Anita:Thanks again for another review! You are always so encouraging, I really appreciate it! :D As for School Days – yes actually I did write a third chapter to the series but never quite finished it. I may get around to posting it someday ~ glad you enjoyed them!

Crumbs:Hi, thanks for taking the time to review! Glad to hear that you are reading along and are enjoying it so far. I hope I can meet your expectations /meekface

Hoho:Ah I'm pleased you checked out the report. Gosh – isn't it shocking stuff? I think if you wrote it as fiction no one would ever believe it was possible. It's hard to believe it's real!

Thine Own Palace

Chapter 4

It was a bare cell; small, hard and cold. Presumably kept precisely for this purpose. He was thrown against the wall and left a trail of blood on the concrete as he was beaten into the floor. It was almost industrial. Purposeful and serious. No passion, no rage or desperation like normal fights. The blows he received were weighted and accurate, designed not to win the non-existent round, but rather to inflict visible damage. He was being made an example of, after all. Thus they concentrated their violence where it would be most notable – his face – and not necessarily where it would be most painful or debilitating.

Not to say that it wasn't bad or it didn't hurt.

For sure, it was bad. And it hurt like hell.

It was just the case that it hurt in such a way as to not actually prevent him from walking once they were done making a bloody slaughter out of the rest of him.

In fact it was that calculated economy which made it all the more sickening.

Once Norio deemed him suitably wrecked, drenched as he was in his own blood and saliva and snot, a halt was called to the example-making and Sendoh was pulled to his feet and dragged back out into the corridor. He staggered, faint, head spinning, barely able to see with his swollen eyes but they marched him onwards without compromise.

He was made to follow Norio, the two other guards following along behind, clouting him painfully over the head with the butt of a gun whenever he slowed his painful wincing pace.

Despite his head humming and woozy, Sendoh had enough presence of mind to realise that he was not being returned to the cell he shared with Sakuragi. This made sense. After all, the whole section was under Norio's forty-eight hour lockdown. No one would be permitted to leave their cells for the duration. They could hardly show off their handiwork to good effect in such a scenario. No. It seemed Norio would be keeping Sendoh for forty-eight hours longer – keeping him aside to simmer carefully, perhaps adding salt where necessary to ensure he had the perfect serving to spill across the floor and under all eyes of the dining area in two days time.

He hated to admit weakness, even to himself, but his head rang painfully as if in dire warning. He felt nervous. He left like he was at a limit. He genuinely didn't know if he would survive another beating like that one.

Still they forced him onwards, staggering out of the building and under the sky, through the grounds and all the way over to an out-building Sendoh had never seen before. Even from the outside he could tell it was deserted. Some windows were smashed, the door was rusted. Apprehension gnawed at him more fiercely than before. It hardly looked like the place where goings-on were officially documented.

Inside the building was large and dark and dirty. There was one central passageway lined on both sides with open-barred cells. Completely unlike the isolated concrete rooms that the inmates inhabited, these were more like holding cells, only the back wall being solid, the front and sides formed of bars through which one could look the entire length of the building, wide enough to even reach an arm through. Certainly this was an outdated and insecure style of prison housing and the reason, Sendoh assumed, that this block had been abandoned to the ravages of time.

They walked down the central passage in silence, only the tramp of their feet echoing in this cold, forgotten place. It was dark inside; none of the lights had been switched on. Sendoh doubted they even worked. Somehow it didn't seem like the kind of place with electricity. He shivered. The thought of being left here alone was increasingly frightening.

However, despite his mounting fears, Sendoh tried to keep his eyes and face (what was still functioning of it) neutral. He didn't intend to cause Norio any satisfaction.

"This" Norio suddenly announced, almost startling Sendoh at the sudden breaking of his silence which had been absolute since pulling Sendoh out of the dining hall, "this is where we kept the leaders of the numbers."

He spoke as if giving a history lesson, as if his words held great meaning, as if Sendoh ought to be interested or impressed, even though Sendoh didn't know who or what the numbers were, or why it should matter to him.

"But of course, they're all dead now" Norio concluded his remark with a touch of smugness. Sendoh wondered if it was an attempt to frighten him. To haunt him. To speak of ghosts in this sad and empty place, and the now barren cells that had once been filled with their lives.

They paced onwards until Norio stopped beside an open cell door. Sendoh had no chance to prepare himself before one of the guards behind him shoved him brutally inside so that he stumbled and hit the floor. It was a confirmation of his fears. He was going to be left here. Caged in with the rats and the beetles and the damp. In a place like this – not simply alone, but actually… forgotten. Ceasing, perhaps, to even exist. No one would come by this place. No one.

He rallied his wits, hoping to burst towards the gate before it clanged shut, perhaps darting out through the closing gap in some madcap bid for freedom.

Too slow his hands only thudded into the bars as the latch clicked shut. And he was trapped in like some animal.

Norio smiled at him between the bars his new prison. "Well, mostly dead."

Sendoh stared at him in unhappy disbelief, not comprehending. Norio only turned away, guards falling in right behind him, moving to walk back the way they'd come.

"W-wait…" Sendoh's voice was dry and nervous. They couldn't leave him here, in this empty aching place. Couldn't.

"Don't expect any heartfelt conversations" Norio called back over his shoulder with a cold smile that Sendoh didn't see, "he doesn't talk much."

In confusion Sendoh watched them leave, their shadows walking out into the sunshine and slamming the rusted door closed behind them with a boom. Feeling sick to his stomach he swallowed and turned his head to the side.

He nearly leapt out of his skin in shock seeing a body in the adjoining cell. He moved away in horror, convinced that it was corpse. A boy. A familiar boy. Almost so much a part of the cell that it was hard to even notice him there.

He neither moved nor spoke. Without any lights on it was difficult to make him out clearly. There was a post in the centre of his cell, although there wasn't one in Sendoh's. A wooden thing that extended fully from ceiling to floor and to which the boy had been handcuffed. He sat leaning back against it now. He was utterly quiet, so thin and so pale that it would be easy to believe him dead if not for the faint rise and fall of his chest.

He didn't acknowledge Sendoh's arrival. He didn't seem aware of it at all. Though it wasn't as if the lack of light made a difference to him because, and Sendoh stared in horror, the boy was blindfolded.

The silence of their shared nightmare stretched out around them like a huge empty cavity filled with nothing but their swallow breath and weak heartbeats.

Hesitantly, fearfully, Sendoh crept over to the bars that separated his cell from the other. He dropped to his knees to bring himself down to the same level as the other boy, his only companion in this place. Even if he reached through the bars, the boy was still a good six feet away. It seemed he would be able to sit or stand but not lie down or move away from the post.

With his voice trembling, Sendoh spoke up.

"Kaede Rukawa?"

His voice echoed eerily in this silent building.

There was no response. Not a flicker of a reaction. Not a shift or a twitch or a tilt of his head to indicate that he had even heard.

Sendoh wondered if he were sleeping. He spoke a little louder.

"Hey."

Again, nothing.

It was creepy. Unable to see his eyes it was difficult to even think of him as a living person. He was more like a shell. Like the frail discarded skin of a snake that had long slithered off elsewhere.

How long has he been here? Sendoh found himself wondering. Has this place driven him mad?

Deprived of sound, of company, of the ability to communicate, to move, even of sight. Surely it would drive anyone mad. It was… horrifying.

His eyes slowly adjusting to the lack of light, Sendoh stared harder. He saw scars and marks on his neck and bare arms. Not the randomised injuries of skirmishes but the meticulous patterning of careful torture. He felt sick.

He called his name one more time, to an equal lack of effect.

Discouraged, he reluctantly drew back from the bars and turned his attention back to his own cell. It was empty. Genuinely empty. No bed. Not even a toilet or sink. A barren concrete square. He sighed and sat himself down again the back wall in an effort to make himself comfortable. It was impossible.

Forty-eight hours, he reasoned with himself. He could survive this. He gently touched his wounded face, anticipating a long and silent two days.

It wasn't until evening that anyone returned. In fact Sendoh was a little surprised that someone bothered to return at all. He'd half been expecting to be left utterly alone for the entire duration. He wondered if they would bring food for him.

Turned out, though, they weren't there for him at all.

The single visitor carried a flashlight which swung across the floor as he walked down towards the only two occupied cells, whistling grimly in the darkness. Sendoh's heart hammered with unexplainable nervousness. He roused himself from where he lay against the hard floor and walked over to the cell door to look out. As the man approached, Sendoh could make out the faint red glow of a lit cigarette in his mouth. It wasn't until he drew almost level with the cell door that Sendoh recognised that it was Norio himself. He expected to be addressed, but Norio continued past, ignoring him entirely, and with a jangle of keys instead let himself into the cell next door.

Curious, Sendoh walked around the perimeter of his cell, moving hand over hand along the bars, feeling the flaking paint and rusty rough under his palms.

Norio set the flashlight down on the floor so that it shone over the helpless form of the silent Kaede. He hadn't moved at all from where he leant against his post. Sendoh hadn't even seen him so much as shift his weight all day. The glow of the flashlight made him look almost grotesque, like an inanimate corpse aglow in the darkness. Like a horror story told around a campfire.

Silently Sendoh crouched down and looked on.

"Now" Norio began in a soft voice, reaching out and taking one of the boy's slim ankles in hand delicately, like a doctor beginning an inspection. There was no reaction and no resistance, although Sendoh hardly expected otherwise. "You know what I want, Kaede."

There was no movement and no reply. Sendoh raised a sceptical eyebrow. It seemed pretty obvious to him that Norio was wasting his time. After all, hadn't he already mentioned that the boy didn't speak? What was he expecting exactly?

Norio let out a sigh as if, like Sendoh, he'd anticipated such a response. "Why do you do this to yourself?" he queried, as if Kaede's silence were a matter of deep personal disappointment. "They're not coming for you, Kaede. You're dead, remember? So just give me the codes, and all of this can end."

Nothing. It was a whole lot like talking to a wall. Sendoh watched intensely, concerned but simultaneously weirdly curious about what would happen.

Norio sighed again as if in regret and gently raised the ankle he had in his hand, resting it on his knee, holding it softly but firmly in his hand. Sendoh licked his dry lips nervously and waited. Kaede still gave no response at all.

Inhaling deeply another round of tobacco, Norio removed his cigarette from between his lips and let out a stream of smoke into the inky air, spooky in the flashlight. Then, with practised ease he pressed the lit end of the cigarette firmly into the bare sole of Kaede's foot.

Kaede's weak body immediately jerked in response to the pain as if a jolt of electricity had run through him. Genuinely the first movement Sendoh had seen him make and the only proof that he was even conscious. Sendoh fell back in alarm, hand over his mouth, sickened by the vision of torture.

Norio did not remove the burning brand, pressing it deeper into the soft tissue, eyes grim as he watched the exposed portion of Kaede's face carefully. The smell of burning flesh leaked into the air.

Kaede's lips parted and let out a long and agonised cry, a steady note which only began to stutter and waver as the trembling instincts of his body overrode him, causing him to attempt to struggle desperately out of Norio's unrelenting grasp. He could not free himself.

Norio only released him once the light had burned itself out. Then, to Sendoh continuing horror, he reached into his pocket and lit another cigarette.

"I'll ask you again" Norio said, lifting Kaede's other foot and Sendoh turned away only to be physically sick, bringing up a wave of acid from his empty stomach, reeling. "The codes for the Tokyo sect."

"Don't…" the plea escaped Sendoh's lips without his consent. It was weakness, he knew, but he couldn't help it. His eyes were drawn to the scene irresistibly.

He didn't know why he should compromise himself of behalf of a stranger, least of all a stranger who had stubbornly ignored him all day, but still there was something about him that inspired… what? Perhaps it was pity. Perhaps it was some bizarre form of respect. Awe. Whatever information the boy was protecting he was clearly protecting it with more strength than Sendoh would have believed possible for anyone. Either that, or he was simply mind-shatteringly mad.

However, it seemed that after having enduring the agony once, Kaede's composure had broken down. He tossed his head from side to side nervously, hands clenching and unclenching in their restraints as he gnawed whimpering at his own lips.

But he gave Norio no answer.

Despite being alone, afraid and in great pain, he did not give in. Did not compromise. Refused to be forced.

And even as Norio set about mutilating the sole of his other foot, and even as the boy cried and thrashed in his private closed-shutter world of agony, Sendoh was rendered speechless. Crouched horrified in the dark like a silent voyeur, utterly powerless to do anything, he was struck most keenly, once again, by the awing concept of the exception.

What did it mean to be that boy? To be outside.

To be alone.

Sendoh began to wonder whether he was strong enough, not to be an exception, but even just to be in its presence.

~tbc

ANs: Fucked-up! Just can't resist messing with Kaede. Sorry. I know, I know… I'm a bad person.

To be honest I wasn't actually expecting anyone (except perhaps myself) to like this story. I initially intended it to be short because I had planned only for a short encounter between Sendoh and Rukawa swiftly followed by a rather sad ending.

Since you guys seem to be more interested than I anticipated (*shocked*), I have loosened up on the reality thing and will be going a lot further into imaginative fiction than I initially intended.

It's less accurate to the source material but hopefully a better story. Whether it will work out remains to be seen.