“Normal for idiots,” Daiki muttered.
“Enough!” Kai’s voice cut through the noise, steady and sharp. “We’re all Half-Plated, all in the same pile of shit. The last thing we need is to tear each other apart. So shut it and let Akiko speak.”
The silence that followed was worse than the shouting. Their attention pressed against me, waiting for an explanation I didn’t have.
Guilt bubbled in my stomach. They didn’t want answers—they wanted hope, something to hold on to, proof they might get out of this place in one piece. And I had nothing. I couldn’t even protect Miki. How could I expect to protect them?
“I don’t know what he meant,” I said finally, the words tasting like failure. “He didn’t have time to explain.”
“That’s convenient,” Haru muttered.
“So we’re just supposed to sit here and wait?” Yoshi’s voice cracked again.
“We don’t have a choice,” Kai said firmly. “None of us do.”
“Are you all dipshits?” Haru’s voice cut through the dark. “Did you forget the apprenticeship? I didn’t. We’re in locked cells with Chopmen breathing down our necks. This isn’t new. You think they dragged us here for a vacation?”
Yoshi let out a strangled sound. “Are they making us compete in challenges again? Is that it?”
Daiki gave a low, humorless chuckle. “If it’s just challenges, it ought to be a breeze. Like repeating a grade—only this time we know how it ends.”
“Shut up,” Yoshi snapped. “This isn’t funny!”
“It’s not meant to be,” Daiki said flatly.
“Enough,” Kai growled. “Snapping at each other won’t change anything. If Haru’s right, and we all know he probably is, then we’d better be ready.”
Their voices faded into silence, the weight of what they didn’t say settling over us all. They had their suspicions. Maybe they even knew, deep down, what was coming.
They wanted answers. I wanted them too. But I had nothing to give them, nothing to ease the fear. Only Jiro’s voice in my head, that single word echoing over and over.
Survive.
34
Sleep didn’t come to me the way it seemed to come so easily to the others. Their soft snores, broken by the occasional creak of a wooden platform, drifted through the Nikubeya, rising and falling, making the place feel more like a dormitory than a dungeon. The torchlight outside my cell hissed every now and then.
Only one other person was awake—Sora.
Aside from telling us his name, he had never contributed to the conversations. He kept to himself, silent, never offering an opinion.
But I could hear him now.
At first I thought he was humming. But when I listened closer, I realized he was murmuring to himself. The words were too faint to catch, just the cadence of a phrase repeated over and over. Curious and a little uneasy, I stepped off the platform and peered across to the opposite side where his cell was, the farthest from the entrance.
In the flickering light I saw him rocking gently, lips moving, gaze fixed on the wall of his cell as if the stone held secrets only he could hear.
Then he stopped. Slowly his eyes slid toward me. A smile broke across his face, catching me off guard. I forced myself to return it, though my stomach tightened.
“Are you okay?” I asked, careful not to wake the others.
“It doesn’t matter how we feel,” he said, low and calm. “Our time has come.”
The way he said it made my skin prickle. “Do you know why we’re here?”
He nodded once.
“Is this another apprenticeship?”
