Since I was locked in the storage room anyway, I tried to think of it in a positive light. Baek Aeyeong probably hadn’t locked me up with bad intentions. Let’s try a change in perspective. How comfortable and cozy was it, being locked in a narrow, dark place together with office supplies?
Considering how hard things had been on me, both mentally and physically, wasn’t a dusty, dim, quiet storage room practically heaven? It wasn’t as if I was locked in with a corpse, or with cultists, or with selfish people, or in a place where bullets were raining down. It was quiet, and there was no one here. No one could torment me. Since I was locked in anyway, I should just rest easy for a few hours.
I tried to soothe my mind, which kept drawing infinitely negative conclusions, but failed. Instead, I only came to understand all over again that I was the kind of person who could absolutely never rest while keeping severed fingers inside a plastic bag. Get me out of here! Send me to the hospital, even if it’s a complete mess!
I spent some time blankly turning into a machine that stroked the whale doll’s back with my right hand, then stood up, telling myself I couldn’t waste time like this. Then I put two bottles of water and a few snacks into my backpack. I shoved the cotton towels I found in the storage room into the backpack wholesale. And I put in the plastic bag holding the fingers and even the doll, then zipped it shut.
Why couldn’t I calm down like this? Was this what happened when a person’s fingers got cut off? Or did people instinctively want to get out when they were locked in a storage room? Or did being stranded on an island where terrorists were roaming around make you this restless?
It felt like someone would come up at any moment and snatch me away. And then they would shove me back into the undersea base. It was as if my body had escaped the undersea base, but my mind was still tied up in the deep sea with a leash around its neck. My lower abdomen hurt from the tension, and my head was dizzy.
I got out of the undersea base. I escaped. There won’t be any problem. In my anxiety, I put the backpack on again. Once I did, my eyes went to the rifle weighing down my shoulder. This rifle had to weigh about five kilograms.
I wanted to shout for someone to open the storage room door, hoping someone would happen to pass by. But I was afraid that if I yelled carelessly, it wouldn’t be Baek Aeyeong who heard me, but some passing believer of the Infinite Church. I considered shooting the doorknob off with the gun, then gave up. If I made that much noise, even the seagulls flying on the other side of Daehando would know I had escaped from the storage room.
I stared at the rifle for a while, then fixed my gaze on the doorknob. Could I break a doorknob with a five-kilogram lump of metal? I recalled Baek Aeyeong’s actions, how she had practically used the rifle butt like a hammer to strike Jennifer in the back of the head. ......It seemed possible?
I aimed at the doorknob and struck it with the rifle butt. Apparently Baek Aeyeong had thought it was safe for me to be here. But if you’re going to lock up a person with all four limbs intact somewhere, you either have to tie their arms and legs with parachute cord like Sin Haeryang did so they can’t move at all, or you need at least some mutual agreement. Like how, if you want to confine adults in a company for eight hours, you need an agreement where you pay them a certain amount of money or something.
I hadn’t realized how hard it was to hit a doorknob with a rifle using only my right hand. But all I had left was time, and maybe because the only thing I could focus on during that time was hitting the doorknob well with the rifle butt, I succeeded in breaking the knob in five minutes.
The worry that the sound of smashing the doorknob might have been too loud belatedly brushed across the back of my mind. I put my hand through the hole where the broken doorknob had been and opened the door. Then I cautiously opened the storage room door. Unlike the storage room, where a single dim fluorescent light was all there was, outside was a corridor, and since it was daytime, natural light came in.
As I stepped out through the storage room door, I held my breath for a moment. An enormous snake was passing through the corridor. The snake was so huge that it not only covered the entire Daehando headquarters building, but seemed to have no end. Its body continued endlessly through this headquarters building, which was located lower than the central elevator, and into the sea. The snake had coiled its body around the undersea bases. How big and long was it? When you saw something too bizarre, you didn’t even think of it as frightening. It was simply grotesque. As I stared at the body of the gigantic snake, unable to tell where its head was, I heard a thud and turned my head.
It was the sound of the metal handle on the other side, which had been barely hanging on to the storage room door, falling to the floor. I looked back at the corridor, but there was nothing there. What snake? There wasn’t even a single rat in the corridor. I was so terrified that not only did every hair on my body stand on end, I was seized by fear as if all the blood had drained out of me.
......My condition is so bad that I’m even seeing strange hallucinations. Did I lose too much blood? Or did being locked in a cramped place make me feel like I was running out of oxygen? ......What did I just see? Is it because I haven’t slept properly?
I hurried out of the storage room and looked down the corridor, then entered some office nearby. There was no one inside. They said people were in the auditorium right next to the headquarters building—should I go there too?
There was a landline phone, so I ran over and picked it up first, but the call wouldn’t connect, and only an English announcement saying it was unavailable played. I wondered if the internet might work, so I tried to use an ownerless computer in the office, but every single one was locked with a password.
The only fortunate thing was that the passwords were stuck on Post-its below the monitors or beside the keyboards. I let out a sigh of relief, entered the login password, and unlocked a locked computer, only to be overcome with disappointment when I confirmed the internet wasn’t working.
Thinking it might just be a problem with this person’s computer, I logged into other computers and checked whether they could access the internet, but it was the same. I picked up the receivers of every landline phone to see if there was a different sound or any phone that could make a call. I entered every office with an open door, putting every phone I found to my ear, checking whether there was a computer with internet, or whether there might be some other strangely shaped phone.
As I wandered around the headquarters buildings like that, there was one office desk where a single phone was functioning normally. To be precise, the English message saying it was unavailable didn’t play, and instead there was only a long duuuuuuuuuuu tone.
Maybe among the phones installed in headquarters for external use, there’s one whose line hasn’t been cut. Or maybe there’s someone inside who will answer.
Next to the phone were speed-dial numbers the desk’s owner had diligently stuck on, and I began calling all sorts of speed-dial numbers posted there. Most of the calls didn’t connect. Or even if they did, no one picked up.
When I pressed the speed-dial number marked with the letter B, oddly enough, the call went through. What? Where is this? I persistently held the receiver, but no one answered. Just as I thought, “This number’s busted too,” someone picked up the receiver. But the other person didn’t answer.
“Hello? ......Did you pick up the phone?”
“Who is this?”
I was extremely hesitant to tell them my name. What if the other person was an Infinite Church believer and called me the Savior? I thought for a moment, then answered.
“......This is Daehando. Could I possibly know where I called?”
“This is the bakery inside the Third Undersea Base. The ringing wouldn’t stop, so I picked up.”
So B was for bakery. Then is the speed-dial number H here for hospital? Once this call ends, I should try calling the hospital too.
“May I ask the name of the person answering the phone?”
“I’m Kim Jae-hui from Engineer Team Ga.”
I was caught in a complicated, subtle mix of emotions between wanting to throw the receiver down right away and wanting to grip it with both hands. Of all people, this bastard had to be the one to pick up. Hearing his voice over the phone, it was much lower than the voice I had imagined.
“......How did you end up answering this phone, Jae-hui?”
“Mm. I was running away from Engineer Team Na and hid in the bakery, but the phone was ringing like crazy.”
It looked like the place Kim Jae-hui was in now was Babylonia, the bakery in the Third Undersea Base. Thinking of the battered state Kim Jae-hui had been in the last time I saw him, I asked cautiously.
“How is it now? Are you safe?”
“Yeees. Roughly safe.”
What does roughly safe mean? Then my condition is roughly breathing.
“What are you planning to do now, Jae-hui?”
“I’m thinking of going to the First Undersea Base.”
“Why are you trying to go there?”
“They say there’s an altar. I’m going to take a look. And I don’t think the Team Na people will chase me all the way there.”
Every time the person on the other end of the line said a word, I felt like I was going to burst with frustration. It really did seem to be Kim Jae-hui. Listening to a familiar yet unfamiliar voice over the phone, while I was the only one talking in the entire quiet headquarters building, was a little frightening. I couldn’t know whether someone would suddenly barge into the office. Feeling anxious, I lowered myself beneath the desk while still holding only the receiver in my hand.
“You said you were an engineer, Jae-hui, right? What happened to your teammates?”
“I don’t know.”
“Water is leaking into the undersea base. Don’t you think that’s dangerous?”
“I do.”
How could he be so brazen? Then run away from there.
“Do you believe the salvation the Infinite Church talks about is real?”
“......Who did you say you were again?”
“I’m your......”
I thought about this question briefly, then answered.
“......friend.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
It was an answer without the slightest hesitation. Just as I felt the urge to put the receiver down immediately and leave this room, Kim Jae-hui asked.
“This seems like voice phishing. What do you want from me?”
“I hope you’ll decide that going back to the past is impossible and voluntarily escape from that undersea base. Please tell the other Infinite Church believers to give up their faith and escape too.”
Just as the things Kim Jae-hui said sounded like bullshit to my ears, it seemed the things I said sounded like bullshit to Kim Jae-hui. The voice coming through the phone was extremely skeptical.
“I think it would be more convincing if you just asked me to transfer my entire salary from tomorrow into your account.”
“Then transfer your salary too, and give up your faith.”
I heard the sound of Kim Jae-hui adjusting his grip on the receiver, then he asked me again.
“The person calling me right now isn’t a scammer, are they?”
You used to call me the Savior! I held back the urge to shout. I heard footsteps from far down the corridor, and I crawled completely under the desk.