Today was a 'rest day'. A lie wrapped in a quiet morning. They gave us extra sugar for our coffee and let us sit in the courtyard. The sun felt like a foreign object on my skin.

I sat with #218. She was humming, sketching patterns in the dirt with a stick. We didn't talk about the games. We didn't talk about debts. We talked about the taste of fresh strawberries, the feeling of clean sheets, the sound of a door closing without it being a lock sliding shut.

Then, without a word, she took my hand and placed it on her thigh, under her green tracksuit. Her skin was warm. She guided my fingers, slow and deliberate, not to her pussy, but to the inside of her wrist, to the frantic, terrified pulse hammering there. She held my gaze, her eyes wide and dark, and pressed my fingertips harder against her lifebeat.

It was the most intimate thing I've felt in this place. More than any fuck, any mouth on my cunt, any violent release. It was the raw, quiet terror of a heart that's still beating, held in someone else's hand. We sat there for an hour, just like that, two terrified animals sharing a secret: we are still alive. For now. The debt is in our blood, but the pulse is ours.

Tonight, the fear is a quiet hum, not a scream. And for some reason, that's worse.