"Where is that boy?" the man demanded.
"Are you seriously asking me? How many times did I tell you to warn him to stay away from that old geezer?"
As though envious of the morning sun waking the world beyond the mountains, the husband and wife were busy shouting each other down inside their cramped hut.
"Why don't you step up and actually parent your kid? People are starting to talk," the middle-aged man grumbled, taking another spoonful of his food before heading toward the door. When he grabbed his scythe from the threshold and slung it over his shoulder, his wife was still barking at him.
"What do you want me to do, tie him to the bed? He takes after you—stubborn as a mule."
Meanwhile, a scrawny boy hollered as he neared the dilapidated hut at the edge of the village.
"Morning, Grandpa!"
"Welcome, little Mel."
An elderly man with a beard cascading down to his chest greeted him with wide-open arms. Decked out in a heavily patched robe, his deeply lined face beamed as he sat in front of a house with a caved-in roof.
"Your mother is going to throw a fit. Look at me, I'm right as rain. You don't need to sneak me food every single day anymore."
"Let her throw a fit! If it were up to her, me getting knocked around by the other kids is perfectly normal just because I'm not built like them. But you... you always teach me new things," the boy replied, puffing out his cheeks.
Suddenly, as if shedding decades in a heartbeat, the old man barked back, "You foolish brat! Do you honestly think I'm teaching you all this just because you look out for me? I'm just bored to tears waiting for the grim reaper, that's all!"
"Why don't you join the village martial arts school like the rest of your friends? If you can make a name for yourself there, you might actually carve out a decent life for yourself in the future."
The old man's tone grew dead serious. Resting his chin in his hand, he sized the little boy up from head to toe.
"Don't mess with me. I can't even hold my own against the regular kids in the village. They all tower over me and are built like tanks. Besides, martial arts training is a total grind. I'd rather just roam the woods with you."
The old man slapped his knees, bursting into laughter.
"Alright, alright, there's no winning an argument with you. Come here, today I'm going to show you some plants you've never laid eyes on!"
As the little boy hopped down the dirt trail, practically buzzing with excitement, the old man trailed behind with heavy, measured steps. The sunlight warming their backs soon snagged on the tree branches and faded away.
By nightfall, the boy who had been sprinting ahead that morning returned dead to the world, fast asleep on the old man's back. The moment he woke up, he hit the road. "Grandpa, I'm heading home! See you tomorrow morning!" the little boy hollered as he dashed off.
The boy's sheer joy brought a smile to the old man's deeply lined face. After watching him fade into the distance, he turned toward his ruined hut. He had barely set foot through the doorway when a thick wooden log cracked hard against his skull.
"Wake up, you filthy old geezer!"
Inside the cramped room, lit only by the flickering flame of a kerosene lamp, five grown men stood over the old man, who lay hogtied on the floor.
The beefiest of the bunch dug his boot into the ribs of the man whose beard stretched down to his chest, while the others glared with murderous intent.
"Didn't we tell you to pack up and leave?"
"Stay the hell away from my kid, you piece of trash. Are you trying to turn him into a pathetic loser like yourself?"
The last voice belonged to none other than Mel's father—the very man who had caught a massive earful from his wife that morning. The middle-aged man practically foamed at the mouth, spitting the words through gritted teeth.
Subjected to this barrage of furious questions, the old man kept his mouth shut. Judging by how cool and collected he was, he had likely danced this dance before.
"You all must have realized by now that this leech isn't going to just take a hint and walk away. I say we keep him locked up here under the radar for a week, and then we toss his ass deep into the forest and be done with it!"
The burly man calling the shots clearly had sinister motives. Even if he wasn't going to get his own hands dirty, he wanted to leave the old man completely defenseless to his fate in a forest crawling with vicious beasts.
The first to jump on board with this idea was Mel's father—the old man's best friend in the boy's eyes. While the old man, with his messy hair tied back carelessly, was just a nobody the other villagers chose to ignore, for Co, he was a massive thorn in his side that gave him daily headaches.
"Co, is your kid going to be able to keep his mouth shut and not stir up trouble?"
The burly man directed the question to his current right-hand man, banking on his answer to put the rest of the crew's minds at ease.
"Don't sweat it. I'll tell him the old geezer bailed on him. He might throw a tantrum and refuse to buy it at first, but give it a few days and he'll be singing the exact tune I want him to. You can bet on it!"
Things played out exactly as the man had orchestrated. The next morning, when Mel sprinted over to see the old man, he was hit with something completely unprecedented.
His grandpa, who greeted him at the door like clockwork every morning, was nowhere to be found. The boy scrambled into the run-down hut, and when he couldn't find the man he was looking for, he planted himself right where the old man should have been and waited until pitch blackness fell over the village.
Alas, the old man wasn't coming back. Knowing full well what was going on, his father dragged Mel back home, not missing the chance to plant some seeds of doubt in the little boy's head along the way.
"No, Grandpa couldn't have just left! He wouldn't ditch me without saying a word!"
No matter how hard Mel tried to fight it, his father constantly shot him down.
"How do you know he didn't bounce? Look, he didn't even bother to say goodbye to you. Guess you weren't as important to him as you thought!"
Once home, his mother tag-teamed this psychological beatdown. After enduring a day full of agonizing suspense, the boy reached his breaking point and passed out in a corner.
Mel would make a beeline for the old man's hut the very next morning, but to no avail. The person he was desperately waiting for had seemingly vanished into thin air.
Meanwhile, the old man hadn't touched a crumb of the dry bread or a drop of the meager water they gave him. As if he had made his peace with death, he looked like a man who was simply watching the sun rise and set until his time was up.
Time crept by. The days were eerily quiet, but two days before their deadline, something completely out of left field happened. Absolutely convinced that his grandpa—who had watched his back for three years—would never just hang him out to dry, Mel plunged into the forest all by himself in the dead of night to find him.
His father got wind of the news when he went to scoop Mel up from his usual crying spot, like he had been doing every evening lately. A couple of other village kids had spotted his son booking it deep into the woods.
Mel might have been skin and bones, but no one was in any position to question his guts. To the kids who asked him where he was headed, he had fired back with just a single sentence.
"Something bad must have happened to my grandpa. I'm going to save him!"