When we first entered the water, it was a bit jolting, but the moment we plunged into the deep sea, every sound vanished. Inside the submersible, only the low hum of a fan could be heard from somewhere far off, and a heavy silence settled over us.
The submersible seemed to be rising very, very slowly. Kim Jaehee called me over and told me to look outside through the observation window. I half sprawled forward and peered out, but I couldn’t see anything. It was only pitch-black.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Chelloni. Turn on the lights.”
[Yes, Vice-Captain Kim Jaehee.]
Only after hearing their exchange did it sink in that the submersible was in a darkness where not a single speck of light reached. Of course I couldn’t see anything, we were in the sea three thousand meters below. Now that I thought about it, there was enough light inside the submersible for us to see each other, and maybe because I wasn’t alone, I wasn’t especially scared.
If I had ridden this submersible alone in a situation with no lights, it would have been terrifying. Chelloni turned on the exterior lights.
For several seconds, I lost the ability to speak as I looked at the scenery outside the submersible. There was a familiar landscape of land out there. The observation window was filled with the sight of a winter night with a fierce snowstorm raging. It was the same as what you saw in your narrow field of vision under the yellow glow of car headlights when you drove at night on a winter evening with snow pouring down.
I could only see the places where the submersible’s lights shone, and the way everything scattered wildly in the current resembled great snowflakes blowing in the wind. That made it feel even more like driving at night. As I watched the snow falling in thick flurries, I could forget, if only a little, that this was an utterly hopeless place, one where I had already died several times, and where danger filled every direction. It felt as if I were watching snow fall together with other people in a café, a hospital, or inside a car.
So white snow falls even in the darkness of this bottomless abyss. I was seized by the feeling that I was peeking at a secret the world had been hiding.
I had heard that unless something unusual happened, the deep seabed was an extremely stable place, where temperature, concentration, and pressure remained constant even after years, decades, centuries, and millennia passed. In this stagnant world, like a place where time did not flow, had snow been falling like that for thousands, tens of thousands of years?
As I stared blankly at the blizzard raging beneath the sea, I occasionally saw deep-sea creatures appear in the lights and vanish back into the darkness. Jellyfish, anglerfish, and long, unidentified creatures were emitting red, yellow, and blue light from their bodies. With them glittering and shining, and snow pouring down on top of it all, it felt like Christmas season had arrived.
When it snows, my heart becomes a little restless and tense. I never imagined I would feel that way watching snow fall on the seafloor. It was only scenery visible under the sea, and yet I felt an aching nostalgia for land where snow fell.
“Isn’t it fascinating? It’s marine snow. An oceanography professor who rode the submersible before said it felt like coming to a cabin where snow was falling.”
Kim Jaehee spoke toward the back of my head, startling me. There must have been quite a few people who, like me, stared outside in a daze. Feeling awkward because I seemed to have been too entranced, I looked around and saw Kim Jaehee kneading a heat pack between both hands. Shin Haeryang was looking outside through another window, but unlike me, he did not seem to be admiring the deep sea so much as checking with the naked eye to see if there was any problem outside.
“It’s really beautiful. ······It doesn’t feel like the deep sea. It feels like driving through a place where snow is pouring down on a pitch-black night.”
Before looking outside through the observation window, I couldn’t understand that there were scientists in the world who wanted to ride a submersible even at a tremendous cost, but now I felt like I could understand that feeling a little. I still couldn’t understand the feelings of people who set sail toward dangerous, suffocating space on a voyage where they might die, but maybe if I rode a spaceship, I would come to understand. ······Though I’m going home.
I was watching the silent snowy scenery outside when, before even twenty minutes had passed, I hurriedly pulled away from the window. To be exact, a disgusting, bizarre-looking anglerfish had appeared in the light, and the anglerfish, which had been far away with its mouth open, came right up to the window in an instant, startling me so badly that I fell backward.
Shin Haeryang, who had been talking with Chelloni and checking the submersible’s navigation, seemed startled by my sudden movement and quickly asked,
“Are you all right? Is there some problem?”
“······I’m fine. There’s no problem. I was just startled because I saw something strange.”
Since this was a manned deep-sea submersible, it should be sturdy enough to beat at least one deep-sea anglerfish. Kim Jaehee checked the observation window I had been looking through, gave a small laugh, and said,
“You’re easily scared. There’s nothing there.”
“There was an anglerfish······and it had a lot of teeth. When it opened its mouth······ Never mind.”
You try making eye contact with an anglerfish glowing with its whole body in the deep sea. Its teeth were seriously weird. It looked like it had more than a hundred of them. You’d have to see those grotesque upper and lower jaws for yourself to understand this shock.
I tried to defend myself to Kim Jaehee for getting startled, but I was too embarrassed and shut my mouth. I hadn’t noticed because I’d been focused outside the window, but my thigh felt as if it were on fire. Realizing I had put a heat pack in my pocket, I quickly took it out and rubbed my freezing fingertips with it. Kim Jaehee pointed at the observation window with her thumb and asked,
“Aren’t you going to look outside anymore?”
“I’m fine. You look as much as you like, Jaehee.”
“Everyone sees the deep sea a little differently. Some people stick themselves to the observation window and don’t come off until we reach the surface, and some people don’t even look for a minute and say it’s boring.”
Then what did Kim Jaehee think when she first saw the deep sea?
“How was it when you first saw the deep sea, Jaehee?”
“I thought it was pretty because it sparkled. They say most deep-sea animals can make light. Unlike humans. They live by glowing on their own in the darkness. ······What about you, Team Leader?”
I remembered taking thirty minutes to brush my teeth because I was too busy watching the siphonophores glowing with golden light in the jellyfish aquarium. It was the first time I had seen a creature that could create its own light, so I had stared at it in a daze.
Contrary to Kim Jaehee’s opinion, wasn’t the ability of deep-sea creatures to create light because they survived by hiding in the darkness? If they lived under sunlight, why would they need the ability to glow? Since they had to live their entire lives in a place without light, they relied on the light they made themselves. Shin Haeryang looked at the instrument panel and said offhandedly to Kim Jaehee,
“In exchange, they’re practically blind from living in the darkness.”
“What does it matter if they don’t have eyes? It’s not like they’re on fire, but their bodies shine.”
“No. Eyes are truly precious. Both of you, please go to an ophthalmologist regularly for checkups and treasure your eyes.”
What nonsense. I guess she didn’t know how precious they were because she had both eyeballs intact. Get a grip, Kim Jaehee. No one knows when human eyes might break down. Kim Jaehee leaned toward me and asked,
“Savior, are you married? Tell us a little about yourself.”
“I’m not married. As for my story······I’m not exactly an interesting person, so I don’t know what I should say.”
“Why did you join the undersea base?”
“I joined to earn money, but looking at the state of the company, I think it’s gone······bankrupt.”
Shin Haeryang and Kim Jaehee laughed at my weak answer, so that was satisfying. Kim Jaehee looked at me, then threw out a strange question.
“While working at the dental clinic, have you ever tortured patients who didn’t listen?”
At that absurd remark, I laughed for a full minute before asking,
“What do people say dentists do to torture someone?”
“They say they pull teeth out raw, drill holes in teeth with an electric drill, then keep going farther down and scrape the tooth nerves.”
This is insane. Just imagining it made my whole body feel like a roasted squid curling up. It sounded unbelievably painful. Shin Haeryang asked Kim Jaehee with an incredulous expression,
“Who told you that?”
“Nikolai and Dmitri.”
“Don’t talk to those bastards. If they open their mouths, call me. ······It’s an old torture method Russian mafias used.”
Shin Haeryang briefly explained it to me, and hearing that made it even more ridiculous. How do you know that? Barely organizing my thoughts, I asked Shin Haeryang,
“Do they······not use anesthesia?”
“I’m not even sure mafia bastards know the word anesthesia. Though they might feed the victim a glass or two of the vodka they’re drinking while torturing them.”
Grinding down nerves with an electric drill. Those madmen. I answered Kim Jaehee’s question simply.
“I am a professional torture technician, so I minimize my patients’ pain. Any other questions?”
Shin Haeryang at least asked a normal question that a recently hired employee might receive.
“What do you do during your breaks, Doctor?”
“I watched action movies, contacted home, or lazily took naps. What do you do during your breaks, Team Leader Shin?”
“I talk with the other employees or knit.”
Was this “talking” really conversation? Or was it fists moving swiftly, like his dance battle with Yamashita? It had a double meaning, right? I worked up my courage and asked him outright. It wasn’t as if Shin Haeryang was the kind of person to hit me for no reason.
“Do fights ever break out during these talks, like earlier at the escape pod port?”
Shin Haeryang answered me slowly.
“Usually······most things are resolved with words. There are a few bastards who don’t want to handle matters through conversation, and in those cases, I tend to provoke them so they can solve it with their fists. When your teeth hurt, you can’t think of anything else because you’re focused on the pain. Until they visit the dentist, they won’t cause any more trouble, and every time they eat, they’ll think of me.”
He really was smart and vicious. Teeth don’t heal on their own. They only get better if you come to the dentist and get treatment. On top of that, until recently, there hadn’t been a dental clinic in this undersea base.
“How is the knitting going? What are you knitting?”
“Right now, socks.”
“Oh. When you finish the socks, are you going to use them yourself?”
Maybe because I didn’t know anyone around me who knitted, it felt like quite a fresh hobby.
“I’m making them without any particular thought of using them myself or giving them to anyone. Once they’re done, they disappear a few days later. I think the team members who need them take them.”
“Me, Deputy Team Leader, and Jihyeok hyung take the most. The socks are too big for Aeyeong or Jihyeon noona to use.”
“What do you do in your leisure time, Jaehee?”