The Swamp
What followed was the endless repetition of labor.
Without a moment's rest granted to any of us, we walked, and walked again.
Time after time I hauled the cart—loaded with dirt until it weighed dozens of kilograms—hooked to the chain of my wrist cuffs, wringing every ounce of strength from my body. As everyone's shoveling slowed, so did my footsteps. But rest was impossible.
Crack!!
"Move forward already!"
"Kh-hup! Mmph…."
The slightest lapse, and Leviathan was already there, lashing my hips and breasts with his whip. Feeling the sting and the mounting wounds through every inch of my body, I had to keep moving simply to escape the pain of the beating.
Agonizing and exhausting as it was, I had no choice. The terror of Demeanor Penalty Points—the dread of execution—was what kept my legs going.
And it was not only me.
Crack!!
Crack!!
"You dare stop shoveling? Oh? Thinking of swinging that shovel at me? You insolent little—!"
"Kyaah! N-no…! That's not what I—!"
"Oh? Opening your mouth without permission?"
"Kyaaaahhh!!"
Every one of my cellmates was suffering. Even the simple motion of lifting a shovel with aching bodies earned an electric shock to the neck, and any attempt at a brief rest was met without fail by a beating. Bruises and wounds multiplied across everyone's skin. After the morning's training, forced straight into hard labor without proper rest, our stamina was reaching its limit.
We had pushed our bodies past endurance. The evening torture session loomed ever more terrifying. At this rate… I found myself genuinely afraid we might die under the torture—cast into conditions that harsh.
Crack!!
"What are you standing around for? Move!"
"Kh-hup…! Mmph!"
But as always, so long as they did not stop, we had to keep going. Until we regretted the choice of becoming inmates—and even if we did regret it—we still had to obey their commands. That was the fate of inmates: people who had surrendered their human rights, consumed by sexual desire.
We could not know what state we would be in when we were finally released. Accepting a body that grew more lewd by the day under the pretext of "training," and a self that grew accustomed to sexual acts—that was simply our lot as inmates.
Jingle. Jingle.
"Hnn…! Mmph."
The clamps with their little bells swayed as I hauled the cart once more. I had already made the trip dozens of times. Adding up every round trip, I might well have surpassed a hundred. Hauling that cart so many times left my shoulders feeling as if they no longer belonged to me. Sensation had dulled in my wrists, and the repeated strain of tensing my abdomen to drag the cart along had brought on a deep stomachache.
It hurts.
I'm so tired….
My breath came short, but the gag blocked any free flow of air. My lungs burned, compounding the misery, and now even my legs were trembling. With every single step I took, I had to keep walking that unsteady gait, half-afraid I would collapse then and there.
And in the end, on the narrow path leading toward the dirt pile, I lost my balance… and toppled sideways.
Just for a moment. A single instant of carelessness was all it took.
"Hnn!"
My foot sank into the mire. The same thick viscosity I had felt when I stepped in earlier coiled around my leg. Startled, I tried to pull free at once, but it was no easy thing. The one small mercy, perhaps, was that the ring connecting the cart to my cuffs had come loose as I fell. Had the cart gone in with me, I might have been struck hard enough to be seriously hurt.
"Hnn…! Mmph!"
Even so, the problem now was getting out. I put strength into my leg and pulled, but my foot would not budge so much as an inch—as if stuck fast to glue. It was less a swamp than a stretch of mudflat; more accurately, a wetland thick with moisture. Yet the sensation of my body being slowly sucked down into mud whose bottom I could not see filled me with raw terror.
"Mmph-mmph! Mmph!!"
Both hands were bound and useless. I could see no way free. Leviathan had said the swamp was only about waist-deep—but his waist would come up to my chest. It was a fairly deep place… and my body was sinking into it, so the fear only grew.
In pain and fright, with no idea what to do, I screamed. But all that escaped through the gag was the same muffled whimpering as always. Desperate to signal the danger somehow, I shook my chest with all my strength.
Jingle. Jingle.
"Nayoon!"
Fortunately, Yejin—who had been shoveling at the dirt pile—spotted me. She had not been granted permission to speak, yet she risked calling my name at the top of her lungs. Watching her come toward me, I felt two things at once: worry that Leviathan would punish her, and hope that I might still get out of this.
"Hnnn."
My body was already sunk to the waist. The mud had begun to climb past the lower edge of my breasts. The one small comfort was that the tips of my toes could just touch the bottom. That faint, alien sensation of solid ground beneath the mud brought a sliver of calm.
"Are you okay? Nayoon. Nayoon!"
Yejin came running. She stretched both cuffed hands toward me.
"Hnn…! Nngh!"
"Leviathan, sir!! Nayoon's over here!!"
She even called for the guard, her face urgent. In that moment I realized she did not know how deep this swamp was. Thinking back, Leviathan had explained it only when the two of us were alone. Yejin had never heard that explanation—so she feared I might sink and drown if left alone, and she called for Leviathan even knowing she would be punished for it.
A pointless guilt rose in me. I shook my head, trying to tell her no—but in her panic, Yejin did not understand. She only mistook my thrashing for fear and kept on.
"Hnn…. Mmph."
I felt so sorry. If I had simply fallen in alone and stayed quiet, only I would have been scolded and that would have been the end of it. If I had stopped moving, Leviathan would have noticed something was wrong and come looking—a small incident that would have ended with me alone being found and punished. Instead, my fear of being unable to escape had needlessly blown the whole thing up.
But it was already done… and there was no taking it back.
"Why… why won't it come free!"
Yejin pulled at my body. She hauled hard enough to hurt, yet I did not budge. She was already exhausted herself, and dragging a person free with cuffed hands was no simple task. On top of that, the mud pressing in around me made the odds far worse.
I tried to help her efforts, kicking with my feet—but with both hands bound behind me, there was only so much I could do.
Squish.
"…Hnn?"
Then something touched the tip of my foot. At first I thought it was only a clump of mud. But the strange texture made me feel around a little more carefully—and I sensed a peculiar movement. It was not motion caused by my own touch. Something was writhing under its own power. Soft, living things were squirming right beside me.
"Nngh! Mmph!"
A chill ran through me. I had listened to Leviathan's explanation and assumed the swamp was safe… but other living things I knew nothing about were dwelling inside it.
"Ugh… hnn!"
"It's okay, Nayoon. Calm down. Calm—ngh!"
Yejin took my reaction for nothing more than fear of being stuck, and put even more strength into pulling. But separately from that, I was facing a far greater terror. Trying to avoid the creature underfoot, I shifted my foot sideways—only to find another one waiting there. This time it writhed beneath my sole as I stepped on it. Large things. At least several creatures the size of my own body were crawling along the bottom.
"What the hell are you two doing? Ha—Inmate A713. Is that you?"
"Leviathan, sir! Th-there—"
"Settle down. Inmate A691. Kim Yejin. And you—get out of the way. Hnn!!"
From a distance, Leviathan had noticed our situation and was approaching. He made Yejin step aside, then reached out, seized me, and pulled. Compared to the other guards Leviathan looked lean, but the force in his arms—sinews standing out along his forearms—yanked me free of the swamp in a single smooth motion.
"Hoo…. Honestly. I even showed you the path and told you to be careful, and you go falling in somewhere like this? …What's this. One of the clamps is gone, too?"
"Hnn… nngh-mmph…."
I was free of one crisis, but a new one was waiting. Leviathan brushed the mud from his hands and looked back and forth between Yejin and me. Under that sharp gaze, not only I but Yejin as well shrank down, waiting for judgment.
Our offenses were plain. I had gone somewhere I had been told not to enter. And Yejin had raised her voice without permission to speak. No matter what reasons we might offer, that kind of consideration simply did not exist on Prison Island.
"Inmate A713, Lee Nayoon. Twenty Demeanor Penalty Points for loss of equipment and failure to obey orders. Ordinarily, disobedience would earn you far more points—but since this was an accident, I'll adjust it."
"…Ha-mmph… mmph."
Of course the points were issued. And for Yejin as well—
"And Inmate A691, Kim Yejin. Thirty Demeanor Penalty Points for raising your voice without permission to speak."
—she had to receive them too. I looked up at Leviathan with pleading eyes. Yejin had shouted entirely for my sake. And when I thought about it, the whole thing had started from my own mistake. If anyone was to take the points, I should have taken more of them—and if possible, I should have borne all of hers myself.
"No. When an inmate raises her voice without permission, a warning-level electric shock is applied first. If she keeps making noise after that warning, Demeanor Penalty Points are issued. And Yejin—you took one shock already, didn't you?"
"…Yes. That's correct."
"Nayoon, you wouldn't have known, but Yejin here violated protocol even after receiving a warning—so I have no choice but to issue the points. Accept it this time."
"…Hnn."
"…."
I never knew being unable to speak could feel this wretched…. Leviathan went so far as to use our names while explaining, and Yejin nodded in acceptance—yet I still wanted to persuade them one more time. With my mouth sealed, though, there was no way. Body language and the look in my eyes could not convey even half of what I truly meant.
As he said, this time there was nothing to be done. Just as our human rights had been stripped away, we had to live caught in restrictions and oppression.
"All right then. Inmate A713—back to work. You weren't planning to keep resting like this, were you?"
Crack!!
"Kh-hup!!"
Crack!
"Ahk… ow…."
"Hurry up."
As if to remind us of our place, the horsehair whip lashed across our hips. Feeling the sting, Yejin and I had to return to our original positions—I to hauling the cart, she to the endless shoveling. In the thick of the labor… I had to trudge across the ground in a prison uniform dripping with mud.
After work resumed, a great deal more time passed.
"Hnn… hnnn…"
Sweat soaked into my clothes as if I had been caught in rain, and the mud caked on my body had hardened, hindering every movement. I was so thirsty, so drained of stamina, that even walking was a struggle. If I were dragged to the torture chamber like this, I truly felt I might die. I did not know what kind of torture awaited… but in this body, I had neither the courage nor the mental strength left to face it. The greater problem, though, was that the end of the labor was nowhere in sight.
"Hah. Hah. Hoo—hah."
When I hauled the cart around again, I saw Jaehee and Seoa gripping their shovels like canes, forcing themselves upright on trembling legs. We had split the work, yes—but after more than two hours on the treadmills, dragged straight here without rest into continuous hard labor, everyone's condition was a wreck. We truly had no strength left even to twitch a finger.
And yet night had come… and the long shadows of dusk stretched out across the ground.
"Well. Looks like the work is more or less done?"
"…."
In the end, at the point where some of us had collapsed foaming at the mouth and could not get up again, Leviathan called us all together. Everyone was conscious, but none of us could move properly. Especially me, filthy with mud, and Jaehee, wearing a prison uniform soaked through with my urine… the stench of sweat mixed into the fabric left us nearly lightheaded.
"No one has an answer. Do you all want Demeanor Penalty Points as a group? Inmate A522. Does the work appear complete?"
"…No, sir."
The reason no one had answered was simple. Even without Leviathan pointing it out, we knew the work was not finished. Of the pits, only one had been properly filled—and even that one was packed so loosely that a shovel pressed into it would sink straight through. The other two pits still had a long way to go.
They looked deceptively manageable, but the insides of those pits were deep and wide. Thinking about it, of course they were. Heavy machinery had dug out the earth, and installing those rising-and-falling crosses would have required all kinds of equipment—and fitting all that equipment would have demanded a considerable amount of space. From the start, these were not holes we could dig with shovels… and not pits we could fill with shovels either.
Come to think of it, I remembered the first time we had found the dirt piles. We had seen them heaped up like hills and never once wondered why so much earth was stacked there. In the end, every bit of that dirt had clearly come out of these pits. We had been fools to think we could simply handle it.
"Right. Then you'll have to take your punishment, won't you?"
The dreaded hour had arrived.