“I’ve barely used any swear words recently, except for a few. ......There were quite a few questions asking if you’d thought about the immigration proposal; did you know?”
“It’s been a few years.”
Sin Haeryang nodded lightly. Seo Jihyeok, who had been walking while lifting and lowering a dumbbell in his left hand, spoke through a yawn.
“That gentleman. I suppose he still hasn’t given up.”
Yu Geumi cradled my bag in front of her and asked Sin Haeryang.
“Are you going to immigrate?”
“No.”
Seeing Gang Sujeong beside her saying nothing, it seemed she had already known her team leader had received such a proposal. A light silence fell.
Yi Jihyeon was slowly scrolling upward with her finger. As Yi Jihyeon’s gait gradually drifted toward the wall while she looked at the pad, Seo Jihyeok lightly grabbed her forearm and changed her direction.
Yu Geumi broke the silence that had settled.
“I’ve heard that engineers often get offers like these. Researchers hardly ever receive them unless they’re professor-level or a genuine once-in-a-lifetime genius, so I always find it fascinating when I hear about this.”
“Is there a country you’d want to immigrate to?”
At my question, Yu Geumi thought briefly before answering.
“The three Nordic countries, I suppose?”
The Nordic countries? But we’re in the North Pacific.
“Then I’m out of luck at the North Pacific Seabed Base. Please pray as hard as you can that the North Sea Seabed Base finishes construction soon.”
“......Please, please. Let me be able to work as a professor there without worrying about research funding a few years from now. Or let me be able to quit everything and open a bakery.”
Sin Haeryang looked at Yu Geumi’s behavior and spoke.
“......Immigration offers come frequently to team leaders. If I had accepted every one of them, my nationality would have changed about seven times.”
“Isn’t that proof that the other teams acknowledge your skills?”
At Yu Geumi’s words, Sin Haeryang thought briefly and shook his head.
“They want a drain of manpower. My skills themselves are no more than a minnow compared to our deputy team leader.”
Listening to him, I was reminded that protecting civilian nationals of Korean citizenship was part of this person’s duties. As a dentist, it seemed to me that the purpose of pulling Sin Haeryang into their country was to protect their own engineers’ faces. I didn’t know how the members of Engineer Team A got along, but when I checked Seo Jihyeok’s dental condition, Sin Haeryang did not seem to be the type to beat his own team members. Though if he hit places other than the face, I suppose I wouldn’t know.
Was he even the type to do such a thing? ......Even adding up all the time I had spent with Sin Haeryang, it didn’t amount to a full day. Summing up the stories of patients who had come to the infirmary because of him over the past five days, he was a hot-tempered bastard with iron fists.
But what remained deepest in my mind was, unexpectedly, his appearance when drinking. To me, who had been nothing but a stumbling block in the face of failure, he hadn’t shifted the blame onto me even when only the two of us remained—wasn’t that the mark of quite an excellent guardian? Yet in one corner of my mind, a voice of caution carefully screamed about work-related matters. How many protected persons who visited the dental clinic had told me they tripped to hide their guardians’ assault?
At Sin Haeryang’s sudden remark, Gang Sujeong started and answered.
“Even if you suddenly put me on a plane, nothing will come of it. ......Did I do something wrong without knowing?”
At those words, Sin Haeryang smiled and shook his head. Yi Jihyeon frowned, looked at the team leader’s pad, and spoke.
“Team Leader Sato sent messages thanking us for our cooperation every single time we worked together. How unexpected. ......Why is he writing so verbosely and at such length? Proposing team lunches, surfing, asking when birthdays are, asking all sorts of bizarre things? Ichida’s laptop went missing; they don’t think you guys did it, but they’re asking whether any of the team members saw anyone. Yamashita wants to fight again and is asking if you can lose to him just once; if so, he’d like to show his gratitude and is going on about what method would be best, blah blah. Whether you can mediate a work-related misunderstanding that occurred with Engineer Team G (Australia)? Etc., etc. I gave up learning advanced honorifics halfway through, so I have no idea how polite I’m being.”
“Earlier, he used messenger somewhat properly compared to the other guys? Is it because he’s a team leader?”
Gang Sujeong spoke as if surprised. Judging by the previous examples, it seemed she had expected this side to be nothing but obscenities.
“Show me too.”
“Uuuep?!”
Sumire leaned her upper body heavily toward Yi Jihyeon, and suddenly the center of gravity shifted to the side, causing John to panic. Because they barely avoided falling over, John spat out fierce complaints with a muffled voice.
Since neither the team leader nor the deputy team leader objected, Yi Jihyeon slowly approached Sumire to show her the pad.
“I’ll do it.”
Seo Jihyeok took the pad from Yi Jihyeon’s hand—Team Leader Shin’s pad—and showed it to Sumire, whose upper body was raised because she was being carried on someone’s back. Yi Jihyeon frowned and spoke to Seo Jihyeok.
“I could have done it too.”
“What if she bites your finger?”
At his words treating her like a beast, Sumire glared at Seo Jihyeok for a few seconds, but soon focused on the pad.
“Scroll up. ......You went too far up. Slowly down!”
Her wrists were tied in front, so unable to see the content she wanted, Sumire snapped at Seo Jihyeok. As if teasing her, Seo Jihyeok touched the scroll, playfully jumping through months of conversation history in an instant and then back down again.
Even though only the back of Sumire’s head was visible to me, I could guess her expression. She’s not really going to bite his finger, is she? Having somehow read the messenger contents despite that, Sumire spoke to Seo Jihyeok in a stiff voice.
“You can put it away.”
“What did you want to see?”
“The tone.”
“What about the tone?”
“......It’s polite.”
Seo Jihyeok looked at Sumire briefly and returned the pad to Yi Jihyeon. Yi Jihyeon sighed as she looked at Seo Jihyeok.
“I don’t know how far he read.”
“Ah. Right. ......Sorry.”
Yi Jihyeon gave up rummaging through the messages Sato had sent. She pressed back and then tapped on Yamashita, who had sent the next highest number of messages, and began to read. There was a flood of Japanese that didn’t translate properly. Images of cartoon characters wearing boxing gloves and kickboxing videos were attached intermittently in the messenger window.
Yi Jihyeon asked Sin Haeryang with a sigh.
“Team Leader. It occurred to me because of what you said about making an immigration proposal to Tamaki. So did you formally propose it to Engineer Team B (Japan)?”
“I did about three months ago.”
“What did you say? Please tell me in detail.”
“I said I want to bring Tamaki Yuzuru from your team to our team. We are struggling severely because our staff is not replenishing quickly and there is too much work. Such a proposal is a new adventure for both teams and another opportunity for the team member to develop, so you lot should quickly find another person. ......It’s a stock phrase used in immigration proposals.”
“What did they say?”
“They said they asked the employee in question and he has no intention of immigrating. Thank you for your valuable opinion. We will refer to it in future team operations. The others all said they received similar answers.”
So Tamaki had rejected the immigration proposal. If I were Tamaki, I would have wanted to run away anywhere. Did he dislike Korea or Engineer Team A? Sin Haeryang spoke slowly.
“I wasn’t the only one who proposed immigration. Hai Yun, Richard, and Oliver had proposed it too. As you know, Oliver is a guy whose hobby is watching others’ misfortune, so I don’t know if he would properly handle the immigration procedures. Hai Yun said that since only three out of seven in his team actually work, he doesn’t care if the nationality is Japanese as long as the person works diligently.”
Shu Ran, one of the employees who actually worked in Engineer Team D (China), seemed to be hearing this story for the first time and gradually tilted their head toward Sin Haeryang.
“Richard had been continuously looking for a replacement because one of his team members went into heroin shock during vacation. He seemed very pleased when he learned that Tamaki was suffering from the same team. He said he would gladly make his country a refuge and tried quite aggressively to take him, as far as I know.”
“So Tamaki was unexpectedly popular?”
“A subordinate with no opinions of his own who works as ordered from above, and even when given an unmanageable workload, doesn’t complain and quietly works himself to death? That is the ideal subordinate superiors want.”
Whether because he had judged it unusable, Seo Jihyeok dropped a 15 kg circular barbell onto the corridor floor and spoke.
“Really? But Team Leader, you’ve never ordered us to become robots like that.”
Sin Haeryang looked at Seo Jihyeok and spoke somewhat bluntly.
“You’d run away immediately.”
“Ah. I wouldn’t look back. I’d leak screws everywhere and flee while making whirring sounds.”
At Seo Jihyeok’s light tone, Gang Sujeong and Yi Jihyeon beside him laughed softly.
“What country’s team leader is the person named Oliver?”
To my knowledge, in order, Sin Haeryang, Sato, Vladimir, Hai Yun, Jennifer, Liam, Richard, and lastly, the Canadian team leader’s name was Hayley.
Gang Sujeong answered my question.
“He’s the deputy team leader of New Zealand. He is leading the team in place of Team Leader Liam, who was hospitalized for cancer surgery. He’s about two meters tall and very large. He likes rugby and sometimes rolls around on the grass with his team members on Daehan Island, ball in hand. And among them, the one who looks like he has the shittiest personality? That bastard is Oliver Simon.”
Perhaps because she had been through a lot, Gang Sujeong shuddered even as she explained. Then Sumire, who had been quiet the whole time, suddenly spoke to Gang Sujeong.
“He’s handsome, though.”
“By that logic, your team’s Sato Ryusuke is handsome too.”
“He’s married.”
“So you do have that kind of common sense in your head. Amazing. I thought Japanese kids didn’t care about that at all.”
Even though Sumire wanted to snap at Gang Sujeong, she looked exhausted since she had been raising a fuss until recently. As she simply stared, Gang Sujeong also stopped talking to her further.
When they arrived in front of the escape pod port, the air entering through the nasal cavity was chilly. The engineer team members seemed to be wearing full-body suits, so they didn’t feel the cold much. Perhaps weak to the cold, Tumanako was chattering her teeth, and Yu Geumi was also huddled up more than before. I checked whether Henry’s skin was exposed outside the cardigan.
Before entering the escape pod port, Sin Haeryang spoke to us.
“Please wait here. I will go check and return.”
Leaving one reliable marksman behind, Seo Jihyeok and Sin Haeryang moved to enter the Cheongnyong-dong Escape Pod Port.