There was no one in the Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Center except Kim Jae-hui. Shin Haeryang looked at Kim Jae-hui and gave a small nod. Then, instead of going straight to his team member, he made a broad circuit of the treatment center. If I hadn’t known anything, I would have wondered why he was ignoring someone sitting on the sofa greeting him and going somewhere else. Now, I understood at least a little why he was doing it. It seemed like he was checking whether someone else was hiding there, or whether there was some other danger.
Kim Jae-hui seemed used to her team leader merely acknowledging her greeting before loitering around the area. Baek Aeyeong or Seo Jihyeok probably did this often too. I walked in a straight line toward the sofa where Kim Jae-hui was sitting, half lying down.
Perhaps she had showered after using the diving area, because I could see droplets of water clinging to the ends of her hair. Looking closer, I saw she had left the hair at the back of her head loose without tying it up. While crossing the farm, I had kept dusting myself off, and whenever I saw an irrigation facility, I had shoved my hands and face into it to wash, but seeing someone freshly showered made me want to wash too. Memories came flooding back of lying flat on floors covered in dust and strewn with trash whose age I couldn’t even guess. Sipping at an iced Americano through her straw, Kim Jae-hui asked me,
“Savior. What happened to your leg?”
“I fell and hit it hard against the floor.”
“Did someone push you and make you fall?”
“I slipped on my own because I was in a hurry.”
“I see. Someone made me fall, though.”
That someone was me. I immediately apologized to Kim Jae-hui.
“I’m sorry.”
Kim Jae-hui handed me the iced Americano she had placed on the table. Did that mean it was all right? I took the iced Americano she offered me. When I tried ordering this after coming to the undersea base, I’d had to ask for a long black with lots of ice and water.
I lowered my mask and took a sip of coffee. Ha. I drew in a deep breath. ……This was so good. As I was indulging in the black drink that forcibly kept me from falling asleep, sharpened my mind, and was made from the exploitation and suffering of others, Kim Jae-hui came closer and tugged my mask down farther with her fingertips as she asked,
“Are the handprints on your neck from the floor too?”
For a moment, I didn’t understand what she meant. I wondered if there was something on my neck, and only after about two more sips of coffee did I remember what had happened on the stairs.
“……Ah. That happened because of a misunderstanding. It was nothing serious.”
“Hmm. If you’d come with just me back then, you would have arrived much earlier and in far better health than you are now.”
“But thanks to that, the people being held hostage were able to be freed.”
“Really? Next time, come with me. Choose me.”
Next time? There won’t be a next time. You and Shin Haeryang are both getting out of the undersea base this time. The moment I had that thought, I sensed signs of someone in the distance. As Kim Jae-hui watched her team leader, who had checked even the inside of the chambers, coming this way, she said,
“I should have followed you, Savior. Breathing in smoke, rolling around on the floor, getting choked, tumbling through dust. I’m jealous of the team leader who was by your side. I had such a hard time being bored while waiting.”
“You should have come, then.”
Judging from Shin Haeryang’s attitude, there didn’t seem to be any immediate, urgent danger inside the treatment center. Shin Haeryang acted as if Kim Jae-hui’s betrayal had never happened. I wanted to tell Kim Jae-hui to try climbing fifty flights of stairs with a washing machine on her back, but I held back, considering her leg. All sorts of old-man scolding remarks like, “You’re saying that because you didn’t suffer enough,” were swallowed down along with the coffee. This was one of the good things about coffee.
There had been nothing fun about it. Every second, we had only struggled to survive. If you’d been there…… No. It’s enough that at least you didn’t climb those stairs.
“I’m glad to hear you were bored. I guess nothing much happened.”
Shin Haeryang asked Kim Jae-hui what he was most curious about first.
“Why aren’t there any Infinite Church followers here? It seemed like there were about two near the submersible port.”
“Who would waste precious manpower coming here? You know this place is almost never used unless it’s by kids like us who got on the wrong submersible because of maintenance issues, someone who got drunk and went diving, a diabetic patient, or someone with severe burns. There is an American employee with Buerger’s disease who apparently got hired aiming for hyperbaric oxygen therapy, but aside from him, only a few kids come here because they accidentally inhaled the wrong gas or because stress gave them sudden hearing loss. And the followers are almost all in the Garden right now.”
“Have you been to the Garden? What was it like?”
Kim Jae-hui, an Infinite Church follower, let out a huge sigh.
“I went to take a look, but it wasn’t that much fun. I’m not even sure what I saw. They really did build an altar in the middle of the Garden. I was expecting them to at least catch some animals, chop off their heads, collect the blood and smear it over their bodies, dance while singing some bizarre songs, and chant weird Latin phrases.”
Had Kim Jae-hui ever gone to a place like that? Why was she describing it in such detail? Had she joined somewhere else besides the Infinite Church?
“Since the undersea base barely has any animals except for experimental ones, I thought they’d at least catch some big fish that bled a lot with a well-honed knife and make the blood spray.”
“They didn’t?”
At Shin Haeryang’s question, Kim Jae-hui slumped her shoulders as if she were deeply disappointed and said,
“Religious people a hundred years ago used to offer anything as sacrifices, whether people or animals, whether to water or fire. They’d cross over to other continents and, in the name of missionary work, traffic millions of human beings and run slavery systems too. I’m very disappointed in twenty-first-century religious people these days. In the old days, they supposedly prepared candles made from human fat, lit them in the darkness, and built altars out of blood and flesh, but these days, they put LEDs in the altar. They use string lights. They open up the ceiling so sunlight comes in better and make the Garden brighter than broad daylight. Of course, it is daytime right now too. Ugh.”
As if she were some sort of fundamentalist when it came to cults, Kim Jae-hui shook her head and said,
“I knew cults had compromised to some degree for the sake of convenience and hygiene, but I didn’t know it was this bad. In the old days, they supposedly squeezed out oil or blood directly from the sacrifices through screams and pain before offering it up. These days, I hear they sign contracts with butcher shops and receive freshly butchered meat and blood, or get it frozen, thaw the meat, and offer it on the altar. They don’t want the hassle of using or storing blood directly, so some make it into pudding and offer that. Others slaughter a lamb once, draw its blood, add heparin to store it, and then reuse the uncoagulated blood over and over.”
Isn’t it…… a good thing that they’ve become modernized? I couldn’t understand why Kim Jae-hui was so disappointed.
“In the old days, they supposedly burned herbs or branches and purified the altar with the fragrance, but these days, they conveniently use diffusers or spritz perfume. They say there’s no need for a bunch of people to mumble Latin terribly, so they record one person’s voice and play it. They even pray silently in their hearts because people file complaints about the noise. The outfits are the same. Apparently, there are hardly any places that dress uniformly like this.”
With her fingertips, Kim Jae-hui lightly flicked the brim of the oddly designed black hat she was wearing.
“They say in other places, they even hold rites wearing T-shirts and shorts?”
“Uh. Is that so?”
“I had my hopes up a bit. The Infinite Church is even worse. There’s no blood and no meat. They offer hundreds of cups of coffee no one even drinks in the Garden and on the altar. They’ve sharpened several large knives with a lot of effort, but honestly, I’m not sure they’ll ever use them.”
Coffee was said to contain the souls, blood, lives, and life force of people in the Third World. As I listened to Kim Jae-hui’s complaints, my first thought was that it was fortunate they weren’t leaving the Garden of the Hesperides, said to be beautiful enough to be called an underwater paradise, submerged in darkness, making a bloody mess of flesh and blood, holding rites naked, and swinging knives and guns around.
Wasn’t it better than Jean or Rico seeing something terrible when they went to deliver food? If things were as Jae-hui said, I wouldn’t have to worry too much about cleaning the tables or chairs.
“It’s cleaner than I expected, and in its own way…… sensible, isn’t it?”
“Savior. I’m so disappointed. You need to hurry over and change all of it. Don’t you have a typical image that comes to mind when you think of a cult?”
“Pardon? No. I don’t, and I don’t want to know.”
“The formal aspects are very important too. Newer generations ignore traditional culture and only try to make the outside look acceptable. People like me who enjoy old-fashioned spectacles will all leave. If they held rites like in the old days, wouldn’t demons, ghosts, gods, or people come to see what they were doing out of curiosity? The Infinite Church is…… far too tame, considering.”
As a dopamine addict, she seemed to find the Infinite Church’s methods extremely unsatisfactory. Was that what people who believed in wicked cults expected? I imagined the state of the Infinite Church Kim Jae-hui had described in my head, then said,
“Maybe. Reality is already hell, so perhaps they don’t feel the need to stage another hell on top of it. If anything, isn’t that a twenty-first-century version of hell? Wasting coffee like that…… What a terrible waste.”
Kim Jae-hui stopped complaining about the Infinite Church and closed her mouth. After listening to Kim Jae-hui’s story, Shin Haeryang dismissed it in one sentence.
“Good. Let them stay in the Garden like that.”
Then he asked Kim Jae-hui whether she had already used the hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and Kim Jae-hui nodded indifferently at her team leader. The reason Kim Jae-hui’s physical condition looked better than before was probably not just because she had washed up, but because she had undergone hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Shin Haeryang said to me,
“If you’re going to receive treatment, you need to do it right now.”
Kim Jae-hui, who had been lost in thought for a moment, returned to reality and looked at me as she said,
“Unless you’re planning to kill yourself right now, get into the hyperbaric oxygen chamber.”
Shin Haeryang frowned at Kim Jae-hui’s tone. I thought he would advise her about her tone or attitude, but unexpectedly, he said something else.
“If we’re going to receive treatment, you need to keep watch so no one comes.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to stop your fellow followers from coming here?”
“Yes. What if Mr. Muhyeon wastes away and dies, leaving me behind?”
Then she took the lead and entered the hyperbaric oxygen treatment room. There were two chambers inside. Judging by their size, one seemed to be a multi-person hyperbaric oxygen chamber, and the other appeared to be a single-person chamber. On the wall was a list of things one must not do before entering the hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
First, it said not to enter the chamber after applying or spraying volatile products on the body, such as cosmetics, perfume, nail polish, or hair spray. The same applied to clothes containing synthetic fibers. Likewise, electronic devices and watches, various medical devices, cigarettes, lighters, wigs, and types of lenses could not be brought into the chamber. A long explanation followed, saying that if static electricity occurred, a fire would break out inside the chamber filled with 100% oxygen, and then the patient receiving treatment inside would be completely roasted. Since there were hospital clothes made of pure cotton, I changed immediately.
While Shin Haeryang and I were changing clothes, Kim Jae-hui promptly entered the multi-person hyperbaric oxygen chamber and beckoned to me. Seeing that, I pulled off my shoes and socks, practically throwing them aside, and immediately went into the single-person hyperbaric oxygen chamber.
Shin Haeryang, who had changed clothes and removed his broken watch, looked at Kim Jae-hui inside the multi-person chamber, and Kim Jae-hui quickly popped back out of the chamber.