"......Mr. Sin Haeryang. If you were going to say that to someone who'd woken up to a leak with two of his team members missing, you might as well have just watched me get hit instead."
Vladimir seemed conflicted over whether to hit me or Sin Haeryang first with his seized right arm. The team members of both teams swarmed around their team leaders. Then, leaving me gasping for breath and the team leaders glaring at each other, they chattered amongst themselves. They didn't look the least bit inclined to stop this situation. Seo Jihyeok smacked the forearm of Nikolai, who was yawning wide enough to tear his mouth, and said,
"Hey. I'm going to bet money that our team leader wins. You too, put money on your team leader before it starts! Hurry! I have five dollars right now."
"I don't have cash. I ran out of the room without even wearing underwear right now; do you think I'd have money?"
"Ugh! Gross! Why didn't you just die in the quarters!"
Baek Ayeong asked Sofiya, whose face had turned deathly pale.
"Where did your two kids go? ......Are you okay? Why is your face like that?"
"I don't know. I feel sick. Maybe the salo we ate as a snack went bad. Ah. My hands are like ice, and I feel like I'm going to throw up."
"Show me your back and bend over."
Baek Ayeong began pounding Sofiya's back with her fist, loud thuds echoing out. Viktor, who had been sitting silently on the floor, half-rose at the sight of Baek Ayeong's fists, but when he saw that Sofiya wasn't dodging, he sat back down. Sofiya, who was being hit on the back with loud thuds, said with a grimace,
"......I think I'm going to vomit even more."
"Go vomit in that corner. Don't let us hear it."
Vladimir looked at Sin Haeryang, then locked eyes with Nikita, who was standing beside him waiting for his turn. Then, looking displeased, he let go of my collar. Entirely unprepared, I immediately fell on my rear. The moment I could breathe again, Nikita grabbed my shoulder like a relay baton pass and asked,
"So where is Dmitri?"
"I don't know."
Now Nikita tried to grab my collar. Gang Sujeong, who had been watching from the side with her arms crossed, stopped him and said,
"Goodness. Take it easy. The doctor's going to die."
"He may be a shitty bastard, but he's our family's shitty bastard. I don't want to go home and tell Mom and Dad that I abandoned my little brother and ran away to save myself!"
Nikita growled, speaking anxiously. I quickly shook my head.
"I checked all the lower-numbered rooms, but he wasn't in the Baekhodong quarters. ......I haven't seen him in Jungangdong, nor in the Jujakdong quarters."
It wasn't as if I was intentionally hiding anything. I was telling everything I knew. Nikita stared holes into my face, then said,
"Then he must be in Cheongnyongdong or Hyeonmudong. Is it true that the Chinese in Cheongnyongdong have guns?"
"Yes. They're all armed. They'll probably be waiting for anyone approaching the Cheongnyongdong escape pods."
"What about Hyeonmudong?"
"I don't know."
It seemed useful yet useless at the same time. Nikita muttered quietly, then gestured with his eyes toward the child and asked,
"Is that kid yours?"
"No. His name is Henry. He's the child of Leonard Sanders and Nevae Hopkins."
"That drunk on the American team?"
Gang Sujeong, listening from the side, asked me. Which of Leonard and Nevae was on the American team? Tumanako looked at us and said,
"To be exact, he's Nevae's child now. The two got divorced, and Nevae is going to raise the kid, isn't she?"
"How do you know that?"
"Nevae came to the hair salon to get her hair done. Spend five hours on someone's hair, and all sorts of stories come out. Uh...... She said she was leaving the kid at her mom's house in Brisbane. I don't know why the kid is here."
It was surprising enough that Henry, a minor, was in this undersea base, but it was also surprising that something could be done to hair for five hours. What do you even do to hair for five hours? It's not even surgery. I rubbed my neck with my hand and asked Tumanako,
"Why did they get divorced?"
"Well. That's a robust privacy bound by protein between a hair designer and a client, so I can't tell you......"
At the urging glances of two men bigger than doorframes, one woman, one angry woman, and one man sprawled on the floor, Tumanako quickly corrected himself.
"They say Leonard is an alcoholic. He supposedly drinks at least two bottles a day. He promised he wouldn't and broke that promise four or five times, and once he lost Henry because he was drinking and sleeping. They say they got divorced right after that. She said once she got the house in America sorted out, she'd go back to Australia."
"Leonard that bastard brought him in."
Gang Sujeong said nonchalantly to the team leader looking at her.
"The American team's helicopter came and went most recently, after all."
Nikita stared at the sleeping Henry for a few seconds, then let me go with a troubled expression. As I awkwardly rose from the floor, I spoke to Vladimir, who was shaking off Sin Haeryang's arm with annoyance,
"Thank you. Thanks to you, Henry survived."
When Vladimir turned his attention to me, tension once again enveloped the surroundings. He slowly asked me,
"......Doctor. What were you planning to do if I had left that kid in the room and come out just like that? Were you confident I'd bring him out?"
Even if Vladimir had fallen for my words and gone to Room 80, the worry that he might see Henry sleeping in that room and just leave had constantly hovered in a corner of my mind. Rather, the thought that it would take more time but be safer if I went and carried the child out myself had constantly tormented me as I checked the lower-numbered empty rooms.
In the worst case, it was a situation where a child could die because of my misjudgment. I glanced at Tumanako for a moment, then spoke to Vladimir.
"You woke your team members and checked inside the room before leaving last, didn't you? I thought you were a team leader who knew how to take care of his team members."
I had no certainty. It was merely that, having observed his actions for a short time, I believed in the morality I saw in him.
"Other than trusting that you wouldn't abandon a living child and leave, there was no other way."
The gaze of Vladimir, who was frowning, stayed on me for a few seconds. I thought he might lunge at me again, but soon he averted his eyes from me. He went to gather his team members who were sitting in corners, dozing while lying down, or vomiting. I hastily called out to Vladimir's back,
"Wasn't there a snake in the room?!"
"Don't let me see you. If you don't want to die."
So did that mean there wasn't one? Or that there was? Depending on whether the snake had been in the room, the hypothesis that Emma, the cat, and the snake—none of the three—existed inside the undersea base became clearer.
As I tried to call out to him again to confirm, startled, Gang Sujeong lightly covered my mouth with one hand. Perhaps because her hand was large, my nose was covered too. Gang Sujeong urgently whispered to me,
"Doctor. That man's not exactly good-natured. Husband and wife both, they're quite the pair. Bam! Ugh! This ended quite peacefully, all things considered."
Gang Sujeong shook her head back and forth as if disgusted, then slowly removed her hand from my face. Sin Haeryang, who was beside her, looked at Henry lying on the floor, then turned his gaze to me and said,
"I'm Sin Haeryang, leader of Engineer Team Ga."
"I'm Bak Muhyeon, the dentist of Deep Blue."
I see. This person doesn't know me. Sin Haeryang calmly looked at me and asked,
"Are you hurt anywhere?"
"Yes. I'm not hurt."
Sin Haeryang nodded and looked toward the escape pods. Following his gaze, I saw that one empty escape pod remained.
"I heard the broadcast. There is a remaining escape pod, but you are not using it."
"Ah, yes."
"How did you obtain the information you spoke of in the broadcast?"
How should I explain it? That I'm experiencing this situation for the third time and was forced to learn it?
"I happened to find out by chance."
Sin Haeryang looked at me once. He didn't say anything in particular to my words, but he didn't seem to trust the source very much. Looking around, I saw Sin Haeryang, Gang Sujeong, Baek Ayeong, Seo Jihyeok, and I Jihyeon. ......Two members of Engineer Team Ga were missing.
"Did you use the escape pod?"
"......Among the team members, Gim Jaehui and Jeong Sanghyeon escaped using the escape pod."
"Why......why?"
"The broadcast started while Gim Jaehui's escape pod was being ejected, and Jeong Sanghyeon didn't believe the broadcast content."
"To be exact, that crazy bastard Sanghyeon ignored the order telling him not to board and threw himself into the escape pod like he was diving."
Seo Jihyeok propped his right jaw on his right hand and drew a parabola in the air with his left index finger while making a whooshing sound.
"In all my life, I've never seen that bastard move so fast."
Gang Sujeong beside him snorted and laughed. One escape pod had been taken by Carlos, who had fled from the Baekhodong quarters. ......I had guessed that some might not believe my broadcast, but having it confirmed like this felt strange.
Sin Haeryang was watching on a large monitor the escape pods that had just left the deep-sea zone (3,000m~6,000m) and begun ascending. He seemed to be checking the escape pods' status before moving. While the team leader was doing so, the team members were all either lying sprawled on the floor or sitting around idly. Yu Geumi, who had been standing beside Henry the whole time, and Tumanako, who had been looking around at the people, also sat down on the floor after seeing what the others were doing.
I couldn't tell whether they trusted my words or not. Earlier, they had rushed toward Jujakdong with unstoppable momentum, as though breaking bamboo. Then, a low voice asked from beside me,
"Is there a reason you made the broadcast?"
"Because I know the escape pods are broken. I announced it because I didn't want people to die riding them. The same goes for the other dangers."
"......Then the ones who broke them will be targeting you, Doctor."
"I know."
It's fine. I'm prepared. ......Actually, I'm not sure how prepared I need to be, but at least it shouldn't be worse than getting my flank torn by a shark. In this situation, rather than gaining an advantage through information inequality, it was better that even one more person survived.
"I simply shared what I knew for the sake of survival."
"Have you shown all your cards?"
"Yes."
Sin Haeryang said to me with an expressionless face,
"......Doctor, don't play poker."
"Yes? Ah. It's fine. I'm not doing this to win."
I opened the zipper of the backpack I was wearing and hurriedly took out candies and pads.