Chapter 57

Negotiation, Part II (りき ②) is the fifty-seventh chapter of The Promised Neverland manga.

Synopsis
Emma and Ray manage to get the man to join them on their trip to AO8-63.

Plot
The chapter starts recapping Emma and Ray's motive, which is to get the man to guide them to AO8-63 to continue the search for Minerva.

Emma walks up to the man, to the fearful looks of Don and Gilda, seeing as he tried to kill her when they first met, they wonder if she could ever convince him. She greets him and says that they could make a deal.

Emma introduces her self and asks for his name, and the man harshly declines answering, she is not fazed by this at all, however. She then offers him a seat, to which he declines that as well, and asks Gilda to bring him a plate of soup. She asks how the man is feeling and he says he is in a bad mood, Emma apologizes for having to tie him up and for stealing all of his cookies, and offer some breakfast soup to reconcile with him. She reassures him that nothing is amiss with it.

He looks like he is about to have the soup, but put it down on the table, to Emma's disappointment. He is about to assume that the food supply was used to make it, but Emma corrects him that it was all made with ingredients they brought from Grace Field, so there is not a drain on his food supply. She plans to make all the food with their own supplies and keep water, electricity and space use to a minimum.

The man does not accept this and tells them to leave, but Emma says that this is all so they can start on the right foot, and reveals that he is not actually worried about the limits of the shelter's resources.

As said by Ray, there was a major contradiction as he seemed to have the attitude of a someone living the good life when he talked so much about "dead weight" and the limits, which means his motives are something else. His lack of response also confirms this.

Emma says that she and Ray are going to meet with Minerva, and proposes that they'd like him to be their travel guide and body guard. She asks if he is strong, and knows this because he survived thirteen years on his own and he must have a lot of experience with going outside the shelter. Ray adds that his shoes are quite worn down, and he looks quite fit from when he showed them the ID on his belly, which shows he all this time living calmly. In addition, there were fresh fruits hanging in the pantry, which cannot be made in the fields, and also they seemed recent, which means he would have had to journey outside to obtain them, from the forest or by the waterside.

Thoma and Lannion are shocked by this as they remember when Sonju told them to never go back or go near "a body of water", which implies that the man went through demon nests multiple times and made it out alive. The shot the man fired yesterday barely grazed her skin, and assuming he missed on purpose, it would have taken a lot of skill with the gun, he also escaped their binding too. He is not stupid.

Emma pulls out the letter she looked through before, and says it was found unsealed, the man and his friends must have tried to find Minerva as well. She and Ray want to tr, and want his help because he has strength and experience surviving in the demon world. The man refuses with a smirk, asking why he should care and tells them o get out of the shelter, and Ema reaffirms that they will, and when they find Minerva and return safely, her and all the children will leave the shelter at once.

The man sighs, exasperated that they think that offer will get him to risk his life going out and protecting Emma and Ray. Emma brings up that he wanted them to leave, and he agrees, but says it is a lot easier to just kill them right now. Emma asks if he can do it, and says when he makes up his mind, he doesn't look back.

Ray brings out the man's gun, and the man thinks that he is going to shoot him, and tries to talk him out of it. Ray says that he is not going to kill him and was just returning his gun, of course, the bullets have been removed. Instead, he pulls out a small switch, which the man recognizes. They found it yesterday when searching the archive room, and Ray lost sleep trying to fix it as the wiring was cut, the switch is an emergency self-destruct device.

Emma says that they are going to make a deal, or else they'll blow up the whole shelter. She knows that the shelter is important to him in more ways than it just being a suitable living space, he will not be able to have "tea parties" anymore if the shelter is destroyed. The man wonders how they even know and if they are insane. She adds that if they are going to die according to him, why not just destroy the whole place.

The man feels cornered at this moment and thinks something is wrong with them when they managed to find and make the self-destruction system operational in a single day. He contemplates trying to turn the tables since they have plenty of opening but thinks about taking them out the A8B-36 thinking that the latter would make it easier to take care of them and a bit fun. He agrees to their deal. Chris says that he cannot let them die to which the man tells him to shut up.

He says that he will help them go and search for Minerva, but refuses to guard them as he does not want to put his life on the line for them, Emma agrees to this as well and asks for his name, to which he refuses to tell her again and calls her "Antenna Kid", to her shock as Ray tries to hold in a laugh. The man says that he has no intention of getting close with the man tells them to stay out of this sight.

Ema accepts this result, saying "pleased to meet you, then...dear man with no name."

Research Elements
In this chapter we have the following Research Elements: