I CHOSE to be a VILLAIN, not a THIRD-RATE EXTRA!!-Chapter 38: A Play of Reactions

Ashok couldn’t help but feel a surge of satisfaction as he reflected on the knights’ ignorance.

"Of course, they had no idea who the man in the bamboo hat really was. If they had, they’d have handled that message with far more care, perhaps even double-checked it by reading it twice before passing it along. But they hadn’t." thought Ashok as he snickered in his mind. He could already picture the man’s reaction when he read the message.

The knight approached the man, his tone brusque as he called out, "Hey, you". He wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries.

The man in the bamboo hat didn’t flinch. He simply turned slowly, the dark shadows beneath the brim hiding most of his expression. "Yes?"

"There’s a note for you from that kid outside the gate. He’s claiming that you’re from the same hometown as him." The knight didn’t elaborate further, but his eyes flicked towards Ashok’s direction.

The man in the bamboo hat’s expression shifted, brow furrowing with clear confusion. He turned his head slowly, following the knight’s subtle gesture with his eyes. Ashok’s figure was unmistakable, though there was no immediate recognition in the man’s gaze. The man’s face twisted into an expression of pure puzzlement as he tried to make sense of the situation before him.

Meanwhile, Ashok stood with a broad smile, completely at ease. He raised both hands in the air and started waving enthusiastically, utterly enjoying the spectacle before him. He wasn’t quite sure of the words that the knight was speaking to the man, nor did he care; the confused reaction of the man was enough to make him feel like the situation was unfolding in the direction, exactly as he’d hoped.

The man’s confusion deepened even further. Here he was, minding his own business, when a stranger—no, a kid—suddenly appeared out of nowhere, delivering a message that he was supposedly from the same "hometown" as him. The absurdity of it felt like a riddle wrapped in a joke, and the man struggled to wrap his mind around it.

The man’s eyes flickered back to Ashok, who stood there beaming with a broad, almost playful grin, waving his hands like they were old friends reunited after years apart. The kid’s carefree demeanor, and the joy in his gesture, only added to the strangeness of it all.

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The man’s brows furrowed further as he looked at the kid, who was now smiling and waving enthusiastically as though they shared some deep, unspoken connection.

In truth, the man never had a "hometown." He had been raised in Central, a place so vast and impersonal that the very idea of a hometown was a foreign concept to someone like him. Yet here was this kid, waving to him like they were old friends as if some bond existed between them that he himself didn’t know of.

"Why are you standing here, acting like a clueless fool? You can’t even recognize a kid from your own hometown! That boy spotted you from that distance, and yet here you are, still unable to recognize him, completely oblivious. Shame on you!" spat the knight and shook his head in exasperation.

"But I don’t have—" The man began, his words faltering as he opened his mouth to explain, but the knight was having none of it. Without a moment’s hesitation, he infused a bit of his aura into the paper—just enough to give it some weight and force then hurled the note toward the man, sending it through the air with surprising speed.

To the knight’s surprise, the man caught the paper effortlessly, his fingers closing around it with the ease of someone handling a simple object. There was no fumbling, no awkwardness—just a smooth, almost nonchalant motion as if the note were no more than a casual toss.

The man’s smooth catch with an effortless reaction left the knight momentarily stunned after all he was a knight, trained in combat, yet his throw was simply caught by a man, who is just a sweeper.

’Who is this guy? Those are not movements an ordinary sweeper could make. I need to look into this.’ thought the knight as quickly masked his surprise, allowing his steely exterior to return.

"You have all day to stand there and act aloof," the knight muttered with a sneer. "But I can’t waste any more of my time on you." With a dismissive flick of his wrist, the knight turned sharply on his heel, the sound of his boots echoing through the silence as he strode off.

The man stood there, the paper crinkling lightly in his hand, still trying to make sense of the bizarre exchange. The knight had left, but the oddness of the encounter remained, echoing in the silence. His first instinct was to toss the paper aside, to forget the whole thing as some strange, meaningless encounter.

But as Ashok’s smiling face flashed in his mind, something stopped him. The image of the kid’s enthusiasm, the way he’d waved and acted as though they shared some deep, unspoken bond—there was something about it that didn’t sit right.

’What most could an unknown kid write to someone like me’ thought the man not knowing that Ashok’s charisma had planted a small seed of doubt in his mind. That seed was very small, almost imperceptible. Still, it was enough to keep him from dismissing the note outright.

With a slight, almost reluctant hesitation, the man unfolded the paper and began to read.

As the man read the note, his aloof, confused expression began to shift. His gaze slowly drifted back to Ashok, no longer clouded with uncertainty but now sharp.

Ashok, however, remained completely unfazed by the intensity of the man’s stare. With a mischievous smirk tugging at the corners of his lips, he raised both hands once more and waved enthusiastically in the air, as though the whole thing were nothing more than a game to him.

The man’s grip on the paper tightened, his fingers pressing into the edges as if trying to crush the message when he saw Ashok’s reaction. Without taking his eyes off the kid, the man read the message once more, slowly this time as if confirming something.