TCWGRF 22

Isaac regained consciousness once again in the cramped room.

He thought he had been carried away by strangers. But the shackle on his ankle was still there, and the scenery he saw when he opened his eyes was no different. Seeing that it was bright all around, it seemed a new day had dawned.

His vomit-stained clothes had been removed, and he had been dressed in new, clean ones. It was an undeserved kindness for a prisoner, but he forced himself to accept it, thinking it would have been natural if he were a new piece of furniture or a carpet placed in the Chief Commissioner’s room.

“Ugh.”

As he sat up, his temples throbbed painfully, and his limbs felt as heavy as if they had absorbed all the dampness of the Public Security Bureau’s basement.

What was truly crushing his body was not the pain from hitting the floor, but the fear of being in the same space as him.

Thinking objectively, it had not been very long since Isaac was caught. Including the time he was locked in the basement, perhaps only three or four days had passed. Seeing as the entire city remained quiet, it seemed the party’s founding day had not yet arrived.

‘It was a chance.’

The moment the word “chance” left his lips, I should have seized it. But I couldn’t even support my own body and let it slip away in vain.

From the moment he faced Chief Commissioner Samuel inside the red door, Isaac became helplessly powerless. A fear that his very existence would be completely shattered and dismantled dominated his entire body.

That feeling grew more vivid with each step he took closer. He became short of breath, utterly precarious, and unable to do anything about himself.

The fear could not be easily removed even if he tried to pull it out; it gnawed at his inner darkness, growing in an instant to become a rope that bound his limbs, reminding him of the sensation of being tied down, unable to move, the sensation of his vision being blocked by a black cloth.

No matter how many times he steeled his resolve to somehow go find Asel, no matter how many times he meticulously reviewed and listed everything he knew about the rebels and imagined himself boldly proposing a deal to his captor… his mind kept killing the possibilities he had painstakingly cultivated, and in the end, killed his very self in the most brutal form.

The only thing he had for hope was the ‘chance’ he had uttered. What kind of chance was he trying to give? Could he seize that chance again? When would he offer it again?

To find out, he had to wait for the day to end once more, for the siren to wail, for the sound of uniform footsteps, for the Chief Commissioner to return.

The day’s time passed slowly, yet quickly. His anxious heart and fear clashed, causing him to wish for the sun to set, only to quickly change his mind and pray for it not to set.

In the meantime, Sarah came again, set down a meal, and left. A cream stew made with vegetables, large chunks of meat, and milk.

Isaac was not particularly fond of a food called stew.

Outside, they would catch wild animals and boil them with water in a large pot, and the watery broth with blood foam floating on top always had a fishy, disgustingly barbaric taste.

But the moment he saw the bowl Sarah brought, it felt as though lightning had struck his head.

Stew was a dish where meticulously prepared green, orange, brown, and yellow ingredients harmonized against a pure white background. The city’s prosperity and uniformity, and everything the outsiders yearned for, was contained in this single plate.

The fear that pressed down on his whole body, the suspicion of whether it might contain poison, of whether he should eat it, was powerless in the face of extreme hunger. Besides, hadn’t he eaten it all the day before? Even if he had thrown it all up.

Even in a situation where he had no right to decide his own fate, Isaac moved toward the continuation of life. The rumbling of his stomach was a roar for life.

Still, he was alive. He had not been punished or tortured. New clothes, a clean room, and a meal he had never even dreamed of in his entire life were right before his eyes. He had also confirmed that he would not be killed right away. After all, he was fine for now, even after vomiting spectacularly in front of him.

Though he had resolved to brave any danger to find Asel when he voluntarily entered the city, became a patrol officer, and infiltrated the records office, that firm resolve, after experiencing the reality of the much-rumored basement and facing the Chief Commissioner, had not just softened but had melted away like a rain-soaked piece of paper.

The small but pleasant room, the luxurious meal enjoyed while sitting on the floor, the temporarily deferred torture and death, and whatever chance of survival he had almost been given.

Suddenly, the judgment that this place was better than the gloomy basement where he had waited for death, bound and starving, took precedence. Perhaps it might even be much better than living in District 28.

Originally, there was no such thing as freedom in the city. Everyone was slowly dying, deprived of freedom in their own designated gray coffins.

All citizens wore formless shackles.

In reality, it was as if their ankles were bound by the invisible shackles of laws, rules, and surveillance put there by the rulers. The realization that he was in a state not so different from theirs was a definite comfort to Isaac.

In the extreme anxiety where one could not guarantee what lay an inch ahead, the elixir of resignation and rationalization was quite effective. Soon, the trembling in his hands stopped, and he was able to hold a spoon.

Mumbling, he put the spoon in his mouth, chewed, and swallowed, and soon the food was gone. What he had consumed, what he had chewed and sent to his stomach, might have been the fear this city, that Samuel, had planted deep in his heart.

His decision solidified, and his thoughts became organized into one. The moment he put the spoon down with a clang, Isaac wiped his mouth with his sleeve, got up from his bottom, and stood up from the floor.

He had not come to the city to become a citizen, to live the same life as them. Just as when he first came here, if he wanted to find something, it was right to move on his own two feet.

As he firmed up his resolve, his eyes, which had been as dead as ash, showed a rare glint of light.

---

With the complete sunset, the siren wailed. From now on, the lights of the entire city would begin to go out one by one, and a pitch-black night would arrive.

All public time stopped, and private time began in spaces unseen, but it was a long while after that before Samuel headed to his official residence.

The position of Chief Commissioner was originally one of the busiest in the city. There were many things to attend to and the responsibilities were heavy, so it was a natural consequence.

He had to listen to the complaints of the whining rulers at all hours, fix the things his predecessors had managed in a complete mess, ferret out the rebels’ spies, and monitor the public security situation in real-time, which was bound to have holes no matter what he did. From the city center to District 28, and even further to the outside of the city, everything was under the Chief Commissioner’s responsibility.

Fortunately for Samuel, he possessed the guts to ignore the nonsense from his superiors, the resourcefulness to handle the work of several people by himself, and competent and loyal subordinates who performed their duties shrewdly without needing to be instructed on every little thing.

Having finally reached a high position, perhaps there was no need to work so hard. Even if he did nothing and just indulged in nightly amusements recklessly like his predecessors, the Public Security Bureau and the city would somehow manage to run on their own.

But he loathed incompetence and could not bear the moments when his judgment was wrong. Even while acting dissolutely and playing around with various people day and night, Samuel did not forget his work.

This was likely not just because he possessed the undeniable, fatal flaw of being an outsider who had to prove himself at every moment.

Since the day he set foot in the city, Samuel had never once thought of wanting to become a true citizen. To him, yearning for the city or becoming one of the greaseballs was a rather trivial and worthless affair.

He had not come to the city of his own will, so what meaning was there in gaining the approval of the rulers who were being weeded out day by day while desperately fighting to protect their own seats?

It was just that, for a long time, he had wanted to bring about some sort of clear and irreversible ending in this cliché-ridden city that believed itself to be flawlessly and immutably gray since its birth. A complete ending that no one could deny.

If that happened, Samuel would break his leash and come out of the iron cage, mercilessly biting even his master, and seize complete freedom in his own hands.

However, it was not easy. The operation he had painstakingly worked on for months had failed.

The long-awaited moment had receded for a while, but the more he looked back, the more the rebel ‘head,’ Vincent, and his choices piqued Samuel’s interest, to the point of making him forget to even go home. To correct the derailed situation, it was necessary to start again from there.

According to the information Sarah had scraped together as much as possible, no one in District 26 suspected Vincent. It was strange from the start that the citizens on the outskirts, who did not easily trust each other and paid no attention to one another, believed that one man alone was a perfect citizen, friend, and neighbor.

He would often take the lead in various unpleasant tasks carried out by the party under the pretext of earning money for his wife’s medical treatment. The couple’s relationship was so good that everyone was moved by his sincerity.

There was nothing suspicious about his activities. In fact, because he was on friendly terms with everyone, most of the citizens of District 26 had to be put on the list of rebel suspects.

He had hidden his identity so perfectly that Samuel could not help but be impressed. So why, of all times, did he reveal his existence at this point, when the Public Security Bureau had blatantly set a trap?

For the rebels, it would have been more advantageous for Vincent to remain hidden inside the city until the end. He was a person who should never have made a move himself. Yet, he brazenly stole what he wanted and left. As if he would never return to the city, as if he did not care what happened to the remaining rebels.

Could there have been some kind of change of heart? Or perhaps a dispute with the ‘leader’ on the outside, or it could have been a more personal reason, like his ‘dead’ son or the wife he ‘killed.’

However, no matter how thoroughly they dug, they could not obtain any more information about Vincent and his family. The son, the wife, his personal activities—that was all there was. The pieces they had were far from enough to complete the puzzle and track the opponent’s psychology and destination.

If they were to poke around the public workplaces where he had worked or the doctors at the health center where his wife had received treatment, they might be able to gather a couple of related anecdotes, but one or two quick-witted executives would surely notice that the situation was unusual.

‘It’s late.’

It had been a long time since he had been so engrossed in thinking about the target he had to pursue that he lost track of time. Was that why? On his way back from his office to his residence, he had momentarily forgotten about the prisoner locked up in the small room.

“…Ah, right.”

Unlike the previous day, the prisoner who had been so afraid to even approach that he had thrown up was not cowering and hiding in the room until Samuel called for him. He had rushed out as soon as Samuel got off the elevator, walked down the long corridor, and opened the door to his residence.

Only then did Samuel recall the young man’s hair, the color of the city’s night sky without lights; the texture of the stiff, coarse strands; the thrill and genuineness conveyed when he had grabbed it; and the moments that were all the more questionable because of it.

Then, he dragged up his intuition—which was now probably stuck in some dull form somewhere, if not swept away by the river of cold reason—from the very edge.

Ah, what sort of change of heart is this one having?

The person opposite him, who seemed to have finally adapted to the range of the shackle, stood at a reasonable distance without fumbling or falling. His hands and feet were a bit fidgety, but his eyes did not hold the same level of deep, profound fear as yesterday.

“You, you said you would give me a chance. You, you also said you’d let me live. Right?”

“I did say that yesterday.”

The voice from across him must have gathered its courage to ask, but Samuel answered indifferently as he took off his hat. For the prisoner, it might have been his one and only hope, but for him, it was merely an experiment to confirm his intuition, or something like a whim.

Besides, the more he pursued Vincent, the weaker the connection between the two became, and the young man became more worthless. Perhaps it was time to admit that his intuition had lost this time.

“…I’ll tell you everything I know.”

“Well now. Is it worth it?”

His feet kept curling and uncurling on the spot, causing the heavy shackle to clank repeatedly. Despite the clear signs of nervousness, the prisoner desperately clasped his trembling fingertips, trying to gain the Chief Commissioner’s mercy.

“I know when the leader will appear. His location, too…”

He said he wasn’t a rebel, and now he knows the whereabouts of the rebel leader. He did not seem the type to make up absurd stories just to survive.

Had there truly been no one who had begged for their life, claiming to know the leader’s identity?

The information they laid out, as if it were something truly significant, was similar, as if pre-arranged. An elderly man who hid his face in a mask and went around the bases outside, checking on personnel and supplies. That was all they knew. Nothing more.

Anyone with a bit of a brain would have guessed that information of that level was utterly useless, but unfortunately, if they had that kind of capacity, they would not have jumped into the lion’s den that was the Public Security Bureau in the first place.

It would have been more admirable if he had at least tried to make something up, claiming to know Vincent, or if he had tried to show some loyalty to his comrades by saying he would rather die than talk.

“And so?”

Prejudice was overlaid like a color, and the person who had seemed special now wore a face similar to those who had died in the basement of this building.

Perhaps he had overestimated his opponent because he had trusted his intuition.

Could he be just a run-of-the-mill lackey, a young man who got caught up by chance, a disposable pawn with no value no matter how hard you looked? Could it be that he only seemed momentarily attractive because he was the bait cast by the rebel ‘head,’ the man named Vincent who had been masquerading as a perfect citizen…?

“I’ll do anything you tell me to, so please just grant me one favor.”