Who could be wandering around the headquarters building right now? An employee who worked here? It seemed to me that all the proper headquarters staff would be lying facedown on the auditorium floor with their hands and feet tied.
“I think someone’s coming. Please wait a moment.”
I pressed the hold button and set the phone on the desk. Then I gently pulled the chair beside me closer. From the hallway, I heard footsteps; whoever had been walking around was coming into the office where I was hiding.
It sounded as though someone was looking around the empty office. Tension curled around the back of my neck. The heavy footsteps wandered back and forth between the desks. For a moment, the thought crossed my mind—could it be Baek Aeyeong, back to get me?
I quietly endured the urge to crawl out from under the desk and check the person’s face right away. The footsteps moving around were extremely confident. As if they were the owner of this Daehando, they strode through the office without hesitation. Baek Aeyeong, Seo Jihyeok, and Shin Haeryang made almost no sound even when walking beside me, so the thought flashed through my head that it probably wasn’t them. And if it really had been Baek Aeyeong, I wouldn’t have noticed until she was right next to me.
Afraid the other person might hear me breathing, I carefully swallowed my breath and let it out. I am a still life. I am an object. Please just get out of here quickly.
I heard sounds as if the unknown person was touching the things on the desks. Since I had been lifting and setting down receivers here and there while searching for a phone that could make outside calls, quite a few of the receivers on the desks had been left in disarray, and it seemed the person was examining them.
There was a sound like they had picked up a receiver. Fortunately, it wasn’t the one on my desk. After the English message saying the call could not be connected played a couple of times, they roughly slammed the receiver down, and then I heard the door of the empty office bang shut. After that, the sound of footsteps walking away echoed through the office as well.
I wanted to push away the chair pressing down on my body with all its weight and poke my head out from under the desk. I wanted to grab the receiver I had tossed aside and continue the call with Kim Jaehui. But then I noticed that the footsteps in my ears sounded slightly strange.
It occurred to me that the person might not have left the office at all—that they might have only closed the door from inside the office and were making footsteps. Calming my pounding heart and sweat-soaked body tense with fear, I waited there for about three minutes.
Around the time I was wondering whether I was being far too anxious, whether there was actually no one in the office and I was making a fuss all by myself, a sound rang out.
Creeeeeeeeak!
It felt as though my heart rolled somewhere down into my stomach. Someone who had been silently holding their breath opened the office door from the inside. Then came the thud of the office door closing. Not long after, I heard the sound of footsteps again, but they were noticeably quieter than before, spreading from the hallway outside the office.
I closed my eyes and slowly exhaled. Only when I was certain no one seemed to be in the office did I carefully push the chair away and crawl out from under the desk. I worried that someone hiding like a ninja or an insect, suppressing their presence, might grab me by the nape, but fortunately, there was no one in the office. Exhaustion so intense it felt like I might faint washed over me.
I’m scared to death. The storage room would be safer than this. Holding the receiver, I asked in a quiet voice.
“Miss Jaehui. Can you hear me?”
“I can hear you. I thought the call had been cut off because of the water too.”
Her relaxed voice came from beyond the receiver. Listening to Kim Jaehui’s voice, I tried to forget the tense situation that had just happened. What would have happened if I had mistaken the person for having left the office and crawled out from under the desk? Calming my heart, which felt like it might burst, I spoke quickly to Kim Jaehui.
“There’s no time to explain at length. You need to get out of there right now.”
“I still have plenty of time.”
“The Muhan Church can’t grant your wish, Miss Jaehui.”
“Then will you grant my wish?”
Kim Jaehui seemed to be quietly waiting for my answer. If I answered yes, I had a feeling Kim Jaehui would try to switch from the Muhan Church to me personally.
“I can’t grant it either. There’s no one in the entire world who can grant your wish, Miss Jaehui. Even the famous saviors of massive religions can’t save their believers in the exact way those believers want. How could I, a mere human, do that?”
“Is that so? Then. Goodbye. My mere human friend.”
Kim Jaehui sounded as if she were about to hang up, so I hurriedly stopped her.
“Wait! Miss Jaehui! ……I’m worried about you, Miss Jaehui! I don’t want you to die in the deep sea! Actually, it’s not just you I’m worried about—I’m worried about everyone trapped in that undersea base! Forget salvation or whatever else—can’t you escape from under the sea first and think afterward?”
After listening to me, Kim Jaehui clicked her tongue and said,
“……For a con artist, you’re really bad at lying. You could just say you can save me and tell me to come meet you on Daehando to talk. Are you going to be able to wring salaries out of the Muhan Church believers like this?”
As if evaluating my phone manner like I was the first amateur con man she’d ever seen, Kim Jaehui let out a sigh. Watching the office door, I held the receiver and said in a weak voice.
“……I suppose I don’t have a talent for deceiving others. Even if I did, I don’t want to instill false hope I can’t guarantee.”
I had no idea how Kim Jaehui was taking the call from the bakery, but the faint sound of splashing water kept coming through. What was that sound? Thinking of Kim Jaehui as I had seen her at the Fourth Undersea Base, I asked,
“What condition are your legs in?”
“They need repairs.”
“I see. What about the places where the people from Engineering Team Na beat you?”
“Those parts need repairs too.”
It sounds like I’m talking to a broken tin can. Thinking about it now, Chelloni had really been easy to talk to. How is it that an AI is easier to converse with than a person?
“Are you alone in the Third Undersea Base, Miss Jaehui?”
“Mm. I don’t know. Until a little while ago, it seemed like quite a few people were walking around. I was hiding, you see.”
“Is there no one who can support you or walk with you?”
It would be fortunate if she could use an elevator, but if that was impossible, she would have to escape using the stairs. No matter how I thought about it, given the state of Kim Jaehui’s legs, climbing all those stairs alone seemed far too difficult. Wouldn’t it be less hard if there were someone she could go up with?
“Are you sure you’re my friend? You don’t seem to know much about me. I don’t like people.”
The moment Kim Jaehui finished saying that, I remembered the way she had treated me so kindly, calling in a high-pitched voice, “Savior! Savior!” If you were next to me right now, I would have smacked your back so hard it disappeared, even with my left hand that only had three fingers left.
A faint sound of water came from beyond the receiver. It was a sound that no one who had lived through several floods could forget. When I asked Kim Jaehui about the sound of water, a shocking answer came back.
“Water is leaking from the Hyeonmu-dong elevator area. Right now, it’s up to my ankles. The Fourth Undersea Base wasn’t leaking, but strangely, the Third Undersea Base is.”
Her low voice was still calm. When a cult believer and an ordinary person exchange words, I suppose the only one who gets angry is the ordinary person. I raised my voice, then looked at the office door and lowered it again.
“Why are you answering the phone in a situation like that! You should get out right now!”
“I pressed the button for the central elevator right in front of the bakery, but no matter how long I wait, it won’t come down. It just keeps saying it’s at the First Undersea Base. I’m still waiting.”
Having been trapped in the ceiling of the central elevator until not long ago, I felt a heavy sense of guilt. Right. The people in the undersea bases couldn’t use the central elevator anymore.
“Don’t wait for that elevator any longer. Find any remaining escape pods, or look for another elevator that still works. If there’s no other way to escape, Miss Jaehui, you’ll have to escape through the stairs.”
Just in case, I briefly explained to Kim Jaehui the location of the stairs connecting the Third Undersea Base and the Second Undersea Base. They were dark, the stairs were narrow and damp, and there were a few bugs. And when I explained that there were quite a lot of stairs, Kim Jaehui asked how many.
While thinking about whether a person who only liked pleasant things, hated hardship, had no patience, and wore prosthetics on both legs would enjoy climbing the same stairs over and over, I instilled false hope in someone for the first time.
“Not many. It’s just enough stairs to knock out as a light lunchtime workout.”
“The vertical distance between the Third Undersea Base and the Second Undersea Base is two kilometers, though?”
For some reason, hearing the cult believer’s suspicious voice made me happy. Why don’t you distrust your religion like this? I quickly confessed the truth to Kim Jaehui.
“……There are actually more than four thousand stairs.”
There was no answer for several seconds. Kim Jaehui seemed more horrified by my explanation that, if she was unlucky, she would have to walk up four thousand stairs to escape the Third Undersea Base than by my absurd instruction to give up her religious life and transfer her salary to me. Listening to Kim Jaehui declare that the flooding Third Undersea Base was now her home and that she would live there forever, the headache I had blocked with painkillers began to return.
“If you hate people, then do you like plants?”
I asked because she didn’t seem to dislike plants, but a strange answer came back.
“Yes. They’re full of moisture, they don’t talk, and they’re pretty.”
I haven’t raised many plants, so I’m not sure, but do other people like plants for reasons like that too?
“If you head toward the escape pod port in the Third Undersea Base, there’s a newly opened hair salon in the corner. It’s the salon with a two-headed person drawn on the wall. Inside, there’s a plant called a Rhaphidophora. I’d like you to take that guy under your arm and leave together. It’ll be too hard for you to climb all those stairs alone.”
Kim Jaehui listened quietly, then asked me back,
“Why should I do that?”
“Think of it as escaping the undersea base to show the Rhaphidophora sunlight. Or think of it as coming to Daehando to meet me. Anything is fine. Anything that can give you strength to leave the undersea base is fine.”
“Climbing four thousand stairs, huh. I might just drink seawater with the Rhaphidophora and die here.”
My patience ended there.
“Hey! Kim Jaehui! Stop spouting nonsense and run to the salon right now! If you stay in the undersea base, I’ll kill you with my own hands!”