“Since the elevator has Korean written in it, when Koreans visit the undersea base, we usually bring them here and show it to them. They take a lot of commemorative photos. Ministers and people like that always visit, too.”
I stared at the phrase written powerfully in Korean and Hanja, then lowered my head. On the elevator floor was a creature drawn like a cross between a pufferfish and a flying fish. Reading the English name written beside it, I figured that strange creature must be an asprete.
If terrorism or the loop or whatever hadn’t happened, I might have used this elevator on the weekend to go up to Daehan-do, saying I wanted to take a walk on the beach. I would have taken a ton of photos of the elevator interior and bragged to my family and friends. Look at this. There’s a place inside the undersea base with Korean written on it. Imagining that, I smiled faintly. Kim Jae-hui glanced at my face for a moment, then continued, as if trying to explain in more detail.
“They say that quote was chosen from one of the suggestions made by Koreans who used to be here and engraved like that. Back then, Ji-hyeok hyung apparently suggested taking a line from some poem. Ah. Seo Ji-hyeok—there’s a hyung on our team who reads poetry, even though it doesn’t suit his build. What was it again? I heard it before. Ah, right. He said they should write, ‘Because no one had ever told it the depth of the water, the white butterfly was not at all afraid of the sea.’ Since this place is full of arrogant, insolent bastards from eight different countries, he said.”
“Were you not here then, Jae-hui?”
“No.”
The elevator doors, which had been open for quite a while, closed with a loud sound. When the doors shut, I felt relieved inside. Because it had felt like they were telling me to get in right away and go down to risk my life fighting that cult.
“Our team’s Ji-hyeon noona apparently suggested writing, ‘Though you may know the depths of ten fathoms of water, you cannot know the heart of a person one fathom deep.’ Isn’t that ridiculous? They were choosing a phrase or quote for people to see as they passed by, but no one suggested writing something lively and hopeful. Are all people who live underwater like that? The phrase engraved on the elevator wall was suggested by Team Leader Sin. They say Sato threw a fit back then, but the team leader didn’t even care. The administrative officer working at headquarters at the time apparently suggested writing something weird. Mm. ......I’d tell you, but I can’t remember it well.”
“If you give up your life, you gain. Tomorrow becomes a lamp. They said it was a lyric from a very old song.”
Kim Jae-hui looked at me with puzzled eyes, then laughed lightly.
“......I think that’s right. They said it was rejected because it was too serious and heavy to engrave in an elevator, and it had nothing to do with the sea.”
“Is that person at headquarters still employed there?”
“I heard they quit in a panic. They were already gone when I arrived.”
Looking at the elevator doors, it felt like they were calling me to get on at once. I stared for a moment at the place that looked like a monster’s maw, then forced myself to ignore it and turned my head away.
“What are you going to do now?”
Kim Jae-hui’s question left me at a loss. Personally, I wanted to attend the prayer ceremony and bring back the fingers. If someone asked whether I had the skill to infiltrate a place packed with Infinite Church believers and secretly retrieve something offered on the altar without anyone noticing, I would answer that I was at the level of someone who woke up at dawn to get water, walked without turning on the light, and got his leg attacked by a dining chair. If my luck was bad, I might end up draped in jewels and headed for altar shabu-shabu.
First of all, I hated the very act of getting on the elevator. Just the thought of going back down to the undersea base made hives break out all over my body and made me feel like throwing up.
Besides, I had already met countless Infinite Church believers. Meeting those people one or two at a time was hard and exhausting enough; if I had to walk into a place where they were all gathered together of my own free will, I would rather give up on the fingers.
But without my fingers, how was I supposed to make a living right away? What about me and my family? My eyes fell on the prostheses Kim Jae-hui was wearing, and it seemed likely he was spending most of the money he earned on maintaining his own body. With no other choice, I looked at Kim Jae-hui’s fingers and asked.
“If it doesn’t make you uncomfortable, could I ask you a few questions about the fingers you use, Jae-hui? If it does make you uncomfortable......”
Kim Jae-hui cut me off and answered quickly.
“It doesn’t. I’m delighted that there’s something about my body you’re curious about. What part of my prosthetic hand are you curious about? Or is that ‘fingers’ thing slang?”
Kim Jae-hui swiftly held up his own hand, so after hesitating for a moment, I asked.
“I’m curious how much the prostheses cost, and how long it takes to be able to move them that naturally.”
“The cost varies wildly, but I’ll leave out hospital fees. Generally, one that looks like a human finger, is soft and warm, but has no function at all costs about 600 dollars apiece. Cheaper ones than that are cold or hard and uncomfortable. Mine can read electrical signals, bend naturally, and make delicate movements, so they cost about 4,000 dollars apiece.”
Kim Jae-hui spoke while bending and straightening his fingers this way and that.
“It took about two months after surgery for the wounds to heal. The shape of the cut surfaces keeps changing for about two years. Once the form stabilizes, that’s when you get the prostheses fitted, so until then you use cheap ones, and after that you buy expensive ones. I’ll tell you a good hospital and prosthetic manufacturer. As a bonus, I’ll also teach you a few jokes and bits of humor that people without fingers use on ordinary people. ......Or how about going down with me and getting your fingers back from the altar?”
Kim Jae-hui, smiling like a Hahoe mask, seemed pleased no matter which of the two options I chose, but I hated both. All I could think was that when I took off the temporary bandage on my left hand, I wanted all my fingers to be perfectly intact.
A loss was something you had no choice but to accept through tears as time passed, but for now, my rejection of it was overwhelming. If I gave up on my fingers, thoughts like, Am I going to become unemployed in this recession? came crashing in, and it was unbearably bleak. Just one day ago, I had been a dentist, and now it looked like I was about to become unemployed. How was I supposed to earn a living? I could clearly see my future plunging straight down, but going down under the undersea base and meeting the cultists was even more frightening.
“......I don’t want to go down to the garden in the First Undersea Base.”
“Really? Did you perhaps go sightseeing there alone? If you go with me, it’ll be much more fun. I’ll explain it even more passionately than I just explained the elevator. That botanical garden is a place I visit often.”
I didn’t have particularly good memories of that garden with the altar installed. Struggling to erase the image of bloodied water and crushed oranges rushing in all at once, I said.
“May I ask you a somewhat more uncomfortable question, Jae-hui?”
“As much as you like. My truth has been prepared for you.”
“You said before that you experienced a ‘miracle’ like the savior candidates. You said you returned to the past dozens of times.”
Kim Jae-hui’s smiling face froze as it was, like a plaster statue. Then he asked me back instead.
“......Who told you? Did a Kim Jae-hui from another round blabber about my past to you? Or did you torture me from another round or something?”
What kind of imagination was that? When Kim Jae-hui crossed his arms over his upper body in an X and tried to avoid me, I answered quickly in case he misunderstood something bizarre.
“You told me yourself, Jae-hui.”
“You’re saying I revealed a Class One secret just because we were friends?”
Back then, you had gone around calling me the savior. If we had just been ordinary friends, you absolutely wouldn’t have told me. I didn’t want to deliberately tell the current Kim Jae-hui facts from other rounds about being a savior or whatever and create the seed of a huge dispute.
“Maybe you got excited about making a new friend and opened up a lot? The Jae-hui from then was a very kind person. You yielded an escape pod to the people around you, lured a shark away, gave me food, and said you were going to live a new and hopeful life.”
“Really? ......I don’t think so.”
It was practically fabrication. Half was a lie, but half was true. Even if Sin Hae-ryang came, wouldn’t it be hard for him to tell whether it was real or not? It felt like what I was dramatically improving at after coming to the undersea base wasn’t work-related skills, but my ability to lie. Kim Jae-hui looked at me with an expression of disbelief, but I asked what I was curious about first.
“Out of over thirty attempts, how many times did you safely escape from the movie theater?”
“......Five times in total, maybe six. It’s not clear. Because of the smoke from the fire, my mental state was all over the place.”
“Like the other savior candidates, was one of the many rounds you experienced randomly selected and reflected in the result? Not the final round?”
Kim Jae-hui’s expressionless face looked tired, but I couldn’t tell whether it was because he had crawled up four thousand stairs or because he was looking back on a painful past. At the very least, his expressionless face was much better than when he was smiling. Because it seemed like Kim Jae-hui smiled to hide how he felt.
“Yes. I was so exhausted that I jumped down the stairs twice or so, but I didn’t know one of those would be selected. If I could have chosen, I would have picked a better result. Who would want to choose a life where you lose two fingers, get roasted to a crisp by fire while crawling around, and your hyung gets smoked by the fumes?”
“......I asked because I’m worried that when I escape this loop as well, a result I don’t want might be selected. It must have been unpleasant to say out loud, so thank you for telling me.”
“It’s fine. Until just now, I was interpreting the word friend from a narrow perspective, but I’ve broadened it.”
Pretending I hadn’t heard Kim Jae-hui’s bullshit, I asked.
“......Just in case, how did you spend the final round?”
“I locked the doors of the movie theater I was in and watched a movie with everyone. It was so boring that before long, they all fell asleep.”
Was that true? Was it a lie? After saying that, Kim Jae-hui stared piercingly at me. Would I become like that too if I gave up completely?
......I don’t know. If I fell into too much despair, maybe I would. I should tell the people in the undersea base to escape to Daehan-do as much as I can, until the very end. If it doesn’t work, then there’s nothing I can do, but maybe at least one person might listen to me and escape.
“......Let’s not take the elevator. Let’s go around Daehan-do looking for people.”
I moved away from the elevator area and began staggering along with Kim Jae-hui. Neither of us was in good condition, so we had to walk slower than turtles. Only after each of us fell over about three times did we start walking with our arms around each other’s shoulders.