“Team Leader Jo was somehow still there?”
“It seems Team Leader Jo decided that since Team Leader Yang had disappeared, all the responsibility and blame would fall either on the absent Team Leader Yang or on the next team leader to come in.”
Team Leader Jo must have been seriously mistaken about something. From what I’d seen of company work, that wasn’t how things operated.
“...The people who remain at the workplace are the ones who take responsibility.”
“Yes. That’s right. Deputy Team Leader Jo was immediately appointed acting team leader, and he began taking responsibility for everything related to Engineering Team A. At first, Team Leader Jo seems to have mistaken me for the new team leader.”
Thinking of Shin Haeryang when he had first joined the undersea base, I felt a little sorry for him. Before he even started, the team leader and a large number of team members had gone missing, and the only person left was a deputy team leader with no sense of responsibility toward his own team.
If Shin Haeryang was in that state, Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong probably hadn’t known much about engineering work either. They must have had their own specialties.
He had to take on work he didn’t know and start immediately, while there was a rumor going around that Koreans spit out money if you hit them, so people from nearby departments were all thinking of ways to beat up Koreans; he had to participate in gambling half by force; and he also had to find the missing team members. If it were me, the moment I grasped the situation at the undersea base, I would have said I was quitting on the spot. The fact that he didn’t was impressive.
“You must have wanted to resign as soon as you entered the undersea base. Was there a reason you didn’t?”
“...There were several reasons. When I joined, the Korean engineering team was almost destroyed. The team leader was missing, and the team members had fled. At the same time, the Koreans in mining found out their salaries were only half that of the Americans, so there was an uproar as they all quit or demanded to change their affiliation to another country. During the period when the undersea base was being reorganized, among the eight countries, Korea alone had become empty.”
As I listened to Shin Haeryang’s explanation, I felt strange. As far as I knew, it didn’t seem like only the Korean team was exceptionally messed up among the eight countries at the undersea base. I hadn’t experienced every other team, but judging from everything I’d seen and heard, all eight engineering teams at the undersea base seemed to be a mess. Was he saying that among them, only the team of Korean nationality had completely collapsed?
“Are you saying there were people who deliberately wanted Korea to disappear from the undersea base?”
Shin Haeryang nodded lightly.
“Yes. Once positions began to empty, they say it became extremely difficult to find people to fill them. Who would want to come to a place where their predecessors had suddenly gone missing? I heard the three people assigned before Jihyeok either quit within two days of arriving or raised their hands and said they couldn’t do it. In Team Leader Yang’s case in particular, she was caught up in a malicious rumor.”
I’d never heard of that. Had it just not reached my ears? Or had I simply been here too briefly?
“May I ask what that rumor was?”
“Ah. The one about Team Leader Yang disappearing because she eloped with Team Leader Richard from Australia? Team Leader Richard isn’t the kind of person who would do that, so I thought it was a bit strange.”
Kim Jaehee seemed to have heard the rumor somewhere before. Shin Haeryang frowned, then answered flatly about that rumor.
“That was bullshit.”
Shin Haeryang explained almost as if he were growling.
“At the time, Deputy Team Leader Jo, who was married, confessed to the unmarried Team Leader Yang and was rejected. In retaliation, Deputy Team Leader Jo stated that Team Leader Yang was in Australia and had abandoned her work and run away because of a lovers’ quarrel with Richard. The police investigation ended there. They said that since an adult had disappeared, they couldn’t rashly judge whether there was a possibility of kidnapping or criminal victimization, so they couldn’t launch a search.”
Shin Haeryang let out a sigh, then spoke slowly.
“When I checked the facts, I found that Richard Random, who was the Australian team leader, had occasionally bought coffee for Team Leader Yang and a few Korean team employees. To Richard, a young female team leader crushed under work and her team members had looked pitiful. And somehow that was distorted, and several Korean reporters wrote articles claiming Team Leader Yang had abandoned her work and eloped for love because she was in a romantic relationship with Richard.”
Wow. That was truly vicious. Was Team Leader Jo insane? Several people bought me coffee to welcome me as soon as I came to the undersea base; if I vanished from the undersea base, would that mean I had a thing with all of them? Just thinking about it made me dizzy.
“Among the engineers working at the undersea base, regardless of age or gender, there isn’t a single person who hasn’t been treated to tea by Richard. That man drinks soda water like a hippopotamus, buys one-liter drinks for the people around him, and drones on like a radio about boring AFL stories as a hobby. He said he himself was pointlessly misunderstood by his fiancé because of that article, and that he would never show any kind of goodwill to a Korean again.”
With another sigh, Shin Haeryang continued calmly.
“The missing Team Leader Yang was processed as having resigned due to unauthorized absence. The same happened to the employees who disappeared. Her daughter, who had faithfully contacted them every three days, suddenly vanished, but the only people left devastated were her parents, who were told she couldn’t be found because she had voluntarily run away after falling for a gay man at an undersea base in the middle of the Pacific.”
Then no one was looking for Team Leader Yang? Under Korean law, if an adult disappeared, was it treated as a simple runaway the moment they were gone? Was there no answer but to wait until they returned on their own?
If that was the case, what would happen to the missing Team Leader Yang? What would happen to the family waiting for her? I was afraid to ask Shin Haeryang that question. I had no idea what kind of answer would come back. The very act of asking anything about people who had gone missing at sea was frightening.
Maybe I felt this way because there was nothing I could do except pray that the people who escaped to Daehan-do were doing well.
“...Did you find Team Leader Yang and the other team members?”
“Yes. We found them.”
I felt relieved for a moment at Shin Haeryang’s simple, clear answer, then a chill ran down the back of my neck. You found them alive, right? This man seemed like the type who would say “we found them” even if they’d been found dead, so I asked again.
“Did they return safely to Korea alive?”
Kim Jaehee, hearing my question from beside me, must have burst out laughing, because he chuckled. He seemed to have understood the meaning of my anxiety. Kim Jaehee. Is this funny? I’m serious. When I stared at him, Kim Jaehee halfheartedly stifled his laughter. Shin Haeryang answered quickly.
“Yes. Every one of them returned safely to Korea alive.”
I leaned my back, which had somehow been half-raised, completely against the mining machine. ...Good. Now I could listen to the story at ease. I was truly glad no one had died. I liked stories where people didn’t die.
“There was also the reason that I had to find people who had disappeared in the middle of the sea, but there were many people who wanted the position of Korean engineering team leader to remain vacant. After a few days, I got stubborn. Why should I disappear for someone else’s benefit? I lived with the goal of normalizing the team I belonged to and handing my position over to the next person who came.”
Thinking of Deputy Team Leader Kang, I asked Shin Haeryang a question.
“So the next person you chose was Deputy Team Leader Kang Sujeong?”
“Yes.”
Then silence fell for a moment. Kim Jaehee felt around his knee with his hand, checking his prosthetic leg, and spoke to Shin Haeryang.
“I heard Jihyeok hyung used to go around saying, like a habit, ‘I’m paying the penalty and running from this place.’ How was he today?”
Shin Haeryang ran a hand over his forehead, pushing back the hair that had fallen forward, and said,
“That bastard said it again today. In the middle of helping me walk, he said his penalty wasn’t that much, so he was going to find Jihyeon, carry her on his back, and run like a turtle. He told me to get on Aeyeong’s back and run away.”
Shin Haeryang laughed hollowly as he spoke. If it were me, I’d rather crawl out than leave on Baek Aeyeong’s back. Or I’d rather die. After hearing Shin Haeryang’s answer, Kim Jaehee smiled at me and said,
“Aeyeong’s catchphrase was that she’d ‘run away one step ahead of Seo Jihyeok,’ so I was a little surprised when both of them told us to take the escape boat and leave. Savior, did you know in advance?”
“No. I didn’t.”
It seemed both of them had had a hard time living at the undersea base. I asked the leader of Engineering Team A, who was scheduled to retire soon.
“Did the engineering work itself suit your aptitude?”
There was no self-torture quite like doing work that didn’t suit you. Shin Haeryang obediently answered my question.
“...Surprisingly, it suited me well. Breaking things is easy, but repairing them is quite difficult.”
I won’t ask what Shin Haeryang had been going around breaking. I think there were even a few people I’d treated recently. I turned to the pseudo-religionist who, somehow, had considered joining the company and asked him about aptitude.
“What about you, Jaehee?”
“Finding where water is leaking is fun.”
That’s fun? Well, if he said it was fun, then that was a relief at least.
“I’m glad both of you had things you liked about your work.”
Having even one thing you like about your job becomes the driving force that lets you keep doing it for a long time.
Shin Haeryang said he would end our short rest, so I barely managed to get up. My whole body cried out for someone to save me as my muscles twisted all over. I couldn’t believe it was this hard to move while alive.
Unlike me, who was in Hyeonmu-dong for the first time, Shin Haeryang and Kim Jaehee walked through the mining robots without hesitation. I quickly caught up behind the two of them and quietly asked,
“Did either of you have anyone you were close to at the undersea base besides your own teams?”
As I asked, all sorts of people came to mind. There were people who had left on the escape boats, but there were also people who had not. As for me, I had a special position and hadn’t been employed for long, so I hadn’t had the chance to get close to anyone. But if they had socialized with others besides their own teams, I wondered if they might be worried now that the undersea base was filling with water, so I asked. Unexpectedly, no answer came back. Shin Haeryang was silent for a moment, then instead asked me a question in return.
“How close do you have to be to call it close?”
“Someone you exchange greetings with, ask how they’re doing, sit at a table and have coffee with, talk about work with, but also talk about things outside of work with... Not someone who believes in the same religion.”
“Ah. Then, somewhat.”
Kim Jaehee seemed about to say something to me, then quickly closed his mouth. It seemed he didn’t have many people he was close to outside his own team.
“By your standards, sir, I am very close with most of the engineers at the undersea base.”
“Even the people you hit, Team Leader Shin?”
“The ones I hit act even more familiar with me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know either.”