“Hey, Grandpa,” Kyle said, his tone dripping with fake sweetness. “Why don’t you sit down?”
He paused, grinning wider.
“Oh wait, my bad. Looks like nobody cares about war heroes anymore.”
His friends laughed.
Richard at last raised his eyes.
His gaze, gray, sharp, and unflinching, settled on Kyle’s face.
For an instant, the laughter stopped.
Something about that look, cold, calculating, impassive, made Kyle’s smirk waver. He shifted on his feet and cleared his throat.
It was subtle.
But Richard noticed.
A weakness.
A crack.
Kyle regained his footing and scoffed toward his friends.
“Looks like we got ourselves a tough guy.”
The train lurched again, a sharp sudden turn.
Richard held onto the pole, steady.
Kyle did not.
He stumbled, then recovered.
Richard did not flinch.
The predator had just shown he could slip.
Kyle muttered under his breath, annoyed now.
He needed to take control back.
With a swift movement, he snatched Richard’s hat off his head.
The action was intentional.
Disrespectful.
The whole train seemed to stop.
Kyle spun the hat around in his fingers.
“Damn, this thing is old. Bet it’s seen some real action, huh?”
He flipped it inside out, making a show of examining it.
“Or maybe it just smells like mothballs.”
The others burst out laughing.
Richard remained silent, but his hands, still holding the pole, tightened ever so slightly.
Kyle threw the hat to one of his friends.
The young man caught it and spun it around his finger as if it were a basketball.
Mockery.
A game.
Richard stood motionless.
Waiting.