The broadcast continued to stream from the speakers.
“We have no choice but to live embracing a sorrowful and despairing past, looking toward a future that approaches with such hardship.”
Hearing my own voice over the broadcast felt incredibly unfamiliar. So that was the voice I spoke with.
“Fortunately, there is no such thing as infinity in this world. You do not have to be infinitely sad, infinitely tormented, or infinitely despairing. Though we cannot return to the past we desire, the pain and sorrow you are experiencing will someday come to an end.”
This was my wish as well. If the exact same events repeated endlessly, I would have already gone mad.
“I know that most of those who joined the Infinite Church were exhausted by a life of despair and joined clutching at a thread-like hope of returning to the past. I hope that the Infinite Church believers and hostages listening to this broadcast survive safely. Even if living has been so painful that you have lost your life’s direction and purpose. If you go on living, the day will come when you no longer feel pain, when you no longer feel guilt or anxiety, when you do not think even the slightest bit about the past that has tormented you countless times.”
Sometimes, just before falling asleep, my brain replays the most shocking content—repeating the scene of a traffic accident or playing back the memory of the day my father left. For years, it was so difficult that I tossed and turned until sunrise, but now I collapse holding my phone as soon as I lie down in bed. Everything has an end. Nothing lasts forever.
“When you long for the past, grieve, and struggle, I will be by your side. I am prepared to watch over you, comfort you, and cry with you. As I have already told you, I am not the Savior of the Infinite Church. I am an ordinary employee working at the undersea base. Just like the people tied up beside you. Outside the undersea base, the families and friends of the employees are worried about their safety. Just as the Infinite Church believers wish for a peaceful life, these people wish for the same.”
I had wanted to say that the hostages were not decorative objects tied up, but living human beings—living creatures capable of empathizing with the believers. The primary goal was to make believers who had lost family and loved ones feel psychological resistance toward shooting the hostages, but it was the passage upon which Baek Aeyeong and I disagreed the most.
Baek Aeyeong opined that believers radicalized enough to lead the charge in terrorizing the undersea base were already completely indoctrinated by the pseudo-religion, so such an emotional approach couldn’t inflict even a fingernail’s worth of damage on their broken minds.
She proposed adding a message warning that the US military was hurrying here with an aircraft carrier to retake the base, and that if they tried something like a hostage execution spectacle, the believers’ only remaining options would be to die horribly or be captured alive and tortured for life in Guantanamo, so they had better watch themselves. I opposed that opinion. The arrival of the US military or the reality of their imminent deaths was unlikely to be something the Infinite Church believers would even consider.
“……Not by solving this with guns, but through a more peaceful—”
The broadcast ended as though it had been cut off there. Someone had likely entered the broadcast room and hurriedly stopped my recorded voice. Baek Aeyeong sighed at the interrupted broadcast and said,
“I had a feeling that would happen. The broadcast was longer than I expected.”
“It’s not like I can broadcast something like, ‘Throw your guns into the sea and surrender. Everything you believe in is a lie. If you don’t want to throw your guns away, throw your bodies into the sea and surrender,’ exactly as you said, Ms. Baek.”
Ms. Baek had suggested broadcasting those three lines from the start. It was typical of an engineer who valued efficiency. She didn’t have even a bullet-sized amount of emotion. Ms. Baek said my broadcast was too long, that someone would definitely interfere midway, and that it wouldn’t even be fully aired.
“You can’t stop terrorists with a broadcast like that.”
“No, probably not. But if we can make them reflect for even a few seconds on whether shooting their guns as ordered is the right thing to do, I think that would be a success. From what I hear, the Infinite Church had trouble recruiting believers as well, so there are quite a few who were brought in for money.”
I wished there were more believers like Tyler. Did they properly instill the Infinite Church’s ideology and doctrines into those who had joined for the money? Walking around with a gun threatening people and executing dozens of tied-up hostages with guns are worlds apart. Those who had joined for money rather than ideology would only think it worthwhile if they were paid far more than they had received so far to commit unethical acts.
Even believers like Kanu, Kim Jaehui, and John Doe, who ideologically sympathized with the Infinite Church, had refused to act as terrorists despite joining because they hated shooting people while carrying guns.
The Infinite Church believers carrying out the executions of hostages would bear tremendous stress and mental burden. Though someone like Elizabeth wouldn’t care, of course.
As soon as my broadcast was cut off, a voice from headquarters—presumably an Infinite Church believer—began speaking urgently.
“The broadcast that just aired was an unauthorized transmission by someone impersonating our Savior, Park Muhyeon. Do not believe such absurd and groundless claims, and perform the tasks currently assigned to each of you faithfully. We repeat: the broadcast that just aired was an unauthorized transmission by someone impersonating our Savior, Park Muhyeon. It was not a broadcast made by our Savior.”
They had called me the Savior, yet now they were denying the Savior to suit their convenience. While the broadcast was going on, we had escaped from the headquarters building. It seemed the Infinite Church believers were moving in large numbers from the auditorium to the headquarters building, searching for us hiding inside.
Baek Aeyeong and I headed for a building located at a lower elevation than the headquarters building. Baek Aeyeong said we were going to a building that stored and maintained heavy machinery. From a distance, the building looked quite large—so large that it was about as big as the headquarters building. It was a building I had never had reason to visit during the five days I’d been here.
Due to its location, Daehan Island was situated closer to the South Pacific than the North Pacific, and the vegetation was almost like that of the Hawaiian Islands. Except for places where cars or heavy machinery could move, the entire island felt like walking along a forest trail.
The areas between buildings had been densely filled with trees and grass, all under the pretense of eco-friendly spatial design. When I first arrived, I had thought it quite scenic, but now I wondered if the grass had been allowed to grow because there were no mowers, or if they were intentionally keeping grass that grew as tall as a person out of some nature-friendly philosophy. The grass had grown to about human height.
Baek Aeyeong dove into the grassy field, as though walking along the well-maintained trail would mean a bullet shattering the back of her head. I had no choice but to follow her, hurling myself into the grass after her. Walking while parting the grass that had grown to human height, Baek Aeyeong glanced behind her every so often and said,
“I heard the employee who managed the mowing robot broke the blade by operating it incorrectly. It isn’t normally this much of a jungle.”
Baek Aeyeong said that, parting the grass that had grown up to her face as we went down. I walked on, parting the grass that had grown up to my chest with my right arm.
“Have you ever been in a difficult situation like this while working?”
I felt like I was going to die from this hardship. Had other people ever been swept up in a pseudo-religion’s terror attack? Baek Aeyeong thought for a moment and said,
“A job I’ve handled? Hmm. None were to this extent.”
“Please tell me about what you did in the past. Before I faint while pushing through this grass.”
Baek Aeyeong brushed away an insect that had flown into her face and said,
“I once took a commission to escort the second-in-command of a drug cartel’s only beloved daughter to a certain location. Apparently, they couldn’t place a man as the daughter’s bodyguard. Ah. It was truly difficult. Just thinking about how difficult it was still makes my teeth chatter. I entered that household as a Chinese tutor and taught the kid absurd Chinese swear words, then the moment the client gave the signal, I picked her up and bolted from the house. I found out later that the client had betrayed the cartel boss.”
Despite the grass making it impossible to see ahead properly, Baek Aeyeong walked without hesitation.
“By direct flight, it would take eight hours to arrive, but I changed boats twice, switched light aircraft four times, and I can hardly remember how many taxis I switched between. I even rode a bicycle with her on my back. I walked ten kilometers too. For ten days, I traveled in a truly grueling and difficult manner. Cartel bastards kept popping out everywhere, clamoring for revenge. My forged passport was a wreck, so I kept getting caught by police. When I barely made it to Canada and delivered the girl to that bastard client—her father—didn’t he say he had to kill me to hide the fact that she was alive? And that he wouldn’t pay the promised reward? It was something I’d never do again.”
I prayed that no snakes or insects hiding somewhere in this field would attack us. Watching Baek Aeyeong’s back as she let out deep, heavy sighs, I asked,
“What was the hardest part of that job?”
“……The twelve-year-old girl crying at every chance she got.”
It was an unexpected answer. I had expected her to say it was taking the light aircraft, or the drug cartel rushing at her to kill her, or being betrayed at the end.
“That’s…… I think that’s only natural at that age.”
“She’d cry because her legs hurt. Cry because she was hungry. Cry because she was exhausted. Cry because she missed her mother. I’m telling you I didn’t cry at that age.”
“I see. You were a brave child in your youth, Ms. Baek.”
Baek Aeyeong turned to me, laughed incredulously, and said,
“It was such a harrowing experience that I don’t take child protection jobs after that. I get offered a lot of requests to guard minors. I refuse even if they offer a lot of money. Honestly, I didn’t like that bastard of a second-in-command who had seized the boss’s position. Not only because he betrayed me, but I wanted to kill him for Regina’s sake too, yet Regina stopped me, so I had no choice but to leave. I may not like the guy, but I suppose he’s important to her.”
“You must have been through a lot.”
So the client could be killed by the mercenary, and the mercenary could kill the client.
“How much would a job like this, fighting pseudo-religious terrorists here, go for?”
“It’s as hard as the drug cartel. These guys can’t be reasoned with. Of course, someone who can be reasoned with wouldn’t resort to guns.”
Baek Aeyeong stopped walking through the grass and kicked me down. Then she began firing her gun behind me.