I’d been terrified the door might not open because of the water, but fortunately, it did, albeit slowly. Maybe because there was water everywhere, inside and out. Listening to the emergency alarm blaring through the entire Baekho-dong quarters, I grabbed just one towel and splashed my way out of the room.
I’d never stayed in my room until things got this bad before. This is insane. Seriously. I wiped my face, which was a mess of nosebleed, tears, saliva, and seawater, with the towel as I stepped out, but there was no sign of anyone. I was the only one wandering around the Baekho-dong quarters while the emergency alarm rang urgently. Had all the Russians left? What about Carlos? Since Yugeum had taken the escape craft out, was he not in his room?
I pushed through the current rising up my calves and checked Carlos and Yugeum’s rooms. Both rooms were empty, with their owners gone. Inside the ransacked rooms, all sorts of odds and ends were floating in the water. Only the water level was quietly rising.
It was hard to tell whether Yugeum wasn’t here because he had taken the escape craft out in the previous round, or whether he had been in his room but I’d overslept and missed him leaving. Did people who went up to the surface disappear from inside this undersea base? Was that why the snake and the cat were gone too? If Yugeum had escaped on the escape craft and was no longer in the current undersea base, then Henry definitely wouldn’t be here either. Then what happened to Tumanako? Did Tumanako make it out of the undersea base successfully? What if she was in her room?
If Yugeum hadn’t disappeared from within this undersea base like the snake or the cat, but had simply left while I was sleeping, then Henry would have been left alone, asleep in these flooding quarters. On top of that, if Shin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok, and Baek Aeyeong had failed, then Tumanako would be here too. Would she be listening to music with her headphones on, unaware of the emergency alarm like before? I stood in the corridor, wondering where I should go.
Should I go check the room Henry was in, or the room Tumanako was in?
I licked the inside of my bone-dry mouth. Why was it always like this? Why could I only go to one place? Without waiting for me to make up my mind, the corridor was rapidly filling with water.
Considering how loud this emergency alarm was, Vladimir must have dragged his team members out.
After hesitating for a moment, I chose a direction and started walking. Now that the water had risen past my calves to my thighs, even moving forward wasn’t easy.
……Yugeum took the escape craft out. Henry left then too. He won’t be inside this undersea base. If he were, the cat and the snake should have remained too.
What if the cat and the snake were suddenly in their rooms? What if Henry was in his room too, and everything I was thinking was wrong? Anxiety crept up on me, trying to gnaw away at my mind. I tried to steel myself. If I’d made a choice, I shouldn’t waver.
As I pushed through the water, I was just passing Room 24. Room 23 was Baek Aeyeong’s room, and I was about to pass it like the others when I saw the vanity inside and stopped for a moment.
On the accessory case atop the vanity, the words [Touch This and Lose Your Wrist] were written in all sorts of languages. According to Baek Aeyeong, there should be things made of gold and diamonds in there. She’d been so disappointed about them. Would she be happy if I brought it to her? ……Let’s just grab the accessory case quickly and go. The moment I made the decision, I ran into the room.
I was about to quickly reach for the vanity, which was on the verge of being submerged, when I realized the backs and palms of my hands were a mess from my nosebleed. I judged that both wasting time washing my hands in filthy seawater and touching someone else’s belongings with bloody hands were terrible options, so I wrapped my hand in the towel I had around my neck. Then I reached for the jewelry box, which was glittering, ornate, and beautifully decorated. The moment I touched it, my body froze.
Only after I barely managed to pull my hand away thanks to the towel did I understand what had happened. My left hand, the one that had touched the case, was trembling and convulsing. I had no idea what Baek Aeyeong had installed on her vanity, but it seemed designed to burn off the palm of anyone who touched her jewelry box without permission. Even with my hand wrapped in a towel, it tingled so badly it shook. The towel had saved me. If I’d grabbed it barehanded, I might have died of a heart attack in this flooded mess.
At the chilling thought, I backed away. Every object in Baek Aeyeong’s room suddenly looked like a trap.
When I hurried out of that room, the tablet lying on the desk in the next room caught my eye. This had been fine before. Would it be fine this time too? I cautiously picked up the tablet in Shin Haeryang’s room. There was no hidden electric shock or anything. Letting out a sigh of relief, I left the room and walked down the corridor again.
Kicking through the water as I went, I approached Tumanako’s room. By the time I reached Room 12, I could hear singing even though it was still quite a distance from Room 8. I was so glad to hear that song, but at the same time, I felt terribly sad. ……She hadn’t gotten out.
Like a boatman enchanted by a siren’s song, I headed toward Tumanako’s room. The New Zealand siren was lying on the upper bunk bed, wearing a headset and singing with all her might. The lyrics of a very old song flowed into my brain.
[We’re just lost stars trying to light up the dark!]
Even with the Baekho-dong quarters flooding and the Grim Reaper closing in beside her, swinging his scythe, she didn’t seem to care at all. The confidence and joy in Tumanako that I hadn’t seen while we were traveling together were pouring out wildly from the upper bunk in Room 8. For a few seconds, her carefree voice and the lyrics made me forget the reality that I was trapped under the sea, submerged in water.
I called Tumanako from outside the room with a smile, but my voice was buried under the singing. I entered the room, intending to take off the headset of Tumanako, who was lying on the upper bunk like before, or shake her arm. If I touched her leg, I felt like she’d startle and kick me.
Using the metal drawer below as a foothold, I climbed up, and the moment I grabbed her arm and shook it, Tumanako, horrified, let out a short scream and sat up. Having anticipated her reaction, I shoved my hand between the ceiling and her head. The head that had almost slammed straight into the ceiling ended up hitting my hand as a cushion instead. I spoke to Tumanako, whose eyes met mine.
“Water’s leaking in. We need to get out quickly.”
“Huh? Huh? Okay.”
After taking off her headset, Tumanako looked down from the upper bunk bed, which was installed so high it almost touched the ceiling, at the water-covered floor below and spat out words that sounded like curses. While Tumanako climbed down, I heard an extremely faint noise from the corridor outside Room 8. Between the emergency alarm and the distance, I couldn’t hear it properly, but it sounded as if someone was shouting far away. The empty corridor had no one in it except floating objects.
Even so, the sound came little by little from far away. The instant I recognized it as definitely being made by a person, my heart seemed to drop with a thud. Did someone not manage to escape? Surely not Henry? Was my judgment wrong? As I followed the other person’s voice and pushed through the waist-deep water to Room 11, Tumanako called out to me.
“If you go that way, there won’t be time! We have to go this way.”
Just then, someone shouted very faintly.
“……Hyeo—na!”
At first I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but after they shouted five or six times, I finally heard a voice yelling, Jiiihyeooon-aa! I shouted back.
“She’s not here! She’s not here!”
Tumanako seemed frustrated with my voice, inhaled, and yelled loudly in my place.
“She’s not heeeeeeeeeeeeeere!”
……She really ought to be a singer, shouldn’t she? I flinched in surprise at Tumanako’s voice, which felt like it would burst my eardrums. Tumanako grabbed my arm and began walking quickly toward the stairs beside Room 1.
It wasn’t easy to walk while pushing through the water, which was already up to our chests, and Tumanako, who was walking ahead, almost slipped twice. I, who had been walking in a way closer to bobbing and floating than stepping, barely managed to catch Tumanako before she slipped. Since I’d grown used to walking through water, the rapidly rising water was a little frightening, but I wasn’t as mindlessly terrified as I had been before.
By the time the water rose from my shoulders to my neck, we reached the stairs, and after we climbed up and closed the door, we could finally catch our breath a little. Aside from the tablet, which I had carried in my hand and later practically held in my mouth, there wasn’t a single part of me that wasn’t wet.
“That was close. I nearly died.”
“Same.”
“I’m Tumanako Oranga. You are?”
Tumanako twisted and wrung the hem of her long-sleeved T-shirt with her fingers, then introduced herself. I, too, completely soaked, answered while coughing.
“I’m Park Muhyeon. A dentist.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m a hair designer.”
Still soaked, we walked down the corridor to the area connected to the central stairs, where the engineers had gathered. Two people were holding one person down as if they were wrestling. The person being restrained was Seo Jihyeok, and the ones pinning him down were Baek Aeyeong and Viktor.
“Let go! Fuck! Let go of me!”
“Stay still!”
Seo Jihyeok was hurling curses at Viktor, who had his lower body entangled. Baek Aeyeong, who had pinned both of Seo Jihyeok’s arms down with her legs, was snapping at him in irritation. Viktor was pressing down Seo Jihyeok’s legs with his entire body, but unlike the other two, he didn’t say a word. Seo Jihyeok was so strong that even with two people clinging to him, Baek Aeyeong’s legs were being dragged around by the strength in his arms.
As if he had no intention of getting involved with the three rolling around behind him, Nikolai was closing the stairway door, where the water had reached right up to the threshold. After he barely managed to close the bulkhead connected to the stairs using his body, water leaked out as if overflowing. Baek Aeyeong spoke to Seo Jihyeok, who was thrashing.
“Give up.”
“I definitely heard it!”
Baek Aeyeong frowned and spoke again. Her expression said she wanted to beat Seo Jihyeok to a pulp but was holding herself back.
“Give up.”
“She called me!”
Baek Aeyeong punched Seo Jihyeok in the face with her left fist. The punch was so natural that the fact that Baek Aeyeong had hit someone in the face only sank in slowly.
“Give up.”
“……I don’t want to!”
“What are you all doing?!”
If I didn’t speak up, it seemed like Baek Aeyeong would punch Seo Jihyeok again. Even though everyone knew we were approaching from a distance, they didn’t let Seo Jihyeok go. Nikolai took his hand off the bulkhead, spat out a Russian curse, and said,
“He says he’s going in there! He’s completely insane!”
“I definitely heard a woman scream!”
“Whether it was a woman screaming or a man screaming, give up!”
“Jihyeon might have heard my voice and called me from inside.”
“Jihyeon isn’t in there.”
At those words, Seo Jihyeok’s body, which had been thrashing and struggling, went completely still. Everyone’s eyes turned to me. Seo Jihyeok calmly asked me,
“How do you know that?”
“I checked from Room 38 to Room 1. There was no one there.”
“I definitely heard a woman scream.”
Nikolai snapped at Seo Jihyeok in irritation.
“You were the only crazy bastard who heard that!”
“My ears are better than your bullshit about it being a rusalka, a Russian maiden ghost!”
Seo Jihyeok shot back.
“Um. I think that might’ve been because I screamed.”
Tumanako answered hesitantly, and Seo Jihyeok stared at her for a long while. As Seo Jihyeok stopped resisting and his body began to go limp, Viktor looked at Baek Aeyeong. When Baek Aeyeong nodded, Viktor let go of Seo Jihyeok’s legs.