酷视

Chapter 19: Only an idiot kills a goose laying golden eggs to make a soup

And yet, in this specific moment, the importance of those two simple worlds was beyond anything I\'ve faced on this side of my portal.

Still, now that I knocked, asking the man inside to wait would be extremely rude. And so, I pushed the doors open and stepped inside while making sure to close the doors as I entered the small office.

"Who are... Wait, aren\'t you a bit too young to be here?"

A look of surprise appeared on the face of the man sitting behind a simple desk.

Just by taking a single look, one could never tell that this was the office of one of the lieutenants for the local boss of the underworld. There were no explicit markings that would give away his gang affiliation. There were simply no decorations anywhere in the room, with every inch of free space occupied by shelves and special stands for bookkeeping and writing.

"That depends," I replied, not admitting to being too young to enter the brothel for the very first time since I approached the bouncer. "Am I too young to be in a brothel? Legally yes, practically no," I said before shrugging my shoulders. "But I\'m here not for the girls, I\'m here to talk with you."

Strangely enough, even when facing one of the more powerful people in the entire area of the town\'s backstreets, I felt no fear or even the tiniest sense of intimidation. For some weird reason, in my eyes, the man before appeared like just another bureaucrat, busy making sure no official could ever find any fault with the documentation of the business he managed.

Still, my words managed to force the man out of the mundane routine of every day. And as he raised his eyes to look at my face now with proper attention, I could see sparks of interest dancing in his eyes.

"And what would you like to talk with me about?" the man asked while letting out a small sigh.

In his eyes, I was likely yet another poor kid who was about to either ask for something unreasonable and be taken straight from some stupid series on gangs and mafias... Or be the more rational type who simply came here to offer his soul to the group.

"May I reach into my pocket? I can show you the item in question and it will make our discussion all the easier..." I made a short pause to build up some tension. "And I will have to show it anyway or you won\'t be willing to believe I\'m serious."

When dealing with this kind of people it was highly unwise to make some sudden movement or reach out for the insides of my pockets. Those men... They wouldn\'t be all that surprised if their rivals would recruit someone as worthless as me just to execute one of the executives of the group.

"Feel free," the group\'s lieutenant replied, hanging back on his chair and hiding his hands below his desk to prevent me from seeing what he was doing or holding in them.

Warned by the open threat, I used my right hand to slowly reach into the pocket in my pants before using just two fingers to grab the coin I\'d hidden inside before, just as slowly, pulling it up and then putting it down on the table. Then, with a single flick, I sent the coil sliding on the desk, straight into the hands of the gang-affiliated officer.

"Is this gold...?" Even though the man\'s voice was flat, he couldn\'t hide the small tones of curiosity that I apparently managed to pique.

"I don\'t know what grade of gold it is, but without a doubt, it\'s gold. I nearly managed to mark it with my teeth," I explained before spreading my arms out.

A world where people dressed in medieval-level clothes couldn\'t possibly come up with all sorts of ways the modern world figured out for faking gold. So, just going by the probabilities, the one coin I initially received was more likely than not to be made from real gold.

The man appeared to think the same, given how long he spent turning the coin around in his fingers and thoroughly inspecting it.

"It looks like it\'s real," he finally admitted before sighing and tossing the coin back to me. "What do you want from me, then?"

\'So far, so good,\' I took in a shallow breath, knowing better than to openly reveal how relieved I was.

"It\'s fairly simple. I\'m pretty sure you\'ve never seen a coin like that, did you?" I asked, keeping the piece of gold on the table while looking straight into the man\'s eyes.

"I did not," he easily admitted, most likely prompted by the curiosity the hints of which I could see every now and then. He was a mobster, not a damn actor or a poker player, after all.

"Aren\'t you curious where it came from?" I asked, only to put a wide grin on my face. "No, it\'s better if you don\'t ask. Because while it wasn\'t obtained illegally, I would rather not explain how I got it."

The mobster stared at me from beyond the barrier of his simple desk.

"And you brought it here..." he muttered, only to suddenly pull forward, resting his elbows on the table, and stare directly into my eyes. "Have it ever occurred to you I could just take it from you before throwing you out? Or that you might not even be able to leave this building?"

There was a small, amused smile on the man\'s lips... But there was no threat in his eyes. After witnessing the moment of anger and how the eyes of that massive fox changed at that precise moment... I could tell that despite the harshness of his words, this man didn\'t really mean anything he said.

"It occurred to me, but I dismissed those worries fairly quickly," I replied while shaking my shoulders. "I don\'t know you. It\'s my first time talking with you. But I assumed that if someone makes it to your rank in the group, then they can\'t be an idiot," I spoke, perfectly aware of how close I was getting to actively insulting the man... even if my words actually praised him instead.

In tense or complex situations like this, people were more likely to just hear the insulting words, not the context they were said.

Still, regardless of how dangerous the game I was playing in this meeting, I forced a small smile on my lips.

"And only an idiot would kill a goose laying golden eggs to get himself a bowl of soup." I shrugged my shoulders again before relaxing a little. "To put it in a more direct way, if you take this coin from me, you will be a few grams worth of gold richer. But if you help me out with selling it, I will be likely to keep coming back with more and more of them."

This time, the sparks of curiosity openly burned in the man\'s eyes.

\'Good,\' I thought, breathing a small sigh of relief while stopping myself from wiping my forehead clean of all the sweat it produced.

As much as I wanted to play it cool, it was all but an act. During every second of this interaction, I was perfectly aware of how close I was to finding a lead nugget stuck firmly where only my brain was supposed to be.

"So, what I wanted to ask you is simple," I added after giving the man some time to process my words. "How much will I lose by exchanging this gold with you guys, if I\'m really against sharing how did I get my hands on it?"