Convict Unit: Black Parade

That evening in the mess hall.

Inmates heading to the mess hall for another listless meal of slop noticed something was different.

“Huh?”

“What’s that smell? Something… good.”

“Could it be?”

Exchanging looks of surprise, the inmates scrambled inside. There, they discovered the source of the aroma.

It was freshly baked bread.

“Bread!”

“Breeeaaad?!”

“Bread! Bread! Bread! Bread!”

The mess hall was stocked with loaves of bread, still steaming from the oven, and packets of jam.

Tears of joy streamed down the prisoners’ faces as they fell to their knees before the glorious sight. A perfectly baked loaf, fresh from the oven, was a taste of heaven itself.

They could tell from the smell alone. This was, without a doubt, going to be delicious.

Just then, Jae-hee, standing at the entrance, thrust a hand into the air and shouted, “Now do you believe I fulfill my promises, everyone?!”

“Woooooah!”

“Boy! Boy! Boy! Boy!”

Amid the prisoners’ cheers, Jae-hee pumped both fists in the air.

“A one-hundred-percent promise-fulfillment rate! I’m your Candidate Number One, Boy!”

Of course, with only one promise made, a one-hundred-percent rate was a given. 

But since he wasn’t technically wrong, the inmates applauded with genuine emotion.

None of the kitchen volunteers had any baking skills, but that hardly mattered. Baking ingredients like flour were always in surplus among the ship’s provisions, and the sealed processed jams were simply dead stock.

All these factors had been turned into a come-from-behind home run with the single addition of the Patissier.

“He just got lucky that a prisoner with the right skills showed up, that’s all,” Razor muttered, looking utterly unimpressed.

Hearing this, Jae-hee jabbed a finger toward the kitchen. “But who was it that rescued this man from Daejeon?”

The Patissier, who had joined the kitchen staff that very day and spent hours baking with the other cooks, gave an awkward wave.

“And who put him in the right place at the right time, everyone?” Jae-hee cupped a hand to his ear.

“Boy! Boy! Boy! Boy!”

The prisoners stomped their feet, chanting Jae-hee’s callsign in unison.

With a nod of satisfaction, Jae-hee threw his arm up and declared, “From now on, we will have freshly baked bread once a day!”

“Woooooah!”

“And do you think it ends here? We’ll keep improving! Little by little, we will make our lives in this mess hall better!”

“Woooooah!”

“Let us advance together! Glory to Deck 1!”

“Waaaah!”

The inmates cheered, tears pouring down their faces as they clutched the steaming loaves. Status Window danced around, alternating bites from a loaf in each hand.

Watching the frenzied scene, Razor shoved a piece of bread into his own mouth, then quietly opened a carton of sterilized milk and drank it down.

“Well… it beats the slop,” he muttered under his breath.

***

The Patissier was assigned to Jae-hee’s cell.

And so, the four-person cell was full. The roommates were Jae-hee, Razor, Status Window, and the Patissier.

“Whoa, this bathroom is tiny!” the Patissier exclaimed in horror as he emerged. “The four of us are supposed to use this? It’s so small, I don’t think I can even wash up properly.”

“Uh, they knocked down the walls of a few cells in each block to make a communal shower,” Jae-hee explained. “You wash up there. This is just for, you know, business.”

“So it really is a prison. This is completely wretched.”

Jae-hee tilted his head. Is it?

Since he had grown up in an abandoned village with similar conditions, he hadn’t really thought of it as all that bad.

“You worked hard today. I can’t believe you were able to bake bread like that on your first day.”

“No, well… my ability is optimized for baking, so the location isn’t an issue.”

The Patissier’s words made Jae-hee blink. “Oh, right, I’d forgotten you were an Awakened, Patissier. Then again, this prison is only for the Awakened.”

“I’m an Awakened, yes, but my ability is completely useless for combat.”

“What is your ability?”

“I can control the temperature of my hands.”

The Patissier held out his warm hands. “To be precise, I can raise the temperature of my palms. At full power, they can get about as hot as a small oven. But with the cuffs suppressing my ability, they just feel a little warm.”

Razor poked the Patissier’s plump palm with his fingertip and recoiled in surprise. “Whoa, it’s real! It’s still at least as warm as a hand warmer that’s cooled down!”

“It helps with the fermentation process, so it’s perfectly optimized for baking bread… but for fighting, it’s completely useless.”

Status Window broke into a cold sweat and pushed up his glasses. “Could it be… the legendary ‘Solar Hands’…?”

“The hell is that you piece of otaku… Ah, forget it. It’s not like I’d get it anyway,” Razor said, dismissing him with a wave.

Ignoring Status Window, who was still muttering incomprehensible otaku-speak, the Patissier sighed and lamented his fate.

“As an Awakened, I’m a D-rank! No, an F-rank! No, no, I might as well be a Z-rank! In terms of power, I’m less useful than a pinch of yeast! And now I’m trapped in this terrifying prison…!”

“That’s rough.”

“Anyway, I can’t go on any missions!” the Patissier pleaded, clinging to Jae-hee. “Please, Boy! You’re the Deck Leader! I’ll work hard as a cook, so please don’t send me out on any Gate missions!”

As the Patissier wept and begged, Razor asked dryly, “Did you do the six-week military training?”

“Nope? What’s that?”

“The Black Parade’s basic training. If you didn’t do it, they won’t send you on missions. Don’t worry.”

Not all Awakened criminals imprisoned here were conscripted into the Black Parade.

If a prisoner had no discernible combat value, they weren’t even sent to the six-week basic training. Training cost money, after all.

“Just keep baking bread, save up your Credits, and get out.”

“All right!”

His mood flipped in an instant. The Patissier shot to his feet and did a little dance, his round body grooving to a silent beat.

For some reason, Status Window joined in, clapping and bouncing his belly in encouragement.

“Huh? I didn’t get any training either, but I’m going on missions,” Jae-hee said, pointing to himself in bewilderment.

Razor grinned. “Ah, that’s right. Our little super rookie here was deployed straight away, skipping basic, wasn’t he?”

“What do they even teach you in basic training?”

Status Window, the most recent graduate of the program, explained, “Nothing much desu. Monster classification and countermeasures, Gate-clearing strategies by time of day, survival skills, first aid, all that jazz desu.”

“What do you mean?! That’s all super important!”

“And basic handling of firearms and cold weapons, I guess?”

“I never learned any of that!”

“Oh, right, you also get a completion certificate desu. Here.”

Status Window rummaged through his belongings and brandished a handsome, gold-leafed training completion certificate.

Jae-hee was already bummed about not finishing school, and now he found out he’d skipped basic military training too.

His face fell. “Should I ask to go now…?”

“Don’t be an idiot. Someone at your level has no business being there,” Razor chided.

“The very fact you skipped basic and went straight to missions proves you’re one of them goddamn freak—” he coughed, then hurried on, “—ishly talented people. Isn’t that proof enough?”

“It really sounded like you were about to say something negative and then quickly corrected yourself.”

“I wasn’t, you little shit. What do you take me for?”

They sat crowded on the floor of the cell, chatting. With the plump figures of Status Window and the Patissier, the already small cell felt even more cramped.

“All right, let’s just get some sleep.”

“Yeah, let’s.”

The four of them crawled into their respective bunks.

There were two bunk beds; Status Window and the Patissier, being larger, took the bottom bunks, while the relatively smaller Razor and Jae-hee took the top.

“It’s so small…”

As it was his first day, the Patissier grew sentimental and started sniffling. This was a common occurrence, so the others paid him no mind.

But Jae-hee vehemently agreed that it was small. His hand touched the wall without his arm even being fully extended. It was hard to even stretch.

“…”

An image of the commander’s quarters on the Rooftop flashed through Jae-hee’s mind.

It was huge. And really nice.

He didn’t expect anything that grand, but if he could just get a slightly better room…

“…How do you get to the upper decks?” Jae-hee murmured to himself.

From the bunk below, Status Window heard him and practically rolled out of bed in a panic.

“Boy-kun?! Are you gonna abandon us and move up desu?!”

“Huh? No, that’s not it.”

“No way desu! I’ll cling to your pant legs desu! If you go, you have to take me with you desu! Otherwise, I’ll stop you from leaving desu!”

Status Window really did grab onto Jae-hee’s pant leg, squawking.

The Patissier, who had also tumbled out of bed, grabbed the other pant leg and wailed. “Don’t abandon me, Mr. Boy! It’s scary here! I’ll bake you lots of good bread, just save me!”

“O-okay, I get it! Just let go of me!”

Jae-hee gave a light kick to shake the two of them off. They dropped to the floor and sobbed their hearts out.

“Ohhh ohhh… When will you come if I go nooow…”

“Your feet will be sore before you go ten ri desu…”

“I wasn’t going to leave right now, I just asked how to get there! Sheesh!”

Watching this whole shitshow unfold, Razor spoke up from where he lay on his side.

“Listen up, dipshits. This kid is in a different weight class. He’s the real deal. He’s not the type to stay on Deck 1 forever. He’s meant to climb.”

“Noooo!”

“However… there’s a way for him to keep being the Deck 1 Leader even if he moves up. That way, we all can keep getting scraps—” he coughed, then corrected himself, “—I mean, he can keep bestowing his blessings upon us.”

Ignoring the suspicious slip-up, Jae-hee asked uncertainly, “There’s a way for me to stay the leader?”

Razor grinned and held up his index finger. “You just have to become the Deck Commander for Deck 1 and 2.”

Jae-hee’s face soured. “That sounds like something out of a high school delinquent manga… becoming the ‘king of all grades’ or something.”

“Oh, it’s similar.”

“Wha?”

“This is Paradise Lost. A prison, and a cruise ship.”

Razor made a circle with the fingers of one hand. “Officially, you can buy whatever you want with Credits. And at the same time…”

He made a fist with his other hand and shook it. “In the shadows, you can also seize what you want through strength.”

“…”

“How do you move up? Simple. You go to the Second Deck Leader and ask for permission. You could slip him some Credits, or you could prove your strength and join his crew as a subordinate. Or…”

Razor drew a hand across his own throat. “There’s also the option of… ‘taking him out.’”

“…!”

“And then you become Deck 2’s Leader. What kind of complex bureaucracy do you think they have in this den of fucking animals? The strongest one takes the top spot.”

“So I just have to fight the… ‘sophomore class president’… I mean, the Second Deck Leader, and win.”

It was a brutally simple and straightforward method, fitting for a den of criminals.

Naturally, he had no intention of fighting without good reason, but Jae-hee’s curiosity was piqued.

“So, who is the Second Deck Leader?” he asked.

“Uh…” Razor’s face went pale.

He thought for a moment, then abruptly rolled over, turning his back to them. “Forget it. Pretend I never said any of that.”

“Huh? Why?”

“On second thought, it’s impossible.”

“What is?”

“Taking out that motherfucker.”

Razor pulled the blanket up over his head and let out a small sigh.

“The Second Deck Leader is…”

Jae-hee swallowed hard, waiting for the rest of the sentence.

“…basically ‘invincible.’ At least inside this prison.”