“Are you injured anywhere besides your hand?”
Shin Haeryang seemed to be asking because I was walking with a slight limp. My whole body felt bruised, or maybe cracked. But with a guy right beside me missing four front teeth and with a hole in his tongue, anything other than my left hand would probably look like whining.
“Other than my left hand, I’m more or less fine.”
“I need to speak with Jaehee separately for a moment.”
Kim Jaehee poked only his head out from behind my back and answered in a sickened tone.
“I have nothing to discuss with you, team leader.”
“......Is this perhaps going to be a conversation conducted with fists?”
At my question, Kang Sujeong and Seo Jihyeok clung to Shin Haeryang and busily exchanged looks. I couldn’t tell whether it meant, If you trip Shin Haeryang’s leg first, I’ll get the other one, or whether it meant, Let’s give up and let Shin Haeryang beat Kim Jaehee like a drum. It didn’t seem like the two of them were in agreement. Shin Haeryang glared at Kim Jaehee, then said to me,
“That depends on what Jaehee does.”
Wasn’t that fairly hopeful? At least, that was how it sounded to me. If it were me, I wouldn’t have left alone the guy who’d thrown me to the sharks. He really must be thinking about efficiency.
“Mr. Jaehee. You heard him, right?”
When I subtly turned my body and stepped aside, Kim Jaehee looked at me as if I had betrayed him, and in an instant, he was surrounded by Kang Sujeong, Seo Jihyeok, and Shin Haeryang. I vaguely heard Kim Jaehee spouting nonsense about how he wanted to die but didn’t want it to hurt.
There were two people there to stop them, so wouldn’t it be fine? I trusted Shin Haeryang’s patience, Kang Sujeong’s strength, and Seo Jihyeok’s way with words. If Kim Jaehee said that what had happened wasn’t his doing, Shin Haeryang, if no one else, might believe him. He was good at detecting lies, after all.
I thought Jeong Sanghyeon might wildly bite at the fingers of my right hand as I tried to stop the bleeding from his tongue, refusing to cooperate with treatment, but unexpectedly, he was obedient. So if he thought it would benefit him, he could endure even the hand of someone who looked as though he’d produce nuclear waste by the ton rummaging around inside his mouth with a towel.
Looking at the pitch-black cavity and his wounded gums, I imagined how I would have treated him if I’d been at Deep Blue. Since the sea seemed to have taken the rest of his teeth forever, unless he planned to pull out shark teeth and have those put in, the only options would be stitching up his tongue and getting implants or expensive tooth regeneration.
I told Jeong Sanghyeon where he needed to press for the bleeding to stop, had him hold it down with his own hand for more than ten minutes, and then retrieved my fingers. Maybe because I was human too, aside from first aid, I didn’t feel particularly inclined to help Jeong Sanghyeon that actively.
A dentist in Hawaii or Korea would treat the rest. To be honest, after escaping the undersea base and coming to Daehan-do, I also wanted to smack Kim Jaehee or Jeong Sanghyeon around the way I had Riko. I didn’t go so far as to want them dead. The moment I thought that far, something someone had once said to me suddenly came to mind.
‘That fucking bastard Jeong Sanghyeon. If I get my hands on him, I’m really going to kill him.’
I remembered the look on Kim Gayoung’s face as she clutched a glass of water and trembled, the look of someone with nothing left to lose. I wasn’t sure what would happen if Kim Gayoung and Jeong Sanghyeon met on Daehan-do. It wouldn’t be anything good. Tumanako, who had been going around with her, would probably take Kim Gayoung’s side. And I would probably take Kim Gayoung’s side too.
I had a cruel fantasy of the three of us getting along and pulling out every last one of Jeong Sanghyeon’s remaining teeth, then skipping them across the sea like stones. It wouldn’t be impossible. But in my imagination, I hated Kim Gayoung becoming a criminal more than I hated Jeong Sanghyeon getting hurt. I felt like I needed to keep those two as far apart as possible. Who else among the survivors didn’t get along?
It seemed the people from the undersea base hadn’t exactly been on good terms in the first place. Considering the problems and incidents that had occurred during the escape, I wondered whether the North Pacific Undersea Base could ever return to the way it had been before.
I didn’t know what they had talked about, but Kim Jaehee, who had been buried among the three tall people, was suddenly released. Seeing as he looked fine on the outside, it seemed his life had been extended temporarily. Like a wild animal that had been caught in human hands and then set free, Kim Jaehee tried to put distance between himself and them, only to be caught by Kang Sujeong and scolded. Kang Sujeong was smacking Kim Jaehee on the back with her hand, and most of what she was saying amounted to, Why on earth do you live like this?
Shin Haeryang came with Seo Jihyeok to check on Jeong Sanghyeon, who was still stopping the bleeding. As Seo Jihyeok briefly explained the situation at the time of the accident, he kept adding phrases like, due to Sanghyeon’s mistake, because of Sanghyeon’s wrongdoing, and through Sanghyeon’s negligence. While listening to Seo Jihyeok’s report and examining the team member who had nearly drowned, Shin Haeryang asked me questions similar to the ones Seo Jihyeok had asked. Then he suddenly demanded to see the injury on my hand.
“......My fingers were severed, so if possible, I’d rather not show you.”
“I want to check for myself how badly you’re injured.”
Shin Haeryang acted as if there had been cases where his team members had hidden or downplayed major injuries in their reports. Seo Jihyeok also stared silently at me. He didn’t look like he had any intention of stopping his team leader.
Until I showed it to medical staff, I didn’t want to look at my wound properly either. I wanted to avoid the reality given to me as much as possible until I got to the emergency room. But when I faced someone who didn’t avoid anything no matter what happened, I felt an incredible pressure. Shin Haeryang looked like he wouldn’t move until I showed him my left hand.
After gauging the two of them, I awkwardly unwrapped the T-shirt and towels around my left hand. Seo Jihyeok and Shin Haeryang carefully helped from beside me. My left hand sometimes stung, and once in a while the pain surged in periodically like waves, but it wasn’t completely unbearable. Once I clearly checked the wound, I saw that my ring finger and little finger were missing two segments each.
When I’d only looked at the severed fingers separately, there had been so much blood on them that I couldn’t tell whether it was my middle finger or little finger that had been cut off. Fortunately, my middle finger had only been lightly cut by the edge of the axe. So it wasn’t my middle finger. It wasn’t the worst-case scenario. After I sighed in relief inwardly, it seemed the others weren’t thinking as positively as I was.
Kang Sujeong came over, saw my hand, and drew in a sharp breath. Then she panicked, saying she hadn’t known I was injured this badly. Seo Jihyeok looked so shocked his jaw nearly dropped, then started saying things like, You were hurt this badly and you were treating Sanghyeon’s damn mouth?
Shin Haeryang looked at my wound, then silently used the items and towels around us to give my left hand first aid. Considering he usually knitted as a hobby, he seemed quite dexterous. Compared to the clumsy self-administered first aid performed one-handed by a dentist enduring pain, the cleanup done with both hands by someone who seemed to have lived making use of Tactical Combat Casualty Care was far neater.
Thanks to Seo Jihyeok and Kang Sujeong gathering rope and towels from around us, we were able to make a temporary sling, and before long, my injured left hand had come to rest beside my right collarbone.
At first, I had simply wrapped it up in a T-shirt, but as time passed, the condition of my left hand injury was gradually improving. What a relief. If things kept progressing at this pace, maybe later my hand would become completely fine. Shin Haeryang said in a blunt voice,
“This is only a temporary measure. You need additional treatment.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s what had to be done. Who cut off your fingers?”
It seemed he had realized, as soon as he saw the cross section of the wound, that it had been severed by a tool. It wouldn’t happen in a situation where he had to prioritize his team members’ escape, but I was worried he might go looking for revenge.
I explained it as an unavoidable accident caused by distrust among people during the escape from the undersea base, but I didn’t know whether that had properly registered in Shin Haeryang’s brain. After listening to my rather lengthy explanation, Shin Haeryang expressionlessly said only, “I understand.” Did he really understand? Then he asked the next question.
“Do you have the severed fingers stored?”
He probably thought they might be surgically reattached.
“I don’t have them. Uh...... a believer of the Church of Infinity...... stole my fingers and offered them to their altar.”
It was quiet. No one around me said anything. I roughly explained what the cultist terrorists had done in the auditorium. Kim Jaehee, who had come closer at some point and was listening quietly, looked at me with eyes full of some kind of yearning and asked,
“So what happened?”
“It seems they tried to use my fingers to go back to the past, but they must have failed. To begin with, the idea of going to the past with a few of someone else’s fingers is absurd. If consuming a bit of protein were enough to go to the past, then everyone who works out would be able to time travel.”
“......”
With my sarcasm as the end of it, the area around the beach bed fell silent. The silence seemed to press down on everyone completely. Trying to dispel the heavy atmosphere even a little, I said,
“I think two fingers isn’t a bad trade for safely escaping that hellish undersea base. It’ll be all right.”
At those words, Shin Haeryang looked at me as if I had been the victim of a massive scam. Seo Jihyeok did the same. The two of them seemed to think my statement was the reality denial of a dentist who had lost his fingers. They could understand having wages docked, but they seemed unable to understand having fingers docked.
They were half right and half wrong. You guys don’t know, but rather than wake up again in Room 38 of the Fourth Undersea Base with cold seawater rising around me, I’d rather give up two fingers, end the loop quickly, and go home. As long as I could go home, a wound like this was really nothing. Of course, losing fingers was definitely a major problem, but I was trying to think it would still be okay.
After the assessment of the injured was complete, the conclusion was that only Seo Jihyeok would move, while everyone else would wait on the beach. Apparently, if we scattered in all directions in this situation, it would take a lot of effort to find each person later. Besides, everyone was injured, and most of us had no stamina left. We didn’t have the stamina or strength to cross the island on foot to where the boat was. For Kim Jaehee, Riko, Emma, and me, even just breathing was honestly difficult.
The wet rifle Shin Haeryang had brought out went to Seo Jihyeok. Seo Jihyeok shook it off, wiped it down, took out the magazine and put it back in, then left the beach with a single rifle and went off somewhere alone.
Worried whether there would be any problem with Seo Jihyeok wandering around alone like that, I asked Shin Haeryang, but all I got back was, “He’s the kind of guy who goes around alone like that.” Survivors continued to come up onto Daehan-do or gradually gather together.