Instead of Torture Time...
What kind of punishment would we receive?
I was truly terrified.
Barely a day since re-incarceration. Not even a full twenty-four hours had passed, and already I had taken demeanor penalty points, with yet another punishment now staring me in the face.
Labor that had been impossible from the very start.
Could it be… that Leviathan was doing this simply to execute us again?
The suspicion suddenly rose that he harbored a personal fondness for me. The sex we had shared back at the detention center. His gentle hands and that sweet, honeyed temptation. Was he trying to corner me into that same situation once more, so that I would offer him not only my body but my heart as well?
I was suspicious and afraid, yet even if the suspicion proved true, I could not escape. It was already like thrusting my neck into a beast’s jaws.
Please no. Please let it not be so.
If my guess was right… either surrender, or endure monthly executions while somehow holding on. One of the two. And if it came to that… after an execution… flee Prison Island….
“What are you trembling for, A713?”
“Mmph… uh…”
“But you know. You girls in Cell 3. There’s something I need to tell you…”
Leviathan looked us over with an unprecedented sly smile. What was he about to say? Every word from his mouth would be the crucial clue that divided heaven from hell for us, so everyone pricked up their ears and waited for what came next.
Yet what followed was something none of us had imagined.
“I never said you had to finish the labor in a single day.”
“…?”
“No matter how strict the guards are, we don’t order the impossible. How could you fill that huge pit in one day? Today’s labor ends here. You’ll continue the rest of the work tomorrow.”
“…!”
An unexpected result. As he said, when he first gave the order he had never told us to finish it today. But every labor we had experienced so far, and most of what we had learned through written notes, had been one-day assignments, so we had naturally assumed it was a mission that had to be completed that same day.
Our misconception. Or perhaps it was simply the result of the changed program.
“Don’t make that face. It’s not like ‘labor continues tomorrow so today’s over!’ or anything of the sort.”
What was he saying all of a sudden?
“Those piercings you’re wearing right now. They’re not ordinary piercings. A522. You know, don’t you? What these piercings really are.”
“Don’t tell me…”
“Ah, you’ve never worn them? But you’ve heard the name a few times, right?”
“…Yes. I’ve heard of them. Could this be… the Magnetic Piercing…?”
“That’s right. You know well.”
“Hic…!”
The most experienced among us, Jaehee, stared at her own piercing with a bleak expression. Thin, yet carrying a faintly heavy feel. Everyone wore the same shape, the same size, the same kind of piercing. The one fixed to my nipple was almost certainly the Magnetic Piercing that had just been named in Leviathan and Jaehee’s exchange.
“Alright. A522 here already knows, and the rest of you seem not to, so I’ll explain. What you’re wearing is the Magnetic Piercing.”
“….”
“Simply put, it’s made of a powerful magnet. More precisely, a special magnet fabricated from new materials—magnetic particles like grains of sand clumped into a circular form. When I remove the magnetism with the terminal on my wrist, it separates according to the pattern I set; when I strengthen the magnetism again, it returns to its original state.”
A sudden science lesson. Magnets—I had only handled them a few times in old lab classes. Recently, perhaps when hanging blackout curtains with strong office magnets? Yet the mere fact that the piercing was magnetic did not particularly frighten me. At best I could imagine hanging a few weights of the same material; no other use came to mind.
But there had to be a reason Jaehee’s face had hardened so completely.
Sure enough, a moment later Leviathan declared he would demonstrate and began operating the terminal. That was when I learned the true nature of the Magnetic Piercing.
“Better to show it with the body. A713.”
“Mmph…?”
“Maintain attention posture. If your posture breaks, ten demeanor penalty points.”
I was the target. Leviathan reached toward me as I stood still. He worked the terminal on his wrist this way and that, then spoke in a low voice.
“Endure for one minute.”
What did that mean? What on earth was about to happen? But there was no need for questions. The instant his words ended, my chest was crushed toward the floor.
“Mmmph!!”
It was a tremendous force. The piercing became an enormous weight trying to tear free from my nipple—more precisely, it yanked with savage strength straight toward the ground. The holes that had barely healed were forced open; blood welled as the piercing strained to fly floorward.
“Kngh!!”
I wanted to thrash in agony. Yet because of Leviathan’s order I clenched both hands inside the circular cuffs, bit down on the gag with all my strength, and endured. I had to endure. I never wanted to be dragged to the execution ground again! I did not want demeanor penalty points…!! In a situation where I already feared Leviathan might harbor other feelings toward me, the execution ground was the one place I most desperately wished to avoid.
But a force this strong was not easy to overcome.
“This entire Prison Island is laced with magnetic minerals. And the Magnetic Piercing can adjust both the strength and the direction of its pull depending on how you operate it. Of course, we’ve taken measures so that dangerous tools like shovels aren’t affected by the magnetism…”
Stop talking. Please. Just stop….
“Mmmph!! Hmmph!!”
My knees bent slightly. I could not hold on any longer. He had said one minute. How endless that single minute felt—clenching my teeth against the vicious pain in my nipples until my jaw joint, then a headache, began to surge.
Please. Please.
“Khmm…! H… hmmph…!”
Fortunately the minute passed and the force on the piercing vanished. Leviathan smiled as he watched me suffer. Then he approached the other inmates, tapping the piercings on their nipples as he continued.
“You cannot remove these piercings until the labor is finished. That is the punishment assigned to you. Better hurry the work as much as possible…. Today being the first day I didn’t operate them specially, but from tomorrow I intend to put magnetism into the piercings.”
“…!”
“At first maybe about two hundred grams? And each day it continues I’ll double the weight. Then let’s see… they say one nipple can usually hold about ten kilograms… if you don’t finish within a week, you’ll have a vicious experience.”
At his warning everyone bit their lips hard. Looking at today’s progress, a week might have seemed ample time. But labor would continue every day. Morning training was also scheduled. And from tonight we would have to endure torture time as well. On top of that, the piercings would grow heavier each day. Knowing it would not be easy—knowing better than anyone how hard the situation truly was—we could only hang our heads with bleak expressions.
“Alright. Everyone keep that in mind. Now let’s go in. It’s already late.”
Thus the first day of the new labor ended. We moved our feet, following behind Leviathan.
The change in the program. At first I had thought it was change in name only. Yet the atmosphere and environment that followed the labor returned to us as something entirely unexpected.
Leaving the execution ground, the place we were taken was Leviathan’s guard room. The moment we entered he unlocked everyone’s cuffs except mine, then stripped Jaehee and me of our prison uniforms—cutting them off mercilessly with scissors.
“Nayoon, Jaehee. You two go stand over there.”
Completely naked, the two of us were ordered to the corner of the guard room—the farthest spot from the entrance. Walking there, I found a drain hole and a shower hose. Things I had never seen before.
“Both of you kneel. From now on I’ll wash you. If you move I’ll take it as resistance and send you to the laundry facility to be spun.”
“…Yes. Understood.”
“Mmph…”
— Whoooosh.
A jet of water came flying.
“Mmmph! Mph!”
“Haah… ah…!”
The stream was far stronger than expected. Not an ordinary shower but something like a high-pressure firefighting hose. In a situation where even standing was difficult, all we could do was endure. Skin struck by the water turned red. Whenever the jet hit a piercing, the force was so violent I feared the nipple might tear; it swept over Jaehee’s entire body.
If there was any fortune, it was simply the fact of being washed. Even roughly cleaned, it felt as though a great deal of the filthy aura had left our bodies. Looking down, dirty water ran across the floor, dyeing it black. Still, we were relatively better off than Yejin and Seoa, who had not been washed at all. They must have wanted to rinse away the sweat they had shed as well…. I could not bring myself to urge them to endure the pain of that stream, yet I wished I could share this sense of cleanness.
“Alright. Park Jaehee. There’s a towel here. Wipe yourself, and wipe Nayoon too.”
The extremely short shower ended. Leviathan pulled out two towels and tossed them to Jaehee. At his order she caught them with a bewildered look, then wiped her own body and, afterward, mine as well.
The moment the soft towel touched my skin I understood why Jaehee had made that strange expression. A towel…. In ordinary life it was the most common of objects, yet here on Prison Island it was a rare existence. Nearly a month had passed since I was locked away, and this was the first time I had seen one. Even when we were bathed at the laundry facility we were only blasted dry with hot air; never once had a towel been used.
“If you’re done, take dinner posture on the floor. Kim Yejin.”
“Yes!”
“You prepare the food bowls.”
“Understood.”
And then a sudden sense of incongruity. Leviathan, who had mixed inmate numbers and names freely all day, was now calling us almost exclusively by name. What did this change mean? It felt more as though the man himself had changed than that the altered program was simply influencing him.
— Clatter.
“Time limit is three minutes as always. Eat late and you’ll take demeanor penalty points plus tomorrow’s torture time, so hurry.”
“Yes!”
Yet no matter how much had changed, our situation had not. At his order everyone buried their heads in the dog bowls and swallowed the pills floating in water. Everyone except me.
“Lee Nayoon.”
“Mmph-!”
Leviathan approached me, still under the fasting order. He swung a cane I had not noticed him pick up and spoke.
“The others already know from experience… when a releasee leaves the same cell, that day there is no torture time.”
“…!”
Surprising news. Something I had never heard. In other words, no torture time had been scheduled for today. At the welcome tidings I almost wept without realizing it.
“But you have one hour of torture time scheduled today from the tribunal disposition. You remember that, right?”
“Mph!”
For me, however, fixed torture time remained. One of the dispositions handed down by the tribunal for the early termination of the special execution. I was to receive an additional hour of torture each day for three days; even if today’s regular session was cancelled, that extra hour could not be waived.
To me in that state, Leviathan offered a proposal.
“So about that—opening the torture-room door is a bother, and having work end late is also annoying. If you take the cane on your calves right now, I’ll subtract one minute per stroke. Fill all sixty and today’s torture is finished. How about it?”
“Mmph…”
The sound of the cane cutting the air seemed to butcher my heart. I was afraid. When I first arrived I had been beaten. Even ten strokes had been so hard I shed tears. To take sixty of those was too harsh. The question hung in the air, yet I could not easily nod. Rationally, one cane stroke instead of one minute of torture should have been the obvious choice—yet knowing that either path meant suffering made the act of choosing itself a crushing burden on the heart.
“If you don’t like it, move it to tomorrow. Add two hours of torture time tomorrow. How about this?”
But there was no leisure to ponder. If this was the Leviathan I knew—a guard who did not treat us as human—either option would only push me into worse pain. Before he chose for me, I had to choose.
I shook my head at his question and, to make my intention unmistakable, turned and presented my calves. It was a clear declaration that I would take the sixty cane strokes right now.
“Good. Then take it like this. First let’s see… three minutes up? Wait like that for now.”
Leviathan ordered me to hold the position, then walked over to the others still eating dinner, checked their results, and returned to me. And without any warning—
— Whoosh! Smack!!
“Khmm!!”
The beating began.
“If you stagger or sit down, we start over from the beginning. Endure.”
“Mph!”
If this condition had been known, would choosing the torture room not have been wiser? In fear so sharp my heart felt ready to burst, Leviathan swung the cane in a wide arc.
— Whoosh! Smack!!
“Mmmph…! Ummph!”
Tearing pain slammed into my calf. Only two strokes, and already I wanted to collapse.
…What do I do.