Yu Geum-i, who had been walking in silence, approached Baek Aeyeong. Then, after hesitating for a while, she spoke.
“Did you not see any survivors in Jujak-dong?”
Most of the people staying in Jujak-dong, which could accommodate over four hundred people, were researchers. They said it had been arranged that way because the research center was close to Jujak-dong. Baek Aeyeong looked at Yu Geum-i, let out an “Ah,” and frowned. It was an exclamation that meant she had completely forgotten Yu Geum-i was a researcher.
“When we saw it while working outside, the research center side of Jujak-dong was being destroyed. We were originally heading to Jujak-dong too, but we urgently returned to Baekho-dong.”
Seo Jihyeok spoke, trying his best to make his voice sound gentle.
“As you can see from all these people escaping from Baekho-dong, the dormitory and the escape craft are closest to each other, so many of them probably got out before the water filled up.”
The fact that more than half the people who had escaped from Baekho-dong had been so drunk they had slept through the emergency alarm did not seem like it would be of much help to Ms. Geum-i right now. Researchers and professors who had been in the same master’s and doctoral programs as her were stationed in large numbers at Jujak-dong and the Jujak-dong Research Center. Yu Geum-i’s expression was not good. As I looked at Ms. Geum-i, a question occurred to me, and I asked quietly.
“Ms. Geum-i, why were you sleeping in Baekho-dong instead of Jujak-dong?”
I asked in a whisper in case it was a personal matter, but Yu Geum-i answered with a dark expression, as if it were nothing special.
“Originally, the room next to mine was occupied by a marine biology professor from America. He’s not my professor. But lately, the data really hasn’t been coming out well, and I’ve been so stressed from writing my paper that even having another professor in the next room was too stressful. He’d greet me by asking if my paper was going well. I was sleeping so badly that Martina told me to sleep in her room and switched rooms with me. ……What am I going to do about Martina? I can’t reach her. I don’t know if I can’t reach her because she’s on the mining shift right now, or because she was in Jujak-dong.”
“Maybe Ms. Martina can’t answer because she’s working? The people outside managing the mining robots might not even know what’s happening here right now.”
Just then, Nikita, who was walking at the very front, pointed to a small window.
“Look outside!”
What Nikita was pointing at was a window facing south from the Baekho-dong side, a precious round window. Windows were rare in the Fourth Undersea Base. There was one here and there in the corridors, and even those were round, no larger than the size of a person’s upper body at most.
I had expected there to be large floor-to-ceiling windows, but when there were none anywhere in the Fourth Undersea Base, I asked Wang Wei in the next room, and he gave a simple answer. Because they cost a lot of money. Besides, even if you put windows in the deep sea, all you’d see when you looked outside was darkness.
According to Nikita, through the windows of Baekho-dong, the lights of the Jujak-dong Research Center to the south were supposed to look like stars in the dark. There was nothing visible outside the window. Normally, if you looked out from here, you should see dozens of colorful lights turned on around the research center.
They said they were researching deep-sea fish and light, so three thousand meters under the sea, they had lit lights like stars, like a lighthouse in a typhoon. But at the end of where Nikita was pointing, there was nothing. Only pitch-black darkness.
“I don’t see anything.”
When Nikolai said this in a leisurely voice, Nikita jumped up and down as if she were about to explode with frustration.
“You’re supposed to see something! There aren’t any lights!”
“Oh, right.”
“Aaagh! You idiot!”
Vladimir, who had been watching Nikita jump up and down, looked at Sin Haeryang and said,
“Looks like it wasn’t a lie.”
“If you can’t believe it, swim over there yourself.”
While they exchanged words as cold as ice, Yu Geum-i looked out the window as if her soul had left her body. When she saw nothing but darkness where the research center beside Jujak-dong should have been, she stammered.
“Why…… isn’t it there? That…… why are those lights gone? No, they should be there. They have to be there.”
“Calm down, Ms. Geum-i. Couldn’t they just be gone? Maybe they moved them. Or turned them off.”
Those don’t turn off! Four seven-story research center buildings are gone! Yu Geum-i shouted things along those lines, then stared outside with a vacant face. Then she staggered back from the window.
Since I knew Ms. Yu Geum-i liked sweet things, I tried to take some snacks out of my bag and hand them to her. I unconsciously rummaged through the backpack that had the snake in it, and only after taking out my pad and cell phone did I realize I had put the snake in that bag. The snake did not bite me. After secretly checking that my hand was safe, I let out a breath of relief.
The phone had no signal, and the internet did not work, but it seemed the internal intranet could be accessed. I handed Ms. Geum-i a sugar-free apple candy. As I pushed a sugar-free lemon candy into my own mouth, I asked Sin Haeryang as he passed by, “Would you like one?” Sin Haeryang shook his head. Seeing his jaw move this way and that in a pleasing shape, I inwardly admired his jawline. Seo Jihyeok immediately snatched the sugar-free orange candy from my hand.
From the Russian team, Viktor and Sofiya took strawberry candies. Listening to the rustling sounds, I accessed the undersea base bulletin board on my pad and tapped the first post, which had practically been spammed all over the board.
Title: This is Jujak-dong Room 77!
Content: Help us! There’s water outside the room! Maybe because of the water pressure, we can’t get out and the door won’t open! There are five of us here! Please save usㅠㅠ
Was I the only one here who had checked the undersea base bulletin boards? Had no one else seen it yet? Were they pretending not to have seen it? No one was talking about this post. Hadn’t Sin Haeryang said that Jujak-dong had been flooded along with the research center? Then what was this post?
If Jujak-dong was not flooded and was intact, then all of Engineering Team A was lying. They were the ones who insisted we go to Hyeonmu-dong, so was it really right to head to Hyeonmu-dong as they wanted?
If all of Jujak-dong was underwater, then this post itself was a lie. Someone wanted people to come to Jujak-dong. Which side was lying? Soon, the central plaza of Jungang-dong would appear. From there, going south would lead to Jujak-dong, and going north would lead to Hyeonmu-dong. If I did not speak now, it seemed no one would pay any attention to Jujak-dong and would just pass by.
“A post went up on the base’s internal bulletin board. Has anyone seen it?”
The people walking turned their heads to look at me. As an introvert, I flinched when dozens of eyes turned toward me. I put strength into my fading voice and said,
“It says several people are trapped in Jujak-dong Room 77.”
“So?”
“We have to go save them.”
Nikita narrowed her eyes. In a voice like the claws of a Russian Amur leopard cutting through a winter wind, she asked,
“Who does?”
“We do.”
The moment I heard that, I thought, This person has already seen the post asking for help. My words jammed in my throat as if someone had clamped a hand over my mouth. But there was a clear reason we had to go to Jujak-dong.
“Because it says people are trapped in the dormitory, and we can help them.”
“You saw Baekho-dong flooding. The dormitory barely seems to have avoided drowning because it’s sealed off right now, and you want us to go back to a place like that? The people going to save them will all die too.”
“It says five people are trapped. They could be people from your team!”
“Shut up!”
Nikita, her face gone deathly white, shouted in an angry voice. Usually, engineering teams worked in teams of seven or eight. Engineering Team C had probably been off duty, which was why they had been drinking that much and playing around before falling asleep. Since there were five now, then two or three of them had either already become food for the deep-sea fish, escaped on their own, were trapped somewhere in this undersea base like that, or were wandering around. One of the four.
“……Or they might have escaped first.”
To the person who looked deeply troubled, I offered the best possible assumption as if trying to soothe her. They were people I did not know, but I hoped they had not died. But the things I had not said aloud were things they must already know too. I also said to Engineering Team A,
“Among the people trapped in Jujak-dong, one of them could be a member of your own team or someone you know.”
At those words, the Russian team members crossed their arms and glared at me. Carlos did not look pleased either. So they did not want to go to a dangerous place, to a flooded dormitory wing, if they did not have to. I was the same. I did not want to go into that water and swim again. But there was a post on the bulletin board begging to be saved.
“All four members of our team escaped on the escape craft, though.”
Seo Jihyeok answered awkwardly, then shut his mouth at the terrible atmosphere. Sin Haeryang held out his hand to me. Thinking it meant agreement, I quickly tried to grab his hand, but Sin Haeryang skillfully took the pad tucked under my arm instead. Then he read the post that had gone up. In a voice of disbelief, I asked Sin Haeryang,
“Where’s your pad, Mr. Sin Haeryang?”
“Mine is inside Room 22 of Baekho-dong.”
Ah. It had been buried at sea forever. How much water pressure could a fully sealed electronic device submerged in seawater withstand? Ownerless objects left in seawater would probably remain powered on until their batteries died or they were crushed by the pressure.
It seemed Baek Aeyeong had entered the undersea base company bulletin board on her phone, because I heard Seo Jihyeok asking to see it with her. Yu Geum-i bit her lip for a long while, then said,
“I’ll go to Jujak-dong. I might not be much help, but that person who says they’re trapped. I’m going to try to save them as much as I can. I don’t know who’s there, but my academic advisor could be there, and people from my lab or people I know could be there too.”
Since it was Jujak-dong, there was a high chance the researchers were alive. Or else Martina, who had switched rooms with her. Though I did not know why five people had gathered in one room.