Ficorpio
Chapter 1
That smell was something Lucas Bennett would never forget for as long as he lived.
Disinfectant mixed with rust, driving straight into his nose like a corroded needle jabbing again and again at his brain. He reflexively tried to lift a hand to rub his nose, only to realize he couldn’t move at all—not because he was tied down, but because he had no strength left. Ten years without much movement had atrophied his body beyond recognition.
He thought he was still in Songjiang No. 3 Prison.
Ten years.
A full ten years. Three thousand six hundred and fifty days and nights. He counted them every single day. The walls of his cell were covered in tally marks. One mark for every five days. Seven hundred and thirty of them in all. Sometimes a guard would pass by and rap on the iron door. “Lucas, stop carving. You’re going to punch through the wall.” He would just smile and not argue. If he stopped counting, he was afraid he would forget the days. And if he forgot the days, he would be completely broken.
Lucas had once been one of the boldest sports reporters in the country.
Not the kind who polished everything into flattering fluff pieces. He really dug until he hit bone. While other writers covered the World Cup with star gossip, fan stories, and scenic travel pieces about the host city, he went straight for the ugly truth. He wrote about how money manipulated matches, how bookmakers bribed officials through the referees, how football association executives colluded with the people running the lines. His long-form piece, “2026: The World Cup Controlled by Money,” ran fifty thousand words. He had stayed up three straight nights, smoked six packs of cigarettes, and when the manuscript was finally done, his eyes were red as a rabbit’s.
The article never went out.
More accurately, the second he submitted it to the editor’s inbox, he was summoned into the office the next day. Marcus Vance sat behind the oversized desk, smiling at him with a pleasant expression that made Lucas’s back go cold.
“Lucas,” Vance said, “this piece… it’s well written. But some things just can’t be written carelessly. You have to think about the paper, and you have to think about yourself too.”
Lucas was young then, full of fire, and shot back, “Mr. Vance, I’m telling the truth.”
The smile never left Vance’s face, but his eyes turned icy.
Chapter 2
A week later, the police came. The charge was extortion. They said Lucas had taken money to smear a certain club. Lucas was stunned. He didn’t even know which way that club’s front door opened. But the evidence was “solid”—bank transfer records, chat screenshots, and even a supposed victim who came forward to identify him.
Only later did he understand that all of it had been fabricated. Marcus Vance had been in the newsroom for twenty years, and everyone from top to bottom answered to him. Framing a young reporter who had only been there for two years was as easy as stepping on an ant.
On the day of the trial, Lucas saw Sophie Hart in the courtroom.
She sat in the last row of the gallery, holding Eli Bennett in her arms, head lowered, too afraid to look at him. When the judge read the sentence, Lucas heard the words “twelve years in prison,” and his mind went white with a deafening roar, like thunder exploding inside his skull.
Twelve years.
He looked back at Sophie. She happened to lift her head at the same moment, and their eyes met. Her eyes were red. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
By the time the bailiffs took him away, the corridor had gone eerily quiet. The only thing left was the metallic scrape of shackles dragging across the floor—clank, clank, clank.
In his third year inside, Sophie came to see him for the last time with their son.
Through the thick glass, she wore the blue sweater he had always liked best, but she had thinned out so much it was painful to look at her. Eli had grown taller too. He hid behind her, staring at Lucas with eyes that were both strange and scared.
“Lucas,” Sophie said softly, like she was afraid someone might overhear, “we should… get a divorce.”
Lucas froze.
He had never imagined he would hear those words from Sophie’s mouth. He had thought Sophie would wait for him. Even if she never said it out loud, he had believed she would wait inside her heart. But now she stood on the other side of the glass and told him herself: I won’t wait anymore.
“I know I owe you,” Sophie said, tears spilling down her face, “but Eli needs a father. He needs a normal home. You’re in here… I don’t even know when you’ll get out. I can’t hold on, Lucas. I really can’t hold on anymore.”
Lucas opened his mouth. He wanted to say, Wait for me a few more years. He wanted to say, I’ll clear my name after I get out. He wanted to say, I’m sorry for both of you. But by the time those words reached his lips, they had all turned to ash.
Chapter 3
What could he say? Tell her to wait until he got out? There were still nine years left. Say he was sorry? What good did that do? He couldn’t even pay for their living expenses. The labor stipend in prison was only a few dozen bucks a month. He couldn’t even buy their son a decent toy.
“Okay,” Lucas heard himself say.
The word felt as if it had been forced out of someone else’s mouth, or squeezed from the seams of his bones. The instant he said it, Sophie’s tears came harder, but she didn’t say anything else. She took Eli’s hand and turned away.
Eli walked a few steps, then suddenly looked back at Lucas.
Lucas remembered that one look for ten years.
Only later did he hear from Walter Hayes that Sophie never remarried after the divorce. She raised Eli on her own, working in a supermarket during the day and washing dishes in a restaurant at night. She rented a cramped partition room that was barely twenty square meters. Life was tight, every day a struggle. Walter said he had bumped into her once on the street. She had been so thin he almost didn’t recognize her, but she seemed all right mentally. She said Eli was doing well in school and that he was her only hope.
Lucas stayed silent for a very long time after hearing that.
Then his father died from rage and his mother cried until she went blind.
Those news came from the prison guard George Parker. George was a decent man. Once in a while he would bring Lucas a pack of cigarettes, and when he spoke, he always tried to keep his tone light, as if he were talking about what the cafeteria was serving that day.
“Your dad… he passed last month. Heart attack. Your mom was devastated. Her eyes… they may not be able to save them.”
Lucas had been crouched in a corner eating when he heard it. The lunch tray slipped from his hands and crashed to the floor, vegetables and soup soaking his pants. He didn’t cry. He just faced the wall and slammed his head against it again and again until his forehead was covered in blood.
George was startled and rushed in to pin him down. “Have you lost your mind? Calm down!”
Lucas was forced flat against the cold concrete floor, his face pressed to the cement, his eyes wide open and staring at a single ant on the ground. The ant was carrying a grain of rice, slowly inching its way toward a crack in the wall.
Suddenly, he felt like that ant himself. Carrying a tiny, pitiful load, crawling forward with all his strength, while someone could step on him and crush him to death at any moment.
June 11, 2036. Sentence served.