I struggled not to fall at the sudden movement. Before I knew it, I was holding Yu Geum-i’s hand and running away from the escape craft. My legs had no strength in them. I nearly fell over again and again, but Yu Geum-i gripped my hand tightly and pulled me up. Tears suddenly sprang to my eyes. Was Yu Geum-i even 165 centimeters tall? She was so small, her hands were so small, and yet she was incredibly strong. Before I knew it, my eyes were brimming with tears, and everything ahead of me looked hazy.
When Yu Geum-i, who had been running ahead down the empty corridor, slipped and fell, it was my turn to pull her back up. She must have struck her knee against the floor; swallowing a groan, she clung to my arm and got to her feet. Though we fell again and again, we ran back the way we had come at full speed, like mad people.
We passed the stairs toward the laundry room and the lodgings, Cheongnyong-dong Recreation Room 2 and the restroom, the shower room, Cheongnyong-dong Recreation Room 1 and another restroom, then turned into the corridor where the Cheongnyong-dong elevator was. At that moment, my eyes met the eyes of the enormous dragon coiled around the elevator. Ah. So if you look at the dragon from the Cheongnyong-dong side, you can see its face and eyes. When I saw it earlier while walking over from Jungang-dong, I couldn’t see its eyes. It felt as though some colossal living creature were mocking the lowly beings running toward the elevator.
Only after reaching the elevator buttons did Yu Geum-i slide down the wall and sit. I was about to collapse backward, but then I remembered the cat and snake in my backpack and fell forward instead. The cold floor of Cheongnyong-dong touched my cheek. Were the cleaning robots doing a good job mopping the floors these days?
After running so much, I was out of breath. It felt like my lungs were about to burst out of my mouth. Even if someone threatened to kill me, I couldn’t run anymore. I wondered if I had ever run that fast in my entire adult life. As I lay there trying to catch my breath, Yu Geum-i took water out of her backpack with trembling hands.
“Drink some water.”
“......You drink first.”
While Yu Geum-i drank, I lay on the floor and rested, but when she threatened to pour it over my head if I didn’t drink, I forced myself up. After barely managing to drink water like a human being and regaining my senses, it occurred to me that Baek Ae-yeong still had not come to the elevator.
As we waited, I opened my backpack and checked the cat first. Its eyes were wide and round, as if asking why I had done such a thing. The cat, which had been forced to ride an unwanted roller coaster, tried to escape from the backpack, and I pressed its head back inside and immediately zipped it shut.
“The cat’s fine.”
Thinking that if the cat could understand me, it would have showered me with abuse, I opened the snake bag. The snake was curled up in a small pocket at the very innermost part of the backpack, not moving at all. At least it had been in the pocket closest to my back, snug against my body, so it didn’t seem to have taken too hard a shock—but that was a human perspective, so I had no way of knowing what the snake felt.
“I’m not sure about the snake.”
I took a few candies from my backpack and handed them to Yu Geum-i, but she shook her head.
“I ran so much I don’t have an appetite.”
“Just keep one in your mouth, at least.”
Yu Geum-i accepted the candy, struggled with the wrapper as if she had no strength in her hands, then sighed.
“What do we do now?”
“Good question.”
It had definitely been twice. It meant we shouldn’t come in. Then something must have happened the moment they entered the escape craft port. Yu Geum-i began muttering, perhaps trying to organize her thoughts.
“There’s definitely someone in the escape craft port. And who was the person in the laundry room?”
“Victoria.”
When I barely managed to say the name I had only heard once and could hardly remember, the image of her sitting against the wall with a towel over her came back to me. Every time I thought about it, goosebumps rose on my skin. Yu Geum-i nodded.
“That’s right. Victoria. Victoria must have been attacked there and made it as far as the laundry room. The bloodstains led that way too. And then she died there because she lost too much blood.”
“The person who attacked her must have had some reason to do it. Maybe there weren’t enough escape craft, or maybe they disliked her from before—there could be all sorts of reasons, right?”
Hearing me, Yu Geum-i frowned. After letting out a long sigh, she said,
“If the attacker took control of the escape craft, why would they still be there instead of escaping? Shin Hae-ryang or Seo Ji-hyeok must have told us not to come in because it was dangerous enough that the two of us shouldn’t enter.”
“True. ......Why couldn’t they escape? Maybe the escape craft were tampered with so they couldn’t launch, like the ones in Jujak-dong, or maybe they’re broken?”
“Then shouldn’t that person also be moving right away, like us, to board an escape craft in another escape wing? Or at least going to take the elevator?”
“Uh...... right?”
Yu Geum-i nodded.
“Muhyeon. I thought the person who attacked Victoria wouldn’t be near the escape craft port anymore. We arrived after Victoria had already died. So I thought the perpetrator would have already escaped by then, or even if they couldn’t, they would have moved somewhere else.”
“Uh...... You could think of it that way.”
As I thought about it, there was one thing Yu Geum-i had not pointed out, so I asked,
“What if the escape craft are fine, but they’re still there without escaping?”
Yu Geum-i frowned at my opinion. It seemed she did not even want to imagine that there was someone who had not escaped this undersea base when the escape craft were intact, water was leaking in, and gunshots were ringing out.
“Wouldn’t that be a complete lunatic?”
“Right?”
“Who could it be? Those two are big and tall, and yet they felt threatened enough to tell us not to come in.”
“Exactly. Who could it be?”
“At the very least, it means they have a weapon capable of putting a hole in someone’s thigh, right?”
“I suppose so?”
“Do you have the ability to subdue someone with a weapon?”
At Yu Geum-i’s question, I nearly burst out laughing.
“I’m the kind of person who could be subdued by someone merely holding out a spoon.”
Among the people I had met, no immoral person came to mind. Of the humans I had met over the five days I had been in the undersea base, I probably knew more about the state of their teeth than about their character. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve and let out a sigh.
If it were a dental problem, I could step in, but efficiently running away in this enormous undersea base or dealing with armed people was not my specialty. Sitting with my back against the elevator wall, waiting for someone to come, I listened as Yu Geum-i put the candy in her mouth, rolled it around, and huffed.
“......No, the more I think about it, the more absurd it is! In this emergency, when it would be hard to escape even if everyone held hands and helped each other, I don’t understand why people are attacking one another! Can you believe they were shooting at each other to board the escape craft?! And Cheongnyong-dong just now too. Does it make any sense to deliberately attack people? No, and didn’t they say they’d known each other’s faces and worked together for a long time? They should be thinking about helping one another escape! Some people escape on the Jujak-dong escape craft and don’t die! Some people just leave without helping those trapped in the water!”
Because she was rolling the candy around with her tongue as she ate it, her pronunciation faltered now and then, but after listening to Yu Geum-i growl for a while, I asked,
“Even if that person you’d known for so long was your professor, or someone from the same lab as you?”
At my wicked words, Yu Geum-i snorted and said, Hah!
“Don’t be ridiculous, Muhyeon. Do you think I’ve only met people I liked in my life? There are truly good people in the world, but there are also pieces of human garbage, and I’ve met plenty of people I wished would get hit by a drunk driver and die while walking down the street. But in a dangerous situation like this, when selfless cooperation from others is desperately needed, I am not such a petty person that I would drag out every old grievance and demand they pay for it right now. And if something bothered me, I’d say it to their face and either apologize or get an apology. I’m not the kind of person who remembers it, waits until the situation changes later, then pulls out a sharpened knife and stabs them with it!”
“......I’m sorry for saying something nasty.”
“......I was too sharp too. I’m sorry.”
Amazing. I understood how Yu Geum-i was able to be acquainted with so many people, with more than half the people in the undersea base. I had tried to test Yu Geum-i, only to get struck by my own question instead. I was the exact opposite of Yu Geum-i.
Compared to Yu Geum-i, I was nothing but a petty little man. Because every time something happened, I stored away grievances as if collecting points. I was not good with words, so I was not good at arguing against the unfair things that happened to me, and I had never been lucky enough to have many people on my side or to be in a situation favorable to me.
The only way I had to endure humiliation was to endure it, and the only thing I could do was remember that situation well. I thought that someday, if the scales tilted and I, the weak one, gained the advantage, I would return the things I had unwillingly suffered in kind, or take revenge. Because only the victims remember harm. The perpetrators have no need to remember it. On top of that, it is truly rare for them to voluntarily place themselves in the position of the weak.
That was why, when a world-upending situation like this occurred, I thought it only natural that those who had been harboring dissatisfaction or enduring things would explode. Selfless cooperation? People usually only want cooperation when the situation becomes unfavorable to them; when it is favorable, they trample others.
I am not such a good person. But fortunately, I had only been in the undersea base for five days, and during that time there had been no one who had become my enemy. People like Kim Ga-yeong or Yu Geum-i were people I did not know well, so there was nothing for me to dislike or hold a grudge over, and that was why I had thought of saving them. If they had been my mortal enemies, I would certainly have ignored them, thinking, Well then, go become fish food.
......I don’t know. Would I really have made up my mind not to save them?
“Unlike you, Geum-i, I’m the type who accumulates grudges. And if there were someone here I truly despised, and a special situation like this occurred, I might wish for them to disappear from the world very painfully through some mistake or accident.”
“Everyone’s like that. You wish for a mistake or an accident. It’s not as if you’d personally pick up a gun or knife in this situation and go kill them, or damage at least seventy-two escape craft just to make sure everyone else is ruined.”
“Uh. Still...... it could depend on the situation.”
At those words, Yu Geum-i furrowed her brows.
“A person who says it depends on the situation is carrying a cat and a snake on his back right now? Even if there are situations and people you don’t like, don’t try to drag them down to the floor. Think about climbing up!”
This young lady was truly honest. ......I could still throw away the backpack with the cat in it that I was carrying on my back. But if I survived and escaped, would I be able to forget the cat’s fur color and those eyes before falling asleep? While reading the obituaries of Engineering Team D or Henry, wouldn’t I think in the middle of the night, Ah, before I escaped, I should have at least knocked on that room’s door once?
I was the kind of person who replayed everything and regretted it, to the point that there was almost nothing I did not regret. Could helping others so that I would not regret it myself be considered goodness? Even if that were the case, Yu Geum-i would probably think of it as goodness. People easily make selfish choices. Because it is comfortable. Because it is easy. Because it is less exhausting. Because it benefits them. I had no intention of condemning those people. But if we could make a less selfish choice and still get out of here—