The Lawyer
A man arrived dressed in a crisp, immaculate suit.
He unfolded two folding chairs he had brought along with his briefcase.
"Here. The floor must be cold — please, get up and take a seat."
In a businesslike manner, he invited me to sit.
Who was he?
A face I'd never seen before.
The man — one of those types people called "slit-eyed" — was watching me with those narrow, thinly opened eyes.
"...Yes."
Out of baseless fear, I forced my exhausted body upright.
It felt faintly shameful.
With a guard it might have been different, but sitting before a man in a full suit while wearing only this revealing prison uniform brought an unexpected flush of embarrassment.
It was a feeling I would normally have forgotten by now — yet after Leviathan had just treated me like a human being while we shared our bodies, that long-buried emotion pricked at me more than I expected.
I sat down on the chair, arms wrapped as tightly around myself as I could manage.
"First, allow me to introduce myself."
Judging that I was ready to listen, the man drew various documents and a terminal from his bag and began to explain who he was — and why he had come.
"My name is Jin Sunghan. I serve as counsel for Waltz Production."
He was a lawyer.
He presented a fingerprint-stamped attorney's license, then accessed an identity verification site and completed an iris scan as well. Only after proving his credentials did he bow his head.
A lawyer, appearing out of nowhere.
I was bewildered by his presence, but his manner was so scrupulously courteous that I found myself bowing in return.
"Within Waltz Production, my nickname is Solomon. It suits a judge better than a lawyer, perhaps — but it isn't a bad feeling, is it? Haha."
The smiling attorney.
He seemed intent on keeping the atmosphere pleasant.
But more than that, I wanted to know why he was here at all.
"Ah... yes. But why is a lawyer...?"
"Oh~ I see. Fortunately, Nayoon, your mind seems intact. In that case, I can proceed straight to the explanation. Heh. I should have come to you first, honestly. Yejin was half broken — rambling nonsense the whole time..."
A familiar name left his lips.
My cellmate. Kim Yejin.
The instant I heard her name, the hellish moment of my own execution rose before my eyes.
"Ah... aah...!"
"Oh dear. I seem to have said the wrong thing. Still, please calm yourself. If you break down as well, Nayoon, today's work will run terribly late."
"Ugh... yes... nngh..."
My body shook like a leaf in the wind.
Even when I tried to hold it down by force of will, the sensation of being edged to the brink only to be dropped still branded itself through every nerve.
If Leviathan hadn't soothed me just a short while ago, I might already have been fingering myself open right in front of this man.
Perhaps that was why Leviathan had treated me with an uncharacteristic gentleness — to prevent exactly that.
"To state my purpose simply: I am here to reconfirm your will, Nayoon."
"...What? Reconfirm...?"
"Yes. More to the point — this was your first incarceration, correct? Then let me ask you something."
"...Yes."
"Do you know why the execution system exists?"
The conversation suddenly took on the air of a lecture.
At Attorney Sunghan's question, I thought carefully about the execution system.
From the first counseling session all the way to now, I had always assumed execution was merely an institutional device for staging the most extreme play on Prison Island.
But after living through it myself, what I felt was a little different.
"I think... it was created to manage the inmates."
"Hmm~ And why is that? Penalty points alone would be enough, wouldn't they? When torture time comes, you already suffer more in proportion to your points. Is an execution system really necessary?"
What was he driving at?
Faced with an answer that deliberately pushed back against my thinking, I carefully shook my head.
"No. Having lived it as an inmate... I understand how important it is that once a month, the mere presence of an unknown fear forces you to pull yourself together. If there were no executions... I would have spent every single day thinking only of the pain, and it would have broken me. But because executions exist, I could immerse myself more deeply in Prison Island. My obedience... grew stronger, too."
Receiving penalty points and being tortured day after day, versus facing execution once a month.
It was hard to argue, by simple comparison, which of the two was harsher.
But what direct experience had taught me was this: both systems were essential for increasing an inmate's suffering and for keeping her under control.
I had to stay sharp every day to keep my penalty points down.
And knowing those points could accumulate into catastrophic harm meant I could never fully let go of the tension.
Aside from the women in my own cell, it was nearly impossible to know another cell's penalty totals — so an execution system decided by relative ranking was a far more effective tool of suppression than the daily, quantifiable reflection of points into torture time.
And the inmates themselves could find a strange satisfaction inside that controlled, oppressed environment.
A system where guards and inmates both came out ahead.
Wasn't that what the execution system really was?
If I had been dragged here against my will, it might have been different. But for someone who had walked in of her own free will, that was what execution meant to me.
"Yes. Correct. However, the execution system carries one additional meaning that inmates are not told."
"...What is that?"
"It means the inmate's death. In other words — the termination of the inmate's activity."
"What do you mean by...?"
"Allow me to explain."
When my face went blank with incomprehension, Attorney Sunghan held out a set of materials.
"Originally, Prison Island had no execution system. It was introduced... let me see... roughly six or seven years ago. It was created after an inmate attempted suicide."
"An inmate... committed suicide?"
"Yes. I hadn't joined the company yet, so I don't know every detail, but according to what I've verified, one inmate couldn't endure the torture during her sentence and bit through her own tongue."
"Ah... I see."
I could understand it well enough.
I had entered this island voluntarily, and even so the life here was more painful than I had imagined. Every act I had only ever known as knowledge turned out to be very different in reality.
Fortunately, my cellmates had helped me adapt.
Without them, I would never have survived this hellish existence.
But to come here by choice... and still choose suicide.
"Hmm... judging by your reaction, it seems some of the memories from the execution have faded."
"Pardon? What did you just say?"
"It's nothing. I'll continue the explanation."
Had I been thinking too deeply about the inmate's suicide?
Attorney Sunghan let a dubious remark slip past.
I frowned at the unexpected comment, but he merely tipped his head as if it were of no consequence and pressed on.
"In any case, after that incident Waltz Production went through a great deal of deliberation. The result was the creation of the execution system. On the surface, as you said, Nayoon, it is a system for controlling inmates. But in truth..."
"..."
"It is a chance for the inmate to give up."
"...Give up...?"
"Yes."
What followed was a long explanation. Its core was this:
"An inmate who has undergone execution may choose whether to continue her sentence or to abandon it. If she chooses to give up, the incarceration itself is cancelled — unlike other conditions — and she is barred from applying to any Waltz Production program for one year afterward. Ah, and for Grade A, re-enrollment becomes permanently impossible."
"However, the first execution is an exception: adjustments to incarceration options are available. Re-enrolled inmates are not eligible — only those who are completely new, like you, Nayoon. If you wish, you may serve the remainder of your term in Grade B, or you may attach additional option settings."
"Among those options are things advantageous to you — a daily limit of one hundred lashes, a daily cap on penalty points, and so on. Looking at your current incarceration conditions... you don't have many options attached. You were placed under a special system the moment you were locked up, but the fact that you received an execution suggests the adjustment has been difficult. Well? Would you consider adding options...?"
In other words, the execution system was the inmate's last line of retreat — a final chance to choose surrender.
At his question, I swallowed hard.
Hope, arriving after a mere two weeks.
But "mere" was a word that did those two weeks no justice. Those two weeks had been hell.
Even now, I longed for the bed in my own home.
Every night, crammed into that narrow cell to sleep, the craving to lie in a real bed and rest for just one night rose up like a fever.
And for someone who had always loved eating, a life on Prison Island that had stripped away every pleasure of food made each day an ordeal.
And now, an opportunity like this was being offered to me.
"Do I... have to choose right now?"
"Yes. You must choose now. Well — not this very second, but before I leave. I need your decision so I can move on to the next counseling subject: A688, Kang Seoa."
"Ah... yes."
Hearing Seoa's name made the choice suddenly easier to reach.
In that instant, the image of her under execution rose in my mind.
Even while enduring orgasm-denial torture, her body had been so savagely broken that the sight of it had filled me with terror of my own.
Execution, true to its name, was the act of killing a person.
Nails driven through hands and feet, flesh seared with branding irons — that was not the SM I had known. It was not something one human being should do to another.
It was a living reminder that human rights had been stripped away. An inmate was subjected to acts too vicious even for an animal.
If I remained an inmate now, the day might come when I received that same treatment.
Perhaps something even worse.
"..."
Come to think of it, a short while ago had been no different.
Both hands bound.
Leviathan taking my body through one-sided play.
I still didn't know his true intent — and even if I gave him the most generous reading, that he had only been soothing the aftershocks of the orgasm-denial torture, his actions were things that would never be permitted outside Prison Island.
Here, I was nothing more than an inmate who was not treated as human.
"What will you do?"
"..."
Attorney Sunghan asked me.
At his question... I bit down on my lip.
No matter how long I turned it over, there was only one answer.
While the three condemned inmates held their consultation with the lawyer, Warden Diabolos and a handful of guards gathered in the conference room.
In the middle of the place where Prison Island's major affairs were discussed every week, the warden rubbed his bare hands over his face, working the fatigue from his eyes.
"Warden. I'm sorry."
Watching him, Marmon spoke up.
Like the warden, worry sat heavy on him; he, too, felt the exhaustion in his eyes and scrubbed at them again and again with his hand.
"Why are you apologizing?"
"...Because this situation happened on my watch as her assigned guard. If I hadn't made A688 an execution candidate in the first place... none of this would have... Hah. I really did try to be careful..."
"Don't talk nonsense. Looking at the penalty history, A688 was already an execution candidate. A691's points were overwhelming, and A713 had a direct order to be designated for this round of executions — so Leviathan finding excuses to hit her with points was unavoidable. But A688 was as good as scheduled for execution under the system itself. And you... you barely gave her any penalty points on purpose, didn't you?"
"...Haa. Even so."
Both men let out long, heavy sighs.
Their worry must have looked too large to ignore, because Leviathan — who had been listening in silence — finally added his own voice.
"...If we're counting it that way, I have nothing to say either. I was the one who fought tooth and nail against putting A713 up for execution. If I just hadn't..."
"You, drop it too! Separating regular executions from special executions was already decided in conference. This isn't any one person's fault."
They were all regretting the past.
Especially the decision-maker Diabolos; Marmon, the assigned guard of A688 who had staged the suicide attempt; and Leviathan, who had argued so fiercely that A688 had to be made an execution candidate in order to protect A713 — their sighs grew heavier still.
"I'm back."
At that moment, Ba'al returned from the Courtroom and stepped into the conference room.
The Courtroom was the name of the zone where condemned inmates made their decision to give up.
It was the place where, with the help of counselors and lawyers dispatched from headquarters, inmates who had made their final choice received — if only as a formality — a re-incarceration verdict. That was why it had been given the name.
"Right. Has A688 regained consciousness?"
"Yes. She came around after treatment. We loaded her with enough painkillers during the process, so she's stable now. She's in counseling with the counselor as we speak."
"Haa... that's a relief, at least."
At the news that the crisis had passed, Warden Diabolos let out a long breath.
He had already heard from Franken that she had received stable treatment and that her life was not in danger — but the mental side could never be guaranteed, and that was what had kept him on edge.
"So... did you hear why A688 attempted suicide?"
"Yes. But it's a bit..."
"Why? What is it? It was the execution after all, wasn't it?"
"Well... the fact that it was too agonizing is part of it, but it wasn't purely because of the execution."
"Huh? What do you mean? If it wasn't the execution... then what?"
"Well, you see..."
The news Ba'al had brought back.
The story concerning A688 — Kang Seoa — drew every guard's ear.