As I followed the people moving with backpacks on, I struck up a conversation with Kim Gayeong and Tumanako. I’m glad you got out safely. Are you hurt anywhere? I somehow injured my finger. It is actually quite serious, and I’d like to be lying in any emergency room right now—that sort of thing. The two of them seemed to take it as a joke and laughed, and I was satisfied with that reaction.
People were more interested in the outlaw boat that had suddenly appeared on the shore than in piecing together their jumbled memories. The boat was still driving in a way that barely avoided hitting people. But when the wake from the boat overturned one of the escape boats, someone who had been forced to jump into the sea began spewing curses. The person driving the boat shouted, “I’m sorry!” It looked like a woman in a life jacket was steering the boat, but no matter how I looked at her, she was someone I had never seen before.
“Who is that driving the boat next to Jihyeok?”
Kim Gayeong heard the scream and said,
“That’s Lee Seeun from the accounting team at headquarters.”
As the boat drew closer to the pier, I could hear people screaming, and it was probably Lee Seeun’s scream. The makeshift pier was, quite literally, a place roughly built out of wood, and the closer we got, the less we could see through the exhaust smoke. Every time the acrid, poisonous smell came toward us on the wind, I felt nauseous.
Because of the boats and yachts burning in the flames, Kim Jaehee’s face grew visibly worse as she walked. Kim Jaehee stopped when she saw the yacht being consumed by the fire, but Kang Sujeong, who had been walking behind her, pushed her back with her hand. Kim Jaehee was shoved along by the back as she walked across the pier.
Emma, who had been watching Seo Jihyeok wave his arms, came over to me and asked,
“Do you remember the Mars base survivor Canoe talked about in the elevator? Kim Gayeong doesn’t remember anything.”
Emma must have lived a life where asking questions like that got answers from the people around her. I first had to recall that the thing Emma was talking about wasn’t a boat, but the name of a researcher. And if I wanted to think about what that person named Canoe had said, my brain had to work a little harder. When I barely managed to recall the story Canoe had told about the survivor of the Planet Project, I briefly wondered whether I should play dumb like Kim Gayeong and say I didn’t know either. But under Emma’s gaze, which demanded the truth, I sighed inwardly and answered.
“...Yes. I remember.”
At my slow answer, Emma looked like she was about to burst with frustration.
“What do you think?”
“I think that nameless survivor must have gone through incredible hardship to survive on Mars, so I hope they live the rest of their life in peace and happiness.”
Emma glared at me for about three seconds, then said,
“...What bothered me wasn’t the absurd nonsense coming out of the mouth of a so-called scientist, but the fact that that guy Canoe knew far too much detail about the survivor’s circumstances. Didn’t you find that strange?”
At the time, I had been shocked by the fact that Canoe was a believer of the Infinite Church, and I’d been terrified by the thought that he might have realized who I was, so I hadn’t really thought it was strange. Right. Now that I thought about it, how did Canoe know something like whether the Mars base survivor was still alive and healthy to this day?
“...You’re right? Now that I think about it, a believer of the Infinite Church knew an awful lot of detailed information about the survivor.”
“How would Canoe know that? ...You’d better be careful.”
Maybe the believers of the Infinite Church stalk all the survivors. Are they stalking me and keeping records too? If so, I wish they’d pay for my finger treatment or living expenses. To divert Emma’s attention even a little, I brought up another subject.
“How is it, meeting Gayeong? Weren’t you glad to see her? Geumi is on the boat too. It seems quite a few of the people who were in the Jujak-dong elevator survived.”
I pointed with my hand at the boat approaching unsteadily. Yu Geumi was on it, and whether it was because the boat made her seasick, her face was blue. She looked like she might throw up at any moment. Everyone else’s expressions were all similar. Not a single person aboard the boat looked fine.
Daehan and the other researchers might have survived somewhere too. Emma’s gaze swept over the people before she looked at me and said,
“I... was depressed the whole time. Why was I born in an era like this? I was born, and all there were were people who had done nothing but ruin the world with all their might, and when it became too harsh to live in, asked us to fix it ‘a little.’ The remaining extinct animals were shot dead as trophies, or eaten one last time because they were rare. And in front of people dying right now from natural disasters and food shortages, they would throw extravagant parties. They only want to maintain a comfortable and unequal environment for as long as they themselves are alive. After they die, no one cares how miserably their descendants will live in the future. If a miserable life is already predetermined, why should we live? Was I born to live this kind of life?”
Emma looked at the boat coming in dangerously, spraying water onto the pier, and said,
“I can’t say I don’t understand the desire to go to the past. There, this kind of depression probably wouldn’t exist. All you’d have to do is use everything there as much as you wanted. But I’m not going to live like that. I’ll keep walking, struggling to find even a small hope in a miserable, depressing life where the future can’t be seen. Whatever conclusion I find, I won’t cling to a cult. You can rest easy. Farewell. Let’s part here.”
And Emma moved away from us one step at a time. I urgently asked her,
“Aren’t you getting on the boat? Why... why not? Come with us. I’ll tell you everything I know.”
“The other researchers might still be alive. I’m going to the other side of the beach. I might meet a few more familiar faces. I’ll grab everyone I meet along the way and compare memories with them. I’ll solve a trivial little riddle like this in no time.”
Kim Gayeong called out to Emma as she slowly grew farther away.
“Emma? Where are you going! Come with us. We still don’t even know where the Infinite Church believers are or how many there are! It’s dangerous.”
“It looks like it’ll be hard enough for you guys to get away on your own. I hope you make it out safely.”
Emma waved her hand toward us. Then she ran, and in the blink of an eye she was far away. Wasn’t she making an insane decision because she was drunk? Shouldn’t we stop her? I watched until her small back grew so distant I could no longer see it at all. Emma had spoken as if she were saying farewell forever.
Shin Haeryang barely landed on the boat, which was thrashing around the pier like a mad horse, and grabbed the wheel Lee Seeun had been surrendering her entire body to. Her arm strength hadn’t been enough to turn the wheel, and because of the current, the boat seemed to be heading in the opposite direction from where she steered it. Did driving require arm strength?
Once the person holding the wheel changed, the boat somehow stopped without completely smashing the pier to pieces. When Lee Seeun collapsed to the side, Lee Jihyeon and Yu Geumi caught her. But Yu Geumi soon began vomiting fiercely toward the sea. Henry was the same.
Seo Jihyeok patted her shoulder, telling her she had done well. Seo Jihyeok probably didn’t know how to drive a boat either. Either that, or he had judged that if a situation came where he had to drive the boat alone while also shooting someone with a gun, it would be better to hand the wheel to someone else and hold the gun himself.
Kang Sujeong approached, looked at the boat’s miserable exterior, stood there with her mouth open, then asked Shin Haeryang,
“We’re going to sail with this?”
“It’s different from how it looks.”
Unlike Kang Sujeong, who hesitated to board, Jeong Sanghyeon got on the boat so quickly he was practically leaping. Kang Sujeong saw that, sighed, and climbed onto the boat while pushing Kim Jaehee’s back. Kim Gayeong and Tumanako got on, and I boarded as well.
The boat only looked like a wreck on the outside. When I checked the inside, it wasn’t leaking water or anything, and it was quite sturdy. It seemed they had disguised it as a trashy boat on the outside, while properly fixing up the inside. Seo Jihyeok forcibly assigned places for people to sit and handed out life jackets to the passengers as if scattering them.
“If you fall into the sea, let’s humbly accept our fate of becoming fish food. Put them on quickly. Koreans, hurry-hurry!”
When Jeong Sanghyeon swiftly snatched away the vest Tumanako had received first, Tumanako silently took the shark ornament out of his pocket and shook it in the air a couple of times. Then Jeong Sanghyeon politely returned the vest he was holding to Tumanako, belatedly received a life jacket from Seo Jihyeok, and began putting it on. It seemed Jeong Sanghyeon had learned something from Tumanako after all.
Seo Jihyeok had a backpack slung over his back, and it looked identical to the bag I had put the cat in.
“Jihyeok. Where did you get that backpack?”
“Ah. This? Aeyeong said it was hers. She threatened me to make sure I brought it no matter what, so I did.”
“That’s right. It belongs to Aeyeong.”
It seemed to be the backpack with the gold bars in it. Shin Haeryang checked the condition of the battery and engine, the amount of fuel, the compass, and the gauges, then filled it with the fuel they had gathered. In place of the team leader, who was busy to death, Seo Jihyeok kept watch as if he were used to it. When Shin Haeryang made a large gesture with his arm, Baek Aeyeong appeared from somewhere, in a terrible state with dirt, sand, and bits of grass all over her. Then she walked quickly to the pier and got onto the boat as if she were used to it.
Thank goodness. Now this boat just had to move. Still, seeing that the boat had an engine, it didn’t seem to be the kind of boat I would have to row to escape. But then my eyes caught the spare oars in the corner, and I felt an ominous aura wrap around my whole body. Kang Sujeong, too, put on her life jacket and looked around the inside of the vessel in a similar way before her eyes met mine.
“Surely... we don’t have to row, do we?”
“You think so too, Deputy Team Leader Kang?”
“If the engine breaks down, we will have to row. Not right now.”
Shin Haeryang’s firm answer came back. I decided to forget every question related to the boat. However, Deputy Team Leader Kang was dragged off by Baek Aeyeong and seemed to be learning how to drive the boat on the spot. Do I really have to do this? Yes, you do. Kang Sujeong gripped the wheel tightly with an expression that said she had no idea what port or starboard meant. I sat down in my life jacket a little far from Yu Geumi, Lee Jihyeon, and Henry. Because Seo Jihyeok told us not to stand up, I greeted them only with words, saying I was glad to see them, and briefly held and released Yu Geumi’s and Henry’s hands. Seo Jihyeok was quickly passing the information he had gathered to Shin Haeryang.
“Communications?”
“No good. Try again once we get a little farther from the island. There’s ECM.”
“The others?”
“The nurses are staying at the hospital.”
“They won’t be able to do anything.”
“They said they’re staying anyway. Everyone’s on painkillers, and there are dying people everywhere. I asked twice.”
“What was the gunfire?”
“The cult bastards and some guys calling themselves the one-day vigilantes were fighting, and there were traitors among the vigilantes too, so they were shooting each other. It’s a complete mess. Even if it’s just us, we have to get out of here.”
Baek Aeyeong told Kang Sujeong to hold the wheel and began teaching her how to drive the boat on the spot. Kang Sujeong was gripping the wheel tightly, wearing an expression that said she didn’t know what port or starboard was.