I woke from the shock of falling out of bed. A kkkkdrrrrrrr grinding sound was coming from somewhere far away. What the hell is that? I pushed myself up from the floor and swayed along with the shaking room. The vibration was strong enough to make the pen on my desk tremble.
Still half out of my mind, I opened the door. With a pshhh sound as it slid open, the water that had been outside rushed into the room. Why is the hallway full of water? The moment that dazed thought crossed my mind, I snapped awake and goosebumps rose all over my body.
The seawater soaking my bare feet was cold. Only then did I smell the brine, and I immediately went back into the room. I was afraid the door might not close, but it slowly slid shut.
I sat on the edge of the bed, wiped my wet feet on the blanket, then put on long socks and the hiking boots with the sturdiest soles I owned. Inside the waterproof backpack my younger sibling had bought me as a job-warming gift was a flashlight I had bought one day, saying I’d go camping, but had never used at all.
I stuffed in the bottle of water I had been drinking, the guidebook, and the candies, chocolates, energy bars, and so on scattered around it, as if sweeping everything in. Then I shoved in the towel I used to wash my face and the whale plushie sitting beside it. As I crammed everything in front of me into the bag, I remembered that all my clothes were in the laundry room dryer. I put in my wallet and the pad on the bed, then zipped the bag shut. It took more courage than before to clutch my phone and open the door.
After calming myself with a single sigh, I pressed the button to open the door. Maybe it was broken, because it opened more slowly than usual. Earlier, the water had only dampened the soles of my feet, but now it rose to my ankles in an instant. Terror surged through me. Why was water leaking in? An undersea base probably had plenty of ways for water to leak, but surely this base hadn’t been built so humans could live like fish.
Is this normal? Thinking things like that, I braced a hand against the hallway wall. Maybe the living quarters flooding once in a while was a common occurrence and I was the only one who didn’t know? Caught up in a situation I had never imagined, my head went blank. Only the cold soaking into the hems of my pants made the flooded undersea base feel real.
The bedroom doors in the quarters opened by fingerprint. Or by brushing the electronic watch on your wrist against it. Or by holding up a pad. I was in the Baekho-dong building in the west, which housed eighty people. To escape, I had to take the central staircase beside Room 40 and go to the escape craft. What if people were asleep inside the rooms? What if they still hadn’t woken up? Or what if this was normal and I was overreacting?
I remembered a sentence from the undersea base guidebook’s section on how to escape: [If a leak is discovered in the undersea base, it is not a normal situation.] Looking at the seawater sloshing around my ankles, I clenched my teeth. Eighty rooms meant I had to start right now. So what if it turned out this was normal? I’d just look a little crazy.
“Wake up! We have to run right now! Water’s leaking in!”
I knocked on the door right next to my room, but no one came out. My room was Room 38, and the room next door, Room 37, belonged to a Chinese chef named Wang Wei. I couldn’t tell whether he was inside or not. I kept knocking, then, knowing full well it wouldn’t open with my fingerprint but trying just in case, pressed my finger to the pad.
In movies, doors opened because of fingerprints left on the pad or whatever. Contrary to my expectations, the door opened right away. I had no idea why it had opened. The moment I saw the empty room, I went straight to the next one. I knocked and pressed my fingerprint. The room opened immediately, and no one was there. Shouting, I kept throwing open the bedroom doors one after another.
“Wake up! We have to evacuate! Seawater’s coming in!”
Only after opening about ten rooms did I finally find someone sleeping. He was about 180 centimeters tall, wearing a headset over his ears, his blanket twisted around his entire body like a pretzel, sleeping shirtless. I rushed in and pulled off the headset first.
“Wake up!”
He waved his hand as if shooing away a fly. I shoved him off the bed by force and dropped him onto the floor. A string of curses in some foreign language I couldn’t understand burst out. They were probably aimed at me, but there was no time, so I kicked the man as he lay sprawled on the floor.
“I said wake up!”
The man staggered upright and started cursing at me, then saw water pouring into the room in real time and his face changed.
“Get out here right now, you bastard!”
He probably didn’t understand “you bastard” since it was Korean, but he must have thrown plenty of curses at me, so let’s call it an exchange. As soon as I left the room, I only caught the name Carlos on the nameplate before moving on to the next room. By the time I had opened two more rooms, Carlos came running out. He had put on a shirt and shoes, but by then the water was rising above our ankles.
“What the hell is going on? Why is water coming into the base?”
Carlos’s face had turned deathly pale. Seeing the fear in his eyes, I realized this was truly a disaster.
“I don’t know! It was like this when I woke up. Start from Room 37 and go down to Room 1—open the doors and wake people up!”
I shouted at the fifty-second door and opened it with my fingerprint, but no one was inside. Carlos pressed at his phone and wrist pad as he said,
“Bedroom doors can only be opened by the room’s owner, or the team’s deputy leader or leader. Or someone in a special occupation category. I can’t open doors.”
Only then did I remember the guidebook’s section on opening bedroom doors and emergency protocols. Was I able to open them because I was medical staff?
“Then at least knock!”
When I opened the fifty-fourth door, there was someone asleep with the blanket pulled all the way up. I yanked the blanket off first. They were sleeping curled up like a fetus, but the moment I saw the face, I recognized who it was.
“Ms. Yu Geumi, wake up!”
Ms. Geumi frowned and sat up, then realized there were two men in her room and screamed. I immediately turned my head aside and said,
“Water’s leaking into the undersea base! Put on clothes and come out right now!”
The research staff quarters were on the other side, so why was she sleeping here? Glancing at the name Martina written beside the door, I opened the next room. As I kept throwing doors open, Yu Geumi came out of the room, having changed from pajamas into regular clothes, wearing glasses. Her face was filled with terror.
“Ms. Geumi. Can you open bedroom doors?”
“I’ll try.”
“My room is Room 38, but I haven’t checked any of the lower numbers yet!”
By the time I opened Room 60 with my fingerprint, Yu Geumi was fiddling with her wrist pad and phone, then shook her head.
“There’s no emergency message. I’ll trigger the alarm.”
When I opened the sixty-second room, an alarm blared loudly enough to tear my ears apart.
[Waaaaaaaah! Emergency situation! Everyone in Baekho-dong, evacuate to the escape craft. Emergency situation! Everyone in Baekho-dong, evacuate to the escape craft.]
Only then did I realize Carlos was gone. When I asked Yu Geumi, she said she had seen him come into his room and leave, but hadn’t seen him at all after that.
When I opened the sixty-fourth room, there was a cat inside. It looked as if it very much disliked both me and Yu Geumi for barging in without permission. Kyaaaaaaow! [Waaaaaaaah! Emergency situation!] The cat’s low yowl and the emergency alarm rang out together, making it feel like my ears were being shredded. Yu Geumi looked at the cat and said,
“It’s a Russian Blue.”
That’s not the problem here. Yu Geumi was staring blankly as she named the cat’s breed, and I was just as close to losing my mind at the sight of it. Animals were prohibited in the undersea base. A cat, of all things.
Its fur was puffed up all over its body, and it was only about the size of my forearm. When I looked at Yu Geumi with an expression that asked, What do we do? she began taking off the cardigan she was wearing and said, “We catch it.” Then she held the cardigan in both hands like a net. Yu Geumi glanced at me and moved to the right.
“To the left.”
At her words, I grabbed the blanket beside the bed in both hands like she was doing and went left. I threw myself at the cat, which was on the desk, mouth wide open and yowling. As if mocking me, the cat slipped out through a gap under the blanket that wasn’t even the size of a fist, but Yu Geumi covered it with her cardigan as if she had known I wouldn’t catch it. Aaaaaaaoooow! I had never raised a cat before, but its cry alone was as thunderous as a tiger’s.
While Yu Geumi wrapped the cat in the cardigan, I emptied a random backpack in the room. Then, as if shaking the cardigan into the backpack, we stuffed the cat inside and zipped it shut. I slung the backpack over one shoulder.