Sin Haeryang dragged the two Muhan Church believers out of the swimming pool. The knot in the rope that had bound them so tightly came undone and separated the two with ease, merely because Sin Haeryang pulled it in the opposite direction.
Sin Haeryang looked at Riko for a moment, then said he would take them one by one and shove them into the shower room. Riko, who had been sagging backward in his chair, collapsed weakly onto the table. I staggered over to the chair opposite him and sat down, then laid my head and upper body on the table as if falling over.
I didn’t want to move so much as a finger. As if my body were used to lying facedown, my muscles contracted hard, then slowly relaxed. There had been times when, unable to study anymore, I’d collapsed onto my desk like this, and after my spine surgery, I’d had to live facedown for a while. The depression I’d pushed aside and ignored saw its chance, crept closer, and soaked one corner of my mind.
I thought of the fertilizer bomb Sin Haeryang had suggested before. Seeing as I kept being drawn to a proposal that had already been discarded, some corner of my mind must find equal destruction shared by all more appealing than the unfairly chosen happiness of a few. If I gave up on the idea of escaping this time, that might really be the case. But…
When I turned my head to the side, Sin Haeryang, who had dragged the unconscious middle-aged man over and pushed him into the shower room, glanced once at the sight of Riko and me sprawled over the table. Then he grabbed the younger believer and dragged him away. I wanted to get up and help that diligent bastard, but there was no strength in my body. Like a balloon with all the air let out, I had gone limp too.
Judging by Sin Haeryang’s attitude, he seemed to think it would be better if those two drowned in the pool. Even so, he was removing them alive to a place out of sight, and if it had not been for me or Riko, the Muhan Church believers would already be dead. So it was possible to act like that even when someone’s opinion differed from your own. Once the people bleeding, groaning, and cursing were gone, the swimming pool became quiet in the truest sense, and that alone made it feel as though my blocked breathing had opened up.
I can’t give up here. You’re getting out this time. Even if the sky collapses, the earth splits open, and the sea dries up, you’re escaping this godforsaken place. After everything it took to get this far.
Kim Jaehee’s face entered my field of vision and blocked Sin Haeryang from view. Kim Jaehee spoke while lying with his upper body sprawled over the table.
“Savior. How long are you going to stay facedown? What are you thinking about?”
You’re next, you impossible bastard. How did you ever live with yourself when you were bored? Still lying facedown, I said,
“I was thinking that today has been far too long and exhausting.”
“You look tired and worn out.”
“Something terrible just happened.”
“That isn’t your tragedy, Savior. Don’t worry. It’s someone else’s business.”
The table against my cheek was cold. Listening to what Kim Jaehee was saying made all the strength drain from my limbs. Thank goodness the table was at least supporting me.
“I might get up right now and beat your back until it’s on fire, Mr. Jaehee. Then it could become your business. Mr. Riko is listening right next to us, you know.”
“To think you already desire the bodies of your believers. As expected, you are merciless. Very well. I can offer you my back, at least.”
I was already so exhausted I could die, yet Kim Jaehee succeeded in stripping my soul bare with just a few words. Riko, who had been quiet, muttered with his head buried against the table, startling me.
“Jaehee, was it. …I want to hit you too. I wish it weren’t something that happened to me. I wish it had been a terrorist attack in some faraway country. …Now that I’ve said it, I really am selfish.”
I looked toward Riko and asked carefully,
“How are you feeling?”
“I feel like lava has filled my stomach and is melting everything and turning it over. I feel sick. When I hit him with the liquor bottle… for a moment, it felt satisfying.”
In a gentle voice, Kim Jaehee murmured as if soothing Riko.
“Things like this will never disappear from the world. They will continue endlessly and keep happening.”
Then Kim Jaehee pointed at me and said,
“Try asking my Savior for help. Ask him to bring back Jean or Lincoln and return them to you. There is a savior right in front of you, so why are you so sad? What could there be to worry about? Though he does desire backs. Well. Compared to others, he is modest. There ought to be at least that much of a price.”
Riko seemed to have no idea what this cultist was talking about. I alone felt chills crawl over me at Kim Jaehee’s words. Only Kim Jaehee and I knew about the method by which a dead person could come back to life. Did he mean that next time, not this time, I should bring Jean or Lincoln back to life?
Silence fell for a few seconds. In Apep Diving, where no one moved, only Sin Haeryang’s footsteps could be heard. Sin Haeryang approached the table where everyone was lying sprawled out, looked at this sorry scene, and asked me,
“Sir. Do you know how to scuba dive?”
Resisting the temptation to keep lying there, I raised my upper body from the table and answered.
“…No. I’ve never done it before.”
“Then you will learn this time.”
“……”
In this situation, I couldn’t bring myself to say I couldn’t do it. Instead, I asked indirectly.
“Is diving easy enough for a first-timer to attempt without much difficulty?”
“Yes.”
Was that true? I’d never done it, so how could I believe him? The only diving I had done ended with drinking enough seawater to burst my stomach, sinking into dark, cold water, and losing consciousness.
“Is it safe?”
Sin Haeryang did not answer for a moment. Kim Jaehee was giggling, and from that alone, I could more or less tell what it meant. Sin Haeryang hesitated, then gave his answer.
“It depends on how well you follow the safety rules.”
“I see.”
If I had a religion, I would have crossed myself or chanted a sutra. I had never once thought in my life that I should learn scuba diving, but now that I was in a disaster situation like this, it occurred to me that swimming and diving were essential. Kim Jaehee sat up and asked Sin Haeryang,
“Isn’t there a diving bell down here?”
“No.”
“If there were a diving bell, the Savior could go up more easily. What a shame.”
“What is that?”
“It’s a temporary base camp filled with air so divers can breathe. If you go inside, you can avoid the current and the cold, and rest even if only for a short while. It’s also used when sending divers or survivors up to the surface. They have to decompress on the way up, but it’s a device that lets people safely ascend from the seafloor.”
“I suppose that diving bell is usually kept on the surface?”
“Yes.”
Sin Haeryang looked at the state Riko and I were in, then told Kim Jaehee they should go prepare for the dive.
“We’ll prepare the diving equipment on the second floor, so please wait here for a moment.”
Kim Jaehee left behind comments like, I don’t want to work. Savior. Save me. Then, held by Sin Haeryang’s forearm, he was dragged away like a banner flapping in the wind.
In the indoor swimming pool, with only the two of us left, an awkward silence rose. I had almost nothing to talk about with Riko. What was I supposed to say to someone from another department who had just had two coworkers he worked with die?
I tried to somehow think of the words of comfort I had heard before, or knew. But the blood spreading through the pool, Jean’s corpse, and the hard feel of the liquor bottle seemed to have evaporated the handful of humanism drying up in my head. From the place where only my cynical nature remained, the only thing I dredged up was a phrase like, “Do not give up fundamental freedom for temporary safety.”
…I want to smash my own head with a liquor bottle right now. That’s not what matters. I barely managed to offer Riko some awkward words of comfort.
“It isn’t your fault, Mr. Riko. The Muhan Church believers who attacked this undersea base are at fault.”
With those words as the starting point, I began cursing the Muhan Church alone for about five minutes, as if a motor had been attached to my mouth. I poured out, at random and with no order, things like how neither Mr. Riko nor I knew why we were stuck here like this, how with every step I took I was terrified because I didn’t know what would happen, how I didn’t want to see any more people die, and how I hoped at least Mr. Riko would get out of here in good health.
Rather than comforting him, it felt as though I had forced Riko to listen to my own lamentations. After I had been cursing the Muhan Church for a long while, Riko asked in a gloomy voice,
“What about the other undersea bases?”
“…They’re a mess. Undersea Base Four is flooded, and I don’t really know about Undersea Base Three. Undersea Base Two caught fire, and they’re putting it out while suffocating people, and Undersea Base One is in this state.”
“Sounds like me getting ready to open the café at dawn on a Monday.”
And silence settled again. Trying to get Riko to say even a few more words, I asked,
“What kind of person is Lincoln, the man who works at the café? I’ve never seen him, so please tell me what he’s like.”
“Lincoln… has a big scar on his chin. He slipped on an icy road and got cut, but he couldn’t go to the hospital, so it left a scar. He’s bald and tall, so when I first saw him, he looked really scary. When we first met, I kind of disliked him, you know? But if you work with him, you realize he’s a decent person. I… worked at other cafés for quite a long time too, but it was my first time seeing a man that clean.”
“And?”
“…Lincoln washes his hands almost pathologically, shaves his head, and always wears a mask and gloves. And when he prepares food or drinks, he doesn’t say a word, afraid his spit might fly. …When I worked at other cafés, there were so many bastards who went to the bathroom and then came into the kitchen without washing their hands that I felt like I was going to throw up. And if I pointed it out, those guys would say, ‘Do you know how much people love the coffee I make?’ and claim I was harassing them for absurd reasons. I transferred here because of people like that, and then I saw Lincoln. It felt like I’d accidentally witnessed an extinct animal.”
Riko, who had been speaking about Lincoln in a daze, drew in a great breath and said,
“He does have flaws. If you go near him, he smells like rubbing alcohol. If he doesn’t put on hand cream, his hands are always cracked wide open. Sometimes, when there’s something he doesn’t like from a hygiene standpoint, he glares like a rhinoceros full of dissatisfaction. When Jean picked up a cat on Daehando, he jumped about three meters in the air and told him to throw it away like he was going to flee across the Bering Sea. He acted like he’d found the belongings of some plague patient. Said it was crawling with germs or something.”
“A cat?”
“Lincoln said we couldn’t keep a cat in the café, so he temporarily put it somewhere in Undersea Base Four.”
Riko wiped his swollen eyes with the back of his hand and said,
“I don’t even know where it is now, in all this chaos. That poor thing probably died just because we picked it up. Lincoln… Why the hell is that guy dead there? Jean and I only cursed him, saying he’d disappeared and was probably drinking sanitizer somewhere.”
“Maybe good people found that cat and thought they had to save it, then took it out with them. We’ll be all right.”