Had Park Muhyeon, climbing the stairs, sensed my presence? Had he realized I was caught by a snake in this ghostly state? Was that why he’d missed his footing? I watched the three of them climb the stairs, utterly spent, then called out to him once more.
Look over here! Did you hear me? Did you recognize me? Did you almost fall because you heard my voice?
When I shouted beside him, Park Muhyeon missed his footing again and nearly fell. Then I saw Seo Jihyeok and Shin Haeryang grab Park Muhyeon at the same time and pull him toward the inner side of the stairs. Shin Haeryang had pressed himself all the way against the inside wall and hauled both of them in, so they were dragged over by his strength. That was when it happened.
Shin Haeryang looked at me, floating in midair with the snake biting me. Our eyes met. ……Had he recognized me?
I was horrified as I stared back at Shin Haeryang, and I could tell he was just as startled.
His face hardened. Shin Haeryang told Park Muhyeon and Seo Jihyeok to stay against the wall, then shone the light from his tablet in this direction. He swung the tablet outright toward where the snake and I were; if I’d had a physical body, I would have been struck hard.
Shin Haeryang examined the empty air and the stairs, then frowned. Seo Jihyeok, enduring the pain with cold sweat running down his face, patted my shoulder and said,
“Sir. That was close.”
“It’s dangerous. ……Thank you, both of you.”
“……Shall we walk on the outer side? That should be safer.”
Shin Haeryang stared into the empty darkness for a few seconds, then deliberately blinked several times. Watching him check the darkness where I lingered again with the tablet light, I figured he must think he’d seen a hallucination.
Then Shin Haeryang hesitated briefly before touching around his neck, taking off his necklace, and handing it to me. Seeing this from a third-person point of view, it seemed Shin Haeryang thought that even if he handed me the tablet, there was no way I could hold it and climb.
Park Muhyeon, who was supporting Seo Jihyeok, looked like a walking corpse. It seemed as though he would collapse if someone so much as poked him. Seo Jihyeok, positioned in the middle, was in similarly terrible shape after three thousand steps. With a sour expression, I said to Shin Haeryang,
“You don’t have to go this far.”
“I’m lending it to you. Please return it once we’re out of the darkness.”
Shin Haeryang began climbing the stairs again, and every so often he stared into the darkness beyond them. He advised the others to keep close to the inner wall as they walked. Yugeum had no strength left to climb the stairs, so she was walking with her shoulder leaning against the inner wall, and Baek Aeyoung answered that she understood.
After that, everything was exactly the same as what had happened in the past. Hoping that Shin Haeryang or one of the others might be able to see me one more time, I hovered around them.
When they were given a brief rest on the landing, everyone who had been climbing the stairs sprawled out on the floor. Looking at Park Muhyeon lying there, he seemed almost unconscious. Only Shin Haeryang remained seated, glaring at the stairs we had climbed.
Seo Jihyeok, lying down and drinking straight from a water bottle, asked Shin Haeryang in a quiet voice,
“Aren’t you resting?”
“I saw something on the way up.”
“What did you see? My boring, miserable hospital life? Or my ruined resignation plan?”
“I saw a fairly large snake……”
At his superior’s hesitant answer, Seo Jihyeok looked appalled and said,
“Snakes live on these horrible stairs too?”
“……Its head was about the size of a dump truck.”
Perhaps lacking certainty, Shin Haeryang trailed off as he answered. Seo Jihyeok, however, sounded relieved.
“What? Come on. There’s no snake that big in the world.”
I looked at Seo Jihyeok while staring at the tremendously huge snake head stuck to my side. Jihyeok. I thought the same thing as you until just recently.
Just in case, I waved my right hand in front of Seo Jihyeok’s eyes. I did the same thing in front of Shin Haeryang and the other team members, but they didn’t seem able to see me at all. How had he seen me earlier? Snakes track their prey by scent. Shin Haeryang glanced for a moment at his team member, who was walking while giving off the smell of blood, then said,
“……Don’t worry about it. Just focus on climbing the stairs. Even if the snake appears again, I’ll make sure you don’t get eaten.”
“I’m grateful, really. Snake or whatever, I won’t run on the stairs, so can’t you untie the rope around my waist? This feels more like a snake.”
“I’ll retrieve it myself. Keep wearing it until we’re off the stairs.”
From then on, Shin Haeryang walked along the outermost side of the stairs the entire time. And now and then, while looking at the light from the necklace, he seemed to be checking the area around Park Muhyeon with his eyes. If a snake of absurd size attacked on stairs so dark nothing could be seen, he seemed to think it would go after Park Muhyeon, the prey it had already marked, or himself, walking on the very outside.
The giant snake that had been still in place began swimming again. It ignored everything I said, whether I told it to stop or said I wanted to go back to the beach on Daehando. Passing straight through the building and the steel beams as it rose upward, I found myself passing through the Second Undersea Base before I knew it.
In the center of the Second Undersea Base, the hostages were lying face down, bound, while armed people guarded them. I saw Jennifer, Kim Gayoung, and Henry lying there, captured. It seemed the people who had used the central elevator to escape had been caught and tied up in the Second Undersea Base. Whenever the hostages whispered to each other or kicked one another while tied up, a fierce kick from an Infinite Church believer came flying.
The snake ignored the hostages and the hostage-takers and was entering the exhibition hall. Once inside, it held my waist in its jaws and waited quietly in a corner without moving at all.
There, several Infinite Church believers were checking the condition of the displayed jewels. When the lights where the snake and I were standing flickered on and off, repeatedly malfunctioning, one believer who had prepared that exhibition hall spoke as if making excuses to Elizabeth, whose expression was like she had found a fly sitting on a dish.
“We called an engineer yesterday and fixed these lights, but they’re like this again today. The engineers must have done a terrible job.”
It occurred to me suddenly, but I didn’t think there was anything wrong with the lights. I thought it would be fine if the snake and I just moved away from this spot. I kept talking to them from the side, asking if they could hear my voice, but the believers, Elizabeth, Jamal, and David didn’t seem to hear me.
Perhaps the constantly flickering light was bothering him, because the Infinite Church believer simply removed the light installed in that spot altogether. The exhibition hall was already dim, and once he removed one of the indirect lights, the area around the snake and me became completely dark.
In the distance, the believers were installing a laser engraver for the jewels. I watched the garbage, dust, and items that had been needed to transport the jewels vanish through the Medic, and only after some time had passed did I realize people I knew were coming.
The first to enter the jewel exhibition hall was Baek Aeyoung. She entered with her gun aimed, and when she realized there was no one armed within a five-meter radius, she lowered the muzzle slightly. Only after a few seconds did Baek Aeyoung notice the raw stones as large as people. Her eyes widened, and she went farther into the exhibition hall. Then she came back out with a group of people.
Yugeum and Park Muhyeon, exhausted from tension and lack of stamina, walked out looking soulless, then saw the exhibits and opened their eyes wide and their mouths agape. Park Muhyeon pointed at an amethyst as tall as himself and shouted something, and Yugeum pointed at a large sapphire and answered something. Seo Jihyeok, sitting in the android’s two arms, was gripping the android as if he might pull its neck out as he said to the others,
“These weren’t here when I came yesterday.”
Seo Jihyeok pointed toward the darkness where I was standing and muttered in a flustered voice,
“That’s the light I fixed, and this place was completely empty. If there’d been something like this, I would’ve picked one up and put it in my pocket.”
Whether or not there were mountain-sized jewels displayed right in front of them, Baek Aeyoung split off to the right and Shin Haeryang to the left. Later, they met again in the shape of the four corners of a square. They were probably moving along that route to check whether anyone was hiding. If I’d had a physical body, Shin Haeryang likely would have discovered me as he moved. Baek Aeyoung answered Seo Jihyeok as if dumbfounded.
“How would you pick up something that size?”
The android walked while carrying Seo Jihyeok, then turned only its head slightly to look in my direction. Since this was a place without lighting and in need of repair, I couldn’t tell whether it was looking for the record or whether it had recognized me.
I called the android several times, but the android faithfully remained Seo Jihyeok’s stretcher and moved only according to his orders. I shouted at the top of my lungs for the others to leave immediately in the opposite direction from where they had come in, but they didn’t seem to hear me.
Leaving my unease behind, they kept walking. As if they had no idea what was about to happen.
While the android showed them the diamond, the snake and I watched the diamond’s radiance along with the group. Perhaps because the lighting was specialized for illuminating the diamond, it was dazzling.
Rather than a sense of beauty, all I could think was whether a jewel like this could grant people’s wishes. Though they focused on the diamond for a moment, Baek Aeyoung and Shin Haeryang were too busy sensing any signs of people or checking the exit from the exhibition hall to care about jewels or anything else.
I heard the footsteps of Infinite Church believers approaching from afar. Soon, I could also see the backs of the people from Engineer Team A, who would split up to hide.
Only the large diamond, the giant snake, and I were left alone. After hesitating for a moment, I reached out and touched the diamond, just in case.
If I tried to steal this, the Infinite Church believers coming this way might have their attention drawn here. This damn huge diamond seemed to be something the Infinite Church people valued more than the lives of their own believers. Then the group that had entered the exhibition hall might end up in a slightly more advantageous situation, or survive a little longer. The past might change.
I tried several times to grab the diamond, but I felt no sensation of touching anything at all. On the way here, I had struck or touched the people I met with my hand, wondering if I might be able to grab them, but I had passed through all of them. Just in case, I tried touching and pushing not only the diamond but all the nearby jewels, yet there was nothing I could touch.
The only ones who had been able to perceive me even slightly were Shin Haeryang, whose eyes had met mine in the darkness, and Park Muhyeon, who had reacted to my voice by stumbling. The snake still had my side caught in its entire head and told me nothing. What was I supposed to do? Was I simply forced to watch the past unfold like this?