Chapter Text
The first time Atsushi died, he didn't realise it.
He was curled up on himself, knees close to his body and head bent in an attempt to ease some of the discomfort he was feeling. The ground beneath him was hard, the air cold and his wounds painful. The Headmaster had punished him after catching him stealing food from the kitchens, which consisted of nothing more than a pear and a piece of bread. A rotting pear and stale bread to be precise. Atsushi hadn't even resisted when a calloused hand grabbed a handful of his hair and dragged him towards the stairs of the basement where his cell was. He was at fault: stealing was wrong, a crime, a sin and proof of greed. But he was so hungry. The Headmaster had glared at him when Atsushi had told him, in a vain attempt to win his pity.
"Stealing is reserved for people with a certain intellect," he replied, chaining her to the wall, "because thieves, the smart ones, don't get caught. Did you really think you could steal? You don't have the intelligence for." For once Atsushi agreed with him.
He had screamed. He had cried. He had apologised. All this seemed to fall on deaf ears because the Headmaster turned his back on him and walked out of the cell without a glance back. There were no windows or skylights in his cell, let alone a clock, nothing to indicate whether it was day or night. The air was hot in summer, stifling to the point where Atsushi would press himself against the stone walls in the hope of absorbing their coldness, and freezing in winter. So cold that the chains around his wrists left purple marks that remained for days afterwards.
It was the latter now, cold as November always was, gray and dark where the humidity reached your marrow. The chains were long enough to allow to Atsushi to lie down, and what a mistake it was to do so. The ground was only promises of a bed of hard stones absorbing the ambient temperature and a mixture of moss and mold infiltrating his lungs with each breath. Lying down meant succumbing to fatigue, laying his head on the ground only to wake up with a burning forehead and, depending on his luck, an inflamed throat.
Lying down meant falling ill, which in turn meant being locked up in quarantine while the illness passed, whether contagious or not. And between the cell and the quarantine, Atsushi would choose ten times over the cold, damp stones to a room just big enough to sit in, with a low wooden ceiling where the fingernails of previous children had left scratches, evidence of attempted escapes etched into the wood. The door was nothing more than a trapdoor through which a tray of food and child or corpse passed, depending on the state of the unfortunate person at the end of their quarantine. Medication? Better pray for adoption.
And yet.
And yet Atsushi lay down. Perhaps the Headmaster knew full well that he was going to give in to temptation, hence the generously long chains in a place where nothing was given for nothing. Or maybe it didn't mean anything and things were just lined up in such a way that ease would only lead to hardship for Atsushi. In any case, he lay down, head and body on the damp floor, praying that he wouldn't wake up sick.
Sleep was hard to come by. Confusing too. One minute Atsushi was cold, his thin clothes a poor barrier to moisture, and the next he was hot, said clothes surely torn off if only his shivering arms had the strength. It was as unsettling as it was frustrating; wheezing, cold or hot, who knows, Atsushi himself didn't know. He focused on the condensation his trembling breath generated in the air, white in the little of the cell he could see, for even darkness has a colour and the light from the staircase leading to the ground floor painted the basement a dark blue. A taste of what it would be like to stand upstairs, with a few candles lit to save electricity and the warm glow they offered.
Then the white became lighter, less concentrated, until it was transparent and the only thing Atsushi could see was the outline of his bed of stones. He closed his eyes.
He had dreamt, maybe, probably, something vague and ephemeral like dreams are, the ones you forget before you're even fully awake. As for waking up, it was just like the cell: cold and lonely and terribly unpleasant. Although Atsushi was pleasantly surprised not to feel any inflammation in his throat, even after swallowing and swallowing, nothing, just his saliva making his throat ripple until his mouth became dry and pasty. Yet he was sure that he had fallen asleep with the beginnings of an illness, or at least something resembling one, with that sensation of hot and cold and the heaviness of his body against the stone floor.
Even stranger, heavy footsteps could now be heard, as well as the familiar jingle of a set of keys, making Atsushi's head snap up. The air still smelled of night, dark and damp, and he hadn't spent more than a day in the basement, so why would the Headmaster be back already? The basement meant isolation, a bit like quarantine but with questionable injections and punishments thrown in. A meal, sometimes, not always, given by a Sister who wasn't really one, lured by a salary paid in cash rather than volunteering under a Christian institution.
Atsushi's heart raced as the basement door opened, illuminating the surroundings for a moment before being closed again. Two breaths, three, and then the Headmaster stood in front of his cell. Long legs, long arms, all close to his body giving him that imposing tree trunk look that did nothing to soften his hard gaze. Gaze directed at Atsushi, filled with contempt and all those other things a ten-year-old boy couldn't grasp, or if he did then he was no longer a child.
"Have you learned your lesson?" he asked, his deep voice echoing between the walls of the basement.
What lesson? Theft? Insubordination? Disobedience? The list was long, but the night was even longer and every second out of his cell was a second of respite. "Yes," Atsushi replied, because what else could he say? In another world, he might have said no, that it was unfair, that his share of the food was always meagre compared to everyone else's, that it was no wonder he rummaged through the kitchens if his plate was emptier than it was full morning, noon and evening. But the Atsushi of this world had no such courage, dragged by the arm out of the cell and then out of the basement to the door of the boys' dormitories.
"Make sure there's no next time," were the Headmaster's words before pushing him against the door. There will always be a next time, Atsushi knew it, the Headmaster knew it, the Sisters knew it. Like there was the time before, just last week, when it wasn't a pear but hard, tasteless carrots that he stole. And there was the week before that and the week before that and there will be the week after that and all the weeks where Atsushi is hungry enough to steal.
Atsushi tiptoed into the dormitory so as not to wake the dozen or so boys asleep in their respective beds and lay down as slowly as possible in his own, the springs of the mattress creaking despite his efforts not to make any noise. He stared at his shoes at the foot of the bed until sleep overcame him. The rest of the night passed without a hitch.