Kang Sujeong was looking out at the sea where the escape craft floated when she spoke to Seo Jihyeok.
“We at least know Sanghyeon fell into the water, but did Team Leader Shin make it out of the underwater base properly? I’m worried about Sanghyeon too, but I’m really worried about Team Leader Shin.”
“Well. Team Leader Shin isn’t the kind of person who’ll croak easily, so won’t he be fine?”
“You’re not worried at all right now because Jihyeon is somewhere safe and I’m here, are you?”
Seo Jihyeok looked startled, then nodded and said,
“How do you know that so well? Since when did you learn mind-reading from Team Leader Shin?”
Kang Sujeong muttered in a soulless voice.
“Right. I’ll work hard and… come up with a plan. At least you guys, don’t worry and just stay put.”
Kang Sujeong repeatedly told us not to go anywhere and to stay here, then headed toward a beach bed some distance away from us. A group of people with minor injuries, or who hadn’t left the beach, had gathered there; seeing Kang Sujeong approach while loudly asking after them, they seemed to be people she knew.
Seo Jihyeok watched his sub-team leader go talk to the survivors on the beach, then strode off across the sand. Your sub-team leader just told you to stay still. I helped Emma, who had been sitting in the sand, up and laid her down on the nearest beach bed. Emma seemed to have exhausted her strength and could barely move. In the place where the adrenaline that had surged explosively had passed, a heavy fatigue seemed to settle in.
Seo Jihyeok lifted the beach towels covering the people who had died on the shore and checked their faces, then frowned. After checking the gunshot wounds on their bodies, he covered them with the towels again. He repeated that for the three people lying there.
“Do you know them?”
“I know two of the three lying there. They used to work at the First Underwater Base. …They’re younger than me. I heard that one was a freediving athlete.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I think so too.”
Seo Jihyeok suddenly jerked his head up and stared intently at the path Kim Jaehee and I had taken to walk down to the beach. Then, in an instant, Seo Jihyeok shoved Kim Jaehee’s shoulder and lightly swept my leg. Aaagh. I toppled over helplessly. Seo Jihyeok also lost his balance and fell onto the sand.
A groan burst from Kim Jaehee, who had gone face-first into the sand. Emma, who had been lying perfectly fine on the beach bed, watched the three men sprawled in the sand and asked in a stunned voice,
“What are you doing?”
“Don’t get up!”
At Seo Jihyeok’s voice, I lifted my head from where my face had been buried in the sand and noticed a group carrying guns approaching the beach. Seo Jihyeok got up, puzzled when he saw the armed people drawing closer and Baek Aeyeong not shooting them first. Covered in sand, I explained to Seo Jihyeok. He had probably judged them to be Infinite Church believers attacking the beach.
“They’re probably people from the auditorium. Aeyeong defeated the terrorists who were in the auditorium, and the people there divided up the terrorists’ weapons.”
“Is that so? But Aeyeong isn’t with that group.”
As he said that, Seo Jihyeok remained wary of the roughly seven awkwardly armed people approaching. Outwardly, he smiled faintly and greeted them with easygoing remarks like, You made it out alive? But his eyes kept checking the positions of the men’s hands.
He acted as if he were looking at blowflies swarming rotten fish. The armed people were survivors from the auditorium, and they said they were an improvised vigilante group moving around to keep watch for terrorists still on Daehan Island and to identify the dead and the survivors.
Emma was handed a tablet by them. It contained a list of the dead and the survivors. Emma did as she was told and wrote her name in English under the survivor section. Then, when she tried to check the deceased side with her finger, the tablet was taken from her on the grounds that there was no time for that and she should check it when it was announced later.
Kim Jaehee, still lying on the ground, entered his name under the deceased section, came to his senses, and got cursed at. After they saw me brushing sand off my ruined left and right hands, the tablet went to Kang Sujeong, who had run over from a distance.
Kang Sujeong wrote Kim Jaehee’s name for him and had the tablet snatched away as soon as she entered her own name. The tablet was given to Seo Jihyeok, and Seo Jihyeok scrolled through the names on the deceased list with his finger to check them.
“It’s in English, so it’s not really registering.”
“Jihyeok! Hurry up and write your name under survivors and pass the tablet to someone else!”
“Just a second.”
“What do you mean, just a second!”
“I have to write my name, don’t I? For my English name, did I write my surname as SEO? Or was it SUH?”
“What are you talking about? You don’t know how to write your own name in English?”
“I’m not from the English-speaking cultural sphere.”
Seo Jihyeok kept spouting utter nonsense as he went through the deceased list once, and now he was looking at the endless survivor list. Every time Seo Jihyeok moved his finger, the names written on the tablet scrolled upward in a stream. A man with a gun tried to forcibly snatch the tablet from Seo Jihyeok’s hand, but Seo Jihyeok gripped the tablet and stretched his arm toward the sky. The tablet rose to nearly three meters high. No one could take it. Annoyed by Seo Jihyeok’s refusal to act as instructed, one man jabbed Seo Jihyeok in the waist with the muzzle of his gun.
“Hurry up, write your name, and hand the tablet to someone else.”
Seo Jihyeok stared blankly at the man. From the look in his eyes, I thought Seo Jihyeok might smash the man’s head in with the tablet he was holding. But Seo Jihyeok still only raised the corner of his mouth and answered in a sly voice.
“Don’t rush me. Have a little patience. My fingers are big, so with this tablet keyboard setting, my English name gets pressed two letters at a time.”
“Oh dear, sorry. Actually, even though he talks like that, Jihyeok is stupid and doesn’t know English well. It takes him a while even to write his own name. Please bear with him a little.”
When Kang Sujeong made that excuse in a lowered voice, the men nodded ambiguously and muttered things like, I knew it. Seo Jihyeok laughed hahaha, wrote his name under survivors, and handed the tablet to me. In my heart, I also wanted to check the lists of the dead and survivors, but if I didn’t write my name and pass it on right away, the gun owners looked ready to eat me alive. Why were they making the other person write their own name? They could just call out the name and write it down. …There must be quite a few names whose pronunciation and English spelling don’t match.
When I tried to write my name on the tablet, the surname Jeong had already been written under Seo Jihyeok’s name. Huh? I was startled inside, but completed the name as if nothing were wrong, and the moment I lifted my head, the tablet was snatched away so roughly that it made a smack beside me. Since they hadn’t checked all of Daehan Island, there could be terrorists anywhere, they warned us to refrain from acting individually and not to go to deserted places, then went around checking the faces of the dead laid out on the beach and writing down their names. Once he confirmed they had gone far enough away, Seo Jihyeok complained to Kang Sujeong.
“Sub-Team Leader, aren’t you being too harsh? I feel like I heard my reputation at the underwater base plummeting straight down.”
“Is that what matters right now? So were Sanghyeon or Team Leader Shin on the list?”
“They weren’t on either side.”
Kang Sujeong let out a deep sigh and said,
“First, let’s be relieved they weren’t among the dead. That means they aren’t on Daehan Island at all, right? …How long does it take them to show us that list, for them to act like that?”
“Exactly.”
“I asked the kids over on that side of the beach, and they said they did see an Asian. When they said they saw one yesterday, I just laughed.”
Seo Jihyeok nodded halfheartedly, his eyes still fixed on the backs of the armed people. Unable to suppress my curiosity, I asked Seo Jihyeok,
“Were Kim Gayoung or Tumanako on the survivor list, by any chance?”
“…Kim Gayoung was on the survivor side. I think there was a name like Tumanako too. It was such an unusual name.”
Emma’s face brightened briefly when she heard Kim Gayoung’s name. Then Emma hesitated for a moment before asking Seo Jihyeok,
“Was there a name called Lucas Day on the list?”
“I don’t know. I was looking in a hurry too, so I only vaguely remember Korean names or unusual names. Who is he? A researcher?”
“He’s in the same lab as me.”
“I don’t know.”
“I see.”
Hadn’t Emma said before that she was dating a boyfriend named Lucas? Emma closed her mouth and lay back down as if becoming one with the beach bed again.
The sun was hot, and the sound of the waves was peaceful. If not for the people walking around with guns, the bodies abandoned on the beach, and the injured people hiding their wounds with towels, it would have been enough to think it was a weekend beach. If the escape craft were rocking on the waves like that, the people aboard them must be terribly seasick. While looking over the sea, I spotted people scuba diving far in the distance.
Beside me, Kang Sujeong was saying that whether we ended up dead or alive, we should move, secure a boat first, and then look for the rest of the people. As Kang Sujeong drew the shape of Daehan Island on the sand and explained where we needed to move, I grabbed her shoulder and shook it lightly. Then I pointed toward the sea.
The divers began to come closer and closer to the beach. The person who looked short was practically throwing off equipment every second as they swam toward shore. Even from far away, I could tell that face was Rico’s. In particular, the tallest person among the divers was coming in with someone slung over his shoulder.
Seo Jihyeok and Kang Sujeong’s eyes widened when they saw that, and they immediately ran out. Kim Jaehee looked at the divers and said,
“I guess the sea rejects him too. Lucky bastard. It’s unfair, isn’t it?”
“Still, isn’t it better that he didn’t die?”
Shin Haeryang was carrying Jeong Sanghyeon out of the sea. Rico, who had barely reached the shore by swimming, collapsed almost completely exhausted. He had swum with his whole body, but he seemed to have run out of strength and could no longer move.
Kang Sujeong lifted Rico, who was being swept by the waves and dragged back into the sea, and laid him straight down on the sand. Then she turned her steps toward her team leader. Seo Jihyeok was transporting Jeong Sanghyeon almost like a piece of luggage.
Rico lay under the sunlight for a while, then suddenly burst into tears. I supported Rico and brought him over to the beach bed. The one thing I had forgotten was that Kim Jaehee was beside me.
Rico, who had used up all the strength in his legs from scuba diving and couldn’t even walk properly, suddenly sprang to his feet as if strength had come from nowhere and swung his fist at Kim Jaehee’s face. Kim Jaehee, after being hit, looked as if he had no idea why Rico was hitting him.