Listening from the side, I spoke while firmly suppressing an absurd feeling.
“If I stole things just because the other party was very nervous, then everyone who comes to the dentist would have to empty their pockets for me before leaving.”
Expressionlessly, Shin Haeryang explained to me again.
“It is slightly different from that kind of tension. …You know it the moment your eyes meet. The moment when time seems to slow down a little, and it becomes clear that the other person is hiding something from you.”
…I have no idea. For him, it seemed like he was trying to explain it to me as clearly as possible. But I don’t think I can understand it. Maybe it’s because I’ve never thought that just because I needed something, I would achieve it even if I had to steal what belonged to someone else.
Gang Sujeong looked at the people lying or sitting inside the serpent that was said to have once held the world until it was born, then asked Shin Haeryang.
“Then what should we do now? We can’t stay here forever.”
At that question, Shin Haeryang looked at me while holding the pad, and I looked at Shin Haeryang and Gang Sujeong. When Gang Sujeong shifted her gaze from her team leader to me, I shook my head vigorously from side to side and said,
“What are you expecting from a dentist who’s only been here for five days?”
Would the engineers who’d spent years at the undersea base know this place better, or would I? Gang Sujeong looked at me, then crossed her arms and asked,
“Doctor. Are you a believer of the Church of Infinity?”
“…No. I said that in Jujak-dong, but that was actually a lie. I’m an atheist.”
At those words, there was a flapping, flopping sound. It was the sound of the man tied up like a fish in front of the shower room door wriggling around, slamming his whole body against the floor. Without even glancing that way, Shin Haeryang asked me,
“In the current situation, where is a safe place? Have you been to Hyeonmu-dong?”
“…I don’t know. I’ve never been there at all.”
“In Cheongnyong-dong, aside from the escape craft, there are several multi-person submersibles. If the escape craft are impossible, what about escaping using a submersible?”
I tried hard to recall what Baek Aeyeong had said before. What was it again? Was it a two-person manual? She’d said something about a submersible.
“I heard there was one two-person manual submersible. I don’t know about the rest.”
While Shin Haeryang was lost in thought, the Church of Infinity believer began wriggling again. Maybe because Shin Haeryang had tied him up so well, he couldn’t move an inch and was lying on his side. His hands and feet were tied in front of him, and it seemed like the only thing he could do was writhe violently.
So you don’t tie someone’s hands behind their back when you restrain them. In action movies, I thought they tied wrists behind people’s backs. Is it because there’s a chance they could get free? Gang Sujeong pointed at the tied-up man and said,
“What do we do with him when we leave?”
Mmmph! Mmmph! The man, whose mouth seemed to be stuffed with something and who couldn’t speak properly, saw Gang Sujeong’s fingertip pointing at him and flopped like a live fish taken out of water. Before Shin Haeryang could say anything, I spoke first.
“We have to take him with us.”
When I answered quickly, Gang Sujeong’s expression turned dubious. We had to take him. Later, when the Fourth Undersea Base collapsed, water would rise here too—was he supposed to just watch that happen with all his limbs bound? Just imagining it was horrifying.
The man heard our conversation and began struggling more frequently. He was only looking this way with his eyes, and those eyes seemed half-filled with hatred and half with rage.
Yugeum and Tumanako also looked over in surprise every time the man hopped and struck the floor with his legs. Yugeum asked Seo Jihyeok, who remained impassive,
“I’ve been wanting to ask since earlier, but why is that person tied up?”
“I tied him up because I thought he’d be dangerous if I left him loose.”
Shin Haeryang opened a three-dimensional map of the Fourth Undersea Base and was asking Gang Sujeong about things like the submersibles’ diving depths and maximum crew capacity. He looked busy. I pointed at the man and asked Seo Jihyeok,
“I’d like to ask him a few questions. I want to remove what’s in his mouth. Would that be all right?”
“Yessir.”
Then Seo Jihyeok lifted the man lying on the floor as if he were luggage, set him upright on his knees from where he’d been lying, and whispered in his ear.
“Well. It doesn’t matter if you scream. But you know I’m faster than your religious people getting here, right?”
The man who had been shaking his whole body immediately went still. Seo Jihyeok undid the complicated-looking knot tied around the man’s mouth in one go, simply looping it once and pulling.
The man swiftly spat out what had been in his mouth, along with a large amount of saliva. When I looked to see what he’d been holding in there, I saw an entire toilet paper roll core and a wad of toilet paper had been stuffed inside his mouth. The man spat several times at the floor, saliva mixed with scraps of tissue, then asked me,
“You’re not a believer of the Church of Infinity?”
When I was about to answer, Seo Jihyeok stopped me with one hand. Then he said one simple thing to the man.
“Questions only come from this side.”
Seo Jihyeok’s attitude toward the other man was nothing but polite, so why was I getting chills like this? The man spat the saliva gathered in his mouth onto the floor again, then closed his mouth. I looked back and forth between Seo Jihyeok and the man, then asked,
“What’s your name?”
“…John Doe.”
It was the English name used to refer to an unidentified man. Was the unidentified woman’s name Jane Doe? He must really not want to answer. After hearing the man’s words, Seo Jihyeok snorted, apparently dumbfounded. This made me anxious. I quickly asked the man another question.
“Mr. John Doe. It seems the Church of Infinity has a phrase they use to confirm whether someone is a believer or not.”
“…They do.”
“What is it?”
The man looked at Seo Jihyeok with dissatisfaction, then answered slowly.
“I said it earlier too. …We survive under any circumstances.”
I’d heard that somewhere before. Was it from the Church of Infinity believer we caught at the Third Undersea Base? Or was it Tyler? I can’t remember. One thing was certain: the phrase I’d heard before wasn’t the correct answer.
“That’s not it.”
“It is, though?”
“It’s similar, but that’s not the answer. If someone says, [We survive under any circumstances], what comes after that? Are you also one of the people who joined because of money?”
The man who had called himself John Doe silently glared at me. Then, looking at Seo Jihyeok, he said to me,
“Get rid of him.”
“Pardon?”
“That guy. Get him out of my sight.”
From the way he jerked his chin, he seemed to be pointing at Seo Jihyeok, who was standing beside him.
“Then I’ll answer. Don’t let that bastard come near me.”
John Doe said it through gritted teeth. At that, Seo Jihyeok replied as if he felt wronged.
“I didn’t even do anything.”
Then, as if teasing the man, he slung an arm around his shoulders and plopped down on the floor right beside him. The man named John seemed frightened even by that simple action. I sighed and said to Seo Jihyeok,
“Mr. Jihyeok. Could you step away for just three minutes?”
Seo Jihyeok answered me while ruffling John’s hair roughly with the hand he had around his shoulders.
“…He might be dangerous. His mouth is free now, isn’t it?”
Was he worried the man would bite me with his teeth or attack the others? I shook my head and said,
“That’s my area of expertise.”
I know jaws and bite force well. Seo Jihyeok looked at the man and me for a moment, then let go of his shoulders and retreated diagonally. The man who had called himself John trembled with loathing. Seo Jihyeok withdrew to about two meters away from us. Only after several dozen seconds did the man named John ask me,
“Why do you want to know something like that?”
“You ask if people are believers or not, then shoot them to death.”
“No. We have no intention of killing people like that. We’re just confirming whether they really are believers of the Church of Infinity.”
“Pardon? No. You confirm whether they’re believers or not, and then you kill people.”
“Some people are carrying guns to force people to move, but killing isn’t the goal. Look at me. I don’t even have a gun.”
What is he talking about? I saw people die with my own eyes.
“I personally saw people being shot with guns.”
“…It’s probably that some hired mercenaries or a few believers acted on their own, but killing people isn’t our goal. I think I’ve said it twice now. If you’re going to keep asking the same thing pointlessly, I’ll say it a third time. Our goal is not to indiscriminately kill people.”
“Then is your goal to kill a few people? Are you only going to kill everyone in the undersea base?”
The man called John Doe said to me, sounding somewhat nervous,
“…I think you’re misunderstanding something. If my goal had been to kill people like that in the first place, I never would have joined a religion like this. Our goal is to go back to the past we want.”
It was similar to the wish Kanu had wanted. The absurd wish to go back several hundred years. Why was that coming up here?
“Why do you want to go to the past?”
“To live. [We head to the past in order to live.] That’s the proper verification phrase. If they answer, they’ll be considered a believer of the Church of Infinity.”
John Doe had spat so much that his mouth had gone dry, and after rubbing the inside of it with his tongue, he answered.
“People who don’t think they can hold a gun, or who hate pointing a gun at people, don’t carry guns in the first place, like me. All I have are rings.”
Then John Doe lifted his bound wrists and showed me the two rings on his fingers. On his second and fourth fingers were diamond rings of the same design, and no matter how I looked at them, they seemed like wedding rings. The man named John turned the small ring on his index finger several times with his thumb and said,
“I’m going to go back to before my wife died. That’s my one and only wish.”
No. With my head dazed, I said to John,
“No. They were shooting people indiscriminately.”
“…No. The Church of Infinity believers agreed to treat people as humanely as possible. Even if we take over this place, what would we do? If we succeed properly anyway, only a few people will die.”
“Who dies?”
“The people who go back to the past will be the ones who become dead. From the perspective of the present timeline, that person has completely disappeared.”
What is he talking about? Then what about the people who died, and what about the people walking around with guns right now? Are the people carrying guns in the Fourth Undersea Base completely different from the Church of Infinity? The Church of Infinity is humane?