Thanks to the beauty salon being close to the escape craft port, we were able to get there without any trouble. Aside from pausing briefly to check inside when we opened the escape craft port door, everyone slipped quickly into the port as if seeping through.
Once he saw there was no one inside, Sin Haeryang first checked the positions of the escape crafts that had launched. Seo Jihyeok looked around the inside of the escape craft port, then came over beside me and Tumanako. His attitude suggested that something might attack us even if there were no people.
It was my first time entering the escape craft port of the Third Undersea Base, but its structure looked similar to the escape craft ports of the Fourth Undersea Base. The first thing that caught my eye as soon as we entered was the floor, which was a mess.
I couldn’t be sure whether people had fought here or whether it was from injuries sustained during the escape, but someone had bled on the floor, and the blood had been smeared all over by several sets of footprints. The floor was littered with bloodstained clothes, a single slipper that had come off, a smashed cell phone, a hair tie that had lost its owner—maybe it had been tied loosely—and a few coins that looked as if they had fallen from someone’s pocket, broken bead accessories whose parts might have belonged to a bracelet or a necklace, a shattered watch, and cracked glasses.
It felt as though we had arrived after a massive human storm had swept through the escape craft port. Fortunately, there were no bodies inside.
On the front panel, the escape crafts that had left from here were shown bobbing on the surface of the sea like jellyfish. As I watched the escape crafts, I realized Baek Aeyeong wasn’t with us.
“Aeyeong isn’t here.”
Seo Jihyeok answered without even looking at me.
“She’s keeping watch outside.”
Following Seo Jihyeok’s gaze, I saw a stream of water trickling down from the ceiling along the wall. The engineer looked like he desperately wanted to curse at the leak but was holding it in, then quickly shifted his gaze elsewhere.
Sin Haeryang was checking the condition of the escape craft waiting on the launch platform. As I stared blankly at the number marked [ 1 ] for the remaining escape crafts, Tumanako looked at the two busy men with a gloomy expression. Seo Jihyeok muttered as he helped Sin Haeryang inspect the escape craft.
“How did you know there’d be one left here? Do you know the kids working under you get a little creeped out whenever something like this happens?”
Sin Haeryang wore a look that said, What’s that got to do with me? and, without answering, checked whether the escape craft was completely sealed. Seo Jihyeok, who had been looking at the compressed air connected inside the escape craft, asked the team leader on the other side, who was checking the engine, as if pestering him.
“How do you know stuff like this?”
“I didn’t.”
“You don’t have anything like being born clutching the Seven Stars cord, or hearing the voice of God, or the foam you spit out while brushing your teeth looking like Jesus?”
“No.”
Even while talking, the two of them were quickly checking the condition of the single escape craft, but they seemed to be spending more time on it than before. The escape crafts in Cheongryong-dong had been prepared for the members of Engineering Team Ra to use, but with this one, they seemed to think the escape craft itself might be a trap. Seo Jihyeok said in a singsong voice,
“So, so scary. Seriously. This is what’s scariest. It’s not the bastards waiting in a dark room with knives that scare me. What scares me more than anything in the world is having a boss who can tell with some ghostly intuition whether this bastard is slacking off or not, even with his eyes closed.”
Tumanako, who had been watching Seo Jihyeok move his hands and mouth nonstop, said,
“What scares me most right now is the fact that there’s only one escape craft.”
“What’s scary about that? You can work expensive guys like us with the flick of a finger for the price of a chocolate bar.”
“Is that a good thing?”
Tumanako looked at Sin Haeryang and Seo Jihyeok, then asked again with a doubtful expression. His face said, Are these guys really going to be any help in getting me out? It seemed that way because, up until now, the people from Engineering Team Ga hadn’t been much help in Tumanako’s escape. Sin Haeryang smiled faintly, and Seo Jihyeok, who had been touching the nozzle to see if someone had made a hole in it, raised the corners of his mouth and answered.
“Of course it’s a good thing. Until you leave Daehan-do, Tumanako, there are three people on your side.”
Tumanako closed his mouth for a moment at those words, then opened it again. His voice was full of distrust.
“Can’t we get support from outside?”
“Should we try shouting from here? Maybe a dolphin will come.”
Even in the face of Seo Jihyeok’s nonsense, Tumanako stubbornly asked,
“The people who left on the escape crafts earlier could help us, couldn’t they? They escaped the undersea base.”
Could the people who had left on the escape crafts really help the people still remaining inside the undersea base? At that, the two men answered at the same time.
“Hard to say.”
“I think it would be difficult.”
Tumanako asked anxiously at their negative replies.
“Why?”
“If the outside is swarming with guys like this too, that sounds even more troublesome.”
“They’ll be facing their own problems.”
Judging by their attitudes, the two of them seemed certain there were armed followers of the Infinite Church on Daehan-do as well. And they seemed to think things wouldn’t be all that comfortable on the island either. In these people’s minds, whether the people who had escaped on the crafts could drive a boat or not didn’t seem like a major issue. Remembering what had happened in the Jujak-dong elevator, I said,
“Don’t you think the people who went out first might have gotten on boats and left the island safely?”
I imagined Emma wearing sunglasses, with a cat and a snake draped over her shoulders and neck, singing as she coolly drove a boat with one hand. Seawater would spray everywhere as a boat went endlessly forward beneath the sunlight on the boundless horizon. Far enough that no bullet could reach it, far enough that the coastline was no longer visible at all.
Seo Jihyeok hesitated slightly before answering me.
“I hope they got the hell out fast and clean. But it’s a little iffy. It would’ve been better if Aeyeong had gone out on an escape craft too. Well. Nothing we can do.”
“Maybe they’re waiting on the surface for us to escape.”
Tumanako seemed to want a helping hand to come from outside to the undersea base where he was. Sin Haeryang simply crushed Tumanako’s hopes as he said,
“I hope not. I hope they abandoned us and left Daehan-do quickly.”
“You wouldn’t even feel hurt? If someone just abandoned you and left? Without taking me?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind.”
With a sigh, Tumanako hesitated slightly before speaking.
“...I’ve been thinking about it. Wouldn’t it be better to surrender to those Infinite Church people instead? Even out of fear of how the international community would see them, those cult bastards wouldn’t just kill people recklessly, would they? Eight developed countries took part in this place too. America’s one of them. No matter how I think about it, wouldn’t it be safer to sit quietly as hostages? Isn’t wandering around trying to escape just wasting our strength? Maybe America might rescue us too while saving its own citizens.”
As Sin Haeryang checked the exterior of the escape craft, he said to Tumanako,
“Are you saying we should voluntarily hand over the weapons we have, then beg for pity and mercy while hoping they don’t kill us? And if we happen to get rescued later as a bonus, all the better?”
At Sin Haeryang’s words, Tumanako looked flustered for a moment, then thought back over what he had said.
“Wait. ...Was what I said really that defeatist and negative? I thought it was pretty rational. ...Wasn’t it?”
“The moment you give up the struggle, you become prey.”
Sin Haeryang said it as though he had spent his entire life fighting. I had never heard words like that in my life. Was it because I’d lived without fighting? No, but it wasn’t as if I’d lived by doing nothing but compromising either.
With a sigh, Seo Jihyeok gave Tumanako a light once-over and said,
“Well, Tumanako, you might be tied up nicely and left in a corner. But if I were them, even if I took a big guy like me hostage, I’d give him a bullet or two as a present, or put a hole in his forehead so he couldn’t get his head straight before tying him up. I think our team leader here would take about three bullets to the head. I’m against surrender, just like the team leader. Ah. Aeyeong would probably be against it too. She’s a hyper-violence extremist.”
Tumanako stared at the two of them with an expression of disbelief, then looked at me beside him. Was he asking me about surrender? Jennifer’s eyes, which had met mine for an instant. That gaze had looked at me as if it still wanted to keep fighting.
“I’ve only just realized this, but I think I’m allergic to bullets.”
Tumanako shook his head back and forth as though dumbfounded. Seo Jihyeok, who had been shaking the soot and water off his hands, gestured toward us.
“Doctor. You can board the escape craft.”
Sin Haeryang also shook off his hands and looked at me and Tumanako. Under that gaze, Tumanako said to me,
“Honestly. I feel like I’m going crazy because I want to get on that escape craft right now. I can’t trust them. I want to push you aside and get on that escape craft so badly.”
I nodded, agreeing with Tumanako’s words. I couldn’t believe I was going to leave on an escape craft. It felt as if my body were floating, like I was dreaming. Why was I allowed to go first? Tumanako was here, and so was Baek Aeyeong, and Yugeum too.
“...You go first. I’ll have another chance.”
Tumanako’s face twisted at those words. He looked like he was about to cry.
“I don’t want that either. Because I promised! Even if I don’t like it, a promise is a promise. You may not know it, but you’re in terrible shape right now. It looks like you could just drop while walking any second. I’d rather you were selfish. I wish you were a mean, selfish bastard, so I could curse you out as much as I wanted without feeling guilty.”
Tumanako handed me the bag he had been carrying. When I hugged the bag with both arms, Tumanako said, almost threateningly,
“Get out first and run away safely outside. You have to give it back. If my plant dies, I’m not leaving your hair alone when I get out.”
Sin Haeryang told me to stand in the designated position.
“It would be fine to wander around the island looking for the people who left first, but staying in the escape craft isn’t a bad choice either. The escape craft’s lifeboat will deploy at a point far from the beach of Daehan-do.”
Seo Jihyeok struck the button with the back of his hand and said,
“Well. If nothing else works, just float around in the escape craft like a jellyfish. Once I get up there, I’ll put you on Zixuan’s boat and take you for a drive.”
The escape craft wrapped around my body, and in the next instant, it launched.