After forcing me to stretch, Shin Haeryang handed me an old wetsuit and told me to put it on. Riko had already taken the wetsuit she received from Shin Haeryang and disappeared into the second-floor shower room. I was about to head to the men’s shower room when I looked at the wetsuit and asked,
“Do I wear underwear underneath?”
“What fabric is your underwear?”
What was my underwear made of again? Should I have just put it on over my underwear without asking such questions? After a brief moment of consideration, I answered,
“I think it’s just cotton.”
“It’ll get completely soaked. Normally, you should wear swimming trunks or sports underwear underneath, but given the current situation, it’s better to wear the wetsuit without anything on.”
Thankfully, I asked before putting it on.
“…Do I really have to wear a wetsuit? The seawater doesn’t seem that cold.”
This wetsuit Shin Haeryang handed me seemed to be one from the communal clothing, and he was telling me to wear it against my bare skin. In my mind, my sense of hygiene was screaming at me not to put it on. It was chilly, but the seawater was warmer than a cold bath, so couldn’t I just go without the wetsuit? What was I supposed to do when I had to take this off later? Shin Haeryang spoke firmly,
“Water steals heat twenty times faster than air. It’s also to prevent abrasions, but you need to wear it to slow down heat loss.”
At those words, I abandoned my brief resistance and headed to the shower room with the wetsuit. Shin Haeryang shouted at the back of my head,
“You need to put it on while getting wet. Get in and out as quickly as possible.”
As I put on the wetsuit, I realized why Shin Haeryang had said that. Trying to put it on over bare skin, it wouldn’t go on easily, so I had to squeeze my body inside while letting water run over me from the shower. Before putting it on, the wetsuit had looked small, but once I got in, it fit perfectly.
Riko had already come out wearing her wetsuit and was putting on her hood and gloves. We hadn’t even properly entered the seawater yet, and I was already exhausted despite wearing only a wetsuit.
Watching Riko gear up, I put on my hood and gloves, following her lead. As I fumbled along and copied Riko’s movements bit by bit, Riko’s dressing speed slowed to half. Thanks to that, I was able to complete my outfit by clumsily imitating all of Riko’s actions.
Riko, having put on her boots as well, stood up. By the time I had finally finished wrestling with the stiff diving boots and got them on, Kim Jaehee took out a hood, carefully put it on her head, and said,
“All the equipment here is old and communal, so it’s not in good condition. I’m sorry to have to give these to you, Savior. There are quite a few things here that no one would care if they went missing. That wetsuit included.”
“I suppose the good equipment isn’t kept here.”
“Yes. Expensive, high-quality personal gear isn’t kept here. In the early days, they used to store everything in places like this all at once, but things got stolen or slashed with knives, so it changed to everyone storing their own gear separately.”
No wonder the wetsuit and gloves I was wearing looked so worn. To exaggerate slightly, the wetsuit, gloves, and boots were all on the verge of getting holes.
“Can you two just go into the water as you are?”
I asked because neither of them had changed their clothes, and Kim Jaehee pointed at her outfit and said,
“That’s why these drysuits are so expensive. How are the shoes?”
“They’re fine.”
I honestly couldn’t tell if they were painfully tight or just right. Kim Jaehee showed me something that looked like a string of colored bricks and said,
“This is called a weight belt. Have you ever worn one?”
“No. Where do I wear it?”
I wished I would never have to wear one in my life.
“You’ll wear it around your waist. Since it’ll be on the outermost layer of your equipment, you need to be able to ditch it with one hand in an emergency. Watch closely.”
Did having to ditch it mean throwing it into the sea? Kim Jaehee demonstrated putting the weight belt on her waist and then releasing it. When she pulled the strap to the side, it came undone instantly. After showing me once more, Kim Jaehee fastened the weight belt around my waist. The area around my waist felt startlingly heavy. It really felt like I had bricks strapped to my waist.
“Try releasing it. Watch your feet. With one hand only.”
I fumbled slightly but succeeded in completely releasing the weight belt with one hand. Kim Jaehee fastened it around my waist two more times and had me release it with one hand.
“That’s seven kilograms. Ms. Riko will wear a five-kilogram one. Generally, you can think of it as wearing about ten percent of your body weight. Normally, you’d wear weights on your ankles too to fine-tune buoyancy, but honestly, there’s no need for that right now.”
“Won’t wearing something like this make it harder to get out?”
Having to swim with seven kilograms of bricks tied to my waist. I could barely support my own weight. Kim Jaehee signaled for me to take the belt off and said,
“Humans are naturally designed to float toward the water’s surface. You need to wear this much weight to sink in the sea. Basically, it means everything wandering around alive in the dark depths of the sea carries around this kind of weight, whether they know it or not.”
When Kim Jaehee set the belt down on the floor, it landed with a thud.
“When you die, you sink no matter how much you weigh.”
“…I see. I had no idea fish were that strong. Let’s work hard to stay alive and get out of here.”
Hearing my answer, Kim Jaehee smiled briefly before picking up a black vest. Looking around, Shin Haeryang appeared busy configuring the Apep system. Meanwhile, Riko was putting on every piece of prepared equipment in order, flawlessly, without Kim Jaehee’s help.
“Now you’ll put on the BCD vest. And the mask too.”
An air tank was already attached to the BCD vest. Connected to the tank wasn’t a regulator, but a large helmet that looked like a motorcycle helmet. Kim Jaehee picked up the vest and began explaining,
“BCD stands for Buoyancy Control Device. It acts as a life jacket both in and out of water, but it’s also the equipment that connects the human to the air tank on their back. It allows humans to swim.”
In the past, users had to control buoyancy themselves, but nowadays, even the cheapest BCDs automatically adjust buoyancy. The moment I put on the BCD vest, the weight of the air tank caused my center of gravity to tilt backward.
If Kim Jaehee hadn’t caught me, I might have fallen right over. Someone had once said there wasn’t a single piece of lightweight equipment used in the sea. They were right. I felt like I would lose weight just by breathing while diving. And on top of this state, I had to wear that brick-like seven-kilogram weight belt last? I was going crazy.
Kim Jaehee showed me how to read the gauges attached to the BCD vest. There was a depth gauge, a submersible pressure gauge, and a compass all at once, but to my eyes, it looked like three watches attached to me. A sigh rose from deep in my stomach, but I held it in with one deep breath and listened diligently to the explanation. Dying is easy. Struggling to survive is this hard, annoying, and difficult.
The depth gauge, I was told, shows how far I am from the water’s surface. …This is extremely important. So when this reaches zero meters, I’ve reached the sea surface. The submersible pressure gauge shows how much air is left in the tank on my back. Simply put, I suppose it tells me how much air I have left to breathe. It currently showed 300, but I couldn’t tell if that was a lot or a little. When this hits zero, I’ll die, I suppose. After learning about them, they weren’t as difficult as I’d thought. When I asked about the compass attached to the back, Kim Jaehee explained very simply,
“I hope you never have to use it, Savior.”
That was it. Then Kim Jaehee handed me a mask that covered my entire face. It looked just like a motorcycle helmet, and it was quite heavy. The divers I’d seen on TV wore masks over their eyes like swimming goggles and had separate regulators in their mouths.
“The divers I saw on TV were using different ones.”
“This is more expensive and better. It’s for industrial diving. If you wear this, you don’t need to equalize pressure. And it has radio communication too.”
How expensive must equipment capable of radio communication underwater be?
“…How much do these usually cost?”
“Just this mask alone probably costs about two million won. The Apep diving management staff scrutinize these full-face masks with a hawk’s eye every time they rent them out and get them back, checking if there’s so much as a scratch.”
The moment I put on the helmet-like mask, an earpiece pushed into my ear and a microphone hung right in front of my mouth. The world beyond the mask was narrow and uncomfortable. The weight of life pressed down on my entire body so much that I wanted to throw off everything I was wearing immediately.
As soon as I removed the mask, Shin Haeryang sprayed defogging agent inside my mask before going to Riko. He sprayed defogging agent on Riko’s mask as well. Riko vigorously rubbed the inside of her mask lens with her fingertip, then dipped just the lens part into the seawater inside the Apep and rinsed it. Kim Jaehee said to me with what sounded like regret,
“If you don’t use defogging agent, moisture will fog up the inside of the mask. It works with spit too, so I was going to offer to apply some saliva for you.”
“…I’m fine. I’ll just live without looking ahead.”
I too rinsed only the mask lens, following Riko. The mask lens seemed cleaner than before. Shin Haeryang and Kim Jaehee also put on their gear quickly—at speeds ten times faster than mine—and what they were carrying looked much heavier than my equipment.
When I put the fins on my feet, I had to walk backward. Ducks walk forward, so why do humans walk backward? After putting the mask back on and fastening the weight belt around my waist, I couldn’t help but pant for breath.
What the hell is the total weight of all this? Following Shin Haeryang’s instructions, I entered the Apep, and it was like a log flume ride with seawater rising to my waist. With Kim Jaehee’s help, I barely managed to board the Apep, but I felt like I was going to die from the exertion.
“Huff, huff, huff. How… huff, huff, huff… how much does the scuba diving equipment I’m wearing weigh right now?”
“It’s about thirty kilograms.”
Shin Haeryang’s voice came through the radio in my mask, and I was shocked by how matter-of-fact he sounded. Moreover, Riko, who I estimated to weigh around fifty kilograms, was boarding the Apep looking more composed than me while carrying about thirty kilograms of equipment, even in a drunken state. Shin Haeryang continued speaking over the radio,
“The Apep system was created for industrial diving. The advantage of Apep is that it can safely change water pressure while allowing you to experience various depths, and you can easily move to desired locations. We’ll use the Apep to move to a depth of ten meters.”
So we were ascending through this snake’s body. The seawater gradually rose, and cold water kept entering through the wrists and ankles of my wetsuit. For a moment, fear washed over me, but there were three people here who were better divers than me. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.
“Current water temperature is nineteen degrees. At our destination of negative ten meters, the temperature will be twenty-four degrees. It’s twenty-six degrees at the sea surface, so it will get progressively warmer as you go up. I’ve set the Apep system temperature to twenty-four degrees, so the temperature will rise shortly. Checking diver status. Kim Jaehee.”
“I’m fine.”
“Riko.”
“So-so.”
“Park Muhyeon.”
“…I’m fine.”