Confinement
Even after Yejin’s explanation ended, the conversation stretched on for a good while.
There was simply too much they still didn’t know about one another; questions and answers piled up without end. Still, they managed to learn a great deal.
“Whew~ Feels like my body’s finally coming back online.”
“Already?”
“Heh. Recovery’s always been one of my strong suits. This much is nothing.”
A691. Kim Yejin.
Yejin was the eldest in Cell 3. At twenty-eight—no small age—and with years of real-world experience behind her, she turned out to be surprisingly thoughtful. As a re-enrolled inmate she carried a wealth of practical knowledge about Prison Island, and above all she possessed the iron physique of someone who had finished an Ironman triathlon.
Her profession was elite athletic trainer—she specialized in managing professional athletes. It was a field I knew nothing about, so I could only tilt my head, but apparently she was a star trainer who ranked high in that world.
Her own masochistic leanings, combined with an environment that shoved her body right up against its limits, had driven her to re-enroll. Once this sentence was over she even planned to challenge for S-grade. Of her ten-month term, eight months still remained. She had entered before me, yet she would leave after me.
“Ahh… I think I set the penalty too high this time. Next round I’ll go a little easier.”
“Huh? Next? I’m already a crazy bitch, but you’re a whole other level of crazy. How the hell do you spend more than a year in this place and still think about ‘next’…?”
“Yejin. Could you maybe shut it for a second?”
Next was A522. Park Jaehee.
She had set the longest sentence of them all—eighteen full months. Factor in that she was a re-enrollee and only twenty-two, and it meant she had already spent more of her adult life on Prison Island than out in society. From what she told us, the university she attended had collapsed under a corruption ruling; even her academic records had been mishandled, leaving her effectively a high-school graduate. In a fit of rage she had come here…
Still, she already possessed masochistic tendencies and needed money, so she decided to treat the opportunity as something handed to her.
“Come to think of it, I feel like I’ve seen your face in a video before… right?”
“Ah. So you watched one of mine. Thanks—looks like we have a customer in the house. Yeah. I negotiated a higher revenue share in exchange for unedited footage.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Anyone who recognizes me is probably into the same things anyway. Besides, look at me now—I’m a mess. If I want to dress up and live properly once I’m out, I figure I need to whip myself into shape like this first. No regrets.”
Bright and cheerful on the surface, yet always calculating underneath—exactly the Jaehee I had already sized up. Even the “I came here in a fit of rage” story probably hid deeper reasons. She gave off that kind of quiet reliability. No wonder she and Yejin, six years apart, could talk so easily.
“I think I’m going to end up considering re-enrollment too. Two months… feels shorter than I expected.”
And then A711. Luia Chambers.
She was a pure foreigner. She claimed she first learned about Prison Island as a minor, stumbling across a site on the family PC… but the way she broke into a light sweat while saying it made it pretty clear she had searched for it herself. She had even studied Korean specifically so she could come here; her fluent speech was proof of how fiercely she had wanted this place. And she was only twenty-one—young even by the standards of the entire island, let alone this cell.
The reason she had applied for only two months this time was her university break schedule…
Wait. Hold on.
University breaks are in summer, right? It’s autumn now. I arrived after Chuseok; there was no way I was mixing up the seasons.
“Luia, didn’t you come during break? You’re attending a university in Korea, aren’t you?”
“Yes, that’s right. A Korean university.”
“But breaks are in summer. Did you mix up the academic calendar?”
“Ohhh~ Nope. Not break—leave of absence. I got confused. Hehe.”
Luia beamed, sunny and open. Despite her radiant looks she had a slightly airheaded streak, which was probably why both Yejin and Jaehee quietly doted on her.
“Unnie, please take care of me.”
“Uh… sure.”
One peculiar habit: she never called the other inmates by name, only by titles. Even when Yejin insisted they drop the formalities and just talk freely, Luia’s honorifics refused to budge. The one small mercy was that she switched to casual speech when they wrote notes to each other.
Ah, and Luia was bisexual. Well… that wasn’t important, so we moved on.
Now that I knew my cellmates, it was finally my turn.
“Me? I just… watched some videos and ended up here.”
I laid out everything—the circumstances around my resignation, the fantasies I’d held about Prison Island, and the impressions of the last three days—and in the process we grew closer. Everyone seemed like good people; that was a relief. There was still so much we didn’t know about one another, so many things left to say, but we could learn them gradually.
And so we talked for a long time, filling in the blanks of each other’s lives.
We lost ourselves in conversation. I had no idea how much time had passed, but just as I was starting to feel hungry, Yejin’s face suddenly twisted and she looked toward Jaehee.
“Jaehee.”
“Yeah. I felt it.”
No further explanation was needed; Jaehee simply nodded at the call. Then she pressed her back against the wall, fiddled with something, and let out a long sigh.
“Unnie, don’t tell me…”
“That’s right, Luia. Drying’s started. Shut your mouth and endure.”
“Yes.”
Jaehee answered Luia first, then turned to me.
“Nayoon, listen carefully. From now on—no, it’s already begun—the cell is going into drying mode.”
“Drying?”
“Yeah. The whole cell gets sterilized so mold doesn’t grow. Look at the walls—the moisture’s already gone. They suck out the humidity and disinfect everything.”
“Ah… you’re right. The walls are bone-dry.”
The prison that had always been damp from the constant spray of recovery fluid had changed. The walls had become hard, parched stone; the floor still held only the faint traces of the blood and sweat we had shed all night, and even those traces were dissolving and blurring under the residual chemicals in the recovery fluid.
“This… is going to last until night. Until the recovery fluid comes back out, it’s going to be hell. There’s no way around it. You just have to save every drop of spit you can and tough it out… and there’s more than that, too…”
“Jaehee, stop talking. You’ll never make it if you keep going.”
Worried about me, Jaehee had been trying to pass on every scrap of information even while her face crumpled. Yejin cut her off. Even without the rest of the warning I could already feel my lips drying out. If Jaehee kept speaking she would only suffer more, so I agreed with Yejin.
“But…”
“Jaehee. I get the idea. Keep my mouth shut and endure, right?”
“…Yeah.”
“Thanks. I’ll do my best.”
“All right. From now on we talk by writing on each other if we have to. Especially if the Stimulation Spores get bad, let us know. Even if we can’t suck them, we can still pinch you with our hands.”
With Yejin’s final summary everyone nodded and pressed their backs to the wall. The moment skin met stone, a gentle heat seeped into our bodies—like a low-temperature jjimjilbang. Sweat beaded and threatened to fall while the cell slowly lost every last drop of moisture.
“….”
We sat in silence, backs against the wall. The cell was so narrow that our legs brushed one another’s bodies; even without speaking we could still communicate with eyes and small nods. We traded faint smiles to fight the boredom, shifted the cuffs when our wrists ached, and simply waited for time to pass.
It wasn’t easy. When we had been talking, time had flown; the moment we sealed our mouths and tried only to endure, the minutes stretched into something almost suspicious. On top of that the temperature inside the cell kept climbing, sweat beading on our skin, and the environment grew steadily more hostile.
“Huu…”
Even knowing we were losing moisture, the stifling heat forced rough sighs out of our mouths. The cell’s environmental shift—meant to sterilize foreign matter—seemed ready to classify us as foreign matter too and simply dry us out of existence. Our bodies grew slick with sweat; the smell of several days without washing began to thicken.
“…Hup.”
Fortunately we were all in the same environment, the same predicament; even as the odor worsened we could understand and endure. If—just if—someone with a weak stomach had been among us… that cell would have been far worse. Luckily our cell had no such person.
Still, it was not something we could simply sit through. We were right at the edge of what we could bear. The smell rising from every body filled the cell; the temperature climbed without end until even keeping our bare asses on the floor became difficult, and fear began to creep in.
Don’t tell me… are they trying to boil us alive?
Of course Jaehee and Yejin, both veterans, sat quietly, so it couldn’t be that—but the thought still rose because the suffering was that intense. Hot, dry, thick with a smell that made breathing hard… and then, on top of everything else—
“Eut…! Hup…!”
The Stimulation Spores began to move, and it was pure hell.
The first time they had stirred had been while we were still talking. Back then Jaehee had helped, and because the pain was sharp, external stimulation had dulled it. Now it was different. This movement felt exactly like someone had caught a nipple between two fingers and was rolling it—slow, deliberate, the way you caress yourself during masturbation. A tickling, thrilling sensation bloomed at the tips of my breasts.
“Hup…! Eut…!”
I tilted my head slightly and bit my lip. I knew. I knew perfectly well. There was no one in front of me… this was only the spores moving. I understood that completely. And yet… this felt like—
“Uu… ugut…! Haut!♡ Ah… aaa…!”
It was far too sweet a caress…!
Even knowing I shouldn’t, my lips parted and I trembled.
“Hold on just a little longer…. Nayoon. If you keep your mouth open it’ll only get worse.”
“Yeah… I know… euhk…! Hau…!”
Yejin, who had noticed my state, spoke with a worried expression. Her own mouth must have been bone-dry, yet she still opened it for me; that alone showed how sincerely she was fretting. But right now the advice was useless. I tried to close my lips; they simply would not stay shut.
Damn spores. Why are you so good at this…!
They weren’t actually touching me, of course, yet I felt thoroughly toyed with. My nipples swelled; every time they caught on the torn edges of my clothes and swayed, pleasure raced up my spine until I thought I would pant out loud.
Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me…
Am I about to come from the Stimulation Spores alone?
Do I have to come?
“Heut…!♡ Hauk…!”
I have to hold on. I can feel it, I can suffer, but somehow I don’t want to come from the spores. If I do… the helplessness will only grow deeper.
“Eup…! Hut…!”
I bit my lip and endured. Honestly I was already at my limit. Just a little longer… just a little more… just a little more…!
“Ha— aeut…! Ah…! Aaa…. Haa♡…ah.”
Resistance ended almost at once. It wasn’t as intense as a penetration climax, but the moment my body crossed the threshold of arousal, strength drained out of me and pleasure flooded every nerve. I hadn’t drunk anything, so nothing sprayed, yet a thin trickle still slipped out between the fluids already gathered between my legs.
“…Nayoon. It’s okay. Hard, right? Lean on me.”
“Unnie…”
“Heuk… yeah… s-sorry… geut…! Ha… eueu.”
A faint scent of urine made the cell even more oppressive. Even so my cellmates fretted over me first. Jaehee offered her shoulder; Luia carefully rubbed the wet spot with her bare foot, spreading it thin across the floor. “It’ll dry anyway,” she wrote.
We had agreed to communicate only by writing, yet out of worry for me they all endured their own discomfort and spoke aloud to comfort me. Gratitude and guilt tangled together. But the only thing I could do inside that tangle was—
“Keuhp…! Eup…! Heua… aaa.… Eu…!”
—pant under the still-moving Stimulation Spores.
“Eut…! Ha-eup!”
And I was not the only one. Before my spores had even finished, Luia’s body began to tremble; she squeezed her eyes shut. She scribbled a quick note on Yejin’s thigh, then leaned over and laid her head on Yejin’s knee. Yejin pinched Luia’s breast between her fingers—her own rough way of grounding her.
The fate of an inmate ruled by spores. The repeated reminder that we could be toyed with at any moment continued without mercy. Intensity, pain, timing, pattern—all random. As if the spores possessed a will of their own and had sworn never to give us the pleasure we actually wanted, we cycled endlessly between resistance and surrender.
Fortunately one storm of Stimulation Spores eventually passed, and another long stretch of time crawled by.
“….”
We sat in silence. How long had we been inside this pitch-black cell? The air was still thick with stifling heat and misery.
“Haa. Ha… eu….”
Every last drop of spit we had carefully hoarded in our mouths had dried up; without exception we all suffered. If it had been as dry as a sauna we might at least have fainted. Instead the temperature stayed just high enough, for just long enough, that the torment only deepened.
Hard… so hard.
I genuinely wanted to get out of the cell. Even knowing that outside meant being dragged to the training room and tortured, I still didn’t want to stay here.
Ah. So that’s it.
An inmate is a being who can never truly rest, not even for a single moment.
With hazy consciousness I waited for the door to open. But the door remained shut… and until someone decided to open it, we were inmates who could not escape.