The Ranch

There's two types of errandboys (2)

When we last left off, Nathan, this person with PTSD from surviving the island's monthly trials, became Tih's "master". The man takes his irritability out on Tih through demanding orders and offhanded comments insulting the child.

Tih, this child who doesn't even understand what being insulted or offended feels like, has been complying to all of his "favors" out of his own free will and interest.

Society deems child labor is bad like it deems killing its own kind is bad. But mass producing and processing livestock is fine. Rules are arbitrary, created by humans for humans. They're incredibly superficial and hypocritical.

Tih has never cared about Society's rules and Ranch Island has never abided by them. Their current relationship is treated with contempt, but this is mainly due to lingering attachment to the outside world and it's unspoken rules. Little of that attachment still remains after continuing to live on the island. So although this kind of situation is disliked, nobody would be willing to intervene, as they're not personally involved with the problem.

There's also the fact that they're aren't any rules against this. Ranch Island's rules aren't especially restrictive, thus giving Islanders a certain liberty to do as they please.

With that being said, no one felt like stopping the two. So, the two could easily be spotted out in the open and soon enough, rumors start spreading around about a newbie acting like a doormat.

The act of a newbie bowing their head to the extent of servitude was quite an entertaining topic. Most newbies arrive embellishing a certain amount of pride. They're usually knocked down a couple pegs by this time, but not to the extent of becoming someone's slave. Its not that easy to erase their ego. Even if they were in front of an instructor, at most they would act humble, maybe more depending on the instructor's rank.

It only took a week for the gossip to become one of the most talked about. Tih had once again become the protagonist of the island's rumors.

Unsurprisingly, the islanders' distain was distributed evenly between Nathan's attitude and Tih's stupidity. Comments mentioning the child's lack of common sense or comparing him to a doormat were as frequent as comments about Nathan's increasing arrogance and narcissism, if not more so.

Due to the increasing popularity of this "slave-master" gossip, Kai and the others finally discovered the person in question was someone they knew, but only a week after it first started, during the peak of its popularity.

The truth came, not out of Tih's mouth, but from rumors. This fact annoyed Kai greatly and he immediately confronted Nathan the day he found out.

The group, consisting of Kai, Sherlock, and Lucien, follow Tih after their daily breakfast together. Tih notices them but let's the group do as they please, not understanding why they're trying to secretly follow him or why they were so gloomy during breakfast. Especially Kai, who didn't speak a word to him the entire morning. Something that's never happened since they first met.

Tih meets up with Nathan as usual. Nathan is about to give out his first order of the day when he sees the group walk towards him and the kid.

"Friends of yours?" Nathan looks at the group of scowling newbies.

"Yo~ do you not have any dignity? Aren't you losing face by ordering around a child that's half your age?! Ha! Or maybe you never had any to begin with." Kai sneers, resentment underlining his words.

"You-!" The boy's jeering tone angers and embarrasses Nathan. He unconsciously tries to take it out on the person he's been treating like his servant this entire time.

"What kind of shit have you been saying about me you little-!" He aims to slap the back of Tih's Head.

Tih can basically see his hand in slow motion, prepares to dodge last minute. Of course he would let himself be touched. Nathan has been taking Tih's attitude for granted this whole time. Tih willingly listened to all of his whims because he found the job interesting and it was a new experience. For Tih, it wasn't something that crossed his bottom line.

As the hand comes closer to Tih, Kai steps between the two, ready to take the blow. Although Kai has been taking Parkour classes to raise his fitness, its not comparable to Nathan who has a larger build and more fighting experience. But even if he can't dodge it, Kai doesn't this a slap will hurt that much. Kai decided to block it because, one: his body moved instinctually, and two: he doesn't believe his friend deserves to be slapped.

Kai misunderstood something. He's aware of Tih's abnormal physique, but after hearing about all the rumors, he thinks that Tih will let himself be slapped.

Kai faces the man, preparing to get slapped, but before that can happen a pale hand wooshes out from behind him and grabs the incoming wrist before it can touch Kai.

Tih wasn't prepared for Kai to protect him, so when he grabs Nathan's wrist, he forgot to control his strength. A cracking sound comes from the man's wrist.

Nathan cries out in surprise at the sudden pain emanating from his wrist. The guy's teammates, who he usually hangs out with, come to see what happened. The teammates are already familiar with Tih and are aware of how their "relationship" came to be.

They arrive to see their teammate holding his wrist in pain and a bunch of newbies with Tih. They come to the conclusion that they ganged up on Nathan. They would never think Tih did the damage all by himself. They spent a week watching the docile boy run around, carrying out Nathan's orders.

With the assumption that Tih called for backup to take revenge on Nathan, they, of course, have to spend in and help out.

Tih was still staring at the Nathan who tried to touch Kai and was too late to stop the punch that landed on Kai's face by one of Nathan's teammates.

Something ignites within Tih. His entire body heats up and borderline all of his rationality is thrown out the window. He looks at the man who punched Kai with red wispy eyes.

Right before his rage engulfed him, he managed to toss Kai behind him with the last bit of his sanity. Now that only enemies are within his vision, Tih goes into attack mode.

Frenzied attacks fly through the air, attacking everyone in his sight. His enemies have no time to dodge of defend.

In a matter of minutes, the five men are down for the count. Bruises and scratch marks litter Tih's body, who didn't try to dodge any of the fear-induced attacks as the men tried to defend themselves against the monster.

Luckily, opponents looked down on Tih, and by the time they realized their mistake, it was too late for them to take out their weapon. Otherwise, with Tih's lack of care for dodging, his injuries would have been greater.