Sin Haeryang kept watch outside the elevator, while Seo Jihyeok stayed inside with the others. Baek Aeyeong fiddled with the elevator’s internal circuit board, then called Sin Haeryang over. Keeping his eyes fixed ahead, Sin Haeryang backed into the elevator and nodded at Baek Aeyeong’s question.
“Are we going straight up?”
“Yeah. Right now.”
The elevator doors closed. Then, as it began to rise with a faint wave of dizziness, the people who had been standing pressed themselves against the elevator walls and gradually sank to the floor. Tumanako leaned her head against the wall and sagged there, utterly drained. As if even breathing were a chore, she spoke with difficulty.
“I’m tired. I want to go home.”
I, too, lost all strength and sprawled limply, like a heap of clothes dropped on the floor. John Doe was lying flat on his back, as if he couldn’t care less how dirty the elevator floor was.
The only ones who looked relatively fine were the three members of Engineer Team A. My palms were sticky with dried blood. I didn’t want to think about anything. I just wanted to go home and collapse into my own bedding.
And facing the reality that I could not, I leaned my body against the elevator wall. I was sick to death of elevators. It was the twenty-first century, and we still didn’t have wings on our means of transportation?
“Are you all right?”
Only after some time passed did I realize she was asking me. I rolled my eyes toward Tumanako and said,
“I don’t think I am.”
“Yeah. That happens. You can’t always be all right.”
The members of Engineer Team A were each sprawled inside the elevator in whatever position felt comfortable. Baek Aeyeong in particular used her bag as a pillow and lay down flat on her back. Seo Jihyeok leaned against the wall with his eyes closed, cradling his gun. At a glance, he looked like a soldier asleep in a trench. But realizing his eyes were merely closed, I asked Seo Jihyeok,
“There was no need to kill him. We could have brought him with us.”
Seo Jihyeok lifted his eyelids and looked at me across from him. Then Sin Haeryang ordered from beside him,
“Rest.”
At that one word, Seo Jihyeok closed the eyes he had just opened. He was like a robot whose battery had run out. Sin Haeryang sat down between Seo Jihyeok and me and said,
“I’ll answer in his place.”
“All right.”
“It was too dangerous to bring him with us.”
“He had a gunshot wound, his wrists were bound, and he said he would cooperate.”
“And the result of that cooperation was stealing someone else’s pad and running off the moment the power went out.”
“Mr. Sin Haeryang’s pad is useless, isn’t it?”
Besides, if I had understood engineer authority correctly, the team leaders’ authority was currently completely useless. Only Michael Roaker’s pad could release the people trapped in Baekho-dong. Even if Sin Haeryang handed his pad over to Zixuan on Daehando, Zixuan would essentially be getting a scrap of paper.
“I only promised to give it to him because Zixuan said he needed it.”
You led him into thinking he needed something completely useless. And an injured Zixuan stole one of Sin Haeryang’s possessions? It seemed more plausible to rip the gallbladder out of a living bear.
“With your abilities, surely you could have avoided having a pad or anything else taken from an injured man.”
“You overestimate me, Doctor. I am only a frightened, ordinary repairman.”
Sin Haeryang said it shamelessly. Personally, I think this was probably the point where the people in the undersea base had thrown punches at him. You’re neither frightened nor an ordinary repairman.
Look at Tumanako over there in the corner. That is what a frightened person looks like. She’s trembling like a rabbit exposed to a midwinter wind. Calm down. I am not flustered by this situation.
“Isn’t an ordinary repairman a little too familiar with guns?”
“You are also far too familiar with cultists and terrorists, Doctor. Normally, both groups would be extremely terrifying and repulsive. You wouldn’t even want to be near them.”
He seemed to be saying that because I had carried Sumire on my back or treated Zixuan. …Right. John Doe was next to me, too.
“The only thing I’m familiar with is dental work.”
“The blackout was an unexpected event. The moment an opportunity came, Zixuan shoved John Doe, knocked Tumanako over, stole the pad, and ran. With enemies outside, we cannot continue to bear such internal risks. Once you escape the undersea base and the Chinese investigation team arrives, please tell them Seo Jihyeok fired on Zixuan under my coercion.”
If I had not known that the undersea base was a sort of extraterritorial zone, and that it was unclear which nation’s public authority would apply here, I would probably have promptly said I understood at this point. I might even have thought Sin Haeryang’s statement sounded reasonable at first. In reality, there would either be no investigation or only the pretense of one before it quietly fizzled out. If this incident had been carried out under China’s leadership, Zixuan’s death would be buried without a sound.
If I had known nothing, I would have trusted and believed what Engineer Team A said.
“Would you have killed Zixuan like that if he had been Korean?”
If one were to trace every last root of where my small advantages had begun, one could learn whether, in areas I had never even been aware of in life, I had been wielding discrimination and violence, directly or indirectly. I was a man born in a developed country, living near the capital, working in a high-income profession, and I had poured in enough money that my disability was almost invisible on the outside. I believed I knew well the privileges I possessed. So, in order to live rightly, I thought I always kept in mind that the group I belonged to might not necessarily be good.
“No.”
…I had rarely ever thought, while living my life, that possessing Korean nationality meant belonging to an interest group. Nor had I ever imagined I would come to realize it in an undersea base full of people with guns.
Even as I treated broken or cracked teeth in Deep Blue, I had thought the three people here were benevolent, righteous strong people. They say that when people are terrified, they split the world into sides, stand with the side that feels safe, and place absolute faith in the group that protects them. Had I believed that way in order to feel safe?
If I considered that my actions had been one form of generosity shown by someone clinging to violent strength toward those he thought weaker or lesser than himself… I felt sick.
The fact that people I had been talking to just moments ago had been shot dead without hesitation brought grief rushing in, but these emotions, close to a sense of betrayal, were mine alone. These people did not know what lay at the bottom of that feeling.
Only I, who remembered alone, knew your other selves. We had spent time together to escape this undersea base, relied on one another, and tried to keep one another alive. In that process, your lives had not been things I could measure by efficiency or necessity.
If I had known from the start that you were a group that would kill a person just for taking one useless pad, I would not have had to suffer alone over having given you my heart, spent time with you, and shared bonds with you like this.
I felt miserable and hurt.
I wanted to call anyone and pour out my complaints. Hey. I had a rough day at work today. I thought those people were good people. Turns out they’re only generous to people inside their own arms, and they kill people outside because they’re a nuisance. From their perspective, I probably look like someone wasting time inefficiently by stubbornly insisting on helping a person who isn’t even Korean, with no good reason. And so on—I wanted to ramble on with all of it.
No, the more I thought about it, the more irritated I got. Arms can rotate at the shoulder joint, you know?! If they can’t bend because of the elbow joint, shouldn’t you at least try to stretch them outward? Baek Aeyeong saw my face crumpling as if I were about to cry, sighed, and said to Team Leader Sin,
“You know by now that he’s someone who understands our internal circumstances well enough. Let’s stop.”
“I wasn’t the one who planned this whole long play to begin with.”
Baek Aeyeong looked at Seo Jihyeok’s face, then kicked him in the calf. His closed eyes opened at once.
“Why kick me? Use your words.”
“I said let’s stop.”
The corners of Seo Jihyeok’s mouth twitched upward, and he covered his mouth with one hand. Then he spoke in a voice tinged with laughter.
“Mm. Deceiving such a kind person doesn’t feel very good.”
Sin Haeryang said to Seo Jihyeok as if he found him unbelievable,
“What? You should’ve just done as you were told? Do what you’re told in everyday life, too.”
“It was the tone of a man feeling bitterness after disobeying his team leader’s orders and being betrayed by someone he spared once! It was my finest performance, chewing on solitude and tragic resolve. Aren’t you being too harsh?”
“Ugh. I’ve got goosebumps. Crazy bastard! Thinks he’s some movie protagonist.”
Baek Aeyeong grimaced at Seo Jihyeok as if she couldn’t stand him. The heavy atmosphere that had been weighing down the inside of the elevator dissipated somewhat. Sin Haeryang suddenly asked me, who still had not gathered my wits,
“You take it for granted that I can commission Jihyeok to commit murder, and you’re certain he has the ability to do it.”
“Pardon?”
“You think the three of us are skilled at killing people.”
“Pardon?”
“I thought it was strange from the moment you knew about my knife. I hid it well.”
“I thought it was a little strange even before you said I’d be shot.”
“What are you talking about?”
Seo Jihyeok, his head resting against the wall, said to me,
“I didn’t kill Zixuan. Well, if I had to choose, the ones I want to kill are Haoran and Weiqi. Not Zixuan. It’s not like he did anything to me that deserved death.”
“No. Just now… you fired. He seemed to collapse on the floor.”
“I sent him far off and shot him in the left calf, yes. Why would I kill someone the doctor worked so hard to treat? I’d hoped he might call over any gang that would come help him, but if he doesn’t have any, what can you do? He’ll have to crawl hard. The painkillers mean it won’t hurt, and you showed him how to stop the bleeding once, Doctor. He fell next to the laundry room, so he can tear up clothes and stop the bleeding or something. He took the team leader’s pad, so he can call someone. If he lived kindly in his daily life, surely there’ll be someone willing to show him kindness.”
“You said Team Leader Sin Haeryang gave you an order to kill Zixuan.”
When I said that blankly, Seo Jihyeok answered with a sly smile.
“If Team Leader Sin had said that to me, his first shot wouldn’t have hit the shoulder. Why waste bullets doing that? It would’ve gone straight into his head.”
“If I could deal with my opponents by killing them however I pleased, I would not have gone around inconveniencing myself with fistfights.”
Sin Haeryang’s calm voice followed. Baek Aeyeong spoke in a low murmur.
“The undersea base is leaking? We can avoid it and get out. Mad zealots? (Baek Aeyeong glanced at John Doe and sighed.) Let’s say they’re all like that. The engineers with guns you mentioned on the broadcast are almost all trapped in Baekho-dong. Then what do you think we’re most curious about now?”
Sin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok, and Baek Aeyeong all looked at me. I felt like an herbivore surrounded by three predators. Since we were inside the elevator, there was nowhere to run.
“Seo Jihyeok, Baek Aeyeong, and I are contracted as engineers. The work histories listed on the résumés we submitted say as much, so to outsiders, we should appear to be nothing more than civilians committing eccentric acts. And yet, Doctor, you already know what we came to the undersea base to do.”