Seo Ji-hyeok looked at Sumire, then turned his head and asked me.
“Is there any reason we absolutely have to take them with us? If not, I’d like to let them go.”
When Seo Ji-hyeok asked me, the eyes of the two people slumped on the floor were fixed entirely on me. Seo Ji-hyeok’s words clearly meant that we should leave the two behind. The remaining two people’s eyes pleaded for the cords binding their hands to be cut.
They were people who shouldn’t be traveling together. If it hadn’t been for this disaster, the two probably never would have been entangled in the first place. The situation had been less than ideal, so we’d traveled together for a few minutes, but if we kept them together any longer, I didn’t know what might happen.
“Let them go.”
Was taking the two of them with me my own greed? The moment he heard my words, Seo Ji-hyeok pulled a pair of scissors from his pocket. And he cut the parachute cords binding the two people’s wrists.
The moment their wrists were freed, the two who had been pressed together immediately separated. John Doe, who had thrown Sumire off his back as if shaking off an annoying burden, bellowed out a scream like a wild horse that had been forcibly captured and distanced himself from Sumire.
“I’ll never carry that woman again! Just kill me! Kill me!”
Sumire rubbed her wrist, which was not only red with marks but chafed raw from the parachute cords, and glared at John. Then she turned to me and Seo Ji-hyeok and asked brazenly.
“So who’s going to carry me?”
“Oh. That was funny just now. To think that someone would carry you.”
“How do you expect me to walk when my legs are like this!”
Seo Ji-hyeok answered Sumire’s question without batting an eye.
“They say cold air sinks to the floor due to convection. It’s chilly right now, so the timing is perfect for crawling. And the dorms are close by, too.”
Sumire ignored Seo Ji-hyeok’s answer and said,
“Team Leader Shin Haeryang made me like this, so tell him to take me there.”
“With our team leader’s personality, I think he’d tell you to crawl just the same.”
“If you hadn’t attacked me in the first place, none of this would have happened, right?”
Seo Ji-hyeok looked at Sumire quietly and let out a sigh.
“You really don’t know anything, do you? If any one of us three had been armed with a gun back then, you’d have a hole in your head right now. You’re only alive because we were holding dumbbells like these.”
Seo Ji-hyeok spoke while showing the dumbbells he was holding. Sumire flinched at the dumbbells in Seo Ji-hyeok’s hand and scowled.
“Then just leave me here. I’ll get to my room on my own.”
“...What the hell is in that room?”
When Seo Ji-hyeok asked out of curiosity, Sumire answered with a sigh.
“Just a normal room.”
“Crazy woman. She’s a crazy woman.”
John muttered while pointing his finger at Sumire, but Sumire didn’t pay his actions the slightest heed. She merely sent John a look of utter pity. So now there was only one person left without a destination. I asked John,
“What will you do then, Mr. John Doe?”
“I’m not going with you guys!”
“Where are you planning to go?”
“Anywhere is better than being with you guys!”
John looked at Seo Ji-hyeok and scrunched up his face. Then he looked at Sumire and scowled viciously, and when he looked at me he made an expression like he was about to vomit, then sprang to his feet and ran. Baek Aeyeong, who had been walking in the middle of the group, saw John running from behind and instantly raised her gun before lowering the muzzle. Then she shouted at us, who had been left at the very back.
“What are you doing!”
Seo Ji-hyeok answered Baek Aeyeong simply.
“We’re coming!”
“Idiot!”
“That—that woman. Seriously.”
Seo Ji-hyeok muttered toward Baek Aeyeong’s back as she walked far ahead. Sumire stood up using the wall and fell about two times. Her legs seemed to hurt too much to stand properly. Curses in Japanese came out intermittently, but I couldn’t understand them. Seo Ji-hyeok spoke to me.
“Let’s go.”
I walked about three steps following Seo Ji-hyeok and looked back; Sumire had started moving in the opposite direction, crawling on her forearms. I had experience moving by crawling on the floor, and it wasn’t easy. I had forgotten for a long time just how much strength crawling required in the arms.
When Seo Ji-hyeok didn’t hear my footsteps, he turned around. And when he saw Sumire, he spoke in an emotionless voice.
“Even if you sympathize with people like that, they’ll just use you endlessly. If she can crawl, her condition is perfectly fine.”
The standard for being “fine” at an undersea base and the standard for being “fine” in my mind seemed to be quite different. It was like something out of a nightmare. Seeing a person crawling because they couldn’t use both legs was more shocking than I had thought.
“...I’ll take her to the dorms and come back. The dorms are right in front of the escape pod port.”
“Well. You never know how things in this world can get tangled up, sir. Think it over one more time.”
“I’ll be five minutes late.”
Seo Ji-hyeok looked at me for a moment, then spoke toward Baek Aeyeong’s retreating back.
“Why must you choose the difficult path? If we find a decent submarine, we might leave without you.”
“You’re right. If there’s a submarine, escape immediately.”
Seo Ji-hyeok nodded at my words and went after Baek Aeyeong. Thinking that I would spend exactly five minutes of my life on this person, I approached Sumire.
When I called her name from behind and placed my hand on Sumire’s shoulder, she jumped in surprise. She probably hadn’t thought I would come back.
“What room number?”
“Room 52.”
“I just need to take you to your room, right?”
“...Yes.”
I crouched down in front of Sumire and offered my back. Sumire approached cautiously and wrapped her arms around my neck. Her body was ice-cold. It felt like a long-legged spider wrapping around my neck, but I tried hard to ignore that feeling. When I rose with Sumire on my back, a weight like carrying two Henrys bore down on me.
Alright. I can do this. If I’ve made up my mind, I have to do it right away. Fortunately, Sumire’s room number was somewhere in the middle. I tried to infuse myself with positive energy, telling myself that at least it wasn’t the very first or last room, so it wouldn’t be too bad to take her there and come back. I can go back. It’s just five minutes.
Thankfully, Sumire didn’t say a word after getting on my back. She didn’t say she was tired, in pain, or cold. Considering her conflict with John, she was strangely docile. Did she hate that man? Or was she in too much pain to speak? Had she exhausted herself from causing such a commotion?
Whatever the reason, she remained silent while I carried her, so I too tried not to speak to her. I didn’t know what to say anyway. Every question seemed stupid. Are your legs hurt? Of course they are. Are you very cold? You must be. Why were you holding a gun? It wasn’t because you wanted to.
Sumire stayed completely still without moving. She was utterly different from when I’d carried Henry. That kid liked to play around, fidgeting or giggling or squirming, but Sumire was as still as a brick or a block of wood. So I too began my effort to become a human taxi, quietly and safely transporting her to her destination.
Not far past the escape pod port, stairs and a door leading to the Cheongnyong-dong dorms appeared. Before Baekho-dong flooded, that door had always been open, and I’d lived without even realizing it was a door. The structure of the dorms was identical to Baekho-dong.
Unlike flooded Jujak-dong and Baekho-dong, Cheongnyong-dong was intact. There wasn’t a drop of water on the floor. Were Jujak-dong and Baekho-dong shoddily constructed? Or was Cheongnyong-dong built unusually sturdy? I felt slightly moved upon entering the intact dorms, but more than anything, I thought it was a relief. If water had been rising in the dorms in real-time, I really would have started wondering whether I should take Sumire to her room at all.
The hallway was a mess with posters and flyers plastered here and there. A poster saying, “Guys over six feet tall obviously play basketball, right?” was taped up above 180 centimeters. There were rugby ball photos with contact numbers, and posters about cycling, jogging, watching American football, and badminton rackets waiting for your interest were stuck in the corners.
Beside it, a poster advertising free scuba diving lessons had a red X drawn over it and was covered in all sorts of profanity. There were helicopter fare inquiries to get to a dentist in Hawaii, and fluorescent posters of some overseas band I didn’t know were plastered on the walls and ceiling. Notices selling effective headache medicine, group horror movie outings, and personal ads looking for lovers, as well as curses and obscene graffiti, were scrawled on the walls. Someone’s door had profanity spray-painted on it in red. Baekho-dong had been relatively clean, but this place was messier than I’d thought.
While I was spacing out looking at the Cheongnyong-dong hallway for about three seconds, Sumire pointed that way with her finger, indicating the room. When I walked up to Room 52, Sumire pressed her finger to the side of the door. Then the door opened, but because I’d been looking at the chaotic hallway, I only noticed the room a few seconds later. The room was somewhat like a young woman’s room, but halfway like a hospital, too. The moment Sumire entered, she went to the bedside table that had been converted into something else. There, a forearm-sized clump of fur was wrapped in a blanket. What was that?
I observed it for quite a while before realizing it was a dog. Its fur had grown too long and was completely ungroomed, so I’d thought it was some oddly furry carpet or scarf. Crawling with her injured leg, Sumire checked the catheter connected to its bladder and confirmed the bag was about three-quarters full of urine. Then she replaced the catheter bag. Unable to believe what I was seeing, I asked directly.
“Is this a puppy?”
“Yes.”
And then she said nothing more. Sumire pushed a very watery meal into it with a needleless syringe. Seeing my gaze, Sumire spoke.
“It’s thirty years old.”
“You, Ms. Sumire?”
“I’m twenty-three.”
Hearing her deadpan voice, I barely grasped the meaning of the conversation. So the dog was thirty years old. She had injected subcutaneous fluids, but because I knew nothing about animals, I couldn’t tell if it was okay to inject fluids subcutaneously like that. Is that okay? However, Sumire very skillfully checked the dog’s condition during the time she’d been away. Did it have kidney problems, which was why she was keeping it like this?
“Aren’t you going to escape?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“They say the temperature is dropping and the air supply is decreasing.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“You might die.”
“However people live or die is none of my business.”