The moment I dropped flat, a gunshot rang out. When I looked back, Zixuan was collapsed on the floor. Her body writhed against the ground as if she’d been struck by an invisible giant. First, I snatched away the gun Zixuan had been holding and threw it down the distant corridor.
“Sir. Are you hurt anywhere?”
When I looked closely, Seo Jihyeok was speaking to me from the ceiling. Even though only his eyes were visible, I was absurdly glad to see him. Why was I this glad? At his words, I felt over my body, wondering if I had actually been shot, and said,
“No.”
Zixuan, lying on her side as if in agony, groped at her right shoulder with her left hand. Only then did I realize Seo Jihyeok had shot Zixuan in the shoulder. Seo Jihyeok landed on the floor from the ceiling with a thud. How on earth had he hidden that massive body?
“Is there a place in the ceiling where a grown man can hide?”
“There’s an air ventilation system for this corridor up there. It’s nice for sneaking a smoke sometimes.”
Seo Jihyeok spoke without taking his eyes off the fallen Zixuan. I found it more amazing that a man his size had been crammed into such a narrow space. Since Seo Jihyeok had my bag slung over his shoulder, I reached out my hand. As he handed it to me, he said in a disgruntled tone,
“Five minutes, my ass. It took over ten. You have no idea how worried I was.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I wasn’t worried, so don’t worry too much about it.”
Leaving me dumbfounded, Seo Jihyeok looked Zixuan up and down. It didn’t seem like he was checking the gunshot wound, but rather whether she had any other weapons on her. Then, grimacing, he brushed the dust clinging to his shoulders and said with a cough,
“It’s wider up there than you’d think. The problem is, if you’re not careful, the ventilator fan might shave the top of your head off.”
“How long were you in there?”
I asked as I took a towel out of my bag and pressed it over the gunshot wound in Zixuan’s shoulder. The dry towel was soaked with blood in an instant. Zixuan groaned in pain and twisted her body.
“Not that long. About two minutes? Sir, don’t press it yourself. Tell her to do it.”
Seo Jihyeok lightly tugged my upper body and pushed me back. Thinking he might have some medical knowledge about gunshot wounds, I hastily moved aside, only for Seo Jihyeok to make Zixuan press her own right shoulder with her uninjured left hand. ……From behind, it didn’t look much different from what I’d been doing. He was simply making Zixuan do the compressing instead of me.
“That’s it. Good. Yeah. Press the entry wound like that. Press harder.”
“You…… you lunatic! Let go! Let go of my hand!”
When Zixuan slapped away Seo Jihyeok’s hand as he forced her to press down and shouted, Seo Jihyeok slowly backed away. Then he coldly observed Zixuan’s condition and concluded,
“She’s fine.”
“You son of a bitch!”
Watching Zixuan tremble in pain, Seo Jihyeok shrugged and answered with hateful nonchalance.
“I avoided the vitals.”
“You call that an excuse?”
“It hurts like hell, but you’re not gonna die.”
“Shut up!”
With a sigh, I took another towel out of my bag. Then I wiped Zixuan’s face, which was a mess of tears and sweat. Seo Jihyeok went to retrieve Zixuan’s discarded gun and returned, grumbling,
“You know how hard I had to think up there? The angle was terrible.”
“What?!”
“I’m not asking you to appreciate it. If you’re grateful I shot your shoulder instead of your head, send me a postcard or something. Dollars would be better than a postcard.”
“You think I’d be grateful? I want to kill you in the most painful way possible!”
Perhaps conscious of the translator, Zixuan tried hard to enunciate clearly.
“Sure.”
“I said I want to kill you!”
“Judging by how you’re shouting, you’ll live another fifty years. Don’t strain your neck like that, just relax. Raising your blood pressure will only make the blood circulate faster.”
Curses in all kinds of languages burst from Zixuan’s mouth. There was no way she could keep strength in her left hand through the pain. Zixuan’s left hand slipped and lost hold of the towel, and I pressed her shoulder again in place of it. Zixuan let out a groan of pain because of what I did, then said in a tearful voice,
“My right hand won’t move.”
“……It’ll be all right.”
So that was why he had aimed for the right shoulder. Scratching the back of his head, Seo Jihyeok replied,
“That’s why I shot it. ……I hear treating severed nerves these days costs at least two hundred million, including rehab. You people have money. Don’t worry too much.”
“……Do you know how much it hurts? You’ve never even been shot!”
“I have. Hurt like shit. Want another one?”
“I’ll kill you!”
“Rather than die by your hand, I’m thinking I’ll die naturally in about…… seventy years, with the passage of time.”
Holding down the struggling Zixuan, I stopped Seo Jihyeok from continuing to provoke her.
“Jihyeok. Stop teasing her.”
Seo Jihyeok, who had been grinning as he answered Zixuan, saw what I was doing and said,
“You don’t have to go that far for her. I don’t know how many people she killed at the escape pod ports, but it was probably quite a few. And she might have killed you too, sir.”
Looking at the blood-soaked towel and Zixuan’s contorted face, I sighed. Pressing her shoulder with the towel, I kept track of the time and answered Seo Jihyeok.
“Maybe so. But I’m doing this for myself. If I don’t focus on something right now, I feel like I’m going to collapse.”
Putting my situation into concrete words made it feel as though exhaustion was crushing my entire body. As the realization flooded my mind that no one would die because of Zixuan for the time being, a shallow sense of relief wrapped around me.
After that, I didn’t want to lift so much as a finger. I tightened my grip to forget the urge to lie down right there and sleep for three days straight, or to lie around mindlessly watching TV and eating ice cream by the spoonful. The unpleasant sensation of the blood-soaked towel was telling me where reality was.
Seo Jihyeok gave me a slight nod, then kept some distance while aiming his gun at Zixuan. Zixuan couldn’t move because of the shock from being shot. Instead, she relentlessly spewed curses at Seo Jihyeok and Engineer Team A. Seo Jihyeok listened to the Korean words that jumped out among the untranslated Chinese, then let out a snicker and said,
“Why are you acting so wronged? If you picked up a gun, you must’ve been prepared to get shot.”
“Why would I get shot?!”
Seo Jihyeok momentarily lost his words, then shook his head and said,
“……Wow. That really is something. That faith of yours that even if everyone else dies from the gun I fire, the bullets coming at you will draw a curve and dodge you. What does the Communist Party do to brainwash you like that? Do they feed you something special?”
“You think we’ll just sit still? A gentleman’s revenge is not too late, even after ten years. I’ll definitely get revenge!”
Even I, dulled by exhaustion, felt a chill for a moment at the way Zixuan spoke through gritted teeth, but Seo Jihyeok yawned as if a dog were barking somewhere and said,
“Not scary at all. You people always say that whenever you’re at a disadvantage. Just say you’ll beat us next year instead. What’s this about winning ten years later?”
“My team members won’t leave you alone.”
“Ah. You think they’ll come rescue you in Baekho-dong? Get a grip.”
I briefly explained Zixuan’s hostile attitude toward Haiyun to Seo Jihyeok, then asked what I had been curious about.
“The people on the same team don’t seem to get along. Is there a reason?”
“Ah. These guys…… what was it? What was that thing again? It’s because their connections are different politically. Jihyeon explained it to me before. Haiyun was from the Central-South region, and you were from East China, was it?”
Even through the pain of the gunshot wound, Zixuan looked at Seo Jihyeok with contempt and said,
“……It’s the other way around, idiot.”
“Is it? Were you people from the military faction? I remember hearing Haiyun was some group’s financial pipeline or whatever. ……Sir. Jihyeon has a strong stomach, so she knows this stuff, but I’m not all that interested in the ecosystem of cockroaches.”
At those words, Zixuan must have gotten furious, because her face flushed bright red as she said,
“The only one among your team members with a brain is Lee Jihyeon.”
“Right. You do know that much.”
“Ignorant bastards.”
“Well, well. To think you know our team’s hidden secret. Did you plant a spy or something?”
Seeming to decide that there was no getting through to Seo Jihyeok, Zixuan shut her mouth while still visibly furious. But Seo Jihyeok forcibly took the pad attached to Zixuan’s side and asked,
“Tell me your pad password. Who’s on your side? Factions or whatever aside, someone who’d help you.”
“……Why?”
“So I can contact them and tell them you’re hurt. Our team leader’s messenger is exploding. Looks like your team members have a lot of time on their hands. If it were me, instead of terrorizing our team leader’s messenger, I’d at least be digging with a shovel in front of Baekho-dong’s barrier wall.”
“……Liwei.”
“Ah. That psycho? Hey. Isn’t there anyone besides him?”
“What’s wrong with Liwei!”
Zixuan shouted at Seo Jihyeok in a shrill voice. Seo Jihyeok entered the password she gave him and opened Zixuan’s pad, only to recoil at the flood of Chinese. Where was the language setting again? Frowning at the pad, Seo Jihyeok said,
“He likes Haiyun, doesn’t he?”
“No.”
“He does. Anyone can tell he likes Haiyun.”
“How would you know that?!”
“You can tell just by looking. Hm. Let’s see.”
Seo Jihyeok spread his fingers, then began folding them one by one as he spoke.
“She’s pretty, she’s got a nice figure, she’s smart, she’s from a good family, she’s rich, and her personality? I’m not sure about her personality. Seeing how she likes our team leader, I can’t be certain she’s all right either. Didn’t all the men on your team like Haiyun?”
Seo Jihyeok, who had been ambiguously folding and unfolding a finger at the part about personality, asked that, and Zixuan quickly denied it through clenched teeth.
“No.”
“I really don’t like that Liwei guy. His personality is a little…… How do I put it? An original brand of psychopath? Like someone produced in a small batch by combining only the defective genes of Qin Shi Huang and the Red Guards.”
At Seo Jihyeok’s words, all I could do was let out a hollow laugh. What kind of person was he, exactly? In her heart, Zixuan seemed to want to lunge at Seo Jihyeok, but I was pressing down on her right shoulder, and because of the pain, her body didn’t seem to move the way she wanted. Watching Zixuan flail only her left arm in rage, Seo Jihyeok said,
“Anyway, the odds that he likes you are close to zero. And that guy’s got a calculator in his head, so he’s probably already finished estimating your value.”
“And what is my value?”
“How am I supposed to know if you ask me? Ask Liwei. No, don’t ask that bastard. Just call someone else.”
“Lili.”
“Not her.”
“Gang Sujeong.”
“Seriously? Hey. Just call Weiqi or Haoran instead.”
“Just tell them I’m dead.”
Zixuan answered Seo Jihyeok through gritted teeth. While Seo Jihyeok played around with Zixuan’s pad, I checked her shoulder. Should I make a tourniquet?