Hoshikawa Teru kept his head turned away and answered quietly, "I just... understood a little."
"Understood what?" Akemi Miyano tilted her head in confusion. "The experiments?"
"Mm." Hoshikawa Teru's voice was very soft. "Most of the organization's 'test subjects' were vagrants and the like picked up nearby. But occasionally, there were... accidents, like Numabuchi Iichiro."
It took Akemi Miyano a moment to understand who Hoshikawa Teru meant. Stroking her chin, she mused, "You mean criminals whose sentences had already been determined, right?"
Numabuchi Iichiro had joined a violent criminal group connected to the organization because he and a classmate from his old driving school had pulled a "prank" that resulted in their instructor's death. Terrified that his crime would be discovered, he had nowhere to return to, so he made use of his unusual physique and became a loan shark's collector...
With all those accidents intertwined, that man—like a startled bird, especially afraid of taking responsibility—had ultimately become a murderer who committed even greater wrongs. Even after escaping the organization's control, he had still ended up behind bars.
"Most of the time, we weren't allowed to communicate with one another." Hoshikawa Teru braced himself against the table, his thoughts gradually beginning to drift. That gloom, like a disease clinging to the bone, slowly surfaced along with his dark words. "They assigned a dedicated supervisor to every person undergoing experiments in the laboratory. If someone left their designated spot without permission, the supervisor would be punished. And some experiments just involved sitting there, getting injections, having blood drawn, taking medicine... We didn't actually spend much time in the lab. We had to take a lot of drugs. Some did nothing when you swallowed them, while others were extremely painful..."
Akemi Miyano, all too familiar with the scenes he described, opened her