I cut in to lower Yu Geumi’s blood pressure as she clutched the back of her neck.
“I learned this while studying sharks, but wasn’t the Greenland shark native to the North Atlantic as far as I know? Why has it come to the North Pacific undersea base to raise hell?”
“They live in Canada too.”
I couldn’t help but laugh at that answer. Heh heh heh. This guy should become a comedian, or be used to treat hypotension patients. I wracked my memory.
“A religion needs…… an object of worship, priests, believers, scriptures, and temples. Let’s say the object of worship is an octopus, the priests are sharks, the believers are squid, and money is seashells. Do you even have a single temple? Any real estate to speak of? In front of those three elevators at Undersea Base 2? Or the Dragon Palace Wedding Hall? Undersea Base 1? Or are you homeless, sleeping on this beach?”
“Fools. We are an ancient religion. Temples exist in every country, every city, and every sea. Your household is already within our territory.”
Baek Aeyeong seemed to think she had already given enough warning. Without a word, she slammed the man’s cheek from behind with her gun.
At that sudden violence, I blankly opened my mouth, and Yu Geumi, behind me, was so startled she stepped back. The man’s face turned almost ninety degrees. It looked like his teeth had been knocked out. When the man ran his tongue over the inside of his mouth and tried to spit out his teeth, I reflexively covered his mouth with my palm. Surprised, I stammered.
“Don’t spit them out, keep them in your mouth. ……You have to hold onto the teeth. That’s the only way to treat them.”
“……Are you the new dentist?”
Whether it’s ceramic or gold, there is no material as good as one’s own teeth, now or ever. Growing them back with stem cells takes far too long. Besides, there’s no equipment here. The man’s pronunciation was a mess with blood, saliva, and teeth in his mouth, and I didn’t answer.
Then the man spat the teeth out onto the floor with a *ptoo* and started giggling.
The man spoke to me, blood splattering. His pronunciation was unclear, yet strangely I heard every word.
“Your younger brother is a college freshman right now. Your dad committed suicide, and your mom got hit by a drunk driver so she can’t use her lower half, right? Crawling across the floor, literally?”
My heart began pounding next to my ear again. A chilling shiver that felt like a blow to the back of my head coldly brushed down my spine.
Everything he said was true, so rather than getting angry, I thought, *How does he know that?* The man spoke, spewing blood from his mouth.
“Did you think we wouldn’t know? We’ve already investigated you and your family. You’ve got a lot of debts too, right? Fool! If you don’t throw yourself into the embrace of the Church of Infinity right now, not only the lives of your family, but you won’t get out of this undersea base alive—”
Yu Geumi let out a sharp gasp. The man was cleanly knocked unconscious by Sin Haeryang’s flying fist. It seemed the bones of his nose and philtrum were broken in one blow with his right hand. The man, who had been kneeling with his hand on his head while sneering at me, simply rolled across the floor.
Hitting the philtrum had broken two of his front teeth along with his nasal bone. Sin Haeryang simply flicked his blood-soaked hand once toward the floor. I blankly stared at the man collapsed on the floor; with that level of trauma, he’d need to visit not just a dentist, but an ENT specialist and a plastic surgeon too.
I blankly picked up the fallen teeth from the floor. Human teeth don’t fall out this easily.
Do you guys know how much arm strength it takes to pull out wisdom teeth? Front teeth are the same. How can you pull out a person’s teeth this easily? Do you know how much effort and money it takes to treat this? As I stood out of it, touching the white teeth, Sin Haeryang lightly tapped my shoulder.
“Let’s move.”
I flinched in surprise at that touch on my shoulder. Without asking anything about what had just been said, he simply supported Seo Jihyeok, who was seated on the floor. Yu Geumi called out lowly, “Muhyeon-ssi,” and stamped her feet anxiously. I began moving like a swaying pendulum. I too lifted the cat carrier from Yu Geumi’s arms as if snatching it, hoisted it onto my back, and supported Seo Jihyeok.
Baek Aeyeong said she would take the rear and told us to go first. Yu Geumi hesitated, then followed us at Baek Aeyeong’s gesture. I looked back to see Baek Aeyeong dragging the body of the person who had died with scissors lodged in their neck by the shoulder.
The pools of blood forming, the teeth rolling on the floor, the ruined faces, the gushing blood were all so vivid. No, there was no need to hit him that hard. There was no need to hit a person like that. I touched the teeth I’d somehow ended up clutching in my hand and spoke in a daze. If I didn’t say something, I felt like I would cry.
“……There weren’t any major errors in what that man said earlier. If that cult investigated my family, my family might be in danger right now.”
Blood and violence, corpses and injured people, a cult, armed personnel with guns, a leaking undersea base. Unable to overcome my anxiety, I spoke with my trembling fist clenched tight, and Sin Haeryang, who had been listening quietly, shook his head.
“Ignore it. There is probably no more effective method of recruiting Muhyeon-ssi in his current state than that kind of threat. And if they’ve investigated someone who joined just five days ago to that extent, they’ve already investigated all of us as well.”
His words were as heavy as a rock; not even a needle’s worth of anxiety could slip through. At those words, I felt slightly less anxious about the cultist’s gleaming pupils and voice. There were still blood-stained teeth in my hand.
Ah, I really hate this. I didn’t know seeing an extracted tooth outside a dental clinic could be this terrible. The anxiety that had been raging like a storm earlier was now beginning to fall like a light drizzle. I barely held back a heart that felt ready to burst. If anyone so much as pressed against me, I would burst into tears. Seo Jihyeok hesitated, then spoke.
“Well…… he was spouting nonsense even when the doctor wasn’t around earlier. So please don’t worry too much.”
“……Yes.”
Seo Jihyeok probably thought I was shocked not by witnessing the violence itself, but by the content the cultist had spoken. I had never seen someone being beaten, nor had I ever hit someone.
Yu Geumi kept glancing behind her. Now that Baek Aeyeong was no longer in sight, she seemed worried.
“Aeyeong-ssi isn’t coming?”
“Oh my. Geumi-ssi. Don’t worry! She’ll be right here. You remember she’s much faster on her feet than us, right?”
We were heading back past the sandwich shop to the area with the convenience store. By the time we came around far enough to see the body of Ha Yoon laid out on the floor, Baek Aeyeong had somehow positioned herself at our very rear. Yu Geumi asked Sin Haeryang’s back as he walked ahead.
“Where are we going?”
“A place that cult group won’t know about.”
“There’s a place like that? From here, to get to Undersea Base 2, you can only move using three elevators including the central elevator and two escape ports, right?”
“There is one more.”
“There’s one more? But the guidebook, maps, and blueprints all say otherwise.”
I don’t even know how many elevators are here. Yu Geumi, who had been here for over a year, and Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong, who had been here even longer, all had expressions full of doubt about where Sin Haeryang was heading. However, Baek Aeyeong didn’t ask, and Seo Jihyeok, perhaps displeased with his predicament of being dragged along while someone held his injured leg, or perhaps because his leg hurt, started chattering again.
“Team Leader? Team Leader? You seem pretty upset because of that crazy bastard spouting nonsense earlier, so please calm down. Rather, what do you think about somehow taking the central elevator up? We could break the elevator at Undersea Base 2 so the doors won’t open. Or let’s just have a gunfight. Wouldn’t taking the elevator to zip straight up be much better than riding those crappy escape pods?”
Sin Haeryang, who had been walking while supporting Seo Jihyeok, stopped. Therefore, I, who was supporting Seo Jihyeok; Yu Geumi, who had been walking behind Seo Jihyeok; and Baek Aeyeong, who had been walking at the very end, all had to stop too. Sin Haeryang asked Yu Geumi and me.
“There are two methods. One where getting there is difficult but we can move to Undersea Base 2 without encountering people, and one where we can get to Undersea Base 2 easily but will definitely run into fanatics with guns. Which do you prefer?”
“I want the one where we don’t run into people with guns and it’s not difficult.”
Seo Jihyeok giggled at Yu Geumi’s words. I thought about the earlier situation and shook my head.
“I don’t want to meet those kinds of guys.”
I no longer wanted to be with Sin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok, or even Baek Aeyeong. Emotionally, I wanted to hole up in a corner all day vomiting and lying down, but I couldn’t bring myself to show it. Had I grown up too weak? ……No.
After my father’s death, I had lived as a commoner among commoners in Korea. I had thought that life as a commoner had grown wild like grass in a field, but now I realized that field had unexpectedly been inside a greenhouse all along.
How many times in my life had I seen someone die with scissors stuck in their neck? That madness. Covered in blood, speaking of others’ misfortunes without hesitation, people punching each other so teeth fall out…….
The less I meet those cult bastards, the less I have to see sights like earlier. Baek Aeyeong gave no answer to Sin Haeryang’s question. Sin Haeryang asked Yu Geumi again.
“Have you ever fired a gun?”
“No.”
Sin Haeryang turned his head toward me, so I too shook my head to the side once more. Seo Jihyeok spoke like a crochety old man.
“This is the problem now that we have a volunteer military system. Seriously. Men these days don’t know how to shoot a gun.” Baek Aeyeong, who had been standing guard with a gun, looked at Seo Jihyeok leaning on my arm with an incredulous gaze and spoke as if pitying him.
“It’s a real problem. The man who knows how to shoot goes around getting shot instead.”
Baek Aeyeong tapped his left leg, wrapped in a splint, with the tip of her foot. Seo Jihyeok, afraid someone might hear, couldn’t scream and just flapped his hands around frantically.
“Kuuuaaagh! Baek Aeyeong! Just wait until I get out of here!”
“Oh my. Try killing me here then. Go ahead, kill me. Ugh. Moron.”
While Baek Aeyeong had her fun teasing Seo Jihyeok, Sin Haeryang seemed to have concluded that the less dangerous option was better. The area near the convenience store was close to a bakery, so it smelled of bread even there, but walking behind Sin Haeryang meant gradually moving away from the center. It seemed they were heading toward a corner.