I tried to stay frozen with both arms slipped through the backpack’s shoulder straps. The backpack had been emptied of everything inside and spread as wide as possible on both sides to serve as a makeshift rope. Afraid I might slip and fall, I had even wound my right forearm around the shoulder strap and bag strap.
The moment Baek Aeyeong began pulling on the opposite shoulder strap from the elevator ceiling, the flaw in this rescue method immediately revealed itself. My body weight was starting to concentrate entirely on my armpits through the backpack straps. It felt like my arms were being torn off.
Once I got up onto the elevator ceiling, I had to cling to the backpack on my own so my arms wouldn’t slip free. I couldn’t use my left hand. I hung on to the backpack with the strength of my right arm.
As soon as Baek Aeyeong gave the signal, my feet suddenly lifted about five centimeters into the air. For a moment, it felt as if my heart had stopped. I thought the backpack might be unable to withstand the weight of a grown man while being pulled up and tear in two. At the same time, a fierce worry surged through me that Baek Aeyeong’s arms, which were lifting my full weight, might rip apart. I tried to speak to her, but closed my mouth. The Baek Aeyeong of now probably had no room to answer.
I have to hang on properly. I can’t make Baek Aeyeong do this twice.
Both armpits where they touched the backpack straps hurt, and so did my right arm, which was wrapped in the bag strap. If only we had a rope, it might have been much more comfortable. No. Let’s not think like that. Let’s solve this with what we have now.
The fortunate thing was that the backpack didn’t tear the way I had expected. The backpack was sturdy. And Baek Aeyeong was sturdy too. I had even accounted for the possibility that she might drop me and I’d fall flat on my back to the floor, but my field of vision only kept rising.
With my feet floating in the air, anxiety made me want to thrash my legs around like mad. It seemed my body wanted to find a foothold in the empty air. Just as you can swim upward when you fall into water, my body must have mistaken this for falling into the air; it wanted to move my legs violently and escape this uncomfortable situation.
I remembered Baek Aeyeong’s warning. She had told me not to move. To keep my legs as still as possible, I crossed them while hanging from the backpack with one arm. And I endured it. I endured the thought that I might fall at any moment, and the urge to move my legs. I could barely feel my right arm. I never knew not being able to use my left hand would be this inconvenient.
Without making a sound, Baek Aeyeong was pulling me up from the ceiling. While pushing the thick, heavy emergency hatch with her foot, she wrapped the backpack strap, our makeshift lifeline, around her arm and pulled.
It was amazing how someone with that build could lift an adult man. Until my arms cleared the ceiling and my head passed through the ceiling hatch, Baek Aeyeong kept pulling the backpack without rest.
Once my upper body was fully up and caught between the elevator doors, I tried to crawl forward with both arms and bring my lower body up. Baek Aeyeong grabbed the back of my collar and pulled me in one motion, dragging my entire body out of the elevator.
I unwound the backpack strap from my numb right arm and pulled the shoulder straps out from under my armpits. Only then did I feel blood returning to my armpits. I tried to pat my right arm with my relatively intact left hand, but both arms hurt, so I gave up. If my arms were in this state, hers couldn’t be fine either.
“Aeyeong-ssi. Are your arms all right?”
Baek Aeyeong took a deep breath and let go of the backpack handle she had been gripping until then. Perhaps because she had exerted so much strength, her palms, face, and neck were literally bright red. I felt so sorry I wanted to die. Baek Aeyeong shook out her hands roughly, clenched and unclenched her fists several times, then said,
“Muhyeon-ssi, you’re lighter than I thought.”
I had once pulled someone up in an elevator before, so I could imagine Baek Aeyeong’s condition. Her arms were probably hurting and exhausted to the point that she could barely put strength into them. I could feel the heat radiating from Baek Aeyeong even from where I was.
“You’re incredibly strong, Aeyeong-ssi. Thank you.”
My back was drenched from tension as well. Instead of my arms being torn off, I had no strength left from hanging onto the backpack with my right arm. I was sure it hadn’t even taken a minute to get up. My right arm trembled uncontrollably on its own. I suggested to Baek Aeyeong that we rest, even if only briefly.
“Let’s rest for ten minutes.”
“Ten whole minutes?”
Baek Aeyeong asked back in surprise, but I did not compromise on the rest time. Ten minutes was long? As far as I was concerned, I needed to lie down and suffer for about a hundred minutes.
“Ten minutes seems too short, so twenty.”
“……All right. Let’s rest ten minutes.”
Baek Aeyeong stretched nonstop, extending and retracting her arms and legs. Then she caught her breath while twisting her body this way and that. It seemed like she was loosening her tense muscles, but it did not look like resting. I copied her movements for a short while, then gathered up the backpack contents that were scattered messily across the ceiling floor and put them back into the backpack.
I knew very well what the people of Engineer Team A meant by “rest.” It meant they would move exactly ten minutes later, without a second’s delay. While panting and asking questions like whether the world really had to torment me this much just because I had lived without exercising, I waited until the ten minutes were almost up and spoke to Baek Aeyeong.
It was so I could rest even twenty seconds longer while talking. When I asked how we were supposed to get out through the elevator doors located four meters vertically above us, Baek Aeyeong answered as if it was not a big problem.
“There are three ways we can get out.”
“Three?”
To my eyes, there didn’t seem to be even one. But Baek Aeyeong said there were three.
It was at least fortunate that one window on the first floor of Daehan-do was made of thick glass. The light coming in from there illuminated the inside of the elevator shaft, however faintly. Baek Aeyeong moved her palm vertically from where we were sitting as she explained.
“First, we climb four meters straight up along the edge. I don’t really recommend it.”
Baek Aeyeong called it rock climbing, but if that was rock climbing, no one would think of it as a sport. First of all, there was absolutely nothing to grab with your hands or feet. It was the same as telling someone to crawl straight up a smooth marble surface.
The elevator shaft where the elevator moved was at a ninety-degree angle, so this was a place where even a mountain goat that could leap along cliffs wouldn’t be able to live. I didn’t know much about rock climbing, but didn’t those people climb by grabbing or stepping on something? I didn’t think they climbed by forcefully jamming their hands or fingers into featureless steel structures and creating handholds or footholds that weren’t there.
I looked at my left hand, wrapped round and round in clothing, then quickly gave up and asked,
“What about the second?”
“Climbing up the wire ropes. That will probably be the easiest.”
Baek Aeyeong spoke while pointing at the ropes connected to the elevator car. According to her explanation, these wire ropes were what moved the elevator up and down. The ropes themselves were extremely thick, and there were more than ten of them on just one side of the elevator.
“So…… you mean climbing up the ropes?”
“Yes.”
“Can you climb up a single rope even when you can’t properly use one hand?”
“It’s possible.”
Baek Aeyeong said it as if climbing up was only natural. She said it would be easy if you used your legs well, but it was hard for me to understand what part of that was easy. Even if my hands and feet were perfectly fine and my body was in peak condition, I didn’t think I could climb it.
“What’s the third?”
“Do you see the machine room up there?”
Baek Aeyeong pointed upward, where the wire ropes continued endlessly, but to my eyes, it was only pitch-black and I couldn’t see anything. She said the central elevator covered a long travel distance, so it had several control panels, and that one of them was up there. She pointed toward a dim place I could barely make out and said,
“You shoot the little handle inside the control panel in that machine room way over there. It’s about the size of a fingernail. If you change its direction, you can force the elevator to rise. It’s nearly impossible, though.”
“It seems completely impossible to me.”
How were we supposed to shoot that from here? It was hard enough to accurately hit a person moving right in front of you with a gun. How were you supposed to hit the eye of a needle hidden in that darkness at that distance?
“If you shoot wrong and break the control panel equipment, the elevator could malfunction, and if you’re unlucky enough to hit the hoist machine, there could be a fall accident. And since you’d be forcibly raising the elevator, it might fail to stop on the first floor, pass right by, and collide with the upper section above.”
“Then the third option is…… basically doing acrobatics with a gun, isn’t it?”
“There are people who can do it. In this world, there are people who casually pull off impossible, insane things. ……I don’t think I’m one of them, though.”
Listening to Baek Aeyeong’s unconfident voice, I looked up at the elevator doors located four meters above.
“Which option are you most confident in, Aeyeong-ssi?”
“Among the three, climbing the rope, I guess.”
Really? I had no confidence in any of the three. It was a relief that Baek Aeyeong was confident in at least one. Since I didn’t want to see her exhaust herself trying to take me out and then collapse, I looked at the wire ropes and made up my mind.
“I’ll wait here. First, Aeyeong-ssi, get out safely on your own. Then bring equipment that can get me out and come rescue me again.”
Baek Aeyeong sank into thought for a moment. Then she asked me,
“Will you be okay?”
“I’ll be okay. I’m good at waiting. Let’s get at least one person out quickly. You’ll come back for me, right?”
“Of course.”
As soon as the decision was made, Baek Aeyeong immediately went into action. Without much hesitation, she put on the gloves she took from her pocket, then gripped and released the slippery, thick wire rope several times. It seemed that even Baek Aeyeong had never had any reason to climb around on wire ropes while repairing elevators.
To save time and strength, I let her step on my knees and shoulders so she could grab a rope positioned higher up and climb. After struggling a few times, Baek Aeyeong found her position and began climbing upward with her light body, powerful back muscles, and trained arm strength. I was rather surprised to see her climb the wire. Even without any foothold beneath her feet, she was hanging from the rope with only her arm strength and climbing upward.
In case Baek Aeyeong slipped or fell, I waited below with both arms spread, ready to catch her. Later, I just watched with my mouth hanging open.
How is that possible?
I admired her all over again while thinking things like, if I hung from a horizontal bar, I’d fall in three seconds at most. Baek Aeyeong, who had been climbing smoothly without getting stuck, had already passed four meters and gone beyond the height of the Daehan-do elevator doors. Then, suddenly, she pressed her entire body tightly to the rope and hung there like a monkey.
That was when I heard noise. Voices came from around the Daehan-do doors. I kept hearing people talking, as if someone outside was trying to open the elevator doors, and then it seemed the elevator doors were being opened.
Baek Aeyeong passed the height of the doors and climbed farther up. After staying like that for a moment, she wrapped both legs around the rope and hung upside down. When I saw Baek Aeyeong hang upside down, I thought she was falling and my heart nearly dropped. Looking closely, I realized Baek Aeyeong had only changed positions so she could use her gun with both hands.
Watching this from below, it looked as if Baek Aeyeong was performing a one-person circus on the rope. Good heavens. She had this kind of skill and had been living while hiding it from everyone?
The elevator doors opened. It seemed one of the Infinite Church followers had opened the Daehan-do elevator doors. The scene visible the moment the doors opened would be the wire ropes connected to the ceiling and a darkness that looked as if you would fall the moment you took even one step. Worried that Baek Aeyeong might be discovered, I shouted upward.
“Here! Over here!”
I waved my hand wildly. Perhaps they heard my voice, because the people around the elevator doors aimed their guns downward and looked at me.
At the same time, Baek Aeyeong began shooting at the people who had opened the doors while hanging from the rope. Bang bang bang bang! Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang! Bang bang bang bang bang! I lowered my head and curled my body as small as possible. Gunfire broke out above, but they were also shooting in my direction, so bullets ricocheted wildly beside my shoulder. Aaaagh! I heard screams, and a moment later, a loud sound rang out.
Thud!
Something fell right beside me. This vibration. This sound. It was definitely a person. The sound of a person falling. I barely lifted my head to look and saw someone in an engineer’s uniform collapsed there. Too scared to check who it was, I shouted toward the ceiling.
“Aeyeong-ssi? Aeyeong-ssi?”
“I’m safe!”
Then who is this person who fell?