Capital Punishment

Dedicated to Mana (HalfMetal Homunculus). She and i...well, you always hurt the ones you love and, boy, we love Kurama a whole lot!

Warnings:
1) Character death.
2) Possible information overload.
3) The combination of Mana's idea and my research and writing.
4) No real plot-line (just a jumble of mixed thoughts and feelings and information).

Genre: Drama. Tidbits of angst.

Author's notes: You cannot imagine how enthralled i was when i researched this topic. There's no possible way. It's amazing how different it is in Japan, judging solely on an American point of view. Now, this may sound morbid, but i think it's simply fascinating. "It" being capital punishment, of course.

A cold feeling washed over him that morning. That feeling of foreboding, the one that said today was the day he'd die, the one that made a shiver run up his spine and linger maliciously at the base of his skull until he had to scratch at it like an itch. That feeling, the one that he got every morning now. He hated the mornings now. He had for a good year and a half, sitting there alone, worrying, cold, depressed, wronged. The most accurate word was that final one: wronged. How was it that he was so wronged by this human world? The demon realm was much more cutthroat than the human one, but this was the plane that threw him into a cell and left his mind to rot before his day came.

He was so wronged, but no one believed him. Not one person in the judicial system would take his word for it and mull over the discrepancies of the case. How could they imagine that he would do such a thing? And how could they sentence him to such a fate?

Of course, he hadn't once thought that he would be found innocent. After all, the conviction rate in Japan was ninety nine percent. He had a snowball's chance in the proverbial Christian Hell of being dubbed innocent. So, he'd gone to trial, knowing that it was absolutely futile to argue his case, despite the fact that he was innocent. Even his lawyer had thought he'd done it, as apathetic to the matter as he was. He'd spent most of his time staring down at his lap with a woeful grin playing on his lips and that look in his eyes of a sentient cartoon puppy that had just lost his favorite squeaky-toy. Given that he hadn't even cared to look at the judge that would decide his fate, no one had cared to even consider the possibility that he hadn't committed the crime.

After the trial, after his conviction, after he was sentenced to death, he was thrown in a cold little place, all alone, wronged, hurt, shamed, and sorrowful. Of all the things to be convicted for, he was thrust into the legal system due to something he had never committed. If he had been given the time to find those that had done such a wrong, he'd have gladly taken his punishment for massacring those bastards, but he took the blame for a crime he'd never commit.

The accused: Minamino Shuichi. The crime: the murders of his mother, stepfather, and stepbrother. Verdict: guilty of all charges. Sentence: death by hanging.

And who knew when his day would come? It could be today, it could be tomorrow. For all he knew, he'd gone insane already and it had been yesterday, but he couldn't follow along with how his life had turned and twisted on him. He didn't quite recall being told that he was dying or anything of the like, didn't know what it was like to be blindfolded before going to the scaffold.

All that he knew was that he'd been drenched in blood when the police had arrived and, somehow, his mind had erased whatever memories he had of the event. He didn't know who had killed his family or how it had all happened while he was sitting right there, but he would have found out eventually if the police hadn't come and arrested him. He would have tracked the bastards down and slaughtered them, then taken his punishment from both the human world police and from Koenma for his heinous actions. But as it currently stood, he saw himself as innocent and betrayed by the legal system he had come to rely on for his mother's peace of mind.

It was cold in the prison. He'd been sitting in the cell for over a year, only allowed a single visit from his lawyer, which wasn't at all consoling. It was times like these that he wished for the systems of another country. He had pleaded with whatever higher being might take pity on him that Yusuke or Kuwabara or someone would disguise himself as a family member and sneak in, but it was so highly unlikely that he almost wanted to vomit because of his own weakness of heart. He was no coward, but he felt so alone.

A prison guard walked by his cell, took a peek in, then sauntered by, making the early morning rounds and seeing that, once again, Minamino Shuichi couldn't sleep. The boy, only recently come of age, had been restless and disquieted ever since his conviction. He'd seen it before, those innocent ones always pacing, always uneasy. The guilty ones would calm down and accept that they were caught. And this boy was as edgy as any he'd ever set eyes on. It was a real pity that young ones like him got convicted as well. He'd had his whole life ahead of him and, from the looks of him and the sound of his voice and the way he carried himself, he was intelligent, charismatic, and respectful. He would have gotten somewhere in life if this hadn't come to pass. The guard shook his head languidly and moved on.

Breakfast was served, last meals for some. Minamino Shuichi refused to eat. He did that occasionally, most often at breakfast, when he was either feeling abstemious or nauseous. This morning, he just didn't feel like eating with that foreboding sitting so contentedly inside his belly. He knew it would get crowded if he ate and would travel up to his gullet and make him feel sick. Then, he'd either have to bear the nausea until the food passed through him or induce vomiting and cause his throat pain. Either way, he wasn't too fond of the result, as some hunger was well worth the prevention of such discomforts.

The sky outside the window was dark and grey, like the inside of his mind. How fuzzy his thoughts were getting, overridden by sorrow and anger. His mother was dead, he knew. It had taken the whole of a month for his mind to finally accept it, the whole of that month he should have been preparing for his trial, and he'd gone into a dark wallowing of mourning and hatred in himself for being unable to protect her as he'd always promised himself that he would. He'd let her down, and in doing so he'd let himself down. And how miserable he felt about it, how detestable and disgusting. What was he but a little whelp of a human, one that couldn't lift a hand to the attacker of his mother, of his family, to protect them from harm? He should have died with them if he couldn't protect them as a demon ought to be able to do against a hapless human assault. Why was it that he couldn't recall the attack? Or the attackers?

"Pathetic, Minamino-kun," he whispered to himself, knowing that another couldn't hear his words. "Brilliantly pathetic."

How he wanted to weep for his lost family, for their shattered lives and hopes and dreams. But not a tear would seep from his emerald orbs, not one solitary droplet of liquid pain. He couldn't divine why, and he couldn't explain it to another through lies. There was no explanation as far as he was concerned, though he had already come to the realization that, as of the day of his conviction, he was utterly alone in the world. The world was restricted to the prison, but within the frore walls was a world to him and his fellow inmates, a realm of mediocre food and lumpy beds, of guards and imminent death hanging over one's head, of cold eyes from others and the sly grins of those that could get their hands on cigarettes and would share if another should follow their whim. He could have stolen those cigarettes with the greatest of ease, but he had never gotten into the habit of making himself addicted to whatever pointless human substance another would indulge in. He had at least that much self-respect, even after the amnesia that left him hating himself for being incapable of saving his human mother's life.

The cell door slid open and Minamino Shuichi glanced away from the window, seeing a guard with a set of handcuff, another with a blindfold. It was his time, then? Of course it was. Otherwise they wouldn't be in front of his cell, now would they? He stood from the bed and sauntered languidly to them, allowing the unnecessary restraints to be added as he was lead to the preparation room and left to watch a statue of a human-worshipped goddess, Kannon, the goddess of mercy, before the blindfold was slipped over his eyes. The goddess of mercy. How absolutely inappropriate. If these humans were to be merciful, they would have believed that he hadn't murdered the family so precious to him, they would have allowed him to see his friends one last time, they would have let him butcher those pathetic humans that had murdered his family in cold blood and let him bathe in the crimson life he spilt from their veins. How merciful were they when they allowed someone barely over the age of eighteen to walk to the gallows to be hanged? He was on his way to the "world of death" below the scaffold, where the living generally avoided.

After being lead to a room he couldn't see, Minamino Shuichi, Youko Kurama, a human boy with a respectful disposition, a set of intelligent eyes, and a charismatic persona, was brought in below a noose and strung up. Below his feet was a trap door. As the seconds ticked by like a thousand eternities each, he wondered when it would happen. A split second of weightlessness told him he was as good as dead. He never felt as his neck snapped.

Based on my research, these things, which i've at least alluded to in this chapter, are true.
— There's a ninety nine percent conviction rate in Japan for criminal trials.
— There's no jury in Japan; a judge deems whether they're innocent or guilty.
— Capital punishment in Japan is reserved for severe crimes, such as multiple homicides at once.
— Hanging is the most frequent method of capital punishment in Japan, since they deemed that it isn't cruel or unusual.
— Japanese on death row are told the morning of their execution when they're to die, which can be viewed as a mercy to allow them time to adjust to inevitable execution or a cruelty in that it can cause them to lose their sanity.
— Death row inmates get the bare minimum for visits: only family members and defense counsel. And Kurama's family was dead, so the lawyer seems the only one to visit.
— The condemned never see the room they're hanged in; they're blindfolded as they watch a statue of said goddess, then are led beyond.
— The "world of death" is a cold concrete room below the trap door.
(For more information, go here. www .japansociety .org/ corporate/ fellowship (underscore) essay .cfm ? id (underscore) fellowship (equals sign) 957833201 Of course, remove the spaces and substitute the necessary symbols.)
Thanks! FrozenBlueRose, Nyte Kit, and miyako14. Yayness for you.

Horray for death scenarios. Horray for research that makes me grin maniacally. Horray for Kurama torture scenes. And horray for Mana's ideas.

Hope you all liked.

12:05 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time. U.S. Wednesday, October 12, 2005.

Owakare.

Chiisai Mu.
Little Nothing.