Chapter 6: Memories
Her thoughts followed Xia Yan's half-lidded eyes back three years...
"I don't care! You're all monsters trapped in latex! I refuse to be like you!!!" The young woman covered head to toe in pink latex slammed a chair hard onto the office floor and snarled at the women in teal in front of her. "Otherwise I'll starve to death! Die outside! Jump from here! I still won't take a single bite of your food!" After saying that, she lifted another chair beside her and hurled it at the dean of discipline, shouting a string of willful nonsense she had apparently learned from somewhere.
"Song Xuan, I have already submitted a report to the principal to activate punishment mode. This is your final warning. Drink the nutrient solution that Teacher Zheng brought you right now, or I will activate your uniform's punishment mode." The speaker was the dean of discipline for the first-year cohort, a woman in her thirties or forties with a tall, professional build. She was also dressed in a teal ladies' suit, but unlike the other teachers, her teal high heels were higher, and five silver metal rings with a metallic sheen were embedded at her neck, wrists, and ankles. Those were some of the visible differences between the dean's uniform and a regular teacher's uniform.
"Xuan, listen to the dean. Punishment mode isn't a joke, and the ladies' suit teachers can't unlock you on their own either. Even the teachers' own suits are locked. Please, I'm begging you, drink the nutrient solution. You haven't eaten for two days, and Mrs. Song is very worried about you. She's already called many times..." Song Xuan's homeroom teacher was much younger than the dean of discipline. Song Xuan was only her second class of students, so she clearly had no experience dealing with a situation like this. She could only keep pleading, never realizing she was only fanning Song Xuan's arrogance.
"Then just activate it if you can, you vicious bitch!" Song Xuan slapped the automatic feeder out of her homeroom teacher's hand and stormed toward the door. But before she could run out of the office, her pink ladies' suit instantly transformed into the look of a confinement suit. The restraining cords between her arms and her armpits, and between her legs, suddenly shortened to one-third of their original length, throwing her off balance and sending her crashing to the floor. And just like that, her week under punishment mode began -- until she finally gave in two months later. Song Xuan's rebellious phase lasted just over sixty days. Compared with the 235 long years she would later live, it was almost nothing more than a blink.
In punishment mode, not only did the severity of penalties for violating Ladies' Academy rules increase, but the suit would also automatically carry out routine punishment twice every day, from 6:00 to 6:30 in the morning and from 18:00 to 18:30 in the evening. The goal was to remind students at the beginning and end of each day that they were under discipline and had to reflect constantly on themselves.
If you counted the times Song Xuan deliberately broke the rules and was punished for it during that period, her own uniform hit her with about seven or eight punishments a day, and each one was five times harsher than usual.
The Ladies' Academy uniform normally did not punish female students. If a woman's daily behavior was sloppy, or her words and actions weren't ladylike enough, it would simply deduct the corresponding etiquette points for the day. At worst, she would have to attend an additional week of evening comportment training from 18:00 to 21:00 each night, cutting into her free time. Even that alone was enough to keep most of the academy's women quiet as mice.
Only when a student truly violated the Ladies' Academy rules would the uniform launch punishment mode. Insulting teachers, verbally abusing classmates, wasting food, lying, damaging public property, failing to finish homework on time, being late, leaving early, skipping class... these were all things that academy students could hardly ever be guilty of unless they did it on purpose.
The punishments mainly worked by using the countless electrodes inside the ladies' suit to simulate the pain of electric shocks, heat, blows, and piercing. The mildest was a low current running through the whole body. Though unpleasant, it was nowhere near truly painful; this kind of punishment was mainly a warning, meant to prevent more serious rule-breaking. Next came tactile impact simulated by internal current pulses, mimicking a cane striking the hands and buttocks. That kind of punishment could really leave welts on the palms and buttocks, exactly like a real cane, with no difference at all. But the suit had a miraculous healing function, and any bruise or swelling would completely heal within a day. This kind of punishment was mainly used as an on-the-spot penalty when a student insulted a teacher or cursed at a classmate. It was like divine retribution from a myth. The suit could also directly simulate a whipping, leaving a long lash mark on a woman's body with a single strike. Even so, it would disappear in a day under the suit's healing, but the pain was absolutely real. This was mainly used for women who refused to change after repeated warnings, as a disciplinary punishment independently judged by the suit or approved by the dean after a teacher's request. Beyond that, auxiliary methods like needle pricks, electric shocks, and burns were automatically deployed by the suit's AI depending on the complexities of the real situation.
Once students reached the upper years and their bodies had finished maturing, the uniform would also unlock nipple punishment and clitoral punishment for adult women, which could be divided into tightening punishment, electrode punishment, heating punishment, and piercing punishment.
Because those areas were highly sensitive, the stimulation from the punishments was strongest.
They were generally used on women in punishment mode or on those who had seriously violated the academy rules.
That was how the uniform worked under normal conditions. In punishment mode, however, not only did the two daily routine punishments remain in place, every punishment level was increased fivefold. The moment a simulated whipping landed on a female student's delicate body, she would usually be in tears and unable to say anything, and some would end up sobbing with tears streaming down their faces.
And in punishment mode, the uniform did not wait only for rule violations. Any behavior that caused a student's etiquette score to drop would trigger punishment. Not being ladylike enough in speech or conduct, or failing to behave properly in daily life, were all enough to set it off. A woman under punishment mode had to stay on edge every second, stepping as carefully as if on thin ice, just to avoid triggering the suit's disciplinary response. Even then, she still could not escape the routine punishments from 6:00 to 6:30 and 18:00 to 18:30 each day.
Compared with the physical pain the uniform inflicted during punishment, punishment mode also put great mental pressure on Song Xuan. Both the appearance of the uniform's punishment mode and the very meaning of punishment mode itself screamed humiliation. Although the students at Ladies' Academy would not simply discriminate against a woman just because she was in a punishment period, or refuse to talk to a classmate in punishment mode, the odd outfit still made the punished person feel ashamed and long to escape that state as soon as possible.
In addition, Ladies' Academy would specifically requisition the free time of students in punishment periods and add extra courses, including the added comportment training from 18:00 to 21:00 every evening, self-reflection homework from 12:30 to 14:00 at noon, and no leave permitted during weekends or winter and summer breaks. They had to stay at the academy during the holidays and weekends for extra counseling, moral instruction, and physical training. In short, students in punishment periods were given very little free time at all. Even during breaks, their entire day was packed, and they could not go home.
After only two months of education under the uniform's punishment mode, Song Xuan had completely yielded.
Unfortunately, turning off punishment mode was just as difficult as activating it in the first place.
First, the student had to rank in the top 33 percent of the grade-level overall score for three consecutive months before she could submit an application to the grade-level dean of discipline. Only after the principal approved it would punishment mode finally be lifted.
The overall score was determined by a combination of etiquette score, academic score, and conduct score. Back then, Song Xuan had resisted the uniform for less than three months before giving in. After that, she had no choice but to start studying hard. She worked hard for two months, only to let her overall score slip out of the grade-level top 33 percent in the third month by accident, forcing her to start over from the beginning.
When the uniform was in punishment mode, the student was forbidden to leave Ladies' Academy. The design was very much like a confinement suit, since a female prisoner was never allowed to take off her confinement suit before her sentence ended.
So Song Xuan had no choice but to stay at school through the entire winter break. During that time, she regretted countless times that she had not simply swallowed the nutrient solution her teacher brought her in the first place.
After all, once a woman was wearing the Ladies' Academy uniform, there was no way she could outmaneuver its rules.
Only then did Song Xuan finally understand how kind her homeroom teacher had been, and over the course of the following semester that teacher sacrificed her own rest every day to look after her.
After the high-intensity evening comportment training, she would use a massage gun on Song Xuan's calves, arms, and shoulders.
Some weekends, she even gave up the chance to leave campus and chose instead to stay on duty at the academy and keep her company.
The first moment punishment mode ended, Song Xuan cried her heart out in her arms, and even she herself did not know whether it was because of happiness or gratitude.
In the end, it was not until the second month of the second semester of her first year that she finally met the requirement of ranking in the top 33 percent of the overall score for three consecutive months. Fortunately, the dean of discipline and the principal were both very considerate and did not make things difficult for her because of her bad attitude back then. After asking a few simple questions and giving her a psychological test, they had Song Xuan handwrite another self-criticism and enter it into the Ladies' Academy system, and then they lifted her uniform's punishment mode.
Watching her body change in an instant from a shameful latex bikini into a normal pink latex bodysuit, and realizing that from then on she would no longer have to endure the routine punishments that came with punishment mode every morning and evening, and would finally have more time to do the things she wanted, was almost the happiest moment Song Xuan had experienced all through her first year. It felt like being suddenly freed after a long ordeal.
For a brief moment, Song Xuan even found the uniform more endearing, and for a long time after that she never once thought about taking it off again. She felt that if she had to die, she absolutely could never go through such an ordeal a second time...