“Savior. How is breathing now?”
Learning something new made even simply breathing difficult. Still, I couldn’t stop breathing. I slowly inhaled and then exhaled, answering Kim Jaehee.
“It’s a little scary, but it’s not extremely difficult or anything.”
I was still startled whenever water entered the diving suit, but I would get used to that too.
“Right? If we had time, I’d teach you a little more, let you practice in a pool, and then bring you in. It’s a shame we had to enter the water in such a hurry. You can move fairly comfortably underwater as long as you have the equipment. The issue is how expensive the equipment you can use is.”
“I see.”
“Diving is safe if you make a proper plan and descend according to it.”
“But we came in without a plan.”
“Exactly.”
Anxiety swept over me. I barely managed to suppress the urge to ask Shin Haeryang to change my buddy. When I exhaled, the bubbles escaping from my helmet made tiny bloop-bloop sounds as they drifted around me. Shin Haeryang asked if I was all right, and all I could do was answer that I was.
After checking the divers’ conditions, Shin Haeryang pressed the button again. As the ship began moving upward, it made a loud, rumbling noise. I had never heard anything like it before, and I immediately gripped the handle in front of me with all my strength. Even though we were surrounded by seawater, the noise was incredibly loud.
It let out an enormous roar, as if an animal were howling, as though it couldn’t rise to a depth of ten meters. The ship tried to move forward, but perhaps it was not functioning properly, because it was eventually pushed back several meters.
Just as I was startled out of my wits, the ship stopped where it was due to the safety stop. When Rico reflexively tried to stand in the middle of climbing upward on a roller coaster, Shin Haeryang pressed down on his shoulder and forcibly seated him. Rico stared blankly at Shin Haeryang and asked,
“Am I drunk and hallucinating, or has Apep stopped?”
“Apep has stopped. Everyone, remain still where you are.”
My body had gone rigid, and I couldn’t move. I clung to the handle in front of me with both hands, hanging on as though it were a lifeline.
“Why has the ship suddenly······started doing this? Is this normal?”
“No. It seems to be malfunctioning. I think it broke down. Savior, what should we do?”
Kim Jaehee asked me in a relaxed voice. Shin Haeryang seemed to be operating the ship to make it rise again, but it failed to work properly, as though something were obstructing it. I didn’t know which button Shin Haeryang had pressed, but suddenly the ship began making strange noises.
Crack! Crack-crack! Grrr-crack!
This was ominous. I felt as though the temperature of my body had dropped another five degrees from tension. Over the radio, Shin Haeryang spoke in a gloomy voice.
“When attempting to move to a depth of ten meters, Apep’s system, for some unknown reason, is not functioning normally. We will have to exit at –20 meters, contrary to our plans. Hold tightly to the handle in front of you.”
After that transmission, the ship could no longer climb back up through the belly of the black serpent and began descending backward.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!”
“Waaaah!”
“······.”
“Uweeeggh!”
Over the radio, I was screaming the loudest of all. In the middle of it, Kim Jaehee let go of the handle and waved both arms around. Seeing him like that brought the words Are you insane? to the tip of my tongue, but all that came out of my mouth was an endless scream.
My body was constantly being pushed backward. I had no idea how much time passed. Eventually, as I clung to the handle and endured it while trembling violently, someone began tapping my shoulder. Kim Jaehee grinned through his helmet mask and pointed upward. Following the direction of his hand, I saw red letters that read –20m. Only then could I relax my arms, but my hand trembled as I let go of the safety handle. I let out a sigh as though I were about to vomit up my organs. In a cheerful voice, Kim Jaehee asked to check on his buddy’s condition.
“Are you all right?”
“······I’m not all right.”
“Did you happen to throw up, like the other diver?”
“No. ······Did Rico throw up?”
“Let’s check from a distance. Come this way.”
Kim Jaehee disconnected our tether and moved to the very back of the ship. I had no strength left and was practically limp, while Kim Jaehee all but dragged me along.
“Shouldn’t you stay close if you’re going to help?”
“Beginners follow the instructions of their experienced buddies.”
I couldn’t say anything more after hearing that, so I slumped beside Kim Jaehee and watched Shin Haeryang and Rico.
In the meantime, Shin Haeryang detached the safety line connecting him to the ship, then moved directly in front of Rico to check his condition.
Shin Haeryang’s voice continued coming through my radio. You can vomit inside the helmet. Don’t be frightened. It’s all right. Nothing will happen. Don’t take off your helmet. Keep breathing. Never stop breathing. Slowly swallow a breath, then slowly exhale again. Swallowing vomit won’t endanger your life. Don’t be afraid. There’s enough air. I’ll stay beside you. Inhale, then keep exhaling while making an “oooo” sound with your mouth. Exhale very slowly and press the button beside your right cheek, and the helmet will fill with water. Press the button on your left cheek, and the water will drain out. You have to keep exhaling the whole time. Try slowly. Don’t be afraid.
At some point, Rico took a deep breath and pressed the button beside his right cheek. In less than three seconds, the entire helmet had filled with water. Rico’s eyes were closed, but tiny bubbles continued streaming from his mouth without pause. When Rico pressed the button beside his left cheek, the water and vomit filling the helmet were instantly expelled.
“If you stay next to him, you’ll get covered in vomit.”
As I watched the two of them and listened to Kim Jaehee’s voice, Rico swallowed the air inside his helmet again, filled the entire helmet with water, and expelled the water outside once more. When he filled the helmet with water a third time, Rico pressed the button on his left cheek, but the water did not drain from the helmet. Kim Jaehee saw this and went, “Huh?” before saying,
“There must be a problem with the helmet Rico is wearing. The water isn’t draining properly.”
The helmet remained full of water. What were we supposed to do about that? I was nervously stamping my feet when Shin Haeryang removed Rico’s helmet and handed him the black object he had been holding. Rico immediately put it in his mouth, producing a tremendous number of bubbles, then made an okay sign with his fingers. Only then did I relax my body, which had been frozen with tension.
“What do you normally do when there’s a problem with the helmet?”
“You surface and stop diving. Still, Rico is an experienced diver. Sometimes people drink and dive, then panic when they’re startled by vomit, fall into a state of panic, take off their helmet or regulator, thrash around, and die. The buddy’s actions were pretty good too. You saw how the team leader kept holding a spare regulator beside him in case something went wrong, right?”
So the black thing Shin Haeryang had been holding was a mouthpiece-style regulator. ······The long, black thing that had been following me around was a regulator. No wonder it had been staying beside me along with the gauge.
“If there’s a problem with the helmet, you take it off completely and use a regulator like that one connected to the air tank.”
“If you take off your helmet underwater, can you see properly? You won’t be able to use the radio either.”
“You can see. We’re not fish, so everything looks blurry. The depth gauge and remaining-pressure gauge will probably be blurry too. The radio can’t be helped. Even if you can’t use the radio, there are hand signals. You also have to keep equalizing the pressure. ······Not being able to use a helmet is inconvenient, sure. But what does it matter if you can’t see? Your buddy is right beside you. A buddy is there to help you surface safely. Rico isn’t someone who’s on bad terms with our team, so I don’t think the team leader would leave him to die underwater.”
“Is diving normally this nerve-racking and dangerous?”
“What part made you nervous?”
Everything that had happened since entering the sea. Kim Jaehee spoke in such a bored tone that it sounded as if he had just watched a dull drama.
“I don’t know why Apep isn’t functioning properly. I’d like to go down once more, but the team leader probably won’t do that, right?”
Kim Jaehee must have found riding the ship downward fairly entertaining. Rico had thrown up, and I had thought I was going to die.
“If we can’t move to ten meters, I think we’ll surface from here instead.”
Shin Haeryang spoke over the radio.
“Yes. Though it’s different from what we planned, we’ll ascend from –20 meters. Rico and I will go out first, so the two of you come out afterward.”
When Shin Haeryang pressed the button connected to his wrist by a cord again, the wall began opening toward the open sea. Four long guns had been tied together lengthwise with a gunsling. When Shin Haeryang grabbed one and slung it over his shoulder, the others dangled along with it. Then, as if demonstrating first, he exited from the open side of the serpent into the open sea.
After Shin Haeryang, Rico went out, and Kim Jaehee and I also left Apep and entered the sea. As soon as we exited Apep’s system, a long white line glimmered beside us, extending all the way to the surface. When I lowered my head, the line continued endlessly downward into the darkness below. Shin Haeryang told Rico to hold on to it.
“Can we climb up while holding on?”
“Yes. Mu Hyeon, you can hold the line and ascend like Rico.”
The installed line was thin and didn’t look sturdy enough to support someone hanging from it, but at least it was there. It was my first time swimming in water this deep while wearing fins, but I was surprised by how easily I could swim. It felt as though I were swimming with flippers. I had moved my legs only two or three times when I suddenly shot upward with a rush.
Fascinated, I kicked my legs freely for a while, then adjusted my pace to match the others as closely as possible and continued ascending. Shin Haeryang, who was ascending at the very top, suddenly stopped.
I thought he had stopped for the safety stop, which had to last at least three minutes before reaching the surface, but strangely, Shin Haeryang could not rise any higher, as though there were a transparent membrane above him.
“What is this? I can’t go up.”
After transmitting over the radio, Shin Haeryang circled around the empty space. Like a fish trapped in a plastic tank and unable to reach the sea, he rammed into and struck the air as though there were an invisible wall.
When Rico approached Shin Haeryang, he was able to swim upward, higher than Shin Haeryang, without encountering any obstruction. Rico reached his hand around Shin Haeryang to confirm that there was nothing there. Shin Haeryang moved to where Rico was and tried to ascend, seemingly puzzled, but he was likewise unable to rise.