I had never dealt with a gunshot wound. It wasn’t as if a patient shot in the face was likely to come to me in my lifetime. Maybe if I worked in an ER. Around the time I was thinking that most people in Korea would probably be the same, Zixuan, gasping in pain, said to Seo Jihyeok,
“It hurts like hell!”
“It wouldn’t have hurt if I’d shot you in the head. Guess I’m just not considerate enough.”
Zixuan ground her teeth as she glared at Seo Jihyeok, who was being insufferable. I was gripping her shoulder tightly and pressing down with a towel, and with my less bloodied hand, I took a pill bottle from my pants pocket and said,
“I got some painkillers from someone I know.”
Zixuan tried to grab the bottle of painkillers in my hand with her trembling left hand, but dropped it on the floor. My hands were busy too, pressing the towel back against her shoulder.
In the meantime, Seo Jihyeok swiftly snatched up the bottle from the floor. Then he leisurely dodged Zixuan’s incoming kick. Opening the bottle to check its contents, he said,
“Doctor. Painkillers are wasted on her.”
“Hand it over!”
“I know you’re a kindhearted person, but when you’ve got something like this…”
Seo Jihyeok looked at the pills in the bottle, then asked me in a playful voice,
“Who did you get this from?”
“On the way here, I said I needed painkillers, and someone handed me the whole bottle.”
“Have you taken these before?”
“No. Am I not supposed to?”
“It’s fine to take them, but the painkilling effect is pretty strong.”
Wasn’t it just something like a big bottle of Tylen*l? Surely it wasn’t narcotics?
While lying down, Zixuan aimed at Seo Jihyeok and kicked at him again. …Just like Seo Jihyeok said, she did seem perfectly fine aside from the shoulder. By merely leaning back a little, Seo Jihyeok avoided the incoming foot. Zixuan, worked up and swallowed by pain and irritation, said,
“The dentist here was going to give that to me!”
“The gun-toting ruffian here says he’ll only give it to you for a price.”
Seo Jihyeok rattled the pill bottle as he taunted Zixuan. From what I could see, Zixuan didn’t look like she could beat Seo Jihyeok in a war of words. Watching the medicine spin round and round in Seo Jihyeok’s grip, I said,
“Just let her take it. I received it without paying anything too.”
“I see. Then please watch how I sell it at a high price.”
“Pardon?”
And Seo Jihyeok shook the bottle in front of Zixuan’s eyes and said,
“Hey. Sell me your boat.”
“What?”
“Sell me your boat. Between that dentist’s broadcast, you people walking around with guns, and if it’s true all sorts of bizarre cultists are wandering around upstairs, the undersea base is more dangerous than I thought. Daehan probably won’t be safe even after he goes up, either. I need to get out of here on a boat, a dinghy, a putter-boat, whatever.”
“You want me to sell my boat for a few painkillers?”
Zixuan looked dumbfounded.
“To be precise, I’ll give you painkillers and even take you along on my boat. I’m a generous guy, you see.”
“Who said I’m selling it? It’s my boat! You think I’d sell a fifty-million-won boat for a few painkillers? Are you insane?!”
“I’m saying I’ll even provide free delivery of your shot-up self to my boat.”
“Who asked you to?!”
Seo Jihyeok was trying to pitch as the selling point of this deal the fact that he would safely escort the shoulder-injured Zixuan past the fanatical cultists to the boat, but Zixuan reacted as if she had just heard some robber’s bullshit about trading painkillers for her boat.
I set the blood-soaked towel, now in a terrible state, down beside me and pressed a fresh towel to Zixuan’s shoulder as I said,
“Jihyeok, Engineer Team Ra is cooperating with the people of the Muhan Church. They don’t know that if they go to the Second Undersea Base and make contact with the Muhan Church, there’s a high chance they’ll be killed.”
Zixuan frowned at me and asked,
“What are you talking about?”
“The Muhan Church believes that a certain number of people must die as sacrifices. They won’t let Engineer Team Ra go so easily.”
“That can’t be! They promised!”
Seo Jihyeok, who had been rattling the pill bottle in his hand, stared blankly at Zixuan and said,
“You got scammed.”
Zixuan’s head, which had been turned toward me, snapped toward Seo Jihyeok. Seo Jihyeok calmly said to Zixuan,
“Of course, I know fraud is your people’s specialty. But there are almost no people who can beat religious types when it comes to running their mouths. Those guys are amazing con artists.”
Zixuan, enduring the pain of the gunshot wound with a pale face, suddenly fell silent. Then she shut her mouth and began glaring at Seo Jihyeok, and I learned that silence could make a person more uncomfortable than curses. After keeping her mouth shut for a full minute, Zixuan, sweating like rain, said,
“Then I’ll buy you. The boat? Fine. I’ll give you the boat. Kill Shin Haeryang and bring me his pad.”
At that remark, even as I thought to myself that I shouldn’t look, I turned to Seo Jihyeok’s face almost by reflex. Seo Jihyeok blinked, and upon hearing this sudden proposal to assassinate his superior, far from being flustered, the corners of his mouth actually rose.
“…I like gutsy women like this. But if you want to buy me, the numbers don’t add up. You’ll have to value me higher than a boat.”
“How much are you thinking?”
Seo Jihyeok said as if amused,
“You’re not going to set an upper limit without knowing how much I’ll ask?”
“I’ll add another hundred million won on top of the boat.”
It was my first time in my life witnessing a murder-for-hire negotiation, and even as an outsider, I thought that amount made no sense. Killing someone was two hundred million won? My lower back alone was worth five times that amount. My eyes went without saying. …If someone were going to kill me, how much would they have to set the price at? Just listening to these two talk felt like my sense of ethics was bungee-jumping into the abyss.
Seo Jihyeok replied as if he had heard something deeply unfair in monetary terms.
“Hey. You think the kids here went after Shin Haeryang because they didn’t need their teeth? You think killing our team leader would be easy? What’s two hundred million? Two hundred million.”
Zixuan began making offers she, in her own way, thought would benefit Seo Jihyeok.
“I’ll give you an apartment too. I’ll make it so you can immigrate right away. Everyone in Engineer Team Ra will welcome you, and New China will treat you as an honored citizen.”
“That last part sounds the most useless. I’m disappointed, Zixuan. You used to make fun of our Team Ga every day for being beggars. What’s wrong with you? This is so beggarly. Only two hundred million? What kind of petty bullshit is that?”
“…One billion won. That’s all the operating funds currently allocated to the team. Ask Haiyun or Li Wei on the pad. Anything beyond that needs approval from above, even for us.”
Seo Jihyeok said with a truly regretful expression,
“You told me to blow Team Leader Shin’s head off when you don’t even have money? Jeez. I don’t associate with beggars. I’m so disappointed. You’re a beggar among beggars, seriously. I heard you people bragged to Aeyeong about having boats and yachts and getting lots of support, so I thought at least you had money.”
How many times was he going to say beggar? It seemed Seo Jihyeok’s goal was to tease Zixuan, not that he was seriously having this conversation because he intended to harm Shin Haeryang. With a thoroughly irritated expression, Zixuan said to Seo Jihyeok,
“If you ask people like Li Wei or Haoran, they’ll probably want to put in their own money too. If you promise to bring back Shin Haeryang’s pad at least, I’ll put in another hundred million from my own funds.”
It seemed Zixuan thought of Shin Haeryang’s pad as the solution to breaking through the situation where her team members were trapped in Baekho-dong. She didn’t seem able to imagine that Michael Roaker’s pad was with Engineer Team Ga. Well, even I probably wouldn’t think another team’s leader had stolen his superior’s pad under the pretext of deleting CCTV footage.
Seo Jihyeok turned and rolled the pill bottle this way and that, and now he was tossing it up and down with a flick of his wrist. The pills, which had been clacking and rattling as they struck one another, suddenly stopped.
“Give me ten billion won in Korean money. I’m not taking yuan or anything like that, so pay in dollars.”
Zixuan’s mouth hung open, and she seemed to have lost her words. I too was speechless. Zixuan came back to her senses before I did and answered. I could only chuckle hollowly after hearing Seo Jihyeok’s words.
“Where would I get that kind of money?!”
“The Japanese kids told me they’d give me one billion if I tied up our team leader and brought him to them. Are you guys worse than Japan?”
Curses poured out of Zixuan like a waterfall. The shares seemed to be split half-and-half between Seo Jihyeok and Shin Haeryang, and curses about Korea and Japan started getting mixed in too. It seemed that last line had severely touched some nerve in Zixuan. Even while gasping for breath from the pain, Zixuan did not stop cursing in Chinese.
…Sumire and Zixuan both—engineers had no ordinary temper. Watching Zixuan’s face turn red with anger, Seo Jihyeok annoyingly waved the pad and asked,
“Give up on that delusional dream of buying me. Can you start the boat with the pad too?”
“…Yeah.”
These days, cars started with electronic devices, but this was the first I’d heard that boats did too. Then again, I had never ridden a boat. In fact, it was rather surprising in itself that some of the people in this undersea base owned boats. And that they treated boats like cars. I did have fellow dentists, but I didn’t think any of them had ever said they were going to buy a boat.
“And your boat is where Haiyun’s boat is?”
“How did you know it was hidden there?”
“Even if you hide it, there are only so many places. First, then, that’s one boat secured.”
Seo Jihyeok opened the pill bottle. Then he pinched exactly one pill between two fingers and set it on the bare floor.
“Eat it before it gets cold.”
“You really are a son of a bitch. You and your team leader. You’re exactly the same kind of bastard.”
As I watched this insane transaction between the two of them in disbelief, I saw Seo Jihyeok about to put the pill bottle back into my pants pocket and said,
“You have no intention of killing Haeryang, do you, Jihyeok?”
“…How can you be so sure? It’s not impossible that I might suddenly snap and go around shooting everyone on our team.”
At those words, a small hope seemed to rise in Zixuan’s eyes as she picked up the pill with her uninjured left hand. She looked as if she hoped he would. Well. The Seo Jihyeok I had seen was not that kind of person.
“You two look close.”
“Really?”
Seo Jihyeok’s incredulous voice asked as if seeking confirmation from me.
“Yes.”
“…Damn. I can’t have it looking that way.”