Kang Sujeong, the deputy team leader of Engineering Team A, seemed the happiest that Shin Haeryang had returned alive. Seo Jihyeok had only grumbled that he was always the one getting worked to death, then taken Shin Haeryang’s gun and left.
Deputy Team Leader Kang, who had been watching the escape boats floating far out at sea with a tearful face and sighing three times a second, had been smiling from ear to ear without pause from the moment Shin Haeryang carried Jeong Sanghyeon out of the seawater until now. Her smile disappeared for a moment when she heard about the crimes Kim Jaehee had committed, but she was enormously grateful that the team leader whose life or death had been unknown had returned—and had even brought back a team member she had been certain was one hundred percent dead.
Deputy Team Leader Kang’s enthusiastic welcome was enough to leave Team Leader Shin, who usually lived with an expressionless face, somewhat flustered. Kang Sujeong acted as though Shin Haeryang’s return alone was like having gained an aircraft carrier.
“I’m so glad you came back safely, Team Leader Shin. I mean it. Please. I hope you don’t go anywhere and just stay here. I hope you don’t quit either.”
Then Kang Sujeong hesitated briefly, lowered her voice, and said,
“You have no idea how grateful I am to you right now. I… right now, I need a superior more capable than me. In a disaster like this, I desperately need someone responsible who can tell me what to do and take control. I have no idea how I’m supposed to act to ensure the safety of the kids staying on the temporary boats by the escape craft, what I’m supposed to do if one of our team members is badly injured when they say Daehando Hospital has turned into hell, or who I’m supposed to hand over a foreign kid to when we’re temporarily protecting them.”
Kang Sujeong whispered to Shin Haeryang as if worried.
“I wish someone would just order me to do something. Then I’d do it without complaint. I don’t know what to do with those guys either. Honestly, personally, I want to smack both Jeong Sanghyeon and Kim Jaehee around and shove them sideways into the sand. But as the deputy team leader from the same workplace, I’m so grateful those idiots are alive and unharmed in this disaster that I also feel like hugging them one by one.”
Kang Sujeong was pointing at Kim Jaehee and Jeong Sanghyeon with her finger. Kim Jaehee called out to Jeong Sanghyeon with things like, “I heard you acted like trash and got all your front teeth knocked out, is that true?” Jeong Sanghyeon tried to run away from Kim Jaehee’s barrage of questions, but his ankle sank deep into the sand and he fell flat on his face. Kang Sujeong watched the sight, sighed, crossed her arms, then shook her head and said,
“Am I the only one bewildered by this situation? Have you ever gone to work and ended up underwater, then had to evacuate with your coworkers? Or suddenly had to face religious people or terrorists who cut off people’s fingers? …Ah. Don’t answer that.”
For a split second, Shin Haeryang opened his mouth, but at Kang Sujeong’s firm words, he simply smiled quietly. Shin Haeryang had clearly been about to answer that he had. To the deputy team leader, who was crushed under the obsession and sense of responsibility that she had to somehow get the team members back to Korea, Shin Haeryang said,
“Please don’t be too anxious, Deputy Team Leader. I’m here, and so are Jihyeok and Aeyeong.”
“That’s true.”
“Even if I hadn’t been here, as the deputy team leader, you would have made the right judgments in a crisis.”
I wonder. Would that be easy? If terrorists suddenly stormed into the workplace where I worked, I felt like my mind would go completely blank. Perhaps Kang Sujeong thought the same, because she looked at Shin Haeryang and said in a reluctant voice,
“…I don’t feel confident at all that I’d make the right judgment.”
“Yes. That’s why I think you’ll become a good team leader.”
Kang Sujeong’s face, which had been full of worry, brightened at once, but by contrast, Jeong Sanghyeon and Kim Jaehee’s faces filled with concern.
Jeong Sanghyeon in particular, whose bleeding had more or less stopped, was called to a spot a little away from the beach bed and had to confess everything that had happened today from start to finish. Surrounded by Shin Haeryang and Kang Sujeong, Jeong Sanghyeon whimpered as he wrote with his finger in the sand. Kang Sujeong, who had been peering down at the words written in the sand, grew angry at some point and snapped at Jeong Sanghyeon, asking if he had any sense at all. But when Kim Jaehee and I, standing far away, looked over, her voice suddenly dropped. Shin Haeryang’s voice was too far and low to be heard from here.
So after Kim Jaehee, it was Jeong Sanghyeon’s turn. Kim Jaehee sat beside me and watched Jeong Sanghyeon get squeezed this way and that by the team leader and deputy team leader, looking at least somewhat amused. Hey. …You were in the exact same situation not long ago. While I was inwardly dumbfounded by Kim Jaehee’s behavior, Kim Jaehee pointed at the three of them with only his middle finger and said,
“They’re probably talking about what to do with Sanghyeon legally.”
“What did they say would happen to you, Jaehee?”
Kim Jaehee answered indifferently, as though it were someone else’s business.
“They said I’ll be handled as a cult believer and a terrorist. Apparently I put Rico, Team Leader Shin, and Muhyeon in danger all at once. I don’t know whether the me from that round was exceptionally capable or exceptionally incompetent. It does feel a little unfair. The three people I supposedly attacked all look far too fine on the outside.”
Kim Jaehee looked in turn at Rico, who was curled up and nearly unconscious, then at Shin Haeryang, then at me, and said that. As for me, I had died and come back to life, and the rest of my wounds hadn’t been caused by Kim Jaehee.
“Seeing as the me from back then isn’t here, I guess I attacked all three of you, but I was the only one who died? Did the shark only eat me?”
Trying to lose the memories of the orange scent that had burst forth and the blood that had surged in all at once and touched my shoes, I said,
“Well… that’s how it turned out somehow. Then does that mean you’ll go straight to prison once you return to Korea, Jaehee?”
“The team leader said that if I cooperate until we escape, the contents of the report might change a little.”
Hearing that, I thought Shin Haeryang really knew how to handle people. He was trying to stop Kim Jaehee from falling into despair and acting however he wanted, and to plant the hope that it still wasn’t too late. Of course, there was no way to know whether Kim Jaehee would change even now.
Jeong Sanghyeon, wedged between people over 190 centimeters tall, looked no older than a middle schooler. Jeong Sanghyeon’s hand, which had been busily drawing letters in the sand, stopped.
Perhaps the conversation was roughly over, because Shin Haeryang looked our way. In the distance, Kang Sujeong grabbed Jeong Sanghyeon and smacked his back with her palm like a drum. Why do you live like that! Aren’t you ashamed before your kind parents? Seeing as neither of them used their fists, maybe he really would die if they hit him with their fists.
As Shin Haeryang came this way, Kim Jaehee slowly backed away from beside me. He moved sideways like a crab, so I wondered if Kim Jaehee’s prosthetic leg had been damaged to a truly serious degree.
“What’s wrong? Is there a problem with your leg?”
“They told me not to come within a three-meter radius of Rico or Muhyeon. Hahaha. Our team leader is less flexible than a robot.”
Kim Jaehee looked at Shin Haeryang coming toward me, furrowed his brows, then moved more than three meters away. It seemed Shin Haeryang had come to me only after handling, one by one, the matters that might cause immediate problems. Oh. Finally, I’d be able to talk with Shin Haeryang alone. Shin Haeryang seemed about to say something, so I got ahead of him first.
“Do you remember that I took your necklace, Haeryang?”
“…Yes.”
“I’m sorry I took it without permission. The… necklace I borrowed ran into a problem.”
Shin Haeryang stared at me silently. It probably meant for me to keep talking, but receiving that calm gaze made me feel as if my conscience were killing me. To think I had taken someone else’s possession, broken it, and now had to confess my sin to its owner. On top of that, it wasn’t just any ordinary necklace. I felt like my insides were twisting.
I was more nervous now than when Dylan threatened me with a knife in the auditorium. In fact, wouldn’t anyone be nervous? Not only guys I was on bad terms with like Sato or Yamashita, but even a teammate would be as nervous as I was if they ended up in a situation where they had to smash Shin Haeryang’s necklace and confess it. First of all, I had absolutely no intention of breaking it… I put on the most apologetic expression I could and said,
“The gemstone part of the necklace shattered to pieces.”
I felt like dying of guilt even as I said it. I saw Kim Jaehee sneak closer from three meters away to eavesdrop, then open his mouth wide. Then he slowly moved away again.
After being tormented by the terrorists, coming up to Daehando, and then dealing with Kim Jaehee and Jeong Sanghyeon in turn, Shin Haeryang’s patience might already have been worn away. Maybe a fist really would fly at me. I’d just have to take it. What else could I do? Shin Haeryang listened to my confession in silence, then asked in a curious tone,
“How did it break?”
I was just holding it in my hand, and the necklace broke on its own. I thought it would be easier to explain if there had at least been a clear reason, like I had stepped on it or knocked it against something.
“I’m… not sure. It suddenly cracked, then broke. I gathered as much of the broken remains as I could and stored them in my backpack.”
Shin Haeryang’s eyes reflexively turned toward my backpack, which had the cat inside, so I hurriedly added,
“That backpack is hidden inside the headquarters building, so I can’t show it to you right now. I’m sorry for damaging your necklace, Haeryang.”
“I expected it would break someday.”
And there were no words of blame at all. No matter how long I waited, no fist came flying either. Silence fell between Shin Haeryang and me. I hadn’t meant to, but hadn’t I basically taken something close to a keepsake and broken it? I felt like I was going mad with guilt. I’d rather he curse at me or hit me. Flustered, I began rambling.
“It looked like you made it yourself, so I doubt something sold on the market would satisfy you. …I don’t have the skill to make an identical one for you, so I’ll buy you something as similar as possible, or compensate you with whatever amount you set.”
I had no idea how much a lapis lazuli necklace cost. It was so embarrassing to have broken someone else’s possession after carrying it around and then say something like this that I couldn’t look him in the face.
“It’s all right.”
Is it really all right? Shin Haeryang brought up the injury to my fingers and said that I’d only be able to receive proper medical treatment after leaving Daehando. He said there was no telling when surgery would be possible at Daehando Hospital.
“Why… is that?”
“According to the information that came to me through Aeyeong and Jihyeok, all the anesthesiologists, emergency medicine doctors, and surgeons at Daehando Hospital are either dead or injured.”
“……”
If the anesthesiologists were dead, surgery couldn’t be performed. The hospital must be paralyzed.