Unscensored Version
The st echo of the orb’s impact faded into silence. For a heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Then the arena began to breathe again—soft pulses of light rippling through the curved walls as the gravity slowly returned. Ashe felt it first in his stomach, a tug downward, a reminder that the world still had weight. His feet touched the gss floor with a muted tap, knees trembling from the sudden shift.
Across from him, J.H. nded like it was nothing. His boots met the floor in one clean step, bance effortless, as if the arena itself had been built around his center of gravity. The faint sheen of sweat along his neck caught the fading light, gold against gray.
Ashe’s pulse was still hammering. His hands shook faintly where they clutched his paddle; the air smelled faintly metallic, still charged from the Spin Field.
Then the voice came—calm, smooth, mechanical.
“Challenge complete. Victor: Participant J.H. Initiating reward sequence.”
The orb that had been their sun shattered into motes of light and vanished. A new shape materialized in front of J.H.—a floating console made of thin gss lines and holographic glow, its surface rippling like water.
Ashe instinctively took a half-step closer. The adrenaline hadn’t left him yet; part of him expected another trick, another test.
But J.H. only exhaled, rolling his shoulders once as the voice continued:
“Reward options avaible. The victor may select one of three reward protocols. Choose wisely. Selection is final.”
He gnced at Ashe over the partially transparent console, that same half-grin tugging at one corner of his mouth.
“Looks like I get to pick the prize.”
His gaze lingered a beat too long. Ashe couldn’t shake the feeling of being measured—not just looked at, but appraised for something he couldn’t name.
Ashe swallowed hard. “Lucky you.”
J.H. turned back to the glowing dispy. His finger hovered over the first option—too far away for Ashe to read clearly, the text reversed and distorted from his angle. He thought he caught a few letters, something that made his stomach twist, but before he could be sure, J.H. hesitated… then drew his hand back and tapped the middle icon instead.
The console flickered once before the mechanical voice returned, crisp and detached:
“Selection confirmed. Option Two: Credit Reward Split.”
The dispy dissolved into golden dust that shimmered briefly between them before fading.
Ashe blinked. Split? He wasn’t sure what that meant in practice, but it sounded harmless enough. Still, curiosity pressed at him.
He rubbed the back of his neck, gncing toward J.H. “So… what were the other options?”
J.H. gave a small shrug, eyes still on the space where the interface had been. “Doesn’t matter now.”
The silence stretched—long enough for Ashe to start regretting asking—until J.H. finally huffed out a quiet ugh.
“Let’s just say one of them would’ve been a real pain in the ass for you.”
Ashe’s eyebrows rose. “Oh.”
J.H. smirked, tilting his head slightly. “Rex. I’m not that kind of guy. You can trust me.”
The reassurance shouldn’t have worked as well as it did, but somehow it still did. The tension in Ashe’s shoulders eased, his heartbeat slowing from its post-match sprint.
With the console gone and the air still humming faintly around them, Ashe finally had the space to look at J.H. properly.
Up close, he was bigger than he’d seemed in motion—tall, solid, every line of him built from something practical rather than sculpted. His rolled sleeves exposed strong forearms marked faintly by old scrapes and sun-darkened skin. His chest rose and fell evenly beneath the gray jumpsuit, the open colr showing a glimpse of colrbone and a thin scar that vanished beneath the fabric.
His face carried that same contradiction—sharp features softened by faint ugh lines and a half-smile that always looked half-meant. His eyes caught the light as hazel, but shifted amber when he turned his head.
When he stepped closer and offered a hand, Ashe hesitated only a second before taking it.
J.H.’s grip was firm but not crushing—warm, rough-palmed, steady. The kind of handshake that grounded you whether you wanted it to or not. The skin along his knuckles was calloused, the heat of his palm almost startling after the chill of the air.
And there was something else: a faint scent that clung to him—Clean, metallic, edged with something faintly woodsy—cedar, maybe. It wasn’t overpowering, just present, curling through the air like static before rain. The longer Ashe stood there, the more it filled his head—soft at first, then dizzying, a strange hum at the base of his skull that he couldn’t quite shake.
For a heartbeat, everything around him seemed to narrow: the glow of the walls, the echo of the voice, the pull of the air between them. He blinked and the haze passed as quickly as it came, leaving him a little dazed but oddly calm, like he’d just surfaced from deep water.
J.H. gave his hand one st shake and smiled. “Guess that’s that.”
Ashe nodded slowly, still trying to piece together why his brain felt so warm and unfocused—but unable to muster any suspicion at all.
Ashe started to pull his hand back, but the faint hum in his head wouldn’t go away. It was a warm, pleasant fog that made every thought move a little slower, every sound a little softer. Before he realized he was speaking, the words slipped out—
“You, uh… smell good.”
His brain caught up a second too te. “Your—uh, your cologne, I mean!”
J.H. blinked once, and the corner of his mouth curved upward in a knowing smirk. “Do I now?” he said, drawing out the words with deliberate amusement. “Funny thing—I’m not wearing cologne.”
He leaned in just slightly, voice lowering, tone pyful but edged with meaning. “This pce does offer some interesting upgrades, though.”
The sentence hung in the air, weighted with implications Ashe couldn’t quite unravel. He caught on only to the first part, face going hot. His posture shrank a little; shoulders curled inward, eyes darted away. “Whatever it is,” he muttered, trying to sound casual, “it… smells good.”
J.H. chuckled softly, the sound rumbling like distant thunder.
But the st few words—interesting upgrades—echoed in Ashe’s head long after the ugh faded. The shop. The system. The strange things people could buy here.
He blinked, the haze thinning just enough for curiosity to cut through. This was his chance to ask—how J.H. had gotten those clothes, why the shop treated them differently, and what exactly counted as an upgrade in this pce.
Ashe’s mind clung to the word upgrades. The fog in his head didn’t quite clear, but it shifted—just enough to let the thought slip out.
“So, uh…” He rubbed his arm, eyes darting to J.H.’s clothes. “That outfit. Did you… buy it from the shop?”
J.H. tilted his head. “This?” He gnced down at himself, amused. “Yeah. Figured I’d get something practical. Why?”
Ashe hesitated, struggling to find a way to phrase it that didn’t sound pathetic. “It’s just—every time I check, it’s all dresses. Skirts. Nothing normal. Like the system’s… bugged or something.”
That earned him a blink, then the faintest ghost of a grin. “Bugged, huh.”
J.H. studied him for a long, unreadable moment. To him, the confusion, the flush, the defensiveness—it all read differently. Endearingly so. “You don’t like what it gives you?” he asked, tone hovering between genuine curiosity and teasing.
Ashe frowned, not catching the implication. “Would you?”
“Y’know,” J.H. continued, eyes flicking down with casual interest, “dresses, flowy stuff. Makes sense, I guess. You were struggling to keep that thing under control in zero-G. Maybe the system’s picking up on performance and trying to ‘correct’ it.” He made air quotes, amused.
Ashe frowned, half following and half not. “That’s not—”
“And,” J.H. added, tone tilting toward mischief, “it’s not giving you any underwear repcements either, huh?”
The words hit like a spark. Ashe’s face went crimson, and his hands flew to his backside as if to shield himself. “N-no, that—my bum—it’s complicated, okay!”
J.H. ughed under his breath, the sound low and unbothered. “I’ll bet it is.”
He leaned back, expression softening just enough to read as teasing rather than cruel. “Hey, don’t take it so seriously. Though I think I finally made a connection about how the system functions."
Ashe gnced up, still flushed, curiosity flickering through his embarrassment. “What do you mean?”
J.H. looked thoughtful, eyes half-lidded as he gestured vaguely toward the walls. “It or something is definitely watching us and well-.”
He let the sentence hang there, watching Ashe carefully. The faint smirk had faded into something quieter—measured. “Of course,” he added lightly, “I'd be happy to tell you about my little theory of mine.”
Ashe frowned, sensing the weight behind that tone. “You know more than you’re saying.”
“Maybe,” J.H. admitted. “But information’s currency here, isn’t it? I could trade you what I know for… what you’ve figured out. Call it fair exchange.”
The shift in his voice wasn’t threatening, just deliberate—an easy confidence that somehow pressed on Ashe all the same. He hesitated, words caught somewhere between pride and uncertainty.
Before he could decide how to answer, the system’s voice sliced through the silence:
“Attention: The first weekly challenge has ended. Participant cubes will soon reset. Please exit the arena immediately to avoid penalty.”
Weekly? Ashe thought, before J.H.’s voice pulled him back to the present.
“I think I finally made a connection about how the system functions,” he said. “But it’s hard to be sure without data.”
Ashe frowned. “Data?”
He shrugged casually. “Patterns. What triggers what. We all got dropped in here around the same time, I assume, right? So maybe you’ve noticed things I haven’t.”
The tone was light—almost conversational—but there was weight under it, a quiet expectation. Ashe felt it pressing on him like the air before a storm.
He hesitated. “I mean… maybe.”
“Quickly. We’re running out of time,” J.H. said, voice firm but urgent.
Ashe’s brain scrambled for something to say—something useful, something he also wanted to understand. “I—uh, one of my Jobs—it was called the Brothel Job.”
J.H.’s eyebrows rose a fraction. “Interesting title.”
“I didn’t pick it!” Ashe said quickly, heat rising in his face. “I just—I had to help these living dolls get ready before… you know, work. But one of them—” He stopped, realizing how fast he was talking. “One of them spoke to me. Like, actually spoke. Not like the others. She said something that didn’t sound scripted. And then it just all happened so fast that—uh—”
J.H. hummed, half-interested, half-amused. “Spoke to you, huh? You sure you didn’t imagine it?”
“I know what I heard!” Ashe snapped, exasperated.
The system interrupted, its cold tone filling the chamber:
“Attention: Any further loitering will result in a timed penalty.”
J.H. nodded slowly, filing the information away behind that calm exterior. “That’s… valuable insight. Thanks for sharing.”
He turned sharply and sprinted toward the elevator that had brought him here.
Ashe blinked, thrusting out his arm as the words caught up to him. “Wait, you said you’d share your—”
“I’ll share my theory when we meet next!” J.H. called back, already stepping inside. “Might even throw in something extra for your patience!”
He tapped two fingers to his temple in a zy salute as the doors began to close.
“When?” Ashe shouted. “You don’t even know if—”
But the door had already sealed, and J.H. was gone.
“Ugh!” Ashe stomped his bare foot against the floor. “I can’t believe I let him get one over on me like that!”
A fshing red light suddenly filled the arena. Ashe turned, spotting a timer near the exit. It had already been running for three seconds—or at least, that’s what it cimed.
His body reacted before his mind could. He bolted for the elevator, the air around him thick with the fading echo of J.H.’s smirk.
The silence that followed felt heavier than gravity itself.
The elevator doors slid open with a pneumatic hiss.
Ashe stepped back into the cube he’d started to think of as his room—but the familiar white glow had been repced by pulsing red light. The walls throbbed in time with a warning tone that made his head throb.
“Ugh…” He winced, pressing a hand to his temple. The fshing was already feeding into a headache.
Across the far wall, his terminal bzed with a rge, blinking word:
PENALTY
He rushed over and smmed the glowing button just to stop the noise.
A side panel slid open beside the terminal with a hiss of compressed air. Something pink and mechanical extended outward on a tray—small, sleek, almost toy-like. Its surface gleamed under the red light, a tiny LED dispy fixed at 00:00:00. Next to it sat a pink ring and a thin adjustable strap.
Ashe stared. “What… is this?”
The terminal flickered, repcing the warning with a single message:
Please equip the penalty device. Follow on-screen instructions.
Each step appeared in crisp white text with simplistic images. The instructions were oddly specific: position, alignment, securing points.
He followed them because that’s what the cube expected of him. That’s what everyone did here—follow the next order and hope for the best.
When he finished wrapping the strap around his waist and connected it to the device which is now wrapped snugly against his manhood, a faint mechanical whir came from inside the pink shell. Then—snap.
Unscensored Version
The dispy on the wall changed again:
Penalty duration calcuted:
9 seconds te = 9 days.
The noise finally stopped. The lights softened to their usual sterile white.
But Ashe didn’t move. His heart thudded against the base of his throat as the tiny device hummed faintly in response to his pulse, the LED timer now counting downward from 215:59:59.
Ashe panicked and tugged, yanked—nothing. The device was sealed tight, even the strap locked into the sides.
He’d never seen anything like it before, but a cold certainty formed in his gut: whatever this thing was, it would keep him from proving his manhood—maybe even from feeling it.
“Fuck!” he blurted. “How did the system know the first thing I was gonna do was finish what I started this morning—before getting interrupted by the challenge alert?!”
J.H.’s scent still lingered in the back of his nose, a faint metallic-cedar trace clinging stubbornly to memory. Ashe shook his head hard, as if he could shake it out with the thought itself. Great, I'm losing my head so bad that I'm thinking of another man when trying to touch myself. Perfect..
So much for that idea.
Ashe was frustrated in every way: physically, from losing the match by losing his cool; emotionally, for letting J.H. pull a fast one; and now sexually.
“This is the worst…” he muttered, thrusting his hips instinctively while pawing at his crotch.
The LED timer blinked at 215:59:45—a quiet, constant reminder of just how long those nine days would st.
sUWUly
?? Worn ClothingSimple sleeveless sundress — charcoal base with sunflower printNo underwear — repced end-day by Penalty “Device” (9 days remain)Bare feetLight sweat-dampened hair — unwashed since morning
?? On-hand / Backup ClothingDuck-print cotton panties — too smallHeather-gray oversized hoodieBck pleated skater skirt — upper-thighThigh-high socksThin Bnket x2
Foil Emergency Bnket
Ft Pillow
?? Room & Gear Inventory
Bucket Toilet (Tier 1) — gel liner ≈ 90% used
Wall-mounted Sink1-Gallon Cleaning Liquid — ≈ 95% usedCellulose sponge
Thermal Micro-Tent — 4 ft x 4 ft in sizeWooden Wash-Tub — 4 ft x 3 ft; Oval Shaped
Credits: 121 cr (21 remaining + 100 Credit reward)
Influence Tokens: 4 (Chloe)
?? Physical & Mental SnapshotHunger: Moderate — missed regur meal windowThirst: Lightly quenchedFatigue: High — post-match exhaustion + stressCleanliness: Slightly sweaty; not yet washed after arenaBody temperature: Slightly elevated from exertionStress: Moderate-high — tension lingeringMental state: Frustrated, restless, embarrassed; lingering sensory recall of J.H.’s scentLust: High — desperate for releaseDetermination: Wavering under enforced restraint
System Log — End of Day 7