Yehuda

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Yehuda: Yehuda is a nine-year-old boy with a thick mop of short, curly, silver-gray hair. His eyes are large and expressive, a deep green that shifts to a striking azure under the light. A perpetual boredom lends him a melancholic air, and he carries himself with a detached indifference toward everyone around him. Every movement seems weighted—carrying books to class, pulling on his shirt after waking—each action slow and heavy-muscled, performed without complaint or sigh. He simply obeys in silence.

He wears a dark brown short-sleeved shirt, its hem tucked into a pair of dark green shorts that leave his legs bare. On his feet are black shoes, almost like small boots, their interiors clinging to his bare skin like a second layer. The lining is worn, the sole barely held on by a rough patch of hardened resin and wood dust.

Yehuda is one of six executioner apprentices in the government’s guild, training alongside his peers in a classroom built into the fortified walls encircling the royal garden—mere steps from the private execution scaffold and the prison cells. Their mornings begin with laps around the garden, mirroring the guards’ rigorous drills, before shifting to lessons in anatomy and execution methods: calculating the precise force needed to snap a neck based on body weight, or mapping the optimal angles for a clean decapitation. Evenings are spent scrubbing the classroom’s stone floors, stacking desks, and retreating to their prison quarters, where they sleep in triple-tiered bunks crammed into a room with a splintered, broken door.

Yehuda remembers nothing of his parents. His childhood unfolded within orphanage walls, under the watchful eye of a nun he grew deeply attached to. One by one, the other children left—adopted into new families or claimed by illness and accidents. Yehuda alone survived past eight years old, and with each passing season, the nuns began to see him as a burden. He proved too placid for physical work, too indifferent to flash a smile when prospective parents toured the halls seeking to remedy their barrenness, and too unmotivated to pursue the religious life. Unwilling to keep him yet unable to cast him into the streets, the nuns made their decision: they forced him to become an executioner.

A habit formed during his time in the orphanage, Yehuda offers brief, hollow prayers before meals and upon witnessing someone at the gallows facing execution—a series of murmured words that mimic prayer in form but are devoid of any true sentiment.

With the sheer number of apprentices and only two positions available—successor and assistant—the students were coldly informed that the rest would face execution by year’s end.

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Relationships: Yehuda was the only one who maintained decent relations with Reuven; they simply ignored one another, exchanging only the barest courtesies—an arrangement Yehuda always valued. That detached, indifferent dynamic persisted even after Reuven was confined to a cell.

On rainy days, Yehuda and Levi assist Gad in hauling firewood to heat the classroom and fuel the stoves. Sometimes, as payment for the wood, the guards give Gad watered-down beer—a drink Yehuda has developed a particular taste for. If it were up to him, he’d live drunk and slumped in some pub corner, covered in his own vomit, a beer always in hand. He considers that his "childhood dream".

Levi shares a desk with Yehuda, much to Yehuda’s displeasure. He finds Levi irritating—too cheerful, too eager for attention—but he’s afraid of snapping at him for fear he might burst into tears or, worse, reject him entirely. Even so, Yehuda has grown accustomed to Levi’s company and simply tolerates him, ignoring his grating presence.

Yehuda had always been as indifferent to Shimon as he was to the rest of the class—until the day he saw him, during a public execution, rubbing his hand inside his shorts, masturbating while intently watching the girl convulse at the end of the rope. Since that day, Yehuda has taken great care to avoid being alone with Shimon, though a morbid part of him is tempted to confess that he saw him.

Isaachar is typically the last to return to the prison cell that serves as the dormitory for their small group; often drenched in sweat from a day's labor with his father. Yehuda, who is frequently still awake, assists him in changing, washing, and hanging his clothes in the prison corridor. This has become a routine for Yehuda, and through this habit, he has grown to appreciate the sight of Isaachar's naked body and their conversations while he is undressed. During these moments, Yehuda struggles to keep his mind occupied to avoid blushing, but beneath the surface, he intensely desires to make a pass at Isaachar and take him without inhibition. He also genuinely likes him, finding a dark amusement in the notion of sleeping with the executioner's son.