1943

“I’m Jules. Jules West.”

It had been a couple of days since Himari came to the soldiers’ lives and gave them a bit of cheering up. She was always kind and smiling, and she never displayed any disgust or sorrow on her face. 

But Jules would regret his next action for the rest of his life.

“Himari,” he said with a low voice. The guard shot him a warning look. “Can you stay and talk to me.”

At that moment, everyone inside the dungeon either slapped their faces or just oh-no-ing Jules’ next fate.

The soldier immediately pulled her hand out of the cell even before she finished replacing Jules’ plate. The food fell from her hand and she tumbled backward just outside Jules’ cell. Jules became infuriated and jumped toward the guard with every energy he got left.

“How dare you fucking touch her like that?” 

The guard tried to knock him off, but Jules’ hands were blinding the guy’s sight. They danced outside the jail doors as everyone else just quietly appreciated the fight and put on their concern faces for Jules. John seemed to almost reach the guard’s keys when he snapped Jules’ head and bashed him to the floor next to Himari. The guard grabbed the keys and stomped John’s reaching arm until the snap could be heard.

John’s scream alarmed everyone in the Cathedral. Men poured in with their rifles readied on their sides. Yamako arrived first and helped the bleeding guard up. Then, he faced Jules and kicked his face with his rough boot. Himari let out a squeak after Jules’ face went upward by the kick. The guard wiped his bleeding nose with his sleeve. Then, he kicked Jules’ belly and he jerked back with ache all over his body.

“What were you thinking, Jules,” John murmured from his cell.

Jules were on the ground, panting, coughing blood. Yamako seized Himari’s right hand and pulled her up. She almost sobbed, but at that very moment, Jules and John saw the hatred on Himari’s eyes. The genuine hatred filling her head with so many angry emotions. 

“You think you are such a hero, huh, private?”

Yamako said something to the guards and they picked Jules up. They dragged him out of the room.

Everything was blurry for Jules. He wasn’t walking. He was levitating, surfing on the air with rainbows and dragons everywhere. 

They all entered a room below the altar, and a surgery table was already conveniently placed. Two guards grabbed the struggling fellow, and Yamako firmed Himari with all his strenght and forced her to look. Japanese forcing other Japanese wasn’t very popular back then. Everyone in the dungeon became so sure that she wasn’t a very popular person in the Japanese military. 

“One question before I torture the shit out of you.” Yamako had his hands all over Himari, holding her from struggling her way out. “Why did you do that? You knew what would happen. Did you want to be tortured?”

Jules didn’t open his mouth. He himself wasn’t very sure why he did that.

The total of men holding Jules’ body on the surgery table was three people. He didn’t struggle because at that moment, torture was inevitable.

A man with a clean, white lab coat stepped in the room. His glasses were wide. His movement was slow. He got something out of his pocket. 

A tweezers.

They were going to torture Jules with the tweezers. They would pull his nails one by one, slowly, excruciatingly. Jules saw this before. He didn’t like where it ended. Being beat up was nothing compare to that.

Jules breathed hard. “Wait. Wait!”

Himari cried. 

The giant tweezers was plucked onto Jules’ forefinger’s nail. One second the nail was on his finger, after that, it lied on the floor. Jules screamed and cried through the whole process. His finger proceeded to bleed. Himari struggled to break free, but Yamako restrained her body even harder.

Inside the dungeon, John and the others could hear Jules shrieked like a poisoned rat. 

Tears blanketed Jules’ face. His arms to the sides, twitching, trembling. The nail-less nine fingers were drenched with blood. Blood watered over to the stone floor, later to be drunk by rats.

The last nail had been pulled, and Jules felt nothing at all when it happened. He just stared at the lamp above him, smiling, smirking. His eyes were wet with multiple emotions mixed together. 

Did he regret his action? Somehow, no. Why didn’t he regret his pointless action? Because he expected death. He greeted it with a warm welcome. He was trying to get himself killed. He wanted to regroup with his family… to join them in the afterlife.

I’m coming, Ava. I’m coming for you very soon. Just you wait and see.

Yamako threw Himari off his side and she slammed the floor harder than he intended. The fat colonel moved angrily toward the smiling man. He scanned his face and checked for any sign of acting. Jules genuinely smiled. Torture didn’t make him deterrent. Torture only brought him an inch closer to death.

Can you imagine a man smiled after being tortured? 

Jules smiled again. He laughed a bit. He imagined holding his sister’s hands. He imagined Ava’s wonderful voice was appreciated while she was standing on a big stage. He imagined hugging her for the first time in two years.

“You Americans are crazy.”

Two guards threw Jules back to his cell. A smile still creeping on his lips. John and the others raised and eyed him with curious manners. They asked him questions and sympathized for him. They saw his fingers. His swollen, drenched, bloody fingers. But what was the first thing Jules did?

Jules snatched his sister’s doll from the bottom of his plank bed. He danced with it all night. He smiled and he hugged the doll as tight as possible.

John and the others watched him with cringing sympathies. They felt Jules’ pain and realized he suffered the most out of the group. So they let him dance with the doll. He let him enjoy his moment before falling asleep on the freezing floor.

And just like that, Jules rested. He let his fingers bled until the morning came. 

“Jules.”

The voice reached him like it was from beneath the ocean. 

“Jules, wake up!”

John.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m up.”

Jules sat straight on the ground. He still had his hands wrapped around the doll as blood stained all over it.

“You uh… you sleep alright?”

“Sure.”

At that moment, Jules noticed everyone was awake and they all stared at him with thousands of expressions. They saw what he did yesterday. He tried to get himself executed, but got tortured instead. He smiled and danced after all of that, and he slept like nothing happened. 

“Painful night?” Hal asked from somewhere in the gloomy dungeon. His cell was the furthest.

“Not quite.”

“You have a memory from yesterday?” Jai asked.

Jules nodded. At least he got a bit sober that morning compare to his crazed drunk self the night before. Torture was his alcohol, and he was addicted to it. It didn’t give him pain anymore.

“Did you notice you’ve been dancing and swaying with that scary doll for about half an hour until you collapsed to the floor?” Asher asked, still gasping for air after doing his daily workout. The best looking man must be Asher as he was the least who’s mental got damaged.

“I was dancing with my sister.” Jules turned to the doll and brushed its hair with his nail-less finger. Some more blood poured to the head of the doll.

“Yeah whatever.”

Himari returned to the dungeon that day. She had a brand new wound on her head that was very notable but probably not a severe injury. The escort was still the same guard which Jules badly hurt the day before, and he didn’t let Himari feed Jules.

Did Himari hate Jules for what happened the day before? No. Himari saw him as a rebellious fighter who’s been badly hurt, mentally and physically. Himari respected him more than she ever had.

“You get no food,” the Japanese guard said with the most ridiculous accent ever. Everyone noticed he got brand new stitched all around his eyes.

Jules only responded with a “Sure.”

The guard marched Himari out of the dungeon.

Although the dungeon was underground, the storm outside was too inevitable to not be heard. The thunder from the distance stroke angrily, blasting an unlucky place somewhere in the area, burning the place to the ground.