“Are there many people with beliefs like yours on Daehando?”
“I’m the only one.”
The fact that she was the only one was a relief. I had met more than ten believers of the Infinite Cult, but I didn’t think any of them held beliefs as extreme and inhumane as Anna’s······ No, that wasn’t quite right. There were probably very few of them. Most of them prayed for wishes that would bring happiness to themselves. Anna was the unusual one.
On the other hand, I had seen a few people in society who thought similarly to Anna, but they didn’t seem to genuinely want those things to happen. So this was what it looked like when someone with twisted beliefs also had the ability and diligence to carry them out.
I wanted to refute Anna point by point, but listening to such utterly nonsensical things made what little strength remained drain from my body. There were people in this world who went through hell trying to rescue those who had fallen into cults, and yet someone else was joining hands with one in order to commit terrorism.
As I walked with a gun prodding me along, I had to roll across the ground from time to time, on top of the bruises forming on my back. Sometimes Anna shoved my back hard with the gun, and because my right leg was limping, my steps fell out of rhythm and I had to tumble like an office worker heading home after work. Each time, I had to protect my injured left hand, so I braced myself against the ground with my right, scraping the palm raw.
On top of that, I had to carve a path through the overgrown grass by swinging only one arm, making every step excruciating. Stiff, sturdy stalks and leaves brushed past my cheeks and neck as if refusing to move aside, leaving scratches behind.
If I had been wearing short sleeves, my right arm would already have been a mess. Anna, who was walking easily behind me along the path I had made, tried to contact the other believers with her radio. When she confirmed that no answer was coming back, she grew irritated.
When I stumbled over a rock hidden beneath the grass and fell unexpectedly while limping along, Anna almost shot me dead on reflex. The smell of grass enveloped my entire body. Face-down in the grass, I asked Anna from that position.
“Does anything actually happen when you offer the Savior’s blood and flesh at the altar? Do I really have to go?······I’ll just lie here, so couldn’t the believers move the altar somewhere around here?”
Anna looked at me as though she had heard something absurd, but after seeing the state my entire body was in, she let out a rare sigh and said,
“According to the believers, they can divide up and experience the miracle you possess. ······Savior. If I take you with me, I don’t think we’ll arrive even by the end of today. Wouldn’t it be better for me to kill you and go alone? I kept you alive because you were cute, but you really are useless. You can’t even walk properly.”
You’re the one who smashed my shin and made it impossible for me to walk or run properly. I had spent the entire morning struggling, and my strength was completely depleted, so I didn’t want to move. But when an unfamiliar ant tried to crawl up my right hand, which was braced against the dirt, I grunted and forced myself up. Anna was looking at me with a contemptuous expression. Her gaze seemed to say, This is supposed to be the savior of a religion? So I asked her, as though I, too, found it strange.
“Why am I the savior? Wouldn’t it have been better for both sides if you had chosen from among the candidates for savior?”
Rarely, Anna agreed with me.
“Exactly. Usually, a cult like this chooses one of the fanatics within the religious group who have been brainwashed to the point of wanting to sacrifice themselves voluntarily. But sometimes an ordinary person with no connection gets chosen. If you have the power to return to the past, it must normally be something extraordinary. Yet you’re being treated almost like a laboratory rat.”
The back of my head prickled under Anna’s gaze, as though she were examining a rare animal. Pushing aside the grass that reached my head, I thought.
······Should I run?
They usually said that when you became a terrorist’s hostage, you should quietly follow their demands and avoid attracting attention so that you wouldn’t put yourself in a situation where you could be injured. But the more I followed Anna’s demands, the more injured I became.
We hadn’t even been together for ten minutes, and I was already battered from head to toe. It was obvious that I would suffer more injuries as time passed, and an impulse arose within me: wouldn’t it be better to run away while my body could still move?
Just like a moment ago, I could trip over rocks or protruding stones hidden in the grass, or over tough stalks that could spring out at any time. I might not even get far before Anna shot me down.
If I kept walking like this and returned to the main building to join the believers, I could forget about escaping altogether. If that was the case, I wanted to make things even slightly harder for Anna. I wanted to drain her strength and divert her attention. I wanted to make her run through this grass, even for a few seconds, on that injured leg while searching for me. Then, perhaps she would be at least a little more exhausted when she went after Baek Aeyeong and the others.
“About that wish you mentioned earlier. I think you’re underestimating people too much, Ms. Anna.”
Anna seemed to listen to what I was saying. The movement of the lump of metal that had been bruising my back stopped. Or perhaps she was preparing to shoot.
“Sometimes people are endlessly wicked, but I don’t think seventy billion people would simply stand by and watch until everyone died. There are plenty of people working to change this absurd reality. I don’t think your bizarre wish is going to come true, but if we assume for the sake of argument that it does······if seventy percent of the world’s population were killed through terrorism or violence, would the remaining thirty percent really live well?”
I looked at the grass on my right and the grass on my left and pondered for a moment. They all looked exactly the same. I didn’t even know which direction I had come from.
“I doubt that the respect for life and compassion that failed to appear while seven billion people were dying would suddenly bloom like smoke once only three billion remained. Perhaps you want to see a future where three billion people suffer from PTSD as a group, or you simply want to survive in a world where only people without empathy are left. I would rather stand on the side that disappears than open my eyes and watch that happen.”
Baek Aeyeong had been walking to my right, so perhaps we had gone right. In that case, I would run to the left.
“I think it would be better to reduce the imbalance between low-income and high-income countries through international cooperation, and have everyone survive together through continuous education. ······Should I make a wish for world peace too? I wish worldwide oral health programs and education related to oral health would be implemented. I’d like to laugh wickedly while listening to the sugar-added food companies complain about their declining sales.”
“You said you were a dentist, right? Are you trying to starve to death?”
I had started the conversation to distract Anna, but her question surprised me.
“Are you concerned about my future?”
No answer came. I counted to three in my head. Then I abruptly ran toward the grass on the left. A shout and a gunshot rang out behind me. I had intended to sprint like the wind and leave Anna behind, but after about ten steps, I fell forward.
At first, I thought I had been shot. But it wasn’t until I rolled across the ground twice that I realized I had tripped over something. Beside me lay a broken mowing robot. Grass had grown sparsely between its parts, making it look just like an ankle trap for someone running through the field. I heard footsteps racing through the grass toward me.
From a distance, Anna approached with her gun aimed at me. When she saw me sprawled in such a spectacular heap, she wore an incredulous expression and let out a derisive laugh. My entire body hurt. I couldn’t escape. It was over. I was going to be killed. I wasn’t so sad that I wanted to sob, nor did overwhelming despair come crashing down on me. Instead, as I watched death approach, I became surprisingly calm.
Someone approached silently from behind Anna. At first, I didn’t even realize that the person who had appeared was Baek Aeyeong. She looked like a monster living in the grass or jungle, emerging with grass stains, clumps of weeds, and dirt smeared all over her body.
Baek Aeyeong flew in from behind Anna, shoved the blue rifle sling and rifle to the left with her left hand, and strangled Anna while simultaneously slashing the middle of the bone in Anna’s right arm with the knife in her right hand. The blade entered below the bend of Anna’s right arm and slipped out, naturally shifting diagonally to plunge into her heart.
After forcing Anna’s body down from behind, Baek Aeyeong pushed away Anna’s right arm as she tried to stop her. Then, as though following an old habit, she slashed both of Anna’s legs before stabbing into her lung and pulling the knife out. The entire sequence unfolded as smoothly as flowing water. Three seconds later, Anna was already lying on the ground.
It took my mind a moment to understand what my eyes had witnessed. Having apparently misplaced her own rifle somewhere, Baek Aeyeong took Anna’s gun from her body. She searched around Anna’s wrists, ankles, and waist, then stole a radio and a spare weapon—a knife. She gave me a single once-over as I approached, limping from a distance, and asked,
“Did you get shot?”
I felt over my body with my right hand before answering.
“······No. What about you, Aeyeong?”
“I’m fine. Can you walk? You couldn’t run, from what I saw.”
I wanted to lie there on the dirt and do nothing. My weak body was screaming from every corner that it couldn’t go on any longer. But if I said I couldn’t walk, Baek Aeyeong looked ready to carry me on her back.
“······I can walk.”
“We need to get out of here quickly. They must have realized you’re here because of the gunshot.”
“Wait a moment. I need to retrieve my finger.”
The dark-green Fauna tree had fallen and was rolling across the dirt, perhaps because of what had just happened. When I picked up the jewel from the ground, a crack split across it. Anna, twitching in pain, met my eyes. I took the plastic bag they had confiscated from Anna’s coat pocket.
Anna’s left hand caught my ankle. But there was no strength in it, and her breathing looked terribly labored. I pried her left hand off my ankle and placed the shattered jewel in it. I watched the back of Anna’s left hand turn white as she clenched her fist, then released my own hand.
Urged by Baek Aeyeong to leave at once, I limped after her. With the blue rifle sling over her shoulder, Baek Aeyeong walked while pushing aside the tall plants like curtains. Anna’s fallen body was hidden from sight by the grass.
I suddenly remembered the first time I had met Baek Aeyeong in the laundry-room corridor. The memory of walking toward the café felt as distant as though it had happened ten years ago. I compared my reaction then with the one I had now. Back then, I might have tried to administer first aid to the chest or side where blood was spurting. I would have been horrified that something like this was happening in reality, not in a movie.
Now, I simply followed behind Baek Aeyeong without saying anything. The Baek Aeyeong leading the way no longer frightened me as she had before. A powerful sense of relief wrapped around my body. I felt sorry about Anna’s death, but I didn’t pity her very much. If I had been alone, I would never have been able to stop her. ······I’ve changed a lot from before. Have I grown numb, or am I broken?
I limped along, lost in every possible thought, until I caught my foot on a stone and fell forward. The palm of my right hand, which had struck the ground, was scraped raw. At my groan, Baek Aeyeong turned around and asked,
“Are you all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
Baek Aeyeong grabbed my arm and helped me up, then said,
“We can’t go toward the heavy-equipment building.”
“What? Then where are we going?”
“If the others enter here, they’ll all head that way. Um······what should I call it? Ah. I made signs.”
I was about to ask how she had made the signs, but I closed my mouth. While we had been separated, gunshots had sounded from several places in the grass. Baek Aeyeong had probably encountered some of the other believers. Just as I was too distracted to do anything more than walk without falling, Baek Aeyeong told me to stop and crouched down on the spot.
I crouched like Baek Aeyeong, but I was so exhausted that my eyes closed on their own simply from resting for a moment. When she told me to start walking again, I followed her, swaying almost like a zombie. Baek Aeyeong’s voice, filled with guilt, pierced my ears.
“······Even though I knew Muhyeon was being tortured, I couldn’t bring myself to step forward. That person from earlier. It felt like she was waiting for me.”
“Her name is Anna Garcia. I heard she’s a terrorist whose goal is to massacre the citizens of developed countries.”
“So that’s why she came to the undersea base. ······There are people like that from time to time.”
“What?”
“I meet them occasionally in my line of work. They’re all different, but similar. They want to massacre people of other religions. They want to massacre Asians, women, Black people, people from impoverished countries, the elderly, the disabled, children. They spout all kinds of bullshit about how those people’s lives are unhappy, so they’re going to show mercy and personally put an end to them. Still, that Anna person is somewhat original. Usually, they want to kill the weak because they’re all brave against the weak and cowardly against the strong.”
Baek Aeyeong glanced at my right leg as I limped along and asked,
“You’re in pretty bad shape, aren’t you? Can you keep walking?”
“I’m fine. I can go. You should focus on your own objective, Aeyeong.”
In truth, I wasn’t fine, but the fact that Baek Aeyeong had come had made everything fine. I understood how the people who hired Baek Aeyeong as a bodyguard felt.
Baek Aeyeong searched behind a rock hidden by the overgrown grass and pulled out five rifles drenched in blood. The stench of blood was overwhelming. Combined with the crushed smell of grass, it was enough to make me dizzy. Had she taken them from the other believers?
Baek Aeyeong used the rifle slings to hang the rifles over her body, one on top of another. I offered to carry a few of them, but after looking at me, Baek Aeyeong barked at me to take care of myself and walked on with the pile of rifles, which weighed over twenty-five kilograms, strapped to her body.
“Where are we going now?”
“To the auditorium. From what I heard over the radio, I think they left only the minimum number of people needed to guard the hostages and sent everyone else to search for the savior. They told them to search the grass thoroughly. We’re going in the opposite direction.”