Anita88: Thanks for another review ;D I'm not sure about Sendoh. I do really need to work on his character, and I'm not sure I've managed it so far. I really need to try harder on that! I find him a little difficult to deal with and have a horrible tendency to write him weaker than he ought to be ._.
Addicted to SD: Thanks for reading! There's a little more information about the numbers in this chapter, I hope it interests you!
Thine Own Palace
Chapter Nine
He was a smallish boy. Thin armed and gentle faced. Sure as hell he was no fighter. Born to ride, you might say. Kaede now, he was slim too but he was strong and besides he was... different. Somehow he was unlike anyone else Sendoh had ever met in this appalling place. It was as if the rules just didn't apply to him. But Kogure? No way. The guy just wasn't gang material.
Sendoh chased potatoes around his plate despondently. They looked yellow and unappetising. The seat under him was hard and uncomfortable. The table was sticky with the invisible remains of yesterday's spills. After a few more starchy circlets he pushed the whole tray away with a sigh. His eyes lifted and caught sight of Kogure sitting in his usual place opposite the bitter-eyed Fujima at the end of the table. He stared at them both for moment, trying to see past the bruises and the air of the down-trodden that clung to them like a bad smell. It was hard to do.
The numbers weren't exactly a gang, Kogure had explained. It was a system of gangs.
A system. Well they certainly had a system now, Sendoh mused, knowing that the ever-present eyes were on him. It was only a matter of time before the damn system would swallow him up and spit him back out into a decidedly nastier world. Oh yes, the bruises on Kogure's face and the perpetual limp in his walk were reminder enough of his ever threatening fate.
Always aware of his increasingly-perilous position Sendoh took a surreptitious glance around him. From down the table a thick-lipped man, Tetsuo, sneered at him. Sendoh rejected his instinct to look away and instead narrowed his eyes provokingly back, feeling all the while like a cornered rat.
I was a smuggler, Kogure had mentioned with a wave of his hand. The twenty fives were smugglers. Thieves mostly, petty criminals, the kind of people with a network. The ones who knew people on the outside. The twenty fives smuggled stuff in – cigarettes, drugs, money, weapons, you name it. They smuggled stuff out sometimes too. Whatever the leaders needed, they got.
That was how the numbers had worked. They'd recognised skills other than the two we have now.
There had been more than just fighting or riding.
Imagine a time when there had been more than two choices. Three, if you counted hanging yourself from the ceiling by your own bed sheets. What a beautiful concept. What a wonder that someone like Kogure had witnessed it. To think that it had existed, it had been real and tangible and functioning within memory. And to think that Kaede had come from that world too. The whole thing seemed so exotic, so wondrous, utterly mystical to Sendoh. That prison that had been before.
Six gangs, six leaders, forming an alliance of numbers. Dominating prison society.
It hadn't always been this way. It didn't have to be this way. Perhaps there really was an escape. If it had existed before under the numbers it could exist again, and perhaps Kaede was still the key to it now. Perhaps Sendoh had been right about him after all.
Sendoh had known from the moment he'd first seen him that there was something extraordinary about that boy. He existed in the world on a different plane. He wasn't bound by the petty rules of the vicious social system. It didn't matter what Norio did it him, it was still obvious that he was something wonderful. Like nothing could ever pull him down. Like he was the wind.
And yes, Sendoh found it easy to convince himself that Kaede really must be one of the six so-called leaders no matter Mitsui's reservations. No other explanation suited him. No amount of logic or history was going to erase him of that blind belief. It was faith. It was religion. It was a desperate man seeing a pin prick of light and putting all his faith in it like it was the light of a merciful god. So what if they had died? Kaede was alive. Kaede had been born again.
But, though he saw it as a vision, as a dream, the truth was that Sendoh was fantasising of an age that was already over. The numbers were gone, and the unique social system they had implemented had gone with them.
"Hey, Mitsui! Where's your kid?"
Sendoh lifted his eyes sluggishly from his interrupted daydreams to see Tetsuo drumming his fingers on the sticky table. Ah yes, the dream had gone but the nightmare still remained. Opposite Sendoh, Mitsui twisted his lips around his fork hesitantly, his eyes sent drifting irresistibly down the table towards where Kogure and Fujima still sat quietly.
Sendoh could almost feel Mitsui's reluctance. His delay. But after a moment he nonetheless put down his fork and tossed his head soundlessly in the rider's direction. Tetsuo gave Mitsui a toothy grin and, standing up, set off down the table towards Kogure. Sendoh felt his dreams failing him. The numbers were gone. They didn't protect Kogure any more.
Tetsuo looked like a spider approaching a butterfly. Almost unbearable, knowing what would happen. Sendoh considered rising from his seat, but what could he do?
He looked over at Mitsui and saw him trembling ever so slightly with both anger and his own powerlessness. And Sendoh knew that Mitsui wouldn't intervene. Mitsui wouldn't act because, like Sendoh, he no longer believed there was anything he could do. Didn't believe it was possible to survive alone. Believed that this was the only way to survive. All the strength and pride of the twenty eights had been closed in. Proof that prison walls didn't have to be made of concrete.
Tetsuo took a fistful of Kogure's hair and dragged him back off his stool so that he fell awkwardly backwards, striking the floor painfully. Hardly anyone spared the scene a glance. It was common enough. Kogure tried to move away from Tetsuo's harsh grip and the result was a heavy blow across his face.
Sendoh looked down at his hands that lay idle in his lap. It wasn't right. It was sick. It was fucking sick.
But was he really prepared to risk everything for sake of one rider? He felt as if two worlds were colliding in him painfully. His eyes had been opened to other possibilities but the reality was that his position hadn't changed at all. His eyes fixed on Kogure who still sat on the floor nursing his bruised face and awaiting his fate. Even if he stood up for him, challenged Tetsuo, he'd win nothing, save no one. The price the gang would extract from him was too high. To high to pay for something in vain.
Still, Kogure wouldn't blame him for this. He cared, after all. He'd considered it, at least. So what if he failed? So what if he couldn't bring himself to move? He gave a shit, and that was more than anyone else would give.
Be thine own palace. The words came back to him now for no reason he could understand. He thought once again of Kaede, of the exception, and knew all over again that he wasn't strong enough to break apart from the system. Just like Mitsui. They were both caged in like dogs, unable or unwilling to bite the hand that fed them.
Sendoh dropped his eyes and looked away as Tetsuo pulled Kogure roughly to his feet, clearly far stronger than the smaller boy. Even though Kogure was a veteran of prison life it was obvious that there was no contest between them. Tetsuo motioned for him to head back towards the cell block. Kogure looked as if he wanted to protest, but when he looked over at Mitsui and received no support, the momentary meagre fire seemed to die in him. With heavy, defeated steps he fell into line behind Tetsuo. What other choice did he have?
Rape, Sendoh remembered, was not only an agony of the body, but a decimation of the mind and spirit as well.
Sendoh sat, twisting his hands, trying to ignore his own self-loathing. Trying to tell himself that he was just doing what was necessary. Kogure couldn't be helped. Couldn't be saved. Not by him, anyway. Not today, at least.
Be thine own palace.
What did that mean anyway? To look after yourself, to defend yourself from anyone who would knock you down. To protect yourself. That was the only sense he could read into it, Kaede's few precious words to him. He tried to take reassurance from them now. It didn't seem to help. And across the table he couldn't meet Mitsui's eyes.
He clenched his hands in his lap to stop them from shaking.
Suddenly the metal door of the hall clanged loudly against the brickwork like a gong and Sendoh looked up sharply. Tetsuo, who had already reached the doorway, froze in his stride. Behind him Kogure did the same. The whole dining hall fell silent. The reason was obvious.
Standing in the door frame was Norio.
Sendoh felt the fluttering of fear combined with the strange warm hope that perhaps, just perhaps, he'd get the chance to see Kaede again. Have the opportunity finally to reassure himself that the boy was all right. Or, if not all right, still alive at least.
Norio's eyes moved with familiar unsettling speed, taking in the state of the room, swift and calculating. For the first time Sendoh noticed that he was actually quite a short man. Tetsuo so nearby clearly towered over him, even though he hunched his shoulders almost in a subconscious effort to appear smaller. A futile attempt to not attract the man's attention. He wasn't lucky enough for that though.
"Going somewhere?" Norio addressed him coldly into the abrupt silence of the empty air.
"N-no, sir."
"It isn't permitted to leave the dining hall during meal times."
"Yes, sir."
The entire room focused on the exchange, waiting with bated breaths. Tetsuo seemed to be attempting to shrink, his back so hunched that he looked almost deformed. Norio's eyes moved suspiciously over Kogure who stared back with as much defiance as his sallow and bruised face could muster before Norio turned back to Tetsuo.
"I hope you weren't thinking of sneaking off for a quick fuck."
Sendoh licked his lips nervously. The room suddenly felt so tense, so dangerous. Somewhere a knife slipped off the table and the clattering impact against the floor filled the whole room with its unreasonable loudness. The jangling echoed into nothing while all eyes remained fixed on Norio, waiting to see what he would do next.
"I… no… of course I… I wasn't I… I wouldn't… I mean…" Tetsuo stammered under Norio's intense consideration.
There was an unbearable pause. Norio turned his eyes away from Tetsuo.
"And you" he was looking down at Kogure again. "I know you. Former number, aren't you?"
Around Sendoh a few heads lifted. An immediate murmur ran through the gathered inmates which not even Norio's dangerous presence could suppress. A number? they mouthed to one another, sharing glances and looking suitably scandalised. Opposite Sendoh, Mitsui squeezed his eyes closed tight. Sendoh thought he might be praying.
Norio stepped up to Kogure who, to his credit, did not back down although Sendoh had no doubt that he was terrified. There couldn't have been a single mind in the room that wasn't at that moment recalling the sight of Kaede's mutilated body. The perpetual example. Norio's dire warning.
"I dislike numbers" Norio said threateningly.
Kogure said nothing.
The entire room waited breathlessly.
The next moment Kogure's head struck the sharp edge of a table with a sickening crack as Norio's blow knocked him down. He gasped, collapsing through the bench of a gang Sendoh didn't know in a loud angry rattle of splintered wood and impacting metal. The gang members scuttled out the way like cockroaches as Norio approached ominously slowly. He lifted one heavy booted foot and stamped down on Kogure's face, hard.
The boy cried out as his nose shattered under Norio's heel. An agonised sound like metal on glass. Sendoh watched Mitsui gouge his nails into the table.
Norio spat at Kogure before turning to make his exit, the entire room stunned, his right foot leaving bloody prints as he walked.
"What about the other one?" one of the accompanying guards queried as Norio passed him in the doorway. Sendoh could not hear the reply but saw the guard nod and then turn back to gesture to his fellows back in the corridor behind him. A moment later four men succeeded in manhandling Kaede into the room, smashing his shoulder against the door frame as they came through and knocking his head violently against into the concrete wall so he dropped to the floor dazed. And there they simply left him, handcuffed and silent and hopeless same as last time.
Yet for once the eyes in the room were not on him. Kogure, hands splayed over his face, red and sticky with blood and rolling with agony amongst the ruins of the broken bench commanded everyone's attention.
The silence continued.
Sendoh strained to see over the heads of the others. Kaede, he noticed briefly, was as ever in his own world. He seemed to have no awareness of anything around him. Still crumpled at the foot of the wall he didn't move a muscle. Fifteen feet away from him Kogure's situation seemed much more urgent.
Some of the nearest gangs had risen slowly to their feet, their eyes fixed on the injured rider, their expressions decidedly unfriendly.
"Fucking numbers" someone commented into the quiet, breaking the silence and a murmur of agreement gradually went up from the gathered inmates. Sendoh's eyes were wide as he looked towards Mitsui who was pale as death. More and more people were rising to their feet, moving towards Kogure who was pulled to his feet roughly. The situation was bad. Really bad. Sendoh didn't know where the animosity towards the numbers came from but it was obvious enough.
"Akagi" Mitsui said urgently, turning his eyes up the table and rising to his feet determinedly. Sendoh did the same. The Yunta gang might not have been able to defend Kogure from Norio, nor from Tetsuo, but they did have a duty to defend their riders from other gangs. At the head of the table the Yunta leader sat with his arms folded watching the developments seriously.
But he made no move.
Sendoh waited with rapidly increasing concern until Mitsui faltered in the face of his inaction. "What..." he stammered, "...what's the meaning of this, Akagi?"
Akagi waved a hand as if in dismissal. The gesture was clear. The others around the table looked cautiously among themselves, waiting to see what would happen. Fujima, Sendoh noticed, had also lifted his head in concern.
"But he's... he rides with us." Mitsui protested in pale shock. "He's earned the gang's protection."
"He's not one of us." Akagi replied. "He's a number. I won't have numbers in this gang."
Mitsui opened and closed his mouth in disbelief. Sendoh looked quickly back over towards Kogure who was being shaken back and forth violently by a large, red-faced man amid noises of approval and encouragement. Kogure's neck snapped this way and that sickeningly, blood flying. Sendoh resisted the instinct to gag. If they didn't do something to help him soon, he was going to be lynched. It was no longer a case of rape. They were going to kill him.
Across the table Mitsui turned panicked eyes on Sendoh. "You said you he was a number. A twenty three. Are you sure?"
The words were nearly indecipherable amidst his nervous rush, it was clear that Mitsui was panicking, and Sendoh blanked for a moment before realising that he was asking about Kaede. He nodded mutely.
Mitsui chewed his lip, clearly trying to think things through despite his mounting fear. It made Sendoh wonder, momentarily, just how much Kogure really meant to him. This clearly went beyond gangsters and riders. Beyond the simple matter of honouring an old pact between two fellow former gang mates. But this wasn't the time to dwell on the matter.
"You're a thief, right?" Mitsui demanded after a moment. "Can you pick locks?"
"Well... yeah."
"Handcuffs?"
Sendoh stared wide-eyed as he realised what Mitsui was asking. "I don't think he will help..." he replied awkwardly.
"Can you open handcuffs?" Mitsui repeated angrily.
Sendoh's eyebrows furrowed before he grumbled back "I don't know. Perhaps if I had a pin."
The next thing he knew Mitsui had seized his arm from across the table and was dragging him with no small show of strength towards the epicentre of the mob. A few shouts followed them from the yunta table but were ignored. Mitsui elbowed and shouldered his way furiously through the enraged crowd, dragging Sendoh along behind him towards where three of the mobsters had dragged Kogure up onto one of the tables like a makeshift stage and were holding him upright by his hair. The boy was obviously weak with hurt.
As they got closer, Mitsui forced a pin into Sendoh's grip and gave him a nod and a shove, pushing him in the direction of Kaede away by the wall. The boy hadn't moved from his place and was in ever silent danger of being trampled, a danger to which he did not seem to be aware. Sendoh didn't have a chance to ask Mitsui anything as the heaving crowd forced them apart. He only caught his eye briefly before losing sight of him, and with nothing but his own resentment to accompany him, forced his way through the angry mob in Kaede's direction.
He was in a state of hopeless conflict. This, he presumed, could be considered his formal resignation from the yunta group. Even if it was bound to happen sooner or later, he felt angry that he hadn't been allowed to make the decision for himself. Mitsui had had no right to drag him into this goddamn mess. If they even came out of this alive it would be a miracle. And even if the crowd somehow failed to murder them for being numbers, Sendoh was sure Norio was watching everything from the wings. This was going to turn out very dangerous for him. And even though yes perhaps he felt bad for Kogure, had he been given the chance to choose, he honestly wouldn't have chosen this. It seemed to him little better than suicide.
But even that realisation, he thought as he dropped down beside the silent Kaede, was mixed with a weird and twisted gratitude. He'd thrown in his lot with the numbers. He hadn't been strong enough to make the decision for himself so perhaps he ought to be grateful to Mitsui for forcing him into what, at the end of the day, he perhaps believed was right. Wasn't this, in the depths of his heart, what he wished he could do? Stand up the system. Be, somehow, exceptional?
Well, now he was doing it.
Swallowing his reservations he took Kaede by the shoulders and shook him gently.
"Kaede? Kaede it's me, Sendoh Akira. Do you remember me?"
There was no response. His eyes were closed. Sendoh couldn't help believing he might even be unconscious. What the hell Mitsui was thinking he didn't know. Asking Kaede to help was worlds beyond pointless. The boy was in no state to do anything. He probably couldn't even stand up.
Someone forced their way past behind and and shoved him with their leg so he was knocked forward to his hands, leaning over Kaede, almost touching him. The boy seemed even smaller from this close. The outline of his bones were visible under the weak layer of skin. He smelt strangely musty, like clothes left sitting in the damp for too long. He was frail and meagre and sickly.
But, feeling Sendoh's breath on his cheek he opened his eyes and Sendoh was momentarily blinded. Despite his failing shell of a body, he was full of fire. Full, full, full. Sendoh felt his blood thump angrily through his veins. He wanted to share in that heat. Whatever drove this boy to such strength, Sendoh wanted it. Like a drug. Like, if he could share it only for a moment, he'd be better, he'd be stronger.
But for now. For now...
Gently he took hold of Kaede's arms and reaching around, set to work using the pin Mitsui had given him on the handcuffs. Kaede at least seemed to understand what he was doing, and kept still. As he worked, the noises from the crowd seemed to rise and fall and change although Sendoh did his best to pay no attention to his surroundings, concentrating on his task. He guessed Mitsui had reached the bench-come-stage, and whatever he was doing was causing a reaction, although whether it was good or bad, crouched down on the floor Sendoh couldn't tell. Kaede was staring only at the floor in some kind of confused stupor.
It was only once the handcuffs opened with a click that Kaede turned his eyes to look at Sendoh. His stare was full of question. Unable to meet his eyes, Sendoh concentrated on his wrists which, he saw, were scabbed and sore from rubbing against the metal for however long he'd been forced to wear the infernal things. But when Kaede's curious stare did not relent, Sendoh found himself almost forced into speech.
"Uhm..." he began awkwardly, eyes looking anywhere but into Kaede's face. He didn't have a clue what Mitsui was expecting to gain. "My... friends..." he gestured weakly in the direction Mitsui had gone, although neither of them could see anything but feet and legs from where they sat on the floor, "...some trouble" he finished lamely.
Kaede continued to stare at him. Sendoh could almost feel the question – what has that got to do with me?
Yeah, he mused silently to himself, he was almost asking himself the same thing.
"They're both, uhm, numbers" he explained. "And I think... I think they thought you might... well... help them. Somehow. I don't really know."
Kaede's stare didn't change. Sendoh hardly expected anything less. It was obvious that there was little or nothing he could do. One badly beaten boy against the rising hordes. He might be exceptional, but it wasn't as if he could work miracles. Sendoh sighed heavily and kept his eyes on the floor.
The word came softly, hoarsely, the sound of a voice so rarely used it seemed to be skating on fly paper.
"Friends?"
Sendoh looked up at him again. His expression hadn't changed, still blank and relentless, no emotion, no clue as to what he might be thinking at all. And yet, he had leaned forward. Ever so slightly. Ever so slightly closer to Sendoh.
"Ah... yeah" Sendoh realised, "I guess." Mitsui and Kogure, his friends? What an odd word to use in this place. Friends here tended to be no more than useful people to forge alliances with. A closed society, it wasn't like there was a great deal of choice of who to spend time with. And allies were important, gang acceptance was important, but friendship – likeability, shared hobbies, interests, hearty conversation - was mostly irrelevant.
Still Kaede was watching him and Sendoh fidgeted slightly. He felt like his soul was being pulled out through his eyes. Again he felt the pressing need to justify himself.
"Kogure is a good guy" he said honestly, "I want to help him."
Only the tiniest flicker of a relation in his eyebrow that was gone as soon as it came, and Kaede reached out a hand as if silently asking Sendoh to help him to his feet. Slightly surprised at the gesture, Sendoh immediately did so, looping Kaede's thin arm over his shoulder and holding his thin body by the waist, gently helping him up. It was easy to do. He weighed nothing at all, like he was made of paper.
Once on his feet Kaede staggered slightly, leaning a hand against the wall to steady himself, but after the initial blood rush he straightened, maintaining a surprising amount of poise in his stance. Sendoh hadn't thought that such a slim and sickly build could create such an intimidating form, but somehow he did so. He just had a presence that no injury or disgrace could lessen.
The crowds seemed to part for Kaede naturally. Mitsui had had to fight his way through, but the inmates naturally fell back from Kaede as if he were a ghost walking in their midst. No one had ever seen him do anything before, Sendoh presumed. He had always appeared unexpectedly in their midst, isolated and terribly wounded, the symbol of Norio's influence, the means by which he harvested their fear. He'd been nothing more than a doll, a painting, perhaps even a myth.
But he approached the table now with quiet measured steps, silent, easy and confident. All Sendoh had to do was follow in the gap his passing left behind.
Mitsui, Sendoh now saw, was in a bad way. He must have been an exceptional fighter because despite everything he stood on the table still, feet spread for balance, his fists raised, blood pouring into his eyes amid all the cheering and goading for the fight. Kogure lay unconscious at his feet, and six men surrounded him, each already showing signs of battle, but each with a dozen more at his back waiting to take their places. As Sendoh and Kaede came closer, Mitsui swayed slightly where he stood, uncertain on his own feet, but nonetheless clearly prepared to fight even to the death. His sleeves had been pulled back revealing for the first time perhaps in years that tattoo which he now displayed proudly. He was a twenty eight. He was a number.
They reached the very edge of the table just as Mitsui took a heavy blow to the head and was sent staggering to the side, nearly losing his footing and falling from the height. A second man immediately launched himself at him, landing a fist in the unprotected flesh of his stomach. Mitsui grunted with the impact and spat a glob blood from his mouth. He raised his arms instinctively to ward off the next blow, but it was not forthcoming. Uncertainly Mitsui looked up and over his guarding arms and saw that his assailants had all become distracted by the sight of Kaede climbing unsteadily onto the table to join them, wincing slightly with the pain of his movements.
They looked at him as if he were an alien. A completely unknown entity. Even the cheering from the crowd slowed to a confused murmur at the sight of him. He seemed so pained, so weak and frail, they couldn't have been more confused to see a lamb climbing up among them. Sendoh held his breath.
Gasping with the effort of his movements, Kaede managed to straighten up so he was standing on the table silently, staggering slightly as if dizzy, taking careful sight of the men around him.
The men stared back in confusion.
It seemed an odd kind of stalemate for a moment before one of the men finally stepped forwards.
"What the hell do you want, punk?"
Kaede looked at him silently, not moving, not reacting, just still and unrelenting. The man balled his hands into fists.
"Listen, punk. This ain't none of your business so just fuck off, all right?"
It was clear they all held some odd kind of fear of him, as if he were in part a piece of Norio himself. No other inmate would have been given a chance to retreat, that was for sure. Anyone else would have been struck already. But there was something unique about Kaede, and clearly it wasn't only Sendoh who recognised it. He didn't have to say or do anything to make them all hopelessly nervous.
"I said fuck off, got it?" the man repeated angrily, stepping close to Kaede in an attempt to intimidate him. But Kaede gave no ground, staring up at the taller and stronger man with his unsettling eyes.
Sendoh swallowed nervously from where he stood on the floor just below where Kaede was on the table. He had no idea what Kaede would, or even could, do in this situation.
"You deaf or what?" the man demanded, reaching into his waistband and pulling out a roughly carved shank made from the melted handle of a toothbrush. He waved it menacingly at Kaede, and when Kaede made no response, finally thrust the sharp thing towards Kaede's face. It caught his cheek, just a shallow scratch which immediately ran with bright red blood, but Kaede didn't so much as flinch. Instead he brought up his knee and struck the man soundly between the legs, causing him to immediately double over in pain, spluttering curses, eyes watering.
Taking advantage of his momentary lapse in concentration, Kaede walked around the man until he stood directly behind him. With practised and accurate movements he reached forward to take the man's head gently in his hands and with a sudden unexpected snap of his arms, wrenched his head to the side.
The crack of splintering vertebrae was audible throughout the room.
Sendoh sucked in his breath in horror as the dead man slumped to the floor at Kaede's feet.
Before anyone had time to react, Kaede had reached down to snatch the shank that fell from the man's now-limp hand and turned to the right only to shove it as far as it would go into a second man's throat. Blood sprayed like a fountain as the doomed inmate dropped to the floor with a final, astonished gurgle, his wide eyes registering his last moments of surprise.
The rest of the men around the table began to back away.
As the sick sound of dead flesh collapsing down in a crumpled heap sunk its way into Sendoh's mind, he found he had to put his hand over his mouth to stop himself being sick.
Mitsui – apparently unaffected by the sight of the violent deaths - was immediately beside Kaede, still panting from his earlier efforts, wiping blood out of his eyes.
"Anyone else want to challenge the numbers?" he shouted loudly at the populace in general, raising his bloodied fists in readiness, animated with adrenaline and anger. Kaede beside him remained silent but firm, the weapon clutched tightly in his hand.
The sight of these two badly beaten and wounded boys invoking the name of the numbers and defiantly challenging the entire prison population seemed too much to comprehend. There were no takers. Some groups began to slink back. The momentum of the mob had been broken, and the dead men stared silently on.
As the crowd began to fragment and break away, only Sendoh was left standing and staring dumbstruck at the corpses so nearby. He felt small. He felt uncertain. He might have stood there indefinitely if Mitsui hadn't noticed him staring transfixed into those empty bleeding eyes and offered out his hand.
"Hey, Sendoh, you're with us."
Sendoh stared first at the hand, and then at the nearby body crumpled, neck snapped on the table. Then he turned away and was violently sick.
Norio twirled a pencil around his fingers thoughtfully as they reviewed the footage from the security cameras installed in the dining room.
"Finally" one of the aides exclaimed excitedly, leaning close to the monitor "this is the first time we've seen him act in years."
Norio made no immediate reply.
"Is it beneficial to allow him to interact with those numbers? Perhaps it will make him easier to break? Its obvious that we're making no progress otherwise."
"He's never reacted to other numbers before. Don't you recall the experiments? Why this time, why now?"
"Perhaps because it wasn't staged by us?"
"No" Norio spoke up finally, staring intensely at the screen. "It wasn't the numbers."
The three other men in the room looked up at him curiously. Norio tapped the screen with the end of the pencil, indicating a tiny pixelised figure. "It was him." Everyone squinted curiously at the screen. "He reacted to him."
"Prisoner 067841, Sendoh Akira" one of the aides read from the sheet. "Serving twelve years for three counts of grand theft auto. Twenty six years old, unmarried, heterosexual, no known numbers or yakuza affiliation."
Norio looked down at the photograph clipped to the file. It showed a handsome, slightly arrogant young man at odds with the nervous and more unassuming prisoner he saw in the video.
"Does he look like a killer to you?" Norio queried quietly.
The other men turned their attention to the picture. "Not... not really..." one suggested uncertainly after a moment.
Norio nodded in agreement. "Then why would the twenty three be interested in him?"
His aides exchanged uncertain glances and shrugged. Norio straightened and rocked slightly on his heels, chewing the end of the pencil, deep in thought.
"This might be it" he said finally, looking up at the ceiling intensely, trying to keep his excitement out of his voice. "This might be what I've been looking for." They stared at him, uncomprehending, so he continued in explanation, "This might be the chink in his armour. Apprehend them and put them together, I want to see what happens."
The men around him nodded in understanding and turned to one another, eager to discuss new plans. Norio stared down at the open file thoughtfully.
Sendoh Akira, huh?
He couldn't hold back the cold, satisfied smile that broke over his lips. With a slow crunch, he snapped the pencil in one fist.
~tbc
Uh this chapter took simply AGES. I'm sorry I haven't updated in a few weeks. Its coming up to the end of the school year and to be honest I'm literally drowning in school reports to write and end-of-year show rehearsals to attend. I'm still plugging away though!
Please take a moment to let me know what you think! :D Reviews are my oxygen xD
