When Baek Aeyeong went to press the elevator button, I thought everyone here was going to move to the front of the elevator. But Shin Haeryang said we should wait right here, and Baek Aeyeong naturally came back this way. In response to Yugeum’s and my questions, Baek Aeyeong answered quietly.
“The area around the elevator is too open. If we stand in front of it, anyone could see us, so we can’t.”
“Wow!”
“Whoa.”
At that unexpected opinion, Yugeum and I let out low exclamations of admiration. During the three-minute break, Seo Jihyeok sat down on the floor behind the café counter and said he’d check whether the internet worked on his pad first. Yugeum plopped down beside him and immediately took out her phone.
“The internet’s not connecting.”
“Calls aren’t going through either.”
Listening to their disappointed voices, I looked around the kitchen area of the café we were in. I had only used the two cafés in the Fourth Deep-Sea Base, so I hadn’t had a chance to try this place. Looking at the menu, it seemed like they mostly sold blended fruit drinks. They must have evacuated in a hurry, but just how frantic had they been to leave frozen strawberries and blueberries outside a big refrigerator like this? I opened the upper freezer compartment to put the pack of frozen strawberries inside, only to realize the freezer I’d opened wasn’t running. Huh?
There was a lump of metal in the freezer that definitely shouldn’t have been there. Was this a real gun? Seo Jihyeok couldn’t move. Baek Aeyeong hadn’t taken her eyes off the elevator.
“Mr. Shin Haeryang. Please come over here for a moment.”
At my voice, Shin Haeryang came right away. I showed him the nonfunctioning freezer. It seemed they’d been using it not as a freezer, but as some kind of storage compartment, and there was something inside that should never have been in a fruit juice shop.
“Did you touch it?”
“No. I just opened the door.”
Shin Haeryang looked at the handgun and magazines inside the freezer, then pointed to a palm-sized empty space beside them.
“It seems they took what was here and left these behind.”
Then, after confirming that nothing had been installed inside the freezer, he picked up the gun and checked the safety and the chamber.
“Is it fake?”
Please let it be fake. Shin Haeryang shook his head.
“It’s real.”
Inside the freezer were a gun, two magazines, one pack of bullets, and a bottle of liquor. Shin Haeryang carefully opened the remaining refrigerators. Only after watching him did I realize he was checking for booby traps. ......I’d just yanked the freezer open without thinking?
We opened the rest, but they were all full of milk, chilled sparkling water, and food. Just in case, I searched behind the milk too, but there was nothing there. Awkwardly, I set the frozen strawberries I’d been holding back down on the floor where they’d been. Maybe those huge packs of strawberries and blueberries had been used as camouflage to hide the gun. With a clack, Shin Haeryang set the handgun on top of a dishcloth and took the whole thing apart.
No, why was he taking apart a perfectly fine gun? Once the palm-sized gun was disassembled, the tiny parts amounted to, if I exaggerated, about a fistful. I worried that he might not be able to put it back together, but as if to crush that concern, Shin Haeryang began reassembling it while inspecting the spring and the inside of the handgun. By the time he had fitted the pieces together here and there as if assembling Lego, made one gun in no time at all, inserted the magazine, and even loaded it, Yugeum came into the kitchen.
“What on earth are you two doing in here—huh?”
At the sight of the handgun, Yugeum’s eyes went wide. Ah. I reacted like that too when I saw it in the freezer. Swallowing, Yugeum asked.
“A-are you going to use that?”
Shin Haeryang looked down at the gun he was holding. Judging by his hand, he seemed to be engaging the safety.
“I hope there won’t be any need.”
When we left the small kitchen after Shin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong saw the gun and caused an uproar, each insisting they should have it, making both Yugeum and me recoil in horror.
“Can’t I shoot it? Captain? No, Team Leader! I got shot today and I’m having a hard time here.”
“He says he’s having a hard time. Let’s leave him out. You know my skill, right? I’m confident I won’t waste a single bullet.”
“......I’m keeping it. Both of you, be quiet.”
At Shin Haeryang’s words, both of them grew sullen. Why were they so desperate to have the gun? When I asked, Baek Aeyeong said with a sigh.
“My wish right now is to have a loaded machine gun. Do you know how uneasy it is to be unarmed?”
“I don’t know at all.”
I thought about it for a moment, but my answer remained the same. It wasn’t as if I normally walked around armed.
“Since I don’t have a weapon that can hurt the other party, couldn’t I expect the other party to be unarmed as well, and hope for a peaceful solution?”
“I don’t know about that. Considering they brought a gun into an undersea base where weapons are prohibited, it seems the other side isn’t thinking about a peaceful solution in the slightest. They seem to want chaos full of bloodshed and screams.”
“......I’m quite skilled at bloodshed and screams myself, but I always use peaceful solutions.”
Hearing that, Seo Jihyeok and Yugeum let out small snorts of laughter. Those two had received treatment from me before. Baek Aeyeong looked puzzled at the two of them smiling. Only later did she snap her fingers and say, Ah. You were a dentist, right? Baek Aeyeong said to me.
“I’m also the sort of person overflowing with the intention to return the same kind of peaceful method if the other side wants peace. (Seo Jihyeok shook his head vigorously as if there was no way that was true.) But if the other side wants a bloody fight, I’ll gladly fight.”
“......Have you never heard the saying that you should stop a fight and encourage a bargain?”
“Is that really a Korean proverb?”
Hahaha. Good grief. Baek Aeyeong suddenly snapped her head up and looked at the elevator. She stretched her neck out like a meerkat, then abruptly told us to duck. I, already sitting half-reclined, and Yugeum, who had clamped a hand over her own mouth, didn’t even breathe properly.
Hiding behind the café’s employee counter, I felt like we’d be discovered if I so much as raised my head wrong. I heard footsteps, as if people had come out of the elevator. Looking at Baek Aeyeong’s fingers, there were two of them, and I suppressed the urge to cling to those people right away and say I wanted to get out of the undersea base. Shin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok, and Baek Aeyeong all silently raised their index fingers to their lips.
Shin Haeryang tapped the gun he was holding twice with his fingertips at Yugeum and me, then tapped the air twice toward the elevator. It was hard to tell whether he meant he wanted to fire two shots at the people who had just come out of the elevator, or whether those people were also armed with guns like this. Given the personality of Engineering Team A, I had the uneasy feeling it was the former.
When the people came out of the elevator and moved to the side, we finally caught a very small glimpse of them. On both of their upper arms was something like a round mark or patch, made of black, red, and white, showing a shark with its mouth open. Both of them were armed with guns, and their overall outfits were pitch-black. They were also wearing black masks that covered their noses.
People in the undersea base usually don’t wear black clothes for both top and bottom. They say it’s because the deeper you go underwater, the less light there is and the darker it becomes, so it’s to prevent accidents and reduce depression; after five days of seeing only brilliantly colored clothes, those pitch-black outfits naturally felt intimidating.
Seeing them, I understood why Baek Aeyeong had been so cautious about getting on the elevator. It seemed they had been riding inside the elevator the whole time. Judging by the fact that they came out as soon as she pressed the button. Two men armed with weapons, wearing black caps, black masks, and black clothes, with shark patches on their shoulders. They looked like the sort of people pedestrians would all avoid if they were walking down the street. Why were people like that in the undersea base?
From their conversation, it seemed the two armed personnel were very curious about who had pressed the elevator button. Yugeum muttered softly, “Somniosus microcephalus.” I had absolutely no idea what that was. But after a few seconds, the translator in my ear translated in a dry voice, [Greenland shark], and I thought my heart would drop.
The two with guns said they should look around, then began searching [Unlimited Chocolate Cookies and Book Café], which was closer to the elevator than the café where we were hiding. Only after the two figures had completely disappeared did Baek Aeyeong speak.
“If we’d had a suppressor, I would’ve shot them right away.”
As if he agreed, Shin Haeryang did not deny Baek Aeyeong’s words. Since the two armed people had gone toward the book café, I asked whether we should take the now-empty elevator.
“It bothers me that they came down in the elevator that had been stopped at the Second Undersea Base.”
Shin Haeryang was probably anticipating that the moment we went up in that elevator called Archelon, we would run into a truckload of armed personnel wearing black caps and pitch-black clothes. Scratching her cheek, Yugeum asked Shin Haeryang.
“Would they be hostile to us even though we haven’t done anything?”
“They’re covering their faces. It means they’re willing to do anything anonymously.”
“There are lots of people like that even without covering their faces.”
“......That’s true.”
Listening to this bland exchange between the two, I asked with an incredulous expression.
“Then what do we do?”
“A preemptive strike is best.”
Baek Aeyeong looked at Shin Haeryang while gripping a flathead screwdriver. After a few seconds, Shin Haeryang nodded.
“Let’s catch them and ask.”
Shin Haeryang handed Baek Aeyeong the gun he had been holding. With the screwdriver clenched between her teeth and the gun in one hand, Baek Aeyeong told Yugeum and me to hide in the kitchen until they caught those two people. And not to come out until she called us.
When Yugeum and I tried to take Seo Jihyeok, who was sitting on the floor, to the kitchen with us, Shin Haeryang shook his head. Seo Jihyeok let out a loud sigh and said.
“So you need my killer acting skills after all, right?”
“Yes.”
In front of the cheeky Seo Jihyeok, Shin Haeryang nodded without so much as a change in expression. Shouting that they couldn’t do it without him, Seo Jihyeok grabbed his leg and pretended to roll around.
“Aaaaargh! My leeeeg!”
Yugeum and I hid in the kitchen and counted together. Before two minutes had passed, I heard Baek Aeyeong’s voice, and when I went out, one of the armed men was lying sprawled on top of Seo Jihyeok. Baek Aeyeong had a handgun thrust in front of the other man’s face, while the muzzle of the gun the armed man was holding was aimed precisely at his own thigh.
Unarmed, Shin Haeryang had wrapped himself around the man from behind, almost like an embrace, and had twisted the direction of the man’s gun barrel toward the man’s own thigh. Shin Haeryang was now making a terrifying threat.
“If you scream, either your face gets blown off, or something inside your pants gets blown off. One of the two is going flying.”
Since Shin Haeryang was over 190 centimeters tall, if the gun went off, the man, who looked about 170 centimeters tall, would lose either his lower abdomen or something precious below it, while even if Shin Haeryang were hit badly, it would probably only be in the thigh or calf. Seo Jihyeok shoved the man on top of him to the side, snatched away the gun he was holding, and aimed it at the man Shin Haeryang was embracing. The three of them were aiming at one man.
“Slowly raise both hands.”