Chapter 211: Dangerous Air

The short man’s face had practically gone dark at this point. And Jon was staring at Finn in abject terror, and an unwilling and remorseful look that clearly said he regretted bringing Finn here. As if he was certain he’d just lost his job.

The short man leveled his gaze with Finn, still with that dangerous, dark look on his face as his voice dropped to chilling levels. “Ohh… Is that what you found funny?”

​”Yes,” Finn replied naturally. He even let out a small, genuine chuckle. “It totally caught me off guard.”

A short beat of silence passed, then the man nodded slowly and replied with the same dangerous tone:

“…It is indeed funny.”

His eyes moved robotically to Jon. “Who the hell is this mad fellow?”

Jon stammered, tumbling over his words as he introduced Arros. He seemed physically pained to be vouching for him now, but he gritted his teeth and forced the words out. “I—I’m vouching for him… for a job, boss.”

Silence reigned for several long seconds. The kind of silence that made Jon’s breathing sound too loud in his own ears.

The short man’s eyes twitched, “Did I hear ya correctly?”

Jon clenched his jaw and responded, saying the same thing with more conviction this time. “Yes, boss. I’m vouching for Arros here.”

The short man’s eyes found Finn’s again and he began listing out Finn’s “crimes” slowly, deliberately, each word coming out like a whisper:

“So let me get this straight. You walk into my office uninvited. You touch my belongings without permission.” He gestured at the conch shell still in Finn’s hand. “You insult me to my face not once, but twice. Yet you’re looking to get a job from me?”

He rubbed a hand across his face and chuckled, but there was no humor in it whatsoever. The sound was cold, dangerous, the kind of laugh that preceded immediate violence.

“I can’t even decide whether you’re simply bold, or whether you’re just plain stupid. Either way, both reasons do not benefit you at all…”

The man let the silence stretch. Jon had gone pale, looking like he wanted to sink through the floorboards. Finn, on the other hand, remained perfectly calm, still holding the conch shell loosely in one hand.

“…Or rather,” the short man continued, his tone shifting subtly, “both options would not have benefited you if it were a different person you were this blatant to.”

Then he cracked a smile and laughed, a genuine belly laugh that filled the room and shattered the tension like glass.

Finn smiled in return, with a knowing expression on his face.

Jon was dumbfounded. Every one of the boss’s words as he’d berated Finn had sounded like they were directed at Jon himself, seeing as he was the one who’d brought Finn in the first place.

His stomach had been twisting itself into knots, and he’d already begun calculating how long it would take to find new work, whether his reputation would be completely ruined.

But what was this? His expression seemed to ask as confusion colored his face.

The short man looked Finn up and down again, this time with an appraising eye. Then he gave his own more scalding assessment. He didn’t hold back as he dug at Finn’s appearance that contrasted starkly against his audaciousness.

“You look like one of them pretty boys,” he said bluntly, gesturing to Finn’s face. “Soft skin, soft hands. No muscle to back up that audacious spirit. No scars from real labor.” He shook his head. “I’d love to see the kind of trouble that mouth gets you into. I’d pay good coin to watch a proper beatdown when you crack that kind of joke to the wrong man.”

He gestured broadly toward the window of his office. “Not everyone is like me, boy. The docks are a crude environment, filled with hot-blooded men looking for any excuse to throw a punch. Half of ’em have been at sea for months with nothing but sweaty bastards for company. The other half are harbor rats who’ve been brawling since they could walk.”

“You crack a joke like that to the wrong dock worker and they’ll toss you into the bay faster than you can wring your way out with that mouth of yours.”

The man tsked and walked back to his seat, which was so high he literally had to climb into it using a small step-stool that had been positioned beside it. The setup was deliberate, clearly custom-made.

The chair elevated him to precisely the right height so that when someone sat across the desk from him, they met at eye level. It was a smart, and maybe stubborn way to bridge the vertical deficiency he suffered from.

Once settled, the short man waved dismissively at Jon. “Head to your station. Why are you still standing there gawking like a fish?”

Jon blinked, still processing the complete reversal from certain disaster to… whatever this was. He muttered a few words of apology that came out jumbled and unclear, then practically fled from the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Finn and the boss alone in the room.

The man looked at Finn in deliberation, watching him like a puzzle as he casually walked toward a painting on the wall, still holding the conch shell he’d picked up earlier. The painting depicted a ship in remarkable detail, every line of the rigging carefully rendered, sails billowing as it cut through painted waves that seemed to have real depth to them.

“What ship is this?” Finn asked conversationally.

The boss glanced at it and immediately an unmistakable look of pride colored his expression. “That’s theTidebreaker. Passed down from my grandfather who was a sailor. A real pioneer, that man. Conquered the twelve seas and five oceans when most men were content to hug coastlines all their life.”

His eyes glinted in reverence. “That ship was passed down to my father, and then to me when he passed. Though it’s more a monument to my grandfather’s glory now than an actual usable vessel. Been anchored at the far dock for years. Beautiful to look at, but the hull’s half-rotted and the rigging needs complete replacement.”

He then snorted as if remembering something unpleasant, muttering under his breath in exasperation. He cursed like a sailor as he talked about his daughter who dreamed of conquering the seas just like her great-grandfather had. How she kept pestering him to grant her the ship so she could fully repair it and put it out to sea again. How she had no concept of just how much work and coin that would take, or how dangerous the open ocean truly was.

“Stubborn as the old man too,” he muttered. “Won’t listen to reason. Thinks she can just will the damn thing seaworthy through pure determination and—”

He paused suddenly, and a silence stretched until Finn had to stop observing the painting and turn. He found the man looking at him with gears clearly spinning in his head, a grin cracking slowly on his face. It was the expression of someone who’d just solved a particularly entertaining puzzle.

“I know just the best place to put you.”

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