“This is my first time here. Where should I go first? Could you recommend a few places, including the dental clinic they said they built down below?”
“The macarons at the bakery in Undersea Base No. 3 are really good. If you like sweet things, you’ll enjoy them.”
At Priya’s words, I gave a vague nod. I had all but cut ties with sweetness. I didn’t get cavities, but the weight didn’t come off either. Surprisingly, even if you give up sweet things, life doesn’t become so unbearably hard and horrific that you want to give up on living. You simply become the sort of person who shoves more bitter things down your throat. In my case, that was coffee.
“Where’s the coffee good?”
“There are two cafés here in Undersea Base No. 4, and they use different beans. I thought Red Coral, the one that uses Yirgacheffe, tasted better.”
So Red Coral must be the name of a café. Or maybe they ground up coral and put it in the coffee. Either way, as long as it tasted like coffee, that was enough.
“Thank you. I’ll buy you a coffee sometime.”
“You should also go see the beach later, and check out the aquarium and cable car at Undersea Base No. 2. The beach was made when they built the island, but it’s quite well done. It’s prettier at night, too. Undersea Bases No. 1 and No. 2 will open to tourists starting early next year, so it’d be good to see them before then.”
“Thank you. By any chance, do you know where I can take the central elevator?”
I was reading the phrase engraved inside the central elevator.
[Ecce extendit circum se lumen suum et fundamenta maris texit]
What did that mean? It probably wasn’t English. Something like, It operates safely? Or, Descent takes more than twenty minutes? Was it Spanish? Latin? It had to be Latin, right?
The latest translation and interpretation devices could translate thirty-six languages and every document written in those languages. A full set included an interpreter fitted over your teeth, devices installed beside both eardrums, and even lenses placed over your eyes.
My mother’s old interpreter, more than ten years old, required piercing the ears like earrings, had no ability to read text, and could only interpret ten languages in a limited capacity. On top of that, it was old-fashioned and bright red, so it stood out. I didn’t have the money to buy a new interpreter. Even a cheap device that could interpret every language in the world cost as much as a brand-new car.
After paying my younger sibling’s university tuition, I had no options. Besides, the old interpreters weren’t just for the ears; to have a conversation, you had to embed the interpreter in your lower teeth or clip it onto your lips. Rather than clip one onto my lips, I had asked a classmate of mine to embed an old interpreter, only a quarter the size of my little finger, into my lower teeth. Since it was too big to be installed at my eardrum, I was idly touching the interpreter hanging by my ear like an earring when I suddenly heard a voice and turned my head.
“He spreads His light around Him and covers the bottom of the sea with light.”
Fortunately, it seemed to be one of the ten languages my interpreter supported. Since it was being interpreted. Mother had told me not to worry, that the interpreter would work properly. I had been relieved just from the fact that Priya Kumari’s conversation had been translated perfectly, but meeting one foreigner after another like this naturally made me tense. So it was Latin.
“······Is that from the Bible?”
I asked based on a guess, since I didn’t know much. The only verses I remembered were a few I’d picked up while going to church with a friend to get snacks. Love thy neighbor. Cast the stone. Things like that. Was that saying God’s light spread even into the deep sea? Wouldn’t that kill all the deep-sea creatures?
“It’s from the Book of Job. His love illuminates even the bottom of the sea, where there is nothing but darkness.”
I wish that great love would pour down on me a little. ······No. If their interpretation was right, maybe I was here because that love had been poured onto me too. Suppressing my disbelief and aversion toward religion, I offered him my hand first.
“I’m Park Muhyeon, the dentist who just joined the undersea base.”
The hand of a man with solid bones gripped mine and shook it. The white man in a suit looked at me and said,
“I’m Michael Roaker, chief deep-sea engineer. Are you on your way to the dental clinic?”
“Yes. I was curious what the place where I’ll be working looks li—”
All at once, I lost my words, because the elevator that had been on the surface plunged straight into the sea. I stared blankly at the scene reflected in the elevator’s transparent wall. Only later did I come back to my senses enough to look at Michael’s face, and as if he understood my reaction, he said,
“Amazing, isn’t it? Most people who come here for the first time react that way.”
“Excuse me. I’ve barely even been to aquariums. This is my first time seeing underwater like this in person.”
As the transparent elevator descended, more and more different fish appeared. I could see the sea, close to sky-blue, and schools of fish. Wasn’t that a shark? While I stared dazedly at the view outside the elevator, a few of the people riding with me snickered. We’re underwater! I bet you used to have your mouth hanging open like this too. Michael smiled at me and said,
“After three months, you’ll get sick of this view. Then I’ll see you later at the dental clinic.”
Before I knew it, we had arrived, and the elevator doors opened. He got off at Undersea Base No. 2 and left. Most people got off and followed him, leaving me alone in the elevator. A silver sticker on the wall of the Undersea Base No. 2 elevator marked the depth here as -200 m.
On the way down to Undersea Base No. 2, I had lost track of time looking at the countless fish and the green and sky-blue colors of the sea. But the farther we descended, the less I could see. At first, I had been excited and amused as I looked out into the sea, but as the elevator went lower, expression vanished from my face. Was it supposed to be like this? Outside the elevator going down to Undersea Base No. 3, everything was pitch-black. Nothing was visible. Only dense darkness.
As if to comfort passengers suddenly greeted by darkness, several glowing hologram fish stickers had been attached to the elevator walls. Looking at the pictures on the stickers, I saw that things like giant squid lived at this depth, so I began trying not to look at the elevator walls anymore. I had no particular fear or terror of seafood, but being alone in this darkness made me feel like I might pick up a commemorative case of deep-sea phobia.
The inside of the elevator was as bright as broad daylight, and the darkness outside wasn’t so much that it came seeping in, so although I was inwardly startled as the darkness continued, I soon calmed down. It ran for an unbearably long time. When you ride an elevator, time already feels like it passes twice as slowly, but riding one alone in the black sea made it feel as though time wasn’t moving at all.
I was alone in an elevator that looked like it could carry a hundred people. Only after I had wondered hundreds of times when on earth we would arrive at Undersea Base No. 3 did the chime announcing our arrival finally sound.
The doors opened, and along with dazzling light, a woman boarded the elevator, bringing with her an overwhelming smell of bread. The woman, with black hair and looking about 167 centimeters tall, was holding an armful of bread as she looked at my face.
“Oh. I haven’t seen you before! Hello!”
As soon as I heard her greeting, I quickly greeted her back.
“Hello. I’m Park Muhyeon. I’m the new dentist.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Yugeum. I work at the research center. I heard the dental clinic opens tomorrow?”
“I haven’t heard anything of the sort.”
The only dentist who would be working there has heard nothing? At my incredulous reply, Yugeum giggled.
“Then I guess you’ll have to block reservations or post another notice. You need to go into the undersea base program on your pad and change the details. Today’s your first day at the base, right?”
“Yes. ······Unfortunately, I don’t even know where the dental clinic is yet.”
“Really? That’s a problem.”
As if it weren’t a problem at all, Yugeum took a piece of bread from a paper bag and bit into it, then handed me a palm-sized bread roll, telling me to eat. The paper bag was stuffed full of bread, as though she had cleaned out the bakery. I held the bread I had received in my confusion, and when she explained it was a red bean bun, I split it in half to find it packed full of red bean paste. The bread was piping hot, too.
“Undersea Base No. 3 is built in the mesopelagic zone, so light doesn’t reach it. You were surprised, right?”
“Yes.”
“Below -200 m is already deep sea. From below Undersea Base No. 2, it’s deep sea all the way down. You won’t be able to see anything.”
To human eyes, that is. Even with a piece of bread in her mouth, Yugeum’s pronunciation wasn’t impeded at all. I looked at Yugeum’s light hair, close to brown, then at her urging, bit into the bread in my hand. I chewed a mouthful of warm bread. It was good. The elevator filled with the smell of bread.
“Eat it quickly while it’s hot. It just came out of the oven.”
“Thank you.”
It had been a really long time since I’d had a red bean bun like this. As if enchanted, I polished off the entire steaming hot bun. It was incredibly sweet, soft, and delicious. After eating something sweet for the first time in so long, it felt like my brain was screaming, This is it. As I ate the bread, we arrived at Undersea Base No. 4 before I knew it. I asked while chewing, covering my mouth with my hand.
“Do I get off here?”
“Yes. This is Undersea Base No. 4. What you just rode was the central elevator. This elevator runs through the entire undersea base, so you’ll probably use it to get around almost everywhere.”
As soon as the elevator opened and we got off, people poured in as if they had been waiting. Watching them, I suddenly thought of something and asked,
“Are the elevator wait times usually long?”
“This is 3,000 meters down. It takes about ten minutes for the elevator to run. Once you press the button, you end up meeting all sorts of people during the wait.”
The central elevator was located in the Central Building, and if it wasn’t the dormitories, the research center, or mining-related, most of the daily facilities seemed to be concentrated in the Central Building. Yugeum, who had been walking with me through the place called the Central Building for a while, said she had to go to the research center, told me that if I went right, I would find the dental clinic, then waved and left.
“I’ll see you later.”
“See you in a bit, doctor.”
They said treatment started tomorrow, and I was beginning to worry. First of all, aside from the fact that I didn’t know where the dental clinic was, I had to wonder whether it would even be equipped with basic medical tools. Wait, the dental clinic opens tomorrow? What if I get there and there’s nothing, and they hand me a flathead screwdriver and tell me to treat people?