The Boundless Sea
“Ueeeegh…! Gaaack…! Kheugh…! Uweeeugh…!”
She was vomiting.
Like a volcano erupting with lava, white mucus spewed from Inmate 921A-2’s mouth and nose.
“Khuhk… ugh…! Uwegh…! Ge… ugh…!”
It seemed to surge back with all the force of everything she had been holding down. At last even a clear liquid that looked like stomach acid spilled from her lips. She was in such agony that she shook her bound hands. It had gone far beyond anything willpower alone could contain.
“…Are you all right?”
After she had retched for a long while, I carefully shifted my gaze and asked after her. Covered head to toe in filthy vomit, head hanging, trembling—just looking at her was heartbreaking. And more than that…
Seeing what she had thrown up fill the tin can hanging from the clamp filled me with guilt. I had thought the can was only there to add weight to the clamp. In truth it was a torture device meant to be filled with our own vomit so that it would bite even harder into our breasts.
It’s my fault…
“…Uugh… haah. Ha. Hoo… uuuh… Don’t… think that…”
“What?”
“It was… haah… going to happen… anyway. Uugh… haah. Ha. It isn’t… because of you… so… don’t… worry about it.”
Just as the guilt was thickening, Inmate 921A-2 was the one who comforted me first. Bent forward under the added weight of the clamp, she spoke while trying to steady her ragged breathing.
“This… boat… is going to… take a long time. Uugh… haah. Haah. Probably… until both I and… Inmate 921A-1… have thrown up everything… and we’ll have to… just piss and shit… where we are. So… even if it runs… a little late… ugh…!”
“Ah—I understand. Please don’t talk… You look like you’re in so much pain.”
“Ugh… Yes…. Uugh… haah. Ha… ugh…!”
With that, Inmate 921A-2 let her head drop again. Even after emptying herself once, she still looked wretched. Only then did I realize she was seasick.
Seasick…
In this day and age, motion sickness was a rare sight. Ever since the medicine called Panacea had come on the market, everything from headaches to motion sickness, colds, and hangovers had been conquered by a single pill. Panacea was a household staple; ordinary people like me kept a bottle at home, and even if you forgot it you could buy it cheaply at any convenience store. For all practical purposes, motion sickness had been eradicated.
…I simply hadn’t thought of it.
Watching Inmate 921A-2 vomit beside me, I realized I was now in a position where I could not even deal with a symptom so small.
“Haah. Haugh… uwegh… haah.”
Even while those thoughts ran through my head, Inmate 921A-2 kept dry-heaving. She had already thrown up everything; there was nothing left in her stomach, yet the seasickness refused to subside. Looking at her, I understood that her present state was my own future.
Haah…. I’m screwed.
The stench rising from her vomit became a trigger. Headache, dizziness, nausea, and a wave of pure revulsion hit me all at once.
“Haah… ugh…”
Can I hold it?
No. Impossible.
No matter how far I searched the boundless sea, there was no destination in sight. In the middle of an ocean that showed nothing but waves, I could not keep enduring like this. And hadn’t the inmate beside me said so? The boat would take a long time; this would go on and on.
In that case, better to turn my head at least. If vomit filled the tin can, the already unbearable pain of the clamp would only grow worse.
…Or so I thought. I intended to avoid the can as much as possible even if I did throw up. But Inmate 921A-2’s warning immediately erased the idea.
“Uwegh… haah. Haah. If you’re… going to throw up… make sure…! You do it… into the tin can… uugh…! hanging from the clamp…. If it’s… empty when we arrive… you’ll have to… lick up… all the vomit and… excrement… on the floor… with your tongue.”
“…………Yes… ugh… thank… you.”
Just hearing it was disgusting. Even if the vomit was only banana and milk and looked almost harmless at a glance, the distinctive sour stench of stomach acid was still there. I was supposed to lick that up?
I can’t. Absolutely not.
No matter how strong a stomach I thought I had, that was beyond me. But did that mean I still had to fill the can with vomit knowing the pain would get worse?
The tin can hanging beneath my breasts, the chain connecting it to the clamp, and my nipples crushed flat by the clamp’s jaws—all of it branded my wretched situation into me.
Fine.
I’ll hold it for now.
I just can’t bring myself to throw up into this thing.
“Haah. Ha…”
Fortunately, because I had eaten so little, I thought I could last longer than Inmate 921A-2. The sick, heavy feeling never left, but I forced the uneasy churning of my stomach to settle, soothing it again and again.
I can’t throw up like this.
Hold on. Just hold on.
If I try hard enough… I can endure it.
I had never been one to vomit easily. Seasickness of this degree… I ought to be able to bear it.
But then—
“Huh? This bitch still hasn’t puked?”
While I was concentrating every scrap of will on holding out, the voice of a guard from beside me shattered my resolve.
It was Machia.
He came over, looked us both over—me and Inmate 921A-2—then eyed the empty tin can dangling from my breast clamp. From his back pocket he pulled a sleek pair of latex gloves and snapped them on.
Hey. Wait a second.
What the hell are you about to do…?
“Bite my hand and I’ll toss you straight into the ocean, so watch it. Come on. Aaah~ Open up, you dog bitch. That’s it. Aaah~ Good. There we go.”
The voice was almost gentle, the way one might speak to a pet. The act itself was savage. His fingers forced their way into my forcibly opened mouth, then drove straight in without hesitation and prodded my uvula. Fingers whose only purpose was to make me vomit scraped the back of my tongue, my throat, the entrance to my esophagus—and under that assault I broke.
“Uwegh!!! Eeeegh!!! Gaaack!!!! Gu… guuugh…! Eeeegh!!”
“Heh heh. Look at you puke. That’s why you shouldn’t have held it in. Let’s see~ Aww~ Still haven’t pissed either? You’re not still under the delusion that you’re a creature with human rights, are you? You’re just a beast that lost to lust. Drop the pointless pride.”
“Weeeegh…! Egh…!! Kheegh…!! Eugh… haah. Kkuh…!”
Vomit arced out in a spray. Some of it clung to my long hair; some of it landed in the tin can and yanked my nipples even harder. Tears spilled over. My throat burned, of course—but more than that, the crushing defeat of having all my carefully mustered mental armor collapse under a single finger stripped away what little self-respect I had left.
Exactly as he said: a beast. The moment I understood my own foolishness in letting lust strip me of something as precious as human rights.
“We’ve still got a few more hours, so hang in there. Well… even if you can’t, there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.”
“Haugh… ugh…!”
With the vomit-smeared glove he gave a couple of casual taps to the intimate place between my thighs, then vanished behind us with those parting words. It was exactly the way one handled an animal—or an object.
“…Are you… all right?”
Once the guard was gone, Inmate 921A-2 asked me. I managed to turn my head and saw her looking even more pitiful than I felt. Her frame was smaller than mine to begin with, her face young-looking; her wretched state only made her seem more pitiable. How could I tell someone like that that I was not all right?
I nodded, trying to reassure her.
“From… experience… we’ll arrive… around sunset… uugh…”
Despair settled over me. I had no exact sense of time, but counting from when we had left, it could only be around noon at best. How many more hours would we have to go? Even if autumn made the sun set earlier, we still had hours left in this state.
I can’t.
I can’t do this.
Body and mind were already a wreck. Regret and fear over the path I had chosen, the cold wind that made me shiver, the pain radiating from my nipples—everything was so unbearable I wanted to give up on the spot.
“Haah… hhk… uuugh…”
But I had no option that allowed surrender. The moment I boarded this boat—no, the moment I boarded the bus—no… even earlier, the moment I visited Waltz Production and signed the contract, I had already shoved myself into the pit of despair.
Exactly as the guard had said. Even if I could not endure it, I was in no position to stop. I had already surrendered every right I possessed.
My own helplessness. My own foolishness. They turned into a regret so deep it brought tears.
“…It’s all right…. Don’t cry.”
Inmate 921A-2 sensed the emotion in my sobs and comforted me. Yes—she had come here a second time. She would know what these first feelings were like. And yet she had chosen the same path again… didn’t that mean there was something here worth the satisfaction?
“Thank… you.”
All right. Let’s try.
The fear was still there, but her small encouragement shone like a light. At least I was not alone. From time to time we encouraged each other, breathed words of courage into one another, and like that—bound at the stern of the boat—we fought the waves of seasickness that kept rolling in.
It was a painful stretch of time, yet we managed to find a little comfort in it.
The boat pressed endlessly forward.
How long had we been sailing? My condition was far worse than when we had set out.
“Haah. Haah… ugh… haugh… haah.”
The seasickness never let up; I had to keep vomiting stomach acid. I could not get used to the nauseating stench rising from the tin can, now sloshing full, and eventually I could no longer hold it—the ammonia reek of urine that finally burst free tormented my nose as well.
“Kkugh… haah. Eut…!”
On top of that, every time the can swayed, pain shot through my nipples as if they were about to tear off. For hours already. Just the clamp biting down would have been agony enough; with the weight of a can full of vomit added, my nipples themselves felt like nothing but sources of pure pain. If I could have cut them off, I would have preferred it. Every capillary seemed to have burst; a crawling, prickling sensation spread across my entire breasts.
“Uugh… haah. Eu… euut…!”
Inmate 921A-2 was the same. Because of all the milk she had forced down to her limit, she had already wet herself four times; her strength was gone and she hung from the pillar more than she stood. Now and then she let out a moan of pain, and her nipples—perhaps the clamps had been set wrong—were so badly swollen they looked deformed.
And both of us, exposed to the freezing autumn wind, were turning to ice.
“Kkugh… khehk…! Haah. Haah.”
“Ah… no…!”
“I-it’s fine…. Uuugh…!”
Inmate 921A-2’s strength gave out and she started to collapse. In that dangerous moment the chain around her neck choked her; she scrabbled at the deck with her feet and clutched at the pillar with her bound hands behind her back. Only after scraping together every last scrap of strength and forcing herself upright again did her breathing return. Both she and I had already repeated the same desperate scramble more times than I could count.
“Ahhk… ugh…”
In this knife-edge situation, even our lives were not guaranteed. How much farther did this hell have to go before it ended? The very idea of “enduring” had already vanished; all I wanted was mercy.
Mercy from the guards. For the boat to arrive so that we might be granted even a brief rest. I wished for it with everything I had.
But still no island appeared. If only some scrap of land would show itself, I might have felt a little safer. All that met the eye was water; there was nothing left to hope for.
“…We’re… almost there.”
Just as I was sinking into despair, Inmate 921A-2 beside me said it with a faint smile. Had she seen a mirage? I looked every direction I could; there was no island. But then a loud noise from behind made me flinch and shrink—
—and the guards approached.
“We’ll be getting off soon. Ugh! The smell. How much did you bitches shit yourselves?”
“….”
“Well… nothing to be done about it. Hey. You bitches. Listen carefully. Once we reach the island you’ll go straight for a physical inspection, so follow orders. If you collapse on the way or pull any crap, you’ll get the whip right there on the spot. Keep your heads straight. Understood?”
Were we supposed to answer? I did not even have the strength to open my mouth.
“Good. Seeing you keep quiet without permission, looks like you’ve finally figured out your place. Or maybe it’s because there’s a stupid bitch here for the second time. Anyway—I’m taking the clamps off. Grit your teeth.”
“…!!”
The words were barely finished before the guard ripped the clamps from our nipples. Even easing them open would have hurt; yanking them free in one motion sent blood rushing back into nipples that had been crushed for so long, converting the sensation into blinding agony.
It hurts!! I’m going to die!
Tears spun in my vision; I nearly collapsed clutching at my nipples. The guard would not allow it. Instead he hauled me upright by the very nipples the clamps had ruined—pulling on them.
“Grrraaagh!!”
“Don’t make a sound. Hold it. Hold it. That’s it.”
“Hhuuk… uuugh…!! …!! Eu… grrraaat…!! Ugh…!”
I clenched my teeth until they ground together. Tears ran down my cheeks. But with both hands still bound behind my back, I did not even have the freedom to wipe them away.
“Eut…!! Uuugh…!”
Beside me, Inmate 921A-2 was suffering the same treatment, sobbing through it. Like that we were freed from the neck and ankle restraints and dragged along wherever the guards led us.
And a short while later we had to board a small boat waiting at the ferry’s stern. There had been no warning at all—yet a large island was already lying against the rear of the ferry. The boat cut across the sea under a setting sun and carried us to the island.
It looked, at a glance, like an uninhabited island. No proper dock; the boat simply ran up onto the beach of a remote shore.
“All right. First things first—shall we get you cleaned up?”
“…?”
The moment we finally neared the beach, the guards shoved Inmate 921A-2 and me out of the boat and sent us sprawling.
“Gluh…!! Pffft!!”
Caught completely off guard, we plunged straight into the sea.