The prisoner was taken to a makeshift recovery facility and would remain there indefinitely.
He was slowly weaned onto food that was not just stale bread and consequently gained more and more strength each day. He could even stand on his own two feet with a little help from others.
He had remained in this hospital around a month with other newly-freed prisoners, but each day it seemed there were fewer and fewer. Family members travelling from the other side of the country or even outside the country looking for their long-lost siblings, spouses, parents, and children eventually came to this hospital and took them home.
The lucky ones had been picked up directly at the prison.
The man could still hardly believe any of this was real.
He was still waiting for the day one of the hospital staff would slit all their throats, but why would they waste good food on him if they were going to do that?
He often went back and forth with himself like this, weighing the likelihood of each scenario.
Sometimes he would hear conversations travel in from other rooms, or even conversations between those in his own room. He wondered if it was possible that they were all in on some sick joke.
Was the king actually dead?
If so, that would be quite saddening.
Yet, each time someone mentioned it, the smile on their face was cruelly wide and brimming with relief. As if with the king’s death, they could finally die in peace.
Day by day, more and more disappeared from his room, but they were immediately replaced by others. It seemed only prisoners were recuperating here.
Some would try to start conversations, but the hardly man could say anything.
“Where did you come from?”
“What is your name?”
Some more masked men had also tried asking him these things, as well as some nurses.
He did not remember much from the past few decades, he realized.
At first, all he could do was drive himself mad in that isolation room. Then, after harassment from the guards, he realized it was safer to not even think. They said that the king could hear his thoughts as well.
“What did you enter the prison for?”
Really, he did not even remember. What did any of them enter prison for?
They had all betrayed the king, betrayed their country.
All he knew about himself was that his name was Thirteen. Maybe he had once been out of prison, but even that felt like some distant dream.
He was no longer a part of civilization, nor could he ever imagine being. He wondered why they had bothered to take him out at all.
Then again, he was tasting meat for the first time in a lifetime, so he was quite content.
“Don’t worry,” one of the prisoners in the room said. “It is that king. He did this to us. But thank the heavens, he’s gone now.”
The man just nodded, not quite understanding what he meant.
Of course, the king imprisoned them—they had all betrayed him.
He wondered what egregious crime he committed, but thought better that he did not even recall.
Every time he said he did not recall, or that his name was Thirteen, the nurse would give him this pitiful look with glassy eyes. So he stopped saying his name was Thirteen. It seemed that was not the correct answer here.
It took a month for someone to show up claiming to be his brother.
When he thought of it now, he knew he had family. Everyone did.
He had a mother, a father, a brother…
It was hard to think about them. Thinking about them had been off-limits for so long. If he thought about them, the king would surely punish them as well for his crimes.
The guards had taunted him about them even when he had long forgotten what they looked like, what they sounded like. He had separated himself from that family long ago, until it sounded like the guards were talking about strangers.
They could no longer trick him with even that.
He stopped enduring it all for them.
Now, there was a man before him with tears in his eyes. The nurse, whose face was like a breath of fresh air to the prisoner, smiled and gestured to the man.
Her cheeks and nose were rosy, her eyes wet with emotion.
The man was crying as well.
Only the prisoner in that bed blankly stared at that man now, placing a few crumbs into his mouth from his plate at lunch. It took him a few hours to finish his plate everyday, and he was just finishing up now.
“This is your brother,” the nurse told him adamantly.
Brother?
“Xueming…”
Xueming…?
The man only blinked, feeling the crumbs fall from his mouth onto his chin.
The nurse patted the arm of his ‘brother’ as the man trembled in a violent wave of emotion.
“We all thought…”
The nurse came around to the other side of the bed and collected his plate, though he still had a few crumbs left. She set the plate down on the little wooden end table. He eyed it with longing.
“Some of the good men and your brother have confirmed it.” She smiled, her teeth too bright for the man’s eyes. The shutters still had to remain closed in the room so he could look around comfortably. He had forced his eyes completely open by the first week, and still, as he looked around it, it was like there was this permanent burning.
“Your name is Jian Xueming. You are from Yanbei Province.”
The man was shocked.
He had another name? He was from Yanbei?
His ‘brother’ gripped his arm, and Xueming shifted uncomfortably, staring at the blue blankets laid over top of his thin legs.
“You entered Mo Fan twenty-five years ago, when you were seventeen.”
Xueming paused, latching onto those blue blankets. They were rough and cheap, but to him, their warmth was impossibly comforting.
“What…” He cleared his throat, trying to speak again. His voice was coming out all wrong. “What for?”
His brother’s eyes were shining with emotion, and he almost toppled over again. His hand was sweaty on Xueming’s arm.
“What for?” His brother choked out, his entire body shaking, causing Xueming to shake as well. “What were any of you in there for? For protesting against the king’s injustice.”
Xueming’s heart, which had been long subdued, panged painfully. He looked over at all of those prisoners also in the room.
He had long been convinced he had done something irredeemable. Something despicable.
“Do you remember my name?” His brother wiped at his eyes, trying to calm himself. His eyes were a dark brown, but shone so wonderfully, Xueming had to look away. “Do not worry if—”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“Lanzhi,” Xueming said without a thought, his voice barely audible.
He had buried all his memories of his family, buried all their names. But he had never truly forgotten them.
In his own eyes, he felt tears well.
He did not know he remembered. It had been a forbidden name for twenty years, just like his own.
“My dearest brother,” Lanzhi cried. “You had been in there so long. We all thought… you were…”
The nurse’s eyes were lowered, so her lashes tickled her cheeks.
“He moved to the isolation unit after only five years, the men said.”
Xueming did not know what he could possibly say.
He wanted to know what he had done—what they had all done?
He had betrayed the king. He had betrayed his nation. Why were they all so sympathetic to him?
“I must have…” He stopped to collect himself, to speak coherently. Speaking more than one word at a time felt so strenuous, his throat was already aching. He croaked out: “...done something.”
“Oh, Xueming,” Lanzhi hugged him in a boorish hug, The breath was sucked from Xueming’s body. “You did nothing wrong. Nothing.”
But Xueming hardly wanted to hear that.
What did he spend his entire life in prison for, if he did nothing wrong?
“Did the…” He inhaled deeply, looking at the nurse over his brother’s shoulder. “...men say anything…” …else?
It was still difficult for him to speak, so that was all he could get out.
The nurse shook her head, biting her lip. It seemed there may be something else, but she did not want to say.
“I will leave you be!” was all she could croak out, her voice laughably high-pitched as she scurried away.
Xueming was perplexed, but could only focus on trying not to suffocate from his brother’s impossibly tight hug.
“I will take you home,” his brother said suddenly, pulling away, yet keeping his hands on Xueming’s shoulders. “To mother, to father.”
Xueming’s eyes welled again, and he looked over at the shutters, trying to hurt his eyes in order to stop the tears. It did not work—there was hardly any light coming in.
“Do not worry about the rest,” Lanzhi promised. “I will take care of it all.”
Xueming left the hospital a few months later and was carefully placed into a carriage headed all the way for Yanbei province. They stopped frequently to allow Xueming to get some rest. Apparently, they were far from their home province, which was in the upper north of the country.
Mo Fan Prison had been close to the capital, which was in the southern half of the country.
Xueming learned a lot during his last few months in the hospital. His brother came to visit him everyday and stayed as long as the hospital allowed him. Eventually, the nurse just brought him a pillow and allowed him to just sleep over.
“Do you not… have a job?” Xueming had asked him, wondering how he could possibly spend all day in the hospital with him.
“I took a break to come find you when the king fell.” Lanzhi shrugged. “It was not like I earned enough for it to matter anyways. No one could.” Then, after a moment of reflection, he smiled and looked up at Xueming. “Hopefully now that the king has fallen, the new government can fix that. Fix the country.”
One day, unable to bear it any longer, Xueming asked him, “Do you know… what I did?”
Lanzhi only stared at him a moment, then repeated what he had told him earlier. That vague response. But Xueming had long been unsatisfied with it.
“Only a few…” He took a deep breath, hiding his hands beneath the blue blanket, hiding his trembling. “...were underground.”
Lanzhi only stared, his eyes welling with tears, and Xueming was forced to drop the subject.
Then, a week later, Lanzhi and him were peacefully sitting in silence, when his brother suddenly insisted, “Only remember the good things from now on.”
Xueming could only nod, not quite sure how he was supposed to do that. His memories of his life outside prison were at best hazy, and at worst, out of reach. He could only remember that endless darkness, a lifetime in that cell, like that was all he had ever known.
The two brothers often listened to the news as well, through this little stone device that Lanzhi carried around. There wasn’t really anything on it except what looked like a few fish gills where the voice came out and a smooth pad where his fingers swiped. He did something that looked like absolutely nothing to Xueming, but a voice would stream out nonetheless.
“Who… is this?” Xueming would ask.
Lanzhi would reply with the specific station or company or host.
“A lot… has changed,” Xueming huffed with a small smile.
Lanzhi’s smile in response to his brother’s nearly blinded Xueming.
Xueming would watch Lanzhi everyday, admiring his face, wondering if they looked any similar. His brother had long, sleek black hair, narrow fox eyes, a long, wise-looking nose, and small lips. His cheekbones were sharp and angled, and his jaw, even more so. His face was small, and his shoulders wide.
Xueming thought he couldn’t possibly look anything like this man.
However, his brother began to look more and more like Xueming the longer he stayed in the hospital. He began to develop dark under eyes, and his face was looking more and more sunken in as the months went by.
Xueming was getting better, but it seemed like it was at the expense of Lanzhi.
He was eager to leave, if only for his brother.
They often listened to this little device, which Lanzhi called a “little friend”, for hours. Apparently, it ran off of qi. Xueming kept asking for its real name, but Lanzhi insisted this was its official name. Eventually, Xueming gave up.
They listened to the daily news until, after a month or so, Xueming was finally convinced that the king was dead. It took another month for him to decide that this was a good thing.
It was hard for Lanzhi to understand, but he gave his brother all the grace possible; the man had gone through decades of torture, brainwashing, and trauma. He was lucky his recovery was so steady, so quick, in comparison.
“The king’s hidden treasury was found today. He was forced to desert all of this when he fled.” The woman was saying. Lanzhi didn’t really prefer this news anchor, but she was typically on at hours no one else could bear to work. Xueming was just amazed there was a woman working such a job, and a little device playing her voice. “The rebels have found hundreds of gold bars underground. There were also countless Er Bai carriages and all sorts of luxury goods found. This was all stored underground, in rooms beneath the main palace.”
“Er Bai?” Xueming asked.
Lanzhi stared at Xueming for a moment, then half-smiled.
“It is a company that really only the royal family and higher officials can afford.” His smile widened. “Their products are frivolous, and they are more so a statement of wealth.”
Another day, they listened to this man, which was apparently Lanzhi’s favorite. His voice was aggressive, yet his speech was delivered in a way that made sense.
“The rebels, known collectively as the Mandate of the People, race against the clock as they try to find all prisoners within a timely manner. Today, they have freed those from King’s Calamity Prison in Yanbei Province. This is one of the most famous prisons in the province for its cruelty. Of course, nothing is more notorious than Mo Fan, but the stories coming out of King’s Calamity are horrific.”
Xueming looked over at Lanzhi, who offered him a small smile. Hazardously, Xueming grabbed his brother’s free hand, and Lanzhi froze, his expression faltering. Xueming was trembling, surprised by his own sudden urge for physical support.
“Some of the prisoners were reportedly detained for up to twenty years here. So far, the longest-held prisoners have come out of Mo Fan, and, thankfully, already been released. They are all in recovery. May the heavens make it easy for all of them to recover from this nightmare. This entire country… can now wake up from this nightmare.”
Xueming shook, and gripped the blanket with his other hand in an attempt to stabilize himself. Afraid he was sweating onto his brother, he tried to pull his hand away, but Lanzhi held onto him instead. His steady gaze burned brightly.
“We are still receiving information regarding the prisons and what the people went through inside of them, but tracking down each individual is a slow process, given how unorganized the government was in general. Of course, the deprived king was the most organized about the prisons, so progress is a little faster.” He said the last line with malice. “One of the prisoners who was released a few months ago out of Mo Fan is a man detained since the mass uprising, coined as the White Sheet Protests. He was one of the first to be imprisoned, and is credited with being the spark for the mass protests we saw across the country twenty-five years ago.”
Xueming could hardly breathe now, and opted for holding his breath instead. He leaned forward, his eyes burning and ears ringing as he strained to clearly hear every word out of that little device.
“It is reported that when asked his name, he would only reply with the number thirteen.” The reporter was silent for a moment, and Xueming swore he heard him cursing under his breath. His voice was thick with emotion when he spoke again, though it was obvious he was trying to remain professional. “This man… was the last to hold a sign with actual words on it. After bravely going up against the king’s guard with only a single sheet of paper and two characters on it, he was detained and disappeared.”
The reporter paused again, and Xueming looked at his brother, brows furrowed, only registering that this was about him when he saw his brother’s expression. His brother looked horrified, and moved as though he wanted to shut the device off, but Xueming grabbed his arm, stopping him.
To hear about his past and have no recollection of it, was something so absurd, he hardly wanted to believe it. But he listened.
He burned and trembled and strained and listened.
“After that, seeing how even words were no longer allowed, there were mass uprisings with people holding only blank sheets of paper. Famously, one woman held a white bed sheet. The rest… is history.” The man paused again. “May the heavens give this man, who we all know as Peerless, rest and relief for the remainder of his life.”
After a long while, the man continued, but the two brothers were no longer listening.
“Now, with that reminder, a new story has recently come out of King’s Calamity about a prisoner…”
Peerless.
Xueming gripped that blue bedsheet, gritting his teeth.
Thirteen.
Jian Xueming.
For twenty-five years, he only had one name. No, not a name, but a number.
Now, he had more than he could ever hope for.
He existed in the hearts of all of these people.
He had hated the king so much, he had gone up against the king’s entire guard. A hundred swords against a sheet of paper and two characters.
But what had they been?