Rein had no interest in making friends anymore.
Relationships were pointless.
As long as the people around him didn't inconvenience him, he didn't care what they did.
This white-haired man, however—
While unbelievably annoying—
Was at least entertaining.
He was the living embodiment of intrusive thoughts.
White-hair suddenly placed a hand over his heart like he'd been deeply moved.
"So you're basically saying you trust me."
He beamed.
"You really are my bestie."
"Bestie~!"
Rein might have been the only person in the prison lifeless enough to tolerate this man's shenanigans.
"So, bestie, what should I call you? Reddie? Edgelord? Robot? So many wonderful options. Each of them fits you to a T."
He raised both arms and jumped to attention, straightening his body into an exaggerated T-pose.
"I would prefer it if you didn't call me," Rein replied, already sounding exhausted.
How much energy can one guy possibly have?
"Okay, Reddie it is."
Rein's eye twitched at the dog-like nickname. The idea of this talkative man calling him Reddie twenty-four seven drained whatever energy he had left.
"Rein."
"What?"
"My name is Rein."
The white-haired man smiled at that. Unknown to Rein, he had been quietly trying to rehabilitate the soulless kid, trying to get him to show even the smallest emotion. This counted as progress.
"Okay, Rein. You have three options. You can call me Boss, Sensei, or Sato."
Hearing the ridiculous choices, Rein simply lay back down on his bunk.
"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon! Pick already!" the white-haired man whined like a child.
"…Fine. Sato."
A loud buzzer echoed through the prison as rows of cell doors unlocked with a heavy mechanical clank. A blinding red warning light began flashing in every cell.
Unlike the older prisons, technology had modernized this facility. Automated doors. Electronic locks. A synthetic voice that blared through loudspeakers.
"Looks like it's our playtime."
Sato jumped up and down, grabbing the bars as the door began sliding open, shaking them with manic excitement as if it would somehow make the process faster.
The bearded inmate was still sprawled beneath Sato's feet, wheezing painfully.
To Rein, Sato's personality resembled that of a hyperactive puppy. He genuinely couldn't imagine what crime the man could have committed to land himself on death row.
Unless he had somehow annoyed a judge enough to escalate his sentence.
He must've been his own lawyer.
Rein could easily picture Sato defending himself in court while wearing an animal pajama onesie and shouting "Objection!" for absolutely no reason other than thinking it was funny.
Rein stood and stretched, his long red hair falling over his eyes. He brushed it aside and secured it with a paperclip he'd found earlier.
"Hehe. You look kinda feminine when you clip your hair like that," Sato chuckled. "Why not just cut it?"
"I don't trust anyone to cut it," Rein replied. "And I don't want to ruin my image doing it myself."
He stretched again, raising his arms overhead and loosening the tension in his muscles.
The two stepped out of the cell, casually walking over the still-gasping bearded inmate. The man lay on the floor, wheezing pitifully, two front teeth chipped and blood pooling beneath his lip.
Death row had a predictable routine.
Three meals of gruel a day.
Cold showers.
Daily exercise in the yard.
One hour of sunlight.
When Rein first arrived, he had looked like easy prey. Barely nineteen. Skinny. Malnourished. Pale.
Fresh meat.
To the hardened criminals around him, he looked like a victim waiting to happen.
That perception ended quickly.
In the showers, three inmates ambushed him.
Because of his face.
Their intentions had been obvious.
Rein walked away untouched.
The attackers did not.
They left the showers as eunuchs.
Within a month, Rein's body changed dramatically.
Three meals a day and consistent sleep rebuilt the frame that had once been held back by poor conditions. Muscles thickened. Bone density increased.
His body reached a peak most athletes would never achieve.
It wouldn't be wrong to call it superhuman.
During exercise one day, Rein casually bench-pressed four and a half tons. The bar couldn't hold more plates, so no one ever discovered his real limit.
It was debatable whether the laws of physics still applied to him.
Despite that, Rein's demeanor remained passive unless provoked.
Most inmates quickly learned to stay away.
There was a quiet pressure in how he carried himself.
No one doubted he had killed before.
The confidence he radiated was that of a wolf walking through sheep.
No one knew what crime had placed someone so young on death row.
Normally judges gave teenagers some degree of leniency. Time to reflect. Time to change.
But Rein had received none.
Because of that mystery, within three months he was given a title whispered throughout the prison.
One of the four Kings.
"Red Rein"
An existence you never provoked.
Rumors spread that new inmates placed in his cell were constantly medevacked out by helicopter.
Veteran prisoners avoided even meeting his eyes.
"How peculiar…" Sato muttered, stroking an invisible pharaoh-like beard.
"Where are my aggressive uniformed friends who love playing with sticks?"
Rein lifted his head, scanning the hall for the first time since the buzzer.
Something felt wrong.
Sato was right.
There were no guards shouting orders. No batons banging against bars. No boots stomping along the catwalks.
The upper walkways were empty.
The side corridors leading to other wings were sealed with reinforced steel doors, their electronic locks glowing red.
Only one path remained open.
At the far end of the hallway, a dark passage waited.
The lights inside flickered weakly, casting warped shadows across the walls.
Inmates flooded into the main corridor, orange uniforms flashing under the pulsing red emergency lights.
Some shoved and argued for space.
Others simply followed the open path into the darkness.
Rein watched them go.
Faceless figures in orange walking forward like lambs to the slaughter.
A strange feeling crept into his mind.
Déjà vu.
His instincts screamed.
There was danger down that hallway.
Something was deeply wrong.
Sato noticed the wary look on his face and grinned.
"What's wrong, buddy? You can't be scared, can you?"
He waggled his fingers inches from Rein's face in a childish I'm not touching you gesture.
"I heard you took on an entire gang with pew-pews and dodged bullets. You can't be scared of the dark."
He leaned backward into a goofy limbo pose, waving his arms in slow motion like Neo from The Matrix.
"I never dodged bullets," Rein said flatly.
"Really?" Sato blinked.
"You don't dodge a bullet. You predict its trajectory and avoid its path, move before the trigger is pulled. You just have to be faster than the person aiming."
Rein's voice lowered.
"I'm not scared. But something feels wrong."
Sato scratched the back of his head before throwing both hands up dramatically.
"Okay, okay. It was a joke. You're fearless and perfect. Totally fearless."
He repeated it like he was calming an irritated child.
Rein sighed and looked back toward the dark corridor.
"Well, I'm going," Sato chirped. "Wouldn't you rather be in danger and entertained than bored and safe?"
He twiddled his fingers temptingly.
"Come oooon. Have some fun."
Rein stood there silently.
His jaw tightened.
What do I even have left to lose?
After a long pause—
He followed.
The crowd of inmates funneled into the dark corridor. The hallway stretched and twisted unnaturally, the floor slanting downward like a cavern. It didn't make sense. This part of the prison didn't exist in Rein's memory.
The deeper they went, the bigger the room seemed to become, expanding in ways the laws of space shouldn't allow.
A shallow piano melody drifted through the corridor.
A voice sounding like it went through a synthetic modulator sang whole heartedly.
"Well~ meet again~ don't know where~ don't know when~ but I know we'll meet again some sunny day~"
"Could that song be coming through a radio?'
Finally, they emerged into a vast chamber bathed in soft, mist-like light. The walls were geometrically angular, like the inside of a giant three-sided prism. Sleek obsidian bricks formed the structure, polished like glass, yet unsettlingly organic, as if the stone itself was alive.
The prisoners continued to file in, their orange jumpsuits forming an unruly mass that jostled and swayed like a living tide. Some of the newcomers, unable to see past the crowd, shouted impatiently, demanding answers. A few bolder inmates muscled their way forward, shoving aside anyone who stood in their path. One particularly large man, his head shaved and covered in faded tattoos, bulldozed through, breaking the semicircle that had formed around the Piano.
The piano melody continued.
Then the voice spoke far more clearly without its earlier echo.
"Hey kids, adults, and extra-terrestrial organisms watching beyond this electronic medium! It's me, your old pal and overlord, Bill Cipher!"
The voice was cheerful in the worst possible way.
"I'm sure you all missed me. But hey, if you're ever feeling lonely, just remember something comforting…"
The piano keys clacked lightly.
"I watch you while you sleep."
A pause.
The entering prisoners standing in place could only remain silent their minds short circuiting; they couldn't comprehend what was even happening.
"At the end of the day your brain is just a meat computer in a bone cockpit piloting a skin robot. Think about that next time you brush your teeth!"
The melody returned briefly.
"You think the world makes sense? Ha! Nothing makes sense! So you might as well make nonsense!"
His tone lifted again into song.
"Well~ meet again~ don't know where~ don't know when~ but I know we'll meet again some sunny day~"
The final note echoed across the chamber.
At the center of the room sat a massive antique piano, a fancy wine glass sat on the armrest of the instrument's frame, inside an unknown purple liquid half full, above a flickering candle-lit lamp. Perched next to a tall tripod stool behind it was a figure.
A two-dimensional yellow triangle.
For the sake of dignity, or perhaps mockery, it wore a black bow tie and a gentleman's top hat. Cartoonish black arms floated from its sides as if not connected, fingers still resting on the piano keys.
Its body didn't quite exist in the same space as the room. It looked less like something standing there… and more like a drawing in photoshop someone had forgotten to erase.
A single massive eye opened in the center of the triangle.
"Hahaha!"
The triangle spun lazily on the stool.
"Welcome to the tip of the pyramid, folks!"
He raised one hand in a cheerful wave.
"I hate you all."
His eye curved into a crescent of pure amusement.
Uneasy murmurs rippled through the crowd.
Those at the back, who had only caught glimpses of the triangular figure at the piano, began pushing away. At first it was subtle. A step back. A nervous glance.
Then it became frantic.
Bodies shoved against one another as prisoners tried forcing their way back toward the hallway they had come from.
Superstition spread through the room like wildfire.
These were men who had butchered people alive, burned cities, and laughed while doing it. Yet now their faces were pale. Hands trembled. Eyes darted nervously toward the floating figure.
"Is that… a demon?"
"This isn't real."
"We're dead. This is hell."
At the sight of the creature, dozens of prisoners turned and ran down the dark hallway.
The triangle didn't even bother looking at them.
"Now that everyone's here…" it said lazily, its voice dragging with a cheerful sing-song tone.
"…let's get started."
Its eye tilted toward the fleeing crowd.
"All cowards are unneeded."
The escaping prisoners didn't make it far.
A wet crack echoed from the hallway.
White protrusions suddenly erupted from the floor and ceiling, long, curved, and jagged like the fangs of some colossal beast.
The hallway moved.
The smooth walls began closing inward.
Screams erupted instantly.
The corridor compressed slowly.
The prisoners trapped inside had time to realize what was happening.
Bodies twisted between the closing walls as the ivory "teeth" punched through flesh. Some were lifted off the ground, impaled. Others were crushed as bones snapped loudly in the tightening space.
Blood sprayed across the dark walls.
The hallway began to chew.
The slow movement made it worse. Every second dragged out the inevitable as organs spilled from punctured bodies and limbs snapped like dry branches.
Their screams echoed through the chamber until they abruptly stopped.