Still very nervous, and with your emotions in tatters, you somehow held yourself together as you followed the others into a large room that had beds on the floors.
You selected a bed and lay down, watching as everyone else did the same.
“I don’t think I can sleep,” the girl beside you said as she rolled over to face you.
“Me neither,” you replied, reaching out to hold her hand.
“Are you nervous about meeting… him?” She asked, you knew exactly who she was referring to.
“Yes,” you said with a little head nod against the pillow, “but I’ve heard he is very handsome.”
“I’ve heard that too. I don’t know if he is as handsome as our King Kuroo, but I’ll decide that tomorrow,” she said.
You gave her a small smile and squeezed her hand, then let go and rolled onto your back to stare at the ceiling.
Years later, you still remembered lying there staring at the ceiling. You knew you couldn’t keep this secret hidden forever, and tomorrow would probably be the day you would be found out… and killed.
“I hope he picks me,” the girl on your other side said with a soft sigh.
You turned your head towards her.
“Although, he will probably pick you, Y/N, you’re the prettiest of all of us…”
She was meaning it as a compliment- laced with jealousy- but to you, it was your calling card to a beheading.
“Why do you want to be picked?” you asked her curiously.
“Well, a chosen concubine gets her own room and a few staff, and she spends her day making herself beautiful for whenever he calls her to his room,” she said with a small cheeky smile, “I wouldn’t mind spending my days looking beautiful so that I can get railed by him.”
“What if he sucks in bed?” The girl on her other side cut in and you both looked over at her.
“What if he looks different to the day he was announced as king and we all saw him at the ceremony?” she asked.
The two girls then engaged in a lengthy discussion and you lay back and closed your eyes.
Sudden intrusive images came punching into the foreground and you saw your mother’s terrified face as you walled her in, you heard the screams and other bloodied images of your friends and neighbors dying in the streets, and you raised your hands to your face to cover your expression as you finally broke down.
You sobbed into your hands silently, able to keep your distress to a vocal minimum as the room got darker and the girls started to drift off to sleep.
By the time morning came you looked an absolute wreck.
Puffy eyes.
Swollen sinuses.
Tear stained skin.
The holy trifecta of misery.
This was how you were greeting your death day… so it almost seemed appropriate that you weren’t looking your best.
“Everybody up!” Shimizu called as she stepped into the large room, clapping her hands to rouse you all – at some ungodly hour of the morning.
You stirred and sat up, heart pounding in your chest.
“Now, everyone in groups of 10 please,” Shimizu instructed, we will be bathing you and getting you ready for your interview with King Kageyama.”
You did your best to not show the fear on your face when you heard the word ‘bathe’. Would you come undone before you even got to see King Kageyama?
Swallowing thickly, you dropped your head and followed the first lot of girls into another room that had eunuchs (castrated males) with pitchers of water, standing in a line, waiting to dump water on you before you were sent into a different room that housed a natural spring pool to bathe in.
At the instruction from the carers of that section, the girls started to disrobe around you and you slipped to the back of the line.
Mild chaos ensued as the girls were collectively drenched in water and instructed to clean hurriedly so they could make it into the other room in a timely fashion.
“Oh shit, oh shit,” you panicked as you pulled the top half of your clothing down and ducked in behind some girls.
With a painfully beating heart, you slipped your clothes off but kept your undergarments on and squished yourself into the center of the girls as best you could.
There was so much going on that you got well and truly drenched from your hiding spot, and then the lot of you were forced through the doors into the bathing area in one conglomerate mess of limbs and bodies.
“Oh my god, I’m in… I’m in!”
Quickly you got into the water and sank down so that only your neck and face were showing above the water and then you waded out into the middle of the semi deep waters.
Some plup, friendly looking women, then entered, with all kinds of soaps and perfumes to be able to start the beautifying process and you slowly made your way to the edge of the pool so that one lady could attend to you.
“You have beautiful features,” she said softly, “it would be a waste for the king to not see you.”
“He will be interviewing us soon, will he not?” you asked her, looking up into her deep hazel eyes.
“That is correct,” she said, tilting your head back against the side of the pool and lathering soap onto your cheeks, “but the interview will not show your face.”
“How does it work then?” you asked, “how does he choose his concubines?”
“I assume Shimizu mentioned the ‘hole in the wall’?” she asked.
“Yes?” you replied, rolling your head from left to right as she cleaned your neck.
“Well, king Kageyama, prefers to choose his concubines by what they feel like…” She said.
You gave her a confused look so she continued.
“You will be presenting a body part of yourself for him to pleasure himself with. There is a wall, with holes in it, that you will be stood up against… you may chose your mouth, hands, anal canal or vaginal canal to please him— as he will be presenting his manhood through that hole. Whoever he decides to cum on or inside, is then chosen to be his concubine.”
At that point you weren’t sure if you were excited or mortified.
“How?! How am I going to get through this next process without being found out?!” you thoughtwith horror. So far you had managed to get by and not been found out, but this was getting more and more difficult.