In Jonathan Os's memory, he was not chained from birth.
At the vulnerable age of four, Jon was climbing back and forth in a sewer drained in blood. His whole body was soaked in polluted water, his babyish complexion mottled, and his jet-black hair was tousled into irregular spheres.
About half a month ago, little Jon would be nauseated by the putrid breath of the sewer, yet now familiarised with the environment, he had grown immune to it.
Despite the proximity of being starved and frozen to death, Jon knew that at the time he was free, not manipulated by anyone, nor bounded by any undecipherable rules, tangled in an inescapable web.
And so with the futile days and nights that passed by every day, all of a sudden, an unbreakable beam of white light flared in front of his eyes, and Jon was finally saved from impenetrable darkness.
Someone dredged little Jon out of the sewage pipe. When the man learnt about Jon's condition, for a moment he gave an unnatural pause to his sequence of movements, but it was really just a moment. Very soon, the man decided to hold Jon between his arms, gently wiped out the dirt on his olive skin, sparing a hand to pat this fragile child and offering his comfort.
Being placed in this belated warm embrace, little Jon was finally allowed to let go of his vigilance. He dropped his eyelids, shading his burnt-hazel eyes dyed with fatigue from the world.
Before his consciousness became entirely obliterated, a short verse came between his ears.
"On reaching the shore, we dragged the vessel down to the glittering sea."
The man's voice was low, and the poem was uttered in the most ingenious manner, like a zither's sound transmitting from a faraway wonderland, which can also be likened to a song hummed by an old acquaintance, blowing away the bleak haze and offering all the tender solace in the world to the broken child. So Jon never opened his eyes in the man's arms, despite all the turbulence along the way. His muddy little hands grabbed tightly onto the man's snow-white collar, as if he would never let it go. Half-dreaming and half-awakening, Jon was dragged out of eternal hell.
...
...
"Little bastard, what are you thinking? Answer me, stupid brat!"
A rough roar interrupts Jon's brief trance, forcing him to pull himself out of the memory threads that have entrenched in his mind for ten years. Very quickly Jon stands straight, the next moment he puts his hands behind his back and bows down his head, yet habitually eyeing the fully loaded gun holster on the right side of his thigh.
"My bad. I heard you."
The man rebuking Jon is named Sylas, an unusually tall man. As the deacon of the Church of DeKaree and the leader of its assassination group, he tends to be rough on everyone in his team, especially to Jon, the latecomer.
Sylas frowns in dissatisfaction. After a short while, he produces a vague humming from his nose with his lips forming a contemptuous arc.
"I'll lend you my suit. Remember to wear a tie, go get one in the warehouse."
"Yes." Jon delivers a pause and asks, "why the tie?"
Sylas is stunned for a second before he bursts into a pejorative laughter, "What a little moron."
Jon lowers his head and remains silent.
Sylas resumes his "kind" explanation, "Just ask if you don't know anything, anything at all, idiot. Now listen, nominally you are just a poor little jerk studying through the subsidy program, and you'd like to thank those Pandosian dogs from the bottom of your heart for sponsoring you to study in a noble school like this. Play silly, so these cocky little idiots will let down their guard. You heard the High Priest —— now repeat your first mission."
Jon remains poised, bearing no resemblance to a juvenile who just turned fifteen. "Record their behaviour, find out who has unfortunately been under the fallacy of Pandosia, determine who is worthy to join the Church of DeKaree."
"Repeat your second mission, you idiot. Go quick."
Jon's voice is levelled in equanimity, "Investigate whether Edna's successor is in the college. Pandosia spread their rotten philosophy across the country, destined to be connected with destruction. For they are the enemy of Truth, Edna and her successor must die."
Edna, the current leader of Pandosia, has done every possible evil to manipulate the Seven Councils, spreading deceit and swallowing the very purpose of the parliament, as if she fears no divine punishment from the God of Truth.
Crisis looms and no action is taken. As the United Kingdom of Brikavia is ruled by seven councils, with Pandosia as the lead, if Pandosia's influence continues to grow without restraints, Brikavia will eventually be brought to destruction.
Fortunately, as one of the seven councils in the parliamentary system, the Church of DeKaree believes in the God of Truth and submits solely to the truth, only ostensibly remaining loyal to Edna and her party, as Jon is fully aware.
"Tsk." Detesting Jon's composure, Sylas' contempt grows more as he scoffs, "Very well, little prat. Don't get caught by Pandosia like that fool, your death won't be on me anyway."
Jon struggles to believe Sylas said it out of kindness or concern. For another fact he knows better than anyone else is, Priest Kent did assign him the missions for the devotion to the Truth, while Sylas just wants him to die.
After finishing the encouraging speech, Sylas takes a huge step to leave the dark room and lifts a hand from behind, and a heavy whomp is released from the collision between the door and its frame, both made from cheap alloy. The striking sound grinds through Jon's ears, for sure it's more like slamming than closing it.
Jon waits for seventy seconds. As he confirms Sylas's departure, he puts his right hand on the doorknob and pushes outwards.
The time is set at 4.42 am on September 3rd, when the Church of DeKaree is besieged by the entirety of still darkness. The barely detectable sound of Jon's footsteps is the only sound lingering in the long corridor, which stretches eastwards to the warehouse.
It takes him nearly five minutes to reach the gun storage warehouse. He opens the metal grill door surrounded by iron fences, the rancid odour strikes him in the air, yet he does not deliver a slightest frown upon it. Then he pulls down the yellowing lamp cord dangling from the ceiling, rummaging through boxes and cabinets to find his tie by the faint light, and every flick he makes stirs up a thick layer of dust.
In a gun storage warehouse, naturally he cannot find a tie.
Four hours later, Jon appears at the entrance of Chelsea-Westminster college.
South Chelsea is deemed to be the land of humanity of the United Kingdom of Brikavia, coated with its frequent rain all year round. Today the sky is clearer than ever, almost like an ebullient welcome upon his arrival. When a lukewarm wind breezes through the contours of his face, Jon squeezes the leather strap on the top of the handbag and walks ahead.
"Hey, where's your tie?" A short student from the disciplinary committee blocks his way.
Jon gave a quick inspection of him, "Forgot."
"You forgot?" The student is consumed with surprise at his answer, but waves his hands as if he couldn't care less, "Alright, just don't do it again."
Jon is a little unaccustomed at his impersonal attitudes, quickly nodding his head and entering the lobby.
In total there lay fifteen sets of desks and chairs in Room 207. Jon steps on the burgundy carpet, slightly narrowing his burnt-hazel eyes and discovering that eight seats have already been occupied.
And he walks straight to the innermost part of the classroom, makes a turn, and chooses an empty seat on the far left of the first row, ignoring all kinds of curious glances that are thrown upon him. He then opens his handbag, taking out a blank ink pen from the interlayer of his bag before placing it in the corner of the desk.
Unexpectedly, there is no annoying bell denoting the beginning of class. A middle-aged male teacher appears at the door and paces in slowly, greeting everyone with a smile on his face. The wave of responses fills the room, and the instructor nods his head in satisfaction and says, "Alright everyone. Where's Jon? Is Jon here?"
Jon answers, "I'm here, Sir."
"Great. Have you guys spoken to Jon, yet? Come introduce yourself." The old instructor waves him up to the stage in an affable manner, "You may call me Mr. Peters."
Jon thanks him and walks up onto the podium, expressionless.
"My name is Jonathan Os, you can call me Jon. Just turned fifteen. I got here through the Chelsea-Care program, and I was in a public school in east Chelsea. No special skills, sports, I suppose."
"You're being humble," Mr. Peters pats his shoulders, "shouldn't you mention how gifted you are in maths?"
Such a conspicuous compliment triggers a minor curve between Jon's lips. "And. Though I immigrated to Brikavia with my parents when I was five, my ancestral home Winter Valley in north Alysia. So my skin colour is...as you see."
Jon was about to say olive, but soon he realised it was quite self-explanatory, so he saved the energy to take the extra step. As the last syllable of his sentence vanishes, the air in the room freezes.
Mr. Peters responds solemnly, "My boy, you don't have to mention it. Chelsea…well, Brikavia is an inclusive place." Mr. Peters pauses for a moment and continues, "If you think you are discriminated against in any matter, please speak out immediately. I assure you that everyone here would help."
Jon ignores the unnatural silence under the podium and nods.
After the utterly boring algebra class, Jon glances around cautiously from the corner of the room. All the students are walking outwards, seeming to post no dangers, only then Jon packs his note-taking paper into his handbag and finds his way out.
Science, Geography and Poetry Analysis. Every instructor almost reiterates Mr. Peters' speech verbatim, so Jon keeps introducing himself with exactly the same words. The result is that all students start to form some impressions of Jon, yet he can't name a person and hasn't made the slightest progress on his missions.
Sharply at two in the afternoon, Jon finished all the classes for the day. Outside the Engineering Centre, in a gust he walks through the thick bushes, entering the school garden full of lush ginkgo blossoms and trying to leave the school through the stone path. It is the shortest path to leave the school, and he always takes the optimal solution.
As Jon moves further east, more people are gathering along the path and blocking his way. The water fountain in front of lush ginkgo trees is diligently performing its job. There seems to be a person sitting on the swing beside the fountain, well surrounded by the crowd.
Jon cannot see the person's face, frowns slightly to lock down his behaviour and discovers the guy is holding a book and seems to be showing something interesting to the gang around him. Suddenly a burst of laughter erupts, scattering in the warm breeze of the spring afternoon.
And Jon walks even faster, without the slightest intention of checking what they are cheering about.
He arrives at the student dormitory approximately at six and half and finds his room via the janitor's directions. He swipes himself in with his key card.
The room looks regular, except for a huge grey package that could pass for a trash bag sitting jarringly on a carpet of a pale-yellow shade. Jon knows it's a package from the church, but a thorough purview of its content revealed no sight of a bullet, and his favourite P229 is wrapped in the sleeve of a faded hoodie.
Jon takes out the pistol and slips it skillfully into the gap between his shirt and suit pants. He looks sideways at the oven in front of him, wondering whether he should roast some chestnuts. When he lowers his head, he sees the line written in bold red letter on the plastic warning card sticking on the mini-fridge: [DO NOT USE IF UNDER 18]
He takes off Sylas's suit and throws it on the small recliner chair by the bed and tosses the "garbage bag" away. The next moment Jon sinks himself into the soft bed, pressing the off-white sheet into different layers of folds.
Jon closes his eyes and raises his right hand in the air, index finger initiating a list of words shining in smooth golden lines.
[Limited Progress. Pandosia is destined to be connected with destruction, Edna and her successor must die.]
As he puts down his hands, all the characters vanish into void.
Jon removes the pillow behind his head and lies down again, recalling Priest Kent's exact words when he was assigned the missions the other day: find new hope from the next generation. Then Sylas's annoying face along with that suspicious smirk grow in Jon's mind as well, as if he would be disappointed to death if Jon returns to the church without a cut-off leg.
Thinking about the Sylas, Jon don't know exactly how many years the church's assassination force have been cultivated in the dark, but he understands that Priest Kent was in fact asking him to investigate whose children have been brainwashed by Pandosia. If he completes the missions, the church will be able to identify which forces among the other five councils are in Edna's deception, so they can recruit the new acolytes to join the Truth. Only then can he return to the church and leave those spoiled kids and nonsense behind.
Yet, Jon still wonders how the two missions are related to his identity as a trained assassin. The spy before him was caught and tortured, yes it's a thing. But that dude was stupid as hell to encounter Edna's watchdog face-to-face. Here is just a private secondary school full of privileged minds, and all he needs to do is watch and report everything back.
And after his initial observation today, Jon doubts he will be in danger, and highly doubts that Sylas will give him a warm-hearted welcome when he comes back to the church unscathed.
The next day Jon is still without a tie, because he never attempted to find one. At the end of his statistics class, a tall blond girl walks right up to him.
Her voice rises, "Hi."
Jon answers, "Hi."
"I'm Henrietta. You're Jonathon, right?"
"Right. You can call me Jon."
"Okay. I saw you in history class yesterday, what a coincidence."
"You did?"
"Yes."
"Great."
"Nice to meet you, Jon."
"Nice to meet you."
Except for this meaningless, brief exchange with Henrietta and an inquiry of a seat vacancy at a lunch table during break, Jon spoke to no one else today.
However, he did hear a few people talking between classes. There was a flattering voice saying that his grandfather had sponsored the Church of DeKaree. The original sentence was, "My grandfather believes DaKaree is a good church that has the magic to cultivate orphans all into geniuses, so it would be worthy of investment for humanitarians." The voice was so loud that Jon believes the speaker would hate it if he didn't catch all of it.
The report for the night is as follows.
[Henrietta Raffaello, untamed by the prosecution of Pandosia, prospective believer of DeKaree. Pandosia is destined to tie with destruction, Edna and her successor must die.]
In Jon's recognition, "three" has always been a usual number, more like the symbol of the devil than "six". As expected, on the third day of college, his natural routine is finally broken.
"You said you're north Alysian, right?"
At the time Jon is sitting on the other side of the long desk. He raises his head and answers truthfully, "Ethnically, yes. But I've lived here since I was five."
He then narrows his burnt-hazel eyes, avoiding a cross of sight between the speaker and him and starts to examine the brooch he is wearing. It pictures a figure of a lion-tiger, patterns and lines clearly distinguishable, and it is cleansed so bright to the extent that Jon can see the reflection of his eyes by looking at its surface.
Jon mulls over the names of all the students in the college, trying to map the speaker's features to a specific one according to the name list provided by the church. At the end, Jon determines that this blond hair kid should be Charles.
Charles bends down and pulls out his hands which have been in his pockets for a while, and next he lays his palms against Jon's desk and causes a slight vibration on it.
"So if you're not Alysian, you've never killed any antelopes, have you? What a barbarian act! How can they kill such lovely, sacred creatures and strip them into pieces? If I were them, I'd rather freeze to death than kill them for fur, or profits. I bet you haven't done it, because you grew up here, you're not an Alysian, although you look like them. Trust, I believe that you are definitely not that kind of eastern… well, north-eastern bastard. "
This eloquent speech filled Jon's heart with a strange burst of joy that he could barely hide his smile.
If there is no discrimination in the college, it would prove his worldview wrong, collapsing his whole world and destroying his understanding of the universe. To be completely honest, Jon was very disappointed that it took three days to happen, yet the discrimination he faces now is more or less indirect.
He suppresses these rich psychological activities, strategizing on how to give a satisfactory response to a little donkey like Charles. Suddenly, a new voice slides in from behind.
"Alysians ceased to haunt antelopes three hundred years ago, Charles."
The speaker's voice is unusually quiet, or low, but weirdly enough it doesn't seem to be the fact that he deliberately lowered it, as if this is exactly the volume he would use in any normal conversation.
And the person continued, "even if Jon doesn't mention, we should be aware of it."
His wording is the most interesting - it's a "we" rather than "you". While firmly expressing his attitude, the speaker also shows that he has no intention to give up on standing on the same front with Charles. Pure ingenuity.
Charles stands up, putting his hands into his suit pants pocket while turning his head back to check his visitor.
"Rorschach, always playing the good cop."
And Charles is responded to with a smile that Jon doesn't witness.
Aware that the conversation between the two is over, Jon raises his thick eyebrows with interest, turning his head slowly to check out the person who took the initiative to join the conversation. His pupils are brewed black with the slightest tinge of maroon, and his curly black hair dangles between his eyebrows. His facial features do not resemble a typical Brikavian teenager of his age, but using "childishly young" to describe his appearance is also immensely inappropriate.
After all, it was Rorschach who intercepted this insensitive exchange that almost accelerated into a conflict. Charles's interest in Jon waned quickly with Rorschach's arrival, and the two begin chatting away on empty subjects that intrigue only teenage boys and no one else.
Charles leaves shortly, but Rorschach remains in place. His expression does not show a slightest change, as if he is waiting for something. Jon somehow feels troublesome, searches for an appropriate filler for this awkward silence and manages a forced "thank you."
"Not at all." Rorschach's words are stained with a hint of hesitation, "Does your next class start at two? Down for a walk outside to talk for a bit?"
Jon gives him a strange look, nods in agreement, and the two leave the classroom together. He follows Rorschach down the stairs, walks out the back door of the lobby and makes three consecutive turns, and finally they arrive at the green space behind the Science Experiment Building.
As soon as Rorschach confirms that no one is around, he puts his left hand into his suit pocket and hands Jon a royal blue striped tie.
"I never used it, you..." Rorschach recalls Jon's self-introduction and puts it another way, "You can't leave the dorms from Monday to Friday, right? Seems like you can only get the tie on weekends. If you don't mind, please use this for the time being."
Jon pauses for a while and asks, "You don't live in the dorms?"
"No."
"Isn't it the rule that everyone has to follow?"
"Because I..." Rorschach swallows the words back to his mouth, "I will, next quarter."
Jon pays careful attention as Rorschach speak and notices that his accent is also different from that of most students' at Chelsea-Westminster, which reminds Jon of majestic glaciers in ancient times floating in the intricate ripples of midsummer sea waves, ineffably glittering yet prolonged.
Aware of the prudence in his speech and the impeccable way he dissolved the episode back there with Charles, one word popped into Jon's mind: devious.
Jon: "Are you a grade jumper?"
Rorschach lowers a hand, "No, I'm fifteen, just like you. In actual fact, I came to Chelsea this January, so I've only been here for three months."
Jon puts his hands in the pocket: "Which school did you attend?"
Rorschach answers honestly, "I was at home."
"Homeschool? The kind where tutors come and teach you?"
"You could put it that way."
Jon thought to himself "Is he not in good health?" before an unusually vivid picture emerged in his mind. An old gentleman with grey hair sat at the marble table, turning the broken pages with his wrinkled hands and spitting out meaningless old-century literature from his mouth. Rorschach, forced to listen to him on the other end of the long table, yawned in boredom and managed to fake an innocent smile before the old man's fury grew on him.
For decades, Rorschach was poisoned by this old gentleman. Day after day, he finally imprinted his old accent.
When the imagination tangent concludes, Jon takes the tie with both and adds, "Thank you, I'll use it."
Rorschach smiles, eyes clouded over with pleasure, "My pleasure. See you next week."
Jon watches Rorschach leave under the mottled shadow of the trees, his brows tightly furrowed.
Defining his attitude as being jealous is far from the truth, yet hateful is not quite the word, even Jon himself doesn't know what to call his mentality.
To live to the age of fifteen in an assassination squad disguised as a civilian church like DeKaree, Jon naturally has his own theory of survival. Unfortunately, his very first rule was violated by Rorschach - Jon hates "good people" in the conventional sense.
They are often the hardest to deal with. They seem gentle and amiable, and they treat you very well, but you never know what they're thinking, and they'll always stab you in the back from unknown places.
After Rorschach's figure disappears at the corner of the science building, Jon steps forward and quickly returns to the lunch break room.
At 1.07 a.m., the night sky is darkened with scattered stars, only the blurry light halos outside the window are faintly discernible. The air in the dormitory room becomes chilly when Jon closes his eyes and he writes today's report.
[Charles Parry, devoured by Pandosian's absurdity. No hope of joining Dekaree. ]
[Rorschach Philbert...]
Jon stops and wipes away his name.