Was the snake planning to wander around these undersea bases collecting my corpse? What would it use it for? Digest it? A snake with a gigantic body swam freely inside and outside the undersea base, yet judging by the lack of any records, it seemed no one had ever seen it. Weren’t the submarines supposed to be exploring the ocean? Then why had scientists never detected this snake? The moment it was discovered, it seemed like it would be the subject of a paper.
The snake passed through the now-empty Room 38, left the White Tiger Cave, and leaped into the seawater. Then it writhed and swam again, thrusting its head up from the floor of Undersea Base 4.
The place the snake arrived at was inside the central elevator. As the snake carelessly shoved its head into the elevator car, the lights inside flickered ominously. The snake moved its body toward the front of the elevator. Each time it moved, the flowers spread across the floor were crushed or scattered slightly. One member of the Infinite Church standing guard around the elevator saw it, but he did not seem to find anything strange about the sight.
The snake and I waited for Bak Muhyeon, who was walking toward us in the distance. He had a long black cloak wrapped around his body, with jewels densely hung or pinned over it. I thought I had walked along the flower-strewn path on my own two feet, but now that I looked again, the people beside me were holding my arms from either side and escorting me as if I were under arrest.
As he drew closer to the central elevator, his face became visible. He must have cried so much that all the capillaries in one eye had burst, leaving the white completely bloodshot. On top of that, his face was as pale as a sheet of paper. Several nearby believers put bracelets around his wrists while subtly plucking away pieces of his broken nails, or pretended to hold his hand while pricking his fingertips with clothing pins and discreetly wiping the blood onto handkerchiefs to take with them. They also hung ornaments from his hair or ears and pulled out several strands of hair, but Bak Muhyeon, dazed from the shock, did not seem to notice.
Why were the believers taking pieces of the Savior’s body? I watched the incomprehensible sight while the enormous snake held me around the waist. The believers who had made wishes as they hung jewelry on him followed Bak Muhyeon, who was being led away without so much as blinking, and prayed.
The giant snake waited quietly for Bak Muhyeon and the procession of believers following him, then moved again. It entered the central elevator and lowered only its massive head through the ceiling. The elevator lights flickered briefly, but otherwise it operated without a problem. …Why had the snake changed locations? There was a high chance he would die while walking over like that, but he hadn’t?
The medics carrying the wounded had been about to board the central elevator first, but when the snake’s enormous head entered the elevator, they slowly backed away and began insisting that the others go first. In the end, only one medic entered the elevator.
Bak Muhyeon, dragged all the way to the front of the elevator like a pig being led to slaughter, stopped walking for the first time. He seemed unwilling to board the elevator where the Infinite Church believers were waiting. Even when Elizabeth took his hand and pulled him, he would not enter. The snake’s head, which had moved to the ceiling of the elevator, stared intently at Bak Muhyeon. The male believers who had been supporting Bak Muhyeon, along with Elizabeth, grabbed his arms from both sides and forced him into the elevator.
Bak Muhyeon struggled to turn his head back at Ronald Weiss’s voice, but turned it forward again at the sound of the elevator doors closing. And within seconds, a bullet struck him in the forehead.
Bak Muhyeon’s body fell backward, and the elevator doors inside the car closed. Screams erupted from the believers in the departing elevator. The snake, apparently taking that as its cue, spat out the waist it had been holding in its mouth. I jumped off the ascending elevator. I was curious how far I could get from the snake.
A huge commotion broke out among the believers who had witnessed the Savior being shot.
‘The Savior was just shot, right? I didn’t see it wrong, did I?’
‘I saw it too! I saw a bullet hole open in his forehead!’
‘Are you sure you saw it properly? He can return to the past. There’s no way he could die from something as trivial as a bullet! He can remain in the past and exist forever!’
At that moment, the person who had said he saw the shooting suddenly crumpled to the floor. Seeing him writhe as he spewed blood, the startled believers began running around the elevator.
The person who had sniped Bak Muhyeon was targeting the believers moving around the central elevator. The believers standing around the elevator praying, or following the flower path the Savior had walked along, fled in a panic. Gunshots rang out one after another, about twenty in all, and roughly that many people seemed to have fallen.
The bullets mainly flew at people who were running away, people who had stopped after colliding with someone, and people who had fallen down. Those who had hidden in a frantic rush without finding proper cover were shot while crouching behind temporary partitions or wooden objects.
They said capable soldiers could calculate the angle and distance from which a bullet had come merely by listening to the gunshot and observing the direction in which the sniper’s victim fell, then locate the hidden sniper. Yet even though more than twenty members of the Infinite Church had collapsed across the floor, I had no idea where the bullets were coming from.
Perhaps the sniper’s concealment skills were exceptional, or perhaps he was shooting while moving. It didn’t seem as though I was the only one who couldn’t figure it out. The people who had been shot and fallen here seemed to be about as stupid as I was.
A member of the Infinite Church who appeared to have come from the Deep Blue side greeted another believer cheerfully with his hat pulled low, then shot him. After that, he began firing nonstop at the believers around him.
One believer, startled and flailing as he raised his gun, somehow managed to aim it at the man. But the man did not even flinch. He merely stepped a few paces to the side to avoid the bullets, then easily killed his opponent and came this way. He dragged around people who begged him to spare them and used them as shields, crushed his opponents’ noses and jaws with the butt of his gun and took their weapons, and even as he walked toward us he continued firing without pause, as though determined to shatter his own index finger with fractures and blood.
He was too far away, and with his Infinite Church hat pulled low and a skull mask covering his face, I couldn’t see his features. But he did not seem to be anyone I knew.
The three gunslingers I knew would never shoot like that, claiming it was a waste of bullets. The man found people hiding around the central plaza with uncanny precision and gave each of them two bullets as a present, deliberately avoiding the brain or heart so that they would not die instantly. He acted like someone desperate to make anyone who fell into his hands suffer as painfully as possible.
Judging from the way he shot, he mainly aimed for the abdomen, where the digestive organs were located, or the chest, where the lungs lay. The men shot in the abdomen screamed in such high registers that they sounded like sopranos. The man added shots to their lungs or groins, piling on even more excruciating pain. Apparently, the adrenaline released in an emergency did not suppress all pain.
Even though he was merely walking diagonally across the area, cries of agony and pleas for mercy rang out from every direction. The man, who had been wasting bullets with abandon and displaying the height of inefficiency, spotted Kim Jaehee hiding in a corner and fired two shots at him before removing his mask.
Seo Jihyeok’s expressionless face emerged from beneath the mask and hat. Seo Jihyeok stared at Kim Jaehee for a moment, then looked around and asked with a smile in a gentle voice.
‘Jaehee. Where is Sanghyeon? It’ll be better for you if you answer quickly.’
While I was briefly stunned by Seo Jihyeok’s face, screams continued to ring out from inside the central elevator.
I guessed the snake had waited for Bak Muhyeon to die this time as well, then swallowed his corpse whole, just as it had before. I expected it to bite me around the waist again and wander through the undersea base as if giving me a tour of all the time I had spent there, but this time was slightly different. Elizabeth’s voice could be heard.
‘Do you think Daehan could revive him at the hospital with a gunshot wound like this?’
‘What? Don’t be ridiculous, Beth. Look at his head. It’s already hopeless.’
David, hearing Jamal’s despairing words, checked my pulse and shook his head. Ronald shouted in an irritated voice.
‘Damn it! He’s dying! How long have we waited? I don’t know what time this bastard wakes up, but he’ll go back to the morning again! After making us wait like this!’
‘Please show proper respect in front of the Savior.’
‘He has to save me before he’s a Savior! If he’s no use to me, he’s worth less than an ant! If he comes back alive even now, I’ll show him respect. If one of the people here had become the Savior in the first place, none of this would have been a problem!’
‘But Bak Muhyeon was chosen. Not us.’
The inside of the elevator was a complete mess. Believers covered in blood had gathered around my instantly killed corpse. Kim Jaehee would have loved the sight. It was the quintessential image of a cult drenched in blood and flesh.
Elizabeth had my head resting on her knees and was wiping away the blood flowing through the round entrance wound in my forehead with a thin handkerchief. I didn’t know what the back of my head looked like, but with my eyes closed, my face still appeared to be intact. Elizabeth whispered softly into my ear.
‘We’ll meet again.’
We already are.
‘Grant our wish.’
Not a chance.
‘Or at least grant my wish.’
Then Elizabeth clasped my hand tightly. David Knight and Ronald Weiss argued about the employment contract until the elevator reached Undersea Base 3. It seemed David had accumulated quite a lot after spending all this time working under a contract from the cult known as the Infinite Church. While Jamal consoled several dejected believers and picked up Bak Muhyeon’s jewelry from the floor with his hands, the snake watching from the ceiling slowly lowered its head.
The snake couldn’t swallow the corpse and looked at me. I looked back at the snake. What did it expect me to do? It didn’t want me to remove the bullets so the corpse would be easier to swallow, did it? Maybe because I had never raised an animal, I didn’t understand animal behavior very well.
As if demonstrating something, the snake lightly tapped the ornaments in the dead Bak Muhyeon’s hair with its snout. The jewels and ornaments swayed this way and that as though a breeze had blown through them. At that, a male believer who had been picking up an earring from the floor suddenly began screaming.
‘Aaaaaaaaargh! Aaaaaaaaargh!’
Every believer inside the elevator turned to look at the man who had screamed.