Nayoon
When I opened my eyes again, everything was already over.
I had suffered a severe head injury and needed several surgeries.
I was told he had beaten me so hard that his own hands shattered.
And he… had been seized by court officials, yet seized a chance to flee… and died.
More precisely, while on the run he drank and drove, plunging off a seawall; by the time they found him he was already a corpse.
It looked as though he had paid for his crimes, but honestly it never felt real. I could not truly feel that he had been punished.
…
To me they delivered an urn. Precisely, the remains left after cremation at the crematorium.
It was not my ex-husband’s.
What lay inside the urn… was the child who had once shared a heartbeat with me.
Normally such processing would never be done for a child who had never even been born, yet I insisted until I could at least hold the child this way.
During the surgery meant to save me, the excessive anesthetic had taken its toll, and the child had no choice but to leave.
The medical staff told me that if I had died the child would have died with me anyway, so the choice had been inevitable; they told me not to feel guilt.
It was… consolation.
“Hic… sob… waaah… sob… My child… sob hic…”
But how… could I possibly not feel it?
Back in the house that was once mine, I clutched the child’s urn and wept.
A handful.
A child so small it would not even fill a single handful of ash.
My child.
I cried and cried again.
I called, over and over, the name I had planned to give the moment the child was born.
Having lost even the object of my hatred… that was all I could do.
Come to think of it—
Suddenly I remembered the days when I was still dating my ex-husband. We had gone for a name-fortune reading.
According to the saju it was a name that ranked among the absolute worst.
I recalled the fortune-teller’s face as he declared that the reason I had lost my parents was because of that name.
He told me that to lighten the sin of the name, I myself would have to suffer.
Of course, at the time he demanded an enormous fee as the price of that suffering, so I had laughed it off.
Then… perhaps.
Was the reason I lost the child’s life because of me?
All because of me. Because of me…
If I suffered more, if I received punishment…
Then at least the child who had gone to the other world might smile one pure smile for me?
And so I made my decision.
I had won the lawsuit, yet my ex-husband was already dead and no property remained to be reclaimed from him.
With nothing left and no will to live, what I needed now was punishment for myself.
Whether losing the child was because of the saju, or because of the tenacious life I had forced myself to live—whatever the result, it had originated from me… so I had to be punished.
Then what would be the greatest punishment of all?
Simply dying could never be the answer.
One day, while I spent every hour weeping, I confirmed that almost nothing of my fortune remained. I disposed of the house itself and settled every last affair.
Then I went to one place.
“Yes. No, it’s hard, but that’s exactly why. As you know I have no money left… and because it’s hard, I want to go back even more. If I’m going to seize any will to live again, nowhere else comes close.”
That was what I said aloud.
My true heart was different.
Please punish me. Until I almost die… until I want to die… I want to be punished. You can kill me. Please just kill me.
“Yes, a long sentence is good. I need to revive my sex drive and rebuild some assets. Yes, exactly. That’s why I want the videos released right away. Yes, I’m fine with that.”
If I die, I’ve set everything so all the profits go to charity. I’ll just suffer for three years and die. That will be my final atonement.
Carrying a heart that did not match my words, I knocked once more on the door of Waltz Production.
In my heart I wanted to finish everything with S-Class, but I had never completed the required six months of A-Class, so that path was closed.
Instead I set A-Class for the maximum possible term.
Waltz Production expressed concern over such a long sentence, yet my unshakable will carried the day.
That long… surely at least one chance to die would appear inside it.
I felt a faint guilt at using the company that had once helped me as a mere tool, yet looked at another way, I could think of it as offering my body one last time to help their business.
Either way.
Considering the sales of the previous three months of footage and the money they had already earned from me, for the next three years my body alone would be more than enough help.
I could still serve as material for the Waltz Production that had once aided me…
At a moment like this, at least, my youthful-looking frame was not a bad thing.
Several days later the day came to return to Prison Island.
Even in that short span Waltz Production called repeatedly, urging me to shorten the sentence even a little, yet my decision never wavered.
Alone in the room that was no longer mine, a space I would never return to, I finished packing.
Then I climbed into the transport vehicle.
“Get in. 912A-2.”
Two familiar faces greeted me.
Machia and Hobbs.
The transport officers for this region.
Yet they did not recognize me.
Perhaps after dealing with so many inmates they had simply forgotten.
Well, considering I had spent barely a day with them before, it would have been stranger if they remembered.
…Yes. Better this way.
Inside the transport vehicle several women still wearing clothes filled the seats.
Probably the ones headed for B-Class or C-Class.
Being the only one naked brought a flush of shame, yet I ignored it and walked on.
The stares that came with A-Class—I had already endured them once. This much was nothing.
And yet…
What is it with that woman…?
At the far end of the vehicle one woman sat with her forehead pressed to the floor, trembling violently.
She wore no clothes either; she was clearly another A-Class inmate.
“921A-1. Raise your head and straighten your back.”
Only when we reached Waltz Production HQ was she finally allowed to lift her face.
From the temporary number I knew at once she was my batch-mate.
The moment she raised her head I saw the fragile, sweat-soaked, struggling look of a first-timer.
From then on our journey continued together.
Even knowing the danger I warned 921A-1 about the risk of overeating and earned myself a punishment for it; I also told her how to endure the ordeal that awaited us on the ship so she would not face something worse.
I did not know why, but I felt sorry for the first-timer.
It was as though if I did nothing a crushing guilt would crush me, so I chose to help her survive a little better even if it cost me.
After all, I was going to Prison Island to be punished; there was nothing to call sacrifice.
It was simply more punishment for myself.
The peak came the instant we arrived on the island.
“Oh-ho? Resistance, is it?”
After every hardship we had finally reached Prison Island, yet 921A-1 refused to move even when Machia ordered her.
Instead she squeezed her eyes shut and braced herself as if to say do whatever you want.
I had seen inmates resist like that on the island before.
Most of them were first-timers, and the results were never good.
So I worried.
Nothing good would come of it… only more pain…
Anxious about the punishment the transport officers would deliver, I met their eyes.
They too looked troubled, weighing their options.
So I stepped forward first.
With the posture and expression that best suited an inmate I looked at Machia.
The experienced man read my intention at once.
“Right. Sometimes we get bitches like this. You. 912A-2. Head to the ground.”
“Hey, 912A-2. While your batch-mate was resisting like that, what the hell were you doing? And you with experience, no less. Huh? Answer me.”
“I… I’m sorry. Ugh…! Hic!”
My own stamina was already drained, yet I obeyed the order.
In a situation where direct help was impossible, it was the perfect corporal punishment to drive into my batch-mate the reality and resolve of an inmate.
Then, under the pretext of helping her, I sucked Hobbs’s and Machia’s cocks.
They seemed to have recovered their earlier memories.
During my previous sentence, the punishment given to me when I collapsed trembling on this very beach had been exactly this.
Back then I had been wearing a chastity belt, so they forced fellatio on me, saying they would use my mouth as a substitute.
Just like then I licked and sucked, coaxing them to climax.
“Slurp…! Mmph!! Mmph! Suck!”
I had not expected the nipple clamps, yet I sucked them dry and even swallowed the semen; in the end 921A-1 was forgiven.
To her I flashed a V-sign.
I did not want her to feel guilt toward me.
Whether the meaning got through or not, afterward 921A-1 looked at me with a friendly expression.
Less apology, more gratitude; less gratitude, more a sense of kinship.
It was also my first time meeting a batch-mate, so I found the experience novel and was able to begin life on Prison Island in a good mood.
“Oho~ So you’re the re-inmate? All right. This time your assigned guard is me. Do you know who I am?”
“…Yes. Marmon-nim.”
But our companionship ended there.
Assigned to different guards, we were separated the moment we entered the prison.
Still, I knew we would share training hours and joint cell-block schedules, so I sent her a silent greeting with my eyes and calmly followed my new guard.
I would see her again tomorrow anyway.
For now I would focus on the present.
“So. A re-inmate… Can you tell me why you chose to come back?”
My new assigned guard, Marmon.
Honestly, when I learned he was my guard I felt a twinge of disappointment.
He was… the gentlest man among all the guards I knew.
His inmates tended to receive unusually low Demeanor Penalty Points, and sometimes he even used his authority to erase points—an odd guard indeed.
In the past I might not have minded.
But for the me of now he was the wrong match.
I wanted someone harsher… someone like Asmode or Shatan who did not treat inmates as human beings.
Failing that, even Leviathan or Ba’al, who at least treated inmates with pure professional coldness, would have been better.
For someone who had come here to suffer, the beginning already felt twisted.
And so my new sentence began.
Fortunately there was one thing I could lean on.
The Demeanor Penalty Points I had left behind from my previous sentence were still there.
Execution terrified me, yet in my present state I needed to face it at least once.
I knew.
I knew this mindset might destroy my mind…
Even so, I felt that only by undergoing Execution once would something inside me loosen.
Even if it did not, the urge to destroy myself was already driving me toward the cliff.
I could not define exactly what crime I had committed, yet I felt I had to receive some punishment—any punishment—or I would not be able to go on.
So… little by little I piled up the points.
Beside me my batch-mate 921A-1, now called A713, fretted openly, yet that only fed a new desire to protect her and became another reason to accumulate still more points.
The more points I gathered, the safer she would be.
With that thought I simply enjoyed the daily tortures that came with the rising score.
I regarded them as atonement for myself.
Marmon deliberately tried not to issue points, yet I piled them on regardless, desperate to ease my self-reproach.
And at last the day arrived when the condemned were announced.
“A691, A713, A688…!”
In the end I made the list.
It surprised me a little that my batch-mate A713 had also been sentenced to Execution, yet the result was already fixed; there was nothing I could do. I was dragged away carrying only regret.
The execution ground we were taken to.
This time the method was crucifixion.
Nails pierced the tops of my feet and the palms of my hands.
Agony flared; then, when my full weight hung from them, pain so mad it felt like it would drive me insane flooded in.
Still, compared to the previous Execution I had endured, the suffering was lighter.
This much… could not truly be called Execution.
Then what further tortures awaited?
I guessed branding irons, or perhaps setting the cross itself ablaze.
Otherwise there would be no reason for them to build something that looked like a bonfire.
…Yet the present situation was already hard enough.
A cross rising five meters into the air.
One of the tortures they used because they knew I suffered from acrophobia.
As I was lifted, terror seized me.
My teeth chattered against the gag with extreme fear.
Yes. This much at least deserved the name Execution.
And on top of that… ah, right. The branding iron.
The one Lucifer was taking out… it was the same iron he had used on another condemned inmate before.
…I was thinking that when—
“Fucking lunatics. Hey. A688, you okay?”
“U…umph…!”
“Haah—this is bad. Looks like she’s got acrophobia… Hey, just close your eyes. Shit… if she loses it completely it’ll be even more dangerous…”
Another inmate, worried about me, spoke up.
Earlier I had noticed A691; her face was familiar. She was the woman who had arrived not long after my previous sentence began.
And yet…
What had I just heard?
The first time the word reached me I simply went blank.
I doubted my own ears.
“Nayoon-ah.”
“…Huh?”
“Do you know what sundome is…?”
“Ah… that.”
I heard none of the conversation that followed.
The only thing that lodged in my ear was a single word. A single name.
Tears surged.
Why did that word have to ring in my ears now?
Why of all times.
Why!
I swallowed the sob and hung my head.
The name I had screamed for days on end.
The name of my dead child.
The name carved into my heart… the one I could never forget.
Nayoon
The batch-mate beside me.
The condemned woman.
She had the same name.