Chapter Text
“Please state your name for the record.”
The room is as boring as the rest of the prison. Bars on windows that are too high up to see anything of the outside world, let alone reach. Grey floor, grey walls, grey chairs. Even the committee’s suits are grey. The only colorful thing in the whole fucking room is Sanji’s uniform, and he didn’t even chose that. That’s what it has all come to, a reality as bleak as the prison food before his input.
“Sanji Black,” he finally states. After all these years, it’s still a satisfaction to utter this name, the name he chose, and not the name that connects him to his birth family.
“Thank you.” The corrections officer marks something down on the papers in front of her. If it wasn’t dismal enough that this wonderful lady is wearing a grey suit, it also fits her poorly. Someone really needs to advise these corrections officers on their fashion choices. “Mr. Black, the purpose of this meeting is to determine whether, if released, you are likely to break the law again. While this was your first conviction, you have been implicated, though never charged, in over a dozen other confidence schemes and frauds. What can you tell us about this?”
It had been unfortunately unlucky that it turned out this way. The plan had been good, the loot even better. Someone had let him down, and he’d been caught, charged and judged for the first time. A tiny voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like the mosshead’s claims ‘he’d told him so’. What utter bullshit. Sanji puts on his most charming smile because ladies, even this one, do not deserve anything less, no matter their terrible life choices. “As you say, I’ve never been charged.”
“Mr. Black, we’re trying to determine if there was a reason you committed this crime, or if there was a reason you got caught this time?” The officer asks. The other two stay silent, merely staring at him with blank faces as if that would somehow intimidate him. It has always been harder for him to charm men, not that he’d tried many times. A fact that could very well become a problem in the next few weeks due to some unexpected realizations about his own feelings.
“My wife left me. I was upset. Got into a self-destructive pattern.” Sanji shrugs to emphasize the point.
The officers exchange a glance. “If released, is it likely you would fall back into a similar pattern?”
“She already left me once. I don't think she'll do it again just for fun.” Besides, from what he has gathered from the fallout at the time, Pudding is with Reiju now. There is nothing more humiliating than your wife leaving you for your much richer sister who hasn’t cut off the even richer family. Not that he wants to insinuate anything. Or that he’s still bitter about it.
One of the other two officers speaks up. “Mr. Black, what would you do if you were released?”
Sanji pretends to think on that. “No idea. How much do you guys make a year?”