The central plaza of Hyunmudong was quite bright, probably because of all the lights installed there, but the moment I turned into the hallway, the overall atmosphere became gloomy. The number of lights had drastically decreased, and the corridor itself was narrow.
It felt like someone had taken the stereotypically cramped undersea base I had imagined before joining and placed it here verbatim. When heading to the escape craft port, I had been too preoccupied with the mining team members I ran into in the corridor to notice, but looking at it now, the building itself was eerie.
Having stayed in places like Baekhodong or Jujakdong, which felt like extremely clean and newly constructed buildings, encountering Hyunmudong made it feel even more so. It was like moving from a Korean office building with blinding fluorescent lights to a place where indirect lighting dominated, with every corridor dark like some American serial killer's frequent haunt.
Perhaps because the building itself was old, my nose was assaulted by musty building smells—the kind you get when it rains—and other strange odors. When I was in the other buildings, there hadn't been much difference aside from the lack of windows or the faint vibrations, whether on land or under the sea. However, in Hyunmudong, all sorts of screws and wires were exposed on the walls, and various pipes could be seen running across the ceiling.
It seemed they had built Hyunmudong as an early-model undersea base, then improved upon it to create the other buildings. I hadn't been in the corridor for long, yet I was already thinking about how narrow and dark it was, so the interior design must differ from the other buildings too. Hyunmudong seemed to be the oldest building; I wondered how they handled anti-corrosion for these kinds of marine structures. They probably conducted thorough structural status checks and durability inspections, right?
I was walking while staring at the back of the person in front of me when I slammed my shin directly into a protruding pipe. Since it was an iron pipe, my eyes welled up with tears. As I silently clutched my stricken shin with both hands in agony, Kim Jaehui asked if I was alright. I waved my hand to indicate I was fine. If I opened my mouth, I felt a torrent of groans or curses would pour out.
Why is the human body so fragile? This was going to bruise for sure. A heavy, stinging pain—already a familiar sensation—spread through my impacted shin. When I looked at the pipe that had attacked me, all sorts of curses were written on the wall next to it.
Someone had wrapped the pipe with cloth and tape, but perhaps because so many people had hit it, only remnants remained. It seemed the mining staff here had each fallen prey to such traps at least once, offering up their legs in the process.
"Can you walk?"
"Yes."
The moment Shin Haeryang heard my pain-filled answer, he took the lead again. Kim Jaehui tapped his own leg with his fingertips. Kim Jaehui's leg or Shin Haeryang's leg—they were both practically lumps of iron, while mine was the only human leg here.
"Why don't you switch to duralumin while you're at it."
"I'll pass."
Hobbling slightly, I began pouring out internal complaints about the undersea base's layout. Why couldn't they build the submersible port right next to the escape craft port? Why put them so far apart? Was it so that if one became unusable, the other could still be used? ...Then I guess it was well-designed after all.
Right when I was about to curse the protruding pipe just like the mining staff had, I saw a break room with a floor ruined by spilled coffee, half-eaten hamburgers and their wrappers, and scattered snacks.
Kim Jaehui seemed to have found something on the floor, using his gloved hand to fish an object out from amidst the mess of snack crumbs. Looking closely, it was a men's wallet. Perhaps someone had been sitting and dropped it from their pocket while rushing out; it was a mess, soaked in spilled coffee. But maybe because only the exterior was wet, the inside was intact.
As he walked, Kim Jaehui rummaged through the wallet and opened the cash compartment, revealing banknotes I was seeing for the first time. From the look of them, they didn't seem to be US dollars.
"What country's money is that?"
"The wallet owner is either Australian or has been to Australia. It's Australian dollars."
Oh. So Australian dollars are separate. Then does New Zealand have its own dollars too? As he walked, Kim Jaehui looked through the driver's license and credit cards, then pulled out the entire wad of mixed bills—Australian dollars, US dollars, Korean ten-thousand-won notes, and yen. So cash in wallets becomes a mess when you live in an undersea base. I only had a few dollars I had exchanged in Korea and some Korean won.
I watched from beside Kim Jaehui, wondering what he was doing. Shin Haeryang noticed Kim Jaehui's actions behind his back and merely furrowed his brow without particularly stopping him.
Kim Jaehui beamed and held out the wad of cash to me. It was truly baffling. ...I didn't even know where to begin pointing out the problems. My shin hurt, and now my head started aching too.
"I'm not taking it. Why are you trying to give me that money? ...Put the money back in the wallet."
"But you said you'd never seen Australian dollars before."
"I may have lived a hard life, but not so hard that I'd pick someone else's pocket to survive. The owner will come looking for the wallet, so let's leave it on the floor around here."
"The person who finds it first will take the cash inside. The wallet itself, including the ID and credit cards, will be sold back to the owner for about fifty dollars."
"Why... would you resell the wallet to the owner for about fifty dollars?"
"Because if it's more expensive than that, the owner will give up on buying it back."
The wallet owner has to buy their own wallet back from someone else? What kind of sense does that make? These were words I couldn't understand with my common sense, so to verify the facts, I asked Shin Haeryang, who was walking in the very front.
"Is what Jaehui just said actually happening in the undersea base?"
"Yes. It is."
I'll go mad. Why was Kim Jaehui picking someone else's wallet without hesitation, and why was he offering me the cash from it? If he had just pocketed it himself, I might have been able to understand somewhat. What am I going to do with this crazy bastard.
"Put the money back in the wallet."
When I repeated myself without taking the money he held out, Kim Jaehui looked somewhat deflated as he stuffed the bills back into the wallet. Checking my reaction, he casually tossed the wallet toward a corridor we had passed. A heavy thud sounded as the wallet drew an arc through the air and fell to the floor. Just as my conscience was relieved by that sound, Kim Jaehui uttered something maddening.
"So for donations, jewels or gold would be better after all?"
"...Never mind jewels or whatever, don't steal other people's things! Team Leader Shin, why aren't you stopping your team member from stealing?"
The fact that Shin Haeryang's fists had reached my ears before any rumors about Engineer Team A being a bunch of pickpockets and thieves meant that he probably didn't let his team members professionally fleece other employees' wallets and create unnecessary disputes. Or perhaps there was no evidence in the first place. ...Could it possibly be the latter?
"I would have stopped him under normal circumstances, but this time, I was indeed slacking. I'm sorry."
Shin Haeryang's honest apology left me speechless. If he had shamelessly retorted that it was unfair for the sparks to fly at me and asked why he should take responsibility for his team members' actions one by one, I probably wouldn't feel so frustrated. Moreover, he apologized without a single excuse.
"Is there a reason you didn't stop him?"
"I was curious how you would react."
"Ah. Having watched, how was my reaction?"
"Exactly as I predicted."
When I silently grabbed the back of my neck at the other person's blunt answer, Kim Jaehui sighed, shrugged his shoulders, and said our savior was very particular.
"So you prefer money that's been morally and cleanly obtained? I can understand the preference itself—liking the money of proletarians earned through brutal labor that consumes people's blood, flesh, and lifespans, rather than something obtained easily and simply."
What do you even understand? I wished I could hit both of these bastards just once. My hands would only hurt, and my stomach would only churn. Being with Kim Jaehui and Shin Haeryang, it felt like only my blood pressure was rising. I had to get both of them out of here quickly. At this rate, I'd die of hypertension from traveling with them.
The moment we entered the corridor right in front of the submersible port, Shin Haeryang warned those following behind in a low voice.
"I smell blood."
A shiver ran down the back of my neck. I sniffed the air, but I couldn't tell. It was a mess of seawater smell, wet concrete, dust, and such; I couldn't smell any blood.
When we had walked around with cats or snakes in bags before, Shin Haeryang had been the only one to notice, so perhaps he had a good nose. What was the advantage of having a good nose? Being able to smell blood like this? It would probably be good for noticing spoiled food, though.
Shin Haeryang said he would enter the submersible port alone to check if it was safe, then call for Kim Jaehui and me. Perhaps he was expecting that inside the submersible port, someone would be covered in blood, and if our luck was bad, the criminal who had done it would be there too, as a set.
I proposed that all three of us go in together. It was a suggestion born of the thought that rather than one person entering while risking danger to check, it would be less dangerous for three of us to enter so that our numbers looked greater.
Kim Jaehui agreed with my opinion and cheerfully added that if the team leader got caught or something happened, the two of them would be finished anyway. Shin Haeryang seemed to think about those words for a moment before absurdly nodding in agreement. The three of us entered the submersible port together like that.
Inside the submersible port, clothes, trash, books, and broken electronic devices were scattered across the floor, perhaps dropped by mining staff while fleeing. And in the corner, a tall man with a protruding belly lay alone on the floor.
The area around him was a wreck of bloody footprints and blood. Shin Haeryang looked around the interior of the submersible port and told us not to approach the body. Then he went to check himself and informed us that the man was dead. The dead Caucasian man had his right and left arms slashed with lacerations here and there, as if he had tried to defend himself with his arms, and his abdomen—the most vital part—seemed to have been stabbed multiple times with something sharp.
Though the corpse's condition was horrific, it wasn't particularly scary compared to what I had imagined. Rather, the situation outside the submersible port, where my imagination had run wild without limits, had been far more terrifying.
Once I knew what had happened, the suffocating fear visibly subsided, and the fact that there was no murderer wielding a weapon inside the submersible port filled me with relief. I thought that this must be why protagonists in horror movies go to check fluttering curtains and open windows. Confirming the reality made it less frightening.
When I saw Shin Haeryang staring at the man's face, I asked,
"Do you know him?"
"He is one of the mining team leaders. I cannot recall which team. I have beaten him before."