Kevin looked at the axe, then at me, and slowly explained.
“People followed Bell’s orders until the escape craft dropped below thirty. But once there were fewer than twenty left and the water started coming in, they began fighting each other to get aboard. The phones didn’t work, and no matter how much I searched among the people gathered there, I couldn’t find my friend. On my way to my friend’s lab on the sixth floor, I suddenly fell, and when I looked, there was an axe buried in my leg.”
Kevin lightly ran his hand over the bandage on his calf.
“It didn’t hurt until I tried to move. I just couldn’t walk. The guy who threw the axe at me was a New Zealander I used to see now and then in the lounge or the cafeteria, but even thinking about it all this time, I still don’t really know why he threw it at me. We barely ever talked. Maybe he figured that if the number of people went down, he’d be able to get on an escape craft.”
Kevin looked over the faces of the people inside the elevator one by one, then spoke with difficulty in a completely hoarse voice.
“More than the axe being stuck in my leg, what scared me was him coming at me. He was sprinting at full speed toward me while I was down.”
Then he inhaled and exhaled. Whenever Kevin spoke, there was a metallic rasp in his throat; thinking about it now, I wondered if his voice had gone hoarse from crying so much.
“After I got into a melee with the people coming at me, I was the only one left on the sixth floor. I crawled to my friend’s lab, and the door was open, but no one was inside.”
Kevin gripped the axe handle once, then flinched and relaxed his hand again. Looking now, several of Kevin’s fingernails were broken; they must have snapped while he was crawling. I’d been so busy looking at the axe that I hadn’t even noticed his nails.
I rummaged through my bag, found some medical paper tape, tore off strips with my fingertips, and wrapped a few around Kevin’s nails. It wouldn’t be much help, but it was a stopgap measure. It should keep the nails from breaking further or tearing off.
Seeing Kevin up close, exhaustion sat heavily over his eyelids. The way he was breathing in shallow, wheezing gasps didn’t look particularly good either. Emma, curled up in the corner, looked similar. They’re both terrified. Come to think of it, everyone here was on edge and consumed by fear because of the disaster situation. The only one who didn’t seem afraid in the slightest was Kanu. I thought of the two offices on the third floor, then asked Kevin.
“There was a room on the third floor where they’d gathered the dead. Did you happen to go there?”
Kevin stared at me blankly, then shook his head.
“No.”
I remembered being inside the elevator on the first floor, when the water that had lingered below my ankles had risen to my calves in an instant. The Undersea Pollution Center must have been flooding.
I thought of the corpses I’d seen on the third floor. I imagined the countless bodies laid out in the room being submerged and floating up, and hurriedly tried to pull myself away from that image. Damn it. People don’t die that horribly at the dentist. ……Good thoughts. Let’s think positive thoughts. I tried to say something decent to Kevin.
“Your friend might not have been in that room. He may have gone to another research center, or boarded an escape craft when you couldn’t see him because of the fighting.”
“I hope so.”
Kevin said weakly. Silence soon followed. The atmosphere was gloomy. Benjamin was rapidly losing steam under James’s sarcasm. It was because no one was siding with him. Harsh remarks about shutting up and sitting in a corner just breathing were flying back and forth between them. They even exchanged words about how, if possible, he didn’t have to breathe either.
The elevator was still wrapped in darkness, and as that darkness stretched longer than before, I could feel people unconsciously being drenched in fear. To pull Kevin even slightly out of the gloom he seemed to be sinking into, and to organize my own thoughts, I asked him a question.
“If you could pay money and go back to the past like Kanu, would you go?”
“……I don’t think I would. It’d be impossible to gather that kind of money in the first place, but I’ve always lived by agonizing over things and making choices as best I could. Even if I went back to the past, I don’t know if I could live a life as good as the one I have now. Of course, if I went back to yesterday, I wouldn’t stay here today.”
I could sympathize to some extent. If only I could go back to tomorrow, I’d leave the undersea base immediately, hitch a ride on any helicopter or boat passing around Daehan Island, and get out of here.
“What about six hundred years ago, or several thousand years ago, like that?”
“If I went that far into the past, there’d be no one I know. I wouldn’t want to go.”
I see. Well, true. When I thought about my family, no matter what had happened in the past, I also wanted to move only within the time period I’d lived in. Kanu’s wish didn’t seem all that universal. I don’t know about other people, though.
Perhaps her prayer had ended, because Lee Jihyun was listening to the conversation between Kevin and me, who were closest to her. I asked Lee Jihyun as she lowered her clasped hands.
“Are you finished praying?”
“Yes.”
“May I ask what you prayed for?”
“That we get out of here safely. That the Lord look down on me so I don’t beat those people to a pulp. That His little lamb is wandering under the sea. That it would be nice if He fixed the elevator. Things like that.”
Lee Jihyun said with a slight smile. After praying, she seemed to feel at least a little better than before. It was a field I couldn’t understand at all, but if it gave someone else room to breathe, then fine.
“We were talking about going back to the past. Jihyun, if you could pay money and go back, would you want to?”
“Does any time work?”
Someone who wanted to go back six hundred years had already come up. Well. Whatever she said, it wouldn’t be surprising.
“Yes.”
“If I went back to the past, would my past self be there?”
Huh? That was a question I hadn’t thought of. In the six hundred years ago Kanu mentioned, it seemed certain that he himself wouldn’t be there. ……Right. If I went back to yesterday, what would happen if the me who returned from the future met the me of yesterday in the clinic?
“I don’t know. If you were there?”
Lee Jihyun thought for a moment, then said,
“I’d like to go back to when I was twenty.”
“May I ask why?”
“I’d want to tell myself to leave home quickly. I’d tell her that whether it’s monthly rent or a jeonse lease, only once she has a place where she can be alone will she finally become happy. And I’d tell her a few stocks that are going to rise.”
Kim Gayoung and Yugeum, who had been quietly listening to our conversation with their chins propped on their hands, nodded and replied.
“Stocks for me too.”
“I’d go with lottery numbers.”
“Ah. That’s not bad either. But I don’t think either past me or present me would be able to memorize the numbers.”
Smiling as I listened to the two of them, I asked Lee Jihyun,
“You wouldn’t want to go back several hundred or several thousand years?”
“You mean, like spreading the hem of my garment on Golgotha Hill and laying it beneath His feet?”
“Pardon? I wasn’t asking with any particular answer in mind.”
Where was Golgotha Hill? Was it where Jesus was executed? Why lay out your clothes? Lee Jihyun gazed into the darkness, yet spoke as if seeing the past.
“I want to help my younger self a little more. Jesus and God would understand.”
After Lee Jihyun’s words, silence fell for a moment. Not even a few seconds later, Kim Gayoung suddenly spoke while rubbing her chin with her fingertips.
“Now that I think about it, if I could go back to the distant past, I’d like to go kill Grand Prince Yangnyeong.”
If I remembered correctly, wasn’t he Sejong the Great’s older brother?
“Why him?”
“No. Wait. Now that I think about it, Injo is more… ……No, Seonjo was a complete trainwreck too. Should I make Jeongjo quit drinking and smoking? ……Now that I think about it, even if I went back then, I don’t think I’d have the ability to assassinate a crown prince or a king, so it seems a bit impossible, doesn’t it?”
Kim Gayoung began sinking into deep thought, naming kings of the Joseon Dynasty one by one. She seemed far more knowledgeable about Korean history than I was. I only vaguely knew the kings’ names; all their achievements were mixed up in my head.
Was the Tangpyeong policy Yeongjo? But what was Tangpyeong again? ……I memorized it, but I can’t remember. Was it Yeonsangun and Gwanghaegun? There was a reason those people couldn’t have “jo” attached to the end of their names. I tried rummaging through memories of Korean history from more than ten years ago in my brain, then gave up. Kim Gayoung muttered blankly.
“With just me. ……If I could change history in a big way.”
Then Kim Gayoung suddenly frowned and said to me,
“Putting aside whether that cult can send me back to the past or not, I don’t want to pay even one hundred won of my own money to go back and change history for hundreds or thousands of years, or help with anything. It’s not like it’ll benefit me much anyway. Only strange old geezers spouting nonsense would like that. What do I care what happens to the Andong Kim clan!”
Then, as if Kim Gayoung had thought of something, she snorted and started grumbling, “Ugh!” Yugeum suddenly burst into laughter, chuckled softly, then asked me beside her,
“Muhyeon, would you want to go to the distant past?”
If I was asked this question, there was only one place I’d go back to.
“Yes.”
“Where would you want to go?”
I gestured in a circle around my eyes and waist with my fingertips and said,
“I want to go back to before the accident. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
People who’d probably been hospitalized for a long time after a major accident, or whose family members had been caught up in a serious accident, would likely agree with me. How important it was to live without getting hurt and stay healthy. And how much time, money, and effort it took to regain your old life.
“I see. I’d go back to around ten, get the title of genius, receive lots of government support, and either do this research again or aim for a bakery and start eating lots of flour from then on.”
At the end of those words, the elevator started moving again. Unlike before, the elevator operated with a slight jolt, and both James and Benjamin, who had been standing, fell on their butts. The people who had been half-standing or sitting were all startled as well. I, too, slammed into the elevator wall, and Yugeum and Kim Gayoung, who were sitting nearby, bumped shoulders with each other.
“Kyak!”
“Huh!”
“Urgh!”
“Aaaaaah! We’re all dead! We’re all dead! We’re all going to fall and die! Aaaaaaaah!”
While people were horrified by the slightly shaking elevator, the lights came on. Then the elevator began going up again. My body had gone stiff with tension, and when I realized at some point that I’d been holding my breath, I barely managed to inhale and exhale.
The terrified Carter kept screaming, and only shut his mouth after Logan kicked him and told him he was being noisy. After a few seconds of silence, he asked the people around him,
“I heard there’s a good posture to take if an elevator falls. Anyone know it?”
Emma, pale-faced, sneered and said,
“Do you really want to live that badly? If we fall, just die. Why try so hard to live?”
“You die.”