Small Kindness

Naos snacked on his moldy fruit as he walked back to his house. The crowd around it had dispersed when he went grocery shopping, so there was no one there. He walked in the door as dust bunnies were rolling on by.

He sat down on the couch that was falling apart in the living room. Naos had heard about the history of this house. It had been abandoned after the family that used to live here slaughtered each other over some dirty money that they had received.

He heard it was because they gave something up that they shouldn't have, and they got money from a local gang, and greed had consumed all of the members. Naos wondered what they had given up.

...

Days had passed since his return to Calico, and the other residents had started to become less wary of Naos little by little. It started when the adults would stop closing the blinds the second they saw him walking by.

Of course, no one talked to him, but Naos didn't have a problem with that. Keeping to himself was his favorite pastime.

But that social isolation began to degrade little by little, and it all had started when a child had thrown a rock at him.

Being hit with a stone was not by any means fun, so Naos looked at the person who had attacked him with mild anger in his eyes. But who he saw was just a kid, maybe 9 years old.

The brat was skinny and had a sickly complexion. He looked so weak that he struggled immensely to throw the rock and hit Naos. The mother rushed over to berate the child thoroughly. But unfortunately for her, the kid was dead set on chasing out Naos.

"Get out of our town you freak!" He shouted.

The mother quickly shut him up before her foolish son said anything more. After shooing him away with great difficulty, she rushed over to Naos and apologized profusely. "I'm so sorry for my son, he did something stupid! I'll do anything so please don't hurt him!"

Naos looked at her head which was on the floor by now. Disappointed, he said, "Don't worry about it. I barely felt it." Before he walked away.

The mother looked back up at the man with teary eyes, seeing him with his back turned and walking back to his house. Her shock was obvious. She thanked the man loudly before running back to her home where the child should've been by now.

...

Naos, now back at home, was sitting peacefully and thinking about what to do next. Calico was too shabby to stay long-term, but he didn't know where else to go. Even after all this time back in society, he still didn't know how much time had passed since he blacked out from the explosion.

His thoughts were interrupted by a knocking at the door. Naos shook the thoughts away and stood up to go to the door. Opening it, he found the mother from earlier on his doorstep. She was fidgeting, shifting her weight from one foot to another, and playing with her messy hair, so entranced with her thoughts she was a bit late to realize the door had been opened.

Now that Naos was standing in front of her, she bowed respectfully and spoke extremely quickly. "I'm Marla, I'm so sorry for what my son did. Is there anything I can do for you to make it up?"

The man in the doorway looked directly into her eyes for an eternal second before motioning for him to follow him inside. Marla's voice raced for a moment before following the man inside. 

The house looked decent from the outside, one of the better ones when compared to the rest of Calico, but it was even better on the inside. That is, of course, if you ignore the state of the furniture. Naos sat on the couch and told Marla to pull up a chair.

Her hands were close together on her lap, and her knees were pressed so tightly together that they were turning slightly white. "S-so, m-mister, what would you like me to d-do?"

"Tell me about the situation of this town to start with. If I remember correctly, Calico used to be a ghost town. I would like to know what caused people to move to a place like this."

Marla was only blinking when he finished speaking. Noticing her drifting focus, Naos snapped his fingers in front of her face. It brought her back to reality, and he asked once more.

"Is that really all you want from me?" She prodded.

"I do not need anything else you could provide." Naos's confident words were backed by his lack of need for pleasure, food, water, and other things that people would need to keep themselves alive and happy. "Just tell me about the town and I'll forget what happened."

Marla nodded quickly and began talking. "Calico used to be a ghost town, a pretty famous one at that. But people started flooding in about 4 years ago."

According to Marla, the wealthy elite gained more and more power suddenly and started pushing everyone below a certain wealth out of the bigger cities into small towns. The recognizable cities that remained were all filled to the brim fast and ran out of space.

That meant all those others had to flood into the remaining small towns, start their settlements, or move into ghost towns. Marla and her family were unfortunate enough to be below the bottom line and were pushed out of their home. Calico was the only remaining option.

"Do you know when the elite started suddenly getting more power?"

"I think it might've been about 5 years ago. I heard from some friends around that time that some people did some incredible things like they had superpowers or something."

After some people, mainly wealthy people obtained superpowers and became able to kill others effortlessly, the US waged war on the rest of the world.

World domination was now possible, and the country that some would call the strongest was now even stronger. They conquered the rest of the world extremely quickly and began the plan of pushing out everyone below the middle class. This led to situations like Calico's all over the world.

Naos stood up and motioned for Marla to do the same. She did so hesitantly. "Well thank you, Marla. Now this incident is officially forgotten and you can go back home."

Her smile stretched from ear to ear as she thanked him. Then Marla ran back home, nearly tripping on the way out of the door. Naos sighed and closed the door behind her.

"It seems like a lot has changed in the 3 years I was recovering." He muttered to himself.