If you went around behind the convenience store, beyond it there was a straight bridge leading to Cheongryong-dong. I had only gone toward Cheongryong-dong once, when I first entered the undersea base and checked what was there. As we rounded the convenience store building, I lightly tapped Baek Aeyeong on the shoulder as she dropped to the very rear.
“Let’s stop by the convenience store. We should take some water, too.”
When the footsteps of the people walking behind slowed, Seo Jihyeok, who had been at the very front, stopped. After thinking for three seconds, Shin Haeryang nodded. The backpacks were being carried by me, Baek Aeyeong, and Shin Haeryang, and when Seo Jihyeok saw the two backpacks on my back, he said,
“Give me one backpack. I’ll go.”
I couldn’t guess which would be better to hand over—the bag with the snake, or the bag with the cat. Besides, the snake was a very tiny thread snake, but the cat weighed around six or seven kilograms and filled up an entire backpack. If I gave him the bag with the snake, he might get bitten. Of course, considering I still hadn’t been bitten, the little thing was either gentle, didn’t really bite people, or was already dead. Probably one of the three. Still, I couldn’t hand someone else a backpack in that state.
“Let’s go together.”
Unexpectedly, Seo Jihyeok nodded without complaint. Seo Jihyeok, Baek Aeyeong, and I quietly entered the convenience store. From the moment she stepped inside, Baek Aeyeong began counting under her breath. One, two, three, four. The convenience store was overflowing with snacks. Chocolate bars, chips, candies, chocolates—high-calorie things were gathered everywhere. All of it was free. It could only be eaten within Undersea Base 4.
I first went to the drink refrigerator, opened the snake backpack, and tried to pack a few bottles of water. Looking now, the snake had crawled into the inner pocket on the back side of the backpack. It was coiled up in a circle, and being careful, I put two 1.5-liter bottles of water into the bag. Then I opened one bottle of water and drank from it, while sweeping up candies, chocolate bars, and chocolates by the handful and tossing them into the bag as if scattering them.
The others packed similar things. Baek Aeyeong put in two bottles of sports drink and one bottle of water, while Seo Jihyeok also put in two bottles of water and practically filled the remaining space with chocolate bars and nut bars. Baek Aeyeong shoved puddings and fruit cups into the empty spaces in her bag. Fifteen. Sixteen.
Seo Jihyeok, who had been watching Baek Aeyeong count, suddenly pushed aside the very back of the drink refrigerator with his hand and pulled something out. I thought it was a drink, but when he took it out, it was a bottle of Ballantine’s 50-year-old. Fifty years old. I’d never seen one in my life. The liquor was older than me. When two bottles of water and the Ballantine’s 50-year-old wouldn’t fit into the backpack all at once, Seo Jihyeok struggled with the zipper. Baek Aeyeong, who had been counting, called out softly to me and Seo Jihyeok.
“Let’s go!”
“Wait a second!”
“What do you mean, wait a second! I said let’s go!”
Baek Aeyeong snapped irritably and dragged Seo Jihyeok out. I followed the two of them as well, then stopped when I saw something collapsed about ten meters away from the convenience store. A person was lying there.
“Huh?”
I thought I had only paused for a moment after seeing that person, but Seo Jihyeok had already come back, grabbed my forearm, and pulled me along. He was so strong that my feet lifted off the ground and I was dragged along. Shin Haeryang, who had been waiting behind the convenience store building, moved out immediately as if he had been waiting for the two of us.
For some reason, from nearby, I kept hearing sounds like dadadada! Dadadadadak! Like popping popcorn, or the footsteps of something large. Until the convenience store grew distant and we had completely left Jungang-dong, Baek Aeyeong kept signaling for us to be silent. Judging by the way she mimed this and that with her hands, it seemed like if we didn’t keep our mouths shut, she would rip them open or pull out our tongues. When we left Jungang-dong and reached the bridge just as it entered Cheongryong-dong, Shin Haeryang looked around at everyone and said,
“You may speak now.”
For some reason, I felt relieved at those words and let out a sigh. Perhaps uneasy after seeing the armed person, Yugeum kept glancing back behind her and said,
“Phew, that scared me. Still, it’s a relief we haven’t run into anyone holding a gun like earlier.”
Seo Jihyeok opened his mouth with an “Uh…” but when he saw Baek Aeyeong shaking her fist behind him, he closed it again. After hesitating, I looked at Seo Jihyeok and spoke.
“...Earlier, there was someone collapsed beside the convenience store.”
At my question, Seo Jihyeok answered awkwardly.
“Yes.”
“Couldn’t he have just fainted? Was he shot?”
From a distance, I hadn’t seen any part that looked like a serious wound. If someone got shot, didn’t blood splatter everywhere? Baek Aeyeong shook her head.
“He was shot in the back. He’s either dead, or he will be. Do you happen to have any medical knowledge about gunshot wounds, Teacher?”
“No.”
If there was bleeding inside the mouth, I had some confidence I could try hard to do something about it. Even if I stretched the definition as far as possible, the only thing I could treat was the head area. Of course, if someone had been shot in the head or mouth, my knowledge would be completely useless. All I had were two backpacks containing animals, so what was I supposed to do?
“He probably got shot when we were coming from Theater 3 toward the café.”
At Baek Aeyeong’s words, Yugeum grimaced with a sickened expression and said to me,
“Did you see who it was? His face?”
“No. He was collapsed face-down. His… hair was orange and short, he was a man, East Asian, and he had a shark tattoo on the back of his hand—”
“...Hong Tao. He’s Taiwanese, an engineer on Team Ra.”
Shin Haeryang said. Was he the person whose face I had once massaged with my fist?
“Do you know him?”
“I only know his face and name.”
Oh. Guess not. Seo Jihyeok seemed to know him, because he suddenly let out an exclamation and clapped his hands once.
“He’s that… that guy. The one who stole salt from the cafeteria in the middle of the night to make salted coffee and set off the alarm at three in the morning.”
Yugeum seemed to know him too, and nodded.
“Isn’t he also the person who kept posting recipes on the undersea base bulletin board, saying he was going to make this and that?”
It seemed there were quite a few people in the undersea base who relieved stress through food. Baek Aeyeong, who had been listening to the conversation, said,
“It seems more engineers survived than I expected, at least.”
“But the person from earlier is dead?”
At my incredulous question, Baek Aeyeong rubbed her stress-bitten lips and shook her head.
“When working, they move in teams, so if they didn’t die like he did, there’s a high possibility the rest of the team members are alive.”
As we walked across the bridge entering Cheongryong-dong, Yugeum rubbed her forearms several times with both hands.
“It’s a bit chilly on the Cheongryong-dong side. The indoor temperature must be lower here.”
“You’re right.”
Since I had gone into the water twice already, a lot of my body heat had been stolen, so I hadn’t particularly thought it felt colder now. But after hearing Yugeum’s opinion, I suddenly felt a chill. It seemed all the adrenaline that had been pumping through me from tension had been used up as we left Jungang-dong. At those words, the expression of Seo Jihyeok, who had been walking around the undersea base as if out for a stroll until now, stiffened. Looking at his pad, he scratched his head roughly and said,
“You’re right. I don’t really feel heat or cold much to begin with, and the suits our team is wearing block out heat and cold to some extent, so I didn’t notice. It looks like the life-support system has malfunctioned. Normally, the temperature should be maintained at twenty-four degrees. Right now, it’s twenty-one.”
It seemed something extremely important had broken. Even the name sounded fatal.