Sin Haeryang said he wasn’t eating anything, and I had no thought of eating either. Joseph seemed regretful over the sandwich that had been taken from him and the hamburger he hadn’t even touched, but since he had staved off his hunger for the moment, he didn’t insist on eating as strongly as before. Joseph smacked at the bits around his lips, licked them clean with his tongue, and said,
“That bastard doesn’t know food is precious. ……I’m not talking about you, Savior.”
As if he wanted Sin Haeryang to hear, Joseph went on for a few more words about how much of a waste the abandoned food was. I also thought the food was an incredible waste. There were so many countries where food supplies were poor that I had never wasted food to this extent. Perhaps people all over the world felt similarly about food.
As I stared at the food on the desk with a complicated expression and picked up the kimbap container, I sensed Joseph letting out a small cry of delight. But when I began putting all the food strewn over the desk into the basket, I heard a disappointed sigh.
Let’s put it away so it at least smells less. I’m one thing, but Sin Haeryang seemed to have been working nonstop since morning, so he must be pretty hungry too. Isn’t it torture for someone that big to go so long without eating? He seemed to eat just fine when we were climbing the stairs.
I put the basket, now full of food again, in the examination room so the smell wouldn’t spread as much. Then I returned to the consultation room and sat down on the floor. It was a little better now that the smell was gone.
Joseph whispered as if he found my actions extremely displeasing.
“You should have thrown the basket at that son of a bitch and run straight for the door.”
It seemed like he was trying to speak quietly, but maybe he had never spoken in a low voice before, because it sounded incredibly loud. The Infinite Church people supposedly watching outside Deep Blue Moon must have heard it too.
Sin Haeryang hadn’t particularly restricted me from moving around, and because of that, Joseph seemed to think I was wasting several precious chances to escape. Well. No matter how fast I ran, I didn’t think I could outrun a bullet Sin Haeryang fired at my back.
Wasn’t it more unnatural to think I would cooperate with the Infinite Church just because I was experiencing an anomaly they had created? I didn’t have even a fingernail’s worth of affection for the Infinite Church. A hostage-taker with a gun was a hundred times better.
“Are you telling me to compare whether bullets or running are faster in front of someone who subdued armed Infinite Church believers?”
Joseph said calmly and shamelessly,
“Aren’t you experiencing a miracle? Is there no way for you to know what the best course of action is in this situation?”
No. If I had that kind of ability, I’d go around only to places that didn’t leak water and avoid everyone with a gun. I wouldn’t have boarded the escape boat in advance either. I knew that because I had experienced being unable to escape on an escape boat.
……Wait. Surprisingly, after about ten loops, whether through memory or instinct, I might be able to avoid the dangers that happened in the undersea base fairly easily. Water fills this place by such-and-such time, so I have to cross before then; I have to answer this person like this to escape together—by then, I might know things like that.
In the other rounds, I hadn’t had the leisure to sit sprawled on the floor like this and sink into thought for a long time. I had to run from the water immediately rushing in or struggle to escape threats that came at me at every turn. Most of the time I had been terrified or sunk in grief, but being taken hostage and sitting on the floor of the darkened consultation room unexpectedly gave me room to think about many things.
A miracle, huh. Is this a miracle? Since I’m struggling because I want to live right now, I agree, if only a little, with the Infinite Church believers who call this ability that grants me new chances a miracle. Don’t the people who died today come back to life again, as if by a miracle? But is that a miracle? The miracles in my life weren’t things like that.
A miracle was that artificial eyes, after long clinical trials, had begun to be released in America at an enormous price. A miracle was that my younger sibling hadn’t been in that car that day. A miracle was that despite such a huge accident, my entire family survived. A miracle was that we never suffered an accident like that again. A miracle was also being accepted into the department I wanted. A miracle was that Mom’s second spinal surgery ended successfully.
A miracle is……. My life is made up of countless miracles. But isn’t it similar for other people too? Narrowly avoiding misfortune, living an ordinary life—aren’t all people experiencing miracles?
What would happen if, one day, I desperately wanted this phenomenon to end? If everyone in the undersea base escaped and I finished all my preparations to escape too, but I still returned to dawn? What if I lost my will to live? Then this ability to wake up at dawn would become forced awakening. Would I still think of this ability as a miracle then?
……It’s something I only realized after dying several times, but death, paradoxically, also respects life. I hadn’t known what a great self-respect and freedom it was to be able to die when one wanted. Because I had to live. Because living was natural. I had never thought death had value. What if the “infinity” in the Infinite Church is the repetition of days that are the same as eternity? Then this ability would seem more like a curse than a miracle. Could I endure a life like that? What am I supposed to do if I can’t end it when I want to?
No. There must be an end. No matter how hard and exhausting a day is, there is a time to get off work, and even work piled up like a mountain ends someday.
I don’t think a cult like this has the capacity to create something like an infinite life. Even power plants need fuel to run; if infinite energy production were possible without putting anything in, wars would have disappeared already. If food could be produced infinitely, the word starvation would have vanished forever.
To begin with, if a cult could haphazardly create abilities that had an enormous impact on society as a whole, whether in America or Britain, Infinite Church believers would have been captured and experimented on. They wouldn’t be released into society like this, as if put out to pasture.
This loop will definitely stop someday. It’ll be long, but it will stop.
What would happen if this phenomenon suddenly ended? If the circular ring of life suddenly ended and I was thrown into the next day? I’d be truly grateful and happy, I suppose. Even if people I liked or had been close to died in the process, would I still feel relieved that I escaped anyway? Or would I yearn endlessly for today?
“You seem to think I’m omniscient and omnipotent, but this isn’t that kind of ability.”
I want to end this loop properly and live to be a hundred. I want my cute grandchildren at my bedside, crying things like, Grandpa, please don’t die, sob sob sob, while I say things like, The combination to my safe is such-and-such, so when I die, get along and buy yourselves some snacks, and then die.
How did the people who had experienced something like this before get out of the phenomenon?
“Elizabeth Weaver.”
“Yes.”
When I suddenly asked about the Infinite Church, Joseph brightened with delight. He seemed worried that I might have come to hate the Infinite Church itself after being so shocked by the radio.
“You said Beth experienced something like this before. Do you happen to know what happened? I do want to ask her herself over the radio, but…… I’m too scared.”
If I heard that joyful, exalted voice flowing from the radio again, I felt like I would faint. Just thinking about it gave me goosebumps. Joseph nodded after hearing my question.
“She said she was kidnapped by serial killers. Elizabeth said she originally lived in a city in the middle of a desert. Where was it again? I can’t remember the place name. Americans are kind of like that, aren’t they. They live in strange places. Anyway, she said she woke up at night and found herself locked in a room she’d never seen before. There were six or seven people locked up, and in the process of escaping, a miracle occurred. She said she spent about two hours repeating time, then killed the murderers and escaped alive. What was it again. ……I remember her saying one of the killers turned out to have been one of the people locked up with them. It was so long ago for me too, so my memory is a bit…….”
For someone who said he didn’t remember, he knew it in great detail.
“Did Beth tell you directly, Joseph? Where did you learn things like that?”
“Almost all Infinite Church believers probably know it. It’s written in a book.”
“……The Infinite Church publishes books?”
Can such absurd content be published as a book?
“There’s a monthly magazine from the Infinite Church. It has a Greenland shark on the cover, recruits people to go on volunteer work, includes testimonials from each person’s experiences, and has personal circumstances about why they need to go to the past.”
Joseph took a drink from a canned beverage and said,
“It also has the difficulties believers are going through and ways to resolve them through counseling. And how to apply for the welfare system. People look for dates or pen pals too. The magazine is distributed for free. Sometimes random tickets for overseas trips are included as well. It’s pretty good.”
So cults make books like that too. Then they must own at least one publishing company, and maybe later they’ll produce drinks or health foods too. They might already have them.
“Other than Elizabeth Weaver, who else was a Savior candidate?”
“That…… what were their names again. There were two more. Both were men. ……I don’t really memorize men’s names.”
Joseph said apologetically.
“Were there any Asians among the Savior candidates?”
“Asians? No. One was Black, and one was white. Ha……. I can’t remember their names.”
Then is Kim Jaehee not a Savior candidate? He experienced this kind of miracle too. I asked Joseph outright.
“Do you happen to know a person named Kim Jaehee?”
At my voice, Sin Haeryang looked this way, then turned his head away. You’re curious too, aren’t you? So am I.
“Ah……. You mean the person who was on the radio earlier, right? I know his name, but he isn’t a Savior candidate of our denomination. Since only a white person and a Black person were Savior candidates, honestly, nobody thought Park Muhyeon would become the Savior. There’s an exhibition hall at the Second Undersea Base where they display only jewels, and Park Muhyeon was written there in all kinds of languages and abbreviations, so we came to believe it. To be honest, if the name had been written on only one or two jewels, I wonder if we would really have believed it. There are still a few believers in the denomination who are racists.”
Joseph spoke with a face full of shame, as if the wrongs committed by Infinite Church believers were his own.