When on earth had John Doe picked up something like that? Had he stolen it along with the nail polish? The mood sank heavily.
Sin Haeryang stared for a few seconds at John Doe, who was sitting on the floor with his hands bound, then approached, grabbed his ear, and whispered something. John Doe’s eyes filled with terror. With frightened eyes, John Doe nodded rapidly at Sin Haeryang. Watching his reaction, Sin Haeryang connected his bound wrists to the middle of the backrest of the fallen chair beside him with a cord. Then he said to the others,
“You can head out now.”
“What about Mr. John Doe?”
“He says he wants to part ways here.”
When I looked at John Doe to see whether that was true, he felt my gaze and began headbanging back and forth. As I stared blankly at the sight, Baek Aeyeong lightly pushed my shoulder toward the outside of the shop. My feet didn’t want to move. Baek Aeyeong whispered softly to me,
“The sooner we leave, the sooner he’ll cut the cord and run.”
Baek Aeyeong said it while kicking aside the shards of glass underfoot. Ah. Right. The floor was covered in glass, so he could cut the cord and escape.
Since he had wanted to part ways with Engineer Team A in the first place, maybe this was better. John Doe seemed to want us to disappear quickly. I left the accessory shop with one last look at him. Sin Haeryang was the last of the group to come out of the shop.
Since the accessory shop was close to the escape pod port, I expected us to go in a straight line, but Seo Jihyeok said we were heading for the hair salon located right next to the escape pod port. At that, Tumanako began striding straight toward the salon with vigorous dignity.
They looked ready to overtake Seo Jihyeok, who was walking at the very front of the group. Seo Jihyeok looked a little flustered at the sight of Tumanako’s confidence and quickly said,
“Please stay behind me. We don’t know what might be up ahead.”
“What could be there?”
When Tumanako asked boldly with hands on hips, Seo Jihyeok answered in a rush, as if making excuses.
“······The door might be locked?”
“The door isn’t locked. You can just go in. Reservations are the rule in principle, but we don’t chase away people who show up.”
“That’s not the only problem. What kind of customer shoves past their guide and takes the lead in a crime-prone area? Wai, wait! ······Aeyong-aeyong-aeyong!”
When Tumanako acted as if they were about to run straight to the salon in one breath, Seo Jihyeok gritted his teeth and shouted behind him. Baek Aeyeong, who had been walking beside me, immediately moved to Tumanako’s side. Then she separated Seo Jihyeok and Tumanako and explained swiftly.
“He’s worried there might be two men inside the salon waiting for you with scissors held backward, or that they might have set up something weird on the door. Let’s shove Seo-guide in first, and if he’s fine, then we’ll go in. ······Call me that one more time and you die by my hand.”
Baek Aeyeong kindly explained to Tumanako. But despite changing her tone and leaving Seo Jihyeok with a murderous threat, Seo Jihyeok, who was watching the front without even looking back, said,
“Hey. You told me to watch what I said and scare them as little as possible.”
“Yeah. I don’t have to watch what I say, and it’s fine if I scare them all I want. In a situation like this, they’ll be more anxious if we don’t explain.”
Seo Jihyeok seemed busy watching and assessing the path ahead, barely paying attention to what was happening behind his back.
Tumanako had been staring at the salon as it drew closer, but quickly accepted Baek Aeyeong’s explanation. That imposing stride changed into caution in an instant. Tumanako seemed to be suppressing, with all their might, the urge to rush into the familiar space they knew so well. It had looked incredibly close, but seeing Seo Jihyeok tense up made the distance seem longer to me too. Soon, we began moving without a sound.
So the person at the very front of the group had to pay attention to things like that. Back when we were wandering around Jujak-dong or the research center inside Jujak-dong, it felt like we’d just moved around haphazardly. ······Was that why we got hurt so much?
The people I’d gone around with back then had been covered in bruises. Now that I thought about it, the people in this group were emotionally exhausted and worn down, but they hadn’t suffered any external injuries. They had to take care of their own hearts, but their bodies were being looked after.
When the salon was right in front of us, I came to understand what the Chinese goddess Nüwa, whom Tumanako had mentioned, looked like. On the outer wall of the salon was a painting of a man and woman with snake-like lower bodies, wearing skirts and facing each other. They were each holding something like scissors and tongs, and between them a round object that seemed to be the sun floated in the sky.
The moment I saw that painting, an ominous premonition crossed my mind that this salon, too, must have been made with no thought whatsoever for interior design.
Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong entered the salon first. Less than a minute later, they signaled for us to come in. If Deep Blue could be described as a place surrounded by framed pictures of blind sharks in a dark sea and all sorts of shark-related items, then this place looked like a hair salon for ancient people from the BCE era.
It seemed like the salon had taken no consideration whatsoever of the fact that its customers were humans living in the twenty-first century. The wallpaper was a vivid yellow. On top of that, framed images of half-human, half-beast figures with human upper bodies and snake lower bodies were hung all over the walls.
······Would it kill them to decorate the place with a clean, modern design? Do they not have the budget? There isn’t some separate religion related to snakes, is there?
My orthopedic surgeon friend used to say simplicity was aesthetic, and his clinic had nothing on the walls except the wallpaper. I never thought I’d end up envying the interior of that clinic I used to mock for being so bare. I let out a sigh of relief that my Deep Blue seemed at least a bit more refined than Nüwa Hair Salon. Though it was still more or less the same, fifty paces versus a hundred—but still, fifty paces was something.
None of the people carrying guns showed any interest in the salon’s interior. Seo Jihyeok seemed more concerned about possible booby traps hidden somewhere, and Sin Haeryang, who entered last, seemed more concerned about whether someone might ambush us here.
Unlike me, who was calmly looking around the inside of the salon, Tumanako started running here and there the moment they came in. I was worried they might crash into something. As I reflected on what had happened in the accessory shop, I asked Sin Haeryang, who was walking behind me,
“About the things Mr. John Doe hid.”
“Yes.”
“Do you not think I cooperated with him?”
I had agonized over it several times inwardly, but I thought it would be better to ask directly. If I didn’t ask, I felt like I would keep asking myself endlessly. I had been the closest to John Doe, and I’d even carried him around on my back. The people from Engineer Team A had seemed to want to leave John Doe behind in the elevator, but bringing him all the way here had been almost entirely my stubbornness.
Wasn’t it more logical to think I was an accomplice than that a man with his wrists tied had skillfully stolen and kept those things? If I was thinking this much, then Sin Haeryang must have already made that guess too. When he cast John Doe out of the group, it had been a chance to leave me behind as well, but he hadn’t. Sin Haeryang, who was taking the rear of the group, asked while keeping watch outside,
“Did you?”
“No.”
“Then that’s fine.”
What was fine? Sin Haeryang apparently thought that was answer enough. It felt like having a conversation with an AI whose programming was slightly off. I was truly curious what on earth Sin Haeryang was thinking. Though even if I found out what he was worrying about, I doubted I’d be of any help in solving it. Even while dreading the answer that might come back, I threw him a straight question.
“Don’t you think I’m a bothersome person to bring along?”
“Why do you think that?”
Why did I think that? Even to me, there were too many reasons. Everyone we met, including Vladimir, either picked a fight with me or threatened me, and hadn’t I been taking turns being carried by people? Hadn’t I suggested bringing a cult believer along? On top of that, I wasn’t particularly friendly or cooperative toward the people of Engineer Team A. Everything I did looked suspicious too.
If I were Sin Haeryang, I would have concluded that I was a cult member. Besides, I had already told Sin Haeryang all the information I knew. From the perspective of someone who prioritized efficiency, I was someone whose usefulness had been wrung dry. ······Then again, he had taken me along before, back when I had no information at all and was practically luggage.
From a place Tumanako told him about, Seo Jihyeok found a few cookies and several water bottles. He tossed one bottle to Baek Aeyeong, then looked as if he was about to throw one to me, but came over and handed it to me directly with a sigh. Sin Haeryang took the bottle Baek Aeyeong had drunk from, took a sip, and answered,
“I think of you as an ordinary civilian who got swept up in a disaster situation. Please eat.”
Then he chewed a broken cookie. This attitude was ordinary? Then were there civilians who behaved unusually?
Tumanako, who had been running around clutching a towel, brought over a small flowerpot from the corner. Was that the Rhaphidophora? Tumanako tried to separate the plant from the pot, but I didn’t know what was going on with the roots; they wouldn’t come apart. If they pulled with too much force, it looked like only the stem above the soil would come out.
When I held the pot with both hands, Sin Haeryang tried to smash it outright with the butt of his gun. Seo Jihyeok came over while chewing a cookie and stopped Tumanako from grabbing the stem and pulling.
“You’re trying to get the roots out of the pot, right?”
“Yeah.”
Seo Jihyeok tapped the pot a few times, then grabbed the very bottom of the stem and lifted. Then the pot I was holding and the entire plant separated. He’d said he’d separated a flowering tree before, hadn’t he? Where on earth did one learn a skill like that?
Tumanako held the stem and shook off a fair amount of soil. Then they laid the plant down on the towel. After spraying water onto the roots with a spray bottle, they wrapped it round and round in the towel. Then they shoved that towel into the old cloth bag they had been holding. A whole plant was tucked away neatly inside the bag, as if it had vanished. Only then did Tumanako let out a sigh, sink down onto the floor, and say,
“Good. We can carry it like this.”
“Drink some water.”
At Seo Jihyeok’s urging, Tumanako emptied a water bottle in one go and hugged the bag tightly. A broken piece of cookie from Baek Aeyeong’s hand was forcibly delivered into Tumanako’s mouth.
While chewing the cookie, Tumanako suddenly seemed to remember something and opened the drawer beside them. Inside were five large chocolate bars, which they took out and threw at people as if launching them. Seo Jihyeok looked the happiest.