Sin Haeryang seemed to think for a moment after hearing Yamashita’s words. He seemed to be considering things like what strategic benefit there would be in beating that guy, but apparently nothing particularly appealed to him, because he made an ambiguous expression and said,
“All right.”
“If I win, you’ll change your affiliation to Engineer Team Na! Come to Japan!”
Sin Haeryang’s eyes went round as if he were surprised, then he let out a hollow laugh, seemingly dumbfounded, and said,
“......Fine.”
Startled by Kim Jaehee’s interpretation, I looked at Yamashita. Unless I’d heard wrong, Yamashita seemed to be out of his mind right now.
If Sin Haeryang changed his nationality and immigrated to Japan, it felt like only the Japanese people would end up with a headache. Get a grip. This was the man who’d tried to name an island Taekwondo. You want to take him with you?
Kim Jaehee also looked at Yamashita as if he found it rather surprising, then asked Sato with a sly expression.
“Yamashita listens to his team leader pretty well, huh?”
“You misunderstand. How am I supposed to stop my team members from acting on their own?”
Jeong Sanghyeon, who had heard their conversation, gaped as if shocked.
“Jaehee hyung. If our team leader goes to Engineer Team Na, what happens to us?”
“I wouldn’t know even if you asked me. Hahaha. Sanghyeon. We might lose our team leader right before our eyes.”
There wasn’t a trace of worry in Kim Jaehee’s tone as he said that. Jeong Sanghyeon frowned in concern and said,
“Ah, shit. What do we do?”
“If our team leader loses, Sanghyeon, you’re the one I’m most worried about.”
Jeong Sanghyeon glanced over at Sato and asked Kim Jaehee,
“Why me?”
“If our team leader leaves, who’s going to protect you?”
“Come on! Even if you try to scare me like Jihyeok hyung, I’ll never fall for it!”
If Seo Jihyeok or Baek Aeyeong had been here, I didn’t think Yamashita and Sin Haeryang would have ended up fighting like this. Wouldn’t at least one of them have actively tried to stop it?
“If Mr. Jihyeok or Ms. Aeyeong had been here, would the situation have been better than it is now?”
Since they were on the same team, they probably would have tried to stop it somehow. I felt a little regretful that those two, who were reassuring both mentally and physically, had left. Kim Jaehee thought for a moment, then nodded.
“If Jihyeok hyung had been here, he probably would’ve watched with us. Or he might’ve joined in on Yamashita’s side. Saying we should try beating up our team leader together. If it were Aeyeong, well. Wouldn’t she have just watched? But if Yamashita won, I think Aeyeong would’ve approached silently and stabbed him in the side at least once.”
Kim Jaehee spoke quite casually about situations that would have been even more chaotic than now. ......Thank goodness neither of them is here. I made the right choice. Brainwashing myself like that, I glanced once at the escape pod rising on the screen.
Just then, Yamashita began speaking solemnly to Sin Haeryang again.
“A deathly underwater base filling with water. It is the perfect stage for you and me to fight. Even if you lose, do not resent me, Sin. I am stronger than you could ever imagine. I let my guard down in the cafeteria, but this time, such luck will not be granted to you......”
“We don’t have time. Are you fighting with your mouth?”
At Sin Haeryang’s halfhearted words, Yamashita’s face twisted. And perhaps because he really thought time was being wasted, Sin Haeryang approached Yamashita first.
They say the average male stride is seventy centimeters, but I saw five meters close in almost one second. He had been far away, and by the time I came to my senses, he was right in front of him. Did he fly?
Once Sin Haeryang entered his range, Yamashita used his left leg as an axis and aimed a right kick at Sin Haeryang’s upper body. As if he had already expected the kick, Sin Haeryang lowered himself toward the floor as though sliding, avoided the blow, and slipped into Yamashita’s left side.
While Yamashita was recovering the right leg he had kicked into the air, Sin Haeryang attacked between Yamashita’s legs with his right fist.
Someone watching screamed loudly. Oh my god! When I turned around, Mark was shrieking in a high-pitched voice like a dolphin, as if he had been the one hit. Bart closed his eyes and turned his head to the side.
Sin Haeryang had only thrown one punch, but he must have hit so hard that Yamashita’s body floated backward into the air. From where I was watching, it felt like Yamashita hung in the air for several seconds before falling. Yamashita collapsed onto the floor without being able to counterattack at all. Then he curled up as tightly as he could with his back turned toward us. There wasn’t even a groan from Yamashita’s side.
......Is he dead?
Sato, who had looked fascinated until moments ago, turned pale as stone. Jeong Sanghyeon had lowered his head briefly toward his pad to record the fight, then raised it at Mark’s scream. Then he spotted Yamashita lying on the floor and asked Kim Jaehee in surprise,
“What? It’s already over? Hyung! Did Yamashita lose?”
“......It’s over. Sanghyeon. You owe me five thousand won.”
“What happened? Where did Yamashita get hit just now? There’s no way it would end this easily! Can’t he still fight? Why did it end so fast? I didn’t even see it yet!”
Kim Jaehee shook his head and said,
“He can’t fight again. At that level, Yamashita probably won’t even be able to walk.”
Whether it was Jeong Sanghyeon or Kim Jaehee, both of them were only interested in victory or defeat and didn’t care at all about the loser’s condition.
Mark, apparently feeling pain just from watching the scene, was spewing all sorts of English curses and saying over and over that it was a good thing he hadn’t attacked.
“He’s not moving. Isn’t he dead?”
When I approached in alarm, Yamashita was twitching and convulsing on the floor. It looked like testicular rupture. Even from a distance, that was what it seemed like.
Yamashita probably hadn’t expected Sin Haeryang to immediately attack such a vital weak point. Had Yamashita thought Sin Haeryang wouldn’t be that merciless? Or had he let his guard down again? I’d never been in this kind of fight, so I didn’t really know, but were there separate rules even in a street fight?
Sin Haeryang answered my question awkwardly.
“He’s not dead.”
Then, after hesitating, he added one more thing.
“......He’ll be all right.”
He didn’t look all right at all. Still, thinking about how Sin Haeryang fought other people, it did seem like he had held back to some extent when he hit Yamashita. In the past, I probably wouldn’t even have been able to think that, but now I understood.
Sin Haeryang had fought two-on-one against people armed with knives and guns, so I had expected he wouldn’t lose against one barehanded person. Leonard was the same, but Yamashita also ended cleanly in a single blow. Could this be related to efficiency too?
I spoke to Yamashita, who was lying on the floor, but he didn’t seem to be in any state to answer. I thought of medical knowledge like men being able to live everyday lives even without testicles and considered offering Yamashita some words of comfort, but simply shut my mouth.
Yamashita, who had been unconscious for a few seconds, regained consciousness, and perhaps because the pain was severe, he crawled around the floor while gasping, then began to sob quietly with a huuuuuuuuuh sound. Good grief. What do we do?
Yamashita clawed at the floor with his fingers like someone receiving root canal treatment without anesthesia. It seemed to hurt so much he couldn’t even scream. But there was nothing I could do to help. I was a dentist, not a urologist.
Sin Haeryang, who had destroyed a person in less than three seconds, looked awkwardly at Yamashita and at his own right hand, then took a thin towel from a small pocket and wiped his hand. Then, throwing away the towel, he asked Sato, who was turning away as if it were someone else’s problem,
“Sato. Are you going to fight too?”
“......I’ll decline. I saw very well how you fight while observing courtesy. It was so moving that even those watching were brought to tears.”
Sato, who answered sarcastically, quickly shook his head. Sin Haeryang looked slightly disappointed that Sato refused. It seemed he was actively taking into account my words that anyone who fought couldn’t board the escape pod, and wanted to increase the number of people unable to board besides Yamashita and himself.
Just in case there was anyone else who might additionally attack, Sin Haeryang also asked Mark and Bart, but both of them quickly refused.
I checked Leonard’s condition. He had collapsed from the shock of being hit and hadn’t been able to get up, but perhaps he was a bit better now, because he was barely raising only his upper body. He had been punched in the nose and philtrum, but somehow his nose hadn’t started bleeding badly. Leonard seemed severely dizzy and remained sitting on the floor without moving.
“Where is Henry’s mother?”
Leonard didn’t answer, but I couldn’t tell whether he couldn’t answer because he was in bad condition or didn’t want to answer. Wondering if he knew anything, I asked Mark beside me about Leonard’s ex-wife, and Mark looked at Bart beside him, asking how he would know. Then Bart frowned and said,
“Wait a second.”
Bart forcibly pulled out the pad that had been kept in the pocket on Leonard’s thigh. Perhaps the electronic pad had absorbed the impact when Leonard fell, because there were two long cracks across the screen. Bart entered the pad’s password without hesitation and opened the screen. ......Coworkers, huh.
I was startled when a picture of a woman in a short dress exposing her bare legs suddenly appeared on the screen. Leonard was using a picture of a half-naked woman as his pad wallpaper. So there were people who used this kind of wallpaper on a company pad.
Bart quickly tapped into the messages. In the message inbox, there were over three hundred messages presumed to have been sent by Nevae, along with an enormous number of records showing she had called. The reason I presumed that person to be Nevae was because Leonard had saved the sender’s name under horrific misogynistic slurs too vile to put into words.
There were no messages after five in the morning. Only after scrolling up through the incredibly long messages could I confirm what Leonard had sent to Nevae.
It seemed he had sent a photo of Henry asleep under sleeping pills at four in the morning, along with the question, “Guess where this is?” When Nevae didn’t check the message, it seemed Leonard had outright called and woken her up around four thirty in the morning.
Originally, Henry seemed to have been scheduled to stay with his friends at a camp for several days and nights. There were traces of countless messages and calls Nevae had made to Leonard after waking in the early morning and confirming that her child was asleep in Room 80 of Baekho-dong in the underwater base. Most of the people from Engineer Team Sa, who were Australian citizens, seemed to be in Australia.
At first, Nevae poured curses close to maledictions at Leonard, and later she begged. There were long messages saying that the child had done nothing wrong and that, if only for the sake of the good times they had once shared, he should not touch the child.
Just skimming over the messages was enough to make me feel like crying. The last message said she would contact everyone she knew in the underwater base if she had to, in order to find her child.