It took about two seconds to check each room. I swept my eyes diagonally across the inside of the room, confirmed no one was there, then splashed my way to the next room.
Aside from the places that were obviously empty rooms, there weren’t many people who kept their rooms clean. Why on earth would anyone eat potato chips on their bed and spill them everywhere? Half-eaten food, drinks, alcohol, and the like had toppled over, leaving every room in a disastrous state.
In particular, in the room where someone had amassed an enormous collection of French wine, the wine rack, which hadn’t been secured properly, had fallen over, soaking the blanket and bed.
For a moment, I mistook the color for blood and was startled, but when I saw the broken bottles and smelled it, I realized it wasn’t and shut the door in relief. The water was up to my ankles, but the doors still closed for now.
The glass would sink in the water, but if my luck was bad, I might end up drinking water mixed with fine powder or alcohol. After that, it was one room after another filled with nothing but clothes and trash, with neither people nor animals inside.
In room 28, I found Korean-labeled sterilized chocolate milk and sterilized strawberry milk, sterilized soy milk cartons, all kinds of snacks, calorie bars, cup rice, and cup noodles stacked so densely up to the ceiling that the walls could not be seen.
It was a room with nothing but food, but the blanket was shaped like a person, so I pulled it back and found nothing there. The undersea base had shaken hard enough from the torpedo impact to make someone sleeping in bed fall to the floor, and yet the food stacked all the way to the ceiling hadn’t collapsed in the slightest. Looking at it, I thought it seemed more like a survival bunker than a supermarket as I headed to the next room.
That was probably where the rooms for Engineering Team A began. Unlike the room piled high with food, the room right next door was a mess, with unfolded clothes stacked in layers and half-finished drinks and snacks gathered all over the desk. Magazines related to games and programming, which looked as if they had been left on the floor, were all soaked, and there were game consoles of every kind on the bed. All sorts of trash floated in the water. Wow. A total pigsty.
After sweeping my eyes over it for two seconds and moving on, I found a room in complete contrast to the previous one: utterly clean. The blanket was folded with sharp corners, and on the desk there was nothing but men’s skin lotion and a single tumbler. Clean rooms were easy to look through and pass by. There was less information for my eyes to take in.
Room 25, right next door, had a cross and several watercolors attached to the wall, and on the desk beside a Bible were several copies of Easily Learning Pamanyunga and several sketchbooks. The watercolors on the wall seemed to have been painted by the room’s owner. Beside an empty easel, a ruined apron, dried-up paints, a palette, several brushes, and what looked like a dirty water bucket were scattered about. An empty wine bottle floated on the floor.
Pushing through water that now reached my calves, I looked inside room 24, Kang Sujeong’s room. I took in the sight of various kinds of dumbbells and comic books in all sorts of languages strewn about, then headed straight to the next room.
Room 23, next to Kang Sujeong’s, was overflowing with belongings. Posters densely covered the walls and ceiling. Nirvana, Queen, Oasis, Muse, Radiohead… What era of music was this person even listening to?
The bookshelf was overflowing, and when there was no more room to shelve the books, they had been laid sideways on the desk, forming pillars of books. A small metal vanity that looked as if it had been bought and installed separately was overflowing with cosmetics, and the closet was wide open, with clothes overflowing as well.
On top of the vanity was a box that seemed to be an accessory case, and on it, warnings were written viciously in English, Chinese, and Japanese. [Touch it and lose your wrist.] After reading that phrase, I chuckled and headed to the next room.
The next room was room 22, and this room was also extremely clean. A few bags of nuts for snacks and men’s skin lotion were placed on the desk along with a pad. Maybe the person knitted, because I could see a half-knitted sock and a ball of yarn.
A pink flowerpot that had been placed on the floor was floating in the water, taking in seawater and dying. I waded in, picked up the pad from the desk, and immediately put it in my backpack. Then I headed to the next room. Room 21, right next door, was empty.
Room 20 was overflowing with green. Shelves had been installed densely throughout the entire room, and plants were being grown on them. At first, I assumed the room’s owner had a hobby of growing plants under the sea and was about to pass by in two or three seconds like with the other rooms, but a strange feeling washed over me, and I looked inside again.
Several kinds of plants were growing intensively under artificial sunlight lamps, but one plant in particular, which I had thought was a flower bud and was about to ignore, gave me an overwhelming sense that something was off. There was no such thing as a flower bud shaped like that. …Don’t tell me this is a poppy pod? I had never seen a poppy pod in my life, so I couldn’t be certain.
On top of the desk were simple tools that seemed to be used for refining, along with several scales and spoons, a sticky, filthy pocketknife, and dozens of pieces of recycled paper cut into squares. On top of that, beneath the desk was a metal safe that looked incredibly heavy. No way. Surely not, right?
That room had no bed at all, and in its place were large drawer chests. As a test, I opened about three drawers; one opened and two did not. Inside the one that opened were pills I had never seen before, individually wrapped.
What kind of medicine is this? Puzzled because there was no English name engraved on the pills, I flipped them over, but there was nothing written there either. Why isn’t there an English name? …Holy shit. A curse rose up to my throat on its own. As if I might catch poison ivy from it, I recoiled in horror, rushed out of the room, and locked it with my fingerprint. A filthy room would be better than this! Is the room’s owner insane?!
Feeling so unsettled I thought I might lose my mind, I moved toward the lower-numbered rooms. Room 19 was empty. From time to time, I shouted at the top of my lungs toward the rooms I hadn’t checked yet.
“Is anyone still asleep?! Is anyone in need of help, or unable to escape?!”
It was when I had checked up to room 15. I heard some kind of sound from very far away. When I came out of room 14, someone was calling me. Far down the corridor, Yugeum was waving both arms.
“The cat! It’s not there!”
“What?!”
“The cat isn’t there! In room 64! The cat! Isn’t there! Isn’t it another room?!”
Yugeum shouted at the top of her lungs from far away. No. There was a cat in that room! That’s the room! When I rescued the snake, I came out in such a hurry that I got the room number mixed up, but the cat was definitely in that room!
I started to run toward Yugeum, then stopped where I was. Could a cat vanish from a studio apartment like smoke, or hide somewhere? I remembered a friend telling me it had taken them two days to find a hamster that had escaped from its cage inside a room. Could cats do that too? I had never raised one, so… What do I do? After hesitating for a moment, I swung one arm and shouted.
“Geum-i! Escape! Escape first!”
With Yugeum’s personality, there was no way she would say that without looking for the cat. Why wasn’t it there? …Where the hell did that thing go?! Swallowing the fear and anxiety surging up inside me, I gritted my teeth and headed forward.
As incidents became frequent where people refused to evacuate dangerous situations because they did not want to abandon their pets, laws on pet evacuation and transport had already been established decades ago. Animal rescue in disaster situations was now taken for granted, but the story changed in situations where one could not secure one’s own safety. That was because, in situations like earthquakes or landslides, rescuers had died as well after losing time searching for animals that had hidden in fear.
I couldn’t tell Yugeum to risk her life for a cat that wasn’t her responsibility. When I checked room 12, the water had already risen past my knees and up to my thighs. Could I still go from here to room 64? The people staying in the lower-numbered rooms might have escaped on their own. They might be empty rooms, right? Biting my lip, I agonized for a moment, then shook my head. I can’t go back.
Once the water rose past my thighs, walking became difficult, so I began moving while bracing myself against the wall. The residents of the lower-numbered rooms seemed to have quickly used the stairs next to room 1 to leave the dormitory when my announcement went out, or they were on vacation and had already gone outside.
Shouting as loudly as the emergency alarm, I pushed forward, and in front of room 11, I heard the faint sound of singing. An old, famous pop song was thumping away, and startled, I swept my eyes over room 10, then immediately checked room 9.
[I’m living in a world where no one is innocent!]
The farther forward I went, the closer the song grew, and only when I reached room 8 did I realize there was someone there.
A woman wearing a headset was lying on the upper bunk of a bunk bed, singing. As if she were holding a concert by herself, she sang loudly while twisting her hair around her fingers, and even though every single thing on the first floor was floating in water, she had no idea.
[At least I’m alive!]
Confronted with the first bunk bed I had seen in this Fourth Undersea Base, I was left speechless with disbelief. Because the bed was installed near the ceiling, the other person was completely dry. I spoke to her.
“Hey! You have to get out of here!”
Even when I shouted from outside the door, she didn’t notice, so I approached the upper bunk and pulled the headset off her head. The woman, still lying down, looked down at me, then jumped in surprise and sat up in bed. As a result, she slammed her head into the ceiling. There was a bang. I didn’t even have time to stop her.
“Aaaah! My head!”
Listening to her dying groan, I quickly said,
“Water is leaking in! If you don’t want to die, hurry up and get out!”
By the time I had checked up to room 4, the water had already risen from my waist to my chest. The woman from room 8 picked up some clothes and put them on, then said with the headset around her neck,
“The kids in the front rooms went on vacation. They probably aren’t there.”
“I didn’t even know you were here until I came this far.”
At the far end of the corridor, barely visible in the distance, there were two people moving. They seemed to be Nikita and Vladimir. It looked like the two of them had just arrived at the central staircase located by room 40. In particular, Vladimir seemed to be carrying something on his back, but he was so far away that I couldn’t see properly.
All Vladimir did was look at me, point at me with his index finger, then make a gesture of drawing his thumb in a long line across his neck from left to right.
I wasn’t sure what that gesture meant, but it either meant he was going to slit my throat, or that he was going to brush his teeth from left to right. I hoped it was the latter. After confirming that there was no one up to room 1, I climbed the stairs located beside room 1.