I've Never Heard of That?
Luia Chamber.
One of my cellmates—a younger sister who had looked after me carefully from the very start.
My first impression of her had not been good.
That exotic appearance.
The sense of otherness that clung even to her name.
More than anything, the fact that we had ended up fisting each other not long after we met, and the way she kept calling me “Unnie” while seeming determined not to blend into the horizontal relationships that permeated the entire Prison Island—those things had grated on me more than a little.
But if someone asked whether I disliked her, that was another matter entirely.
Luia was mature beyond her years.
Though the age gap between us was not large, she was considerate enough that I could almost feel her as an older sister, and she was the kind of comrade who quietly did her part in any crisis.
Far from causing harm, she had used her own nature as a bisexual to become a great help with the homosexual acts and spore-overcoming that everyone else shied away from.
And on the day she was leaving.
Why had she deliberately sat next to me?
And… how was I supposed to take what she was doing right now?
“Nayoon Unnie.”
“Mmnh… fmmph?”
“You look so cute with that gag in your mouth~ Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone with such big breasts look this adorable. Don’t you all think so?”
Luia whispered the embarrassing words as if confiding a secret. Sitting right beside me, she cupped my breast and began to fondle my body as though putting it on display for everyone.
“Well, Nayoon does have that kind of vibe.”
“Agreed. Honestly, if I were a guy, I’d be pretty greedy for her.”
“…Me too.”
One after another, Jaehee, Yejin… and even Seoa agreed with Luia.
Seoa, in particular, nodded vigorously.
I never expected even you to say that…
“Right? Maybe that’s why… I really like Nayoon Unnie. Ah~ should I call it love at first sight? Seoa Unnie is hearing this for the first time, but I’m actually bisexual. Guys are fine and all, but when I look at Nayoon Unnie as a romantic partner… mmm. She’s really good.”
“…Fmmph?”
The words came out of nowhere.
As she spoke, Luia hooked a finger through the piercing in my nipple. Her hands grew steadily more charged with a strange emotion as they explored my body.
One arm wrapped around my waist while the other tugged at the piercing dangling from my nipple… and little by little her touch began to stir sexual stimulation.
“Look at those eyes. No wonder even Leviathan gets shaken. Heheh. You’re just too cute~♡ Haa. What am I going to do with you. I want to tease you a little more… haah, haah…”
“Mmnh… mmmh…!”
Luia’s eyes had changed. She pressed a seductive smile to my cheek and kissed it.
Even though the stimulation came from another woman, my body was responding to her hands.
The faint pain of the piercing being gently pulled kept injecting unwanted excitement into me.
That aching stimulation gradually clouded my mind.
With my face flushed, I looked at Luia.
The way she was looking at me.
I should have refused—that would have been normal.
Yet, strangely, I liked her touch.
The breath spilling past the gag grew hotter and hotter.
“Luia. Leave it at that. You’ll make Nayoon cry. She’s already had a hard enough day.”
“Heheh. Should I? So that’s why she’s gone all limp? Aww~ and here I thought she liked my hands so much she wanted to leave everything to me till the end~ Fine. Yejin Unnie. I’ll stop for now~ Shall we talk first?”
That was as far as it went.
Yejin, mistaking my panting for distress, had stepped in to stop Luia.
“Fmmph… mmnh.”
I tried to say I was fine, that I wanted her to touch me a little more.
But all that escaped the gag were helpless moans.
“Unnie~ sorry. Rest for a bit, okay~”
I could not stop Luia as she withdrew every stimulating touch.
The pleas that slipped past the gag never reached her.
No—even if she had understood them, she probably would not have listened.
When she released the finger hooked through my piercing, I saw her smile faintly.
If it was not mockery, the meaning of that smile was obvious.
“Fmmph…”
The lingering ache melted through my body.
Tiny sparks of excitement raced along my veins, tormenting a body that was already drained of strength.
But there was nothing I could do.
All I could do was whimper until she touched me again.
“Luia… how long have you been here?”
“Aww~ Seoa Unnie, just talk casually. There’s a ten-year age gap—being spoken to formally doesn’t feel right.”
“Still…”
“I heard from Nayoon Unnie before that Seoa Unnie is serving thirty-six months, right? That means you’ll be here a long time, and if I ever get re-incarcerated, you wouldn’t keep using formal speech then either. As you know, casual speech is just more convenient for conversation on Prison Island. That way I can talk comfortably too, don’t you think?”
“…All right. No—okay. Then…”
“Yeah. Speak freely. Unnie~ I’ll do the same.”
Had Luia always been this bright?
Her expression, her manner… everything about her right now felt like a different person.
Yet even while chatting, she noticed the cane marks on my calves and wordlessly shifted so I could stretch my legs out—as if telling me not to doubt her.
That silent consideration was Luia’s usual habit, and one of her strengths.
Yes. Luia was still Luia.
“By the way, Luia. The way you’re talking, it sounds like you’re thinking about re-incarceration. So are you coming straight back once the mandatory rest period ends?”
“Hmm~ no, not that. Unnie, the mandatory rest is about half the sentence length, so in my case it’s one month. I’m not sure of today’s exact date, but since Nayoon Unnie’s been here about a month already, it’s already October. So…”
“Ah. Right. You’ll hit the Auction, won’t you?”
“Yeah. Because of my no-sex clause I can’t participate in the Auction, so if I don’t want to cause trouble for Leviathan, it makes more sense to come back after that.”
“That makes sense.”
Jaehee and Luia’s conversation.
Yet I heard a word I did not understand.
Luia’s option was one thing, but what was an Auction?
“Mmnh…. mmmh.”
“Hm? What is it, Nayoon Unnie. Are you uncomfortable somewhere?”
“Fmmph. Mmmnh. Mmnh.”
“…Hmm. I have no idea what you’re saying. Is there any way…?”
I did not know what the Auction was, but it seemed to be an important event for inmates.
And the unease that came from the word itself was considerable.
Auction.
There was no way they were talking about trading ordinary goods right now.
Which meant the Auction had to mean trading inmates.
But for a transaction to form, there had to be a buyer and a seller.
If the sellers were the Prison Island guards, then who were the buyers?
“You look like you want to ask something. Just a moment… Yejin, switch places with me, will you?”
“Sure.”
Just as my questions were mounting, Seoa, who had been watching quietly, read my intention and sat beside me.
But even with her close, I was in no condition to ask anything.
Hoping against hope, I repeated the question “What is the Auction?” over and over through the gag, but unfortunately Seoa could not understand me.
“Okay, Nayoon. From now on I’ll ask one thing at a time. Nod if I’m right.”
Yet Seoa possessed the experience and wisdom of the eldest among us.
For someone who could express only yes or no, she found a way—asking questions one by one and reading what I was trying to say.
“Nayoon. Is the first letter of what you want to say ‘A’?”
“…Mmh.”
“Good. ‘A.’ Then I’ll go through the next letters. Nod when I hit the right one. U… C… T…”
“Mmh!”
“Auc…? If it starts with Auc… Auction? Are you talking about the Auction?”
In just a few sentences Seoa had grasped my meaning.
I nodded vigorously, expressing both gratitude and confirmation.
“Huh? Why the Auction…? Don’t tell me… Nayoon. You never heard the explanation about the Auction? That’s strange…. When you sign the contract at Waltz Production HQ, you usually hear about it, don’t you…?”
“Right. I heard it there too.”
“It’s part of the standard briefing, isn’t it? Or did you just forget, Nayoon?”
But the conversation was taking a slightly strange turn.
According to my cellmates, the Auction on Prison Island was explained by the counselors at Waltz Production HQ when the contract was first signed.
Yet I had never heard of it.
Had Ms. Eunbi somehow skipped it?
I could not know the truth, but one thing was clear: the Auction was a completely unfamiliar system to me.
When Yejin asked if I might have simply forgotten, I shook my head.
I truly had never heard it; I knew nothing about it.
My cellmates exchanged glances as if they could not believe I really did not know, then looked at Seoa.
Eyes that silently urged her to explain.
Under that unspoken pressure, Seoa opened her mouth with a stiff expression.
“All right. Since it seems Nayoon never heard it, I’ll explain. With a six-month sentence I assumed you’d been told… just try not to be too shocked… The Auction is…”
Why was she dragging it out?
A nameless anxiety squeezed my heart.
“…It’s an event held about once a quarter where VIPs purchase us. We don’t know who the VIPs are. We’ve only heard they’re various high-ranking people connected to this Prison Island. They rent inmates through an auction format. As short as twenty-four hours, as long as about a week.”
The content was shocking.
An act of buying and selling people for money, like the slavery of old.
Another stretch of time in which those stripped of human rights were treated like objects.
“The starting bid is set by the assigned guard. If the starting price is a hundred thousand won, the bidding climbs from there, and when it’s sold the guard takes ten percent of the final bid while Waltz Production takes the rest.”
“….”
“But… well, for that period the inmate also gets a chance to leave prison life and meet outsiders, and since a lot of high-ranking people are involved, the VIPs sometimes give the inmate money as a tip on top of the winning bid. That money belongs entirely to the inmate, so those who like money tend to welcome the Auction.”
“…Fmmph.”
In other words, it was a way of selling one’s body for compensation.
Something I did not particularly want… no, an event far too harsh for me.
Honestly, even Leviathan taking my body as he pleased still left a lingering discomfort in my heart; I could not easily accept handing my body over to complete strangers in exchange for money.
“The problem is… a lot of the VIPs are cruel. Especially among those who decide they have to get their money’s worth out of an inmate, there are many who do terrible things to them.”
Seoa’s expression darkened.
As expected, she too had experienced the Auction once before.
“I met one strange person during my last sentence…. Back then it was really…. So this time I came in with the no-Auction option. For thirty-six months… I don’t want to pass through anyone’s hands…”
I did not need her to spell it out.
If someone paid money and gained the right to do whatever they wanted with a person…
Then of course they would try to use that person to the absolute limit of what they themselves allowed.
“Same for me. The Auction really is… a vicious event. I’m a fairly well-known trainer on the outside, you know. I saw before that the videos uploaded to the site have the faces swapped with AI, but during the Auction they used my real face…. One VIP who recognized me won me for four nights and five days for twenty million won…”
“Twenty million? That’s quite a sum…. Just how badly were you treated?”
“That’s… I don’t know.”
“Huh? You don’t know?”
“Yeah. Not in detail. I don’t even know exactly who did it to me. The VIP who won me injected me with sedatives the moment the bid was finalized. They even put me on an IV so I’d sleep for days.”
“…Then why do you call it vicious? If you don’t remember, isn’t that a good thing?”
“Hehe. Jaehee. Do you really think so even in a situation like this?”
“What do you mean?”
“I slept for four nights and five days and woke up in the Recovery Room.”
“Ah… yeah.”
“They were worried I might bite their cock in my sleep… so the VIP had almost all my teeth pulled. Well, Waltz Production started talking about the inmate’s life and brought in a doctor, and apparently they even called a doctor’s stop near the end. But while I was recovering after waking up… whew. It was truly the worst. And whatever they shoved into my pussy and ass…”
“Ugh…”
“It took a full week in the Recovery Room just to restore my body completely. Even on full regeneration my body itched and burned so badly I thought I’d die, but Franken kept yelling that recovery would be impossible otherwise. That man may be a sadist, but he’s sincere about healing inmates… and if even he said that…”
“…Yejin.”
“Anyway, that’s how it was. If I’d been awake while it happened, the pain would have been worse, but at least I could have resisted or screamed. Then the VIP, being human too, might have gone a little easier. And more than anything… the despair of waking up to find your body ruined… ha. It’s hard to put into words.”
“…,”
“Anyway, they said they did it to check how sturdy my body was. They were satisfied and deposited tens of millions into my personal account as a tip. Thinking of it that way, maybe it’s better that I don’t remember, but still—even without the memory, just thinking about that Auction gives me chills.”
Everyone fell silent at her words.
After that, Jaehee also shared one of the vicious experiences she had suffered because of the Auction.
“The VIP who won me was a university professor…”
Her experience… if anything, was worse than Yejin’s, not milder.
No—it was worse.
“…He bought me for seven days for 19.4 million won… He was a history scholar. So… do any of you know that story? It’s supposedly recorded in Chinese history…”
“…?”
“I only learned about it while it was being done to me…”
An unbelievable story left her lips.