Listening to Jamal’s explanation did nothing but stress me out and make me angry. The world was full of people struggling to repair it and make it work, yet here I was being told that they intended to find a utopia for themselves and go there. Wasn’t he ashamed in front of all the researchers at the undersea base?
Or was religion originally just a subscription plan whose benefits were available only to those who signed up? Only members of the Infinite Church would survive and go back to the past—the land of salvation? Then would everyone else simply perish together, peacefully?
Rather than fleeing into the past with the people of the Infinite Church and surviving, I found myself thinking that meeting the end alongside most of humanity didn’t sound so bad. If the world were going to end tomorrow, I’d probably spend the day at home with my family. ······I didn’t know. When the time came, I might go mad trying to save at least my mother or my younger sibling. I didn’t know whether the Infinite Church believers who had barely survived by escaping death would be happy in the past, but I cut off Jamal’s nonsense and asked what I wanted to know.
“How do I end this ‘miracle’?”
From Kim Jae-hee’s explanation, it sounded as though he had somehow escaped the loop. Did Jamal know exactly how it worked?
“It was different for each person. It ended when they were seriously injured, when the jewel they were wearing broke, or when they had gotten far enough away. It will probably end similarly for you, Savior. But the end of the miracle isn’t important. What happens to reality is far more important.”
Jamal scratched his cheek with his hand and continued.
“The most important thing in this experiment is whether you can choose which round you want to leave from. In my case, on the sixteenth round, I was able to escape the factory by car with four friends I had been close to at work. But after escaping safely and coming to my senses, I found myself lying in a hospital with burns, two of the friends who had been noisily chatting until just before were in comas, and everyone else had died in the explosion and gas leak. ······As I recall, that happened when I tried to escape the factory for the fifth time.”
Jamal frowned before adding, “There isn’t much benefit to be gained from repeatedly experiencing the same thing.” His words about how it made him tremble with revulsion felt like someone had struck me in the head with a hammer. Wasn’t I supposed to be able to escape the loop by accumulating all the rounds I had experienced?
Jamal sighed once and went on.
“Beth’s case was similar. She said she killed the serial killers at that serial killer’s farm and escaped with the six victims, suffering only minor injuries. Then, while walking along the road, she suddenly tripped and fell, only to discover that one of her ankles was missing and that the friend who had been walking behind her had disappeared. The other victims, including the friend who had been dragged there with Beth, were all found dead at the farm. The two serial killers had apparently escaped. Beth said it happened in the fourth round.”
I listened to Jamal’s story without even remembering to breathe. Why wasn’t what happened in the final round reflected in reality? Could any random round from the middle become my reality? Then what happened to the people who had died?
“And Weiss said that his last memory was of having over forty billion won in his bank account and escaping alone from a collapsing building without any injuries. But in reality, he was stabbed by his enraged secretary, beaten by his junior colleagues at work, and left with barely two million won in his account. Weiss said that happened in his third round.”
When I got through this miracle or whatever it was, what I wanted most would be for every round from the beginning up until now to overlap. Could only one of the loops I had experienced become reality? Even though I was sitting still in the chair and listening, dizziness washed over me. It felt as though the injuries my painkillers had been suppressing were surging back all at once.
“Then when this ‘miracle’ ends, it’s possible that everyone at the undersea base will be dead and I’ll be the only survivor.”
Jamal examined my condition before answering.
“If you’re lucky, you may survive the escape with someone you’re close to. You might even come out of it with fewer injuries than you have now.”
If I was unlucky, I’d end up hospitalized with even more severe injuries, or there wouldn’t be a single person who survived alongside me. I had thought it strange from the moment I heard that there had been only one survivor when the Mars base exploded.
In an emergency, I felt that you had to help even someone you had just met. Before you knew it, you would have formed a group and be moving together. That must be one of the ways people survived. Listening to Jamal, it sounded as though that survivor from Haiti had also ended up surviving alone against his will. Now I understood why Kim Jae-hee had said he could do better if he went back to the past. He must hate the reality he was in now.
“Mr. Jamal, if you could go back to the past, would you want to return to the factory where the accident happened?”
“Yes.”
Jamal answered without hesitation. Then he touched his temple with his index finger and said with a smile,
“What do you think you’ll feel when the miracle ends?”
“I think I’d feel relieved that it was over. I’d like to be admitted to a hospital and sleep for about a week.”
Jamal bared his teeth in a grin.
“The feeling of relief will last only a moment. The thought that you could have done better will follow you for almost twenty-four hours a day. Even while watching a quiz show on TV, you’ll think, Ah, if only I had known that back then, I wouldn’t have been hurt. Even while watching a movie, you’ll think, If only I had subdued them that way, Daril wouldn’t have died. If only I had held back just a little, Jallen would still be cackling right now. Thoughts like that won’t let you go. Whether you’re lying on the sofa, meeting someone new, or playing tennis. Today’s memories will stubbornly remain in your head. It will be the same for the other two people as well, not just me. If only I could go back to forty minutes before that factory exploded.”
I watched the longing for the past fill Jamal’s eyes as he soon returned to the unwanted reality before him. I asked the question I had wanted to put to the candidate for Savior all along.
“I’m asking just to confirm, but in every round, did people repeat the same events at the same times?”
“······You’re saying something obvious.”
Jamal looked at me with puzzlement. ······My loop situation is different from theirs. The people who disappeared might survive. The people didn’t repeat the same actions, either.
In the distance, Baek Aeyeong lowered the muzzle of her gun and spoke with one of the believers in front of her before signaling to me with her hand. It was the signal to start right away.
I sighed once and slowly rose from the chair. The metal chair scraped across the auditorium floor with an awful sound.
Screeeeeeeeeech! Perhaps because the auditorium was so quiet, I felt as though everyone’s eyes had locked onto me. My body felt as if it were breaking apart just from standing. I wanted nothing more than to sit in the chair and rest without doing anything. I also needed time to slowly think over and understand what I had just heard.
Instead, I sprang up from the chair and limped away in the exact opposite direction from where Baek Aeyeong was standing. That way, the believers would be able to stand with their backs turned toward Baek Aeyeong. Then Baek Aeyeong could shoot them in the back. Jamal, who had been having such a pleasant conversation with me, looked at me in confusion as I suddenly left his side.
If the believers weren’t watching me, I had even considered singing or dancing, but fortunately I was spared at least that humiliation. I could feel Rick and Joseph staring at me with bewildered expressions. After seven steps, I suddenly threw myself down, collapsing facedown onto the floor.
The Infinite Church believers nearby, thinking I had fallen, cried out in surprise, shouting my name or calling for the Savior. At the same time, gunshots rang out. Bang, bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang, bang! I couldn’t tell whether Baek Aeyeong was firing or someone else.
Baek Aeyeong had instructed me only to draw everyone’s attention when she gave the signal and then keep myself pressed flat against the floor. Joseph’s startled expression in the distance caught my eye. Gritting my teeth, I pictured Baek Aeyeong in the middle of the firefight. I had to help her. There were eight terrorists, but Baek Aeyeong had only one gun. By the time she shot the fourth person, she would already have been hit by someone else’s gunfire.
When I looked around, Jamal was also lying facedown on the floor. It seemed he had thrown himself down at the same time I did. Bullets were flying in every direction, yet Jamal didn’t look the least bit flustered. When our eyes met in the distance, he gave me a small wave. With no weapon, Jamal seemed content to lie there and watch the situation unfold.
The hostages in the section where Baek Aeyeong had thrown me a knife and allowed me to free my wrists grabbed Joseph by the ankles and legs as he ran around in confusion, sending him sprawling backward. Whoa! The hostages who had caught Joseph pressed themselves against the floor, choking him from behind, grabbing for his gun, and pummeling him with their fists.
The hostages’ screams echoed from every direction as loudly as the gunshots. I felt a bullet graze my hair as it passed. When I ducked in terror, I saw a frightened woman right beside me, squeezing her eyes shut and pressing her cheek against the floor as she waited for the firefight to pass. In my opinion, she was the model hostage.
On the other hand, there were men who, unaware of what was happening, kept raising their heads in the middle of the flying bullets. Were they trying to get themselves killed? I pressed one such man’s head to the floor with my right arm and shouted,
“Get down! Lie flat on the floor! Don’t get up!”
The male hostages, whose hands and feet were bound, threw themselves over the female employees like shields, trying to protect them from stray bullets. Following their example, I covered the head and back of a female employee whose name I didn’t even know with my upper body and waited motionless.
The gunfire, three minutes that felt like three years, finally ended. As people’s sobs and screams rang out from every direction, someone shouted at the top of their lungs,
“Drop your weapon! Or I’ll kill this woman!”
One of the Infinite Church believers was holding a middle-aged woman as a shield and yelling at Baek Aeyeong. Baek Aeyeong, who had been firing while using an Infinite Church believer as a shield, didn’t obediently surrender her gun at those words. Instead, she shot the believer along with the hostage. Gasp! I swallowed my breath in shock as I watched both of them fall backward.
When I looked up from the floor, almost no one was left standing. Whether they had been shot or simply beaten, the Infinite Church believers were all lying on the floor. Baek Aeyeong shouted,
“Stay facedown! Don’t move! Stay down and keep still!”