I woke up from the shock of falling out of bed.
Lying facedown on the floor, doing nothing but heaving sighs, I wanted to do nothing but cry. But it wasn’t like I could really do nothing. Once I get out of here, I’m going to lie perfectly still and do nothing but breathe. Just you wait. I’ll show you how long I can spend lying in bed.
Crying, I checked the time on my phone. It was 7:02 in the morning.
Blood dripped onto the screen, and when I looked, my nose was bleeding nonstop. Why won’t it stop? I pinched my nose and lowered my head. Then I wadded up some tissue, stuffed my nostrils full, and pressed down hard on both sides of my nose with one hand. In the past, it had stopped quickly, but not this time.
Why was I getting a nosebleed? I’d thought it was because I’d hit my nose wrong on the floor when I fell out of bed, but it suddenly occurred to me that maybe that wasn’t it. ……Why is the start of my day this hard?
As I pressed my nose hard for about five minutes and breathed through my mouth, all sorts of thoughts came to me.
Who shot me at the end? Was that the best option? What’s in the First Undersea Base? How do I end all this? Why is everyone so desperate to use other people only for their own gain? Do they really have to live their one and only life like that?
Instead of spouting nonsense about going back to the past, can’t they just face reality and live, even if it’s hard and painful? Do they think they’ll be happy if they go back to the past? Do I look happy right now? What kind of miracle is this?
I hate saviors and everything else. I just want to go home. Let the Infinite Church or whatever take the entire undersea base. Just send me home. ……I want to go home. I feel like I’d be happy just lying on the living room floor at home doing nothing.
As I turned my head, the family photo beside the bed caught my eye.
Mom……
Tears welled up on their own. Crying while I couldn’t even breathe properly because of the nosebleed made my life look far too miserable. No matter how much I thought about it, this repetitive life that my mind couldn’t comprehend even began to look hopeless.
If I believed in a god, I probably would have prayed to that god, but since I had nothing to believe in but myself, I patted myself on the back and encouraged myself. Because living day by day was too hard.
Don’t become powerless. Don’t compromise. Don’t get tired. I’m getting out of here. I can get out of here. Not everything I’ve done has been a failure. I can still do this. I can leave this shitty workplace in no time. Other people got out of this undersea base too. So I should be able to get out as well.
I’ll leave, meet my family, and live much better than I am now. I won’t let these few short days of experiences here shake my entire life to its roots. I still have more than eighty years left in my life. Things like this are nothing! It’s okay! I can do it! Don’t worry. You can get out. You can do well today too! Let’s just do our best within what we can do.
By the time my nosebleed stopped, my tears had stopped too. I felt a little embarrassed because I seemed to be crying especially much today, but once I thought, so what if I cry in my own empty room, that feeling soon disappeared as well.
Ha…… I’ve barely ever cried since becoming an adult. This vicious undersea base is wringing seawater out of people’s eyes. This is why you have to find a good job. What kind of suffering is this, away from home? If I escape today, I am absolutely not living under the sea. Even if I have to get roasted under fifty-degree sunlight, I’m never coming anywhere near the ocean again.
I wiped away the tear tracks and picked up my phone. This time, I’m definitely going to drink coffee. I don’t care how many bullets fly around. I’m going to get a canned coffee from a vending machine and drink it. In a repeating life, you need at least ten seconds of happiness to endure living. Otherwise, I’ll be too miserable to go on.
I opened my backpack and began shoving in the things I could see around me. I need a towel. It can wipe dirty things off, stop up wounds, and be used for all sorts of things. I packed a set of dry clothes and some candies, then swept the bottle of water I’d been drinking and all the emergency medicine I’d brought from Korea, down to the last bandage, into the bag.
I hesitated for a few seconds as I looked at the framed family photo, but I didn’t take it. I can print it again once I’m out. I can go and meet the real people.
As I put on my shoes and took one last look around the room, the orange whale plushie sitting all alone came into view. Maybe because it was bright orange, it stood out especially sharply in the room full of achromatic colors. You had it the hardest, working with me at Deep Blue.
When I thought that I didn’t know how this life would turn out anyway, I decided to do whatever I wanted. After thinking about it for about three seconds, I took a few towels out of my bag and crammed the whale plushie into the empty space in my backpack. The thought that my behavior itself was irrational flashed through my mind. ……It’s fine. So what if it isn’t rational? I die whether I live efficiently or inefficiently, so I’ll live however I want. This time, let’s be careful not to get shot to death. Getting hit in the head was nice because it didn’t even hurt.
If I escape from here, I’ll put Noeul in my room. I’ll place him somewhere with good sunlight and feed him more stuffing so he puffs up nice and plump. If my family asks, I’ll brag that he’s the only thing I brought back from the undersea base besides my life. I struggled to zip up my bag, which looked like it was about to burst, and left the room.
Outside the room, seawater had occupied the corridor. As if it had been here from the beginning and humans had forced it to give up its rightful place, it came proudly into the room. Sloshing through the seawater with my shoes, I entered the undersea base program through the pad. Then I pressed the emergency escape alarm button. Red lights came on in the corridor, a loud alarm rang out, and I heard the dormitory doors all open at once.
[Bee-yung, bee-yung, bee-yung, bee-yung! This is an emergency! Everyone in the Fourth Undersea Base, please evacuate via escape craft, elevators, and other routes. This is an emergency! Everyone in the Fourth Undersea Base, please evacuate via escape craft, elevators, and other routes.]
As I ran toward the rooms in the fifties, I checked each one to see if anyone was inside. I was about to pass Room 48 when I suddenly stopped, realizing Carlos wasn’t in the room. Did he leave first while I was packing? If not, had the Infinite Church believers sent people up to Daehando, making them disappear?
I stared at the empty bed in Room 54 for a few seconds, then ran toward the next room. There was no one inside. Only the unpleasant warning sound went bee-yung, bee-yung, bee-yung as it echoed throughout Baekho-dong. It felt as if I had wandered alone by mistake into an abandoned building where no one lived.
The entire dormitory was quiet. I hadn’t known a dormitory built to house eighty people could feel this devoid of human presence. Feeling goosebumps crawl up the back of my neck, I ran down the empty corridor.
Vladimir! Nikolai! Nikita! Sofiya! Viktor! I ran around calling the names of the people from Engineer Team Da, but there was no one in the corridors or the rooms. After confirming that even the bed in Room 80 was empty, I panted for breath and felt relieved.
Good. ……Now I have to run the other way. Thank god my room number is in the middle. If it hadn’t been, I really wouldn’t have done this.
After I passed Room 78, the water rose past my ankles to about halfway up my calves. I can do this! I took one deep breath and began running back the other way, sloshing through the water again. By the time I passed in front of my room again, the water had risen above my calves.
Once my ears grew used to the bee-yunging warning sound, I couldn’t hear anything except the noise of the water I made as I moved.
As I passed the rooms of the people from Engineer Team Ga, I saw the jewelry box in Room 23 and hesitated for about two seconds, but I just kept going. In Room 22, I only grabbed the pad on the desk and quickly came back out. Then I headed to another room. Just in case, I looked inside as I ran, but there was no one.
It felt as if I were the only one alive inside this huge abandoned building called an undersea base. Holding back the unknown fear that surged up inside me, I passed Room 11. Around here, I should have been hearing music, but there was no sound at all.
The stillness and silence seemed to press down on me. Now I understand why Tumanako listens to music. Thinking that maybe the music had been turned off, I anxiously ran toward Room 8.
There was no one on the second level of the bunk bed in Room 8. Just in case, I pulled down the blanket on the upper bunk that had the shape of a person, but there was no one. Good. Tumanako isn’t here either.
I didn’t know whether Seo Jihyeok had gone to the Fifth Undersea Base or to Daehando, but knowing Tumanako wasn’t in this leaking dormitory let me feel at least a little relieved. For some reason, it felt lonely, but I moved my legs while telling myself that not being here was better for Tumanako.
As I panted from running, the thought came to me that Kim Gayoung might not be in the dormitory either. I’d probably have to check later.
As I walked toward Room 5, the water was rising past my thighs. Drawn by an indescribably strange feeling, I looked back over my shoulder. As the dormitory flooded, chairs and pens, every wooden object, cosmetics, shoes, and balls floated around. There was no one in the Baekho-dong dormitory. There was only the submerged dormitory and me. Red light shone threateningly over the water.
I turned my head forward again. As I held the wall so I wouldn’t fall and carefully took one step at a time through the water, a thought suddenly came to me.
Someday. Someday, later on, I might be the only one left in this undersea base—a lonely, desolate, and slightly frightening thought like that.
When the seawater rose past my waist and up to my chest, it became hard not only to walk but also to breathe. Since my body kept floating, I couldn’t tell whether I was walking or drifting. I had neither the time nor the leeway to dwell on scary thoughts. As if the deserted Baekho-dong dormitory were about to seize me by the scruff of the neck, I moved my legs quickly.
After passing Room 1 and climbing the stairs while gasping for breath, I felt as if every curse word I knew was about to burst out of my mouth.
If I’m left alone, I’m going to write my name huge all over this undersea base! I’m going to write SOS even bigger than my name! You damned Infinite Church bastards! Later, I’m going to hand this undersea base over cheap to someone with a helicopter or a ship in exchange for getting me out! Even now, I still can’t believe you engraved my name on the jewels! What on earth do you people think about while you’re alive? Please, just be good and live in reality!
After leaving the dormitory, I mechanically locked the door connected to the stairs. Lying flat on the floor, I tried to think positively. Should an undersea base be considered real estate? They said they designed the building structure so it would sway slightly, so doesn’t that make it movable property? If I’m left all alone, I’ll be a North Pacific tycoon who owns a four-story ultra-luxury undersea resort. Almost like a Dragon King with a dragon palace……