The City Where Gray Rain Falls Chapter 26

Crunch. When the answer didn’t come immediately, weight pressed down on the heel that was pinning his hand in place, keeping him from fleeing. As a sensation of his hand being pierced through and seared by fire shot through him, a pitiful scream burst from Isaac’s lips.

“What on earth could you have been so curious about? Hm?”

Soon after, the foot that had been mercilessly grinding into the back of his hand lifted. Samuel picked up one of the many documents scattered across the floor and waved it idly, held between two fingers.

“Not someone alive, not someone about to die—but someone who died a long, long time ago. That’s what you’re searching for.”

The pain in his hand remained vivid, but with this brief moment of freedom regained, Isaac’s mind raced busily.

How could he escape from this place? If he fought with everything he had, could he overpower this man? Maybe there was something he could use as a weapon…

He had done nothing more than shift his eyes slightly to glance around him, without uttering a single sound. But as if he had heard that very thought, Samuel’s foot drove into Isaac’s abdomen without a moment’s hesitation. Thud.

A flash of white burst before his eyes, and his insides felt as though they had all knotted together and ignited. He had thought he was used to taking beatings since childhood, but he was utterly wrong. It even crossed his mind that the Misters from the rebels had gone far easier on him.

“I asked you what you were trying to find in here.”

“Ugh…”

Struck without warning, he could produce no sound at all. He collapsed into a corner, barely clinging to his faltering, ragged breaths. There was no way he could say what the other man wanted to hear, and his vision was steadily warping out of shape.

The ever-so-kind Chief of Security grabbed Isaac by the hair and wrenched his head back so that he could look at him and answer, but his eyelids only slid slowly shut.

“…You ought to… answer me.”

“…”

Oh dear. The last words he heard as his consciousness faded were a dry, emotionless sigh that carried not the slightest trace of sympathy.

∞ ∞ ∞

His vision was dim and dark, and his fingertips were too utterly strengthless to hold even a thread of power.

When he first opened his eyes in the darkness, he thought he had died. It wasn’t unheard of for someone’s insides to burst from a single kick, killing them on the spot.

But the pain that soon followed, and his body being dragged somewhere by his bound arms, sadly tried to prove that he was still alive.

Hh-hup, hup. Because of the damp black cloth that kept clinging to his face, Isaac gasped like a fish that had forgotten how to breathe out of water.

Even in his flickering consciousness, he sensed the presence of someone walking ahead, the sticky humidity, the musty, grimy stench of mold. The sweltering, oppressive heat of midsummer was nothing compared to this place. It was close to the foulness of the sewer he had used to infiltrate the city, one might say.

Even without anyone’s kind guidance, he could sense it instinctively—that he was being dragged to the infamous place called the “basement.”

“Hh-hah, hah, hh-hah…”

Countless dizzying, winding stairs; a narrow, dank corridor; the black cloth pulled over his head so he couldn’t tell where he was going; his arms bound; the air, nothing but cold.

“S-save… me.”

Once he realized he was being dragged to the place people said was worse than death—the place where countless people had died under all manner of horrific torture—Isaac wept quietly, murmuring pleas for his life in a small voice.

Screech. He was thrown into a room where rusty hinges wailed loudly, and bound to a chair. The motions were utterly without wasted movement.

The door slammed shut again, and once the footsteps of those who had guided him here receded into the distance, he could do nothing but tremble all over from the terror gripping his entire body.

Would that man with the angelic face now carve me up? How slowly would he make me die? Could I endure it? Would there even be an end? What happened to Vincent? Was he captured like me? Please, don’t let that have happened because of me.

But even after waiting a long while, no sound of a door opening or hard footsteps reached him. Only a heavy, desolate silence stretched on and on. Only then did Isaac have a little room to gradually take in his surroundings.

The black cloth was still over his head, so there was not a single point of light anywhere.

With his sight blocked off, his senses sharpened even more keenly. One corner of his mind ceaselessly imagined the brutal future that would unfold once that door opened again, but he struggled to ignore it and tried somehow to accept the situation he was in.

The cold iron chair clattered as if missing a tooth somewhere, but no matter how violently he shook his body, the chair legs wouldn’t budge—it seemed to be fixed to the floor.

His arms, wrenched behind his back, were bound together with his torso to the backrest of the chair. Like a snake coiling itself to suffocate its prey, thick ropes had been wound round and round, constricting Isaac’s upper body.

The only part of him with any freedom was his legs. Thanks to that, he could shift his hips a little, and by thrashing as much as possible, he could check whether there was anything within reach of his feet. It couldn’t change his situation, but it was just enough to hold a sliver of hope.

“Is… is anyone there?”

But that, too, was brief. Even though it felt as if dozens of hours had passed, no one came to this room. No one to strip the cloth from his head, no one to warn him of what was to come—no rescue, no torture. There was nothing but being bound to a chair, alone.

“Please… isn’t there anyone? Anyone at all?”

Starving, anxious, knowing nothing—but sleep still crashed over him. He dozed off, woke, and with his mouth opening and closing, called out for someone in a cracked voice. Even though he knew from all his experience that no answer would ever come back, Isaac desperately wanted to hear the voice of a living person.

It didn’t matter whether the one who came was a devil or an angel. If a devil, it would mean the end of this life bound here; if an angel, salvation. Either form would bring release.

“…!”

When what felt like an eternity had passed, footsteps echoed from outside. Even in his fading consciousness, Isaac’s ears caught that faint sound.

It was not the footsteps of a thief whose life depended on stealth, nor those of Vincent, who had played the role of his rescuer time and again in his imagination. Clack, clack—there was no way he could not recognize the owner of that regular, even confident stride.

Screech. The door to the room opened and closed, and the presence he had awaited in more ways than one entered. The other man offered no affectionate greeting, nor any remark on facing a sinner.

Click—the sound of a light switching on. Hiss—the sound of a cigarette being lit. A short inhale, and an exhale twice as long. The tap-tap of embers producing acrid smoke and turning to ash followed one after another.

Only after he had burned through an entire cigarette did the man strip off the black cloth draped over Isaac’s head and toss it carelessly to the floor.

What lit the room was a small bulb, just enough to make out a face and recognize the objects around him. Still, it had been so long since his eyes had seen any light directly that even this tiny glow made them sting sharply and sent tears streaming down.

The room was small. A door, a small washbasin beside it, gray walls devoid of any of the usual sharp tools—that was all that surrounded the sinner. Or perhaps one ought to say it was large, for a coffin meant to greet death early.

Into his blurred vision came the figure of the blond man, removing his jacket and cap to hang them on a rack, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt held by suspenders. It was as if he were preparing to set about his work in earnest.

In this case, he was the butcher, stripping the hide and tenderizing wild meat, and Isaac was the piglet who had been laid upon the block, its throat not yet cut.

“…I-I’m… not… a rebel.”

From his parched throat—bone-dry from not a single drop of water—his final plea spilled out. It was the answer he had rehearsed countless times in his imagination over the passing hours.

The man before him—who was unmistakably the Chief of Security, Samuel—gave no reply. He merely leaned against the wall in silence, arms crossed, and stared at him.