Since Michael Loacker was praising someone in particular, I couldn’t properly tell whether he was praising them because they were truly decent, or because they were someone you should never meet in society. Fortunately, Team Leader Yang seemed to be the former.
“Team Leader Yang handled work cleanly, and perhaps because she had a good personality, she got along well with the other teams and was well respected within her own. They said that whenever Team Leader Yang submitted a report, the Korean government would stop pretending to be deaf and provide support so they could at least buy consumables.”
Michael Loacker said with a sneer at Deputy Team Leader Jo.
“By contrast, Deputy Team Leader Jo Dong-hui had a tremendous inferiority complex toward women more capable than himself, and was the sort of person who would obey men physically superior to him to the point of servility. In particular, he gazed with envy at the seven nations of the North Pacific undersea base as if they were some kind of utopia, while finding his own situation of living as a Korean national as distasteful as being stuck in a cesspit. There was no one more suitable to serve as the Korean engineering team leader.”
I never met Deputy Team Leader Jo in person, but listening to what the people I met at the undersea base said, I don’t know about being a team member, but he definitely sounded like someone who should never become team leader. I was afraid to ask how Team Leader Yang had gone missing.
“What happened to Team Leader Yang?”
“In a boringly trite fashion, she was attacked by a subordinate. I called Deputy Team Leader Jo aside a few times and told him that I thought he had what it took to lead the Korean engineers, and had other believers from different teams who were followers of the Church of Infinity cheer on Deputy Team Leader Jo’s actions. I gave him a few bottles of alcohol brought in illegally, and used people around him to keep supplying him with cigarettes so the smoking would continue. The male engineers on the Korean team, who had many complaints about the undersea base’s policies banning things like alcohol, cigarettes, and prostitution, enjoyed Deputy Team Leader Jo’s illicit goods with him and became a sturdy support for him.”
Michael snorted as he spoke.
“After that, it was almost disappointingly easy. His relationship with Team Leader Yang, who pointed out Deputy Team Leader Jo’s repeated work mistakes and his habitual smoking, drinking, and gambling inside the base, gradually worsened, until on a stormy night he struck Team Leader Yang Na-eun in the back of the head with an air tank. Then he shoved her from the First Undersea Base into the sea.”
I don’t know what kind of expression I was making, but Michael looked at my face, smiled hideously, and continued.
“When I saw the CCTV footage and called in Deputy Team Leader Jo to ask him about it indirectly, he said that if I covered up this matter, he would be loyal to me and to the American team. It was laughable. I’m Australian, you see. I couldn’t quite understand the causal relationship of why smashing open the Korean team leader’s head and abandoning her in the sea could be covered up as devotion to an engineering team from another country. I deleted the footage as he wanted. I was enjoying watching the clownish antics Deputy Team Leader Jo committed at the undersea base, when Team Leader Yang’s parents began making inquiries, saying their daughter, who contacted them every day, was unreachable, and an investigation into her disappearance began on the Korean side. Her body wasn’t found around Daehan-do, but I expected it had either been swept to one of the Oceanian islands by the storm and currents or sunk. Surprisingly, it was found somewhere else.”
I felt so sorry for Team Leader Yang I could hardly stand it, but Michael didn’t seem to have any such feelings at all. I remembered this incident being mentioned in passing back when I was going around with the people from Engineering Team A. At the time, I think Shin Haeryang had said Team Leader Yang had safely returned to her family. Had Shin Haeryang lied to me?
“Was she alive?”
Please.
“Yes. Unfortunately, she was perfectly alive at Daehan-do Hospital. It seems Deputy Team Leader Jo’s work ability was even worse than I thought. To think he couldn’t even carry out such a simple murder properly. They say Camilla Hughes from the Canadian team, who had been windsurfing in the stormy sea at the time, discovered Team Leader Yang and protected her, then secretly entrusted her to Korean nurses at Daehan-do Hospital. At the time, they said there was no one they could trust among the people of Engineering Team A, the people who came from Korea to investigate the incident, or the reporters, so everyone involved kept silent and waited for the right time. In particular, Camilla intended to pretend to read tarot cards and, if a Korean team engineer came, hint at Team Leader Yang’s survival and location, but visitors were rare, and even those who did come apparently didn’t trust the tarot card results at all.”
“······I see. It’s truly a relief that Team Leader Yang Na-eun is safe.”
Thank goodness she was alive. Of all the bullshit Michael had spewed, Team Leader Yang Na-eun’s safe return was at least the one story I liked the most. Michael looked at me as if I were some strange animal and said,
“So that is how the Savior thinks. ······It is truly fortunate that someone softhearted is our Savior.”
I think Michael just mocked me. Michael swirled the liquor in his glass a few times, then looked at my face and said,
“Thinking back on it now, I do feel a slight regret that I didn’t hand over the footage of Deputy Team Leader Jo’s attempted murder to the Korean government. If I had, perhaps someone like Deputy Team Leader Jo might have taken the Korean team leader’s position. When Deputy Team Leader Shin Haeryang first joined, I asked him about it, and he said Team Leader Yang’s parents had hired him to confirm whether their daughter was alive or dead and to find her body, and that was why he had joined. He went around searching every place Team Leader Yang had been, and during every break he rummaged through hospitals and morgues around the Solomon Islands, the Bismarck Archipelago, and the Hawaiian Islands as if they were his own home. Even the Korean police and reporters had given up on finding Team Leader Yang. I should have realized then that Shin Haeryang was an odd bastard.”
For the first time, anger began to creep into Michael’s voice. After swallowing all the liquor left in his glass, Michael began speaking in a slightly flushed voice.
“When Deputy Team Leader Shin Haeryang first came to the undersea base, I heard he weighed over 120 kilograms and that, as soon as he arrived, he had mercilessly beaten engineers from other teams who picked fights with him. I was very pleased inwardly. It was rather enjoyable whenever engineers with somewhat violent temperaments wrote that they needed leave to go to the dentist, or ate in the cafeteria with their battered faces swollen and scowling.”
It seemed the parts Michael found enjoyable and the parts I found enjoyable were a little different. It also made me think that the only place that would accept this lunatic was a cult.
“······I have no idea what part of that is enjoyable.”
Michael looked at me for a moment, then continued.
“Until now, there have been people like Francis, the American team leader, Oliver, the deputy team leader of the New Zealand team, and Vladimir, the Russian team leader, but there were hardly any such figures among the Asian teams.”
I was more surprised that there wasn’t just one person going around throwing punches. Since I had personally watched Shin Haeryang and Yamashita fight, I asked Michael,
“What about Yamashita?”
“Yamashita Hikaru, you mean? ······That man’s aggression was directed only toward fellow East Asians. He is quite useful as a seed of discord within a team, but he isn’t the type to cause major problems between teams. They say that even when he uses exercise equipment noisily, if white people like me come over and point it out, he becomes astonishingly quiet.”
Michael lightly sneered at Yamashita, then continued his story.
“Until now, there had never been an occasion where Francis had to eat something like porridge with a miserable expression on his face and his entire face burst and swollen, so it was quite amusing. Whenever rumors went around that he was drinking while playing poker at gambling tables, or that he couldn’t communicate properly and deliberately created conflict, I thought he might be a rather good candidate for Korean team leader. Especially around the time Team Leader Jo was neglecting his work and lying low like a dead rat, saying he was going to immigrate, I felt that even more strongly. But then things began to turn strange.”
Michael poured liquor from the bottle back into his glass with a loud glug, then spoke in a voice thick with irritation.
“First of all, the relationship between Shin Haeryang and the men he had beaten did not deteriorate as much as I expected. Rather, some of them began to respect him despite having been thoroughly thrashed. I’m not quite sure why. Second, the more notorious Team Leader Shin became, the more smoothly inter-country work cooperation proceeded, far better than when Team Leader Yang or Team Leader Jo had been there. Contrary to my expectations that the Korean team would quickly disintegrate and disappear, it only grew stronger with time. Even then, I thought it was a temporary phenomenon. Up to that point, I judged Team Leader Shin Haeryang to be quite good. But then that bastard—”
Michael lifted his glass and downed it in one shot, exhaled a hot breath, and continued with a frown.
“Until I realized that Team Leader Shin Haeryang thought something was strange about the undersea base and had been stealing my pad and phone, or entering my room as he pleased.”
I recalled Michael Loacker’s pad that Shin Haeryang had. For a moment, I almost laughed, but held it back. Had Shin Haeryang left evidence?
“Was there evidence that Team Leader Shin Haeryang stole them or broke in?”
“······Regrettably, no definite evidence or traces were found. But I can tell every time I run into Team Leader Shin Haeryang. When I see those eyes, as if he knows what I’ve done, and that arrogant attitude, the culprit can only be him. Fortunately, Team Leader Sato was easy to talk to. He was full of hatred toward Team Leader Shin Haeryang and the Korean team, so we concluded that we would use this terrorist attack to take care of them for certain.”
While I was sighing, Michael poured liquor into his empty glass and said,
“I have worked diligently to place people who despise their own countries and harbor fantasies about other developed nations in the positions of Asian team leaders, but it is simply regrettable that the results so far have been Hai Yun, Sato, and Shin Haeryang.”
“Hahaha!”
I think that was the first time I laughed while listening to Michael’s story. What a relief that Loacker seemed more incompetent than I expected.
“······What is the situation with the other teams?”
“Liam Marcus of the Australian team is extremely cynical, but he is also the person who has grasped this undersea base the most accurately. He probably has a rough idea of what I’m doing as well. I made a special effort to subject him to intense stress, and as a result, Team Leader Liam is currently suffering from thyroid cancer and stomach cancer. And yet he stubbornly refuses to resign and continues to hold out. Deputy Team Leader Oliver Simon is handling the work in Liam’s place, but I suspect he will soon hit his limit.”
So the engineering teams were a mess because a lunatic like this was in charge.