guys have no sense of hygiene or cleanliness?”

“Sir, I apologize once again for our incompetence. It seems the cleaning crew hadn’t done a good job with cleaning it, I will punish them appropriately. For now, sir, why don’t you enjoy another one of our treats? It will be on the house, so…” the confidence with which the manager spoke made Kenshin’s head spin. Not knowing from where this man getting all this confidence so suddenly when he was like a weak lamb in front of a tiger just a few minutes before, Kenshin narrowed his eyes.

“So you are saying to just eat another one of those go home silently while this matter will be buried here? Are you mad or something? What I wanna know is why such a thing happened? And you are telling me to go home silently? Are you insulting me?” Kenshin ‘fumed’ in anger. He had come across this type of behavior many times in his life, so it's not that new to him. But a true nouveau rich person would feel insulted at such words and would lose sanity over it.

“Well, I wasn’t that direct sir. I just said to not stretch this matter any more and waste both of our time, that’s all…” the manager was very arrogant with his speech, not even caring about his wording anymore. Assuming that this Kenshin was a smalltime character, he was behaving the way he wanted to be.

“You…! Do you believe I will call the police over this matter?” Kenshin threatened.

“haha! Sir, you must be joking. Why would you trouble the police for such a small matter? More importantly, would they even listen to your words when you mention our store’s name? You perhaps don’t know this, but our store owner is a genuine hunter with many achievements under his belt. He was also a silver ranked in DCB, what can the police do to him?” finally, the manager revealed the source of his confidence, and also the reason why there was no customer in this shop. It's probably due to this poor behavior of the manager.

Kenshin felt sorry for the owner of this shop…

“Really? What if the one who complains was a hunter himself?” in reply to all the drivel the manager just spoke, Kenshin sent out only these words.

The manager’s body shuddered like a naked man in the cold tundra. His arrogance and smile, both vanished without a trace and replaced with a gaping mouth. His face became sweaty instantly, and his hands and legs felt numb. As Kenshin looked at him, his body shuddered once more. But Kenshin wasn’t over yet;

“What if that hunter was a magic skill user that works for the government?” as he said so, Kenshin took out the golden card from his pocket; his original hunter license issued by the DCB and flashed it to everyone present.

Like the straw that broke the camel’s back, the consecutive words spoken by him as well as the words he just spoke, literally plunged the manager into the proverbial abyss. Unable to support his weight anymore, he kneeled on the ground with a lost look on his face.