They were just rescuing all of us while they were at it? How was that possible? To those three, Yu Geum and I must have felt like huge burdens. Even if they had abandoned us and left, there would have been no responsibility to bear, no room for blame. So why had they tried to escape with us? Shin Haeryang had thought I might be a member of the Infinite Church, so why hadn’t he left me behind?
Jeong Sanghyeon was tapping at his tablet when he looked at his cracked fingernail, grimaced, and said,
“I didn’t like it from the moment the team leader said he was going to save that woman. Even if the three of them stuck right to us and protected us up close, it still wouldn’t have been enough, so why did the strongest and smartest person have to leave to go fetch somebody else? Is she someone special? Everything they research here is fish and seawater anyway, so I don’t get what’s so amazing about it. I never understood why the team leader and Jihyeok hyung were always so deferential to that woman.”
Kim Jaehee, who had been looking at me, turned his gaze on Jeong Sanghyeon as if he were looking at an animal of low intelligence, then spoke as though lecturing him.
“Sanghyeon. Even if that’s what you think, there’s no need to say it out loud. If you at least keep your mouth shut, people will give you the benefit of the doubt.”
“Ah! Jaehee hyung! This is exactly when you have to look out for your own interests even more clearly! If you don’t say anything, who’s going to notice? Ha. Hyung, aren’t you too nice? You’re the nicest person on the team. Seriously.”
Kim Jaehee seemed to find that amusing and gave a faint smile. Jeong Sanghyeon sighed as he rubbed his palms, the skin reddened and raised from crawling.
“Ah. I didn’t want to come here. I came to the undersea base for no reason and just ended up suffering.”
“Why did you come somewhere you hated so much, then?”
Tumanako, who had been listening quietly, glared at Jeong Sanghyeon and asked. Tumanako had seemed to be eagerly awaiting the day she would join the undersea base. At that, Jeong Sanghyeon frowned and said,
“You think I came here because I wanted to?!”
“Then you can just leave.”
“I’m leaving the moment my contract period ends, okay?! You don’t know anything!”
When I stepped in between Tumanako and Jeong Sanghyeon, they could no longer see each other’s faces, and the conversation naturally had no choice but to stop.
That was when it happened. Krrrrrrrrrrk! A nightmarish sound reverberated through the entire ceiling and walls. As the building suddenly shook, the people began swaying this way and that along with it.
I quickly gave up on even trying to keep my balance and immediately fell backward. It felt like my backside had been smashed to pieces, but at least I didn’t injure anywhere else. I remembered the past, when I had thrown myself forward because I was carrying a child or an animal on my back.
The people who had tried to stay standing all slammed their knees into the floor or braced their palms against it, and only after about three minutes did the tremors stop. With anxious expressions, they hesitantly got up from the floor. Even after everyone else had risen, Kim Jaehee remained sitting blankly on the floor, so I held out both hands. I wasn’t confident I could support an adult man’s weight with one hand.
People with a history of having a leg or a waist break down even once have a hard time getting up from the floor. Going up and down stairs or slopes, and walking over uneven ground, becomes hard as a bonus. But no matter how hard it was for me, it must be harder for him.
Quite a few people use beds because it’s difficult for them to manage their bodies. That’s because getting up while climbing down from a bed is easier than getting up from lying on the floor. Of course, there are also plenty of people who insist on floor living rather than living with chairs and beds. As soon as I get out of this undersea base, I too will remove the bed from my room and start living on the floor. I’ll spread out a mattress on the floor and sleep there. If I don’t use a bed, there won’t be any reason for me to fall off one. If something happens to my back, an orthopedic surgeon will fix it. Or at least nag me about it.
The man who had already fallen over more times than he could count took both my hands and got up with practiced ease. Judging by the way he moved, fortunately, there didn’t seem to be anything especially wrong with his prosthetic arm. Kim Jaehee let go of my hands and said,
“Gayoung’s face is more or less ordinary, but she’s done yoga for a long time, so she has a good figure. Her personality isn’t bad, either. Hmm… She’s good at cooking too. She’s baked cookies or bread and shared them around the undersea base quite a few times.”
“What are you trying to say?”
Kim Jaehee brushed the dust off his backside and legs and said,
“Is there really a need for Muhyeon to risk death to save her? Is she worth risking your life for? She’s a decent person, sure, but there are plenty of women like that in the world.”
I couldn’t quite understand what he meant. Ever since he said the scope of protection included engineers of Korean nationality, it felt like my brain hadn’t been working properly.
“Kim Gayoung is the only one of her in the world. Worth risking my life… I don’t know why you’re saying it that way, but I want Gayoung to live.”
Where in the world would there be another Kim Gayoung? Why was he asking something like this? Was he saying his own life was precious because he only had one, but other people’s lives were common and disposable? He wasn’t even going to help anyway, so why was he saying this? …I’m in no condition physically, and I don’t want to waste mental energy on this too.
“Even if there were ten more Kim Gayoungs in the world, I’d still go save the Gayoung trapped in the water right now.”
It was a horrible hypothetical, but even if I went now, I might be too late to rescue Kim Gayoung. If I failed to escape this time and died again, I would go rescue Kim Gayoung next time too. And the time after that. And the time after that. Until Kim Gayoung escaped this undersea base.
…Even these wretched, merciless days do have their own good points, I suppose. I thought of Kim Gayoung torturing my face with disinfectant at the research center. Why do we risk danger and accept sacrifice for the sake of complete strangers? I didn’t know what answer Kim Gayoung would give to my question, but she would surely come up with a better one than I could. When Kim Jaehee shrugged, the numerous earrings in his ears swayed with a faint sound.
“Good luck. I did my best to stop you.”
“What? Ah. …Yes. Despite Jaehee doing his best to stop me, I shook him off and went anyway.”
Was he trying to avoid responsibility? From whom? I was too tired to continue the conversation. Just listening to the conversation made me feel as if my stamina was being drained on its own.
If I had more muscle in my legs, or even just more stamina, I would have run straight toward the Jujak Building without stopping. Everyone had crawled across the floor or moved on their knees, tense as they tried to avoid bullets, so after the tension loosened, they had no strength left and could barely walk.
On top of that, perhaps because of the shock of the gunfight, they floundered as though the method of walking had been erased from their heads. After falling once in that state and getting back up, their condition was even worse. We must have looked like gazelles that wanted to escape from a lion but couldn’t actually flee very far. Rather than fall again and get hurt, I took comfort in the fact that we were at least moving forward, however slowly.
Carlos, who had been moving the most normally out of all of us, listened silently to the conversation before asking me,
“That person you keep talking about. Isn’t she that Asian woman who used to bake cookies and hand them out?”
“…I heard she did that.”
From what everyone said, it didn’t seem like she had only baked cookies or bread once or twice and shared them around. Flour wasn’t exactly cheap, so just how often had she been stressed? Was that just how researchers were? Carlos said with a sigh,
“Pathetic bastards. They were happy enough to eat what she gave them.”
Then he added a few more words. I figured they were probably curses, but since such a long sentence didn’t translate properly, it seemed to be in a language outside the ten supported by my translator. Was it Spanish? If it were Spanish, my translator should have been able to interpret it. Since it couldn’t, it was probably some other country’s language. Jeong Sanghyeon snapped and shouted,
“What did you say? Did anyone force her to give us any? Did we threaten her to hand out bread or something? She baked it to relieve her own stress and handed it out to people herself.”
Hearing that, Carlos laughed with a sound like muhahahaha, then let out an exclamation and said,
“As expected, developed countries really are nice! Even a guy like you gets to live to that age and walk around. In my life, I’ve seen countless bastards even Jesus would give up on and throw into hell, but selfish bastards like you get whoooosh, taken care of by their own family before they become adults. Or some pissed-off guy shoots them at night and takes care of it that way. I guess Koreans don’t have much sense of responsibility toward society.”
As he said the whoooosh part, Carlos spoke as if whistling and drew his fingertips across his throat. Then he looked down at Jeong Sanghyeon with eyes that seemed to find the very fact of his survival mysterious, and Jeong Sanghyeon said irritably to Carlos,
“So what do you want me to do about it!”
After shouting that, Jeong Sanghyeon put distance between himself and Carlos and hid behind Kim Jaehee’s back. Judging by the sound, it seemed he was continuing the game he had paused on his tablet. Carlos, still smiling faintly, tapped me and said,
“Brother. You seem like you have a decent personality, but nothing good comes from getting involved with engineers. Just ignore them and live your life. Honestly, if it weren’t for the money, there’d be no reason to work here. You live thinking you’re earning money to send back to your family.”
“Is that possible while living in the undersea base?”
“Right. You’re a dentist, weren’t you? You must meet people all the time. Then there’s nothing you can do.”
“By any chance, would you be willing to come with me to rescue Gayoung?”
“Have a safe trip.”
At Carlos’s clean-cut farewell, I was so dumbfounded that a weak laugh slipped out. Over Carlos’s shoulder, I could see a giant shark skull in the distance. When I first went looking for Deep Blue, I had come down from the Central Building and wandered around unable to find it because it was hidden in a slightly tucked-away place, but now I could spot it right away from afar because of that shark skull.
Ophion was the same. On the far end of the opposite side, just the snake’s head was faintly visible. Seeing it from so far away, I could tell that even the snake’s eyes had pupils. Carlos, Jeong Sanghyeon, and Kim Jaehee seemed to be heading for Ophion as previously agreed.
Tumanako cautiously asked me,
“Are you really going to the Jujak Building to save someone?”
“Yes.”
“You might die.”
That had always been the case until now. …I suppose I had been lucky.
“Yes. But I’m still going.”
“Then I’ll go too.”
“What?”
“I’m going too.”
“It might be dangerous. It would be safer for you to hide in the athletic facility.”
“Kim Gayoung? Now that I hear the name, she’s someone I know. I’m going with you too.”
As she shouted that, she came to my side. Tumanako knew Kim Gayoung? In my memory, the two of them hadn’t had any point of contact. After saying our thanks, the group split up. Jeong Sanghyeon didn’t say a word to me, but Kim Jaehee smiled and waved.
The two of us began walking south, but neither of us said anything. We were tired, but there also wasn’t much to say. To break through the awkward atmosphere, I hesitated before asking Tumanako,
“I didn’t know you and Gayoung knew each other.”
“I don’t.”
“What?”
“She’s someone I know starting now. I only said that because I didn’t want to go with them. I don’t want to hide together with men I’ve only seen in passing at the dormitory.”
“Uh… I see.”
I was a man Tumanako had also only just met, though. I almost said that, but instead simply chose to keep my mouth shut and walk. My head was shouting that I had to run, but I absolutely did not have the stamina to do so. All I could think about was wanting to lie down somewhere immediately and sleep for about thirty minutes. Then I felt the vibration of someone running from far away.
“Someone’s coming.”
Someone was running at tremendous speed. I hid behind a nearby water purifier together with Tumanako. Only when the person running toward us came close enough for me to make out his face did I realize it was Shin Haeryang. He had someone on his back. Drops of blood fell with every step. After taking one more step, Shin Haeryang looked toward the water purifier like a wild animal that had sensed a presence.