A/N: If you like my work, you can like my fan page KuraraOkumura's Disciples on Facebook. I update about in-writing chapters there, and you can talk to me directly too if you have any questions. :P
When I wake up, I do not know who I am. I do not think that is very habitual.
I am lying on my side on a concrete floor, my feet shackled together, a length of chain going from them to the bar of what appears to be a man-sized cage. I look up, and the white light of a naked bulb hanging from a dirty ceiling blinds me momentarily and forces me to look back down. My wrists are also shackled together, and as I watch my fingers move in front of my face, still lying on my side, I realize that I am naked. The concrete under me is hard and painful enough against my raw skin that I know I have been laying here for a while now.
That is the second thing I realize; I am smart. As I look around me and my brain immediately processes the cage, the floor, the walls and the metal door with a small barred-off prison window near eye-level, I can already assess that, no matter the similarities, I am not in prison. I have been kidnapped. Whoever I was, it must have been someone important – or important to someone important. I am being held for ransom – I am a hostage.
I know how likely that is; in the world that my brain and intelligence apparently remembers, the probability of my being kidnapped considering my age – nineteen – and my gender – male – are approximately of 0.00016%. How I even know what age I am, I'll leave to you.
My brain has more difficulties providing me with information as to my chances of survival. If I were a child in America, I would have one-of-two chances of getting out of this alive. But I am not a child, and I do not know what America is, so I don't take that probability for granted. I will probably die here. That depends on my important-person's willingness to part with their money.
Who am I? Am I worth paying a ransom for? I certainly hope so, but something deep within me tells me that there is nobody out there waiting for me. I am alone here; alone with my thoughts and my musings and my missing identity.
Who am I? I ask myself again. But does it matter? Will it ever matter again, considering that I am here, chained and bound and obliged, by people who are likely not to care about my name just as long as I get them the cash that they are here for?
I know, somehow, that the world I live in is merciless. I am provided with a vague definition of 'mercy'; a giving of charity and liberality towards one which it is in another's power to punish. Am I merciless? I do not know. Will I be shown mercy? Will I be spared? I do not care.
That is the third thing I register about myself. I am careless. My brain, my thoughts, my feelings, are entirely factual. I evince no emotion as I tell myself that I may well die here; I do not care that I may have nobody waiting for me outside the walls of my prison; and it does not matter to me that I have no knowledge of who I am. I know only that I am here, and that this is all I know. This place, this cage, the bruise of the metallic manacles on my wrists and ankles – none of it matters, yet they make up the entirety of my reality.
I am careless. I am bound. I am truths, and I am lies. I am senseless.
Mercy is a harbinger.
A/N: If you like my work, you can like my fan page KuraraOkumura's Disciples on Facebook. I update about in-writing chapters there, and you can talk to me directly too if you have any questions. :P