The Execution Grounds
Water forced its way up my nose.
Water filled my mouth.
For a few seconds I thrashed inside a space sealed on every side by water.
Unable to draw a single breath, my body was claimed by the water that had poured into my nose and mouth.
The sharp, stinging sensation that had hovered at the tip of my nose seeped deeper and deeper into me.
This was far beyond mere torment.
Pain that surpassed simple suffocation felt as if it were shredding my lungs to pieces.
This kind of agony.
I had never wanted to know it….
This kind of suffering.
I should never have learned it.
I felt like I was going to die.
In less than a full minute, my body seemed to be dying by degrees.
Strength drained from a body racing toward death second by second.
This… I’m really dying.
The acceleration toward death was even faster than when Asmode had choked me.
Terror seized every inch of my body.
This… is real…!
— Gurgle. Glug-glug-glug.
“Puhah!! Uph!! Cough… haah! Ghk…! Haa. Haa! Haa. Haa!”
In the midst of that near-death moment, the water that had risen past the crown of my head drained away.
As the waterline dropped, my airway opened and oxygen rushed in to fill my lungs.
“Cough!! Cooough!! Keh…! Cough! Haa. Haa. Ha…a. Haa…!”
Once oxygen reclaimed my lungs, the invader—water—was expelled.
Even though it was only water, the reverse flow through my windpipe was pure agony.
My chest heaved violently.
“Haa. Haa. Haa. Haa.”
I looked around.
None of the water that had filled the drum remained.
There must have been microscopic holes in the floor I couldn’t see; the water drained with startling speed.
Thanks to that I could breathe again, but….
“Hic… uhk… S-stop….”
The pain did not end there.
This time water began to pour from the rods still buried in my pussy and anus.
I couldn’t see it, yet the pain of being filled from the inside was intense.
Especially the sensation of water flooding into my pussy… it went beyond the worst; it was torture in itself.
Was it even just water?
But the liquid that leaked out in thin streams was unmistakably clean water.
Even so, my womb throbbed with a deep, stabbing ache.
Well, I had never put water in there myself, and every woman instinctively closes her pussy when she bathes. That was simply nature.
Forcing water into a place like that filled my lower belly with a sensation that went past stinging into outright burning.
On top of that, the water forced into my anus was almost too much to bear.
I had been handling my bowels with enemas for days, so I thought I could endure most things….
But the powerful water pressure swelled my intestines until I felt every organ might burst.
“Haah…! Ha… hauk…! S-stop…! It’s going to burst…! Nnngh!”
Water filling my lower body.
My belly, visibly swollen, brought pain and terror together.
It was hard. It was unbearable.
I had no idea why washing a body required this, but this was not something you did to a human being.
“Open it…! Open…! S-stop…! Let me out! Stooop!”
My eyes met Leviathan’s as he watched me with open satisfaction.
I scraped at the glass wall of the washing machine and begged him.
In that same moment—
— Shhhhhhhhhh
Water poured down from above my head once more.
How many more times…! How many more times do they plan to do this?
I already knew the answer.
Contamination Level: 14%. Restarting wash cycle.
Just as the alarm had said earlier, they would keep washing me until I met their standards.
And the contamination level they spoke of included the inside of my organs as well.
“Nnngh!! Kuh!”
The rods that had been filling my pussy and anus with water now began to suck that water back out.
The sensation of water being yanked away under fierce pressure felt as if my very intestines were being torn free.
My pussy… was it going to pull out even the eggs hidden deep inside?
Probably… Leviathan’s semen that he had dumped into me the day before yesterday would be sucked out along with it.
If there was any small comfort, that was the only one.
“Stop! I said stop… stop… stooop….”
Under the water cascading from above, all I could do was make a tearful face.
Once again I had to endure helplessly beneath that powerful stream.
That was all I could do.
I could only take it.
Just as I always had….
Haa—
— Whirr.
Wash complete. Releasing inmate.
How much time had passed?
After that I had to endure continuous laundry… no, water torture disguised as a bath.
Water injected into and sucked out of my pussy and anus six times.
Forced under the overhead stream and submerged eight times.
And finally, after the scorching hot-air drying that made me scream without pause, my body was left covered in nothing but angry red marks.
Only when even the lightest touch felt like it would drive me mad with stinging did the washing machine finally set me free.
“Come out.”
“…Uuh. Uhk… Y-yes.… I’ll come… out.”
But no rest was granted.
One fact I had learned with absolute certainty here was this….
Inmates were never given time to rest.
No matter how they were treated, no matter what state they were in.
When a guard gave an order, you moved.
“Haa… uha. Ah… aah.”
My hands and feet trembled.
My pussy and anus felt shredded, as if they had been raped by water.
My body was clean, yet my heart and mind felt more contaminated than ever.
Forcing my raw, stinging body upright, I stepped out of the washing machine. At almost the same moment the other doors opened, and my cellmates staggered out and gathered around, half-crawling.
At least—
“Huu….”
—only Yejin, with her superior physical ability, walked out as if it had been nothing.
“Hauk… uhk…!”
“Uu… uuh… haa. Haa. Uhk…!”
Jaehee and Luia, who had barely endured the torture of cold water and hot air, looked every bit as wrecked as I felt.
Especially Luia, pale-skinned and thin-skinned as a white woman, was mottled with new bruises from the water jets, looking more blotchy than when she had gone in.
“Here. Fresh prisoner uniforms. All of you, put them on.”
“Yes.”
New prisoner uniforms had been laid out in the middle of the room.
Same as last time: white camisole-style uniforms.
The difference was that they were more torn than before, more stained, and several patches had been dyed brown as if they had been soaked in muddy water.
“….”
Just putting them on made our status as inmates feel brutally naked.
Still… even if the Stimulation Spores made every brush of fabric a torment when they activated, it was better than being completely bare.
There was no special reason.
Being naked… just….
It made you feel like you weren’t even being treated as a person, didn’t it?
“Going to the Training Area now would make it hard to hit the schedule, so today you’ll do other activities under this guard’s direct orders. First, though, we’re eating. Assume the evening meal posture.”
“Yes!”
We moved to the laundry entrance and lined up in the corridor according to Leviathan’s instructions.
Then we each received one of the dog bowls he had prepared, set it on the floor, and knelt.
“….”
The first time I saw those dog bowls, the mere fact of using them had left me speechless. Only a few days later, I was almost glad to see them.
The meal itself held no pleasure, but after going more than a full day without food, I genuinely wanted to put something in my mouth.
On top of that, the forced bath had made me swallow and vomit water several times, and the enemas had left my insides feeling completely empty.
Lumps, pills—I didn’t care.
I just wanted something in my mouth.
“Today’s a special meal. Leave any and I’ll make you do another laundry cycle this afternoon and add a hundred penalty points, so eat every bit. Meal time is three minutes, as always.”
Even though the food hadn’t appeared yet, Leviathan’s explanation alone made this meal terrifying.
Food worth a hundred penalty points if you left any.
Probably something extremely spicy… or disgusting… or hard even to put in your mouth.
Hunger and dread warred inside me as Leviathan brought over something like a bucket from near the laundry.
A ladle stuck out of the bucket; the way it sloshed suggested it was full of something.
“Here. Eat.”
— Splat.
Just as expected.
Leviathan scooped a pale, watery liquid from the bucket with the ladle and poured it into each dog bowl.
There were no solids at all.
Almost no viscosity either—just something that looked like white beverage.
Yet facing a food that seemed less revolting than it looked, I swallowed without thinking.
Have I… really fallen this far?
“Eat.”
“Thank you.”
The order was given.
At his single word, every inmate buried her face in her bowl and ate.
The taste… was nothing special.
Like every meal here, the white liquid had no flavor at all.
The one mercy was that, unlike the lumps, it went down easily, and it lacked the alien texture of the evening pills.
“Smack-smack…. Slurp. Mm… mmm.”
“Slurp… smack… haam… mmm.”
“Smack… smack… slurp… smack.”
“Mmm… mm. Smack.”
Everyone fell into the trance of eating.
Even a flavorless meal, if it was easy to swallow, counted as a feast.
And more than anything, watching Jaehee and Yejin—hardened by long imprisonment—eat without the slightest resistance suggested there was nothing particularly wrong with the food itself.
Still, I couldn’t let my guard down.
At any moment Leviathan’s mouth might spit out some grotesque truth about what we were eating, so even while finishing within the time limit I chewed every mouthful until I felt it had truly soaked into my body before swallowing.
Even if this had been made from filthy excrement.
I was determined not to show any ugly vomiting.
“Heh.”
But while we finished every drop, Leviathan said nothing.
Unease made me guess at the food’s identity several times, yet I never found a clear answer.
At the very end there lingered a faint fishy smell unique to shellfish….
Wait… fishy?
Surely he hadn’t mixed in semen or something?
“All of you finished on time. In that case, today—”
“Uht…! Uhk!”
“Interrupting a guard, A522. Park Jaehee, five penalty points.”
“Yes…. I-I’m sorry.”
“Anyway, from now on we’ll do outdoor activities. You’ll perform self-directed labor until the torture session this evening. All of you, put your hands out in front.”
“…Yes.”
At his order everyone brought their hands together in front of their bellies.
Even Jaehee, who had just cut Leviathan off, accepted the handcuffs while trembling.
From her expression and soft whimpers, the Stimulation Spores were tormenting her.
Suddenly the knowledge that I could end up the same way at any moment tightened around my heart.
I had taken quite a lot of it in the early morning….
Please don’t activate during a hard time. If they must activate, let them torment me during the torture session—I sincerely hoped as I followed behind Leviathan.
— Clack. Clack.
The path following Leviathan.
We walked a long way down corridors in a direction I had never taken before.
“…?”
A question rose.
He had said outdoor activities and even put handcuffs on us, so I had assumed we would leave the prison… yet the direction he was heading was completely opposite.
The gate we had first entered through was on the Confinement Area side, where the guard offices clustered.
So when he said “outdoors,” I had naturally thought we would exit through that gate….
The place we reached following Leviathan was the deepest part of the Training Area.
In front of an iron gate thick with conspicuous vines.
And beyond that iron gate—
…sunlight?
“A691.”
“…Yes.”
“You’re familiar with this place, aren’t you?”
“Ha… yes. I am.”
Before opening the gate, Leviathan asked Yejin.
From her answer it seemed she had already been here.
Strangely, though, Jaehee—still struggling under the spores—wore the expression of someone seeing a completely unfamiliar place.
Even though her sentence was longer and she had spent more time here, the way she looked around was little different from Luia or me.
“Well. Last time A522 had her eyes covered when she received her execution, so she probably doesn’t know the place well. That means everyone except A691 is here for the first time, doesn’t it?”
The casual remark Leviathan tossed out.
Just now… what did he say?
“I’ll tell you. This is the Execution Area. Commonly called the execution grounds. Cross this gate and you enter an outdoor space walled off on every side by high walls. When an inmate is to be executed, they’re dragged here. You, A522, received an execution here once before. Do you remember what kind of execution it was?”
“Uht… yes. Blindfolded… it was a pursuit.”
“You know what was chasing you, right?”
“Hauk… yes. I know… I do. Uht.”
“Tell your cellmates. Tell them what you went through.”
“Uht…!”
At Leviathan’s order, Jaehee ground her teeth.
She seemed to be forcing the old memories back up.
And the explanation that spilled out was short, yet far too cruel.
“I… back then… uht…! With a hood covering my eyes and ears and an O-ring gag in my mouth…, I was hunted. By male dogs… that had been pumped full of aphrodisiacs.”
“How many times were you caught?”
“Hic…! Twenty-seven… times.”
“How did they take you?”
“They… uhk…! Grabbed my arms and legs… bit me… made me suck them… hic… uhk!”
“That’s right. The place you were chased is right through there. How about it? Feeling a little nostalgic now?”
At his words Jaehee’s shoulders shook.
From what she said, the “male dogs” were not the ordinary dogs I knew.
The same male dogs that had been mentioned once in the Solitary Confinement Area.
Just what were they?
As another question formed—
Leviathan clapped once and drew every eye.
“Anyway, all you need to know for now is that that’s what that place is…”
Trembling Jaehee, and Yejin with a dark expression.
Luia’s face full of fear of the unknown.
And me as well.
Every gaze turned to Leviathan.
Then came the main point.
“Today’s labor is installation work inside for the next execution subject… hm? But…”
Fortunately, no one was being executed today.
Yet Leviathan added one more line at the end of that sentence.
The question that followed his trailing words was—
“A713. Why are you smiling again?”
…Huh?