『Author's Note;』

2/21/15

So today I stubbed my toenail on the corner of a table and it started bleeding profusely. Amidst the heart-wrenching pain, however, I got the idea for this story!

Weird, really...

I'm still unsure of how I feel about this whole thing. Tell me what you think. I always love hearing what you guys have to say.~

Enjoy!

one

The prison was hard to miss, so far out of scale to everything else that it could have been funny in another context, like a little kid's first stab at drawing a dog, say, where the ears might grow all the way down to the ground.

The blank white-washed walls were thirty feet high, maybe more, and ran on and on, right next to the sidewalk. Touka caught the tops of guard towers jutting out over the street. Just before the end, the wall made a ninety-degree angle, then formed a recessed three-sided area with the barrier in the middle. She parked on the street and wandered up to it, shoes clacking on the cobblestone underfoot. The gate itself was a black oblong, the paint so thick that she couldn't tell if it was wood or metal.

One last thought entered the heliotrope-haired girl's head.

Are you supposed to knock?

two

Touka stepped through the metal detector as the two guards dumped her bag out on a table: spiral notebook, two Bic ballpoints, cell phone. The guard swept the pens and the phone on the tray with her license and keys, shoving everything else back.

"No pens?" she asked.

"Had a pen sticking in B-Block. Right in the eye, too. I know 'cause I was there," one of them replied in heavily accented English, his eyes flat and expressionless, as if killing a man didn't even scrape the surface of his soul.

"What are we supposed to write with, then?" Touka doesn't bother hiding her contemporary surprise, or her slight annoyance. Her neutral expression mushrooms into something irritated and then clenches. Slammed brows, squeezed lips.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

Then the second sentinel opened the door closest to him and spoke.

"Step on through and we'll get going."

three - prologue

The room was small and very bright; fluorescent lights, cement-block walls and floor, metal shelves half-full of dilapidated books, mostly paperbacks. In the center of the space stood a rectangular steel desk, bolted to the floor.

On card-table chairs around it sat four people in blue jumpsuits; one at the far end, one on the left side, two on the right; all spaced as far from each other as they could be.

"Hi," Touka says, although it comes out more as an imperceptible breath to steady her heart. "I'm Touka. The new writing teacher."

They looked at her as she took a seat near the end of the silver counter; but not in the eye. A no-no.

"Maybe it would help if you all introduce yourselves," she breathes.

Silence.

Then the man on the left—with strangely colored eyes filled to the levees with almost-tears for no particular reason, slicked over blonde hair—sniggered. "Introduce? I know these guys already, way too much!"

One of the men on the right—bulky, thick eyebrows, wispy mustache, long black hair—laughed deeply. The woman next to him—skinny, purple-haired, young—played with a fingernail carelessly. How could things go wrong so fast?

Touka shifts in her seat like a crow fluffing out its wings. The only thing she's missing is the pissed-off caw.

Then, lastly, the man at the end, sitting up very straight, oddly-hued oculars directed at Touka's forehead, interjected quietly. "Tatara."

"Nice to meet you," she nods. "What's your last name?"

Tatara shook his head, a controlled, deliberate movement; there was even something regal about it.

The large man with the curtain-like hair leaned forward. His forearms were huge, bulging with cords of muscle. "You now entering a last-name zone."

"Kirishima," Touka blurted. "And yours?"

He only blinked, muttered, and said nothing.

"Just call me Rize," the woman from the other end replied, clearly uninterested.

"Call me Naki!" The man from the left joined in, raising an excited arm in the air, voice orotund. "Call me Naki! Naki!"

Touka only nodded, shooting Tatara an expecting glance. The man remained silent and composed, ignoring her gaze all together. It ticked her off, but nonetheless, she was here just to do a job. Nothing else.

"Okay, let's get started with—" she began, before being cut off by the sharp sound of footsteps behind her. She turned, saw an inmate coming through the door, and some man who she suspected was a Sergeant following close behind.

"This here's Ken," stated the male sternly. "New student."

The sudden intrusion makes Touka unbalanced.

But what shakes her up even more is the newcomer's appearance; terribly chapped lips, unruly, chalky-white hair with bangs hanging in his face, slight bags under dead, olivine eyes that seem so dull in vibrancy. That wasn't all. Jet ebony adjourned the moons of his fingernails and looked even darker in contrast with his skin; an extremely pale tone that only seemed right in belonging to an unhealthy patient in a hospital.

He stared, a hard stare with real physical force that Touka could feel, even though it was directed at nothing.

Remember to speak.

"Ah. I'm Touka Kirishima," she chokes, rising and holding out her hand. "Welcome to the class. Sit anywhere."

Ken shook her hand; quick, impersonal, exerting no force. Just that.

She pores over his figure with one up-down swipe of the eye and doesn't know what to think.

His eyebrows laid straight, giving him that perpetual expression of nonchalance, while those cracked lips remained slightly parted as if he were trying to get some extra oxygen. His prominent chin found itself inclined downwards ever so slightly, deep-set eyes shuddered to keep anyone from looking through their windows.

It was almost as if the weight of his shadow was enough to drag him down; purpose was a distant thought, lost behind a mountain of fatigue. From how it looked, anyway.

He wasn't as tall as Naki or Kamishiro either, 'nor was he so bulked up; his built was a lot thinner, much more on the starved side, but somehow held quite a bit of muscle all the same.

The pallid stripling gave a hasty gander around the room with dead eyes and Touka doesn't know if she should just choose a spot for him after all.

There was an empty seat beside Naki and another beside Rize...but even despite such, Ken took neither. Instead Tatara rose and willingly moved over to Rize's side, leaving the milky-white of a boy to finally lower himself into the seat that had opened itself.

He cracks a knuckle and everything is silent.

For a second.

"Be good," the Sergeant directs to Ken, turning to give Touka a knowing look before leaving the room.

She almost didn't hear the words that were said before he disappeared past the threshold.

Almost.

"Be careful now. He's a feisty one."