Once the decision to move had been made, people poured out of the escape craft port in an instant. The people from Engineer Team Da did say their final goodbyes to the teammates laid out on the chairs, but even that was done with lightning speed.
We were supposed to go together as far as the Central Wing, then split up midway, but Baek Ae-yeong, who was leading everyone, looked ready to kick anyone in the rear if they didn’t move quickly.
Borrowing Michael Roaker’s pad, which Baek Ae-yeong had, I checked the undersea base bulletin board and saw that Kim Ga-young was already flooding the pages with posts begging for help.
I’d thought that if nothing had been posted this time either, she might have escaped the dormitory with the others, but apparently that wasn’t the case. As time passed, sighs and worry washed over me. I showed Baek Ae-yeong a post saying the water level kept rising and that she was scared, but Baek Ae-yeong only scanned it quickly and expressionlessly before handing the pad over to Team Leader Shin.
Baek Ae-yeong seemed to be doing her best to suppress the urge to kick Jeong Sang-hyeon, who was dawdling at the rear of the group while trying to run a game installed on his pad. Or maybe she was contemplating exactly how to destroy him so thoroughly that word would spread of how well she’d done it; the way she glared at the back of Jeong Sang-hyeon’s head was chilling.
When I cautiously suggested to Jeong Sang-hyeon that it might be better to turn off the game and walk faster, he snapped, “Who are you to tell me that?” so I shut my mouth with a sigh. The gaze of Baek Ae-yeong, who was walking at the very back, seemed to be growing colder and colder.
Seo Ji-hyeok, who had slowed down at the front and dropped back, looked at Jeong Sang-hyeon and grinned mischievously. Then he snatched the pad away and sprinted forward. “This pad’s mine now~!” At that, Jeong Sang-hyeon started running after Seo Ji-hyeok, shouting for him to give it back. Now Baek Ae-yeong began harrying Sofía and Carlos, who were lagging behind.
Tumanako was talking with Kim Jae-hee, the person from Engineer Team Ga whose hair was dyed the most conspicuous color, and their conversation mostly revolved around where she’d dyed it and why she had chosen that color.
From Tumanako’s point of view, Kim Jae-hee seemed to be the only person here with even the slightest interest in hair styling. As for the Russians, I couldn’t tell with my own eyes whether they had dyed their hair or not. I let it go in one ear and out the other as I heard that almost everyone here went out to Hawaii or nearby cities to get their hair done.
I was anxious. No matter how I thought about it, I had come out of my room far too late, and the time wasted because of that was starting to feel painfully precious. I wanted to shout Kim Ga-young’s name at the top of my lungs and run full speed to the Jujak Wing dormitory right this instant.
But because of Baek Ae-yeong and Shin Hae-ryang’s urging, everyone was already walking at a pace a little faster than a speed walk. To move any faster than this, we would have to run, and if we did that, I’d be the first one sprawled out on the corridor floor in less than three minutes.
My heart was so frantic I felt like I was going to die, but my body wouldn’t keep up. If I… get out of here, the first thing I’m doing is exercising.
“What happened to the burn on your left palm?”
I was startled by Baek Ae-yeong, who had approached soundlessly at some point. She was asking outright about my left hand, which I had been keeping clenched or pointed downward. What should I say? I got burned trying to open the jewelry box in your room? Receiving Baek Ae-yeong’s suspicious gaze with my entire body, I answered.
“I got hurt a little in an accident.”
Baek Ae-yeong stared at me silently, then said,
“Humans are insulators.”
“Pardon?”
“If electric current flows through you, you die.”
“Uh… I see.”
Even in my confusion, my brain was throwing out questions like, Aren’t humans conductors? Then why do we get static electricity at our fingertips in winter? I knew nerves reacted and muscles moved because tiny electric currents were constantly flowing inside the body. Maybe we die because we’re insulators? Well, if I were a conductor, my hand would have been fine.
“I don’t particularly like people who try to take my things without permission.”
“Uh. Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Watch your hands.”
I still didn’t know whether the warning phrase “wrist severed” meant Baek Ae-yeong would cut it off herself, or whether she’d burn my hand with an electric shock so badly that it would have to be cut off.
I knew there was gold inside that jewelry box. I also knew there was enough of it that Baek Ae-yeong had kept thinking about it as she moved through the undersea base and feeling regretful.
I closed my mouth, wondering how much she would believe me even if I said I’d intended to steal that jewelry box out of the room filling with water, like a righteous thief, and return it to its original owner.
Baek Ae-yeong seemed to already know that I had touched the electric trap installed in her room. How did she know? Did she test it? …She probably tested it. I looked down at my palm, which was still hot and stinging because the heat hadn’t fully faded, then left it alone. It wasn’t a serious injury, so it was fine.
Kim Jae-hee, who had departed the escape craft port the fastest and had been walking at the very front, began to fall back from the first row while talking with Tumanako. Before long, she was slightly lagging in the middle of the group. She was maintaining a steady pace, but it wasn’t very fast. Kim Jae-hee approached me with a friendly smile and asked,
“Was there anyone you knew from before you came to the undersea base?”
“No. There wasn’t.”
If there had been someone I already knew, they would have signaled me not to set foot in this place and to run away. Like the wish of the believers of the Church of Infinity, if I somehow went back to the past, I would probably tell my past self to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible. Kim Jae-hee stared at my left artificial eye and said,
“I didn’t know anyone either, and it was my first time working in a place like this, so I was flustered. You’ll get used to it soon. Though with the situation like this, I don’t know when the dental clinic will open.”
“I’ve only been here a short time, and suddenly water’s leaking, people are said to have disappeared, and there are dead people, so I’m a bit shocked.”
Kim Jae-hee nodded as if she understood completely, then said to me,
“I also thought the undersea base would be a very still and quiet place, but incidents and accidents happen every day, so it isn’t boring. Before I got hired, when I’d only heard stories about the undersea base, I thought that since it was underwater there wouldn’t be any major problems, and that we’d just occasionally seal leaks and replace corroded parts.”
“What’s it actually like, now that you’re working here?”
Baek Ae-yeong and Seo Ji-hyeok didn’t seem to think of this as a good workplace. I was curious what Kim Jae-hee thought.
“It’s even more of a mess than I expected. There are quite a few leaks where we can’t figure out where they’re coming from, something breaks every day, and when we request replacement parts, they say they have to come by ship or helicopter so they don’t know when they’ll arrive. Or they say the manufacturer went bankrupt and doesn’t produce the parts anymore. There are little things like that, but it also seems like the undersea base is corroding from seawater faster than the researchers originally predicted. According to the concrete structure deterioration and damage simulation based on the records accumulated so far in the MARIA undersea system, the remaining lifespan of this North Pacific Undersea Base seems to be less than thirty years. Even the International Space Station, launched in 1998, was used for thirty-three years. As someone who got hired here, it’s unsettling to think that the expiration date on this hodgepodge stew made in the twenty-first century by throwing in cutting-edge design, construction, and every existing scientific technology might be so short. People and robots are barely managing the repairs, but how long will that last?”
Kim Jae-hee smiled like that and shrugged.
“What are the people you work with like?”
“People are the same wherever you go. They always try to act only for their own benefit, and they’re greedy but have no self-control. In the undersea base, people live shut in, so it’s a little more extreme. One day someone says the food tastes bad and flips over the tray of a kid who was eating just fine. Or they try to fight kids from another country to the death because an opposing player committed one foul in a sports match. Or they pick a fight asking why an Asian person dyed her hair when she should love the hair color she was born with. All sorts of bizarre things happen. At least my teammates are decent, so living here isn’t too bad.”
While speaking, Kim Jae-hee touched the ear piercing she had been fiddling with the whole time using both hands, then twisted the back ball counterclockwise and removed it. Then she put the piercing she’d taken out into her pocket and said, “It was wobbling, so I took it out.” After that, she began asking about my work life.
“What’s the dental clinic like? Do a lot of people visit because of cavities?”
“Let’s see. …First of all, fewer patients than I expected come in with serious cavities. On the first day, when Elliot said there were free vending machines from snack companies and beverage companies all over the undersea base, and that they had practically set chocolate and candy loose without limit, I was shocked. Honestly, I wondered if the dental clinic would be overflowing with cavity patients. I imagined that even though there was only one patient with an appointment, eighty people a day would line up without appointments, grab the one and only dentist by the collar, shake him, and threaten that if I didn’t treat them all by the end of the day, they wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom. They’d make me work without eating lunch or dinner, that sort of thing.”
Seo Ji-hyeok, who was walking beside us, listened to my story and seemed amused, the corners of his mouth rising.
“But rather than cavities, I’m busier doing scaling because of tartar, and there are more cases of people coming in because their teeth are broken, knocked out, or cracked.”
Seo Ji-hyeok’s steps beside me quickened, and he whooshed off to the very front where Shin Hae-ryang was. Kim Jae-hee listened, nodding as if she found it interesting.
“It’s fascinating hearing it from a dentist’s perspective. Isn’t it hard working alone?”
Ah. I had really wanted to say this to someone.
“It’s seriously hard. I wish there were at least one more person. No, I wish there were two more.”
Somehow, the dental clinic could function with a single dentist, but it couldn’t keep doing that forever. I wished a dental hygienist or dental technician would come quickly. No, why didn’t they just hire them all at once in the first place? The clinic was only barely functioning right now because there weren’t many patients.
The reason I hadn’t lain down on the floor of Deep Blue and declared that I couldn’t do this anymore was because the dental clinic had opened for the first time in the undersea base, and because I was enduring on the promise that they were hiring people from various countries, not because it was a good environment to work in.
No. It’s fine. I’m going to run away from here, so the undersea base will have to hire a new dentist first. As I poured out all sorts of stories about Deep Blue and gestured with both hands, Kim Jae-hee noticed my palm at some point and asked,
“What happened to that palm? Doesn’t it hurt?”
“I saw a jewelry box in Ae-yeong’s room and touched it with my hand, and this is what happened.”
Jeong Sang-hyeon, who had snatched the pad back from Seo Ji-hyeok, looked at me in surprise and shouted at Baek Ae-yeong.
“Hey! Did you lower the voltage from before?”
Baek Ae-yeong didn’t even pretend to hear him.
“Hey!”
“Did you… just call me?”
“Then who else would I be talking to?”
“If you call me that one more time, I’ll make sure the squids tear your corpse apart.”
Baek Ae-yeong said that viciously, and no matter how I looked at it, it seemed like she wanted to take advantage of the team leader’s absence and quietly kill Jeong Sang-hyeon. I had never heard Baek Ae-yeong say anything carelessly, so I was rather horrified, but Jeong Sang-hyeon asked as if it were nothing.
“Why are you looking at me like that? It’s scary. …Ae-yeong-ah. Did you lower the voltage?”
“No. Why would I?”
“Then why is that dentist fine!”