Jaehui and I shouted and waved our arms toward the figures of Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong as they came into Jungang-dong from the Hyeonmu-dong side.
“Get us down from the ceiling! There are people here! Come here and help us! People are here!”
“Jihyeok-hyung! Aeyeong!”
At that, Seo Jihyeok looked this way from afar, smiled brightly, and waved his arm in a big arc. And that was all. Seo Jihyeok, who had been flashing us a proud smile, went off somewhere else.
Baek Aeyeong also glanced this way once, but then turned her head back and changed direction without a hint of regret. Once both of them entered Jungang-dong, the height of the buildings and the warehouses blocked them from view. I asked Kim Jaehui in an urgent voice.
“Do you think they couldn’t hear us?”
“Even if they did, I think they would’ve just left.”
Kim Jaehui’s relaxed answer came back. Are all your team members exactly the same when it comes to this sort of thing? Cold. So cold. The words rose all the way to my throat. I looked down at the ground below, estimated to be about five meters away, licked my parched lips, then turned my head to look at Kim Jaehui.
“What should we do now?”
Kim Jaehui answered me in a cheerful voice.
“I don’t know.”
Hahaha. This is driving me crazy. I couldn’t tell whether Kim Jaehui wasn’t thinking at all, wasn’t all that eager to escape, or both. It looked like we’d have to save ourselves somehow.
When the water level had been over two meters, at least the view had been open enough that I could see what the people far away were doing. But now that the water had drained, everything had sunk down below, and I couldn’t see people or anything else properly. All kinds of trash floated around us at ankle height. There were small appliances, clothes, stationery, and huge lab benches and chairs drifting about. Beside them, I saw pieces of clothing that looked out of place. I thought it was a waterlogged, crumpled lab coat, but even from up on the ceiling, the figure with its head submerged looked like a person. Please let it not be. I hoped I had seen wrong.
“Jaehui. That thing over there is just clothes, right? It’s not a person, right?”
Kim Jaehui stared for a moment at the place I was pointing to, then said,
“It is a person. Looks like a drowning victim. They weren’t very lucky.”
······It didn’t look like there were only one or two people wearing lab coats. After hesitating for a moment, I gave up on waiting on the ceiling for other people to help us. Shin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok, and Baek Aeyeong all had their own reasons to be busy.
Looking around, the closest vertically tall object to me was a large lab cabinet. Something about my height was floating in the shallow water. When it passed directly below me, I seized the chance and jumped down onto the top of the cabinet.
The moment I landed on it, I realized I had misjudged. From above, the cabinet had looked big and sturdy enough not to fall over, but as soon as I got on it, it tilted and toppled sideways. Aaagh! I rolled once and fell to the floor, but fortunately I didn’t get crushed under the cabinet. Kim Jaehui, who had been watching the whole thing from above with a startled face, clapped for me as I got up. Clap, clap, clap, clap, clap.
Good grief. I’m going to end up wrecked. I feel like I’m getting battered from every direction. Having literally rolled onto the floor, I tried to ignore the pain washing over my entire body. Then I looked at Kim Jaehui, still on the ceiling, and sighed inwardly.
Once my feet touched the floor of Jungang-dong, the water lapped somewhere between my ankles and the tops of my feet. One thing I’d learned while moving through water was that once the water rose above your knees, you couldn’t walk properly. At this water level, getting around was actually quite manageable. We had to move while we could. Otherwise, who knew what else might happen?
I shoved the fallen cabinet along and dragged it toward Kim Jaehui. Then I righted an overturned lab desk beside it and dragged that over to place next to the cabinet. If I put the desk on top of the cabinet, it looked like it would collapse. But I didn’t have the strength to put the cabinet on top of the desk either.
After struggling through a miserable game of Tetris with the lab furniture and toppled vending machines nearby, I groaned as I lifted a waterlogged folding cot drifting beside them and placed it between the cabinet and a vending machine. Maybe the researchers had often lain down and slept on this cot, because the artificial leather cover was worn into the shape of a person and deeply sunken. If she landed on this first, it would be better than rolling straight onto the bare floor.
If I told an orthopedic surgeon only the things I’d done today, the doctor’s scolding would probably bore holes through my ears. Standing with both feet on the folding cot, I stretched both arms toward Kim Jaehui and said,
“Jaehui. Jump down. I’ll catch you.”
Kim Jaehui, who had been propping up her chin and watching from above, looked at the shoddy ladder I’d made by laying down nearby furniture, and at me, who was just as flimsy and unreliable. Too nervous to entrust your life to me? Well, the other human rope ladders and sturdy metal ladders seemed a little busy right now, so there was nothing we could do about it.
“You really do live the hard way, Teacher.”
Kim Jaehui laughed softly. Then Kim Jaehui’s prosthetic leg stepped sideways against the ceiling wall, and she ran two steps through empty air.
She crushed the top of the vending machine at the highest point, slid past two six-tier wooden bookshelves, and landed lightly on the folding cot. Kim Jaehui, who landed right beside me, had the same indifferent face she’d worn on the ceiling and in the water as she shook her titanium legs, which had scraped here and there, to dust them off.
······She basically just skied down on her prosthetic legs. I stared blankly at Kim Jaehui with my mouth hanging open. Hey. You could’ve gotten down from there without any help at all?
Kim Jaehui clapped lightly for herself, then landed like a butterfly from the folding cot onto the waterlogged floor. Her movements were refined and cool, but wouldn’t moving like that put a strain on her body? Even with all four limbs intact, those movements looked like they would ruin every joint. Kim Jaehui looked up at me and asked,
“Aren’t you coming?”
“······Let’s go.”
It took me more than twice as long as Kim Jaehui to get down from the folding cot and land on the floor. Watching Kim Jaehui walk ahead in front of me, I felt worried and asked,
“Is your body okay? Does anything hurt?”
“It doesn’t hurt. What about you, Muhyeon?”
“My whole body hurts. Anyway, even if it doesn’t hurt right now, if you keep moving like that, you’ll get arthritis later. Your legs, back, neck, liver—everything is taking strain without you even realizing it. When you get old and arthritis sets in, you’ll have a hard time treating it.”
Use your body gently in your twenties and take care of it. Don’t end up wrecked in your thirties. As I nagged her, it was kind of funny because I sounded like an orthopedic doctor. Even the guy with titanium in his back was trying to move carefully right now, but the guy with prosthetics on both legs was practically flying through the sky. It scared the life out of me.
Kim Jaehui, who had been listening as if I were saying something fascinating, asked me with curiosity.
“How long do joints last?”
“According to an unreliable quack doctor I know, around······sixty, degenerative arthritis sets in.”
Kim Jaehui dealt with the matter of her joints simply.
“I won’t live that long, so it’ll be fine.”
“······Let’s not say depressing things. Save up a lot of money and prepare for artificial joint surgery instead.”
It was frustrating to hear someone so young say things like that. Kids these days, honestly. They have no plans for the distant future. Was saying that proof I was becoming an old fogey? Hold on tight to your lifeline. Grab your sanity as part of the set too, and live for 120 years. Looking at people who believed in the Infinity Church made that illness that filled me with frustration flare up again.
Was there no one around Kim Jaehui who might live with her past sixty? She had to have family besides her brother. Even if she didn’t have family, she could just live and end up over sixty. Wouldn’t it be better to live in less pain? She wouldn’t want to spend her life plastering pain patches all over her body. Take care of your joints.
If Kim Jaehui, walking ahead of me, had been my younger sibling, we probably would have had a huge fight over this, but my body was so exhausted that even opening my mouth felt tiring. Kim Jaehui, walking forward, didn’t seem to give much thought to our current conversation. Splashing through the water with her prosthetic legs as she walked through Jungang-dong, she said,
“People have plenty of energy.”
“Pardon?”
“Listen quietly to the voices. Sounds like they’re fighting, right?”
Kim Jaehui stopped walking and pointed toward the central plaza. Tables, bookshelves, and the like had been swept there by the current and piled up in heaps, so I couldn’t see the people, but I could hear their voices. However, the sounds coming in were mixed with crackling noise, and the translation wasn’t working properly.
I took the translator out of my ear for a moment. I shook it hard with my hand and was about to head toward the source of the noise when Kim Jaehui grabbed my arm and pulled me back. Pressing herself behind a fallen refrigerator, Kim Jaehui said,
“Muhyeon, sometimes you’re even more fearless than I am. Stay still and hide.”
“Shouldn’t we go out and check?”
“Let them finish fighting first.”
“We don’t know who’s over there.”
Kim Jaehui nodded and said,
“Even if our team members are at that argument, we’ll go after they’re done fighting and it gets quiet.”
“What if they fight and someone gets hit or hurt?”
Kim Jaehui listened to me, then laughed as if dumbfounded and asked back,
“Who do you think is going to get hit? Our Sanghyeon? Or Aeyeong? Jihyeok-hyung? Don’t tell me Team Leader Shin? I don’t know. If a verbal fight turns physical and someone gets hit, I’d want to film it and keep the footage for a long time. It’s a shame my pad is gone.”
You should stop the fight. What are you talking about? From the way she spoke, if Kim Jaehui’s own team members got hit, she’d probably just watch from a corner. Or maybe cheer them on.
Kim Jaehui took the translator I was holding, held it up under the light, and inspected it from different angles before saying,
“Leave it out completely until it’s fully dry. I don’t think anyone except you really uses this old-fashioned kind of translator, Muhyeon.”
Feeling regretful, I asked Kim Jaehui,
“Can’t I just keep it in my ear and leave the power on somehow?”
In this disaster situation, I couldn’t tell how much more disadvantageous it would be for survival if I lost my language ability too. Kim Jaehui examined my translator and said,
“It’ll either never work again, or if you’re unlucky, you’ll get electrocuted.”
At those words, I gave up on the translator. I wasn’t sure I’d ever had good luck even once in this undersea base. As I listened to the people arguing, four countries’ languages were mixed together, and it felt strangely awkward to hear foreign languages without passing them through a translator after so long.