Kim Gayoung said to Kanu with a worried look.
“Then do you know what that money is used for?”
“It seems like it’s probably used for internal operating funds or something like that. I paid about one billion won in cash. The rest I paid in jewels I had at home.”
Then that meant he had over forty billion won in jewels. Could someone really live with that much in jewels sitting around at home…? Jewels!
I suddenly felt as if I’d snapped wide awake. I remembered the countless jewels that had been displayed in the exhibition hall, jewels the size of a person’s torso, or even larger than a person. Were the jewels Kanu had paid among those? How much would one jewel of that size be worth? Around forty billion won?
“How big was the jewel for it to be worth over forty billion won?”
“…How curious. Usually people ask how many there were.”
At those words, I froze with my mouth hanging open. My blood ran cold. Could they see my pupils shaking even from this distance? I had never been so grateful that Emma had taken the flashlight away, making it hard to see my expression properly.
For a moment I was flustered, but in order to act as if nothing had happened, I looked at Kanu as though waiting for his answer. Please think the translator just made a mistake. …Please.
Kanu grinned at me and continued as if what I had said was nothing important.
“It was one piece, just under two meters.”
After realizing that Kanu had thrown an enormous amount of money into a cult, Kevin said in a slightly shocked voice,
“You could’ve just handed out two hundred million won each to people on the street and made two hundred people happy.”
“…I did think of that method too.”
Kanu looked at Sam, shrugged, and said,
“I also thought that if I distributed a hundred million won to each household in our Black community, wouldn’t they be a little happier? But after everything I’ve experienced in life, I’ve learned that families who were poor and unhappy don’t necessarily become happy just because they suddenly have a lot of money.”
“Have you ever been poor? Do you know the misery of the lower classes?”
When Carter showed particular irritation over the financial part, Kanu shrugged and said,
“I know it well, but I don’t want to explain in detail just how unhappy I’ve been.”
After hearing Kanu’s words, Carter muttered under his breath. If I had that money, I would have used it much better. Do you have any idea how efficiently I could’ve spent it? You wasted it on something useless, and so on. The complaints spilled out quietly.
“Yo, my man. What exactly are you planning to do by going back six hundred years?”
Both Yu Geum and I had asked the same question, but Kanu, who had avoided answering with vague words, looked at Sam, hesitated, then rubbed the diamond on the lighter in his hand and said,
“Do you remember that in 1441, Black people began to be sold for the first time in the world?”
“What?”
“In 1444, the first slave market selling African slaves was established in Lagos, Portugal. After that, unlike the Irish or Native Americans, Black people became, as you know, a popular commodity because we were more resistant to infectious diseases and could endure hard labor better.”
“Uh…”
Sam looked like he had no idea what to say. As for me, Yu Geum, and Kim Gayoung, we were listening to their conversation with expressions that said, What is he talking about?
Come to think of it, all three of us were science people. Lee Jihyeon was an engineer too, so I had no idea how much world history she knew. World history was an elective subject, and for me, who had chosen a path in medicine and staked my life on biology and chemistry, it was a field I knew as little about as Korean history. At least for Korean history, I had crammed everything by rote and taken the exam. Since middle school, I hadn’t opened a single world history book. Kanu said gently to Sam,
“We don’t even know what we lost. I want to see Africa from before it became any country’s colony, and my ancestors who were never kidnapped.”
Sam stared at Kanu as if dazed. Then he opened his mouth, but unable to say anything, closed it again.
“That’s too…”
Sam stood there silently with a frown, and after a while, he patted Kanu on the shoulder with his large hand. No one could bring themselves to speak. In the silence, Benjamin snorted and said to Kanu,
“So what if you see it? What are you going to do, unite the Black people of that time and massacre white people? Are you saying that knowing Black people sold other Black people back then?”
Now utterly appalled, I looked toward Benjamin, who had thrown out those words. Logan, who had been propping his chin on one arm, slipped in shock. Maybe he had bitten his tongue, because all I heard was cursing. Emma shone the flashlight toward Benjamin. When Benjamin frowned at the light, Emma looked at his face and shouted in a sharp voice,
“Shut your fucking mouth.”
“Who the hell are you to order me around?”
“You’re making me ashamed too, so shut up before I make you close that mouth with my fist!”
“Try it! Try it! Go on, try it!”
Emma was staring straight at Benjamin, who sat with his back to the glass overlooking the sea. It seemed even a mythical monster said to live in the deep sea couldn’t frighten Emma in this situation. Kevin, gripping the axe, did not take his eyes off Benjamin.
What if Emma lunged at Benjamin? I should stop her after Benjamin had been beaten to his heart’s content. …Come to think of it, did I really need to stop Emma? I should grab Benjamin, who definitely wouldn’t just sit there and take it. Since my work could increase, I’d have to ask Emma not to hit his face, at least.
Benjamin was clearly trying to pick a fight with Kanu, but Kanu simply shrugged and folded his arms.
“Me? To them? Who knows. Even if I went back in time, I doubt they would believe me if I suddenly appeared and told them that white people would say we weren’t human, then spend six hundred years murdering, kidnapping, and torturing us endlessly. The tribes and nations would all be different too, so I don’t even know if unification would be possible.”
Kanu yawned widely and blinked. Then he said as if dumbfounded,
“And I never mentioned anything about white people. I said there was something I wanted to see. If what you want is for a community made up of Black people to massacre white people, then when I go back to the past, I’ll give some thought to whether there’s a good method. On the day I achieve it, I’ll be sure to reveal that you provided the idea, so don’t worry about copyright issues.”
The people who had been tense, afraid a fight might break out inside the elevator, instantly looked at the white man who had provided the spark for a massacre of white people. Benjamin’s face crumpled.
“You insane cultist lunatic. …You say something too!”
Benjamin said, looking at Carter sitting beside him.
“Say what?”
“You’re white too!”
“Whoa, whoa. Not my problem. It’s got nothing to do with me.”
Then, in this not-at-all-large elevator, Carter tried to move away from Benjamin. It had little effect. James, who had been sitting beside Sam, made sobbing sounds, pretended to wipe the corners of his eyes with the back of his hand, and said to Benjamin,
“If you’d kept your mouth shut, the Arabs might have been first in line. Thanks to you, white people have become the number-one target for a fanatic who lives with the idea of pouring forty-one and a half billion won into going back to the past. I’m so grateful I could cry.”
“Shut up!”
Seeing Kim Gayoung and Yu Geum watching the situation unfold, it seemed like the Asians were not going to add anything more to this. Kim Gayoung let out a sigh deep enough to collapse the elevator. Then she skillfully twisted both arms behind her back and loosened the muscles there. Yu Geum stared blankly at James and Benjamin, then said very quietly, as if to herself,
“Somehow. Among the things I’ve heard here was ‘go back to your country.’ But thinking about it now, Black people can’t even be told something like that. Since they were brought here after being kidnapped, people who were forcibly settled eventually either no longer know their original countries or those countries are gone.”
More than Yu Geum’s realization, I was bothered by the words she said she had heard. …She had suffered that kind of racial discrimination at the undersea base? I asked Yu Geum in a whisper,
“Who said something like that to you, Ms. Geum?”
“…Some bad guy.”
“If I ever open the clinic again at the undersea base, just tell me the name.”
“What will happen if I tell you the name?”
“Nothing will happen.”
I am a person far removed from violence. But if someday, in some situation, the scales were to tilt, and I, a person far removed from violence, were to gain even the slightest advantage over the other party… I still don’t know. Would I retaliate? I am only a powerless ordinary citizen trying to protect the people within arm’s reach. I have never once been the protagonist of an action movie carrying out grand revenge. My treatment hours might become longer, though. I might leave their mouth open and take a long trip to the bathroom.
Yu Geum looked at me, raised the corner of her mouth slightly, then shook her head and said,
“I already forgot who it was. And I probably got an apology from them back then.”
Right. Yu Geum was a far more bighearted person than I was. Kim Gayoung discreetly eavesdropped on our conversation, glanced once at Lee Jihyeon, who was praying, and then went back to watching the argument.
Kevin beside me had not taken his eyes off James and Benjamin, but he had let go of the axe handle. Every now and then, whenever this man grabbed the axe handle beside me, I found myself flinching in surprise. I asked Kevin in a voice small enough that only he could hear,
“If a fight breaks out, are you planning to use the axe?”
Kevin pushed his falling brown hair back and turned his head to look at me. Surely he would use it to stop the fight, not actually chop a person with an axe, right? If someone were to get hit by the axe, the most likely target seemed to be Benjamin. Or Carter. Or some unlucky person.
Leaving aside the condition of whoever might be injured by the axe, if he started swinging an axe inside an elevator like this, there was no telling who else would get hurt or how badly. If he slipped, or it bounced off something, or the axe went flying, what would happen could only be left to the imagination.
And people are like flesh sacks carrying blood, so blood would end up splattering all over the inside of the elevator and everyone riding in it. On top of that, such a visual shock would not be something easily forgotten, no matter how much time, money, or effort one spent.
It seemed best not to use the axe on a person’s body as much as possible. Kevin nodded at my question, then looked forward again and said,
“Today was the first time I’d ever used it on a person too.”
“What about before?”
“I used it to chop firewood.”
I had never chopped firewood once in my life. To begin with, what occasion would someone like me, born and raised in the city, ever have to use an axe? I looked at his injured calf and asked Kevin,
“How did you injure your calf?”
“When I came to, the axe was stuck in my leg.”