Chapter 4: Keep Up the Act

At Tidal Prison, volunteer inmates from three or four detention areas were generally brought together to work in the same laundry. How many laundries there were altogether, the inmates didn't know, and the guards weren't too sure either.

Once the work was done, inmates from the different detention areas returned to their own sections. If you tried to enter another area, an electric shock would knock you flat the moment you crossed its doorway in the corridor.

The inmates' job in the laundry was to wash dirty prison uniforms and cloth shoes. Underwear wasn't reused; it went straight off to be destroyed.

Tidal Prison inmates didn't wear socks. This wasn't out of fear that they might put on puppet shows with them. The main reason was that socks could be used as weapons. Someone had once put a bar of soap inside a sock and swung it at people in the showers. It did considerable damage, set a very bad example, and inspired plenty of imitators. From then on, nobody got socks.

For the same reason, the inmates' shoes had no laces. Legend had it that a prisoner nicknamed bigstan once made nunchucks out of a shoelace and two bars of soap and beat everyone in the prison. After that, inmates didn't even get shoelaces.

After these two incidents, fighting in the showers eased off somewhat. The inmates were worried that, at this rate, soap would be the next thing banned.

Back to the matter at hand. When Zuo Dao arrived in the laundry, he discovered that the work wasn't actually very tiring. You just loaded dirty clothes into trolleys, wheeled them over to empty washing machines, stuffed the clothes in, and closed the lids. When a machine stopped spinning, you took out the clean clothes, loaded them into a trolley, and wheeled them away. The final step was to sort matching sizes into sets and toss them into baskets.

None of this took much effort. It was just a little fiddly. As Zuo Dao did this mindless work, he began wondering whether he could work out how many inmates the prison held by counting the dirty shirts and trousers.

In fact, someone had tried that long ago. Tidal Prison had no shortage of highly intelligent criminals. They had devised all sorts of ways to collect information, spending years trying to uncover the prison's patterns. They had drawn up countless escape plans that looked highly promising at first glance, but in the end, either they ruled the plans out themselves or reality did it for them. Every so often, they would hear about some unlucky bastard who had perfectly executed a plan that happened to match the one in their own head, then been shot dead...

The number of inmates, the number of guards, their personalities, backgrounds, and weaknesses—all this seemingly accessible information was extremely difficult to obtain in Tidal Prison.

Zuo Dao was no exception. About a week later, he understood where the difficulties lay. They could be summed up quite briefly: clothes washed in batches, cells changed daily, guards transferred often, inmates dead too soon.

The laundry work was finished in an hour. There was a fixed amount to do every day, for the reason just explained, to stop you from using the clothes to calculate the total population of each detention area.

There was just over half an hour until mealtime. Zuo Dao thought that perhaps those who worked here would get slightly better food that day. It was the most practical, most plausible reward he could think of.

"Hey, new guy." A voice came from behind Zuo Dao.

Zuo Dao reacted quickly. He played dumb and pretended he hadn't heard.

"Hey, we're talking to you, new guy." Another inmate spoke up, standing directly in front of him.

Zuo Dao knew he couldn't keep it up. He raised his head. "Me?"

"That's right." A group of inmates had closed in around him.

Zuo Dao's face went white. No way! Was it that obvious he was new?

Clinging to a shred of hope, he struggled to look calm. "I've been locked up here for six months. Haven't you seen me before?"

A large man stood before him. "Six months or ten years, doesn't matter. You've definitely never been to the laundry."

"And we really haven't seen you before," someone else in the crowd said.

Zuo Dao understood. He seemed to have stumbled into a peculiar social circle. The inmates who worked in the laundry were more likely to run into one another. Though both their detention areas and their assigned laundries changed, they certainly met more often than inmates who didn't come here. So these men, familiar with one another's faces, had formed a gang.

"Fine, it's my first time working in the laundry. What, you have a problem with that?" Zuo Dao was doing his best to look formidable. Left to his own devices, he would already have been bowing and scraping, asking his big brothers in the "Laundry Gang" to go easy on him and look after him. But in a place this dangerous, he absolutely couldn't show weakness. Once people saw fear in him, death probably wouldn't be far off.

"Pretty cocky, aren't you, kid? All skin and bones. Want us to loosen you up?" The big man in front of him edged closer.

Zuo Dao didn't give an inch. He glared at him. "Dogs that bite don't bark."

This fellow had played Mark when he was arrested. Now that he was in prison, he'd moved straight from A Better Tomorrow to Prison on Fire. In any case, he was determined to see this righteous gangster act through to the end.

As the saying went, you had to be possessed to bring a role to life. Zuo Dao's commitment to the part earned him quite a few points, but the inmates who made it to Hell Island had all seen a thing or two. They weren't going to develop a solemn respect for you just because you spouted a few tough lines when backed into a corner. That sort of thing only happened when an aura of stupidity combined with a protagonist's overpowering charisma.

"We welcome new members, but if you want to keep coming to the laundry, there are a few things you need to understand," another inmate said. "See those guards? There's a whole crowd of us gathered here, and they're still standing in the corners pretending not to notice. That's the unwritten rule in the laundry. Even when different guards come in, they don't interfere in matters between inmates. Here, you can beat people up in plain sight. As long as you don't kill anyone, no one holds you responsible afterward.

"You have two choices. First, join us. From now on, you share information with everyone, and we look out for each other, making sure our members don't get sent to the special detention area or end up in cage coffins and the like. You can get better food, too. Second, we beat you half to death. And whenever you come back to the laundry, we beat you again."

Zuo Dao could barely restrain himself. He desperately wanted to put on a fawning expression, describe his admiration for these big brothers as an endless, surging river, and swear he'd climb mountains of blades and plunge into seas of fire without hesitation. Just don't beat me up. I'll join anything you want.

"I could join. But as far as I know, only weaklings form gangs to look out for each other." The moment he finished, Zuo Dao wanted to slap himself across the face a few times. How did I actually say that? It just came out! Is that what I really think deep down? So when you play the hero, you start saying all kinds of things that deserve a beating without even realizing it.

"Don't think you're somebody just because you could throw your weight around outside. This is Tidal Prison. Who do you think you're talking to?" one of the inmates interjected. "Anyone who survives a month here has something special going for him."

The big man spoke again. "And you'll find out soon enough whether we're weaklings. The rule is, new members pick three people and fight them. But don't worry. Whatever the outcome, you're in, and nobody's allowed to hold a grudge."

Are you running Fight Club here?! Three people? Against me alone? What is this, Fight the Landlord? The Modu version, at that! If I don't join, you all beat me until I can't look after myself. If I do join, I still have to fight three people at once? Doesn't that mean I'm screwed either way? Zuo Dao cried inwardly, his face still a picture of icy composure. "Sure. You look eager enough. I'll count you as one."

"Hmph... Fine." The big man answered with a sneer.

Zuo Dao had his own calculations. He'd probably already pissed the big man off. If the fellow lost his head and took things too far, the guards might come over to stop him. Now he just had to pick two scrawnier men and hope they didn't hit too hard.

"And you. And you." Zuo Dao chose two short, thin men from the crowd. Both gave him malicious smiles and walked toward him.

The other inmates backed away, leaving an open space inside their circle. The three men, one big and two short and thin, stood in the middle facing Zuo Dao.

The guards had also gathered together, whispering among themselves as they watched the show. They had no intention of stopping it. Their principle was that fighting was fine, as long as it didn't cause a riot. Keep it orderly and you could fight however you liked. You could even hold the World Martial Arts Tournament during recreation time.

The sort of dining-hall fight where plates flew, food was thrown, and dozens or even hundreds of people got involved counted as a riot. Things would inevitably get out of control. Once something like that happened, in keeping with the principle that the law couldn't punish everyone, the warden would very likely stop supplying plastic trays and spoons and build the inmates a pig trough. From then on, the guards would supervise as they lay on their stomachs in a row to eat. Anyone with a shred of dignity left wouldn't want to see or even imagine such a scene.

"Come on, what are you waiting for? I'm waiting to eat." Zuo Dao continued to provoke them. He was already prepared to take a beating. Once he started losing, he would activate humanity's strongest defensive stance by crouching down and covering his head to hold out. Nobody could use their abilities in Tidal Prison anyway. Even if you knew techniques like the Eighteen Dragon-Subduing Palms, against my dung-beetle stance they'd hit no harder than wild flailing.

Just as he was thinking this, the big man in front of him assumed a textbook boxing stance. He held his fists, each the size of a cooking pot, out in front of him, one high and one low, one forward and one back, and moved nimbly into striking range.

Zuo Dao might be a Paper-rank ability user, but even outside he rarely fought anyone. He wasn't a gentleman thief like Accountant, who could successfully avoid violent confrontations, nor a savage brute like Blood Owl, who could terrify people with his presence alone. His crimes usually ended with him making a quick getaway. But now, in this prison, facing these three opponents, he had nowhere left to run. He could only face them head-on.