While I was busy treating her, Baek Aeyeong briefly came to. And the moment she regained consciousness, she began flailing. Writhing and groaning in pain, Baek Aeyeong said,
“What the hell. Here... where am I?”
“You’re at the dental clinic, Aeyeong. Please lie still.”
“What? No! Why am I at a dental...”
Baek Aeyeong, who had been trying to sit up in alarm, lost consciousness again like an unplugged electronic device. I looked at the bandage that had fallen to the floor while I was wrapping it around her arm, took out a new one, and wrapped it again.
I’d never dealt with a gunshot wound before, so I hadn’t known this, but the entry and exit wounds were in slightly different places, so I had to bandage two spots. When the treatment was done, I slowly took off my gloves. Now all that’s left is to wait. I quietly listened to Baek Aeyeong’s breathing and looked at the electrical tape, now a bloody mess. The piece of plastic that had sealed her chest—only after wiping the blood off could I tell what it was. It was a chocolate wrapper. Something like this can save a person’s life, too.
As I sat there listening to Baek Aeyeong’s breathing, I felt someone shake my shoulder. I must have dozed off for a bit, because Seo Jihyeok was standing in front of me. “Doctor. At this rate, you’re going to end up lying on the floor altogether.” Apparently, I had been nodding off in my chair so badly that my body was tipping sideways, and he had caught me. The smell of sweat and blood hit me all at once.
Still half-asleep, I first checked Baek Aeyeong beside me. She was still lying on the bed, breathing quietly. Seo Jihyeok gestured at Aeyeong with his chin and asked me in a tired voice,
“What treatment did you give Aeyeong?”
“I only dressed the chest wound, and I sutured the arm.”
“How’s her condition?”
“We need to move Aeyeong to Daehan-do quickly. They should have a thoracic surgeon there.”
“...Could you take a look at me too?”
“Yes. Come here.”
I answered while shaking my sleep-fogged head from side to side. If I could just have one cup of coffee, I’d have no other wish. Beneath my dental mask, I yawned wide enough to split my mouth and got up from the chair. While I stretched and pulled another chair over beside me, Seo Jihyeok stared at Baek Aeyeong’s face for a while, then turned his head.
He tried to roll up the clothing on his left arm, but the blood-soaked fabric was stuck to his skin and wouldn’t come off, so he practically started ripping it away. He tore the clothing enough to expose his trapezius, and when I looked, I saw a long gash on his upper arm.
If he’d been unlucky, it might have hit his arm or shoulder. The skin was gaping open, and I could see inside. So I have to stitch this too. It was torn open in a long cut of about seven centimeters. What made it rip this much? Looking at the blood stuck to the fibers of his clothes and tangled messily into the wound, I asked,
“Does a bullet graze do this?”
“Yeeep. It hurts.”
As I prepared to suture it, Seo Jihyeok held the edge of his clothes so the wound would be easier to see and said,
“That security guard over there said our team leader went to the main operations wing alone. Is that true?”
Wondering who he meant, I turned my head and saw Tumanako sitting near the entrance of the dental clinic after having dragged out a chair from my consultation room. He was rolling a shark ornament about the size of a Korean melon around in his hands. It seemed he was planning to smack anyone who came in with it.
His fighting spirit seemed impressive, but Seo Jihyeok, who should have been the target of Tumanako’s first attack, looked perfectly fine. I wanted to know what kind of exchange the two had had while I was asleep, but I answered Seo Jihyeok’s question first.
“Yes. He went to get Gayoung, who should be in the dormitory.”
“...This is an unpleasant assumption, but.”
“Yes?”
Seo Jihyeok dragged out his words and hesitated before saying,
“Too much time has passed, so there’s a high probability that Gayoung is already dead.”
“...”
“Our team leader is a capable son of a bitch, but he doesn’t have the talent to bring the dead back to life. Anyone who says they have that kind of ability is a fraud. Doctor, I think you should prepare yourself to some extent. To be honest, I’m... a bit worried about our team leader’s mental state too, since he might end up seeing a drowned corpse.”
There was nothing I could do right now, so all that came out was a sigh. For now, let’s solve the problem right in front of me first.
“With my concentration, I can’t handle more than one thing at a time. Let’s finish the treatment and talk afterward.”
“Yessir.”
Then Seo Jihyeok shut his mouth and entrusted his arm to me. He made an exaggerated show of being in pain when I injected the local anesthetic, but after that, he was quiet. As if he didn’t want to watch the thread and needle pass in and out of his flesh, Seo Jihyeok turned his head to the side and looked at Baek Aeyeong’s face. Then he raised his head a little more, saw Baek Aeyeong’s dressed chest, clicked his tongue several times, and shifted his gaze to the ceiling. Since there wasn’t much to see there besides the lights, his head returned to its original position.
I felt his gaze boring into my face. However, Seo Jihyeok did not go out of his way to speak to a busy dentist and make the person suturing his wound lose focus.
Instead, he tried to turn the chair slightly and talk to Tumanako in the distance. When he turned the chair, his body turned with it, so I was startled and told him to stay still. Looking dejected, he stopped exactly like a statue. Once the dressing was more or less finished, Seo Jihyeok, now slightly slack with the tension gone, said,
“Aeyeong will need a transfusion.”
“I don’t know how much blood she’s lost. Is she RH positive type A, by any chance? I saw the tattoo on Aeyeong’s wrist.”
“Yes. I have one too. I fell for the evil great white shark’s temptation and got one with her back then.”
Seo Jihyeok slowly turned the inside of his left wrist to show me. There were two lines written inside his wrist, not very large—small enough that a large watch would cover them.
RH+A DO NOT RESUSCITATE
CREMATE ALL NO FUNERAL
...If you’re going to tattoo something on your body, shouldn’t it be a phrase asking people to please try hard to save you? Am I the only one who thinks that?
“You have the same blood type as Aeyeong.”
“When we go on long assignments, we sometimes match blood types before going. But even that’s just luck. Everyone with the same blood type could die, so it’s not that helpful.”
Seo Jihyeok spoke about his own experience as if it were nothing much, but to me, it was a rather terrifying thing to hear.
“Don’t people usually tattoo their name or birthday together with it? Or their medical history.”
“What use is writing my name or birthday on my body? It’s just personal information.”
“Even if I let the DNR pass, what’s with the last line?”
“You saw it, didn’t you.”
Then Seo Jihyeok gave a sly smile and subtly turned his wrist so the tattoo was no longer in view. It seemed he didn’t want to talk about it. Wondering if all three of them had tattoos, I asked Seo Jihyeok another question.
“Does Team Leader Sin have a tattoo too?”
“That man said he had to go to the gym and public baths, so he didn’t get one. I only heard that after I’d already gotten mine, and that’s when I started regretting it a little and wondering how to cover it properly in public places.”
I’ve never had a tattoo, so I don’t know, but apparently you can’t enter gyms or public baths with one. Seo Jihyeok scratched his chin with his fingertips and said with a small laugh,
“There’s a guy named Mitchell on Engineering Team Ma. When he went to a Japanese hot spring, he had a cross, a knife, and a snake the size of his own face on his chest, upper arm, and calf. They say people with tattoos can’t enter hot springs in Japan. Do you know what he did?”
Did he get kicked out? ...I have no idea.
“What did he do?”
“He stuck pain-relief patches about half the size of a palm on his chest and calf and went in. He hadn’t put one on his upper arm, so when I asked him about it, he said he’d completely forgotten he had a tattoo there.”
...Can you forget a tattoo? No, wait.
“Didn’t you say the tattoos were about the size of a face?”
“Unless they were blind, everyone in that hot spring must have seen his tattoos. But no one said a word. I’m not sure if it was because he looked like he’d shot at least five people to death, because he was a foreigner, or because he was two meters tall and built like a bison. Jack from Engineering Team Ba and I each borrowed a patch from that bastard. I stuck mine on my wrist, and he stuck his on his ankle. It covered them up cleanly, like the tattoos were never there.”
“Ha ha ha.”
“When he comes to Korea to visit, I’m planning to go with him to a public bath. I’ll have to borrow another patch from him then too.”
“My God.”
As I laughed in disbelief, Seo Jihyeok moved his treated left arm this way and that. He was still holding a gun in his right hand. His body was also angled toward the entrance, probably so he could react immediately the moment anyone tried to come into the dental clinic.
“Let’s continue the conversation we paused earlier. If you have any questions first, Doctor, go ahead and ask.”
Seo Jihyeok really never strays far from a topic he’s set his mind on. With that kind of focus, I feel like he could do well at other things too.
“There’s something I want to know about the scope of your protection targets.”
“...Did Sanghyeon or Jaehui tell you?”
“They said you only have to protect the Korean engineers. Is that true?”
“Yes. Well.”
“Then why did you go out of your way to rescue Kim Gayoung, who’s a researcher, and why didn’t you hand me over to the Infinite Church believers?”
“I just did what I was told like an obedient dog. Ask our team leader. If you ask me, I have nothing to say.”
Seo Jihyeok answered like that, then looked at Baek Aeyeong’s head and said,
“—is how I’d usually dodge the question, but if I have to tell you, it’s because the bastards here are stupid.”
“Yes?”
“The people here have terrible memories. Even if you teach them, ‘Don’t touch Korean engineers,’ these bastards are too dumb to memorize it. Except for the Asians, they’re not exactly well educated either, and for birdbrains like that, warning them, ‘Don’t touch Koreans,’ works much better. Making them memorize ‘without Korean’ with your fists leaves a stronger impression than ‘without Korea engineer,’ doesn’t it?”
“Uh. ...Does it?”
That’s not how memorization works. Seo Jihyeok lowered his voice and tried to imitate a white man’s voice as he said,
“Hey. You, Asian passing by over there! Yeah, you! Are you Korean? Oh, you are Korean. Okay. Then are you an enginear? Oh. You’re an enginear? Hey. You can go. Get out of here, quick! You’re not an enginear? Okay. Then I can bust you up. Hand over all the money you’ve got first! We didn’t want to create that kind of flow. Hey. You! Are you Korean? Hey. Get out! Get out, quick! Tell Ssin Haeryang, that son of a bitch, I’ll get my revenge someday! According to our team leader, that’s cleaner. Anyway, the idea of becoming safe through violence and infamy belongs to our insane team leader. The bastards here are absolutely not the type who won’t pick fights or start shit. Every day, they’re desperate to confirm the pecking order. It’s like they think the North Pacific Ocean belongs to them and that Asians are daring to steal their resources. The funny thing is that our team leader’s punches, threats, and rigged poker games with wages on the line actually worked. Once they got beaten up, even if they tripped someone they didn’t know, they’d ask if the person was Korean and then not trip them. In that situation, expanding the scope of protection to Korean civilians was Aeyeong’s idea.”
Seo Jihyeok looked at Baek Aeyeong’s hair and said,
“Anyway, aside from the seven engineers, the only Korean civilians across this undersea base and Daehan-do are seven women. According to Aeyeong, saying, ‘You’re not engineers, so we won’t protect you! Survive on your own!’ is idiotic. According to the team leader, it’s inefficient too.”
“Seven women? Are there more besides the researchers?”
They must be people I haven’t seen yet.
“Two researchers. Four nurses on Daehan-do, and one office worker at headquarters. But the four nurses safely acquired Canadian citizenship last year, so there are three Koreans in total. We’re already being paid to protect seven people, so what’s wrong with seven women benefiting indirectly just because they’re Korean? It’s not like the nation does anything for them. Even when someone goes missing, they don’t care. They don’t even look for them. All they do is put bullshit in the newspapers about how they’re making every effort to find them. These are the bastards who replaced every Korean on the mining team with robots because they thought their salaries were a waste, so what can you expect? Now that you’ve come in, that makes four Korean nationals. Isn’t it better for fourteen Koreans to have a somewhat easier time at work than just seven engineers? We’re beating people up either way.”