The moment I saw the snake right beside my shoe, terror seized me. I wanted to bolt out of the yam field at once and scream loud enough for the entire underwater base to hear. But my body froze, unable to move an inch.
My head screamed at me to stay still. Fear made my breath stop for an instant, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the snake. If I looked away, it felt as though the snake would suddenly spring up and bite into my arms and legs.
It had been shocking enough when I saw the snake roaming around inside the small enclosure in the room in Baekho-dong, but unexpectedly running into one in the field hit me even harder. I slowly exhaled and silently pleaded with the snake.
Please don’t bite me. Just pass by. I won’t hurt you, so you don’t hurt me either.
The footsteps of the two Infinite Church followers felt unbearably slow. They were probably just walking normally, but I held back the urge to scream at the backs of their heads to run to the warehouse.
I wanted to get out of danger quickly and move somewhere safe. If I was thinking that, the snake probably was too. I calmly watched the snake and waited without moving. The snake must have somewhere it wants to go. I’m the intruder who arrived later. Let’s yield and wait for it to pass first. I said quietly to Sin Haeryang,
“There’s a snake by my foot.”
Sin Haeryang asked me calmly,
“Were you bitten?”
“No.”
I felt truly relieved that I could confidently answer no to Sin Haeryang’s question. If I had been in a situation where I had to answer yes, composure or not, I would already have been crying.
“If you stay still, it should pass. Where is it?”
“……By my right foot. I’ll wait without moving.”
Sin Haeryang waited beside me, perhaps thinking he would strike it with the butt of his rifle or send it flying if things went wrong. The pale green snake moved slowly without a sound. Since I didn’t move and stayed still, the snake slid deep into the field.
It moved so quietly and swiftly that if I hadn’t kept following it with my eyes, I would already have lost sight of it. The farther away the snake went, the more the tension that had been crushing my whole body eased. How did I ever carry one of those around in my bag? I must have been fearless in an urgent situation.
By the time the snake had gone quite far away, only the backs of the Infinite Church followers could be seen in the distance. I gestured to Sin Haeryang that we should leave. I restrained the urge to rush out without looking back. As I slowly walked out of the yam field, a warning sign installed in the corner caught my eye for the first time.
A grinning snake had been drawn very cutely on the warning sign, but in reality, they absolutely did not look like that. The sign, written in Chinese, English, Korean, and Japanese, read as follows.
[Beware of snakes! For experimental purposes, researchers are raising one snake in each designated area. If you don’t want to be bitten, do not enter the fields. For areas containing snakes, please refer to post No. 183 on the underwater base bulletin board. If a snake escapes or is found elsewhere, the contact information is below. If you are bitten by a snake, go to the emergency room while praying and do not call me. Beware of snakes!]
I scanned the researcher’s contact information written beneath the sign with soulless eyes and thought, ……Just like the people in this underwater base seem a little crazy, the researchers seem to be going a little crazy too.
If I had seen this warning sign from the start, I would never have walked into the yam field of my own accord. No wonder there was netting set up around this yam field up to knee height. When we entered the field, I’d thought the fence had been put up to divide it from the other fields, but now that I looked at it, it seemed like a physical barrier to keep the snakes from leaving the field.
How were they feeding the snakes? Since this was an artificial farm, unless they had bred them separately, there shouldn’t be any mice or bugs. Were the researchers raising them while even taking care of their meals separately for the sake of research? I thought of the snake in Baekho-dong’s room. It had been kept separately in an enclosure all by itself, so what had it been living on? Was that snake also being raised by the researchers?
After taking two steps with the warning sign at my back, I suddenly had a question when I thought of how incredibly calm Sin Haeryang had been, so I asked,
“Did you jump into the yam field even though you knew there were snakes there?”
“Yes.”
Sin Haeryang’s answer came back as if it were obvious. Before my eyes stood a person who, if told to choose between encountering cult followers and entering a field full of snakes, would rather choose the snake pit. What was he going to do if he got bitten? Come to think of it, cult followers could bite too, like snakes. ……If he had given me the choice, I think it would have taken me much longer to decide.
I glanced back now and then at the yam field growing farther away, then looked at the flimsy-looking fences and said,
“What are they going to do if a snake escapes while being kept like that? Wouldn’t it be better to completely surround the field with things like gasoline, alum, naphthalene, cigarette ash, or garlic?”
Were the people in the underwater base not worried at all? When I mentioned every snake repellent I knew of, Sin Haeryang answered as he walked.
“I don’t know about the others, but cigarette ash isn’t very effective.”
“How do you know?”
“Long ago, Aeyeong once smeared herself with cigarette ash, saying she was going to drive away a snake, then lay face down on the floor and waited there for a long time. She said the only thing that happened was that the smell soaked into her clothes, and she didn’t drive the snake away.”
“When you say she didn’t…… drive it away, what did she do?”
“She said she caught it with a knife.”
A snake appeared while she was lying face down, and no matter how long she waited, it didn’t leave her vicinity, so she had to catch it with a knife. If I fought a snake one-on-one, I felt like I’d lose one hundred percent. How were Baek Aeyeong and Seo Jihyeok so fearless? Judging by Sin Haeryang’s attitude, he didn’t seem afraid of snakes either. To them, humans must be far scarier than animals.
Fortunately, no more Infinite Church followers appeared after that. As we walked across the farm, I understood why Sin Haeryang had moved so quickly. The farm was huge, but there were fewer fields than I’d expected where large crops grew tall enough to hide a person’s body.
A farm was, unexpectedly, an open space, so unless you lay flat and crawled around, it was immediately obvious who was coming and going and how. The moment we left the farm, I felt the hot air and the unpleasant, heavy humidity disappear. Right in front of us was a large wooden café.
The name of the café was written in large letters as [Taiga], and beside it, pines and firs that stretched almost to the ceiling practically surrounded the café.
There was a map next to the café. This café called Taiga seemed to be the hub connecting the First Underwater Base. Centered around this wooden café, it was directly connected to [The Garden of the Hesperides], which was both a botanical garden and a flower garden, and the diving area, escape craft port, and submersible port were also connected around the café.
The name of the farm I had come out of was simply [Bada Farm]. Seeing that “Bada” was written in Hangul, it was probably a name given by the Korean side.
I could roughly understand why they had built the other areas around the café. It seemed to be a place made so that people who visited the hot, humid farm or botanical garden could buy a few drinks at the café and rehydrate.
In front of Café Taiga, two men who appeared to be Infinite Church followers were receiving drinks. The two glanced at Sin Haeryang and me as we walked over from a distance, then naturally turned their heads away. Then, holding the drinks they had received from the staff, they walked toward the path connected to the escape craft port.
Only then did I realize that because Sin Haeryang and I were wearing Infinite Church clothing and hats, they had gone on their way, and I let out a relieved sigh. Strangely, there were no chairs or tables in front of the café. Were you not supposed to eat here?
As we approached the café, two employees were working frantically, busy making drinks and baking bread.
The two women appeared to be East Asian, but unlike at the Second Underwater Base, they were not being held hostage and tied to the floor. I was quite surprised inside as I looked at the café operating normally.
If the underwater base had been seized by terrorists, shouldn’t the employees working there be getting some rest? Just as I was thinking that while looking at the back of the employee busy brewing coffee, she noticed us standing beside the counter and came over while wiping her hands. The employee’s eyes widened, as though she recognized Sin Haeryang’s face.
“Huh? Sin? Do you believe in this bizarre religion called the Infinite Church too?”
Hearing that, another employee quickly shouted sharply at the one who had asked. She looked terrified that sparks might fly her way.
“Zhang! Don’t say weird things! We respect all religions! She just asked because she doesn’t know anything.”
Zhang paid her no mind and asked Sin Haeryang again.
“What do you want to drink? We’re a little busy right now, so whatever you order will take about fifteen minutes. There are a lot of orders ahead of you.”
“Why are you two doing this here? I could understand if the Infinite Church followers were holding people hostage, but they don’t seem to be making anyone work.”
At Sin Haeryang’s question, anger clouded the eyes of the woman called Zhang.
“What? Other people aren’t working? We’re the only ones working like this? Riko! They say we’re the only ones working nonstop like this! Those fucking cult bastards are working us like dogs even while terrorizing this place!”
The woman called Riko looked at me and Sin Haeryang, turned pale, and shouted at Zhang.
“Shut your damn mouth! I don’t want to get lumped in with you and killed! I’ll take out the bread, so shut up and make the coffee!”
“If you want to work so badly, then you work! Don’t force me!”
“Does it look like I’m working because I want to? I’m working because I don’t want to die!”
The employee called Riko and the employee called Zhang began arguing with each other. In the middle of it, when Riko started crying and sniffling, the employee called Zhang made an apologetic face and turned her head back toward us.
“What would you like to order?”
I had been staring blankly at the sight of them shouting wildly at each other, but then I came to my senses and asked Zhang,
“Aren’t you going to take an escape craft and escape?”
“Terrorists who believe in a cult came in armed and are ordering drinks and food in groups. Oh, I’m sorry. I have to go take an escape craft now. If you wait a little, the person on the next shift, who probably ran off somewhere or died, will come. Please order from them—I don’t have the confidence to say something like that. I’m sorry for badmouthing your own people, but the people from your cult really have been eating nonstop. I came out at dawn, and I’ve been working until now, three in the afternoon, without even being able to go to the bathroom.”
“Uh. I see.”