Baek Aeyeong looked me over from head to toe, then nodded twice. Then she wore a slightly proud expression, saying that we were no longer at a level where people would laugh at us or attack us recklessly. Thinking about it through Baek Aeyeong’s assessment, it seemed that whenever we had encountered unfamiliar groups until now, my appearance had either not looked threatening at all, looked like I had nothing worth taking, or looked so insignificant that they had not bothered attacking.
······I want to believe it was because both my opponent and I were citizens of civilized society, and that they had simply chosen not to attack in this disaster situation. But when I thought of the guys who had tried to steal my bag, or the men who had looked the women traveling with me up and down as they evaluated them, my stomach began to hurt.
I had thought that the moment Baek Aeyeong handed me the tools, she would charge toward the central elevator and attack the two people with guns, but she did not particularly do that. She simply circled around the central elevator like a predator waiting for the right moment.
In front of the central plaza, right before the central elevator, there were quite a few pillars, various kinds of storage rooms, cafés, and rest facilities, and we moved little by little using the shadows around them and the blind spots in people’s vision. We had to move carefully without making a sound, but quickly, two or three meters at a time.
I realized all over again just how difficult it was to move to a target location without being noticed by anyone. It was about a hundred times harder than filming a spy movie by myself at dawn as I opened the refrigerator door to eat a late-night snack without waking my light-sleeping family. But clinging to the ceiling was beyond comparison with anything else.
Baek Aeyeong kicked off my shoulder, the nearby statue, and empty air, then climbed up deftly and hung from a long connected piece of ceiling material with both arms. It took her less than five seconds to pull herself up with only the strength of her arms, as if she were hanging from a horizontal bar, and settle beside a stable piece of ceiling material. It was an incredible level of skill, the sort one might see in a circus. Emma could probably pull off a similar trick. At that display of strength from her flexible, powerful muscles, I was briefly at a loss for words. I didn’t think I could do that even if someone paid me.
Baek Aeyeong looked down from the ceiling toward the central plaza and the elevator. The people keeping watch by the elevator seemed to be talking to each other or looking only straight ahead. Well, who would imagine someone was clinging to the ceiling like a spider? After keeping watch, Baek Aeyeong must have judged that it was safe now, because she gestured for me to come up. So the time had come. I answered that I would just stay well hidden on the floor around here, and only got cursed at.
I let out a heavy sigh. I can do this! ······Can I do this? Rubbing my sweaty hands together, I steeled myself. Then I clumsily stepped on the marlin statue beside me and leaped toward the ceiling, trying to climb up like Baek Aeyeong. I actually flew through the air for about two seconds. And when I caught hold of the long material installed in the ceiling with both arms, just like Baek Aeyeong, I was even moved, thinking, I had a hidden talent like this?
But I had no arm strength, so before five seconds had passed, I slid right down and flopped onto the floor. The fact that I had expected to fall and at least kept my head up, so that I did not smack the back of my head against the floor, was a secret point of pride no one would ever know. In the end, Baek Aeyeong grabbed my arm from above and pulled me up, and I barely managed to climb onto the ceiling. Fortunately, while I was kicking in midair, the others did not seem to have looked this way.
Back then······Shin Haeryang had pulled both Kim Jae-hui and me up at the same time. I hadn’t been able to climb up with my own strength then either. I had used so much strength in my arms that my fingertips were trembling and had no power left. I’m dying. I’ve already used up all my stamina?
While panting and staring at the ceiling light beside my face, I asked when she intended to ambush them. Baek Aeyeong lowered her voice and said,
“If we simply throw something at people armed with guns or rush in, there’s a high chance it’ll just be a dog’s death. Of course, we might win. But there’s a high possibility that one of us will be badly hurt or shot.”
She was right. Even if we threw tools from a distance and managed to reach close range of the elevator, I would already be shot dead by then. I was not confident I could throw the tools I had well either. Even if I threw a hammer, it would probably arc through the air and fall to the floor, and those people might not even feel threatened enough to dodge.
Even if we succeeded by luck, there were two gunmen, so the probability of me getting wounded was high. No matter which direction we attacked from, all I could simulate in my head was us being shot dead by the Infinite Church believers before we even crossed the central plaza.
“Then what do we do?”
“We have to wait for an opportunity. We have to wait for a situation where we can gain even the slightest advantage. Or set a trap.”
I asked what she thought of me whistling and luring out at least one of them, but Baek Aeyeong shook her head. When she said that if it were her, she would not approach the direction the whistle came from and would shoot first, I quietly shut my mouth.
After resting for a few minutes, I saw someone moving in the distance. Baek Aeyeong told me to stay still, so I held on to the ceiling material and even stifled the sound of my breathing. As I remained on the ceiling as still as a dead mouse, I heard voices conversing from far away.
“It’s Team B.”
Only after hearing Baek Aeyeong’s whisper did I realize that the people approaching were Engineer Team B. In the distance, I could see the members of Engineer Team B entering the central plaza. Behind the team leader, Sato, there were only four of them in total: Ichita, Yamashita, and Uehara.
The mood of the team was extremely dark. All of them were expressionless or wore faces full of dissatisfaction. Uehara was calling weakly toward Sato’s back, saying she didn’t know where they had gone either. Sato asked the other team members the same question, but all the answers he got were similar. He looked displeased that they could not account for the absence of their own teammates, but Sato did not ask anything more and walked on ahead.
Sighs and irritation occasionally burst out among the team members. When they pressed Uehara, asking how it made sense not to know where Takahashi was and whether the women did not get along with each other, Uehara shifted the topic to the Russians. Then Ichita’s voice, as he made excuses to the others, was so loud that Baek Aeyeong and I could hear it from where we were hiding.
“They yelled first and threatened us. It was self-defense!”
Ichita was walking with a gun and a slightly smug expression on his face, and with every step, as if proud of the gun he was carrying, he even stroked the stock with his palm.
Yamashita, walking right behind him, looked at Ichita as if he were pathetic, then let out a deep sigh while lowering and raising his gun. He seemed unhappy with the gun, and instead of slinging it over his shoulder, he carried it around as if he were holding a dumbbell.
Uehara, walking at the very back, also seemed to find the weight of the rifle hanging from its gun sling considerable. She would carry it on her right shoulder, then switch to her left shoulder before even twenty seconds had passed, repeating the process.
Aside from Sato and Ichita, the team members’ faces were full of irritation. In particular, Uehara, walking at the very rear, looked as if she were about to throw the automatic rifle somewhere at any moment because of its weight.
As they entered the central plaza, the Infinite Church believers standing watch by the elevator and the members of Engineer Team B recognized each other and their eyes met from afar. Sato lightly waved a hand at them. The people keeping watch in front of the elevator did aim their guns briefly at Engineer Team B, but whether they had already agreed on something or not, they did not shoot at each other.
Baek Aeyeong clicked her tongue softly when she saw that. She seemed to have been hoping they would fail to communicate properly and amicably annihilate each other, and looked disappointed that they were not killing each other.
Engineer Team B seemed to be cutting across Jungang-dong, perhaps with Hyeonmu-dong as their destination. Uehara Sumire, who had been grumbling as she walked at the very back of Engineer Team B, slowed down more and more as time passed. When Ichita urged her to hurry up, Uehara sharply retorted, “I’m coming, aren’t I? Are you blind?” At that, Ichita, who had been elated by his first murder, scowled as if offended and turned his head forward.
“Takahashi, Suzuki, and Tamaki aren’t there.”
Baek Aeyeong’s voice from beside me startled me so badly that I almost let go of the ceiling material I was holding. Uehara complained loudly that she had no idea why she was doing this nonsense. At the same time, her steps were carrying her not forward, but to the side. I whispered quietly to Baek Aeyeong.
“Uehara Sumire is going to run away and head to her room.”
“Why?”
“Looks like she chose something more important than shooting people with a gun.”
“······I suppose. Uehara is very honest about her feelings. Before, she asked me whether our team leader was married, then said we should swap her team leader and ours.”
I was laughing silently at that when Sumire, seeing that she had put some distance between herself and her team, suddenly began running wildly toward Cheongnyong-dong.
Baek Aeyeong told me to stay still, then jumped down from the ceiling. Then she began running at a frightening speed in the direction Sumire was likely to go. A few seconds later, the two running people collided with their bodies with a thud, like billiard balls striking each other. Sumire had been running while constantly looking back behind her in case someone from her team chased after her, so she did not see Baek Aeyeong charging at her from the side like a rhinoceros at all. Baek Aeyeong literally threw herself with all her might, using her elbow and body weight to slam into Sumire.
Sumire, struck by Baek Aeyeong, fell completely backward. Baek Aeyeong, who had driven her left elbow into Sumire’s side, seemed to have hurt herself as well; she grabbed her own left elbow once, shook her arm two or three times, then approached Sumire and took her gun. Then she was saying something while holding the gun.
Sumire, who had been shoved away and sent sprawling about three meters by Baek Aeyeong’s body weight and running speed, rolled on the floor in pain, clutching her waist from the shock. They seemed to be saying something to each other, but because of the distance, I could not hear the conversation properly, and because of the terrain and objects in the way, I could not see them clearly either. When Baek Aeyeong held out her hand, Sumire smacked the back of Baek Aeyeong’s hand hard enough to make a sharp sound and shouted,
“Ask me to give it to you!”
Then Sumire, tears of pain in her eyes, got up by herself and began walking toward Cheongnyong-dong while rubbing her waist with her hand. Baek Aeyeong watched Sumire’s back for a while as she walked away, then headed toward where I was. Sumire’s staggering figure was hidden behind a storage room.
When I heard whistling from far away and turned my head to look, Kim Jae-hui was walking over from the direction of Baekho-dong, singing cheerfully to herself.