I must have run around carrying someone on my back for ages, because steam was rising from my body from the heat it gave off. Gasping for breath, Sin Haeryang silently raised the gun in his right hand toward the water purifier.
The motion was so natural, so fluid, that I reflexively shouted, Don’t shoot. When Tumanako and I sprang out from behind the water purifier, Sin Haeryang looked around, then lowered the muzzle.
Only now did I see that the person on his back had been bound tightly to him with parachute cord. Maybe it was so they wouldn’t be separated even if he tripped or rolled while running, or so he could use his gun more comfortably. Since Seo Jihyeok wasn’t around, I asked.
“Where’s Jihyeok?”
“He should be doing the job I assigned him. Why are you here?”
“We’re on our way to Jujak-dong to rescue Gayoung. Is that Aeyeong on your back?”
No way someone that size was Seo Jihyeok. The other person’s knees and calves were lashed around Sin Haeryang’s stomach with parachute cord. Sin Haeryang looked at me, hesitated briefly, then said,
“She was shot in the arm and chest. Is a blood transfusion or treatment for gunshot wounds possible at the dental clinic?”
Shot in the chest? Then what was I supposed to do? A transfusion? First Seo Jihyeok asking if I knew how to deal with gunshot wounds, and now Sin Haeryang too—what the hell did these bastards think a dental clinic was? Were they going to ask me later if I could do brain surgery too? Slightly out of it, I answered.
“N-no. There’s no reason to do blood transfusions at a dental clinic.”
“Can you do dressing?”
“Yes. Yes!”
“Can you treat Aeyeong?”
“Yes! …But Gayoung is in danger right now.”
“Then I’ll proceed as planned and go rescue Kim Gayoung.”
Well, thinking about it, it would be better for me to look after Baek Aeyeong and for Sin Haeryang to go rescue Kim Gayoung, rather than Sin Haeryang treating Baek Aeyeong while I went to rescue Kim Gayoung. Only then did Sin Haeryang show me the person on his back. Baek Aeyeong had fainted, her face deathly pale.
When Sin Haeryang began untying the parachute cord connecting him and Baek Aeyeong, Tumanako and I carefully lowered Baek Aeyeong from his back. …Both of their upper bodies were covered in blood. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.
I caught a glimpse of a tourniquet made on Baek Aeyeong’s arm, but there was no blood coming from there at all. Then was it coming from her chest? As I floundered, trying to get Baek Aeyeong onto my back, Sin Haeryang lifted her up and easily set her there for me.
The sudden weight of a person on my back almost made my trembling legs buckle, but I desperately braced myself and held on. The weight of an unconscious person was seriously no joke. Acting as if nothing was wrong, I struggled to find a stable posture and center of gravity with Baek Aeyeong on my back.
Sin Haeryang was already retrieving the blood-soaked parachute cord and winding it around his forearm. Seeing that his forearm and his entire hand were drenched in blood, I asked,
“Are you injured anywhere?”
“I’m fine.”
Then Sin Haeryang dug into the wound on his little finger with the tip of his thumb. Tumanako, beside me, was horrified. Seeing such sudden self-harm nearly made me lose my mind too. Sin Haeryang sprinkled drops of blood on the floor, expertly smeared them a little with his shoe, then said,
“Don’t step on the bloodstains. Go to the dental clinic. I’ll head to Jujak-dong like this.”
“So you’re acting as bait?”
“That’s also why I didn’t go straight to the clinic and came all the way back here. If they follow, they’ll probably go straight to Jujak-dong.”
“It’s Jujak-dong, number 77!”
“Yes. …Can either of you shoot a gun?”
Tumanako answered with a bloodless face.
“No.”
“No.”
I hesitated a little before answering. I hoped there would be no need to shoot. Sin Haeryang nodded, took what looked like Baek Aeyeong’s gun and the two guns he had acquired, and said,
“It won’t take thirty minutes.”
“If we finish treating her, would it be better to go to Ophion?”
“Wait at the dental clinic. If Jihyeok succeeds, he’ll probably come there.”
“What did you tell Jihyeok to do?”
“I told him to drive a wedge between the believers of the Infinite Cult and Engineer Ra Team, who are entering Jungang-dong.”
“…Is that possible?”
“They don’t seem very good at telling East Asians apart. It seems the Infinite Cult believers had originally promised not to come down to the Fourth Undersea Base, but for some reason they broke that promise.”
Sin Haeryang looked at me as he spoke. His gaze seemed to say, It looks like they came down here to catch you, so let’s talk about that later. Or maybe I was just feeling guilty for no reason.
“Please take care of Aeyeong.”
And with that, Sin Haeryang ran south again at tremendous speed. After watching his back recede in an instant, Tumanako and I started walking toward the enormous shark skull with Baek Aeyeong.
With no strength in my legs, walking while carrying someone on my back made me emotionally want to collapse on the floor crying, but surprisingly, my body moved faithfully. Mechanically, it started walking toward the dental clinic. But from the side, perhaps I looked like a mangy donkey hauling cargo right before death, because Tumanako began cheering me on with all her might.
“Hang in there! You can do it! It’s not much farther to the clinic! Let’s go just a little faster! You’re doing great! You’re super strong! Look over there! Even the shark is waiting for you!”
…That last part drained all the strength right out of me. I hoisted Baek Aeyeong’s body back up as she slowly slid down.
Staggering but walking frantically, we soon arrived at our destination. Standing before the massive great white shark skull, the grotesque feeling and aversion I had once felt were gone; only relief remained. And as I passed it and entered the dental clinic, for the first time during these grueling days in the undersea base, I felt a sense of ease and stability. This place was under my control, and it was the only place where I could show what I was capable of. As I stepped into my familiar workplace, the persistent sense of deprivation and helplessness I had been feeling seemed to lessen, if only a little.
With Tumanako’s help, I laid Baek Aeyeong down in the unit chair, and the first thing that caught my eye was the emergency treatment Sin Haeryang had performed on her chest. This area was probably where the lung was.
As I adjusted the unit chair and took out suturing instruments, Tumanako fidgeted beside me.
“What should I do?”
For a moment, I considered hiring Tumanako on the spot as my one-day dental hygienist. Then I quickly abandoned the thought. What sin had a hairstylist committed that she should have to look at wounds spewing blood? About five hundred years ago, surgeons seemed to have handled barbering too, but there must have been a clear reason the two professions split afterward. I asked Tumanako to do something else.
“Please keep watch in case anyone comes. Let me know if they do.”
“Uh, okay.”
The moment she heard that, Tumanako must have become gravely worried about the state of security here, because she hurriedly left the treatment room. I could hear her rummaging through the desk in my consultation room, saying she was looking for a weapon. Bang! Crash, clatter! Listening to the noise, it sounded like Tumanako was robbing the dental clinic. I spent three seconds thinking that if I was going to hire her as dental security, maybe a dental hygienist would have been better after all, then gave up on that too and moved my hands busily.
If someone made up their mind to break into this Deep Blue, it wouldn’t take them even five minutes to smash through the door and get in. And it would take even less time than that to murder a dentist. Come to think of it, dental clinics on land were the same.
There was nothing in a dental clinic that could be used as a weapon. The most common reason people visited a dental clinic was gingivitis and periodontal disease. The cause was bacteria inducing inflammation, and the next most common patients came for dental caries, cavities, which were also bacteria damaging the teeth. Therefore, a dentist’s enemies were all small.
There was nothing in a dental clinic suitable for dealing with enemies the size of humans. Of course, there were cases where people themselves became the dentist’s enemy. Like not brushing their teeth. Or treating a dentist explaining dental floss as a scammer. Or doing everything they were told not to do, then coming to the clinic and demanding the dentist take responsibility.
While preparing the dressing, I briefly ran a simulation in my head of fighting some imaginary enemy who suddenly burst into the clinic, but the only answer that came up was getting killed by the intruder. Who would maliciously break into a dental clinic anyway? A patient enraged by dental fees? A thief after gold? …There were indeed people who came after dental gold or extracted teeth with gold crowns. But I had yet to hear any rumors of a dentist repelling such people by force. I had only heard rumors of dental clinics being robbed.
Along with those empty imaginings, my tension loosened a little. Once preparations were complete, I looked at Baek Aeyeong’s face, took a deep breath, exhaled, and thought, I can do this! I can do this well!
Sin Haeryang had cut parachute cord to make a tourniquet on Baek Aeyeong’s arm and had done his best to stop the bleeding, but it seemed he hadn’t been able to do much about the bullet that hit her chest beyond emergency treatment. Fluid leaked intermittently, and I couldn’t tell whether it had been treated properly or not.
Probably, in the urgency of the situation, Sin Haeryang had stuck something crudely onto her chest with whatever he could easily get his hands on nearby. I cut away the clothing and wiped off the blood that had made a mess around the chest gunshot wound, and when I looked closely, I saw that what had been applied was electrical tape.
A rectangular piece of plastic had been taped down on three of its four edges with electrical tape, leaving only the right side untaped. Everything was covered in blood, and the ends made it plain how much he had struggled because the electrical tape hadn’t torn properly. Whether he had bitten it off with his teeth or not, the cut edges of the tape were not smooth.
It was like when attaching a poster or a placard to a wall—not just taping the four corners of the rectangle, but carefully using as much tape as possible to surround the four borders, only in this case, he had taped three of those borders with all his might. Seeing that, I guessed. …He had probably tried to perform an occlusive dressing, but there was nothing suitable around. It seemed he had done this to prevent foreign contaminants from entering and to keep it from getting infected.
When Baek Aeyeong exhaled, the plastic blocked the wound so air did not enter, and when she inhaled, I could feel air escaping through the one side that hadn’t been taped down. Without this emergency treatment, Baek Aeyeong probably wouldn’t have been able to breathe after being shot in the chest.
I peeled off the electrical tape with extreme care and quickly attempted an occlusive dressing. Worried that Baek Aeyeong might suffer respiratory distress the moment I removed it, my hands practically flew as I replaced it. I didn’t even blink.
For a moment, I wondered whether I could remove the bullet using dental medical instruments, or whether I should just close that wound completely. I was a little afraid I might induce pneumothorax or infection in someone who was breathing properly, or that Baek Aeyeong might die because I handled it wrong. But contrary to my emotions, my hands moved with familiar steadiness, without trembling.
Like Sin Haeryang, I closed only three of the four sides and left one side slightly open rather than sealing it. When the air trapped in the thoracic cavity successfully escaped through that section like a vent, I felt a little relieved. Baek Aeyeong’s breathing sounded somewhat more stable after my treatment. I couldn’t tell if that was just in my head or if it was really stable. Damn it.
After I finally finished a human-looking dressing on the chest where electrical tape had been messily plastered all over like a robot had done it, I hesitated briefly, then began examining her arm. Looking at the wound wrapped and bound with cloth, there was no blood coming from the gunshot site. Neither the entrance wound nor the exit wound was bleeding, and both the primary and secondary tourniquets had been tied skillfully. Wow. This was the first time I’d seen a tourniquet made and tied like this with parachute cord. He must have been incredibly busy.
I removed foreign matter like bits of clothing from the wound in her forearm, disinfected it, and began suturing the affected area. I cut away tissue that was too contaminated, then stitched it up. The exit wound was a little larger than the entrance wound, and since I had never met a patient with this kind of injury in a dental clinic before, it felt strange. Only after releasing the tourniquet could I let out at least a small sigh inwardly.
Baek Aeyeong, this is your first time at Deep Blue, and I haven’t even been able to look inside your mouth. After administering antibiotics, I asked Baek Aeyeong silently, You’re not allergic to antibiotics, right? I hope not. Please.
Only after completing all of that treatment did I notice something like a black bracelet on Baek Aeyeong’s wrist. When I lifted the sleeve near her wrist, I saw it wasn’t a bracelet but a tattoo. The letters RH+ A especially caught my eye. Beside them, the words Peach Allergy were written in English. Since no other special notes were written on her wrist, she probably had no other allergies.