Was the great white shark offered as the price for the miracle? Considering the circumstances, it seemed to be the other way around. What do you mean, the great white shark was offered? I was offered to the great white shark.
Great white sharks take one bite, and if they decide you aren’t to their taste, they spit you back out. The problem is that their jaws are so powerful that, during that trial bite, a human body is practically torn in two. Did these things get something wrong? I never offered up any great white sharks.
“What does ‘offering’ mean, exactly? How are they offered?”
“At the final stage of the ritual, one creature is killed—a creature whose extinction would have little impact on the ecosystem, even if the entire species were to disappear.”
This really was a cult. Why treat a shark like a sacrifice? Didn’t you people cherish sharks?
“······Doesn’t the Infinite Church regard sharks as friends?”
At last, with all the rings removed, Elizabeth’s hand looked free and light. Apparently they had been quite uncomfortable, because Elizabeth repeatedly opened and closed her hand before smiling elegantly.
“Friends. More precisely, we were raising them. For today.”
It was difficult for me to feel pity for great white sharks, but I did feel sorry for the innocent Greenland sharks. It seemed they had been scheduled to be slaughtered for today as punishment for becoming the mascot of a deranged cult. If you’re going to use a sacrifice, don’t people usually use sheep or cows? Why torment sharks that quietly live in freezing waters?
Elizabeth took my hand and began putting the rings back on, one by one. An overwhelmingly beautiful woman was slipping expensive rings onto my fingers right in front of me, yet, astonishingly, I felt nothing. It seemed the shock had completely paralyzed my ability to experience emotions.
The two white-haired men remained at a certain distance from me, merely watching Elizabeth’s actions. Looking at my right hand, so full of rings that I could barely make a fist, I said,
“So Greenland sharks were livestock for the members of the Infinite Church.”
“Is there any creature humans don’t consider livestock?”
Elizabeth shrugged as she spoke.
“The disappearance of the great white sharks was an outcome we hadn’t anticipated. Still, it shouldn’t cause any major problems. After all, more than eighty percent of the world’s marine life had already gone extinct at human hands by the 2020s. No one will care if one more species disappears.”
Elizabeth spoke as though she were discussing something happening in a distant country with no connection to her.
“And with marine life, it will take quite some time even for anyone to notice that they’re gone. And even if they did notice, it’s not as though there would be anything they could do about it.”
That was the sort of statement that would have made Yu Geum-i clutch the back of her neck and collapse if she’d heard it. What would she think if a creature she had been researching suddenly went extinct? So the Infinite Church had decided that Greenland sharks had less impact on the ecosystem than great whites?
Who knows. I thought every living thing on Earth was an essential part of the natural ecosystem. Humanity had failed at controlling nature at its own whim in the first place. Just look at Australia. Shooting rabbits, foxes, cats, cane toads, and camels had practically become tourist attractions. Humans had brought all of them into Australia for their own convenience, even though they didn’t belong there.
My perfectly fine side suddenly began to itch. It felt like the flesh around a surgical wound prickling from a change in air pressure on a rainy day. That great white had bitten through my insides without mercy, but it wasn’t as if the entire species had committed some crime deserving death. It had probably been hungry at the time, or simply because I had been nearby, bleeding profusely. Thinking back on it now, there had been another creature with me then, one whose life had also been hanging by a thread.
No matter how I thought about it, surely it was that snake, not the great white shark, that had been killed as the sacrifice.
You people seemed to think the great whites had gone extinct because you couldn’t find one right away. When I leaned back, I saw in the distance the skull of Deep Blue, a North Pacific great white powerful enough to hunt whales. The two men supporting me must have thought I had no strength to keep my upper body upright, because they hurriedly grabbed my shoulders and waist. There was no way they could die so easily. Creatures like that wouldn’t just drop dead because of some deranged cultists’ games.
Thanks to Elizabeth’s delicate hands, all ten of my fingers were packed with rings. The jewels glittered so brightly they could blind me. Weight aside, I couldn’t bend my fingers at all because of the rings. They didn’t come off easily, either. I had to keep my hands spread out. Why didn’t they make handcuffs like this? ······They’d be difficult to resist while putting them on.
Elizabeth held out her palm to me. It took me about two seconds to understand what she meant. Wasn’t this supposed to be done the other way around? When I placed my large hand on Elizabeth’s small palm, she happily led me forward at a slow pace.
The white-haired men who had been standing nearby waiting began walking with us. I understood why the men around us had only waited while I was being adorned with jewels. If they had taken my hands and tried to escort me while putting all those rings on me, I probably would have slammed my head against the wall just to pass out a little faster.
At the end of the flower path stood the central elevator and Gim Jae-hui. A large bruise was swelling around his cheekbone, as though he had been struck in the cheek with a rifle butt. Several believers waited with guns trained on Gim Jae-hui, who was tied up. Beside them sat a large, round tray about the size of a pizza, holding something. From a distance, I thought it might be bread, like a pizza or a baguette.
As I walked forward with support, I gradually began to see what it was. The bottom of the tray was red, so at first I mistook it for pizza sauce. It was blood. The arms and legs on the silver tray looked like mannequin parts or doll limbs. My brain seemed unable to recognize them as human bodies. Elizabeth asked me,
“What shall we do with him?”
I wanted to run away from here.
“What happened to Jeong Sang-hyeon?”
Surely that figure atop the body beside the elevator, with the frantic medic hovering nearby, wasn’t Jeong Sang-hyeon. ······It was fortunate I hadn’t eaten anything, or there would have been nothing left to vomit.
“We administered narcotic painkillers and forcibly stopped the bleeding from his limbs. We thought you might want to deal with him personally, Savior.”
Wasn’t that more your preference? Couldn’t you just······put him back together somehow? Could severed parts like that be reattached through surgery? Teeth could be put back in after falling out, at least. But limbs like those. Good grief.
The medic tending to Jeong Sang-hyeon also seemed unable to understand why he had to wait here instead of taking his patient to a hospital immediately.
“Tell them to treat him.”
If some sociopath had been in my place, he might have praised Elizabeth’s work or been pleased with it. He might have said something like, What a loyal believer, carrying this out with such devotion to me. Ignoring the headache surging through my skull, I turned toward Gim Jae-hui. Elizabeth followed my gaze and spoke.
“What shall we do with the traitor? Though he is a member of the Infinite Church, he acted alongside the person who insulted the Savior and sullied your name. Later, he was persuaded by that loathsome and evil hostage-taker and cooperated with him.”
From the way Elizabeth explained it, she seemed determined to punish Gim Jae-hui severely. The attitude of those around us was cold beyond measure. Gim Jae-hui, his face haggard, looked at me uneasily before turning to Elizabeth beside him and asking,
“Judging by the atmosphere, Team Leader Shin is dead, isn’t he?”
He really knew nothing. The believer who had been aiming a gun at him immediately raised it again. It looked as though he intended to bring it down on Gim Jae-hui once more. Why?
Startled, I raised my right hand to stop him. The believer halted at once. Uh······. I answered Gim Jae-hui,
“Yes. ······He’s dead.”
“Oh. That’s a relief. He was a difficult man, but I didn’t think he deserved to end up like this.”
Gim Jae-hui glanced at the tray beside him, sighed with a sickened expression, and pleaded with me,
“If you’re planning to make me like that, could you change the order a little? Could I die first and be cut up afterward? I watched Sang-hyeon’s cutting ceremony from the side, but I’d rather not see my own. I don’t like pain, either.”
Ha······. As if I’d want to watch it. When I tried moving my legs, I found that I could barely stand on my own. After taking a deep breath, I pushed away the person supporting me and walked forward with difficulty.
After two steps, my legs gave out. I dropped onto one knee and grabbed Gim Jae-hui by the head. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I heard the people around us gasp. With no strength left to stand again, I remained on one knee and whispered softly in Korean beside Gim Jae-hui’s ear,
“Don’t the members of the Infinite Church know that you experienced a miracle?”
Gim Jae-hui looked at me in shock. He probably wouldn’t have been this surprised even if I had ordered them to cut off his limbs. Perhaps Sin Haeryang had learned Gim Jae-hui’s secret because he was under the influence of drugs, and it wasn’t something he wanted spread all over town. He gave a small nod and answered,
“Yes.”
Good. Then. Uh······What was I supposed to say? I whispered into Gim Jae-hui’s ear again.
“How do I stop this?”
When I pulled back and looked at his face, our eyes met. Perhaps he thought he had found a way to survive, because he quickly spoke first.
“My one and only savior. I beg forgiveness for my rudeness and my mistakes. Everything that has happened is the result of my foolishness. I fell for the schemes of an evil and vicious hostage-taker, turned away from the truth, and ignored the truth that is you. Please grant me a chance to atone, even now.”
I held Gim Jae-hui’s cheek and uttered words I had never once said in my life.
“I forgive you.”
In everyday life, I had never had any reason to forgive someone or not forgive them. And now I was somehow playing the role of a cult’s savior beneath the sea. No. I had joined as a dentist, hadn’t I? Then I roughly rubbed the crown of Gim Jae-hui’s head with my palm and said,
“He has promised to submit himself to the Infinite Church once more.”
Gim Jae-hui didn’t seem to like the Infinite Church much, either. Why had he joined? To gather information?
“It is true that he committed a wrong, but he quickly realized his mistake and begged me for forgiveness. There were too many people in his working environment tempting him astray. The Infinite Church does not abandon believers who find themselves in difficult and trying circumstances. Let us help him return to the embrace of the Infinite Church. As the Savior, I do not wish to begin issuing commands with the blood of a believer.”
I spoke carelessly, as though welcoming a patient who hadn’t come to the dentist for a scaling in years.
When the believers around us untied Gim Jae-hui’s arms, he crawled on his knees, pressed his lips to the hem of my clothes, and drove a jewel-studded piercing into the fabric. The believers around us then helped him to his feet.
This was going to be okay, right? I tried not to look around anxiously. Act calm. As if I had simply done what anyone would naturally do. ······Being a savior was not suited to me. I wanted to quit as quickly as possible.
Elizabeth had already moved on to the next subject.
“What shall we do with the corpse of the vicious and cruel hostage-taker, Sin Haeryang, who threatened and stole your life and freedom, brutally murdered and grievously wounded members of our Infinite Church, and wasted our time and resources?”
It was one thing after another. Sin Haeryang hadn’t done those things······Actually, he had. From the Infinite Church’s perspective, it did look like this.
No. Why did they enjoy punishing people so much? Did their heads contain no mercy or compassion? What do you mean, what should we do? The body should be returned to his family, or, if that was impossible, buried properly somewhere with plenty of sunlight.
Jeong Sang-hyeon had already been punished, and Gim Jae-hui was a member of the Infinite Church, so he had barely managed to get off. But they had no intention of leaving Sin Haeryang, an outsider, alone. Judging by the attitude of everyone around me, they wanted to turn Sin Haeryang into a thousand-piece puzzle right away. Didn’t these people know anything about Confucianism? You weren’t supposed to mutilate corpses······. They didn’t know.
“Tell them to leave him where he is. I’ll think about it a little longer.”
Elizabeth looked at me with faint disappointment but did not argue with my decision.