Bitter Coffee
Last night.
After shoving every inmate under his charge—including Luia—into Cell 3, Leviathan headed for the guards’ office to clock out.
More than twelve hours of grueling work. Yet it never really felt that hard.
The 2050s. Quality jobs had dwindled under the weight of AI-driven industries; outside of service work born of low birth rates and aging populations, or fields that demanded original reasoning rather than rote learning, almost nothing else offered this kind of compensation. Long hours aside, it was the best job around.
“Hey. Leviathan. Got a minute?”
“Ah. Warden.”
And a good boss to go with it.
Leviathan brightened as Diabolos approached and opened the office door for him.
“What can I do for you, sir?”
“Nothing urgent. Just wanted to talk a few things over. So—Miss Luia’s already in her cell?”
“Yes. Last day, so I put her in without restraints.”
Diabolos stepped inside and glanced at the traces the inmates had left on the floor. Leviathan flushed and moved to clean them up at once, but the warden stopped him. He’d already watched everything on the CCTV, he added; he knew the place was a mess.
“Good work. Keeping the line must’ve been exhausting. And you were under a microscope the whole time.”
“…Still, I kept her at the same level as the other inmates. Aside from the three-day mark when she cried and begged to be released, she held up well enough. That was a relief.”
“True enough. Honestly… I still wonder what the chairman was thinking, giving permission. For a daughter he dotes on that much.”
The conversation turned immediately to Luia.
Tomorrow she would walk free. But to them she had never been just another inmate.
“Exactly. I only learned this recently—apparently the name ‘Alisea Rhumb’ itself was taken from his daughter, Luia Chambers?”
“That’s right. Anagrammed it until it sounded good and used it for the company. Anyway, putting a daughter he treasures that much into a place like Prison Island… knowing full well what it is. Remarkable. Makes you wonder whether he loves her or not.”
One of the so-called VIPs. Among them, Luia was the daughter—and only blood relative—of the chairman of Alisea Rhumb, the most powerful corporate sponsor of all. Barring something extraordinary, she would have been the designated heir to the family business.
“Well, Luia…”
“From now on, call her Miss Luia or something with a proper honorific.”
“She’s still an inmate until tomorrow. This much is fine… And Miss Luia… do you really think we’ll see her again? Unless she comes back as an inmate, that is.”
“Heh. Fair point. Still—be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”
Thinking of the woman who would reclaim her rightful place tomorrow, both men smiled faintly.
The heir to a corporation that sat at the absolute pinnacle of society. Given Alisea Rhumb’s standing as the world’s number-one pharmaceutical company, the experience of treating someone like that as less than human was something they could never speak of anywhere—and something they would almost certainly never experience again. Knowing how special it was, they couldn’t help sharing the sense of wonder. Even two months later, it still felt hard to believe.
“But you didn’t come just to talk about that… Get to the point, please. I’d like to go home sometime tonight.”
“No wonder you didn’t offer me coffee. Fine. It won’t take long—I’ll say it and get out of your hair.”
“Come on, Warden. Want a cup?”
“…Pour one.”
“You’ll have to cover the overtime.”
“Tch.”
Leviathan brewed two cups without complaint and handed one to the warden. The soft aroma of coffee erased the lingering, metallic scent of the inmates. All that remained was a faint smear of spit left by Nayoon’s gag. Leviathan gazed at the mark, quietly reflective, and sipped his coffee while he waited for the real reason Diabolos had come.
A man who normally watched his staff’s hours so carefully would not drop by at quitting time for ordinary business.
“Tomorrow, when Miss Luia leaves on the drone, Ji-eun will leave Prison Island with her.”
“Hmm? Big sis Asmodeus? That’s fast. Then the replacement…”
“The replacement arrives the day after tomorrow with the new batch of inmates. Actually… the reason I came to see you today is because there’s something I need to tell you in advance about that replacement…”
Diabolos chose his words carefully, taking repeated sips of the coffee Leviathan had given him. Whatever he was holding back seemed to burn his throat. Leviathan looked at the man who was more big brother than boss and tried to make the air a little easier for him to speak.
“Someone I already know, then. Don’t tell me… Miss Luia isn’t the replacement, is she? Walk out the door and—ta-da—she’s a guard?”
“Haha. That would be entertaining. If Miss Luia decided she wanted to become a guard, I’m not sure the company could stop her. Complete the training program and there might even be a path… but no. It’s not that.”
“If it’s not that, then it can’t be anything too shocking. Just say it. You’re going to tell me anyway—no need to play coy.”
“Tch. That obvious?”
“Maybe not to everyone else, but you’ve been my senior since I was a rookie. You scouted me for Prison Island yourself. You think you can hide something from me? I know you just as well.”
“Hah. All right, then…”
Diabolos drained the last of his coffee, loosened his tongue, and finally said what he had come to say.
“The next Asmodeus is Min-seok.”
“…You’re serious?”
“Yes. Lee Min-seok. You know him.”
“…Ha. Fuck.”
The reaction was sharp. Diabolos looked down into his empty cup the way he had expected Leviathan to react. Not a drop remained.
“Don’t take it that hard. He’s going to be a colleague for a while—starting like this already? And you don’t actually think badly of Min-seok himself.”
“Yeah, that’s true… but that guy… does he know what he’s walking into?”
“…Of course. I told him.”
“And he’s still coming?”
“He doesn’t have a choice. You know how he is. And right now there’s no one else. This year’s guard training course hasn’t even started, and Asmodeus just got disciplined—what other option is there?”
“Ah… so he’s coming in fully prepared. One mountain after another. Tch—”
Once the explanation was finished, Leviathan could see it was unavoidable. Understanding and acceptance, however, were different things. Even if there was no other way, his feelings refused to simply fall in line.
“There’s one more thing I need to say.”
“What is it?”
Diabolos added one more remark.
“Cell 3 has almost no sex.”
“…That.”
“I know what you’re going to say. It’s the assigned guard’s discretion, and if there’s no reason to send them to another guard, not sending them is correct. But even allowing for that, it’s too little. A713 is one thing—why the other inmates too?”
“….”
Leviathan closed his mouth under the warden’s pointed observation. Diabolos was right: if you ranked the cells by how rarely the inmates had sex, Cell 3 was overwhelmingly first. Other cells did it once a day, or at least once a week. Whether by direct penetration or by machine, it was one of the ordinary practices of Prison Island—encouraged by the program itself. To keep the feeling of stripped and violated human rights vivid, touching an inmate’s sexuality was effective; guards were expected, at minimum, to rape their charges or hand them over so that a proper level of exhaustion was maintained.
“I know you deliberately hold back from sexual acts with the inmates. It’s cost you plenty on your evaluations.”
“….”
“Even if A713 is personal for you, there’s no reason the others should get the same treatment. And A713… looking at the records, only three times since she was committed—and only when it was necessary. With reports filed to the control room every single time.”
“….”
“Why?”
Leviathan let out a long breath. He had plenty to say. He knew a guard’s duty perfectly well; the conflict had been daily. He decided to use this moment.
“Warden.”
“Yes?”
“Is it really all right to handle an inmate however I want?”
“…What kind of nonsense is that? That’s what being a guard is for.”
“No—that’s not what I mean…. Something I’ve realized lately. A713… Nayoon…”
“…?”
“I only thought of her as A479’s little sister. She isn’t.”
“Heh.”
Leviathan sighed heavily, checked his empty cup, and brewed more coffee. He refilled Diabolos’s cup as well.
“During the last execution I felt it more sharply. The old A479… she would have been smiling the whole way to the execution ground, and the second I stepped into the holding cell she would have begged me for sex first.”
“Right. With you, sex was a reward.”
“I’ve got a bit of a unicorn streak, so I’m passive about sex myself—but like you said, handing them over to another guard is easy enough. Just ask and most of them will do it. Especially Shatan, or Lucifer… those two have what people call infinite stamina. If I asked, they’d spend the whole night on an inmate.”
Another sigh. Diabolos could see his subordinate was deep in a private struggle—not about the job of being a guard, but about the man Park Si-hoo. He understood it completely.
“So what? You don’t like that A713 shows a different face?”
“…No. Once I realized she was someone else entirely, I fell even harder. The same face made me fall at first sight; the way she was different from A479—how she bent but still tried to hold on—made me fall again…. You know what my ideal type is.”
“I know. A woman who looks like she’s about to break, yet can endure every last bit of my sadism.”
“Yes. A479 showed me she could take everything. It felt like no one else would ever be able to withstand my sadism the way she did. But if you asked whether she was the ideal… no.”
“Because A479 enjoyed every pain. Smiling through it.”
“Exactly. Even when she blacked out, she held on with a smile. Haha. So there was never that ‘about to break’ look. I tried coaxing her, tried being gentle, hoping to see it—but the version of her that felt weak just left.”
Leviathan stared into his coffee, briefly lost in the past. As he said, Nayoon’s older sister Hayoon had been a strong woman. Not physically strong—her mind was simply too strong. She smiled through any pain; even while screaming she never lost the clear-eyed smile of a madwoman. That was why Leviathan had believed she could endure anything he did. But enduring was all she did. She never showed the look of someone about to break. So he changed tactics: hoping she would accept him, he tried to color her more gently, more gradually. It failed, and he had believed he would never meet another woman like her.
“So what do you want? A713 is closer to your ideal, so you’re going to conquer her—something like that?”
“…No. I don’t know anymore. I’m not even sure this is the right path. While I was stuck in that loop… I just stopped paying attention to the sex side of things.”
That was the final answer. Diabolos quietly checked his terminal. It was already late to be going home.
“Leviathan. Listen carefully. You know our guards are people who want to end up with an inmate. But there are too many side effects, so it only becomes possible when the inmate chooses us.”
“….”
“Whatever effort you put in along the way doesn’t matter. The inmates down there already know. Spend months—sometimes years—rubbing against a guard and it’s only natural for the heart to open too. For the inmates, pairing with a guard is a way to have their sexual walls acknowledged and to keep living this life more easily. In a way, it’s the rational choice.”
As he said, bonds between inmates and guards formed fairly often. Each side paid a heavy price. A guard who bound himself to a particular inmate could not return to Prison Island without divorce or spousal consent. An inmate could not be locked away again without her husband’s permission. Even so, Waltz Production actively encouraged such pairings. It risked shrinking the customer base, but matching people of the same inclination and letting them stay together was also a kind of service that satisfied their clients.
“So decide your direction clearly. If you’re going after A713, go after her properly. If not, act like a proper guard within reasonable bounds. Half-assing it… you know what happens.”
“…Yes.”
Thinking of the person who had already left, Leviathan bowed his head.
For some reason, the coffee tasted especially bitter tonight.