Runaway

 Missione M4, quarta settimana

Prompt:  Come on now, you knew you were lost, but you carried on anyway

The first thing the man saw after opening his eyes was a yellowish ceiling, with a scraped off corner revealing the gray concrete underneath. Right after opening his eyes, the young man felt a sharp pain to the back of his head, causing him so softly whimper. After getting used to it, he turned his head around to figure out where he was. The room was empty and it looked like a cabin. At that moment, he also noticed the slow and steady periodic swinging of the environment together with the static low noise he kept hearing ever since he woke up.

 He deduced he was on a ship. What was he doing on a ship again?

 But, before that, he realized another frightening reality. Never mind the reason for him to be on a ship, he didn’t even remember a more basic thing. Who was he? After raising his back in order to sit on the small bed he was placed into, he began wondering. His mind was blank.

 At that moment, the pain on the back of his head stung him harder and he could swear he heard a voice.

 

 ‘Come to London. Your mission is there.’ London? Was he English? No, that wasn’t right.

He made a quick summary of what he actually remembered. He knew how to speak Japanese and English, and while he felt like he was more comfortable with speaking English, he understood that he was more fluent in Japanese. Thus, he had to come from Japan. He also knew some laws regarding the Japanese and England courts. Was he an exchange student, then? Those words resonated in his head, and he felt like he was on the verge of remembering something very important. But, at that moment, the pain on his head was unbearable, so the man decided that he would try to figure out things from another way.

 

 He slowly scanned the room. There was nothing in there. Not a closet, not a piece of luggage. There was just a table. On it, a single yellow flower – he didn’t know its name, but at that moment it wasn’t important  - and a red piece of clothing. Nothing else. He wondered why he was in that kind of situation. He then proceeded to look at his clothes. He was wearing a pitch-black jacket, with pitch-black trousers. He had golden buttons on them and little brass stars on the jacket collar. That was probably a uniform. Maybe he went to university, which would corroborate his early theory of being an exchange student. He still didn’t understand why he would go on an exchange trip without any luggage.

 

As he was absorbed in his thoughts, he heard a noise from outside his room. He overheard some voices from outside but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. They sounded like males' voices. The sailors from the ship? As they were approaching his room, the man wondered about what to do about it. Would they help him?

 

The man didn’t know why he did it. Maybe it was just a hunch dictated by his instincts. The man decided to suddenly lie in his bed again upon hearing the two voices enter the room. He tried to steady his breath in order to seem like he was still sleeping. Or unconscious. He didn’t know how he ended up there, anyway. As he had his eyes closed, he couldn’t see what the two men who entered the room looked like, nor how they were dressed. They were talking casually as they entered the room.

 - So, when are we arriving? I’m getting seasick. -

 - I highly doubt you could ever get seasick. We’ll be arriving at the next harbor in an hour. Anyhow, how is this one looking? It seems to me that he’s still unconscious. Do you think he will come to his senses before he is back in Japan? -

 - I hope so. If he doesn’t regain his senses before we arrive in Hong Kong, I’m going to wake him up by force. I’m sick and tired of having to carry him around from ship to ship. He is boarding the next ship on his own two feet. – He said, sounding annoyed.

As the man heard the two sailors – he thought that was likely the case – close his door. He slowly opened his eyes. He let out a sigh of relief. It looked like he was right in pretending to be still unconscious.

It’s true that the two sailors just wanted him to go back to his presumed homeland – and he was relieved that they didn’t have bad intentions like selling him to the black market for illegal organ trafficking – but he just couldn’t comply. That voice he heard… He felt like it had been talking to him all the time he was asleep. He had to go to London, to accomplish his mission. He didn’t know what that mission was – heck, he didn’t even know his own name – but he was sure that it was important for him. So important that his subconscious self would remember it even before his own name and identity.

As he knew his time was running out, the man quickly investigated his room to find out if there was something he could use to remember something. Unluckily, there was nothing there and that made him wonder what kind of exchange student would be sent back to his homeland, while unconscious, and without luggage. He felt that if he tried to look for answers inside his own head he would end just like when he tried to think harder about the exchange student matter, so he left things as they were for the moment.

 

 Tucking the red piece of cloth on the table into his pocket – he didn’t know why but he had a feeling it was connected to an important person of his life – he silently tried to make his way out of the ship. While he was avoiding the stare of every people he met during his escape, he thanked his Japanese university for giving him such a disguisable outfit as a uniform. Once or twice, he felt that some of the sailors were staring at him too much, but he took advantage of the fact that the disembarking of passengers was always a tiring activity for both the ship clients and the staff. If that had been a normal situation he would have been found out, but everyone was busy with listening to angry customers or carrying passengers’ luggage. Thus, he was able to sneak outside of the ship safely, blending with the other guests.

 

As he was on the dry land, he was just overwhelmed with the feeling of a foreign country. That uneasiness told him that he had never gone to Hong Kong before. He guessed that he had probably never left Japan before. The people around him were speaking a language he didn’t know and he understood that going properly to England in his situation was impossible. He didn’t have any kind of documents on him and he didn’t even know his name. If he tried to embark with a regular ticket, he would be sent back to his homeland immediately. Feeling a strange sense of melancholy, he decided to pursue the underhanded path.

 

The Masked Man, as he decided to call himself for now seeing that he felt as he was wearing a mask as a consequence of not having the faintest idea about who he was, was tucked between a wooden case of apples – he could smell their sweet flavor – and a box of oranges. His back and legs started to hurt but he didn’t dare to move. He had been lucky to be able to board that ship as a stowaway, he didn’t want to risk being found out. At least, not before arriving in London. As he tried to readjust his position as his left knee was starting to hurt real bad, the young man clung to the mysterious voice in his head to endure the great pain he was feeling both in his heart and body.

 

He knew it. He knew it would happen. However, he also knew that there was no other way around it. And besides, it’s not like he had an idea of what he would do upon actually reaching London. The voice he kept hearing in his head wasn’t so nice as to tell him what to do once there. He swore he tried his best. But he had already been lucky back in Hong Kong. The tactic of blending with other people was effective in a place where people had similar facial features as him; unluckily, people going to England were mostly Europeans returning home from a trip to England and, needless to say, he was found out almost immediately.

 

 And there he was. Sitting on a chair, in front of a policeman too busy with thinking of ways to avoid working to actually listen to him and trying to help. At least, he thought, he knew how to speak with them. It was a particularly hard trip from the harbor to the police station. Those two were rude and, as soon as the three of them entered the interrogation room, they began tampering him with questions, not even giving him time to think about anything. He knew they didn't believe a word he was saying.

 

Suddenly, the two policemen were shut down from the door opening. Upon seeing the man who walked through the door, they stopped talking immediately and stared at him with eyes full of timorous reverence. The Masked Man was overwhelmed by the presence of the newcomer and felt like he really was worthy of such treatment.

 The man who entered the room was imposing and massive. Our man thought it could be because he himself was a lot shorter compared to him. He had large shoulders and was dressed in typical gentlemanly attire. The Masked Man thought he was about to sit down in front of him on the chair the two policemen hurriedly took for him from the other room, but he put out a portable watch from his breast-pocket and kept standing in front of him, looking very annoyed by the whole situation.

 

 - I have to tell you, boy, I’m a very busy man. But your case is very interesting and I think it’s worth postponing my meeting for another two hours. - 

 As the man watched his unusual behavior, he wondered why he wanted to come to England if all people were like him. Ever since he laid foot on that island, everything went downhill for him. He also reasoned that the circumstances of an illegal immigrant might have attracted some kind of hatred towards him. Then, the watch man started speaking.

 

Our man didn’t know where the strength inside him came from, or why he was so passionate and burning with fervor as he was pleading his own case. He just did it, as his instinct told him to. As he was arguing with that strange character – who later introduced himself as the Chief of Justice and went by the name of Hart Vortex – he just felt inside him everything he needed, and he knew that the voice he kept hearing would tell him that he was on the right path. He knew he was lost, he knew that he wouldn’t remember his identity or his important mission for the time being, but he carried on. He kept carrying on because his heart was giving him the strength to do so. He briefly wondered what kind of person he was before and he hoped to find himself real soon.

 

He could feel the heavy gaze of the Chief of Justice on him: being able to almost win an argument against a key figure of the English legal system would be a feat he would boast for as long as he lived. He just needed to find the people who cared enough to be proud of him. He knew they were somewhere in the world, perhaps waiting for his return.

They could be even in that same place as him. He wouldn’t have carried around such an eccentric piece of clothing as a red headband if there wasn’t a deep meaning behind it. He wondered what kind of person that item was related to. His heart spoke louder than words and he just felt it inside him that they would be a force to be reckoned with. He couldn’t wait to meet them.

- Very well. I understand you are well versed in the field of Law, and you know how to brilliantly speak English for yourself. If you had been a thug immigrant you wouldn’t be so knowledgeable. You may stay in the land owned by Her Majesty the Queen. However, I ask something in return for this favor I’m so kindly doing to you. -

 The man could just stare at Mr. Vortex with very confused eyes.

 

As he laid his eyes on the refined desk Mr. Vortex was showing him, he knew. He knew he made the right choice. His voice had been telling him to go to England for days. He hid his true self, behind that voice, using it as a mask, too scared to look for answers inside him. And there it was. An elegant white and golden mask, on his table. The Chief of Justice explained that it was to cover his oriental facial features, as seeing a foreigner prosecute English people would be unsettling for the English jury members. He didn’t care if his past self didn’t want to become a prosecutor; he didn't even know what his name had been. From the mask on the table, he knew he was on the right path. A path full of thorns, but a path that would surely lead him to the truth.