Those Who Live Without the Law

Chapter 1

Pardon

* * *

The morning at the Carlson Labor Correctional Facility began with the sound of a trumpet blaring through the loudspeakers.

The dismal tone, spreading low like a death sentence, woke me up.

"Everyone, as of this moment! Wake up! Get up, you bastards! The head of each cell, prepare the headcount report!"

The shout echoed thunderously down the prison corridor, where thin ice clung everywhere.

"That bastard of a guard must've had a rooster for a father."

One of the inmates sharing the room with me grumbled in a small voice.

Meanwhile, I shivered from the cold and slowly rose from my spot.

"Traitor, what's the temperature?"

The cell leader shouted at me.

Traitor.

That was the nickname all the criminals in this trash heap called me.

I brushed the white frost clinging to my eyebrows and checked the thermometer hanging outside the bars.

"Minus 27 degrees. Another refreshing day. I'm wide awake now."

"Shit. 27 degrees? Even the ink in my eyeballs is going to freeze solid!"

A chorus of laments burst out among the inmates. With sighs, they all exhaled white, frozen breaths over and over.

It was such a brutal cold that no one would be surprised if frost formed inside their lungs just from breathing. One of the inmates let out a questioning noise and looked at the guy lying nearby.

"What the hell. Why isn’t this bastard getting up? Hey!"

Everyone was busy rubbing their hands together and puffing out white breath to warm themselves, but nothing came from the nose or mouth of the one collapsed on the floor.

Even after getting smacked hard enough that it made a cracking sound, the guy showed no sign of getting up.

"He's dead."

The conclusion came quickly. The region where Carlson Labor Correctional Facility stood was such a remote, extreme place that the temperature rarely rose above zero even in summer. And now it was the dead of winter.

Combine the harsh climate with makeshift cells and meager rations, and you’d witness the peculiar miracle of a prisoner who’d been alive yesterday turning into a frozen corpse by morning.

"Cell 3, report."

"One froze to death. The rest are still alive."

At the cell leader’s report, the block supervisor opened the door, came in to check the body, and clicked his tongue.

"Damn it."

Unlike other correctional facilities, it wasn’t the guards who managed the prisoner blocks at Carlson Labor Correctional Facility, but one of the inmates themselves.

The guards’ only duties were to prevent escapes and conduct periodic patrols. Whatever happened inside was none of their concern.

"Clean this up when you head to breakfast."

"Understood."

Just as the supervisor was about to leave after checking the room, he looked at me.

"Oh, and Traitor. I think I’ll have you write a letter for me today."

"Understood."

I nodded at the supervisor’s words. The inmates of Carlson Labor Correctional Facility didn’t know how to read or write. But I was the exception.

He knew how to read and write.

"Are you sending it home? I’ll come find you after work."

"Yeah, yeah. How much was it again?"

"Two hundred characters for three cigarettes, but since it’s something you’re asking, two will be enough."

In any case, the fact that I could read and write had helped me survive six years at Carlson Labor Correctional Facility.

"What the hell. You bastard, you can write too?"

One of the inmates listening to the conversation looked at me with surprise. He was a newcomer who had arrived two days ago.

He was the bastard who stabbed someone to death in a drunken brawl.

In fact, you wouldn’t be sent to Carlson Labor Correctional Facility just for that level of crime. He’d ended up here because, after the stabbing, he killed the old woman who’d witnessed the scene and screamed.

"Where’d you learn that? Did you swindle a noble or something?"

Despite his tone, which could have been offensive, I answered calmly.

"Until I ended up here, I was a young noble. Now I’m just a traitor and a criminal."

Hearing my answer, the man looked even more intrigued.

"So that wasn’t just a nickname. You really were a traitor?"

When my family’s treasonous conspiracy was exposed, every direct member of my household was executed, except for me.

"Treason means immediate execution. How are you still alive?"

"I was lucky."

At the time, I’d been studying abroad and therefore couldn’t have taken part in the plot.

And I had been a minor, only seventeen years old.

Those two factors had spared me from execution, and I’d been sentenced instead to life imprisonment in Carlson Labor Correctional Facility.

The bastard kept inching closer to me with a sly grin.

"That’s how it is, huh. Well, then, write a letter for me too."

I nodded at his request.

"You already heard the price, didn’t you?"

Two hundred characters for three cigarettes. Or something equivalent. At my words, his sneering face twisted with irritation.

"Price? Look at this little shit. You think I’m a joke because I asked nicely?"

He spat on the floor with a wet smack, then grabbed me by the collar.

"Ruining my mood first thing in the morning. You want to die? You want to squeal like a pig after getting stabbed—"

Pathetically, he never finished his sentence. The brick shard I picked up rammed straight into his mouth.

In an instant, his mouth filled with blood, and the force of the stone crushed several teeth, sending them clattering to the floor.

I didn’t say a single word. I simply, wordlessly, smashed my fist over and over into the head of the bastard with the brick jammed between his jaws.

To survive among inmates, you couldn’t offer kindness without payment, and you couldn’t let anyone look down on you.

I had lived six years faithfully upholding those two rules.

"Ugh… urgh…"

Grabbing the other man’s hair, which now looked like a pile of grated potatoes, I lifted his head and met his eyes as I spoke.

"I don’t ask if you want to die like you did. What’s the point in getting an answer from a bastard who’s about to die? Right?"

With a dull thud, the head in my hand slammed into the cold, solid stone floor.

All the inmates watching thought the same thing.

‘Good grief.’

Of all the people he could have picked a fight with, why did that idiot have to pick Kairus?

"That crazy bastard."

Across not only Cell Block 3 but the entire Carlson Labor Correctional Facility, I was a rare breed.

If no one touched me, I was extremely quiet. But if someone provoked me enough to snap, no one could predict what I’d do.

Because of that foul temper, I’d been thrown into solitary confinement three times.

Three times.

Just going there once was usually enough to turn someone into a half-crippled wreck by the time they crawled back out. That hellish solitary cell yet I’d survived it three times.

Normally, even the wildest inmate came out of there as docile as a gelded rooster, but I’d stayed exactly the same.

"Hey, hey, Traitor. Cut it out. If we have to haul out two corpses before breakfast, we’re gonna be cursed all morning."

In the end, the cell leader stepped in to stop me. I released the handful of hair in my grip.

"This morning’s breakfast is that damned moss again, isn’t it?"

When winter came, the Carlson Labor Correctional Facility made porridge out of edible moss and served it to the inmates as their meal. I tapped the collapsed man’s face lightly with the tip of my boot.

"Hey, you haven’t been here long, have you? You’ve probably still got plenty of fat on you from all the shit you stuffed yourself with outside. Should I roast your belly instead of eating that moss crap?"

The man sprawled on the floor, drooling blood from his mouth, shivered violently at my words.

"I can’t even joke with you in case you pass out."

I spat phlegm onto the crown of his head.

"Let’s not go around making enemies of the people we share a room with. Courtesy and respect are where kindness grows."

And so, after a bit of commotion, the morning was about to begin as usual.

Eat the garbage they called food, spend the whole day working whatever job you were assigned, eat again, and pray you’d wake up the next morning without freezing to death.

These were the days of punishment that criminals rightly deserved.

My family’s treason was also my crime.

That was why I accepted this harsh life as the punishment I deserved.

"All of you, heads down, you bastards!"

But with the sudden sound of a whistle, something finally changed in the daily routine that had gone on for six years without interruption.

"W-What the hell is this all of a sudden?!"

At once, the cell leader’s face turned deathly pale.

"Goddamn it, it’s the guards."

"They already searched the cell block a week ago. Are they pulling that shit again?"

"You idiot. Does this look like that?"

It wasn’t a routine inspection. Guards almost never set foot inside the correctional facility. And whenever they did, it always meant something bad was about to happen.

With the rattle of equipment, the guards entered the cell block. The inmates sprawled flat on the floor, pressing their foreheads against the ground, and began to pray.

The door to my room slammed open. All the prisoners inside squeezed their eyes shut. Whatever this was, the guards clearly had business in this cell.

"Which one of you is Kairus?"

At that voice, I remained flat on the floor as I answered.

"That’s me."

"Rise and present yourself with proper decorum. This is an imperial decree from His Excellency, the all-powerful and enlightened ruler of the Empire, the one and only Sun."

An imperial decree?

Suddenly, the manners I hadn’t needed for six years were called for again.

I slowly rose, then sank to one knee and bowed my head. The man standing before me wasn’t a guard but a knight in full formal regalia.

‘Did His Majesty finally decide to change his mind and have me executed instead of rotting here?’

If so, there was nothing I could do. A fitting end awaited a convicted traitor. In a solemn voice, I performed the required greeting.

"Though I am an unworthy and sinful creature, I humbly receive the voice of the Sun."

"During an additional investigation, your family was found not guilty of treason."

The moment I heard those words, I nearly forgot all pretense of decorum and lifted my head without thinking.

Wait a second.

"Not guilty? Not guilty? Did he just say not guilty?!"

It felt as if someone had poured molten lava straight into my skull. My mind boiled over with rage.

"Then what were these six years I spent here for, and why did all my family have to die?"

I had truly believed my family had planned a rebellion. That was why I had endured everything, accepting that it was only right for me to rot away in this place.

But now—

"After all this time?"

I had no family left. Not even distant relatives. Everyone was dead. And I’d wasted six years in this miserable place.

"If you have something to say, speak."

Something to say? A torrent of curses like fire almost burst from my mouth. But instead, I chose something else.

"I feel infinite honor and joy that His Excellency, the all-powerful and enlightened ruler of the Empire, the one and only Sun, has finally come to understand my family’s loyalty, even now."

I had to say it like this. If I didn’t, I couldn’t leave. That was the only thing that mattered right now. I had to get out. No matter what, I would leave this place.

I repeated it to myself countless times.

"As of this moment, your life sentence is revoked. However, the very fact that you were suspected of conspiring in treason is proof enough that you had failed to earn His Majesty’s full trust."

Hearing those words, I couldn’t help but feel utterly dumbfounded.

So, the reason the Emperor didn’t trust House Featherwing was because we hadn’t shown enough loyalty?

"What absolute horseshit."

For the moment, I kept silent and listened to everything he had to say.

Go on, keep spouting that nonsense.

"You will not regain any of the privileges you once enjoyed, but you are granted the grace of freedom. For this, you must be grateful grateful again and again."

My life sentence would be revoked, and I would be free. But nothing my family had once possessed would be restored.

Not even my status.

From this moment on, I was a commoner.

"Once more, as a loyal subject of the proud Valorn Empire, you may serve the Empire’s eternal glory. You must be thankful again and again."

"Prepare to leave immediately."

At his words, I replied.

"I would like to request a single day’s reprieve."

"The reason?"

I raised my head and looked at the knight clad in armor.

"I promised the block supervisor that I would help him with something once today’s work was over."

I had agreed to write a letter for him. At my words, the knight gave me a look of sheer disbelief.

That I would choose to stay one more day in this hell just to keep some trivial promise it was not something any sane man would say.