Baek Aeyeong kept watch outside while hanging from the rope. Then, after gauging the distance between the rope and the elevator doors, she jumped toward them in an arc. The moment she landed below, the pouch hanging at Baek Aeyeong’s waist fell.
The bag full of gold and precious metals dropped onto the elevator roof with a heavy thud, fortunately not on top of me or the fallen engineer. I could hear Baek Aeyeong cursing even from here. As I looked back and forth between Baek Aeyeong’s bag and the person who had fallen, a voice came from above.
“Take my pouch and stay right there! Don’t make a sound no matter who comes! Don’t go anywhere! I’m coming back, so don’t just disappear without a word!”
“I’ll stay right here!”
I lifted my wrapped-up left hand and waved it. It wasn’t as if I could go anywhere. Baek Aeyeong seemed to look this way for a moment, but with the light behind her, her face was obscured by shadow.
“If someone comes and starts shooting at you, just jump right into the elevator. They won’t bother climbing all the way down there to kill you. I’ll come get you! Wait for me!”
After repeatedly warning me, Baek Aeyeong disappeared toward the elevator doors where the light was coming in. Even after the sound of her footsteps had faded and vanished completely, I kept staring at the elevator doors lit by that light.
Almost no light reached the side of the elevator roof where I was. Sunlight did stream through the elevator doors four meters above and the large glass window installed on the opposite side, but it was only enough to barely make out my limbs. While I was rummaging through my backpack with my right hand to take out a flashlight, someone grabbed my ankle. A scream burst out of me reflexively.
“Aaaaaaagh!”
I screamed loudly enough to shake the elevator shaft. As time passed, the scream gradually died down, and when I realized the fallen person was alive, I shut my mouth entirely. The sound of my own ragged breathing filled my ears.
“Hah. Hah. Hah.”
I thought he was dead. When I found my flashlight and shone it on him, the first thing I saw was black hair soaked in blood. After hesitating for a moment, I used my right hand and right foot to turn the man lying face down over. The man’s body was convulsing from the impact of the fall, and he didn’t seem able to breathe properly.
A gurgling sound came from his mouth; it seemed the blood pooling there was flowing into his airway. On his chest were gunshot wounds that looked like Baek Aeyeong’s work. Two shots to the lungs. In the flashlight beam, the man was bleeding profusely, spewing bloody foam from his mouth and nose. Bloody tears flowed from his eyes. My God. Seeing this right in front of me was so terrifying that I wanted to slam my head into the wall and pass out.
The instinct to get as far away from this person as possible swept over my body. Aeyeong! Take me with you! Don’t leave me here! Suppressing the urge to shout outside, I clenched the flashlight between my teeth. Then I grabbed a towel from my bag. After letting out a sigh, I moved toward him. He’s an injured person. Just an injured person.
No matter how much I wiped the bloodied mess of his face, more blood kept coming, making it impossible to properly identify him. If Baek Aeyeong had shot him, he probably wasn’t from Engineer Team A. Examining his clothes in the darkness, I saw Haoran written on them in English. I didn’t know how he had ended up here, but it seemed the Infinite Church had probably sent him to fix the elevator. His nose seemed broken, too. Baek Aeyeong’s gunshots must have been fatal, but when the heavy metal rifle slung on him collided with the floor, it seemed to have crushed every vulnerable part of his body.
I practically hugged him from behind and laid him on the uneven elevator roof. Then I lifted his chin and turned his head to the side. Blood trickled down from his nose. Bloody tears flowed sideways from his eyes as well. He seemed unable to come to his senses, perhaps because he had slammed his head hard against the floor. Still, he must have been able to breathe now, because after coughing up clots of blood, the man spoke indistinctly.
“I have to go. I’m going. I have to go.”
The man flailed his arms and legs as if trying to go somewhere, muttered something in Chinese I couldn’t understand, then went limp, as though he had no strength left. I pressed the towel to the bleeding wound on his chest with my right hand. Gunshots kept sounding in the distance, but I couldn’t tell who was shooting or where. Looking at the flashlight clenched in my mouth, Haoran asked me,
“Who are you? ……Are you Park Muhyeon?”
After hesitating for a moment, I nodded, and the flashlight beam bobbed up and down.
“I can’t see your face. Show me your face.”
I switched the right hand pressing down with the towel for my useless left hand. Then, with my right hand, I took the flashlight out of my mouth, held it above, and shone it downward. Haoran coughed, bloody tears streaming, and asked,
“I’m lucky. You’re our savior.”
“……So they say.”
“Save…… me.”
Haoran’s hand struggled across his chest, then held out a small pouch.
“I’ll pay the price.”
His blood-soaked hand trembled. He shook it toward me as if telling me to keep holding the pouch.
“What is this?”
“Find the owner of the bracelet and return it to me. It must have been human trafficking. She suddenly disappeared ten years ago.”
I held the flashlight in my mouth and used only my right hand to take the pouch and open it. Inside the small pouch was a jade bracelet, round and smooth and a deep green. Judging by the size, it seemed to be for a woman. He had fallen from the height of the second floor, yet the jade bracelet was intact, without so much as a crack. Only Haoran had been crushed every which way. Haoran spoke, barely breathing, and the sound of his breath was strange. Each time he spoke, blood surged and spilled out.
“You said…… if we gave you jewels…… you’d grant our wishes.”
The taste of the flashlight in my mouth was bitter. I wanted to shout that I didn’t know how to do anything like that. As I turned my head, the flashlight beam lit up Baek Aeyeong’s pouch. From the shock of the fall, a few gold bars were poking out through the zipper, and among them I saw a lapis lazuli necklace. When I lowered my head, the translucent green jade bracelet flickered busily in the flashlight beam.
I took the flashlight out of my mouth with my right hand and shone it on Haoran again. I could have told him only pleasant things. It probably wouldn’t be much of a problem to pretend to be a savior until Haoran died.
But.
“When we get out of here, I’ll buy you a jewel. Even with my finances, I think I can afford the cheapest amethyst necklace or so. I’ll give you a jewel, so please grant my wish.”
“What?”
I could feel Haoran concentrating in order to hear me. I leaned closer to him and asked,
“I wish someone would save me from this pain.”
I said it while lifting my blood-soaked left hand. Then I jerked my chin toward the elevator entrance far away, high above like the sky.
“I wish someone would get me out of here right now.”
I pressed down hard on Haoran’s chest with my left hand again and said,
“I wish someone would make it so I don’t die anymore.”
Every time the wet plastic bag hanging from my right wrist slapped against my forearm, it grated on my nerves. So did the pain that surged over me at every moment.
“I want to go home. ……If you people ask me to save you, then who saves me?”
Haoran must have heard me clearly, but he said nothing. As he spat out the blood rising to his lips, he seemed bewildered for an instant, then suddenly grew furious and said,
“Why…… why are you saying that…… to me? Ptui! I joined the Infinite Church…… and I’m full of faith! Do you know how hard I worked for today? You’re supposed to save us! What are you talking about! ……Take the jewel! Take the jewel…… and grant my wish! If I offer you a jewel, you’re supposed to grant my wish! Kuhk!”
Haoran shouted with the face of a man rejected by the god he believed in, but his condition seemed to be worsening. Well, of course he would be dumbfounded when the savior of his religion asked to be saved first.
“There’s only one method of salvation I know.”
“Yes! You just have to…… go to the past! You must know how to go back to the past!”
“My method of salvation is simply living one day at a time. Brushing your teeth every day, and flossing too if you can. Treating the people you meet kindly. Listening to someone who’s having a hard time, feeding someone who says they’re hungry, encouraging someone with a few simple words. That’s all I know. I don’t know any other way of salvation.”
“……What about the way to go back to the past and save us? Think carefully. There’s no way there isn’t one.”
“I don’t know either.”
The moment Haoran heard that, frustration must have overwhelmed him, because despite being shot twice and having his body wrecked by the fall, he tried to sit up. From the way he flailed his arms, it seemed he either wanted to hit me a few times or cling to me.
“The believers of the Infinite Church will have to save themselves, just like believers of other religions. Wishes are the same. If you think about it, religious life is all the same. People pray fervently to a god, asking for things, but unless they move with their own two feet to make their wishes come true, nothing happens.”
Haoran stared at me with a look of despair, then threw the pouch containing the jade bracelet at me along with several curses.
“You’re supposed to save me with absolute power. Grant…… my wish. Is this not enough? I can give you more. If I have to do it myself, then why…… did I join the Infinite Church?”
“……Exactly. Maybe…… you chose the wrong person as your savior, or joined the wrong religion. Someone must have deceived you.”
“This isn’t what I wanted. I don’t want to die here…… like this, so meaninglessly.”
I was pressing hard on the gunshot wounds in his chest with the towel and my left hand, but it didn’t seem to be doing much to stop the bleeding. Looking at Haoran, the bleeding was so severe that anemia and low blood pressure seemed to be setting in. Haoran’s face was deathly pale. All I could do was listen to him.
“I don’t want to die like this. It hurts so much! Dying like this! Save…… me.”
Because I was holding the flashlight in my right hand and shining it from above, Haoran grabbed my left arm and clung to it. He was incredibly strong. I clenched my teeth and endured the pain. Haoran kept repeating that he didn’t want to die like this, until finally, as if he no longer had the strength to speak, he slowly went slack.
His labored breathing continued. I don’t know how many minutes passed. Around the time there was no sound left to hear, a small noise came from the corner. When I shone the flashlight over, it had come from the pouch Haoran had thrown. I opened it and saw that the jade bracelet had cracked and split in two. I placed Haoran’s two hands on his chest and put the pouch with the bracelet between them.
Gunshots sounded occasionally in the distance, but no one approached the elevator. I waited beside the dead Haoran for about thirty more minutes, but no one came.
Would it have been better to act like a savior, even falsely, so he could meet his end in peace? Feeling a shapeless guilt, I continued waiting for Baek Aeyeong.