Following the bloody handprints, we found Sin Haeryang and Seo Jihyeok looking at a woman sitting beside a washing machine in the corner of the laundry room. All sorts of blood-soaked clothes lay scattered beside her thighs. The smell of blood spreading across the floor was enough to make my head ache. Sin Haeryang said nothing when he saw our faces as we came through the door, but Seo Jihyeok scowled hard.
“Ah, why did you come in instead of waiting outside?”
Before I could answer, Yugeum shouted back.
“The hallway’s scarier!”
At that, Seo Jihyeok’s mouth fell open, and then he started grumbling.
“You weren’t even waiting two minutes. Both of you are way too scared over nothing.”
Had it only been two minutes? To me, it had been two minutes that felt like twenty. As I approached the person sitting there, Sin Haeryang raised his head and looked at me.
“She appears to have died from excessive bleeding. This is Victoria from Engineering Team A.”
I felt like Engineering Team A was a team made up of Canadian nationals. The woman had probably injured her leg, wrapped it in clothing, and pressed down with her hands, but that hadn’t been nearly enough to stop the bleeding. She was already no longer breathing. Her heart wasn’t beating either, and when, my teeth chattering, I pronounced someone dead for the second time today, Sin Haeryang took a photo and then covered the woman’s head with one of the large towels lying around the laundry room.
Once the corpse’s face was covered with the towel, Yugeum let out a sigh of relief. Then, trying hard not to turn her head that way anymore, she asked Seo Jihyeok with anxious eyes.
“It looks like she hurt her thigh. Can you die like that from an injury there?”
“If the femoral artery is severed and fifteen minutes pass, even Hua Tuo couldn’t fix it.”
I looked around, but there was nothing that could be used as a weapon. Since it was a laundry room, all that was there were clothes or towels someone had put in the washer and forgotten to take out, and hoodies that had been half-folded before whoever it was had gone somewhere. It seemed she had walked down the corridor while injured, entered the laundry room, and died here while trying to stop the bleeding. Yugeum chewed over Seo Jihyeok’s words, then frowned.
“Then she was attacked and died somewhere within fifteen minutes’ distance of the laundry room?”
Seo Jihyeok only scratched the back of his head. There was nowhere at all in the laundry room for anyone to hide. Taking that silent response as confirmation, Yugeum began staring fixedly at the laundry room door we had come through. It seemed as if she thought someone might come running in. I moved away from the corpse and approached Seo Jihyeok.
“Did you know her?”
At my question, Seo Jihyeok frowned.
“There aren’t even a hundred engineers here, tops. After about three months, you know everyone’s face and name. Team Leader, isn’t she close friends with that one from our team… that girl?”
“She was close with Gang Sujeong from our team.”
After filling in the gaps in Seo Jihyeok’s lacking memory, Sin Haeryang stood and handed me one of the hoodies on the table, along with a pair of sweatpants.
“Change into these.”
“Uh… but they’re someone else’s clothes.”
At the words that slipped out reflexively, Sin Haeryang shook his head.
“You’ve lost too much body heat.”
Then he naturally took the two backpacks from my back and left the laundry room. When Yugeum followed Sin Haeryang out, Seo Jihyeok shouted at me to hurry, hurry, and then left the laundry room too. Well, since Sin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok, and Baek Aeyeong were all wearing suits that covered them from neck to toe, getting wet probably wasn’t much of a problem for them.
I unbuttoned my wet shirt one button at a time, but halfway through I just ripped all the buttons off and took it off. Only after I took off my wet jeans and peeled off my waterlogged socks did I finally realize just how soaked I was. The sense of liberation from simply not wearing wet clothes was incredible. At the same time, I was shivering with cold. I turned my head, wondering if there was a dry towel, and goosebumps rose all over me.
Because from the direction I turned, I felt an overwhelming presence. The moment I thought about how I was in the same room as a corpse sitting in a pool of blood with a towel over its head, all I could think was that I wanted to run out of here immediately. No matter how hard I tried to ignore it, my gaze strangely kept drifting toward where the corpse’s face was. Even though the face was covered by the towel and couldn’t be seen, it was as if my eyes were searching for the dead person’s face.
In this room, it was just me and one corpse. It was a good thing Sin Haeryang had covered the face; if he hadn’t, I probably wouldn’t have been able to endure the chills crawling up my body and would have run out screaming. Did dead people always have such a strong presence? Holding back every curse that wanted to spill out of my mouth, I took a towel placed beside the dryer and quickly wiped the water from my body.
Then I put on the pale sky-blue hoodie and black sweatpants. My underwear and socks were too wet, so I just gave up on them. I threw away my socks and put my wet shoes on over my bare feet, but just wearing dry clothes made me feel much better than before. I don’t know whose clothes these are, but thank you, I’ll wear them gratefully. If I meet you, I’ll compensate you, so please let me borrow them just this once.
As soon as I finished dressing, goosebumps rose all over my body again. Feeling as if someone might snatch me by the back of the head, I ran out of the laundry room. Outside the laundry room, Seo Jihyeok, Sin Haeryang, and Yugeum were waiting for me, and they seemed startled when they saw me practically tumble out. Yugeum jumped in place, and Seo Jihyeok, patting his chest in surprise, spoke as if he found it absurd.
“Did the corpse get up or something?”
“No. No. Nothing happened.”
“…Let’s go.”
After watching me for a few seconds as I shot out as if I’d flown, Sin Haeryang set off without another word.
Yugeum told me that compared to the shirt I’d been wearing earlier, this bright color made me look much younger and cleaner, which made me feel strange. That striped shirt had been my very favorite shirt. We walked toward the escape pod port, avoiding the bloodstains on the floor.
In the distance, I could see the door leading into the escape pod port. In order not to think about the corpse in the pool of blood I’d just seen, I focused on the door as it drew closer and glared at it. Looking now, the doors to the laundry room, bathroom, and quarters were all different.
It seemed that sliding doors were used in places that required complete sealing. When Seo Jihyeok heard my thoughts, he said they weren’t sliding doors. They opened sideways like aircraft doors, he said. On top of that, the places where the doors opened automatically did so because they were too heavy for an individual to open by hand. They used doors like that to withstand high pressure.
I had been here for five days, and yet whether the doors opened sideways, upward, downward, or by turning a handle, I had used them without giving it any thought. I had simply assumed there must be some reason. But now that I looked, I wondered whether I had been using the facilities far too thoughtlessly.
When I voiced my curiosity about the doors to Yugeum, she said the doors in the research center in Jujak-dong were all slightly different too. Some of the doors inside the laboratories were transparent, and some were more than seven centimeters thick. Hearing Seo Jihyeok grumble about whether we had any idea how often the doors here broke down reminded me of Gim Gayoung’s door to her quarters.
…For places where privacy wasn’t needed, it might actually be safer to remove the doors altogether. When we were only a few meters away from the escape pod port, Sin Haeryang cut off Seo Jihyeok’s chatter and spoke.
“As you saw from the attack in the laundry room, the area near the escape pod port may be dangerous as well. This time too, Seo Jihyeok and I will enter first, so come in when we signal you.”
“What signal?”
At Yugeum’s sparkling-eyed question, Sin Haeryang seemed slightly flustered before answering.
“We’ll just call for you to come in normally.”
“Aww. Not something like knocking on the closed door?”
Seo Jihyeok laughed quietly at Yugeum’s words.
“You mean like, don’t come in if we knock twice, come in if we knock three times?”
“Oh, I like that.”
Come to think of it, Seo Jihyeok, who had talked so much, seemed to be laughing for the first time since finding the corpse in the laundry room. Did he talk a lot when he was anxious? Only then did I realize that with just a few words, Yugeum had changed the mood of the dark, gloomy people around her. It was one of the talents I didn’t have. On top of that, it also made me feel a little excited, like I had become a supporting character in an action movie. I said with a smile.
“That sounds good. If you two knock three times, we’ll go in.”
“If there is no signal or sound at all, or if we knock twice, run immediately and regroup with Baek Aeyeong. Explain the situation and tell her we are abandoning the Cheongnyong-dong escape pod. She’ll understand.”
With that single sentence from Sin Haeryang, the mood instantly grew heavy. This was a talent too. I watched as one blunt man’s single sentence changed the mood that had finally brightened up a little. This was also a talent I didn’t have. I couldn’t really stand things getting this heavy.
“Then instead, if we can escape right away, please bang on the door and play us a whole song.”
“…Very well.”
I thought he would refuse, but unexpectedly, Sin Haeryang answered reluctantly and handed the two backpacks he had been holding back to me. I slung the two now-familiar backpacks onto my back. Seo Jihyeok entrusted Baek Aeyeong’s heavy food bag to Yugeum. After checking their pads one last time, Sin Haeryang and Seo Jihyeok walked toward the escape pod port.
Yugeum and I stood far away and silently watched the backs of the two as they pressed the button beside the escape pod port door and went inside. Once the two entered the escape pod port, the door soon closed.
Both I, wearing two bags, and Yugeum, wearing Baek Aeyeong’s bag, felt like underfed children waiting for our parents to come home. I hate waiting the most, but today I keep having to wait again and again. As we stared endlessly at the door and waited, Yugeum adjusted the twisted strap of the bag on her shoulder and said,
“Still, I feel somewhat reassured because of the others.”
“Right? If I’d found that corpse in the laundry room by myself, I would’ve run out screaming at the top of my lungs.”
“Me too. I would’ve screamed even louder. It’s such a relief to have people more composed than me nearby.”
“Seriously. Baek Aeyeong is one thing, but those two don’t even flinch at the sight of a dead body.”
“Aren’t they incredibly calm? I think they’re really amazing.”
Just then, there was a loud thump, thump against the door. Since it was a thick door, it sounded like someone was kicking it. We waited for the third sound. No matter how long we waited, no sound came. Huh? That’s strange?
Come to think of it, we hadn’t decided how much time there should be between knocks. Why weren’t they hitting it a third time? Should we wait a little longer? Was it definitely three knocks? Was two knocks the one that meant go in? I was sure it had sounded twice. Why weren’t Seo Jihyeok or Sin Haeryang laughing and opening the door, asking why we looked so startled? At that moment, Yugeum grabbed my hand. Then she pulled it.