The man kept his hold on Juna and laughed at him, loud enough that two tables near the notice board turned to watch.
"Are you insane?" he asked, his fingers tightening around her arm, "I am being nice about this, so play along while the mood lasts."
Hajin looked at the grin and thought about how many teeth were behind it.
"A beastkin like that is far too good for a nobody dressed like you," the man said, giving the arm a small tug, "you should be thanking me for taking the burden off your hands."
Juna heard the word burden and felt her stomach roll over on it.
Men had said the same in front of her before, then argued the price down while she stood there listening to them do it.
The comment panel at the edge of his vision kept shifting upward as the lines arrived faster than it could hold them.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] nah this guy has a mouth on him
Hajin let all of it scroll past while he watched the hand on her arm, where her own fingers had gone still in a way he did not care for.
[ ShadowMage44: ] why is hajin just standing there taking it
'I told him nicely,' he thought, something cold arriving under his ribs, 'so he can have the other version.'
"Come on, do not make that face," the man said, reading the silence as the wrong thing entirely, "you are standing in a guild hall full of armed people, so what exactly do you think you can do here?"
[ NewViewer_02: ] first time here, is that guy allowed to grab people
He gave the arm one more tug to prove that he could, so Hajin moved before the decision had finished forming.
A hand clamped over the mouth mid-sentence, then the whole man came off the floor by the face while two legs kicked at nothing, with no strain showing anywhere in the arm holding him.
Gasps went across the whole hall at once.
A ring of light turned itself on around his right wrist a moment later, thin and bright, wrong for anyone standing in that room.
Its orbit dragged a slow gold line across the face of the man he was holding.
Nothing on it carried the crystal edges or the junctions where mana should have gathered, which was the part that emptied the color out of the nearest faces.
Several veterans reached for weapons on instinct before their hands stopped halfway there, because not one of them recognized the shape, though every trained nerve in the room read the weight of what was moving through it.
The hall went quiet as forty people found the same wrist to stare at.
[ CringeSlayer91: ] oh damn, he does have a spine after all
Behind the desk, the clerk who had offered six silver for two Shards put both palms flat on the wood.
An unknown rank symbol could mean forbidden art, foreign bloodline or an awakening nobody had catalogued yet, so every one of those promised danger, money and the attention of people who did not walk into public halls.
'What am I looking at,' one adventurer thought while backing toward the wall, 'a ring where the Shards are supposed to be?'
The man clawed at the wrist with both hands as the panic came up through the smugness, though Hajin did not blink.
"I warned you," he said, his voice low while he looked into the bulging eyes, "so I am honestly unsure why any of this surprises you."
Two jagged Shards turned into view as the captive tried to pull mana together, so Hajin put him into a pillar with force that opened the wood before the skill could finish forming.
A cough broke under the hand while the body spasmed against the beam.
Juna stared with one ear up and the other flat against her hair.
'He stood up for me,' she thought as her pulse tripped over itself, 'a human actually did that.'
The confusion hurt about as much as the grip.
Taking his protection meant putting a question to every rule that had kept her alive around worse men than him, though nothing in the anger looked like greed, or like somebody staking a claim in front of witnesses.
He looked offended on her behalf, which was a thing she had never learned how to survive.
One of the friends finally shook the shock off and came forward a step.
"Hey, let him go," he said, though the words came out thinner than he had probably planned, "you cannot just pick a man up off the floor for talking."
Hajin turned his head and looked at him without letting go, which finished the rest of the warning for both of them.
'Those eyes say I am next,' the man thought while he studied the ring, 'so he can learn this lesson on his own.'
He stepped back into the crowd and decided his friend could manage alone.
Hajin adjusted his grip, then dragged the panicking man forward while two feet scraped over the boards, until Juna went stiff at the moment he lowered the face to the level of her own.
The hand stayed clamped over the mouth, forcing the breath out through the nose in short bursts.
[ ShadowMage44: ] walk him down, make him say it out loud
"Look at her," he said, holding the weight there without any effort worth naming, "go on."
The man turned his face away on reflex, so Hajin tightened his hand until a muffled sound came out of him.
"I said look at her," he said again, with no more heat in it than the first time.
Her eyes widened as the head came around.
She did not know where to put her own, because men like that walked out of rooms every day of her life.
They talked, bought, then moved on while beastkin girls waited them out in silence.
'Why is he making him do this?' she thought, her fingers closing on the blanket, 'why does any of it matter to him this much?'
Hajin took his hand off the mouth so the words had somewhere to come out.
"Now apologize to Juna," he said, keeping the other hand shut around the throat, "and think about the ones you pick before they leave you."
The captive dragged in a breath, then looked at her with fear sitting on top of the humiliation.
"You crazy little animal," he said, the words coming out of him thick and badly aimed.
Hajin put the back of his head into the pillar, which made several onlookers flinch at the sound of it.
"Wrong answer," he said.
[ LurkerNoMore: ] do not let up, he earned every bit of that
The body went slack for a second before it jerked when Hajin hauled him upright again.
Juna watched something move through her chest that she had no name for.
It was not relief, though it was not trust either, and the refusal to stop was making the numbness harder to hold on to.
'He is not doing this for show,' she thought while her ears turned toward him, 'he has been at it far too long for that.'
'All of this is for me,' she thought, 'though I have done nothing to earn a single part of it.'
He brought the man in close a second time until she had the face in front of her again.
"Try again," he said, turning the jaw by hand so the eyes had nowhere else to go, "her name is Juna."
"Apologize for putting your hand on her," he went on, patient in a way that was worse than shouting, "then convince me the lesson is finished."
The lips shook while he looked at her properly, which appeared to be a new experience for him.
Whatever he found in Hajin's face took the last of the argument out of him.
"S-sorry," he said, swallowing around the hand still at his throat, "sorry, Juna, I am sorry for putting my hand on you."
The room stayed quiet while she failed to find one word to put into it, since nobody had ever stopped a human in front of an audience like this one, then made him say her name out loud.
Even the men who had been laughing about her earlier were studying the floorboards now, so for one impossible moment the shame belonged to them instead of to her.
'What am I supposed to say to that?' she thought, her eyes going from the man to Hajin and back, 'nothing I know how to say fits in here.'
Her lips parted, then closed again as every possible answer tangled before it reached her tongue.
[ DarkBlade: ] this is the shot they put on the poster
"I," she said, then stopped, because nothing behind the word had arrived yet.
The front doors opened while she was still working on it, so half the hall turned that way on reflex.
"What is going on in here?" a voice asked from the entrance, and the crowd made a path without needing to be told.
Hajin did not put the man down.
"He was just leaving," he said, without bothering to turn around, "were you not?"
The man made a sound that everybody in the room agreed to accept as yes.