Hayley shrugged, then looked at me and said,
“I don’t know what you expect from me.”
“I’m saying that the people who rode the same elevator should stop fighting and focus on the terrorists waiting outside.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m in too much pain, but I don’t feel like helping at all. Let the Asians with guns kill each other. I’m not doing anything.”
Hayley didn’t seem to have any intention of talking to me. Perhaps when proposals like handing over Imin or sharing the guns didn’t work, she had simply given up on trying to persuade me through conversation.
“......Then, according to your original plan, if I’d been hacked to death with an axe and you’d taken Ms. Aeyeong’s gun, what were you going to do?”
“That’s none of your business if you’re dead, is it?”
It seemed Hayley hated even speaking to me. Baek Aeyeong had been listening to this disastrous conversation with a blunt expression, then gave a slight nod. Then she asked Jennifer, who was groaning.
“Jennifer. How’s your leg?”
“......What are you asking for? Are you joking right now? What is this? If you want to know how much it hurts, try shooting yourself in the leg.”
After hearing Jennifer’s answer, Baek Aeyeong swept her gaze around the elevator with a frown and exhaled before saying,
“The people living in this undersea base are all the same. None of them know what they did wrong. Everything they do is justified, and everything others do is unfair. Fuck. I’m sick of it. Really.”
Baek Aeyeong muttered a few quiet curses about the undersea base, then jerked her chin toward Jennifer’s leg and said,
“I’m sorry about your leg. But look at what you did. Take a look at the hand of the person next to you, and then try saying you did nothing wrong and were unfairly shot by me. If you hadn’t come at us, I wouldn’t have shot you.”
Baek Aeyeong looked at me for a few seconds, then looked back at Jennifer and said,
“Will you cooperate in taking down the terrorists even while injured? Or will you do nothing, like Hayley?”
Jennifer, who had been clenching her teeth against the pain, exhaled with tears welling around her eyes, then snorted at Baek Aeyeong.
“This much...... is nothing. You think this is the first time I’ve ever been shot in my life? Have you ever worked at a convenience store at night?”
“No.”
“Bastards wearing nothing but underwear show up three times a week to steal a lousy thirty dollars and shove guns in the clerk’s face like it’s the most natural thing in the world. You think that’s enough to scare me?”
When Jennifer swept her hair back, I could see that the edge of her right ear was uneven. It looked as though a piece about half the size of a pinky nail had been gouged out. Had she been shot in the ear?
“You and the terrorists both. Even if a whole truckload of you came, I wouldn’t be scared. Any bastard who points a gun at me, I’ll kill them all.”
Hayley, who had been listening to Jennifer, let out a scathing laugh. When she said, “Is getting shot something to brag about? You couldn’t even handle one skinny, weak-looking dentist properly, and now you’re acting tough,” Jennifer’s eyes immediately blazed.
Even while she was in enough pain to die, Jennifer apparently couldn’t tolerate being insulted. She snapped back at Hayley, asking if she had failed to subdue a single Asian girl smaller and skinnier than that dentist and gotten her shot because of it. When Hayley shrieked back at Jennifer, “If both the person fighting with an axe and the person fighting barehanded got no results, which one of us should be blamed?” Jennifer shouted angrily, “Wasn’t it your fault from the start for suggesting we go take the gun because she looked weak?”
......They had formed an alliance on the spot, but it seemed they weren’t exactly a team or especially close to one another. When Baek Aeyeong stamped her foot once, the two of them shut their mouths, still breathing hard.
After trading low-voiced curses in English, Jennifer, who had been panting, twisted her eyebrows in pain and grabbed her leg again. The dentist who looked skinny and weak—and was now missing fingers on top of that—asked Jennifer,
“If customers point guns at convenience store workers like that, don’t you call the police?”
Seeing how she answered Baek Aeyeong, I had asked because it seemed Jennifer solved things herself rather than calling the police. If it were Korea, she would have called the police right away. Jennifer looked at me with a gloomy expression and, surprisingly, answered without resistance.
“You really don’t know anything. You think if you call the police, they come quickly and solve everything like they’re omnipotent? Unless I’ve shot someone dead, or I’ve been shot and am dying, the police barely even come. When you call, the first thing they ask is whether anyone’s hurt or not. If I called them for every petty theft that happens at the store, I’d have to call three times a day. And if you annoy the police like that, later, when you’re really in danger and call them, they show up an hour later. You have to handle most things yourself! And if I get scared of people with guns, the convenience store gets robbed every single day! Once word spreads, the whole neighborhood comes by to make pocket money. Then we can’t run the business.”
Every word Jennifer said made everything about American culture astonishing to me. As a wave of pain washed over me, I held my left hand with my right and groaned. Jennifer looked at the plastic bag tied to my wrist and, frowning as though uncomfortable, spoke to me.
“How bad is your hand?”
“As bad as your leg, Ms. Jennifer.”
An uncomfortable silence rose between Jennifer and me. The others seemed to be watching the two of us as well.
“Aren’t you sorry to me?”
The moment I said that, the elevator went deathly quiet. Hayley, far off to the side, looked as if she had plenty to say about my words, but Baek Aeyeong acted as though if Hayley opened her mouth and uttered even a single word, she would shoot Hayley’s leg next. I felt like I could hear Dana’s eyes rolling from all the way over here.
Looking at Jennifer’s face, it seemed she would rather look at my corpse than have this kind of conversation with someone she had harmed. After hesitating several times, Jennifer barely managed to answer.
“......God will put your fingers back on properly.”
I had tried to force an apology out of her, but it seemed she would rather die than actually apologize. Or maybe that evasion—that God, not Jennifer herself, would take care of things—was the indirect apology unique to religious people. If God had anything like sense, he wouldn’t have let a dentist’s fingers get cut off like this. My mind sneered cynically.
Suddenly, I thought of Carter, who had stolen my bag and never apologized, and Benjamin, who had thrown the cat and felt no guilt. At the same time, everyone in the undersea base who had failed to treat people as people flashed through my mind one after another. I also thought of Kim Jaehee’s leg, which I had stabbed.
Sometimes I think that all the efforts I make might really be worthless. The world is full of malice, and people are desperate to devour one another, so perhaps goodwill and kindness only exist for a moment before disappearing.
“The moment my fingers were cut off, I was so sad and angry that I wanted to make your hand the same, Ms. Jennifer. Ah. The first thing I thought was, what if I can’t earn money and my family starves to death? I also thought, my fingers are ruined, but that person’s fingers are fine?”
The awkward atmosphere instantly turned strange. Hayley and Jennifer both wore expressions as though they had never imagined that the injured person who had survived might be thinking of revenge against them.
“But I’m not going to act the same way.”
“......”
“If I cut off your fingers for the sake of revenge, Ms. Jennifer, it seems like after you get treatment, it’ll take twice as long before I can get surgery on mine. And doing something like that won’t make my severed fingers snap back into place. It won’t make my awful mental health dramatically better, either.”
I remembered Jennifer from right before I rushed into the exhibition hall, when she had recognized my fear. Jennifer, at that moment when she had been forced to lie bound on the floor, wriggling unhappily and moving her head, only for our eyes to meet by chance. She could have told the terrorists that I was there, but she hadn’t. We hadn’t known each other at all.
“I think you were terrified, and that’s why you made this choice. If we’d met somewhere else, because of something else, maybe we might have had a better relationship.”
It was a little sad to think that I was holding onto a mirage the other person didn’t even remember, but there was nothing I could do about it.
“If you feel even a little sorry toward me, please help us fight the terrorists and escape this place. Please cooperate so I can get to a hospital and have surgery as quickly as possible.”
I had to make the effort first. So that a world filled only with malice would not be created. For a moment, an awkward silence enveloped us. Everyone looked at me, then at Jennifer. Jennifer avoided their gazes, her eyes darting around, then seemed uncomfortable as she sighed and said,
“I do think I went too far.”
Baek Aeyeong looked at Jennifer and gave a small nod.
The elevator seemed to slow for an instant, so I turned my head and saw that the central elevator had arrived at the Second Undersea Base and was slowly stopping. The elevator doors did not open and remained shut as it came to a halt. It seemed to have stopped because someone outside had pressed the button, but the doors did not open. No one spoke. Inside the elevator, it was quiet except for the occasional groan.
Baek Aeyeong broke the silence and asked Dana,
“Dana. What about you? You’re a safety officer for the undersea base. What are you going to do?”
There were safety officers in the undersea base? Dumbfounded, I looked at the person working in a profession I had thought didn’t exist here at all. Dana looked at me and Baek Aeyeong with distrustful eyes and said,
“I’m going to stay right here. If you’re going to fight, then fight among yourselves. So what if I’m a safety officer? What do you want me to do? Fight terrorists? If I die, are you going to take responsibility?”
Baek Aeyeong looked at the three of them, then nodded.
“Fine. I understand your opinions clearly. Even with no time to spare, I think we’ve talked enough. I think it’s time for me to collect payment.”
Not understanding what she meant, I looked at Baek Aeyeong. Baek Aeyeong stood alone, leaning against the elevator wall, and said,
“Muhyeon and I could have just ignored the three of you and ridden the elevator down. Honestly, I said we should leave you behind. I judged that letting you into this cramped space was too dangerous. But Mr. Muhyeon said we should take you with us. It’s true that one or two terrorists might have been hiding among you, but even so, Mr. Muhyeon and I accepted you. And what did we get in return?”