Chương 47: 20.Just a Chat, They Said. That’s How Nightmare Begins 20-3

Ten minutes later, when I went back, Master Tam was already inside. Same folding chair, same old cotton vest, same face that looks like the kind of guy selling fakes at the market, except he could talk your whole family history into doubting itself. Same black-market cigarette, same slow, curling white smoke. The whole man was like a pot of soup that hadn't started boiling—but you knew if you stuck your hand in, you'd still come out cooked. The moment I stepped through the door, he didn't even lift his head.

"Sit." I sat. No straps this time. Which was even cheaper. Because at least the straps are honest about one thing: you're about to suffer. No straps meant that today he wanted me to sit here and sell myself voluntarily. Master Tam opened a paper file on the table, flipping it very slowly, like he was looking at a menu.

"We'll pick up where we left off," he said.

"If you get caught, who are you throwing out first to lie to me with?" I leaned back in the chair, trying to look like human waste with no hopes left in life and only a working mouth on the payroll.

"No one," I said.

"I'd just make something up." Master Tam nodded.

"That's called your first mouth." I frowned. He turned a page.

"Hard, cheap, and handy. The upside is speed. Downside is, it's trash talk. Good enough for noise, not enough to pass inspection." He lifted his eyes to me.

"Try again."

"I told you, I'd just make it up."

"You'd make it up, but you wouldn't pick at random," Master Tam said.

"When people are cornered enough to use someone else as a shield, they don't just grab whoever. They choose. The one that sounds the most believable. The one least likely to get them killed. The one they can walk back easiest later." He tapped the table with his cigarette.

"So I'm not asking for a name. I'm asking what kind of person pops up first in your head." I didn't answer. The cabin was very quiet. The white light was so clean it was aggravating. Like even the light had been trained to know exactly when to shine people into a corner. Master Tam didn't push, just kept turning those pages I couldn't even tell if he was reading.

"Teammate?" I said nothing.

"Instructor?" Still nothing.

"Someone who doesn't exist?" The corner of my mouth moved.

"Someone dead?" I looked at him. He finally smiled.

"Oh, that one got a reaction." He leaned back; the folding chair gave a little creak.

"Second mouth."

"You registering my mouth for household records today or what?"

"Close enough." He exhaled smoke, lazy.

"First mouth is for biting. Second mouth is for hiding things. That look you just gave me—that was number two." I couldn't be bothered to answer. He, on the other hand, looked like he'd finally found something fun, eyes half-narrowed as he watched me.

"A kid like you, making shit up is not the skill," Master Tam said.

"The real skill is jamming people up with half-truths. If you get caught and they ask who the Federation is grooming here, who they trust, who they plan to send where—you won't give them a name that's completely fake. Purely fake falls apart on the first check." He flicked ash into a small metal tray.

"You'll give them someone real, but in the wrong slot. Someone useful, but with the wrong purpose. Someone you actually kind of care about—so your eyes look the most honest when you say their name." I snorted.

"You really know your stuff."

"That's how I make my living," Master Tam said. He flipped the file to somewhere in the middle and shoved it forward just enough that I still couldn't see.

"Okay. Let's say you've been caught. Who are you selling me as?"

"You," I said. Master Tam was amused.

"Good answer. Nasty, but not cheap." He watched me.

"Why?"

"You just look like you'd sell well."

"That's your mouth talking. Not a reason." I stared at him. He stared right back. Staring contests are annoying. Especially when the other person isn't trying to out-intimidate you; they're just waiting for you to drop on your own. Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings. I let my gaze slide away a centimeter.

"Because you're the type…" I paused.

"Low rank, but you know a lot." One of Master Tam's eyebrows lifted.

"Go on."

"Prisoners don't start by making up big shots. Too obvious. They don't waste it on bottom-tier people either—no value." I stared at the corner of the table, pushing the words out slowly.

"If you're going to lie, you lie with someone who sounds real, sounds specific, is tempting enough that the other side will actually spend time checking, but won't lead them straight into the core." Master Tam nodded.

"Good. So how would you sell me?"

"I'd say you're nominally a training instructor, but in practice you handle loyalty screening for second-tier trainees," I said.

"Say you barely show up on any official roster, but you get access to candidates with special cultivation value. Say you look like some old guy smoking black-market cigarettes, but you've actually got special clearance to handle allocations for the next-stage training streams." Master Tam stayed quiet. I glanced up at him, and deliberately twisted the knife.

"Well? Sound about right?" He watched me for two seconds, then slowly broke into a grin.

"Girl, that's not something you'd only say if you got caught," he said.

"That's the kind of thing you've already been keeping track of." …Annoying. I didn't reply. He didn't press the advantage. Just casually turned to the next page.

"What if you can't sell me?"

"Then I sell J. J."

"Why?"

"Because he deserves a beating, and he's crazy enough," I said.

"Crazies make the best smokescreens. You say he runs unauthorized drills, tweaks simulation parameters on his own, pushes people into zero-level phases before they're cleared—people will believe half. Half is enough. They'll fill in the rest themselves." Master Tam nodded.

"Good. And if you can't sell J. J. either?" I hesitated. This time the pause dragged a little. Master Tam watched me like an old fisherman seeing the line finally twitch.

"Mila?" he asked. No answer.

"Karl?" Still nothing.

"Leonard?" My breathing slowed for a beat.

"Or Leo?" I lifted my head and looked at him. Master Tam wasn't smiling. Right now his face looked most like a teacher's. Not an instructor, not an interrogator, not an old fox. The kind of adult that, if you'd been lucky enough to have as a kid, might have let their pen hover one extra second next to your parents' signature line. Of course, the Federation doesn't manufacture that kind of thing. The Federation only mass-produces people who tear the signature line off for you.

"You see?" he said.

"That's your third mouth."

"You're really busy today," I said.

"Busy compiling my family portrait."

"The third mouth isn't for being tough, and it isn't for hiding," Master Tam said, closing the file at last and looking me straight in the eye.

"The third mouth is where you play old." I started to laugh. Stopped halfway. Because he'd hit it too cleanly. Like someone threading a needle through my ear and slowly picking at the one nerve in my brain I least wanted anyone touching.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked.

"It means your first two mouths are still childish," Master Tam said.

"First one bites, second one ducks. Third's the troublesome one. Third starts acting like it's seen the world. Like it understands everything. Like lives, loyalty, comrades, superiors—they're all just pieces on a board." He lifted one thin finger and tapped his own temple.

"This mouth is the most dangerous, because you'll believe it too." I didn't move. The door was closed, the lights were white, the tabletop clean enough to slice apart someone's dignity on. The whole room was too quiet—just his voice, that little rasp in his breath like sandpaper moving very, very slowly.

"First you said there was no one, because you wanted to look hard," Master Tam said.

"Then you sold me and J. J., because you know how to make it sound right.

"But the second it's about the ones you've actually fed into your system—whether you respect them, resent them, fear them, or kind of want to get close but don't dare—you shut up." I stared at him, cold.

"So?"

"So it's not that you don't have anyone to sell," he said.

"You do. More than you think. You just wrap that part up like garbage so no one notices it's actually your own flesh." My fingers curled in without meaning to. Small movement. But people like Master Tam live off small movements. He dragged his chair a little closer; the metal legs scraped softly on the floor.

"Alright, no more hypotheticals," he said.

"I'll give you the simplest problem." I looked at him.

"You've really been captured. They know your age, your training, your value, and that you're not fully grown yet. They won't start by hitting you. Wasteful. They'll give you water, give you a blanket, give you a handful of nice-sounding words." He paused.

"They'll tell you: as long as you can prove you're not just a dog the Federation's throwing to the wolves, we'll help you." My throat felt dry.

"Then what?"

"Then you start thinking about who hurts the least," Master Tam said.

"Which piece of information is the most peripheral, least central, that looks the most like survival and the least like betrayal." I kept quiet. Because I knew. I actually knew. That was the disgusting part. Not because I've actually been caught before. Not because I'm some Imperial rat planted in deep cover. I'm not. It's because off these forty-three days alone, I can already start drafting how I'd be captured, what I'd say, how I'd live. Federation efficiency is impressive.

Turn a fourteen-year-old girl into a natural disaster and throw in a pre-written "captured-use manual" for free. Master Tam must've seen that tiny little pause, because he nodded slightly.

"See, that's the first thing I want you to learn today," he said.

"Not how to hold out. How to see where you'll start to rot." I lifted my eyes.

"You talk like it's guaranteed people are going to rot."

"No shit," he said.

"If people didn't rot, I'd be out of a job." I almost laughed. Almost. Didn't, in the end. Master Tam crushed out his cigarette, leaned back, and finally put away that market-stall small talk tone, showing the cold that only comes with actually doing this for a living.

"Hoshino Shimo, I'm not in a rush to teach you how to fabricate a statement today," he said.

"You're too fast. If I teach you too fast, you'll just use it to protect those rotten shells of yours." I fixed my eyes on him.

"Rotten shells?"

"Yeah." His tone stayed flat.

"Your foul mouth. Playing old. Playing hard. Playing like you don't give a shit about anything. Those shells are still useful, so I'm not peeling them off yet." He lifted his eyelids and met my gaze.

"But you remember this: the things that can save your life are often the same things that stop you seeing clearly how you're going to die." My chest tightened. Not because he was being heavy. Because it felt exactly like seeing a pit in the road ahead and then having some old bastard squat next to it and helpfully put up a sign for you—by the way, don't worry, you'll fall in later.

"So that's it for the second session?" I asked, my tone stiff.

"What else?" Master Tam said.

"You thought I was going to strip you bare in one day? Dream on." He stood, folded up the chair with slow, closing-time movements.

"That's it for today. Count yourself lucky." He tucked the chair under his arm and took two steps toward the door, then stopped.

"Go back and think through today's question."

"Which question?" He didn't turn around.

"Not 'who would you sell,'" he said.

"Why you already know how to choose." The door opened. The cold corridor light cut in at an angle, like someone sliding a thin knife into the room. Master Tam stood in that strip of light, still a little hunched, still in those black cloth shoes, still with the kind of back that never gets taken seriously anywhere. And now I knew better—that people like that are the worst. They look unimportant, and they specialize in finding cracks in what actually matters. He turned half his face toward me, voice low.

"Tomorrow's the last session. We're not going in the cabin." I frowned.

"Then what?" Master Tam's mouth pulled into a thin smile. So thin it was like the edge of old newsprint.

"We talk," he said.

"We lay all your tricks on the table—how you hit, how you endure, how you fake it. And I'll see what's left when I'm done: a weapon, or a girl." Then he really left. No looking back this time. He left me sitting alone in that too-clean white room, staring at my own blurred reflection in the tabletop, wanting, for the first time, to smash it in with a fist. Too bad the table was metal. The Federation is clearly very experienced at preventing trainees from hurting themselves when they get emotional. Truly reassuring.

I sat a while longer, then finally stood. My knees were a little stiff, shoulders a little tight, stomach hollow enough to ache. I felt like someone had scraped off a small patch of the paint I usually use to bluff and snarl with, and now every draft hurt. When I stepped out, the corridor looked like it had no end.