I'm so sorry for the delay! Family and new job and stuff all got in the way. Sorry, sorry! Hope you are all well and had a good summer!
Darkhooded Angel: Lawwwwl, "Hard" Liron. I love it! Hahaha! I'm glad the pace and character developments are going okay – I'll try and keep it up :)
Addicted to SD: Thanks for your review! Yup yup, more numbers info in this chapter – please enjoy! Hope you are doing well ^.^
Anita: Hey hun! Hmm it's very interesting what you said… actually I don't think Sendoh is really "changing" as such. I think of him more as coming back to his "real self", or something like that anyway.
As for Rukawa's POV… since Sendoh is our narrator I guess Rukawa's inner thoughts will have to be shown through his actions and words ("what action and what words! He never says/does anything!") Yeah, it'll be a bit tricky to pull off ahaha. I'll keep your suggestion in mind!
Tidbits: Action-less-action – yikes! I guess a little is okay, but a little bit of actiony-action would be nice too, right? Unluckily this is a bit of an explain-y chapter, I'll make extra effort to put some more spark into the next one!
Reodavle: Hey hun – numbers details for you ~ wish granted! :D I'm trying to fuse together images of badass Liron Kai and Coach Buddha Anzai in my head but…. eugh…. nhh…. grrrrr…. just can't do it lol!
What is Kaede protecting? – best question yet! ~ I wonder…. :D
Thine Own Palace
Chapter 12
It hadn't really occurred to Sendoh to wonder what would happen upon his return to the main block. To be honest he'd probably avoided the thought on purpose. What, after all, could he possibly do? What reception could he expect except a violently hostile one? No, for all intents and purposes it was probably better not to think at all.
Instead he had thrown all his thoughts forward, to the future, dreaming up endless schemes and plans and clever trickery only to discard each as wishful impossibilities in turn. There had to be a way to help Kaede, he just didn't know what it was yet.
It was for that reason that the matter of the large, fighting redhead Sendoh shared his cell with had not seemed of much consequence right up until the moment that the guards pulled the door open and flung him back inside with that particular colossus. Sendoh and Sakuragi had never spoken much and that, at least, remained consistent now as Sendoh's hearty welcome home was expressed not with words but with what felt like the one ton weight of a fist in his cheek.
Indeed, it seemed that no sooner had his feet touched the floor of the cell than the rest of his body was knocked down to it too.
"Fuck" he managed to gasp before the rest of Sakuragi's considerable mass was hauling him up by the collar and shaking him to and fro furiously.
"You lying shit" Sakuragi hissed angrily into his face, flecks of spit flying. "I'll fucking kill you."
Sendoh was entirely helpless as he flew briefly through the air of their narrow cell, thrown aside as if he weighed nothing at all, winded as he hit the wall. He felt the warm stickiness of thick blood leaking down the side of his face. The two of them were of similar size and stature, but Sakuragi's strength was nothing short of monstrous. Sendoh lifted his arms defensively as Sakuragi reached down to grab him again, and it took all his effort just to part his lips and gasp desperately; "I'm not a number!"
Sakuragi dragged him to his feet by the throat and glared menacingly into his face. "Do you think I'm stupid?" he demanded.
Sendoh tried to prise Sakuragi's fists from his neck. "I've only been inside for two years" he protested, struggling with his short breaths "how could I be?"
To his momentous relief Sakuragi seemed to hesitate, thinking this over, his brown eyes taking in Sendoh's hurt but earnest expression uncertainly. "What were you doing then?" he demanded finally, wary confusion in his voice, "Why did you go with them?"
Sendoh gestured weakly at Sakuragi's fists which were threatening to cut off his air supply, and Sakuragi released him. Sendoh winced and rubbed at his throat, gratefully filling his lungs with air.
Sakuragi still stood menacingly close beside him. "Start talking" he growled threateningly.
"Mitsui…" Sendoh explained raspily, "…Mitsui dragged me into it." He looked up at Sakuragi earnestly. "I thought us yunta ought to help that rider. I didn't really know what the numbers were. To be honest I still don't get it now."
Sakuragi's expression changed quickly into appalled disbelief. "Are you fucking kidding me? How stupid can you be?" He threw his hands up in disgust and turned away. "You're in some fucking serious shit."
"Yeah," Sendoh agreed, relieved that Sakuragi's hostility seemed to have evaporated. He touched his head tentatively, and his hand came away red with blood, "I figured."
Sakuragi sat down on the edge of the lower bunk and watched him bad-temperedly.
Sendoh waited a few minutes, leaning back weakly against the concrete wall, recovering his breath, before hazarding a question. "The numbers" he began, a little warily, "are just a gang, right? What's the big deal over it?"
Sakuragi huffed and looked away. "You wouldn't get it."
Sendoh hardened his jaw and stared at him determinedly. "If I'm in this shit, don't I get to know how deep?"
Sakuragi glanced over at his stubborn expression, pursed his lips and reluctantly spoke. "No, they weren't just a gang" he explained scathing, as if unable to believe Sendoh wasn't already aware of such common facts, "Just a gang is fifteen guys. Twenty guys. The numbers were huge. They had members in every block. Even in different prisons. Fuck, they didn't even know each other, they were that big. It was run like a fucking army too; the guys at the top gave orders and the guys at the bottom did as they were told. Anything the prison did to contain them, they always found a way around. Whatever they wanted, they got. They could open any lock, bribe any guard, smuggle in anything they needed. There wasn't a single part of the prison that they couldn't control."
Sendoh found it surprisingly easy to imagine. He had already known, after all, that the numbers had recruited for skills other than just fighting strength. With enough resourceful members working together under firm leadership, it would have been possible to control the environment much more effectively than anything the current fragmented gangs could manage.
"But why didn't you join them back then? I mean…" Sendoh gestured to Sakuragi approvingly, "…you can fight good. Didn't they want you?"
Sakuragi gave a cold laugh. "What you gotta know about the numbers" he said, "is that because they were so big they had a whole load of rules. Lots of laws and rituals and shit. They had to, or the whole fucking thing would fall apart. The whole gang was a system. To enforce it they had these guys they called judges, and I'm telling you they didn't fuck around. If someone put a toe out of line, didn't do as they were told, broke the rules, there was blood to be paid. They didn't make no bones about killing their own either. It was nasty."
Sendoh nodded silently, and Sakuragi continued.
"As it was, when they checked new guys, it wasn't a fight. It was a kill."
"A kill?" Sendoh queried in confusion.
"Yeah" Sakuragi nodded but grimaced as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. "They'd tell you who to go for – another prisoner, perhaps even a guard - and if you had enough guts in you, you'd do it. And if you couldn't, or wouldn't, then you were out… or worse."
"But… I thought not all the numbers were fighters?" Sendoh refuted, "The… the twenty fives…" he thought of Kogure "…and the other sects? They couldn't do something like that."
"Oh, you don't need to be able to fight to kill someone" Sakuragi commented coolly. "You just had to be stupid or fucked up enough to do it. They'd even help you if you needed it. They'd hold the unlucky fucker down for you. All you had to do was shove a shank into their throat and you were done."
Sendoh tried to move his mouth but no sound came out.
"They wanted me to kill my cell mate" Sakuragi looked closely at Sendoh for a long, tense moment. "I refused."
Sendoh couldn't help but swallow under Sakuragi's stare, not failing to catch the threat in his words.
"You ask me why everyone hates the numbers so much." Sakuragi continued coldly, "I'm telling you – they killed more prisoners, more guards, more of their own members than you can imagine. They were butchers. Didn't a single day go by without someone left bleeding and dying in the middle of the fucking dining hall. It was fucking sick."
Sendoh thought of Mitsui and Kogure. Had they done such a thing? Had they killed simply to earn the right to join a gang? He remembered Kogure's guilty depression three nights back and with a sick feeling in his gut finally thought he understood it.
He bit his lip. He reminded himself that it natural in this place to survive by sacrificing others. Wasn't that what be thine own palace had meant too?
Then he shook his head fiercely. That was exactly what he had wanted to change, or at least escape. It seemed now that the numbers were nothing but an earlier, fouler and more organised form of the systems they had even now. That continual terror, continual fear, continual necessity of fighting, beating, raping, being part of a gang simply to protect yourself. Looking out only for yourself, and trampling on others in the effort to survive.
He screwed his eyes closed tight, forgetting completely about Sakuragi nearby, lost in his own whirlwind. All the things he'd assumed. How he'd summoned up the courage to finally strive, now to be pulled up short. They weren't… what he had hoped. They weren't an answer.
He'd wanted to learn. Learn from Kaede's deep eyes, from his silent lips. Perhaps, he realised unhappily, that wouldn't be possible after all.
But as his thoughts turned to Kaede, Sendoh opened his eyes. It was as if his own notions had blinded him, shaken him awake.
It rose in him once again, flashing and fierce; something that defied logic, reason, sense. It was bizarre how strongly he felt; how easily Kaede overtook him. Even as he learned more about what the numbers had been, what they had done, somehow he couldn't bring himself to think of that silent, tortured soul as anything less than before. If he'd only been enslaved – and he'd said that much himself – by the machine of the gang, just as Sendoh was now, just as all of them were, it didn't lessen him. He would always be something more. Something… strangely wonderful. Even trapped in a society none of them could escape or even influence, he was still nothing less than the fierce ocean, beating against the rocks of Sendoh's stone soul.
And so there was still… hope.
Not something lofty. Not a higher cause. Perhaps there really was no way to ever salvage the hellish system of prison society, but still there was hope for him. For the boy trapped in the darkness. And, perhaps, even for Sendoh himself, who wanted nothing more than to stand under his gaze as if staring down the sun.
And if he needed to use or destroy the tattered remains of the numbers in order to do it, he was prepared for that.
And then a thought struck him.
"Sakuragi" he said abruptly. "The judges, you said before. Do you know any more about them?"
Sakuragi pondered the abrupt query, but nonetheless obliged Sendoh's curiosity. "They were one of the sects. Like… managers, I suppose. They organised things. Made the gang work. And they enforced the rules, of course. Delivered the punishments too. They had a lot of power, when it came down to it. They could control things, you see, to an extent."
The smallest but most highly revered of all the sects.
"The twenty threes" Sendoh said in a low voice, feeling the fine hairs rise on his arms. Judges.
Sakuragi lifted one brow. "Right" he confirmed.
"You want to do what?"
Sendoh looked up at the appalled Mitsui and frowned. "I want to contact the Tokyo Sect" he repeated.
Mitsui gaped for a second before shaking his head in disbelief. Kogure, leaning against the wall beside him looked equally blank. Sendoh sighed and glanced around out of nervous habit. The three of them were alone in a quiet corner of a corridor. The place was deserted, it was dinner time, but the three of them had no intention of walking into the wasp's nest of a dining hall. They hadn't eaten in five days, but it didn't look as if they'd be having another meal any time soon.
Even the fiercely proud Mitsui had been forced to admit that it was probably necessary for them to hide, at least for the moment. He looked much the same as usual, crouched casually on his haunches – it was obvious his cell mate hadn't been up to the task of confronting him as Sakuragi had with Sendoh. The much slighter Kogure, on the other hand, had sustained a fresh crop of injuries, although nothing he seemed to consider significant.
The three of them had spent the last five unhappy days in Kaede's company. On only two occasions had Norio appeared, arriving in the dark and playing out his whims on Kaede's body like a grotesque pantomime. Sendoh hadn't been sick only because there had been nothing in his stomach. Even Mitsui had seemed thoroughly shaken by it and yet despite witnessing the torture he'd remained adamant that Kaede couldn't possibly be one of the six leaders.
The cause hadn't been helped when, in curiosity, Mitsui had attempted to talk to Kaede, asking him to verify himself, to explain. True to his nature, the boy hadn't spoken a word. Hadn't honoured Mitsui's request to see his tattoo. Didn't seem to have been aware of a single thing Mitsui had been saying. Mitsui had taken the silence as a personal slight and Sendoh had spent the days watching him become increasingly frustrated, attempting to argue reason against Kaede's silence, descending finally into crude insults. But despite Mitsui's fiercest threats and tantrums Kaede had remained, as always, far beyond reach.
Sendoh lifted his eyes now and looked again at Mitsui, this born-again warrior. Despite the severity of their situation he still had cool arrogance in his stare and in the tilt of his head. There was little doubt that when the challenge finally came, Mitsui would be there fighting to match it. He'd rolled up his sleeves, Sendoh noticed, and the black stain of his tattoo blazed angrily out of his skin like a warning.
Sendoh, in contrast to Mitsui, as someone who'd climbed his way up hand over hand from the very pits of prison society, couldn't help feeling constantly uneasy, a continued nervousness, as if enemies were waiting and watching from every corner. He shivered involuntarily.
Still, he reminded himself, foremost in his mind was Kaede. He was determined that it would be Kaede. He told himself sternly that he could no longer afford to spend every moment paranoid over his own safety now he had finally determined on a course of action. Habits, however, were not easy to break, though he did his best.
So he resisted the urge to look over his shoulder and asked again: "Isn't it possible to reach them?"
Mitsui gave him another incredulous look, subconsciously pressing his open palm comfortingly against his empty stomach. "How the hell should I know?" he responded irritably, and tossed his head towards Kogure.
Sendoh refocused his eyes instead on the self-professed smuggler of the numbers expectantly.
Kogure looked nervous. "Well you see" he said quietly, placatingly, as if Sendoh might get angry with him, "all the old communication lines were broken a long time ago. I don't even know where the sect is anymore. I've got contacts outside I could use, if it's still possible to even get messages out, but I wouldn't know where or how to find Stanley's boys." He smiled in nervous apology.
"What the hell do you want with them anyway?" Mitsui asked, fixing Sendoh with an accusing stare. "Gonna ask to join the gang or something?" He gave a derisive laugh as if that were highly amusing.
"Well…" Sendoh shifted his weight slightly, "…the sect are supposed to support the numbers, right? So then why didn't they help you out when… you know… when the gang fell?"
Mitsui snorted in disdain. "What the hell do you think they should have done? Norio cut the head off the whole damn snake. The whole bloody system fell apart, it was chaos. Besides, why would they give a fuck about a bunch of stragglers like us?"
"Perhaps not you…" Sendoh admitted quietly, lowering his voice and leaning meaningfully towards them both, "…but what about Kaede?"
Mitsui threw his hands up in disgust. "Come off it, you don't still seriously believe that he's one of the six, do you? I told you, they're all dead. If they weren't, do you think we'd be having to put up with all this bullshit? We'd still be fucking kings of this shit hole."
"But Norio…"
"Fuck Norio" Mitsui snapped furiously. "As far as I'm concerned, if that silent bastard doesn't even know the lowest codes then he's not even a number. He's just a seriously unlucky guy with a tattoo"
Sendoh looked over at Kogure for support, but the boy just shrugged. "The numbers used different sets of codes to identify each other" he said softly. "It's just basic stuff. Without even the most simple verification, I don't see how we can possibly believe him to be anything."
"Maybe he doesn't want to risk saying anything in front of Norio" Sendoh pointed out.
"I expect Norio broke most of the internal codes a long time ago" Kogure replied with a regretful sigh, "He probably knows more about the numbers than we do. It seems the only codes he still needs are for the Tokyo Sect."
"But that's my point" Sendoh continued, leaning forward, "if the sect found out that their security depended on how long Kaede can hold out under torture, wouldn't they be forced to do something?"
"Even if he really is one of the six, which he's not, why haven't they done anything before?" Mitsui snapped.
"Because they think he's dead, same as you" Sendoh replied coolly.
"None of this changes the fact that we don't know how to contact the sect anyway" Kogure pointed out.
Sendoh leaned forwards, planting his elbow firmly on his knees where he crouched. "We don't. But Norio probably does. You said it yourself; he knows more about the numbers than we do."
Mitsui rolled his eyes. "Oh, that's just great. Why don't you go and ask him?"
"He has a huge number of files in his office" Sendoh continued seriously, lowering his voice to nothing more than a whisper. "If we can get in, we could find proof that Kaede is the leader of the twenty threes and find out how the Tokyo Sect can be contacted."
Silence greeted this suggestion. The two men on the opposite side of the empty corridor only gaped at him in horror.
"You want to break into Norio's office?" Mitsui demanded after a moment, his voice also low. "Are you even aware that this is a fucking prison?"
Sendoh shrugged. "Aren't you numbers? I heard this kind of thing was just routine for you."
"Numbers?" Mitsui glowered in annoyance. "What numbers? All I see is one twenty five, one twenty eight, and some crazy guy tagging along spouting stupid ideas. So yes even if the numbers could have done something that stupid, the three of us still fucking can't."
"If only we had some more people…" Kogure said thoughtfully, looking wistful.
Sendoh looked over at him, slightly deflated but not yet ready to give up. It had been an idle hope that Kogure and Mitsui might have known some method to move through the prison as easily as the numbers had done before. He tried to think. There had to be some method they could use.
Kogure suddenly sat up straighter. "What about The Kings?" he suggested.
Sendoh looked up hopefully, but Mitsui scoffed in immediate derision. "Maki won't talk to us" he scorned. "Especially not now we've come out in this blaze of glory."
"Who are The Kings?" Sendoh queried anyway, leaning forwards.
Kogure looked over at him. "It's a gang run by another ex-number. We knew him back when we were in Block B together, although he keeps quiet about the past now, of course."
"He's a twenty eight so it doesn't help us anyway" Mitsui pointed out, folding his arms. "What we need is a twenty seven."
"But maybe he knows others…" Kogure hazarded uncertainly. Mitsui looked highly sceptical.
"Where could we find him?" Sendoh asked earnestly, his eyes suddenly bright. They both looked over at him.
"They have a territory over in the third wing" Kogure replied, "They don't usually go to the dining hall."
It was something.
Sendoh allowed himself a moment to close his eyes. He recalled Kaede's steady gaze and his quiet, rough voice. The way he sat so unassumingly and yet oddly comforting with his undemanding presence. He tried to hold in his mind a vision of what the past Kaede had been, and perhaps what kind of creature the future Kaede would make, free from pain.
He breathed deeply.
"Let's go pay them a visit," he said finally, confidently, opening his eyes again and standing up briskly. Then, slowly, a little awkwardly, as if testing out a long-forgotten skill, he relaxed his face, feeling his muscles twitch slightly as they assumed an almost nostalgically familiar expression.
They stared up at him, thunderstruck.
He was grinning.
~tbc
I've just finished reading Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. It was rubbish. Thoughts?
