The hyperbaric oxygen chamber felt like a transparent tube. My artificial eye probably wouldn’t catch fire or anything just because there was a lot of oxygen inside. A blunt AI voice above my head kept firing questions at me like some kind of god. When I gave my name and said my nationality was Korean, questions in Korean came pouring down.
The questions the AI asked were similar to the warnings plastered in huge letters on the walls of the hyperbaric oxygen therapy center. To the roundabout questions asking whether I had brought in anything that could start a fire and wanted to burn to death in agony, I answered “No,” and to the question asking whether it could scan my entire body, I answered “Yes.” It was probably trying to check whether I had pneumothorax, high blood pressure, or some other issue that would make hyperbaric oxygen therapy impossible.
Once the full-body scan ended, the lights around me changed from red to a warm green. The chamber across from me seemed to be in a similar situation, because I saw it turn green as well.
The AI warned me not to rush out before it told me the treatment was over and I could leave, and at the same time, after getting my permission, the chamber door locked. ......Were there really patients like that? I felt like the AI was shuddering in disgust. As the chamber locked, a slight sense of relief and an anxiety that churned my stomach swept over me at the same time.
[When the body is exposed to 100% oxygen under high pressure, the oxygen supplied to the plasma will increase by at least tenfold.]
The businesslike female voice continued explaining the treatment process, which consisted of pressurization and depressurization. Then questions related to safety came pouring out, and I began quickly selecting “Yes” or “No” to answer them.
[Do you have claustrophobia?]
If I honestly said, I think I’m developing claustrophobia while staying in this undersea base, the AI seemed likely to issue an order kicking me out. I liked it far too much, being able to lie down somewhere clean and safe without running, walking, or climbing stairs, and I did not want to be thrown out. The hyperbaric oxygen therapy was a secondary issue. As for my mental state, even I wasn’t sure.
“......I do not.”
When I answered “Yes” to the statement that anything resulting from failure to properly follow the AI’s instructions was the patient’s responsibility, oxygen began to flow in. Everything I said was probably being recorded and stored as data by the AI, and if a problem occurred, it would be transmitted to Daehando Hospital or the medical device company’s headquarters or something. According to the AI’s judgment, my treatment time was seventy minutes.
The AI continued explaining that the chamber would soon reach 2 atmospheres, so for pressure equalization, I should swallow saliva while moving my jaw left and right, or pinch my nose with my hand, close my mouth, and slowly exhale through my nose. I kept gulping down saliva. Around my ears, I heard a crackling, popping sound as the pressure equalized. The pressure equalization instructions in the undersea base guidebook’s diving section, and the methods for handling sudden exposure to a high-pressure environment, seemed almost the same.
A creaking noise came from outside the chamber. I had been lying with my head on the pillow, but when I lifted my head to look, I saw Kim Jaehee outside the transparent window, gripping the backrest of a chair and dragging it toward me.
It was so absurd that I laughed. It seemed he had no intention whatsoever of going outside and quietly keeping watch. The time was displayed above the chamber Shin Haeryang was in as well. 100 minutes. ......He’s in worse shape than I am.
As I lay there quietly, a panel near my feet turned on and began playing a video for the sake of the bored brain of a patient who had entered the chamber without any electronic devices. An animation about precautions during hyperbaric oxygen therapy was playing. It explained, through cute animated characters, that ordinary air contains 21% oxygen, but the inside of the chamber currently contained 100% oxygen, making it an environment where fires could ignite easily, so smoking inside or bringing in fire-hazardous materials was extremely dangerous. The characters were shown being roasted whole or turning to ash and vanishing inside the chamber. ......I don’t know who made that video, but it seems like one of the best ways to make patients anxious.
Warnings continued to scroll across the screen, saying that the door would open automatically when the time was up, and that if it was opened recklessly, the pressure difference could break it and make it impossible to open, so I should stay still until the time came. There were also cautions telling me not to hold my breath and to keep breathing.
Then, all of a sudden, an observation video began playing about red wolves in the southeastern United States, which were on the brink of extinction. Today as well, the hungry red wolves set out in search of prey. Having already gone five days without food, the wolves have no strength. If they fail to hunt today as well, they will face an extremely dangerous situation. Five wolf pups, not yet able to open their eyes, whimper.
Kim Jaehee dragged the chair right up beside me. Then he set it next to the chamber, sat on it backward, and rested his chin on the top of the chair’s backrest. I watched the poor wolf pack for a moment and was about to touch the ash powder in my pocket with my hand, but Kim Jaehee’s gaze from beyond the transparent window was terribly burdensome.
“I’m bored, Savior.”
“......There is nothing entertaining about me. Please go to Mr. Shin Haeryang over there. He probably has more heroic tales to tell than I do.”
I said it while pointing toward the chamber Shin Haeryang was in. What interesting stories would an ordinary dentist have? At that, Kim Jaehee answered in a whisper, his chin still propped up.
“I don’t want to learn so much as a fingernail’s worth of additional information about my superior at work.”
......Oh. I see. Well. That makes sense.
“Zhang and Riko might come this way.”
“The team leader told me.”
“The Muhan Church believers might come too.”
“They aren’t interested in this place. Unless word spreads everywhere that Muhyeon is here, they won’t come.”
“......I’m tired, so I’m going to sleep.”
“Go ahead. I’ll stay here and guard you so you can sleep safely.”
I gave up on chasing Kim Jaehee away. I rubbed the back of my head against the pillow inside the decompression chamber, but when I felt like I might actually fall asleep, I tried starting a conversation. Caffeine was no help at all.
“How many minutes were you in the chamber, Jaehee?”
“Seventy minutes too.”
“What did you do then?”
“I was bored.”
“When you were receiving oxygen therapy, did the same video about that red wolf pack play for you too?”
The wolf pack, having luckily discovered prey, was moving. Kim Jaehee glanced at the panel next to him and said,
“Mine was a video about the final day of the vaquita porpoise, of which only one individual remained in the entire world, with extinction imminent.”
If it were me, I thought I would have been so absorbed watching the video that I wouldn’t have felt bored at all for seventy minutes, but apparently Kim Jaehee was different. I turned my head toward the decompression chamber Shin Haeryang was in, then shifted my gaze back from the quiet chamber to Kim Jaehee and said,
“May I ask you a few questions that might be hard to answer?”
Without saying anything, Kim Jaehee pulled his chair a little closer to my chamber.
“When you were repeatedly spending that strange day in the movie theater, was there anything like an exhibition hall full of jewels?”
“......It was just an ordinary movie theater on the verge of going under. A place where a young part-timer who hadn’t even graduated high school yet handled cleaning, ticket sales, and concession sales all at once. As for jewels, there probably weren’t any aside from the piercings in my ears or the things other customers were wearing.”
Kim Jaehee took a sip of coffee and said,
“Maybe the Muhan Church made something like that to control this kind of situation. You’ve already experienced it, so you know, but after dying several times, you start getting confused later on about how many times you died and came back to life. There must be a reason why the range that applies to you is much wider than mine, or why the number of times or the duration is longer, right? ......I don’t know exactly either.”
“Have you ever felt an unexpected headache or had a nosebleed every time a new round began?”
“Mm. What about emotional pain?”
Kim Jaehee’s question stabbed right into my chest. Even I didn’t know how great a psychological shock I had suffered while being in this undersea base.
“That......let’s exclude that for now. It’s not something we can measure immediately.”
Kim Jaehee laughed softly and answered.
“I didn’t have anything like that. Aside from my mind, I was fine.”
“Is your hair dyed, Jaehee?”
“Yes. It suits me, doesn’t it?”
It suited him so well that I would have believed him even if he lied and said he had been born with red hair.
“Yes. ......Will my hair turn white too after I go through all this?”
Kim Jaehee touched his bangs and said,
“Probably? The Muhan Church says it’s because time has passed, but in my opinion, it seems like your hair just goes completely white from being subjected to extreme stress. You experience too many things all at once in too short a period. I think the reason they attach some special meaning to that kind of white hair is because this place is a cult. If you took people from developed countries and made them work at a small or medium-sized company in Korea for just three months, their hair would all turn white the same way.”
I let out a hollow laugh at Kim Jaehee’s answer and asked,
“When did you realize your hair had turned white?”
“Who knows. When I came to my senses, my hair had ended up like this. Savior, try running your hand through your hair like this.”
As Kim Jaehee instructed, I put my hand into my hair at the scalp and shook it lightly, showing him my hair.
“I can’t really tell yet whether you just have a lot of gray hairs, or whether your hair is turning white, Savior. Don’t worry. I think white hair would suit you too.”
Kim Jaehee, in the prime of his twenties, said with a grin. You punk. There was a time when I didn’t have a single gray hair either. I leaned my half-raised upper body back again and asked,
“How does it feel when a loop like this ends?”
Kim Jaehee quietly thought while drinking his coffee, then answered.
“......A lot of things. You’ll have all kinds of thoughts. When you wake up after sleeping, you feel like you’ll be in the movie theater. Even if you’re just staying still all of a sudden. Ah. You think, It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Then you think, Is there any way I can go back somehow? And then you think, It’s fortunate it ended like this after all. All kinds of thoughts really do come to you. The hardest part was explaining to my parents how my older brother died. There were times when he heroically escaped with me, and times when he got scared of the smoke and fire and abandoned me, and times when I told him there was a fire and he said he was going to the bathroom, then never came back.”
Kim Jaehee adjusted his hat and said casually,
“It’s really awkward to explain. Out of thirty-three times, nineteen times he got scared and ran away alone, leaving me behind; ten times he took me with him; and four times he took me along but got tired halfway and abandoned me. So should I take the average and tell them he was a decent bad guy? Say, This is the kind of person my brother was? The people you meet will probably be similar, Savior. There will probably be people who help Muhyeon without asking for anything in return, people who act like bastards who deserve to die ten times over, and people who normally help you well but, depending on the situation, behave like utter scum. But now that I think about it, the people living around me are like that too. People who were kind to me sometimes act like shit to others. For example, Richard, the head of Engineering Team Four, hates Asians, but he treats me well. When I asked him why, he said it’s because I’m disabled. I heard Sanghyeon got kicked in the hallway by Richard for being in the way. Isn’t that funny? He treated me pretty well.”
Countless people I had met in the undersea base passed through my mind. ......I think I met people under conditions that were far too extreme. If I had met them in safer, more ordinary circumstances, how would they have treated me?
“What kind of person do you think I’ll remain in your memory as, Jaehee?”
“Who knows. I did want to become someone who gave you an unforgettable memory, Savior. I also wanted to forcibly raise your understanding of my past self by setting fire to the chamber Muhyeon was in and letting you experience being burned alive.”
What? Seeing my horrified expression, Kim Jaehee grinned and said,
“You definitely wouldn’t like it. You probably wouldn’t even want to come near me afterward. And I’m not that eager to do it either.”