Carter glared at Emma, then swept his gaze around the people in the elevator. He glanced once toward where Kim Ga-yeong and Yugeum were sitting, looked over at Kanu and Sam, then muttered.
“I can’t die in a place like this. Trash like you people might not understand, but a talent like me must not die a meaningless death at the bottom of the sea!”
Kim Ga-yeong heard that and laughed, heh-heh-heh. It was the kind of laugh that said the bullshit was so absurd that laughter was the only thing that came out. James’s voice rang out toward Carter, filling the entire elevator.
“Hey. I’m embarrassed for you. You trying to make me ashamed?! Am I the only white bastard here who knows shame?”
From behind, Logan shouted things like, “Did you just deliberately leave me out?! Huh?!” Benjamin was watching Carter and the others with an amused smirk. Swallowing the sigh that was about to burst out of me, I said to Carter.
“Lie down on the floor.”
“What?”
“Lie down on the floor. If an elevator falls, that’s the safest position.”
“How am I supposed to believe you?”
“A friend of mine is an orthopedic surgeon, and something like that was in one of their journals. What is the safest posture an orthopedic surgeon riding in a falling elevator should take to increase survival rate? I read it in the waiting room while I was waiting for him to finish clinic. Lie down straight.”
At my gentle but commanding words, Carter hesitated, then obediently lay down flat on the floor. Once he was lying there, I waved both arms like wings, as if demonstrating, and said.
“Wave your arms.”
“Like this?”
“Yes. While lying down. Like you’re lying on snow and making an angel. Yes, like that. Faster. A little faster.”
“L-like this?”
“Yes.”
Carter, lying on the elevator floor, flapped his arms as if trying to take flight. At the sight of his arms flailing grandly, Kanu and Sam burst out laughing, and though Yugeum quickly covered her mouth with both hands, her eyes had completely curved into crescents. Kim Ga-yeong clutched her stomach and laughed. Kevin smiled at the corners of his lips. I said quietly to Carter.
“That’s how you go to hell.”
“What? What did you say?”
Carter asked while still flailing his arms. Beside him, Benjamin kicked Carter’s arm. You stupid asshole. Stop it.
“At this height, the only way to survive is to fly.”
“……What kind of lunatic are you?! Were you playing with me just now?”
Carter sprang up from where he’d been lying on the floor. His face and neck were bright red. I gestured toward Carter with my palm and said.
“That was a trash-tier survival lecture brought to you by the first and last dentist of the undersea base. Please give a round of applause to Mr. Carter, who personally demonstrated for us.”
Clap clap clap clap clap.
Applause broke out all around. Sam and James, in particular, shouted enthusiastically.
“Flap those wings some more! I’ll kick you till your ass flies off!”
“With your personality, you’re going to hell even if you flap till your arms fall off, you bastard!”
It’s true that lying spread-eagled on the elevator floor increases your chance of survival in a fall. The problem is that when an elevator built 3,000 meters under the sea is falling, no matter how much your survival rate rises, all you get is a corpse that’s only half-dead.
Carter stomped toward me, thud, thud, thud, thud. Then he glared at me from right in front of my nose for a long while before stepping back and saying.
“Consider yourself alive because I owed you one from earlier, and because of Mr. Shin.”
“Who is Mr. Shin?”
You just stared at me and walked away, and that means I died and came back to life? Why am I surviving because of someone I don’t even know?
When I asked Carter’s retreating back, he stomped his feet as if his rage had shot all the way to the top of his head and said.
“Shin Haeryang! That son of a bitch!”
When his stomp made the elevator shake slightly, Emma shouted at Carter, asking if he really wanted to die by her hands, and the thudding of his feet noticeably decreased. Why Shin Haeryang? Lee Jihyeon spoke to me as I stood there with a stupid look on my face.
“I think it’s because Team Leader Shin said before that every bastard in the undersea base who comes into contact with a Korean will end up having a meeting with him.”
Kim Ga-yeong asked Lee Jihyeon in surprise.
“He still goes around doing that?”
“He’s gotten a lot better since becoming team leader. Back when Team Leader Jo was here…”
Lee Jihyeon inhaled and bit her lip. Then, with a sigh, she said.
“I’d honestly been thinking of just quitting this place. Considering the situation now, maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d quit back then and gone back to Korea. ……Did you know we can’t renounce our nationality while we’re working here?”
Lee Jihyeon asked me. I tried hard to recall the contract that, chronologically speaking, I had definitely signed five days ago. I had definitely signed it five days ago, but emotionally it felt like fifty days ago.
When would anyone ever have to renounce their nationality in life? While practicing dentistry, no less. As I read the documents, I’d thought becoming stateless while working mixed in with people from eight countries sounded even scarier, so I’d signed that document without much thought.
“I remember filling out that paperwork.”
“When you stay at the undersea base, you get immigration offers from the other seven countries. The more rumors spread that you’re good at your job, the more of them come in, and the better the offers. That’s why the previous engineering team leader ran off to America. He abandoned his wife and daughters back in Korea too. Every day he’d spout nonsense about being henpecked. He’s going to hell. Truly.”
Lee Jihyeon’s tone sounded like she had a lot bottled up. This was the first I’d heard of any of it. I remembered Priya’s slow voice telling me that Korea had recently added some documents regarding immigration and that I should read them carefully. I’d been too busy looking at the salary, working hours, and vacation.
“Back then, we were basically the American kids’ handmaidens. If the American team said anything, our team leader would be the first to go yes, yes, groveling like he had no pride. We were doing all the work they were supposed to do. They’d be drinking beer in broad daylight. They’d suddenly barge into our rooms. They’d tell us to get their permission if we wanted to go on vacation. Jesus won’t forgive you people either, seriously. On top of that, we only found out late that all kinds of personal information on the Korean team had been handed over wholesale. Like those three on our team, it seemed the American ones got some kind of benefit if they obtained information on people in the undersea base and reported it to their country. There was a huge uproar because Jihyeok’s health information and family details were on American Team Leader David’s pad. Jihyeok said he was going to kill Team Leader Jo Donghui, so Team Leader Jo ended up staying over in Cheongryong-dong with the American team.”
……What a mess. A total mess. Lee Jihyeon looked off into the distance, trying to recall the past, and said.
“I think they said he’d received around eighty thousand dollars in cash alone and crossed over. At the time, he’d been bragging to the team members nonstop. He kept spouting bullshit like, Japan said they’d give me a hundred million won if I went over, but if I’m going to leave, I’d rather go to America than Japan, so Team Leader Shin asked Sato if that was true. Apparently Sato laughed and said they didn’t take traitors like that. After that, everyone who remained signed contracts saying they wouldn’t renounce their nationality while employed here.”
……What a disgrace. A total disgrace. Embarrassing. It was someone else’s business and happened in the past, so why was I ashamed? So that was why one of the documents I signed had been created. Yugeum listened quietly, then said to Lee Jihyeon.
“I don’t think researchers get offers like that.”
“Is there a country you’d like to go to?”
At my question, Yugeum scratched at a hangnail on her index finger, then tore it off as she said.
“I do want to go to Australia or New Zealand. Or to a marine research center in Europe. Korea doesn’t spend much research funding on marine life. I came here because the undersea base research center forcibly supports research with money extorted from each country. Our team itself could be dissolved and disappear at any moment.”
“What about you, Ga-yeong?”
“If I said I was changing my nationality, my parents and about ten old people would put on durumagi robes, get in a helicopter, and come all the way here. Just thinking about it gives me a headache. I already get headaches from them calling every day telling me to get married. I’ll live in Korea without that particular headache. ……Muhyeon, have you ever dreamed of immigrating?”
“Not once.”
This was the first time I’d even learned that nationality could be sold and turned into money. My mom and younger sibling were in Korea, so what renouncing my nationality?
Suddenly, a flash of realization crossed my mind. ……If I thought about it the other way around, maybe they had selected someone who would remain in Korea because he had family there, and seated him in this undersea base dentist position.
An employee at the Jeju Naval Base had said I’d been chosen at odds of one in a thousand. Because the salary was high, I’d expected there to be many applicants, so I hadn’t imagined I would be accepted for this position until I received the acceptance notice.
Maybe. Maybe someone had deliberately selected an atheist, a dental specialist who had a family and needed money. ……But there had to be quite a lot of people who fit those conditions. If you threw a stone with those criteria, wouldn’t every dentist walking down the street get hit?
While I was lost in thought, Carter had been grabbed by the collar by Logan and Benjamin at the same time. Carter had deliberately stomped his feet to see Emma have a fit, and when the elevator shook, Logan and Benjamin beside him had pounced on Carter at the same time.
“I’ll kill you!”
“All right. I won’t do it. Let go.”
“I’m going to beat you even while the elevator’s falling, you bastard. I’m going to beat you until right before I die. Even if my arms and legs are all broken, I swear I’ll beat you into dough. Jump just one more time. I’ll make sure you don’t have ankles anymore.”
Emma looked at Carter through the eyes visible between her tangled curls, then scoffed and said mockingly.
“You act like your life is the only one that matters, but I’m the one who can’t die here. Even if you gathered up all the brains of the people here, they wouldn’t measure up to mine.”
Surprisingly, no one denied it. Since I didn’t know much about the research center side, I couldn’t say anything, but seeing Carter unable to refute her, it seemed Emma’s words weren’t a lie. Veins stood out in Carter’s neck as he answered, trying not to lose to Emma.
“……Do you have any idea how important my research is to the undersea environment?!”
“I think there’d be someone to research it in your place even without you.”
Carter ground his teeth fiercely and shut his mouth. When the interior of the elevator fell quiet, Emma sighed and curled herself back into a ball. Kim Ga-yeong asked Emma, who had buried her face in her knees.
“I was trapped in my room crying my eyes out, sure, but what on earth were you doing that you couldn’t get on an escape boat?”
“……I don’t really want to talk about it.”
Emma spoke in a gloomy voice. After that, complete silence fell. Only the elevator kept rising, little by little.