Kang Heesu
002.
When I opened the door to the medical examination room and stepped inside, Kang Heesu was trembling in nothing but her underwear in the middle of the room.
Whether because the guards had beaten her before she passed out or not, the bruises blooming across her skin were vividly blue.
At the sound of my presence, she snapped her head up.
Her eyes were full of rage.
"Who the hell are you, you crazy bastard!"
She screamed so hard it sounded like her throat would tear.
"Are you a cop? Special forces? If I get out of here, I'm suing you!"
Strange.
Just moments ago, she had been rolling on the floor, begging for her life because she was afraid she’d be killed by that woman.
And yet Kang Heesu, the serial killer before me now, left me oddly unmoved.
I don't feel scared at all.
On the contrary, it felt as if my head had been plunged into ice water, my thoughts cooling all at once.
I was absolutely certain that this place was under my control, and that the serial killer before me was nothing more than a worthless prisoner who ought to crawl at my feet.
Perhaps it was the power of the system making me this calm.
Still, noise was noise.
Frowning, I turned to the Vice Warden standing beside me, and she bowed her head politely.
"Since this is your first time, I will show you everything slowly, one step at a time."
When the Vice Warden’s gaze fell on the guards waiting nearby, they moved at once.
Whoosh—!
They blasted Kang Heesu with a high-pressure stream of water.
"Pffft—!"
The violent spray slammed into her face. She flinched and turned away in a panic, choking for breath, but the stream shifted direction and struck her swollen side and thighs head-on.
"Ghk...! A-agh!"
A cry of pain echoed along the walls.
Kang Heesu shook all over, reduced to the miserable state of a soaked rat.
Not long after, the water stopped, and the Vice Warden approached at an unhurried pace, looking down at her as she spoke.
"Your name is now Number One. Answer me."
"....."
Stupid bitch.
With her lips clamped tight and her eyes fixed stubbornly on the floor, I shook my head.
Thunk!
"Aaaagh!"
As if on cue, one of the guards swung the club in his hand and mercilessly smashed it into her back.
"Now then, what is your name?"
"I-I'm Number One....."
Her voice had lost all its backbone. The eyes that had once flashed with murderous intent now wavered anxiously before sinking down to the floor.
In a way, it was only natural.
She might have awakened, but it had only been a few days, and she was nothing more than some drunk who had stabbed ordinary people and run wild.
There was no way she possessed the mental strength to endure suffocating fear and overwhelming violence.
With a gesture from the Vice Warden, the guards rushed in, roughly tying Kang Heesu’s hands and feet before hauling her out like a sack of baggage.
The Vice Warden came up to me and bowed deeply once more.
"Now, let us proceed to the interrogation room."
The way she opened the door for me, so considerate and deferential, sent a chill down my spine.
Is it really all right for me to receive this kind of treatment from beings like them?
That brief sense of unease lasted only a moment.
Before long, the reassuring weight of the title prison warden wrapped around my entire body.
They were beings who obeyed my orders.
The interrogation room was dimly lit.
Kang Heesu sat trembling in a steel chair, drenched and miserable.
Her wet hair clung pitifully to her face.
The Vice Warden took the chair opposite hers, and I watched from behind, learning how this was supposed to be done.
"Kang Heesu. Prisoner Number One, correct?"
"Yes....."
The club treatment must have worked wonderfully.
Still cowed, Kang Heesu rolled her eyes around nervously before they met mine.
She immediately looked away and dropped her gaze to her knees in a panic.
She had realized who held the highest position in this space.
Thwack!
The Vice Warden slammed the file in her hand down and spoke in a dry voice.
"Drunk driving and a hit-and-run, followed by a secret burial. Murder of a witness. Then assault of a police officer and flight."
At that, Kang Heesu, bound to the chair, shook her head wildly as if she had been wronged and started howling.
"N-no, it wasn't like that! I didn't do it on purpose! I was completely drunk at the time, okay? Please, forgive me. Please? Just this once, can't you show me some leniency...!"
Leniency? The shamelessness of it made bile rise in my throat.
"How the hell do you expect me to take your crime into account just because you were drunk, you fucking bitch!"
The shout burst out before I could stop it.
Kang Heesu flinched, shrinking her shoulders and bowing her head deeply.
There was no need for even a shred of sympathy for trash like this.
"Vice Warden. Step outside with me for a moment."
Outside the interrogation room, it was just the Vice Warden and me.
"Just how far can this correction process go?"
"There are only three things you must avoid. First, the prisoner’s death. Second, severe damage to the body. Third, a state in which the mind is completely damaged and the prisoner can no longer even perceive the punishment."
That was surprisingly lenient.
"However, maintaining those three conditions during the correction process is harder than it sounds. You must be careful. If you fail to uphold them, a penalty will be imposed."
"A penalty? What kind?"
"I’m afraid I cannot tell you that."
There must be some being far, far above the prison warden’s rank... some godlike existence watching over all of this.
So even if I wielded power in this place, there were still rules I could not cross.
"Understood. Please stay by my side and help me avoid any mistakes."
"Of course. That is my role."
The Vice Warden bowed respectfully.
***
It hurts... I'm cold. I'm starving to death.
The cruel hunger and pain twisting my stomach from within.
Those bastards. If you're going to lock someone up, you should at least feed them!
I swallowed the curses I had chewed on a hundred times over in my head. But there was no way I could ever spit them out aloud.
I was terrified that the guards on the other side of the iron door would burst in at any moment and beat me again.
How much time had passed?
Just as my senses began to blur—
Clatter.
A cup filled with liquid was pushed through the food slot.
Thinking at last that water had come, I hurriedly gulped it down.
"Hek! C-cough, cough! Shit, shit. This is alcohol!"
The esophagus burned. The sharp reek of liquor stabbed hard into my nose.
"Aaaagh!!!!! Fuck!!!!!!"
In the end, I couldn’t take it and screamed, hurling the cup at the wall.
"Water! Give me water!!"
As the days dragged on into one, then two, thirst tightened its noose around my throat.
In the end, I had no choice but to force the alcohol down my throat just to survive.
"Kekh..."
An awakened body did not die easily from alcohol poisoning or dehydration alone.
But that vitality was its own horrifying curse. After spending days stuffing my empty stomach with nothing but liquor, stomach cramps and a hangover so vicious it felt like my skull was splitting dragged me into hell.
"Please... please give me some water....!"
Even when I screamed, clutching at my burning throat, nothing came back.
My strength finally gave out, and once my body grew hot as well, I staggered down from the bed and collapsed on the cold tiled floor. It was a horrible stretch of time, one long sequence of nothing but ragged breathing.
Click.
Then I heard the prison door open.
When I opened my eyes, a pair of polished shoes walked into view through my blurred sight.
The prison warden. The devil who had thrown me into this hell.
"Water.... please.... please....."
The plea slipped out through lips I could barely part, and the man looked down at me indifferently before speaking.
"Fine. Open your mouth."
That single sentence.
My body, which had nothing left in it, twitched instinctively for the sake of survival.
Crawling across the floor to his shoes, I lifted my head and opened my mouth wide, forgetting even my shame.
Ptui.
A lukewarm, sticky sensation landed on my lips.
The man's spit dropped into my mouth with a soft plop.
Gross! Disgusting! I need to spit it out right now!
My mind screamed at me.
Gulp.
But my throat, desperate for even that tiny bit of moisture, swallowed it before I could stop myself.
"Want another bite?"
A cold sneer rained down from above my head.
My last scraps of human pride shattered to pieces and crashed to the floor.
"....Yes."
Like a dog, I opened my mouth again.
***
The sound of the cell door shutting faded away into the distance.
"...Ha."
A strange breath escaped me—whether it was a laugh or a sigh, I couldn’t tell.
What had just happened kept circling through my mind.
That desperate look in her eyes.
The woman crawling along the floor.
And the way she opened her mouth without resistance at all.
Is this... really right?
The conversation I had had with the Vice Warden came back to me.
"The first stage of correction is reflection."
"Reflection?"
"Yes. So long as the sinner continues to perceive herself as an ordinary citizen, correction cannot even begin."
At the time, I had not been able to say anything.
I had only stared at the black silhouette standing before me.
"As long as a person retains dignity and self-respect, the prisoner will keep trying to rationalize."
"....."
"They minimize their crimes, evade responsibility, and blame the situation. So long as that continues, correction is impossible."
The Vice Warden’s words made sense.
Had I not seen it myself?
She said she was drunk and couldn’t remember.
She said she hadn’t done it on purpose.
The way she kept evading responsibility to the very end.
"That is why it must be broken. Completely."
For a moment, a chill ran down my spine.
However heinous the criminal, wasn’t that going too far?
It felt like it was reducing a person to something less than human.
But then the face I had seen in the interrogation room came back to me.
I was drunk and can’t remember.
I didn’t do it on purpose.
Have mercy on me.
The way she dodged responsibility even after burying a person.
Right... that bitch cared more about her own life than about the victim.
Before I knew it, the resistance in my heart had begun to settle little by little.
"I’ll say it again: your minimum survival is guaranteed. However, the method may differ from ordinary standards."
I hadn’t understood what those words meant then.
But now I thought I did.
"A prisoner must be given a choice."
"A choice?"
"Yes. To yield or to endure. And they must be made to accept the consequences of that choice in full."
In that moment, something clicked inside my head.
This was not mere violence.
Not simple punishment, either.
A structure that forces choice...
"It breaks self-respect, forces a decision, and imprints the outcome."
The Vice Warden added one final thing.
"That is Regina Prison's method of correction."
*
As I walked toward the warden’s office, the Vice Warden was waiting for me.
"Well done."
Her voice held no warmth, but the satisfaction within it came through clearly enough.
"I’m truly relieved you’re adapting to the prison so quickly."
"Thanks to you, Vice Warden."
At my words, it felt as though she might have smiled, and she opened the warden’s office door with a graceful gesture.
"Then let us move on to the next stage."
Sitting down at the desk and looking at the computer screen, I heard her continue.
"Now begins the real correction. The next stage is......"
"Is this structure really possible?"
The Vice Warden pointed at the monitor and began explaining this and that, and I listened carefully to the new knowledge being laid out before me.
*
The next day.
The guards opened the iron door, and I stepped into the cell.
Kang Heesu, who had been lying on the steel bed as if dead, snapped her head up at the sound of my approach.
Her appearance was still a wreck, ruined by thirst and hangover.
"Number One."
At my cold call, she crawled across the floor on trembling limbs.
"Y-yes, yes... Warden....."
"Confess your sins."
Kang Heesu tried to swallow, but there wasn’t even any saliva left, and only the dry rasp of her throat came out.
"I... I was wrong.... I drank and drove, buried someone, and stabbed a police officer.... It was all me... Please, please, I was wrong....."
At last, she began to voice her crimes and cry out her remorse.
I took out the bottle of water I had prepared in advance.
At the sight of it, Kang Heesu's eyes lit up wildly.
"Open your mouth."
Without hesitation, she lifted her head.
Between her gaping lips, her tongue looked dried out like a parched rice field.
I opened the cap and tilted the bottle just enough to let a single mouthful of water spill into her mouth.
"Ahhh....!"
The moment the liquid went down her throat, Kang Heesu’s face bloomed into an expression of indescribable ecstasy, and she smacked her lips, as if even a single droplet in her mouth was too precious to waste, over and over tightening her throat around it.
"Please... please, just a little more.... Please, Warden, please....."
I looked down coldly at her, groveling as if she were about to grab my pant leg.
"Every time you repent of your sins and act in a way that deserves forgiveness, I’ll treat you a little more like a human being."
As if to say there would be no more mercy than that, I put the water bottle away and turned on my heel without another word.
"Ah..."
Left alone in the solitary cell, Kang Heesu would be thinking about what she had to do to be forgiven.
About how she could drink water again.
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