I spoke to Baek Aeyoung with my voice slightly choked. Talking with her seemed to be helping me escape my panic.
“I feel terribly guilty.”
“That’s normal.”
“I want to get out of here without killing or hitting anyone.”
“Then try telling that to these religious fanatics who attacked this place. Just my opinion, but I don’t think they’ll listen. They won’t stop until they get what they want.”
“I’m so afraid I’ll get used to it.”
Whenever I rubbed my face with the back of my hand or my arm and my vision became unclear, Baek Aeyoung would watch our surroundings even more carefully, then said firmly,
“It’s normal to be extremely frightened and terrified. You’ll think all sorts of things. Did I really do the right thing? Do I really want to live this badly? Even if I survive, you’ll worry about how the law is going to screw you over. What will the people around me think of me? Shouldn’t I get rid of the evidence? Shouldn’t I leave this place right now? But they’re terrorists, so wasn’t what I did right? All sorts of thoughts like that will occur to you. That’s normal. Mr. Muhyeon, you did the most difficult thing of everything that happened today. First battles are always difficult.”
Baek Aeyoung took a deep breath. A hollow smile suddenly burst at the corners of her mouth, and before long she was cackling and laughing loudly. Even while laughing, neither the hand holding the gun nor her shoulders shook in the slightest. As Baek Aeyoung’s laughter gradually grew louder, I began to worry more about her mental health than my own.
There were three dead people around us, but Baek Aeyoung was the one who had killed two of them. Could it be that Baek Aeyoung had also lost her mind from the stress, just like me? Seeing her laugh actually had the opposite effect and calmed me down. The tears that had been welling up retreated as well. In a slightly frightened voice, I asked Baek Aeyoung,
“What’s······so funny?”
Even asking the question was terrifying deep down. If this were a horror or thriller movie, she might suddenly attack me after changing her voice and saying something like, “It’s fun thinking about killing you!” Baek Aeyoung did not seem likely to do that right away, though. Since we were standing side by side, holding our guns and keeping watch, I only stole occasional glances at her profile.
“It’s a somewhat funny story to me, but it might make you uncomfortable, Mr. Muhyeon. Do you still want to hear it?”
“······Yes.”
What kind of story was it? Could it really be more horrifying than the story of me beating someone down with an ax? Baek Aeyoung spoke in a voice that still held traces of laughter.
“When I met you this morning, I honestly didn’t believe much of what you said. I just thought, ‘Ah, he’s a bit strange.’ When you had the gold bars from my room, my first thought was, ‘How on earth did he get that information?’ I wondered if I had eaten something strange or said something stupid in front of you this week. Maybe there was a truth serum in the drink we shared? I thought of all sorts of things, but you immediately returned what you said was mine—that you’d stolen—no, no, picked up from my room. You didn’t ask for anything in return, either. These days, it’s incredibly rare for someone to do something out of goodwill without expecting anything in return. Even when people think they’re doing a good deed, deep down they want something back. Whether it’s a word of thanks, a reward, or anything else. Even people who believe that anything they find belonging to someone else should be returned to its owner still hope for something like that. I wondered if you were doing it because you planned to ask for compensation later. I had all sorts of thoughts. And it was only later that I realized you returned our team leader’s necklace on the condition that I come here with you because you wanted to show me that the terrorists really existed. That was when I started believing your words, little by little.”
Baek Aeyoung probably didn’t know how frightened and shaken I had been inside when I entered her room, thinking that even though this was a disaster situation, I had recklessly trespassed into a room whose owner was absent. Nor did she know that every minute, even while stuffing gold bars into a bag with the intention of returning them to their owner, I had thought, If they don’t properly make it back into the owner’s hands, how is what I’m doing fundamentally different from stealing?
If I suddenly died while escaping and the loop ended just like that, a dentist who had never once received a paycheck from the undersea base would be found dead with a bag full of mysterious gold bars and gold jewelry. The police, out of curiosity alone, would probably visit my family and my former workplace at least once and ask what those jewels were, and whether Park Muhyeon had a hobby of pulling gold teeth from his patients and turning them into gold bars.
Putting my morality aside, after meeting Baek Aeyoung and returning every piece of gold that had been weighing down my bag, I felt as though I had been freed from an equal weight of burdens, leaving behind only relief.
As for Sin Haeryang’s necklace······I was honestly worried. If I told Baek Aeyoung later that she had to abandon the necklace and escape, would she believe me? No matter who was carrying it, we couldn’t take it out with us, but it would mean something different to Baek Aeyoung. I had set the condition that I would give it to her when she reached Jungang-dong because she seemed ready to board an escape craft and leave immediately, and if she stayed where she was, she would likely confront the people from the Infinite Church head-on while defenseless. Yet that condition had instead won me Baek Aeyoung’s trust. I had been sniffling, but now I quietly listened as Baek Aeyoung gazed into the distance with the smile lingering around her mouth and said,
“Whenever I fight a battle like this, I imagine the worst possible outcome. To be honest, I thought you might bring that ax down on me, Mr. Muhyeon. That’s one of the most horrifying things that could happen to me. Rather than fight an armed adult male terrorist screaming viciously, it would be much safer and easier to bury an ax in the back of a woman who appeared to be on the same side. Or you could promise to fight alongside me, then run away and leave me behind when the appointed time came. Or, right before the battle began, you could suddenly say something like, ‘Why should I listen to you?’ and disobey my orders.”
Baek Aeyoung exhaled heavily. Hoo. It was only a large breath, but I could feel a weight that seemed capable of crushing down on her lungs and chest. It was the weight of distrust.
“After deciding to travel with you, I thought of countless ways the operation could fail horribly. If we lost the battle because of my lack of ability, I’d be angry, but I wouldn’t feel it was unfair. But I worried every second that we might lose and die, or end up in some terrible situation because of some other variable. Ah, Mr. Muhyeon. He seems like a good person. But after talking to him, he doesn’t even seem to know the proper way to the beach. Will we be able to get out of here safely? If so, it wouldn’t be so bad to take him with me when I leave. But would he remain harmless or kind to me even in an emergency where our lives were at stake? My head was a complete mess, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
Baek Aeyoung swallowed once, then used her exhaled breath to ruffle her bangs before continuing.
“Wasn’t it safer to travel alone after all? Did I choose the wrong person to trust? If I carelessly gave him a tool, wouldn’t the blood on that ax ultimately be my own? But if I had to fight the terrorists, or at least defend myself, shouldn’t I have something in my hands? Naturally, the more allies and weapons, the better. But what if that person doesn’t care whether I live or die and only cares about his own safety? Looking at him, he doesn’t seem capable of protecting even himself properly. Would I have been better off choosing the crazy Mr. Kim from our team? But if what you said is true, Jaehee Kim is one of the terrorists. If I kept her as an ally, wouldn’t she sell me out right away? And speaking of which, you joined five days before Terror D-Day. Couldn’t you be a spy planted by the terrorists? My heart was a mess from endless anguish, changing its mind every three seconds.”
Baek Aeyoung spoke in an even voice, holding her gun as she gazed into the distance.
“I’ve spent my whole life learning that you shouldn’t trust people so readily. I should have cast you aside and boarded an escape craft by myself. Baek Aeyoung, you idiot! After being betrayed by people so many times, you still haven’t come to your senses. On the way from Baekho-dong to Jungang-dong with you, I regretted hundreds of decisions, changed my mind, then regretted those changes and blamed myself. In one corner of my mind, I thought, He hates violence, and there’s no way this mild-looking dentist would bring a tool down on the back of my head with that clumsy form of his. But then I thought, No, it’s all an act. If you let your guard down, he might beat your head like a drum. ······It’s all right. Even if he beats me up, I can get at least one hit in for revenge before I die. I can’t even say how many times I had to convince myself of things like that.”
Baek Aeyoung briefly checked the elevator’s location, then turned her head forward again and continued aiming her gun as she spoke.
“But you had absolutely no intention of attacking me, and you were worried that you’d beaten a terrorist carrying a gun as if he were a human being. Seeing that, I wondered what all the anguish I’d gone through to get here had even been for. It was so empty and absurd. The fact that I’d worried about countless things all by myself on the way here. The fact that my opponent had no intention of betraying me at all, while I alone had been fretting endlessly. It was so funny. I even thought that if I lived with fewer worries like that, I could have devoted more concentration to planning the operation more advantageously. If I’d had a little more room in my heart, maybe I could have persuaded Uehara to come with us instead of slamming him down and taking his gun.”
After voicing several regrets, Baek Aeyoung realized that she had been rambling. She let out another deep breath, accompanied by yet another regret, and fell silent. Listening to her, I suddenly thought that if Baek Aeyoung had possessed physical conditions like Sin Haeryang or Seo Jihyeok, she probably wouldn’t have felt such overwhelming anxiety.
Objectively evaluating myself, I thought that luck and coincidence accounted for most of my victory in the battle just now. Honestly, if I fought Baek Aeyoung, I felt like she would win with a 300 percent probability. Even so, I could apparently pose a threat to her. When the silence grew long, I slowly opened my mouth.
“I’m not sure which part was supposed to be unpleasant. If anything, it seems you suffered tremendous anxiety while traveling with me, so thank you for coming this far with me. I understand why you didn’t trust me. ······Though I don’t think I can completely understand it. Still, thank you for trusting me enough to bring me along. And listening to you, it seems you didn’t intend to betray me first, either. I’m realizing once again just how difficult and arduous it is to trust someone.”
The elevator descended and stopped with a sound. Startled, I turned around, but Baek Aeyoung must have known it was coming already, because she told me to keep watch from where I stood. Then Baek Aeyoung aimed her gun at the inside of the elevator.