“Hikan. Samael. Go bring in the new ones.”
“Yes!”
That day, I went with my senior, Hikan, to receive the newly arrived prisoners.
The doors opened, and a whole group of prisoners came in.
Muted green prison uniforms. Sacks covering their heads and their hands and feet bound. Every one of them was male.
Among them, my eyes were drawn to a tall man.
Prisoner No. 1208.
‘Whoa. What kind of build is that….’
I was fairly tall myself, but he was much taller than me. The kind of height you might see in one person out of a hundred, if that. Even through his baggy clothes, there was something sculpted about his enormous physique.
“Move it, you pieces of shit leeching off society!”
Hikan and I went around putting the inmates into their cells one by one, and every time someone entered a cell, Hikan smacked him across the head.
SMACK!
“1512. Get in there, you piece of trash.”
“Yes.”
The prisoners were only allowed to remove the sacks over their heads right before entering their cells.
From my perspective, it was the moment when those who had been nothing more than ‘some prisoner’ until then each gained a face and became a ‘person.’
“1895. Get in there. Hurry the fuck up and crawl inside!”
“Yes.”
“Next, 1756. Get in there, you tiny little bastard! What, are you from Eden? Get in there! You bastard!”
“…Yes.”
Hikan irritably smacked the prisoners on the head as he shoved them into their cells.
That little ritual was no exception for the exceptionally tall 1208.
“What the hell is this? While decent citizens are suffering, whose spine did you suck dry to eat enough to grow this big, huh?”
Hikan looked him up and down with a snicker. Then he jumped with all his strength and slammed his palm into the back of 1208's head.
SMACK!
But the man did not budge an inch.
Hikan looked briefly flustered.
“1208. Lucky you. The cell at the end is solitary. Get in.”
Only then did Hikan remove the sack from his head.
And his face was revealed.
Whoa.
Whoa…….
He was handsome.
No, I never thought I'd feel something like this toward a prisoner. But man to man, he was overwhelmingly impressive.
He had the air of a black panther.
He looked to be in his mid-forties. He must have been filthy after going days without washing, yet his face still carried an extraordinary dignity. Jet-black hair and jet-black eyes.
The man entered without a word and sat down on the bare floor.
“Hey. The guy in the last cell. Don't feed him.”
But just as we were turning out of the corridor, Hikan suddenly gave me that order.
“Pardon?”
“Are your ears fucked too? From now on, whenever you're handling meals, don't feed the guy in the last cell.”
“Ah….”
“And when we get back to the office, tell the other guards that the last cell is excluded from meal distribution.”
“I'll let them know. But why…….”
“He didn't answer when a guard spoke to him. Arrogant bastard.”
“…….”
Was he talking about when he told 1208 to enter the solitary cell?
“Inside a prison, the guards are gods! Those pieces of filth in that crowd are supposed to obey us…. Tch. Ill-mannered beanpole.”
As Hikan muttered to himself and headed back to the office, I glanced toward the cell at the far end of the corridor.
For some reason, I had a bad feeling about it.
***
For the first few days, the feeling bothered me quite a bit.
I did not know why. Every now and then while I was working at the Guard, 1208's face would come to mind. Maybe it was because he'd left such a strong impression.
So when the office was empty, I secretly checked the profile for Prisoner No. ‘1208.’
He was an ordinary carpenter.
His crime was nothing special either. Apparently, he'd gotten into an argument while drinking, and both sides had assaulted each other. Then again, with a body like his, it probably wasn't much of a mutual assault…. Even if ten people jumped him, they'd probably be the ones getting turned into pulp.
Still, I did not give him food.
My senior had told me not to.
To be honest, I thought Hikan would lift the meal restriction after a few days.
But Hikan did not lift it.
Not after two days.
Not after five.
And not even after ten days…….
.
.
.
.
.
“Oh…!!”
One day, while my glasses had fogged up from stirring braised peas with a spatula the size of a shovel in the kitchen, I suddenly remembered 1208.
I'd completely forgotten about him!
I'd been insanely busy all that time. I was still learning the job late, while my seniors had dumped a massive amount of work on me.
I always came to work an hour earlier than everyone else and usually went home 3~4 hours later.
Still.
How could I have forgotten this completely?
How much time had passed?
Damn it, almost a month.
‘A month?’
A month???
‘Isn't he dead…?’
Here at the ‘Gesenna Provincial Guard,’ prisoners were not made to do much of anything. They simply stayed locked in their cells waiting for meals and occasionally had to clean their rooms.
That was why my seniors showed an almost bizarre lack of interest in the prisoners. They basically left them alone as long as someone fed them.
If I had not fed 1208, then no one else would have, either.
For an entire month.
They probably had not even given him water.
But when I realized that, there was something else that sent an even worse chill down my spine.
For a prison where someone had gone without food or water for an entire month, it had been far too quiet.
Normally, someone in that situation would have screamed for food until the guards beat him with clubs.
Was he actually dead?
So that evening, I waited for an opportunity.
As luck would have it, no one was in the office except the guards on duty, and the duty guard was completely absorbed in an erotic magazine.
“Limpy, you heading home?”
“Not yet…. Haha….”
I carefully slipped out of the office and headed toward the last cell.
Then I slowly approached the door.
It was a nerve-racking moment.
I might be about to find a corpse.
“…….”
I cracked open the inspection hatch.
Something was there in the darkness.
A person with his head lowered.
Well, obviously it was a person.
I just could not tell whether he was a corpse.
Looking closer, he wasn't.
No, what the hell….
Prisoner ‘1208’ was sitting in exactly the same position he'd taken on his first day in the cell.
His face had grown gaunt.
Anyone could see that he was in terrible condition.
“Um…. 1208…?”
I opened my mouth without any sort of plan.
The man raised his head and looked at me.
“…….”
Ah, thank goodness.
He wasn't dead yet.
Wait…? Then why wasn't he dead?
I'd heard people died after three days without water. How had he survived a month without drinking anything?
Water did come out of the toilet, but it was practically sewage (wastewater). Contaminated water no one could drink.
And there was no foul smell whatsoever coming from the solitary cell.
“You haven't eaten anything, right? Want some water…? …Sir?”
I had no idea how I was supposed to talk to him, so what came out of my mouth sounded remarkably stupid.
“…….”
The man did not answer.
Just in case, I brought over a large spray bottle and filled the dust-covered water bowl in front of the meal slot.
Even then, the man barely moved.
He only stared at me.
“…….”
I took a closer look at his face.
Sunken eyes.
Lips cracked all over from dryness.
His glossy skin looked like the grease that seeped out when making jerky, and dirty streaks of grime covered him.
He looked worse than a beggar off the street.
Yet for some inexplicable reason, a chill ran through me.
It was because the man's gaze as he looked at me was far too clear.
“You're not drinking? You must be thirsty.”
“…….”
“Or do you need something? If you do, tell me now.”
“…….”
“Hmm……. …Wait, can you not talk?”
“…….”
No answer.
I guess that was it.
Ah.
Only then did a few things make sense.
Why he had not answered Hikan on his first day here, and why he had not made a sound despite starving for an entire month.
Maybe he simply could not speak.
“…You're a cripple too, huh?”
A sudden sense of kinship blossomed inside me.
Us cripples had to look out for each other.
As luck would have it, that evening's menu was chicken porridge.
There was not much left, but once I added some more water and thinned it into a watery gruel, there was plenty.
When I returned to the last cell with it, the water bowl was empty.
Apparently, he'd drunk it.
Sure enough, the rigid posture he'd been sitting in had loosened a little as well.
I gave him some more water, then slid the chicken porridge through the meal slot.
“Eat this first. I'll see if I can find you anything else.”
I've gone hungry plenty of times in my life.
I knew better than most how a starving person felt.
So I even felt a little guilty that our 1208 had gone hungry for a whole month.
Feeding prisoners was a guard's job, after all.
“And don't eat too much at once. If you've been on an empty stomach too long, your body might not take in food well.”
“…….”
“If you're upset about what happened, I'm sorry. I was ordered not to feed you…. But it's not like you committed some crime deserving death. How's anyone supposed to live without eating….”
“…….”
“So hurry up and eat, then clean the bowl too. If anyone finds out I gave this to you, it won't end well. I'm already a rookie everyone hates, so I have to be really careful.”
Separate from the fact that he did not speak, 1208 seemed to be the type who put on one hell of a stoic act.
Without responding, he looked beneath the open meal slot at my ankle.
More precisely, he seemed to be looking at the cane beside it.
“Oh, this? My ankle's a little messed up. I'm a leg cripple. Cripples can be guards too, you know.”
“…….”
“Hmm… is not being able to talk hard too? If you're talking to someone who doesn't know sign language, do you always have to just listen? Ah, right. You can't answer anyway….”
He was really committed to that stoic act.
Still, he was human, and apparently there were some bodily reactions even he could not control.
His empty stomach had finally received water.
The savory smell of salty chicken soup slowly spread through the air, and even my mouth started watering.
So how must his stomach have felt?
GRRRRUMBLE…….
There we go.
Only then did 1208 feel a little more human.
“Eat. Hurry. If the smell spreads, the other inmates will notice.”
If there was one fortunate thing, it was that this was the last cell in the corridor.
The room directly beside it housed the heating and cooling equipment, so it was somewhat separated from the other cells.
“…….”
After a long wait, the man finally rose.
He took hold of the bowl of chicken porridge.
Then he brought the entire bowl to his mouth and began devouring it.
Good grief, that precious stuff.
Still, to him, it was probably the most delicious food in the world.
Barley bread when starving tasted better than the finest feast when full.
“…….”
Then 1208 showed a new reaction.
Halfway through, he lowered the bowl and stared at it.
As though he could not believe what he was tasting.
Then he swallowed the rest of the porridge.
No, it went beyond that.
He even licked the bowl completely clean with his tongue.
“…….”
Apparently full, 1208 resumed his stoic act.
He set the bowl down.
Sat cross-legged.
And closed his mouth.
Still, I felt good about having fed him.
It was nice seeing him eat so well.
It made me want to give him a little more.
I held out a handful of nuts and a few cookies I'd stolen from the kitchen.
“Eat these where no one can see.”
I, Samael, Thomson Ward's useless Junior Guard.
Was evolving into a truly fucking useless guard.
“Hide the trash behind a brick or throw it in the toilet.”
If someone calls you useless for no reason,
give them a good reason.
‘But seriously?’
This was my seniors' fault.
If they'd lifted the prisoner's meal restriction in the first place, I would not have had to sneak food to him like some worthless screwup.
What else was I supposed to do, let a man starve to death?
The next day, when I checked, he'd eaten every last nut and cookie I'd given him.
“Haha.”
For some reason, I felt incredibly proud.