Filling the inside of the giant serpent called Apep with water had happened in an instant, but draining it was just as quick. Diver 3’s vitals seemed to be a mess, but there was nothing I could do. By the time some time had passed and the heartbeat and breathing returned to normal, reducing the warning alarms, I could no longer hear anything over the radio. Kim Jaehee pressed the Apep system control button several times and said,
“Normally, when using the Apep system, you’re supposed to fill it completely with seawater before operating it. But if we filled it with water and went to the First Undersea Base, I thought I’d die from excessive bleeding, so I drained it. I figured you wouldn’t like it if this entire area filled up with my blood.”
Kim Jaehee came over, connected the transparent boat and my body with the safety device, then sat beside me as if nothing had just happened and secured their own body to the boat as well. I sat collapsed inside the boat, staring blankly at what Kim Jaehee was doing. I didn’t have the strength to move a finger.
“I’m only telling you just in case, but since Apep isn’t filled with water right now, don’t take off your helmet or anything. Just look straight ahead. If you’re unlucky, you could suffer hearing damage.”
Kim Jaehee pressed a button, trying to move the boat inside Apep, which had been staying at a depth of twenty meters, down to minus fifty meters. Several warning alarms went off, and then we began descending vertically through a section as tall as a ten-story apartment building. As the boat set off as if plunging straight down, I more or less understood why the Apep system was meant to be filled with water. When the human body was surrounded by water, the shock to the body was at least somewhat reduced, but without water, the entire body had no choice but to withstand the wind, pressure, and speed head-on.
Since I was clutching Shin Haeryang’s necklace in one hand, I held the safety bar with only the other. I couldn’t even scream. There were a few stretches where we moved smoothly, but each time a vertical drop came, it felt as though the serpent called Apep was sucking out even the last handful of my remaining soul.
The red display reading -50m turned green, and the door opened automatically. Having returned to the First Undersea Base, Kim Jaehee released the safety device and, as soon as they got out of the boat, quickly took off the diving equipment. Then they released the safety device connected to me. I had no strength in my arms or legs, so without Kim Jaehee’s help, I couldn’t even get down from Apep. Still wearing my fins, with the diving gear on my back, I more or less crawled out of the boat.
Blood flowing from their right thigh ran down along the calf prosthetic and soaked their shoe, and every time Kim Jaehee moved, clear bloody footprints remained in place. Kim Jaehee literally nearly slipped on their own blood. One leg flew up into the air, but the electronically controlled prosthetic automatically corrected the unstable posture, so their head did not crack open on the floor, which was a mess of water and blood. After taking off my helmet, I watched the slapstick comedy unfolding right in front of me, then stared at the bloody footprints and said,
“……You’re bleeding that much, and your leg doesn’t hurt?”
“It hurts.”
“……A person who knows what pain feels like cut someone else’s leg like that?”
“That’s why I can cut well. Because I know.”
The lapis lazuli necklace I had been gripping tightly fell onto Kim Jaehee’s bloody footprint. All kinds of curses tore through my head. Even if I swore now, not only would it fail to make me feel better, Kim Jaehee would probably just admire me and say they didn’t know I could use language like that.
Still sitting collapsed on the floor, I used one hand to undo only the weight belt among my diving gear and carefully set it down. Along with it, I set down the fantasy of swinging the seven-kilogram weight belt like a flail and shouting, You lunatic! Seeing what you’ve done, I can’t travel with you anymore! Be half-dead by my hand right here!
Even if I wanted to grab Kim Jaehee and cause a scene, I didn’t have the strength left to do it. Once the weight of the belt pressing down on my pelvis and stomach disappeared, at least my lower back hurt a little less. I took a deep, ragged breath and reached toward the BCD vest.
“What happened to Rico and Haeryang?”
“They’ll be fine. Sharks don’t immediately tear into humans just because they bleed a little. They like fish blood better than human blood anyway.”
Kim Jaehee had approached from behind, saying they were going to take me to Apep, then pressed down on my diving gear and descended, but since my head had been facing downward, I couldn’t see anything. If they had at least grabbed me by the ankle and gone down, I could have raised my head and seen what was happening.
Just as Kim Jaehee had helped me put on the equipment, they tried to take off the gear I was wearing, but I stopped them and tried to undo it with my own hands. After flailing several times with strengthless hands, the moment I freed myself from the BCD vest and air tank, which weighed about twenty kilograms, I felt a liberation as though I had thrown off all the pressure in the world. As I simultaneously felt as though I had cast off my body and been trapped in it again, Kim Jaehee’s voice came from beside me.
“Sharks are curious like cats, so they keep circling around, then bump into things and give a little playful chomp. The team leader fired a gun and told it to get lost, so it backed off, but then I think it came toward us because of my blood and collided with Apep’s wall.”
The day had come when I felt pity for a shark. That poor thing, both in the past and now, had only ever been used by humans.
“……The radio stopped working properly once we entered the Apep system. Is that normal? Or is only my equipment broken?”
“That’s normal. Once you go back out to sea, it’ll connect again.”
Kim Jaehee brought over a dry sports towel and tied it tightly around the wounded part of their thigh as they said,
“The team leader will take Rico and go to Daehan-do. Compared to a team member who joined the team last and is this uncontrollable in a disaster situation, and you, Muhyeon, who aren’t even their team member, joined the company only a few days before the terror attack, and keep saying suspicious things, they’ll care more about the lives and safety of the other five team members whose survival they don’t even know and whom they can’t contact. That safety-obsessed team leader knows very well what they’re carrying on their shoulders.”
“……You could have resolved it without attacking someone with a knife.”
Even opening my mouth and spitting out a single sentence was exhausting. We had both gone into seawater and come back out in the name of diving, but other than the thigh, Kim Jaehee looked perfectly fine. I couldn’t tell whether kids in their twenties simply had good stamina, or whether I had suddenly grown decrepit.
Even sitting upright with my upper body straight was too much, so I lay down on the floor damp with water and blood, still in my wetsuit. Seeing the state I was in, Kim Jaehee grinned and said,
“I don’t have a talent for persuading people. Are you bothered that I attacked Rico? I could have attacked the team leader, but if I had, the knife would have been taken from me before I could even try. I would’ve been hit a few times, subdued, knocked unconscious, and then dragged off to Daehan-do while floating on the surface like a jellyfish with my BCD vest inflated as much as possible, wouldn’t I? Even if I had somehow succeeded in attacking them, judging by that build, I don’t think they’d care much about being cut three or four centimeters by a blade and having a shark show a little interest in them.”
I stared blankly at the ceiling and said,
“……Other than driving away the shark and having Shin Haeryang leave, there was one more thing I requested, wasn’t there?”
“You’re my buddy today, Savior. You may not know the diving buddy system, but entering the water and abandoning your buddy without consent is practically the same as murder. Especially since this is your first time diving.”
What an infuriating thing to say. If I had been able to throw Kim Jaehee toward Daehan-do by force, I would have done it already.
“I don’t want to travel with someone who uses people as tools. If you had attacked me or Haeryang instead, that would’ve been one thing, but what’s the meaning of attacking someone who had just been crying and throwing up because their friend died? You could’ve spent more time and tried for a better result. We had enough air. What did the shark caught in the middle do wrong? Now there are two injured people.”
“I’m so happy to be having this conversation with you, Savior.”
For a moment, I couldn’t understand what Kim Jaehee had said. I was criticizing Kim Jaehee right now, so why were they happy about it?
“……Why are you happy? I’m insulting you right now, Jaehee.”
“It means you still have room left in your mind, Muhyeon.”
Kim Jaehee was saying it with a smile, but it felt like we weren’t communicating at all.
“What?”
“I’m glad it seems you’ve met fairly decent people until now and were well protected, so you suffered fewer terrible things on your way here. I’m happy to have met, in the middle of the loop, a savior who is this strong and gentle, and who still has the mental capacity to care for others. You probably don’t know how grateful I am that you’re someone who still thinks conversation works between people, who believes it’s worth extending goodwill first, and who thinks there is hope. A misanthrope or a narcissist can’t become a true savior, you see.”
Kim Jaehee examined the prosthetic around their calf, then touched the scraps of cloth torn by the blade and said,
“They might become a savior, but what would lie at the end of the path that person guides others down? Fortunately, since you stabbed the outer thigh, I won’t be treated like a pervert even if I walk around like this.”
“……So you think of humans as tools, but you’d prefer the savior who saves you to be someone who has affection for humans.”
“Yes. I’m greedy, you see.”
If Kim Jaehee hadn’t been injured because of me, I think I would have leapt up and kicked them. I had already attacked Kim Jaehee enough. On the high ceiling of Apep Diving, a large black serpent was painted with its body twisted this way and that, and the word Apophis was written in English in a very impressive style. Even without legs, a snake could go wherever it pleased. It existed in the sea, beneath the ground, and on land. I wished it would bite Kim Jaehee’s broken head too.
“Go out and apologize sincerely to Rico. Pay for the treatment and go to prison for assault. Apologize to Haeryang too. As for the shark…… that shark must be injured, right? I don’t know if you’ll be able to find that shark in this vast North Pacific. Find a proper organization connected to the ocean and volunteer there, or make a large donation at least.”
“And if I don’t?”
“……You can go on living like that. But the savior you meet someday, Jaehee, won’t be me. Someone who thinks of humans as tools will become your savior. You’ll probably meet someone on about the same level as yourself. They won’t care whether their believer swings a knife at someone else or gets stabbed by one, and if you offer them jewels, they’ll store them in a safe or convert them to cash and spend it lavishly without even feeling grateful. The wishes their believers want granted will mean less than scraps of tissue to them. If you’d like that kind of person to become your savior, then keep living as you always have.”
Kim Jaehee looked at their own thigh, then asked me,
“Are you going to do that to me too?”
“Yes. ……When you stab someone with a knife, it feels this sorry and guilty, this frightening and sad, but does it not affect you at all, Jaehee?”
“It burned away a long time ago.”