I thought it over slowly, then said to Yu Geum-i.
“......If I spent about a year here, I might become the kind of person who hates the people here so much I’d dig a hole through the floor of an undersea base with a spoon. But, yes. Like you said, Geum-i, seventy-two people is too much. If it were me, I’d dig through the floor of the room of the one guy I didn’t like to get at him, but I wouldn’t wreck an escape craft.”
Yu Geum-i lightly patted my frightened heart—and my arm—with her small hand. Since we were both sitting flat on the floor, it was easy for her to pat my arm.
“Why do you sound so powerless! Have some confidence. And don’t go around saying things like ‘it depends on the situation’ to just anyone. You’ll end up framed later as the main culprit behind the destruction of the undersea base!”
Yu Geum-i opened the backpack of Baek Aeyeong’s that she had been carrying, and when she spotted the bottle of Ballantine’s inside, her eyes went wide. Then she merely fiddled with the cap with her fingertips and said,
“You can call me naive and I wouldn’t have anything to say. But throwing away your humanity the moment you get the chance and fighting like dogs, tearing into each other—that’s too much like beasts.”
“......You’re incredibly strong, Geum-i.”
“What part of me?”
Your mind. Your mind is strong. Even in this situation, you’re trying to think positively and make moral judgments. Just because you’re in a trashy situation, you’re not trying to drag other people into the trash can like a water ghost. And even though I’m acting like a complete loser, you’re not abandoning me and calling me a useless bastard, and so on—there were too many things to list. Am I having that hard of a day? I’m being way too self-deprecating.
“All of you. Your knees seemed strong too, when you fell earlier.”
“You just endure it and keep going, even if it hurts.”
You just endure it and keep going, even if it hurts. It felt like a useful maxim for life. I mulled those words over once more, then looked at the cap of the liquor bottle Yu Geum-i was still fiddling with and asked,
“Are you going to open that?”
“Here? Right now? Alcohol? Absolutely not! I don’t know who put this in the bag—(I answered quickly. It was Seo Jihyeok.) Ah, I knew it. Absooolutely not. Maybe once we get out of here, but we must not drink now.”
As if worried I might try to drink it, Yu Geum-i quickly zipped the backpack shut.
“I have no intention of drinking it either. Let’s drink once we get out. ......When we get out and go to a bar, I’ll buy every drink they have. Seriously. Once I get my first paycheck here, I’m going to spend it all on alcohol.”
“I’m not sure you’ll even get paid. Hmm. ......The closest bar to here is in Hawaii.”
“This damn artificial island doesn’t have a single bar?”
“Do you think the engineers and the mining team would work sober if it did?”
I had nothing to say to that. I thought of Engineering Team Da, who had drunk themselves into a stupor and fallen asleep once, only to get caught by me and become an example of bad behavior. Especially if a bar opened here, the counselor Elliot would clutch the back of his neck and collapse. There were plenty of prescription medications that shouldn’t be taken with alcohol.
“Elliot!”
“Yes?”
“He’s a specialist staff member, so he’ll be staying in Baekho-dong, won’t he?!”
“If you mean the counselors, they’ll be staying on Daehan-do.”
“Oh. ......That’s a relief.”
With a sigh, I took the backpack off properly and sprawled flat on my back on the floor. The floor was cold; if I had still been wearing wet clothes until now, I definitely would have caught a cold.
“Baek Aeyeong is late.”
“No posts have gone up.”
Neither of us suggested taking the elevator up. If Yu Geum-i wanted to take the elevator and leave this deep-sea base first, I planned to send her off and wait for Baek Aeyeong alone. But judging from Yu Geum-i’s personality so far, she wasn’t the type to go alone. She would probably send me ahead and wait for Baek Aeyeong herself. ......Though I didn’t know what would happen if the situation got even worse than this.
Waiting with no promise of an end made me anxious. What if Baek Aeyeong didn’t show up after five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen minutes—even until the life-support system made it impossible to breathe? What if Baek Aeyeong had also been attacked, or something had happened and she couldn’t make it to the elevator? Would I have to force Yu Geum-i onto the elevator then?
Unlike my anxiety, Yu Geum-i asked leisurely, saying she was bored.
“Do you know why an undersea base got a dentist’s office?”
“I don’t. Because everyone’s teeth were a mess?”
Listening while lying down, Yu Geum-i’s laughter-tinged voice sounded like a lullaby.
“You may not know this, Muhyeon, but the dentist’s office that was established in the undersea base isn’t an absolutely essential facility, but it is a nice one to have. The reason you came here is that the North Pacific Undersea Organization has outright decided to gradually increase those kinds of facilities. Do you know what that means? They’ve given up on all the ridiculous efforts to refreeze glaciers that melted away decades ago, or to somehow restore flooded lands, and now they’ve begun to compromise. Think about when the previous generation finally sent around a hundred people to Mars after carrying out the Galaxy Project for so long, pouring in astronomical sums of money, and quite literally offering up lives for it. And what about all the money burned on the Moon Project and the Planet Project? Humanity’s efforts to go into space are starting to stagnate.
Now people are trying to survive somehow in the polluted seas of Earth. In a little while, the Atlantic undersea base will be completed. They practically poured in all the construction personnel who were here, along with funds from the countries around the Atlantic, didn’t they? Soon the Indian Ocean undersea base will be developed too. The sea floor has been chosen not for mining, but as a habitat truly necessary for the survival of humankind.
Of course, no one knows how enormous the side effects of this choice will be later on. Scientists are making all sorts of terrible predictions. It’s easy enough to predict a story like how pests ran rampant and people starved to death because of some madman who told everyone to kill sparrows long ago, but when humans build structures three kilometers beneath the sea and live there, no one knows what will happen to humanity, or what kind of effect it will have on Earth.”
“Like the mess we’re in now?”
When I asked with a laugh, Yu Geum-i laughed softly too.
“That’s right. Like the mess we’re in now. I hope that when people reflect on this incident, which will go down in history as the worst undersea accident in the future, they’ll be in a better state when they operate the Atlantic undersea base.”
“I’m going to survive and give interviews, so please leave me out of the ‘worst’ part.”
“I’m not going to die either! There are still too many things I haven’t done. ......I haven’t even finished writing my thesis! Ah, now I suddenly want to die!”
Yu Geum-i began roughly twisting her own hair around her fingers.
“Do you know what my thesis topic is? It’s similar to jellyfish, but it’s a fish you’ve never seen before, Muhyeon. No, it’s a weird-looking thing that crawls around almost along the deep-sea floor, so I’m not even sure if it should be called a fish. Anyway, if you pour a reagent on it and observe it, what happens is—”
As I listened to Yu Geum-i’s voice, I was able to push away, to some extent, my anxiety and my worry and guilt toward the people who had gone into the Cheongnyong-dong escape craft port. After running so much, once I pushed away the deathly anxiety, sleep came crashing over me like a wave. Before I knew it, I was inside my quarters in Baekho-dong. The quarters were full of water, and the socks I had bought new for coming here were floating around the room like fish. I could swim freely through the water. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, I breathed naturally underwater, left the room, and moved down the corridor.
All sorts of things that had come out of the rooms brushed past me in the corridor. Cups, scarves, chairs, earphones, cosmetics, and basketballs drifted by. Everything was completely submerged, but I breathed peacefully like a fish as I leisurely looked into the rooms. In the corridor, every wall was transparent, so I could see everything inside the rooms. I passed my room, number 38, and also saw an alarm appearing on a lit pad in room 22, which was said to be Shin Haeryang’s room.
People were hiding all kinds of things in those tiny rooms. Prohibited food, prohibited weapons, prohibited drugs. At last, I was passing room 8. Someone was floating inside the room. It was someone I had never seen before, and their hair obscured their face. In an instant, they grabbed me as I passed through the corridor and began choking me.
Even though I was underwater, I could hear the voice in my ears with terrible clarity. Why didn’t you save me! At that moment, water began flooding into my mouth. As I gulped down seawater, I was instantly unable to breathe. I could have lived! I couldn’t breathe. I flailed my arms and legs, struggling desperately to get away from them.
Save me!
I can’t!
Save me!
I don’t have the strength!
Save me!
Startled, I jerked and floundered. Baek Aeyeong and Yu Geum-i were staring at me as I lay face down on the floor, swimming on all fours. Still half asleep, I literally crawled across the floor as I got up.
“How long was I asleep?”
Yu Geum-i checked the time and said,
“About five minutes.”
I thought I had slept for about five hours. Baek Aeyeong, who had gulped down the water Yu Geum-i handed her, looked at me and Yu Geum-i, then pointed to the elevator.
“When I went to the submersibles, all the usable ones had already gone. There was one two-person manual submersible that had to be piloted manually instead of automatically, but I won’t bother asking whether either of you has ever piloted a submersible. (Yu Geum-i laughed hollowly, as if her soul had left her body.) In any case, both of you should take the elevator to the Third Undersea Base right now.”
Perhaps she had already pressed the button, because the elevator was in operation. Hearing Baek Aeyeong’s answer, Yu Geum-i frowned and asked,
“What about you, Baek Aeyeong?”
“I’m going to the escape craft. You two go first.”
“Are you going to help them? I’ll go too!”
Baek Aeyeong smiled at my words.
“You think I’m going to help those two? I just want to know what’s happening. You two go first, like Team Leader Shin said.”
Yu Geum-i spoke anxiously to Baek Aeyeong.
“Those two could be extremely dangerous. They knocked twice! Not three times. I clearly heard it! You could be in danger too, Baek Aeyeong!”
“I know.”
At that simple, chic answer, I grew even more restless and added,
“There was also someone who died of excessive bleeding after their femoral artery was injured. It might be safer to come with us.”
As if she had already heard it from Yu Geum-i, Baek Aeyeong nodded.
“It was probably a gunshot wound.”
“What?”
“There were some people in the submersibles who had died from gunshot wounds too. I also saw signs that someone had shot up the internal circuit boards of the submersibles.”
“Those...... two didn’t say anything like that.”
At Yu Geum-i’s words, Baek Aeyeong smiled, her eyes curving.