Silence fell on the courtyard. Gale stood over the boy. Chest heaving. Red vision from adrenaline fading. He looked at the children around him, noticing they all looked rather docile compared to earlier. But he thought they were supposed to be an angry mob out to get him.

At that time, those stares felt threatening. There were never that many eyes on him in the wild. Other than his parents’ eyes, every other eye on him, even the animals, were supposed to be threats to his life.

He had always wanted to see and meet other kids around his age. Even told mom and dad about it, but not like this. They were looking at him like a monster, and now all he wanted was just to go back to the wild.

Gale started hyperventilating. Where were they? They never left him alone. Even during his solo hunts, he knew they were just nearby, just in case.

“What is going on here?” a voice demanded. It was one of the staff members, a thin woman with graying hair.

Her eyes went wide as she pushed through the children, taking in the scene. The boy lay unconscious on the ground, bloodied nose, urine all over his pants and pooling at his groin.

“Who did this?” the staff lady looked around.

None of the children moved, except their eyes gave it away, pointing directly at Gale.

“Office. Now,” she barked at Gale.

Gale followed her inside, he could hear the whispers starting behind him.

“Freak,” one kid whispered.

“Monster,” another whispered.

But he was just defending himself. They were the ones threatening him.

The staff lady ushered Gale into the office, then sat behind the desk. The piles of paperwork that felt like they were about to topple over obstructed his view of her.

“Call me Ms. Molly,” she said. “Now, explain yourself.”

“I just… didn’t mean to… they surrounded me… and… I…” Gale’s throat felt dry, trying to find the words or how to even explain that his dad told him to subdue the biggest threat.

Ms. Molly’s lips thinned. “Violence is never the answer. We have rules here, and you just broke the most important one on your first day.”

What did she mean by first day? Mom and dad was gonna pick him up soon from this place after they were done with whatever they were doing.

“This isn’t how we solve problems. We use our words. We come to a staff member. We don’t resort to… to that kind of brutality,” she nagged. “You need to learn to control that temper. This isn’t like where you come from, out in wherever.”

Gale couldn’t even get a word in. It wasn’t his fault. As she continued to lecture him about the importance of self-control, he thought of the rigorous training his parents had put him through.

Self-control was all he had. Patience is rewarded with food and the ability to live to the next day. It was a simple life, and in that life, he didn’t have to deal with anyone else. All he had to do was follow what he was told to do, and he was happy.

“Now, Gale. This is your only warning. Another incident like this, and we will have a problem. We’re trying to provide a safe home for everyone, including you. Do you understand?”

The words she spoke went in one ear and out the other. A safe home, she said. Why did he need another home from the home he already had?

“Gale, nod if you understand.”

He nodded. That was all he could do.

“Good. Now get out of my sight,” she said.

Gale stood up from the seat, closing the door on his way out. So this was going to be life from now on, huh? He wasn’t that dumb to know he was abandoned in this place.

Tears started rolling down his cheeks. He’d give anything to get back to that familiar routine. Even if his fists bled, even if he was sleep deprived every day, he just wanted to see mom and dad.

‘Stay low, blend in, survive.’ That was the mantra his parents always repeated to him. Stay low in the woods lest you make yourself known. Blend in and be one with nature. Run away if you need to survive to get to the next day.

Guess this place is not too different.

The days that followed were a blur. Gale’s parents never came back to pick him up. He learned that the building he was in was called an orphanage. A place where kids were left abandoned by their parents. Every day was a total experience of isolation from the other kids. No one wanted to talk to him. Each time he walked past the hallway, they’d talk to each other out loud about a monster, obviously referring to him.

School wasn’t any different. Rumours already spread not to talk to the weird kid. Still, though, at least most of the kids there didn’t insult him as he passed them by. They just left him alone, unlike the weirder kids who got constantly beat up by the bigger kids.

Weeks passed by just like this. Lonely.

Until one afternoon, he sat alone in a corner of the playground, drawing a campsite by a tree in the forest on the dirt. Crude, but it looked pretty good.

The sound of footsteps approaching tensed his muscles. Gale prepared his heart for another round of taunts or insults. Maybe this was even the day they’d start beating him up, just like the other kids.

“Hey,” said the boy. “I’m Shawn. You’re Gale, right?”

The boy had unruly dirty blond hair and a smattering of freckles across his nose.

Gale nodded cautiously.

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Shawn plopped down beside him. “Pretty impressive beating up Brian like that. He’s been bullying kids smaller than him for years and no one’s knocked back at him for anything.”

A small smile appeared on Gale, though it quickly faded as he remembered that beating up people was a bad thing. He didn’t want to make Ms. Molly nag at him again.

“I shouldn’t’ve…” he mumbled, not finding the next words.

“Probably not,” Shawn chuckled. “But hey, rules are meant to be broken. Where’d you learn how to hit like that anyways?”

Gale hesitated. For the past year, his parents had told him to always keep secrets to himself. Don’t tell anyone, otherwise they’d be really mad.

“My dad taught me,” he said finally. “It’s our… way of life.”

Shawn’s eyes lit up with interest. “Really? That’s so cool! Mind teaching me some moves sometime?”

Didn’t this boy see the damage he did to Brian? It was dangerous. And… and Ms. Molly would get mad and nag both of them. However, the feeling of having a friend his age wasn’t so bad. Good feelings are good. Having someone to talk to who isn’t afraid of you… that felt warm. It shouldn’t hurt too much to teach a little bit. Probably.

“Yeah, maybe,” he replied.

The next few weeks didn’t become a blur. Gale and Shawn became inseparable. The first week was basics, showing Shawn how to move through the wild. Well, not the wild. More like the playground.

Gale taught Shawn how to climb the tree. Both went up to the top with no fear at all. Some students ratted them out. Ms. Molly came and shouted at them to get back down to the ground. After which, she nagged at them for an hour in her office for ‘breaking the rules’.

The next week, Gale taught Shawn how to make fire with just pieces of gathered wood. Accidentally, Shawn lit up a whole bonfire in the middle of the playground. Next came Ms. Molly, banging on her desk, asking whose idea it was to make a fire in the middle of the yard to both of them. That went on for an hour until she had to go to a meeting.

The week after that, Gale started teaching Shawn some martial arts he learned from dad. Shawn called it ‘wilderness arts version 1.0’. The moves themselves were basic, focusing on balance in order to be able to move all joints into a striking force.

For the first time after being abandoned, he felt like he found someone that could alleviate some of that longingness. A sort of comfort in friendship.

But that comfort was short-lived.

One afternoon, Shawn and Gale were in the yard.

“You ready?” Shawn asked. “I ain’t going easy on you!”

“Come at me if you dare!” Gale said jokingly.

Shawn charged at Gale, running at full sprint. “Aaaah!” the boy shouted.

Gale sidestepped the charge, “too easy, naive.”

“I’m not done yet!” Shawn crisply switched his momentum to the left. Leg already out, sweeping towards Gale’s head.

Gale used two arms to block, allowing the force to dissipate by moving his body with the leg. But the fist came too quickly, aimed right at his temple. His body moved on instinct, grabbing the arm and pulling towards him to the side.

Shawn toppled over, his hand staying in Gale’s grip. An audible crack could be heard from his wrist, bending at a bad angle.

“AAAAAH!” Shawn shouted. “It hurts!”

The boy shouted and cried as he saw his wrist was clearly broken.

Gale froze. The boy didn’t know how to fall. That was one thing that Gale forgot to teach him. What do I do? What do I do? He tried reaching for Shawn, but the boy crawled backwards with fear clearly written on his expression.

Staff members rushed over, quickly whisking Shawn away to the infirmary, leaving Gale alone. Through it all, he saw Shawn’s eyes, carrying the same look as everyone in the orphanage.

Ms. Molly had taken him to her office after that incident. She didn’t say anything for a while, flipping through notes and glancing at her computer monitor.

Finally, after a while longer, she said, “Gale, do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Gale shook his head. What else could he say? Tell her that they were just play fighting some hero vs dark lord kind of fantasy that might get them hurt? Scrapes and scratches were one thing. A broken wrist or arm was something else.

“Gale,” her voice became soft. “I understand you’re going through a rough time. Causing small trouble is fine, but this one is just too big. Just please, please stay out of trouble. Okay?”

Somehow, even though she was softer on him, the words hurt more than when she just nagged him. At least with nagging, or maybe even shouting, Gale knew he did something wrong. All he could do was suppress the tears. Stay out of trouble.

Stay low, blend in, survive. Just like what his parents told him.

Gale left the office. Ms. Molly didn’t even say anything as he left, not even showing him any slight anger.

The following days were agonizing. Shawn avoided him, making excuses to leave whenever Gale called out to him or whenever he entered the room he was in. The whispers started up again, much more than before.

“I told you he was dangerous.”

“He can’t control himself.”

“He’s wild and feral.”

“A monster.”

But… I’m not. He’s not any of those things. Each time he passed by those whispers, a part of him wanted to cry out. Wanted to lash out at them. And what would that do? Prove to them that he was a monster. So he didn’t.

Gale retreated further into himself, creating walls around him so that no one could ever come close. After he got out of this orphanage, he’d build a house in a forest. A cabin. And maybe even a pool. No one would ever be invited, except his parents if they ever came back.

One night, he made the decision. All the skills, all his knowledge, basically everything he learned when he was with his parents would all be put away. He would become the quiet boy that no one would look at like an unseen ghost.

From that day forward, Gale became part of the background. He moved through the orphanage like a ghost, speaking only when spoken to, never drawing attention to himself unless warranted. When other children picked on him, he endured it silently. Fighting back would just draw more attention to him, attention he didn’t want.

During classes, he sat alone, quiet as to not attract any attention from even the teacher. Soon, they all did as he wanted, leaving him alone. The whispers soon died out, and he just became part of the background, blending into the life at the orphanage.

The staff were relieved by his apparent transformation. Ms. Molly even called him to her office.

“Good job, Gale.” Ms. Molly smiled. “Here, have some chocolate bars on the table. Don’t be shy.”

Gale took a bar. The label said: Hershey’s Cookies and Cream Crunchy Bar.

“Now Gale, if you ever need anyone to talk to, my door is always open,” she said.

That was a lie, of course. She was always busy, always talking to students in trouble, nagging at them. She droned on and on about how much better he was that Gale didn’t even register most of her words.

After she finished her monologue that took about 30 minutes, Gale stood up and headed for the door.

Ms. Molly coughed, “Gale, don’t forget to visit the library. We just got new books from a donor.”

Gale walked through the corridor and saw a cart full of books. The library usually only had textbooks and educational material. But this new pile was different, more colourful.

Taking a handful, he went back to his room. He laid them all out on his bed. One book was a mystery noir novel. A couple of them were romance. One was a sci-fi, and the last one was a fantasy.

That whole night, he read through all of them, burying his mind in the realms of the books. The fantasy book caught his interest the most, where knights roamed a kingdom felling demons. The feeling of freedom as he read through the lives of the characters that lived inside those books felt like a valve release.

Years passed, and Gale’s mask became more convincing. The other children stopped fearing him, instead largely ignoring his presence. He became adept at blending into the background, observing without being observed. At times, he even became the target of bullying. A shove in the hallway, a book knocked from his hands. He became a sturdy, silent punching bag, and in a twisted way, he had fulfilled his parents’ expectations—he had learned to stay low, to blend in, to survive.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep