Sakura let the hammer drop with a methodical rhythm.

*Bang*Bang*Bang*

With each stroke chips blasted off the hard, stone wall that stood in front of her. She liked this type of mindless physical labor sometimes. She often complained about it--about how she wanted to use her head in her work. She wanted to be an engineer, not a mindless drone. Yet, there were days like this when she was thankful for the rote repetition of her work. It gave her time to think.

*Bang*Bang*

The hammer struck, was raised up, and struck again. But Sakura's mind was far away from the hammer, far away from the rock wall, far away...far away with her friend.

"Where is he?" Sakura asked herself.

The hammer struck harder, breaking off a large chunk from the wall.

"What happened to him? I don't even know if he's alive."

Sakura's mind returned to that night. She saw Toku slip into the closet. She saw the soldiers burst in. She saw them tearing through the room. She felt once again how her face tensed and tightened as the one solder--the dark-haired soldier with a huge mole on his cheeck, even now she could clearly see it in her mind--as he approached the closet door. Once again she felt the fear shudder within her.

*Bang*Bang*Bang*

Then, she heard the scream. Toku's scream. She had cried out in response at that time, knowing that the mole-faced man had founded him and grabbed him.

*Bang* The wall gave way once again, a shower of granite falling to the ground.

The scream she heard from Toku's lips suddenly stopped. At the time her heart had panicked, thinking that the mole-faced man had done something awful. That was why she had not understood why the mole-faced man was still in the closet, pushing tunics and dresses and boxes aside.

"What horrible thing is he doing now?" She had thought at the time.

It was not until the captain had apologized for taking so much of her time and left with the soldiers following behind him that she realized that Toku had not been taken by them. She couldn't understand it. How had he escaped them?

She waited for Toku to come out. She whispered through the closet door, "It's okay. They're gone. What's going on?!" But no whispered response came. The door remained closed.

*Bang*Bang*

Eventually she became impatient and she flung open the door, repeating the mole-faced soldier's search. She pulled the tunics from the closet, throwing them to the ground. The boxes and bags suffered similarly. Soon the closet was cleared of its contents entirely, the bare, smooth back wall standing before her.

She had spent the rest of the night searching through the rest of her chamber, calling Toku's name, quietly at first, then loudly, then quietly again.

*Bang*

The hammer came down one last time. It did not raise again. Looking deeply into the stone, Sakura let the hammer fall from her hands, the sweat standing out on her face.

"Where is my friend?"