I removed the towels pressing Sumire’s hand and thigh and checked her thigh. Blood was flowing because the rough barbell plate had pressed into her plump, soft skin. Whether the bone was damaged was the most important thing, but I couldn’t tell at all from the outside. I figured we’d need an X-ray to know.
I could probably disinfect and stitch it up, but right now I had nothing but towels. Since this was Jungang-dong, I could probably get it disinfected and stitched up if we went to Deep Blue, but I didn’t want to go that far with this person.
······What a strange thing. I was someone who had injured my leg and climbed over four thousand stairs in the dark while crying, together with a person much heavier than Sumire. And yet I didn’t want to go to the dentist—a place located on bright, flat ground that wouldn’t even take ten minutes to reach. Struggling to shake off the feeling of not wanting to do anything, I moved my hands.
I left the towel pressing her leg as it was and pulled out another towel from the bag. Then I tried to tear the towel with my grip strength.
······It won’t work. Clothes too, and towels too—do they have to make these things so well? Or do I just not have any grip strength? No, that’s not it. I have enough strength to pull out wisdom teeth.
Baek Aeyeong, who was aiming her gun barrel at Sumire’s head, was the closest, so I asked her.
“Miss Aeyeong. Please help me tear this towel.”
Baek Aeyeong watched me grunting and struggling with the towel as if observing a primate, then answered.
“How should I?”
“Please help me tear the towel with the knife you’re wearing on your ankle.”
“······.”
Baek Aeyeong’s face hardened in an instant. Then she let out a sigh and whispered to me quietly like the sound of wind.
“You don’t go around exposing someone else’s concealed weapon.”
“Uh, uh······ I’m sorry.”
Baek Aeyeong took out a pair of scissors from her left pants pocket and handed them to me. The scissors looked familiar. It seemed one of the kitchen scissors Seo Jihyeok had brought from the café had ended up with Baek Aeyeong.
I cut the towel with the scissor blades as if slicing it, made pieces, and wrapped them around her thigh like a bandage. Sumire sat there with her cheeks puffed out, then asked me.
“Excuse me, do you have any painkillers?”
If my translator wasn’t malfunctioning, it seemed she was using honorifics only with me. I hadn’t known she was this kind of person when she came to the dentist’s. All I remembered was that she had been quiet without a word during her cavity treatment and scaling. I only remembered asking a lot of questions because she was so quiet. I hadn’t expected her to have this kind of personality back then.
“I don’t have any.”
While Sumire and I were talking, Yu Geumi lost her grip on Tumanako. Tumanako tried to lunge at Sumire, but I caught her around the waist in surprise as she shouted.
“If I’d gotten on the Baekho-dong escape pod, I would’ve died because of you!”
Sumire touched the leg wrapped in a makeshift bandage with both hands, looked at Tumanako, then snorted.
“I didn’t get on it. And I didn’t do it!”
“I’m going to put you on an escape pod and send you off first! You should experience it too! Eeeek! Let go of my waist!”
If I hadn’t been hanging onto her waist, she would have flown off like a bullet and attacked Sumire. ······I just treated her leg. Let’s not add more injuries. Thankfully, Yu Geumi was diligently covering Henry’s ears.
“Please calm down. What would hitting that person here solve in this situation?”
“I think hitting her would calm me down! They wrecked the escape pods?! Are they out of their minds?! ······Aren’t you angry?! You live in Baekho-dong too! They said this situation happened because the engineers were fighting! Neither you nor I are guilty at all! Let the engineers fight to the death! Why do we have to get involved in something like this?!”
A hairdresser who had only been hired at the undersea base for a month and had nearly died without even knowing why was shouting, flinging her arms into the air.
Anger? Right now, it felt like fire was burning somewhere in a corner of my head. Tears wouldn’t even come.
If we could use the escape pods, we wouldn’t have to use stairs or elevators. Besides, there were probably people escaping on those escape pods right now. If hitting that person would let us escape this undersea base immediately, I really don’t know if I could have refrained from hitting her. ······My heart is so heavy.
And having gone through this kind of life for the third time, I felt more disappointed in the people who destroyed the escape pods than the armed Infinite Church believers I had seen at the Third Undersea Base.
At the research center, the escape pods had been intact, but even then they had been outrageously insufficient compared to the number of people. There were people who yielded their turn so that others could board the escape pods, and people who had truly fought with their lives on the line just to get on one. Aren’t you ashamed of breaking the escape pods? ······Someone who knows shame wouldn’t commit such an act, would they?
And Tumanako seemed too excited right now. When you hit someone, the hitter gets hurt too—whether it’s the back of the hand or the heart, somewhere. There was no need for Tumanako to injure herself by hitting someone like this. And she didn’t need to feel even a speck of guilt, either.
“I’m very angry too. But I intend to determine the cause and those responsible after we get out of here. ······There will be plenty of time.”
Tumanako’s finger pointed toward John, who was next to Sumire.
“And you! Infinite Church, right?! I don’t know what kind of religion you are, but you’re the ones who flooded this undersea base, aren’t you?!”
“Uuuuup!”
John, who had been pointed at by Tumanako, shook his head wildly from side to side. He seemed to be saying no. Then who the hell launched the torpedo? Tumanako spoke as if her insides were bursting.
“If I find the culprit who made me lose my job here, I’ll hang them upside down at the top of Milford Strait!”
······I don’t know where that is, but it must be a terrifying place. While I was calming Tumanako down, the others immediately prepared to depart.
The gun naturally ended up with Baek Aeyeong, and Shin Haeryang picked up the 15kg barbell plate that had fallen to the floor. Gang Sujeong placed a hand on the shoulder of I Jihyeon, who had been turning her head away the entire time. As the others prepared to leave just like that, the one flustered was Sumire sitting on the floor.
“Wait! What are you doing?! You have to take me with you!”
Yu Geumi, with tired eyes, ran her hand over Henry’s head several times and said.
“Unfortunately, the people gathered here are all guests staying in Baekho-dong. How about asking someone staying in Cheongnyong-dong?”
“The one who broke the escape pods was Tamaki! It’s his fault! I didn’t do it!”
Shin Haeryang looked at Sumire’s fingernails and spoke like a sigh.
“All the engineer team leaders at this undersea base know that Tamaki Yuzuru is handling Team Na’s work alone.”
“That’s······ that’s······ he does it because he wants to!”
Sumire shouted as if she were at a loss for words, but Shin Haeryang silently lifted a 10kg plate from the floor. Looking at the atmosphere around them, it seemed the people from Engineer Team Ga already knew all of this.
Is it possible for one person to handle an entire engineer team’s workload? Teams are composed of at least seven to eight members. There must be a reason they’re organized that way. Gang Sujeong let out a deep breath and spoke to Sumire.
“The weekly English engineer reports your team writes. He writes all of those alone, right? Tell him to study infinitives again. He stuck ‘to’ all over the place.”
I Jihyeon nodded at Gang Sujeong’s words and added.
“You guys have never written an English report with your own hands even once. Have you ever even read what he wrote?”
Sumire, who had been frowning, shut her mouth. Shin Haeryang spoke gently to Baek Aeyeong, who was checking the remaining bullets and the gun’s condition.
“I’ll shoot.”
After Shin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok added softly.
“Aeyeong. I’m here too. If it’s been so long that you’ve forgotten how to shoot, or if it’s too heavy······”
“I’m not giving this to anyone! It’s my gun now! Team Leader, you just carry that lump of iron around! You carry a dumbbell too!”
Baek Aeyeong acted as if she would bite anyone who tried to take the gun from her.
“This is my entire fortune right now!”
At those words, Shin Haeryang seemed to quickly give up on the idea of taking the gun Baek Aeyeong had looted. However, Seo Jihyeok, holding a dumbbell, asked Baek Aeyeong.
“How am I supposed to fight someone with a gun using this?!”
“Do I look like a part-timer?”
Seo Jihyeok didn’t ask any further and let out deep sighs. Sumire shouted toward Shin Haeryang’s profile.
“I’m going to sue you for making my leg like this!”
Shin Haeryang didn’t even reply to that. Rather, Gang Sujeong looked at Sumire and said.
“Yeah. Sue all you want. I have a ton of things to sue for too. Let’s send each other so many lawsuits that the mailbox bursts. I’m planning to hire a hundred lawyers and a hundred yakuza. You do your best with the suing too!”
······I think the reason Gang Sujeong doesn’t use her fists is because she can beat people thoroughly enough with just her tongue. Sumire bit her lip tightly and glared at Gang Sujeong. Then Sumire burst into tears and shouted toward Shin Haeryang.
“Why are you doing this to me?! I didn’t break the escape pods! I didn’t shoot the gun either! Why are you treating me so coldly?! You even offered Tamatama a chance to immigrate to Korea!”
What did she mean by an immigration offer? I wondered, then barely managed to recall. Hadn’t they said they made such offers to foreigners in each engineer team who did decent work? It seemed Engineer Team Ga had told Tamaki Yuzuru to immigrate. From what she was saying now, it looked like Sumire had never received such an offer from Team Ga. Sumire screamed as if she were unjustly accused.
“Tamatama is an idiot who only graduated from Kankandoritsu, a country bumpkin! He’s a fool who doesn’t fit in with our team of Tokyo Ikkō people at all! You were so kind to him, so why won’t you treat me kindly?!”
“So that’s why you fed him needles.”
What? Shin Haeryang crossed his arms and looked at Sumire as if she were a bug.
“Engineer Team Sa’s leader Richard contacted me. He said to beat people in moderation. He complained that the shower room was covered in blood. He asked if putting needles in a person’s mouth wasn’t too excessive. He said if you’re going to do that, at least pick up all the needles that fell on the floor.”
They put needles in a person’s mouth?
Is that even possible? I went blank for a moment from the shock.
What had Tamaki’s reaction been when asked whether he had chewed on a sea urchin or a hedgehog? Tamaki had been quiet the whole time, cowed and trying his hardest not to say anything. I had thought it was because he was tired and exhausted.