The other islands closest to Daehando were, relatively speaking, the Marshall Islands to the left or Hawaii to the right. The Marshall Islands were a republic made up of 29 atolls and over 1,000 coral islands. Due to climate change, the sea level had risen, and it was a country in danger of submergence, with most of its islands disappearing beneath the waves.
I had come to know about the Marshall Islands purely because they were close to Daehando. Before joining the company, thinking I should go sightseeing on Daehando or the islands around it, I had watched a few documentaries about Pacific nations. To think I would end up there myself.
Before we reached the Marshall Islands, we ran into several problems, and the boat stopped before it even reached the nearest island. An island on the Marshall Islands side was welcoming us from a distance about the size of a fist, but it was by no means close enough to swim to. I realized the boat engine had stopped, but I wasn’t too worried. After all, there were seven engineers here who had lived under the sea. However, listening from the side, all seven of them offered different problems and different solutions.
There was the intermittent fasting theory, which said the boat engine must have swallowed too much seawater and would be fixed if we starved it for twelve hours; the solve-it-with-your-fists theory, which said it would work again if we hit it a few times at the right angle; the reboot repair theory, which said machines that suddenly went bad would turn back on if you waited a while; the warding-off-evil ritual theory, which said the problem occurred because we hadn’t held a ritual before sending the boat out to sea; the prayer-solves-all theory, which said we had to pray politely to the engine and then try turning it on again; and the natural death theory, which said maybe the engine was so old and worn out that it had simply died.
According to Shin Haeryang’s testimony, the boat engine had been purchased not long ago. Someone said the team leader might have been scammed into buying a junk engine, but when someone else pointed out that the seller ought to know his own life was precious too, the natural death theory quickly vanished.
Kim Jaehee said he barely got seasick, but had a weak stomach. He claimed he had only thrown up because everyone around him was vomiting, and he couldn’t help it because of the smell and sound. As time passed, however, he recovered faster than anyone else. Then, looking perfectly fine, he put forward the most absurd hypothesis.
Kim Jaehee proposed the Sim Cheong’s Indangsu theory, saying the sea god wanted an offering, so we had to pick at least one person here and throw them into the deep water. Just as the Dragon King, moved by Sim Cheong’s filial piety, sent up a lotus flower and brought her back from the depths, he said the sacrifice’s courage would be rewarded and the boat would start working again. Kang Sujeong, looking as if her soul had left her body, said to Kim Jaehee,
“Jaehee. Then who should we throw in as an offering, including you, since you suggested it?”
Kim Jaehee’s eyes lingered between me, Jeong Sanghyeon, and Henry. In particular, after Jeong Sanghyeon met Kim Jaehee’s pitch-black pupils, which held not a single speck of light, he avoided his gaze and hid behind Kang Sujeong. Absurdly enough, the Sim Cheong’s Indangsu theory Kim Jaehee suggested was apparently a plausible hypothesis. Since more people than the boat’s load capacity were on board, the engine might have been overloaded and stopped.
Most of the passengers opposed throwing someone into the sea as an offering and drowning them. Especially since Shin Haeryang, the boat owner, said that on his boat, either everyone got off or everyone stayed on, Kim Jaehee’s hypothesis was quickly discarded. If Sim Cheong had been on this boat, she probably wouldn’t even have been able to jump off.
The engineers took turns testing the hypotheses they had proposed on the engine, and watching this from the side was nothing short of distressing. We couldn’t go back to Daehando. We had come too far.
As I listened to the engineers in the background repairing a boat that had stopped in the middle of the Pacific with their bare hands and slapdash methods, anxiety swept rapidly through the boat. Henry calmly asked the adults around him,
“Are we going to drift out here now?”
How surprising that he knew the word drift. Tumanako looked at the islands of the Marshall Islands in the distance and answered Henry’s question.
“Don’t worry. The island is right in front of us. We won’t drift at sea, and you’ll go back to your mother’s side. Everyone here will go back to wherever they want to go too.”
Tumanako’s firm words were deeply comforting. That’s right. Even if the sky collapses and the earth gives way, there’s always a way to survive. We escaped from the deep sea; we couldn’t give up here. I wanted people to focus on how we could survive.
“Henry. Do you know how to swim?”
After my question, the people began answering one after another, asking each other whether they knew how to swim, and if so, how well they could swim. Every sea-related sport anyone had even the slightest confidence in came pouring out.
It was a topic I had brought up to keep us from getting depressed, but fortunately, there was no one who couldn’t swim. Listening to Henry, it seemed like he was better at swimming than I was. When I thought that in the worst-case scenario, we would have to abandon the boat and swim, the distance to the island suddenly looked unbelievably far.
Only after an hour did the engineers conclude that the likely cause was that we had continued operating the boat under strain while exceeding the proper weight limit, and they finally acknowledged that the engine was completely dead. They had given up trying to revive the engine by luck.
I was secretly worried that the engineers might propose a small-scale Indangsu theory and suggest throwing away the bag of gold bars or the backpack I was carrying, but fortunately, nothing like that happened. They grabbed the oars installed as a backup. Since technology was impossible, they had decided to solve it with strength.
Henry and I were first excluded from the one-day ferryman roster. Jeong Sanghyeon, with his mangled pronunciation, asked why Henry and I had to be excluded, and when Kang Sujeong suggested that if he cut off a finger, she would exclude him too, the people who hadn’t known much about my injury looked at me with worried and concerned eyes, asking whether my finger had been cut off. People suggested excluding Kim Jaehee from the ferryman duty, but he refused and volunteered to row. My arms are fine. Then, after Seo Jihyeok and Shin Haeryang, he rowed the greatest number of times.
The number of strokes assigned to men was more than three times that assigned to women. People applauded and cheered as if the person holding the oar were holding a trophy, counting each stroke aloud. When Jeong Sanghyeon finished rowing and collapsed backward, the people around him whistled, clapped, and showered him with praise, telling him he had done well. Henry, who had been watching, said he wanted to try too, so he rowed about three times and then switched with someone else.
As I sat there only cheering, apology and gratitude pooled in my chest like seawater, enough to make me want to die. The severed part of my finger hurt more and more as time passed, and as I focused on that, I reached the point where I couldn’t feel the seasickness at all. As if we were holding a concert on the sea, we sang without stopping and kept counting.
The island grew from the size of a palm. When Meiji handed me a diving helmet and I lowered my head as told, there were countless buildings and roads preserved beneath the seawater. So this must have been an island before the sea level rose. We had already reached the Marshall Islands. Fishing boats in the distance waved at us. When the boat finally barely reached the beach, those soaked through with seawater and damply dried by the sea breeze hugged each other and cried.
Lee Seeun said she had a hundred dollars in emergency cash in her pocket and would buy everyone something to drink, then led the group to the supermarket closest to the beach. Listening to Kang Sujeong talk with a local, it seemed the hospital wasn’t far. ……Now that I thought about it, I had no ID and no money. What about the hospital bill? I saw only Shin Haeryang say something to Baek Aeyeong, then quietly slip away from the group.
“Where are you going?”
“Why don’t you rest? ……I’m going treasure hunting. Will you come with me?”
I didn’t know what he meant by treasure hunting. Shin Haeryang headed to the backyard of a house tucked away in a corner, then naturally picked up a shovel leaning against the wall. The tension of trespassing on someone else’s private property made my insides twist at once. What if someone came?
“Aren’t we entering a house with an owner without permission?”
As I looked around anxiously, Shin Haeryang said casually,
“Most of the houses around here are empty. It’s right before they’re submerged, so the owners have already taken their families and left for the United States.”
Then he began digging under the largest tree. After five shovelfuls, there was a clang, and Shin Haeryang pulled something out of the dirt. It was a hard-looking box, and inside it was a small bag. When he opened the bag, there were several large bundles of dollar bills, several cards, a powered-off cellphone, and a few passports. Shin Haeryang checked the contents and, as if it were only natural, took the bag and left the house. Had I just participated in theft?
“Whose things are those?”
“They’re mine. I hid them here thinking they might be needed if something happened on Daehando and I came to the Marshall Islands.”
I let out a sigh of relief inwardly. It really was treasure hunting. Emergency funds, then.
“When did you prepare all of this?”
“When the previous team leader went missing, I prepared them while searching the morgues around the Marshall Islands, the Solomon Islands, and Hawaii.”
“Did you bury some in Hawaii too?”
“Yes.”
“What happens if you bury them and forget about them?”
“It’s about two hundred million won, so it isn’t an easy amount to forget.”
That was two hundred million won? It seemed like he was including the amount he could use with the cards. I found the nerve to bury two hundred million in the ground even more astonishing. What if someone dug it up and took it? I thought the crumpled hundred dollars in Lee Seeun’s pocket was a much more realistic amount.
“Um. I don’t have money for the hospital right now. I’ll pay you back later, so could I borrow some?”
“I’ll pay.”
“I’ll definitely pay you back.”
“I came to retrieve this with the intention of paying for everyone else’s hospital bills, lodging, and airfare as well. Don’t worry about it.”
I was worried. Extremely worried. By the time Shin Haeryang and I returned, Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong had rented a truck, and everyone had a bottle of water or a drink in their mouth.
We took the truck and the boat to the emergency room of a hospital in Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands. Once I entered the emergency room, I was in so much pain I was almost out of my mind. Except for the moment it was severed, the pain had been faint until we escaped Daehando, but from the moment I saw the Marshall Islands, my finger hurt so much I couldn’t bear it. Was it because I had relaxed after getting out safely? Only after receiving painkillers did I barely come to my senses.
Shin Haeryang talked on the phone for a long while, then asked Henry for a phone number. Fortunately, Henry knew the direct number for his mother, Nevae. The problem was that the line was busy the whole time, so she didn’t answer. Maybe she wouldn’t answer a call from an unknown number. There were so many spam calls, after all. Shin Haeryang was leaving the other party a text.
[I have your son. If you want him returned safely, contact this number.]
Uh? Wait a second. But Shin Haeryang sent the text in the blink of an eye, and I, who had witnessed the sight beside him, was the one who grew restless.
“The contents of that text are extremely dangerous.”
“Yes?”
“Never mind.”
Twenty minutes later, the phone began to catch fire.