Chapter 388

As soon as I arrived in Korea, I went to the orthopedic clinic run by a friend and had my condition examined. The severed fingers were also reattached. During the process, my family came to learn every detail about the state of my body. The moment Mujin saw my hand, he said, “Hyung. Why are your fingers missing?” Then he clutched the back of his neck and collapsed on the spot.

Unexpectedly, Mother remained remarkably calm when she saw her son’s disability. It was the composure of someone who had raised two disobedient sons while living in a wheelchair.

“What happened to the fingers that were cut off? Can’t they be attached even now?”

“I gave them to the terrorists in exchange for my life and survived.”

“……You’re alive, and that’s enough. Whether you have no hands or no feet, as long as you’re still breathing, you can somehow go on living. Don’t worry too much. If you came back alive, that’s all that matters.”

Her words were filled with unwavering conviction. They held a belief that I could return to my ordinary life. I nodded. That was how I would live.

I heard that my friend was considered a very kind doctor to his patients, but no matter how I thought about it, he must have been fooling everyone with his professional poker face. Ever since I had slipped on an icy road last year and cracked my butt, I had never seen him get that angry.

He went on a rampage, saying that if I had lost two fingers in a week, then within two months a dentist’s hands would have turned into DoraXmon’s, and demanding what kind of hellhole it had been for terrorists to tear off and eat the fingers of a doctor who treated them like sharks. I asked my friend when I would be able to buy and wear prostheses. “Do you think your body is made of Legos?” When he told me it would take at least three months just for the wounds to heal, I was quietly shocked inside. It was going to take quite a while before I could use all ten fingers again.

Through Maris, the undersea base’s computer network, the survivors’ group and messenger chat formed around the undersea base continued to receive reports of people being found in the water. Everyone except those capable of returning to normal duties was given two weeks of paid leave and a month of unpaid leave.

The reports that made me happiest were the ones saying that people who had been drifting at sea had been found, or that survivors who had swum to safety had been discovered on nearby islands. In the case of the dead, it was at least fortunate if their bodies could be found quickly.

If the discovery of the bodies of friends and colleagues one by one brought desperate grief to the undersea base survivors and the bereaved families, then the endless failure to find anything created an anxiety that gnawed at their very guts. Eight countries had joined forces, but the search area around the undersea base was too vast, and the search for survivors was proving difficult.

My name remained on the missing persons list, then was moved to the list of the dead, and afterward changed back to that of the survivors. Without even knowing it, I had died once and come back to life.

Shin Haeryang only later revealed that some people had survived, and I was one of them. They had changed the hair color that was my most conspicuous feature, dressed me in clothes I would never normally wear, and split up and acted separately from Bonriki Airport in Kiribati. On top of that, I had arrived through Incheon Airport, whose number of users had fallen after it was submerged.

Unlike my extremely quiet return home, Kang Sujeong gave a survival interview as soon as she arrived, under an overwhelming barrage of cameras. Engineer Team Da had been among those who informed the world of my death the fastest.

Engineer Team Da stated the facts plainly: they had taken me, mentally unsound from a head injury, along with them and used me as a shield to block gunfire. When my name was moved onto the survivors’ list, they seemed to assume that I had been riddled with bullets and transported to a hospital in Hawaii, a hospital in the Marshall Islands, or a U.S. Navy hospital ship, where I had somehow survived.

Engineer Team Da continued sending me hospital bills and letters of apology. I was a little surprised by how large the amount sent for medical expenses was. Each payment came to nearly tens of millions of won. Reading the letters was so difficult that at first I did not even open the envelopes.

When I asked Shin Haeryang for advice on what I should do, he told me to accept them for the time being and throw them away if I decided I had no need for them. The people from Engineer Team Da wanted to visit Korea in person and apologize, but when I conveyed my refusal through Shin Haeryang, they did not come. Instead, the hospital bills and letters continued to arrive.

Meeting them again was rather frightening, and aside from my fingers, I was in such good condition that I could not explain what had happened between Engineer Team Da and me. One pleasant day, I picked up a random letter and began reading from the middle. There were sentences translated into Korean.

‘I remember the time your blood drenched our bodies and your body began to convulse. We should have died there together. There isn’t a single moment when you don’t appear in my dreams. I regret what I did so much…….’

Once more than twenty letters had accumulated, I almost stopped dreaming about someone grabbing me and holding me in front of a gun. Personally, I wanted them to writhe in guilt, but I kept thinking that these people had had no choice either. They seemed to have cared for one another quite a bit as teammates. If I had been an employee of Engineer Team Da, perhaps these people would have gone around with me too…… It would take time, but I thought I would probably forgive them. Not for their sake, but for mine.

One of the ROVs—remotely operated underwater vehicles—searching for survivors succeeded in receiving messages from survivors at Undersea Base Five of the Deep-Sea Belt, located at -3015 meters.

[Help us!]

The ROVs continued carrying water, food, and air. Even after the survivors were rescued through a submersible four days later, they had to live underwater for a month before six survivors and one dog could finally make it to the surface. For those four days, all they had for food was one bag of senior-dog food that Sumire had brought and a single bottle of water.

Emily Kim, an Ophion trainer from Undersea Base Four and one of the survivors, left an interview saying, [The dog food was actually edible.] The dog-food company that saw the interview sent Emily two whole boxes of the food in question. Emily passed them straight to Sumire without even opening the plastic packaging.

Tamaki Yuzuru survived and confessed to what Engineer Team Na had done. Japan seemed extremely flustered by his admission that he had joined hands with the mad fanatics and taken the lead in terrorizing the North Pacific undersea base. It appeared that no one had expected Tamaki to survive in one piece. Sumire took Tamaki’s side for the first time in her life.

Shuran and Summer’s names were moved from the missing persons list to the survivors’ list three days after the terrorist incident. Shuran also gave a detailed statement about what Engineer Team Ra had done together with Engineer Team Na. China immediately protested, claiming that Shuran was framing Engineer Team Ra with absurd accusations.

Hong Kong was not on the side of its citizen Shuran, either. Countless rumors were fabricated simply because Shuran had gotten along well with people from Engineer Team Ga in Korea, Engineer Team Ba in New Zealand, and Engineer Team Sa in Australia. Reports flooded in questioning Shuran’s mental state because she had been taking antidepressants. Indicted by the Hong Kong authorities under the national security law, Shuran requested asylum in Australia to avoid prison. She spoke while calming Baek Aeyeong, who was hopping mad and shouting, “Is your country insane?”

“I knew this would happen. If I had stayed quiet, I might have been able to live in Hong Kong. But it can’t be helped. I only told the truth.”

Tamaki Yuzuru’s situation was similar. He applied to leave Engineer Team Na altogether and requested immigration to Canada. I silently cheered him on in my heart. China and Japan tried to confine the matter to individual wrongdoing, saying that a few employees working in isolated locations had fallen in with a cult, but the six countries that had suffered damage had no intention of letting the matter pass quietly. A fierce investigation into the terrorists began.

As for the torpedo, all eight countries denied having fired it, so news reports were filled with talk of Europe sending an investigative team. In the undersea base survivors’ messenger chat, people were betting money on which insane country had launched the torpedo.

Kim Jaehee was released due to insufficient evidence for both the assault and terrorism charges. Kim Jaehee had never donated to the Infinite Church, so there were not even any financial transactions. Aside from his confession, there was practically no evidence linking Kim Jaehee to the Infinite Church. After asking Kang Sujeong to let him resign, Kim Jaehee cut off contact and disappeared.

When I asked Baek Aeyeong, she sent me Kim Jaehee’s phone number three days later. Using that number, I sent him the locations of the psychiatric clinic and orthopedic clinic I had visited before, recommending them. I also messaged him to ask whether he could recommend somewhere better, but no reply came.

I was curious what Toumanako and Kim Jaehee had agreed to do about the Rhaphidophora. I could not tell whether they had decided to divide it between them like in Solomon’s judgment, or fight over it so that the victor could take it like in the Colosseum. If it was the latter, Kim Jaehee had virtually no chance of winning.

Toumanako visited Daehando and attended the funeral for several days, where she found the potted plant Kim Jaehee had hidden. It was apparently delivered to Kim Jaehee through Baek Aeyeong. I attended the funeral online from Korea. It was not especially strange, since people hospitalized or living in other countries who could not attend in person had also participated through an online intermediary. The camera briefly panned across the attendees, and I was glad to catch a fleeting glimpse of Emma.

[Please send me a picture of the Rhaphidophora. So my heart can heal.]

When I texted Kim Jaehee, several pictures arrived a few days later. They showed the Rhaphidophora beneath a window where soft sunlight streamed in. It was the same potted plant Toumanako had sent me a picture of. After staring for a long while at the green plant basking in the sunlight, I expressed through Kang Sujeong that I wished to resign.

Kang Sujeong only contacted me to say that I was not the only one, and that they would collect the requests and process them together. If I retired, I had the ominous, inexplicable feeling that Daehando General Hospital would not establish a separate dental department—it would simply disappear altogether. Every welfare service at a workplace was easy to abolish but extremely difficult to create. Please, let there be a dental department at Daehando.

Deputy Team Leader Kang Sujeong became one of Daehando’s heroes. She had put everyone she met on boats and evacuated them to the Marshall Islands, stayed at hospitals and hotels while asking the authorities for help as quickly as possible, and even rescued a child that another Engineer Team had smuggled in and hidden. According to Shin Haeryang, she was on the verge of retirement anyway and already had a reputation for being notorious, so it was better for someone still in service to take all the credit for the good image.

Satellite footage of Kang Sujeong piloting what looked like a decrepit old boat that could collapse at any moment, her face crumpled as she escaped toward the sea, swept across the world. Interviews with Nevae, Henry, Toumanako, Rico, and Maisie, all thanking the people of Korea, appeared one after another.

The person in question repeatedly posted on Daehando’s Korean messenger chat that she was entirely unsuited to such a title, that she had suddenly been summoned to receive an award and desperately wished someone else would accept it instead, and that the pressure was enough to make her feel like she was going to die.

Perhaps because Yugeum had set out water and prayed to the jellyfish in every direction, or perhaps because of the outstanding swimming skills of her academic advisor, news apparently came that she had returned alive. Kim Gayoung contacted me, saying that she was seriously considering opening a bakery. I began harboring the grand ambition of making enough money to open a dental clinic on the second floor of the bakery Kim Gayoung would run. Bread was a food containing a tremendous amount of sugar. In the long term, people coming and going from a bakery were practically future dental patients. If I opened a clinic there, I probably wouldn’t go bankrupt, at least.

News arrived that Sam Young, James Darnell, and Kevin Roy had survived, while Eun Jjadi Kanu, Dustin Gordon, Benjamin Clark, and Carter Morgan had died. As time passed, the bodies of other Infinite Church members, such as Michael Roaker and Elliot Brown, also began to be found.

I only learned that the man I had called John Doe was named Stephen Donnelly when I saw his photograph on the list of the dead. I heard that several members of the Infinite Church who had escaped from Undersea Base One had survived and been arrested.

They said that the members had continued performing rituals through the other jewels until water rose to fill the altar of Undersea Base One. They must have kept attempting new loops until just before they died.

Had they succeeded?

Shin Haeryang told me that the body of David Knight, one of the Infinite Church members on the list I had written, had not been found. The same was true of Elizabeth Hueber. He suggested that they had either died and had not been found, or had escaped. But how could anyone escape from a collapsing undersea base?

As I looked at my bandaged left hand while recalling the faces of the two, I let out a sigh.

Three weeks after the Muhan Church terrorist attack, Shin Haeryang retired when his contract expired. Kang Sujeong had hoped he would join in cleaning up the mess Daehan-do had become, even if she had to stretch out his retirement date like taffy. However, Korea had apparently concluded that the contracted personnel had no notable achievements to show for their actions during the terrorist attack. There was no reason to renew their contracts, some said, and others called it a waste of taxpayers’ money.

I heard all this through the Korean messenger group at the undersea base and was dumbfounded. It seemed to me that the Koreans had already earned their pay simply by surviving the terrorist attack on Daehan-do and making it back alive. Baek Aeyeong’s feat of single-handedly stopping the terrorists in the auditorium had, before long, been rewritten as the white men of Daehan-do standing together to fight injustice. As always, the martial valor of a short East Asian woman was easily erased from the record.

The higher-ups seemed delighted that Shin Haeryang was retiring. During his contract, he had constantly pestered them to replace equipment or do one thing or another, and the United States, China, Japan, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand—developed countries all—had repeatedly lodged complaints demanding that the head of the engineering team be replaced.

Only Kang Sujeong, the person actually handling the work, took over as head of Engineering Team A with an anguished expression. Once Shin Haeryang’s retirement was registered in the Daehan-do and undersea-base computer system MARIS, the employees either threw parties, shouting that the bastard had finally left, or caused a commotion demanding that they drag the bastard back and seat him at the gambling table.

Kang Sujeong discovered that the coordinates Shin Haeryang had sent as a commemorative gift led to a camouflaged boat, with books for the Class 1 and Class 2 powerboat licenses tied to it with a red ribbon. Holding her aching forehead, Kang Sujeong sent a question through the messenger.

[You needed a license to operate a boat?]

Lee Jihyeon became the deputy head of Engineering Team A after Kang Sujeong. She evidently did not want the position very much, because messages saying [I feel like I’ll be seeking the Lord more often] and [I was satisfied living as an ordinary employee] appeared one after another. Since most of Engineering Team A had either quit or were planning to quit, Kang Sujeong clung to Lee Jihyeon and Baek Aeyeong, begging them not to leave.

Baek Aeyeong occasionally posted cat pictures in the undersea-base survivors’ group chat. She regularly posted asking if anyone knew who had brought a cat onto Daehan-do, but no one was able to give her a proper answer. Baek Aeyeong wanted to raise a Russian Blue. But she, too, would have to drift away like a floating plant once her contract expired.

With my family’s permission, I decided to raise the cat at our house. I named her Bada. Unlike the way she had screamed while watching the rising water, on land Bada was polite, quiet, and gentle. Whenever I sat cross-legged, she would sit or lie down on my legs and act coy.

I hadn’t known, before raising a cat, that cats were creatures that spewed fur like humidifiers. Apparently Bada shed less than most, so did that mean other cats lived in a state where their fur flowed like water? Bada was very intelligent, but every now and then she could also be astonishingly stupid. And, for some strange reason, she took a liking to Mujin. I had no idea why. I was the one who fed her.

Bada would often curl up beside the whale plush toy Noeul that I had brought home and fall asleep. I liked seeing the creature that had once been forced into a backpack in a hurry sleeping in the wide-open living room, with nothing threatening it. There’s no danger here. I thought this as I stroked Bada’s purring nape and back. Yes. We’re safe now.

The last time I contacted Shin Haeryang before his retirement, he said that the surviving members of Muhan Church seemed to be mistaking Jeong Sanghyeon for their savior instead of Park Muhyeon. It was probably partly because I had repeatedly used Jeong Sanghyeon’s name, but the members of Muhan Church apparently found a mysterious hacker who had appeared like a comet at the North Pacific Undersea Base after having no records since middle school more appealing as a savior than a thirty-something disabled dentist who lived in deathly silence.

Shin Haeryang had considered taking legal action against Jeong Sanghyeon, but the survivors’ memories were all different, so once again there was insufficient evidence. Shin Haeryang said he had placed Jeong Sanghyeon in a dormitory in Burundi run by retired CIA personnel. It would be safe from the eyes of the cult terrorists for the time being, and Sanghyeon’s parents were apparently delighted, believing that their son had found another job overseas.

“Are the people around me and I safe? Or do I need to move into the room next to that dormitory as well?”

“Live as you normally do. Nothing will happen. Just in case, we needed a capable sniper for Mr. Muhyeon’s safety, and as luck would have it, a man I know had just finished a job and was unemployed.”

Could that unemployed man be tall, bad at cutting his own bangs, fond of food, a smoker, and a former guide at the undersea base? Could I call him over and feed him? How were we supposed to call in a sniper stationed so far away? Wondering whether Shin Haeryang’s necklace had reached its rightful owner, I asked:

“Did you happen to see the lapis lazuli necklace I’d put in my backpack?”

“Yes. Thank you. I disposed of it properly.”

“Um······I think I may have broken it, so I’d like to buy you a new one or compensate you.”

“It’s fine.”

“What are you going to do after you quit?”

“There’s something I need to do.”

Since he was not answering clearly, he probably did not want to explain. A brief silence settled between us. The person on the other end hesitated, then said:

“People who survive with their lives intact from an incident of this magnitude develop ‘survivor’s syndrome.’ It isn’t your fault, Mr. Muhyeon.”

“······I’ve started seeing a psychiatrist.”

“I see. I hope you’ll continue for at least a year.”

I wanted to tell him to go as well. I asked if his health was all right and told him that we should meet and have a meal if he came to Korea, but he left me with the vague promise that he would contact me again later, and before I knew it, the call had ended. Not long afterward, Baek Aeyeong quit too and disappeared.

We had only happened to meet at a turning point in our lives because the undersea base had brought us together. They had entered my life like the incoming tide, then receded like the outgoing tide. I contacted them, but none of the three replied. Kim Jaehee, on the other hand, sent me pictures of her Rhaphidophora regularly. If I said I needed someone to talk to, she would speak with me on the phone, and every now and then we could even have coffee together.

To the outside world, Daehan-do and the North Pacific Undersea Base had been seized by the fanatical terrorist organization Muhan Church and torpedoes. It was reported as a massive terrorist incident perpetrated by infiltrated followers and people who had sided with the terrorists. Since all the testimony from the survivors who had been found was different, the authorities seemed to be struggling with the investigation.

When summer passed, the search for the missing around Daehan-do was officially concluded. Eight countries were still fighting over the torpedoes, and the North Pacific Undersea Base remained noisy with the settlement of insurance payments and compensation, the processing of departing employees, and the trials of the criminals. A construction-company executive’s remark that the Atlantic Undersea Base, nearing completion, would not collapse like the North Pacific Undersea Base had caused an uproar and set the internet ablaze.

I sleep on a thickly spread-out mattress on the floor. After learning that not using a bed helped me sleep more deeply, I got rid of the bed altogether. My alarm clock is set for eight. Even if an earthquake struck at 7:02, I would probably still be asleep. Dyeing my hair had helped considerably. Every time I looked in the mirror, I knew that I had successfully survived the loop.

I started exercising to build up my stamina. Unless I had no choice, I avoided elevators and walked the stairs as much as possible. It did not seem as though suspicious people who looked like members of Muhan Church were wandering around nearby.

I could not tell how much my mind was healing, but my body was steadily recovering. The cross-sections of my fingers had healed and thickened. It was around the time I was discussing with a friend getting a prosthetic hand fitted in spring. As winter approached, I received a phone call. It was an international number I did not recognize, but I answered in case it was a call from Daehan-do. A familiar voice came through.

“It’s safe now.”

That was all. By the time I began to ask whether he was healthy, whether he had found another job, and what he had been doing all this time, I realized the other person had already hung up.

From that brief conversation, I knew that David Knight and Elizabeth Hweber were dead. The fanatics I did not know, and the leader of Muhan Church whom I had never identified, were probably dead as well. I drew in a deep breath, then exhaled very slowly. It felt as if the tension had drained from my entire body. Other people’s deaths had become my relief. Once, I could never have imagined such a thing.

I called Kim Jaehee, whom I had spoken to a month earlier, just in case. I contacted her wondering if she had died too, but she was alive and well. That was a relief. I nagged her to floss diligently and keep going to the hospital regularly, then hung up.

A postcard arrived from an address covered in an absurd number of stamps and written in a language I could not identify. It had nothing written on it. I sent several replies, but none ever came back.

Sometimes, when Lee Jihyeon, Kang Sujeong, Kim Gayoung, or Yu Geumi came to Korea and we ate together, I would tell them about what I had been through. Lee Jihyeon listened quietly before saying:

“My favorite snacks and drinks keep arriving by courier. I thought they had been delivered to the wrong address, but apparently not. If you hear from him, let me know too. I’ll kill him.”

There were several more people who said they would kill me if they met me, just like Lee Jihyeon. I shared my resentment with them. Shin Haeryang, Seo Jihyeok, Baek Aeyeong—any one of them. I hoped at least one of them would feel their life was in danger. That way, they might think of coming to find me.

As winter set in, I thought a great deal about life at the undersea base. The seawater in the deep sea had been bitterly cold. Whenever the temperature dropped and colder winds began to blow, the days grew shorter, and the nights when I could not sleep grew longer. Each time, I remembered the eulogy I had heard at the online funeral.

‘Through this terrorist attack on the North Pacific Undersea Base, we were able to see both the best and the worst in people at the same time. The attack on the undersea base was a challenge to humanity and peace. We will not answer evil with another evil because of the malice they showed us. We will live by goodness, and show how much love and devotion are possible in this world.’

We will not answer evil with another evil. We will show that we can live by goodness. ······That seems a little difficult for an ordinary dentist to uphold and live by.

Just a little. It seems difficult.

Whenever I thought the world was unbearably dark and filled with malice, I thought of the deep sea. The deep sea was not as dark as people imagined. There, creatures that carried light within themselves lived together in harmony, illuminating one another. I knew the deep sea now.

Extra. The Great White Shark Is Alive (1)

These days, unless it is a general hospital, there is almost never a medical-administration desk. Most private clinics have nothing but androids or kiosks. Making appointments online is the norm, and although some places occasionally accept appointments by phone, an automated response system handles them. Most facilities are equipped with well-developed unmanned systems, making it easy to request billing or medical records.

When a patient arrives at the scheduled time and waits in the waiting room, a large notice displays their name and instructs them to enter. Once they go into the examination room, they are seen immediately. Unless they arrive unusually early or late, patients rarely even encounter one another.

The more private a clinic was, the less likely it was to hire an office worker. Clinic directors did not have to pay salaries, and they preferred machines that had no personal circumstances and never retired. Moreover, shouting at or kicking a kiosk or android was not considered a major legal problem unless one smashed it completely into powder, which also played a part. Even if a patient damaged the registration machine, the clinic could simply request free after-sales service, so that seemed more convenient. That was why, when the dental clinic announced it was looking for someone to work at the front desk, I heard that nearly twenty people besides me had applied.

[Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic] was a small dental clinic with a dentist as its director. At small, one-doctor dental clinics, it was common for one dental hygienist, in addition to the dentist, to work there while the remaining positions were filled by assistant robots. Here, there were three employees in total: the director and dentist, Park Muhyeon; the dental hygienist, Lee Nayoung; and me, handling reception, administration, and odd jobs.

There was Celloni, a medical-assistance assistant and a robot for the technical room, but it was unusual that the assistant robot most dentists called a servant had been given an English name. When I asked Director Bak Muhyeon about it over lunch, he told me that part of its voice system and AI had been taken from a submarine at the North Pacific Undersea Base.

Director Bak Muhyeon was missing two fingers on his left hand. He had openly mentioned it during the interview, so when I asked what had happened, he said he had lost two fingers after being caught up in the terrorist attack at the North Pacific Undersea Base. The incident, in which a cult carried out a terrorist attack at the undersea base two years ago and several hundred people died, was still occasionally reported in the news. I had heard that Koreans worked there, but I hadn’t known that the director of the hospital where I worked had been there.

Perhaps because he wore a prosthetic and kept his gloves on while treating patients, it was impossible to tell at a glance that he had a disability. I asked I Na-yeong, the dental hygienist, how much of a difference there was between a dentist missing two fingers and one with all ten, and she said she hadn’t noticed much difference.

Later, while having lunch together and listening to the director’s story, I learned that he had wanted to work as an employed dentist, but few places were willing to give an employed position to a dentist who had lost fingers. Even when there were such positions, they cut the annual salary so much that he had no choice but to consider opening his own practice.

“I remember the news saying that almost none of the Koreans were injured.”

“Yes. It wasn’t life-threatening.”

Bak Muhyeon’s gaze unconsciously fell on his own hand, then returned to his lunchbox.

For lunch, the hospital had a contract with a lunchbox company and received boxed meals, though we occasionally went out to eat. Today’s lunchbox contained tteokgalbi. A large, well-grilled tteokgalbi sat atop shiitake mushroom rice, accompanied by quail-egg jangjorim, stir-fried kimchi, cabbage salad, seasoned lotus root, and dried pollack bean sprout soup. The soups made by this company were mild but delicious. Ms. Na-yeong said she was looking forward to tomorrow’s gochujang bulgogi lunchbox. I was secretly looking forward to the smoked duck lunchbox.

For the employees, lunchtime was the hospital’s only pleasure and happiness. Those gathered in the break room chewed their lunches diligently, pushed them into their stomachs, and cleaned up their places.

After brushing their teeth, people usually dispersed or remained in the break room until lunch ended, but Director Bak Muhyeon looked around at the staff and asked,

“Anyone want coffee?”

“Me!”

“Me!”

After taking everyone’s orders, Director Bak Muhyeon smiled and happily hopped out of the room. Rather than heading toward the elevators, he disappeared in the direction of the stairs. I had never once seen Director Bak Muhyeon take the elevator.

“He must always use the stairs like that.”

“He says it’s because he can’t exercise if he stays in the treatment room all day.”

Director Bak Muhyeon would probably go to the bakery to buy the drinks. The dentist’s office had a relationship with [Delicious Bakery] on the first floor, and whenever a dental employee bought bread, drinks, or wine, the bakery gave us a thirty-percent discount.

The bakery did such roaring business that it was common for all the bread to sell out before afternoon. According to Director Bak Muhyeon, the owner of the bakery knew quite a few people and imported flour from France. One corner of the bakery also sold wine. There were so many varieties that I sometimes wondered whether they had initially intended to specialize in wine and only happened to sell bread as well.

Occasionally, pastry chefs with tired, exhausted faces would come out, greet Director Bak Muhyeon, and then vanish back into the kitchen like zombies.

As I stood with a toothbrush in my mouth, I saw a gigantic shark skull beside the elevator, at the entrance to the dental clinic.

The strangest thing about this dental clinic was the utterly incongruous decoration in front of the hospital door. According to what Director Bak Muhyeon had complained about over lunch, the North Pacific Undersea Base had said they would send him a gift to commemorate the opening of his practice. He had casually given them his address, but apparently he had never expected a box larger than a person to arrive.

The deliveryman had said that he had only barely managed to deliver it because the elevator was spacious, then vanished in an instant. The problem was that the enormous box couldn’t pass through the hospital entrance. To get it into the hospital, they would have had to dismantle and remove the front doors.

With no other choice, Director Bak Muhyeon opened the enormous cardboard box, taller than a person, in the hallway outside the hospital—and was startled out of his wits. Anyone would be surprised to receive bones as a gift, but he stood dazedly staring at the enormous shark skull, more than two meters long. Then he looked at the large letters on the wall reading Bak Muhyeon Dental Clinic, followed by the date and time on the digital clock, and let out a huge sigh of relief. The fear clouding the dentist’s eyes was soon carefully tucked away and disappeared. I asked the dentist, who looked completely stunned,

“Wow. It’s enormous. What should we do with it?”

The interior of a solo dental practice reflected the director’s tastes entirely. Doctors opening their own practices were usually short on money and had their interiors done at the lowest possible price, but even then, their preferences found their way in somehow. The wallpaper or floor color, the lighting, the various kinds of framed pictures hung on the walls.

Considering the clinic’s interior, decorated in bright yellow and orange, and the impression I had of the usually neat and dignified Director Bak Muhyeon, the shark skull, with all its teeth bared, did not fit in at all. Still, if this monstrosity was the director’s taste, what could an ordinary employee like me do?

Director Bak Muhyeon wore a troubled expression and smiled awkwardly. Judging from his reaction, it seemed that this dentist had never intended to display a terrifying shark head that looked ready to devour patients entering the dental clinic one by one.

“……I know.”

I asked where we should put it, but Director Bak Muhyeon stared silently at the skull for some time. Time, however, waited for no one, and we had to open the hospital doors immediately, so the three of us started by clearing away the cardboard and trash. The thing was unbelievably heavy; it didn’t budge at all with the strength of one person. Only after the dentist, the dental hygienist, and I all strained against it together did we barely manage to move it away from in front of the elevator.

Fortunately, according to the director, the real estate contract stated that the dental clinic would use the entire third floor. The shark skull was left abandoned in the hallway in front of the third-floor elevator.

I witnessed patients with appointments getting off the elevator and jumping every time they saw the shark skull. Before I could even inform him that the patients were startled, Director Bak Muhyeon seemed to be busily making phone calls here and there. An odd object has arrived at my clinic.

After skipping lunch to investigate the monstrosity left in the hallway, the dentist learned that the North Pacific Undersea Base had sent him something recovered from the waters off Daehan Island as an opening gift. There were apparently quite a few objects salvaged from the seabed, but even Daehan Island didn’t seem to have anywhere suitable to put a shark skull of that size.

When they heard that a dentist who had retired from the undersea base had opened a practice, they had decided to give it to him as a gift and simply gotten rid of the nuisance. Director Bak Muhyeon was loudly saying in English that he would send it back, but the people at the undersea base seemed to be responding as though he should deal with it himself. The footsteps of the distressed dentist pacing back and forth echoed all the way to the desk.

People from every floor of the building came by once to look at the shark skull before going back downstairs. The dentist, sweating coldly, had collapsed in the break room. According to Director Bak Muhyeon, he had jumped to the conclusion that the insane cult responsible for the terrorist attack on the undersea base had sent it as a threat, and had been relieved to learn that wasn’t the case.

With lunchtime running short, Ms. I Na-yeong lightly remarked to the director, who was making do with bread for a meal.

“Oh, come on. The North Pacific Undersea Base terrorist attack was already two years ago. Why would they go out of their way to target you?”

Bak Muhyeon’s face lit up as he nodded. “That’s right. There’s no way a cult would target an ordinary dentist.”

It was only after a day had passed that Director Bak Muhyeon told us the shark skull had once belonged to a great white shark named Deep Blue, which had roamed the North Pacific as its own territory, and that the undersea base had sent it to him. The patients had been asking the desk what on earth it was, and I had asked the director.

There was nowhere to put it in the cramped dental clinic. The waiting room wasn’t especially large, but bringing it inside would mean getting rid of one of the four-person sofas. Besides, Director Bak Muhyeon didn’t seem to have any intention of bringing it into his clinic and lovingly caring for it. The dentist called every center in the country with the word “marine” in its name, offering to donate it, and was looking up the price of chainsaws in case nothing worked out and he had to dismantle it.

From the desk, I observed patients press the elevator button and wait. They would look at the shark skull, hesitate, then take pictures with it, its jaws stretched wide as though they were taking commemorative photos. Afterward, they would grow slightly embarrassed, snicker, and get on the elevator.

Oh. ……Not bad.

Perhaps because the hospital had only recently opened—or perhaps because he simply had no intention of doing so—Director Bak Muhyeon did no advertising or promotion at all.

If handled properly, couldn’t this become a photo spot for patients? When I mentioned the shark skull’s usefulness over lunch, Director Bak Muhyeon was silent for several seconds before saying he would think about it.

Even now, a month later, he still hadn’t bought a chainsaw and was using a duster to brush the dust off the great white’s teeth. It seemed he had given up on throwing the thing away.

**Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (2)**

After observing Director Bak Muhyeon during my three months of employment, I found that he spent each day in a monotonous routine—monotonous enough to be boring.

Director Bak Muhyeon’s daily routine was as follows. At eight in the morning, he came to the hospital from home carrying a coffee tumbler. He did some simple cleaning, checked the appointments, and prepared for treatment before opening the hospital doors at nine. If he had an appointment, he treated the patient. If not, he either bought household goods online, read the newspaper, read recent clinical studies, or leafed through books on hospital management and the charts of scheduled patients. Bak Muhyeon Dental Clinic’s lunch break was from 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., so after eating lunch and brushing his teeth, he rested for about twenty minutes before returning to work. After that, he spent his time much the same way until six. The schedule occasionally changed depending on the patient, but he finished tidying up and closed the clinic by seven.

After returning home from the hospital, Bak Muhyeon ate dinner and went to the hapkido studio located practically right outside his house. He took the adult hapkido class for an hour, then walked home exhausted, swaying this way and that like a deflated balloon. Other than taking out the trash, he never left the house again that night, and in the morning he went back to the hospital.

There were a few variables in between—going downstairs to the bakery to buy coffee, taking a short walk, going to the bank, stopping by home, visiting another hospital, and so on—but he rarely traveled more than a kilometer from the dental clinic. Watching Bak Muhyeon, I sometimes felt that dentists were animals trapped in a tiny room of less than ten pyeong, living by peering into the mouths of their patients.

Of course, Director Bak Muhyeon wasn’t free of worries. Depending on the condition of a patient’s mouth, he would fall into serious anguish. Alongside his chronic concerns—whether good treatment results could be inversely proportional to treatment costs, what the best treatment for a particular patient was, and what made a good dentist—he seemed to suffer stress from the appearance of unreasonable patients who startled a dentist who had survived a cult terrorist attack, the mental pressure of his accumulated loans, and the surprising emergencies that occasionally occurred. Yet even those worries looked extraordinarily peaceful from a third party’s perspective. The dentist’s life flowed quietly, day after day.

Over lunch, I deliberately brought up the subject of exercise. Looking at today’s lunchbox, which contained brown rice and a chicken-breast salad, I felt as though I were on a diet, and my appetite vanished completely. While we talked about the exercise each of us did, I steered the conversation until Director Bak Muhyeon had a chance to explain how he had started learning hapkido.

Director Bak Muhyeon said that one day, he had realized how terribly poor his physical strength was and bitterly regretted it. He said, somewhat bashfully, that his goal was to work hard at exercising until lifting around a hundred kilograms was no difficulty. Contrary to his usual behavior and appearance, he also said he wanted to learn kickboxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or Muay Thai. The problem was that those gyms were quite far from his home on foot, so he had no choice but to attend the hapkido studio closest to his house.

I nodded half-heartedly.

“If a robber broke into the hospital, could you take care of him, Director? Could I leave it to you?”

At my question, Park Muhyeon smiled with a confident expression and answered.

“If anything like that happens, please call the police quickly.”

Since he looked like such an ordinary dentist, I expanded the scope of my surveillance from weekdays to weekends. On weekends, Park Muhyeon went grocery shopping, spent time with his family, or went to the gym with a thoroughly unwilling expression on his face. He sometimes met up with friends, and once a month, on a Sunday, he went out to provide volunteer medical services.

For three months, I conducted close surveillance through a small unmanned aerial vehicle stationed at high altitude for long-duration flight, miniature surveillance drones, and wiretapping devices, all to dig up Park Muhyeon’s secrets. I even contacted a hacker who had recently returned to work after being completely cured of cancer. We thoroughly picked apart every website Park Muhyeon had visited over the past year, the files he had deleted from his laptop’s recycle bin, the conversations on mail sites registered under his resident registration number, everything he had typed through his cellphone and computer keyboards, a year’s worth of card transactions and cash withdrawals from ATMs, his bank loan records, and the GPS records from his cellphone and car.

But there was nothing particularly unusual.

It would have been easier to understand if Park Muhyeon had been secretly creating drug addicts by rubbing narcotics onto his patients’ gums, selling photographs of the insides of his patients’ mouths to some strange perverts, or laundering all the money earned by his dental clinic through major Chinese dental franchise corporations to fund their entry into the Korean dental market.

Aside from the unfortunate incident in which he lost his fingers to terrorists while stationed at an undersea base in the North Pacific, and a traffic accident during his school days that wrecked his entire body, he was a perfectly ordinary civilian. If he had six secret lovers, or if he were the sort of person who relieved stress in bizarre ways, investigating him would at least have been somewhat entertaining. Just in case, I hacked into his phone gallery as well, only to find that 90 percent of it consisted of cat pictures and family photos. The rest were pictures of food or photos taken with friends.

There was genuinely nothing suspicious about this dentist.

I had turned him inside out and shaken him thoroughly, yet not a speck of dust came out.

There were people like that from time to time. They just weren’t the kind of people I particularly wanted to meet. I wasn’t a good person, after all.

He was a novice dental clinic director who diligently traveled back and forth between the hospital and his home, devoting his entire life to paying off his bank loans. On top of that, he wasn’t doing very well because he didn’t advertise. The moment I opened up Park Muhyeon’s bank account in particular, I began to worry that I might lose the job I hadn’t even held for very long. My lower abdomen started cramping like mad from the tension.

If you’ve opened a new dental clinic, you have to advertise like crazy!

Make sure there isn’t a single person in this city who doesn’t know about Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic!

Please spend at least twenty million won on advertising!

Those words rose to my throat every day. Or he could give the money to me. I wanted to steal the card from the dentist’s wallet and charge the advertising expenses myself. Since I actually had the ability to do so, my hands trembled every time I looked at Director Park Muhyeon’s wallet. Coffee wasn’t important! Advertising was!

A dentist who survived a terrorist attack with bullets raining down like a storm! Where is the clinic he runs? Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic, located on the third floor!

Have a cavity? Then where should you go? Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic!

Need braces? Then where should you go? Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic!

Is your jaw making noises? Then where should you go? Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic!

Need a trustworthy dentist who doesn’t over-treat? Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic!

You bastard, Director! Do some advertising!

Why had that bastard Sin Haeryang sent me here? Maybe he’d sent me here to make me go insane.

He had only told me to come here and recuperate, without offering any explanation.

That bastard was always like that. As soon as my lower abdomen healed, I was going to rip his head off the moment I saw him.

Ding.

The elevator doors opened with the chime announcing its arrival on the third floor. Even while sitting at the desk, I could see through the transparent window as the patient with an appointment got off the elevator and approached the clinic. The patient stopped for a moment upon seeing the skull of a great white shark with its jaws gaping wide, then awkwardly pulled out their phone and took a picture. As soon as the patient entered, I greeted them in a bright voice.

“Hello!”

“Uh. Yes.”

Dental patients were always startled when they saw a living person at the desk. After asking for the patient’s name and telling them to sit on the sofa and wait, I watched as the patient awkwardly looked around the clinic, stared at the actual time and appointment time displayed on the screen, checked their name, and then sat down on the waiting-room sofa. The patient had been looking around at the clinic’s interior when they saw the sign and arrow reading, “To those who would like to brush their teeth, toothpaste and toothbrushes have been provided,” along with the five-minute remaining wait time. After hesitating, they stood up.

There was a small sink in the corner of the waiting room, but a partition wall and curtain had been installed around it, so it couldn’t be seen from the desk. The moment the patient disappeared into the waiting area, I turned my head toward my phone. Through a camera secretly installed in the ceiling, I could see the patient reaching for a new toothbrush.

The patient paused while reading the notice asking them to place the used toothbrush in the wooden container provided beside it and take it with them. From the area where toothpaste, mouthwash for rinsing the mouth, dental floss, and cups had been arranged, I heard the sound of the patient picking up the toothpaste, followed shortly after by the sound of brushing.

I habitually flipped through the documents on the desk, but nothing registered in my eyes. My gaze was drawn to the eco-bag the patient had left on the waiting-room chair.

There probably wasn’t anything dangerous inside. …Probably. If there had been, the artificial-intelligence X-ray installed at the clinic’s entrance would have detected the belongings of everyone crossing the threshold in real time, analyzed the footage, and emitted a bizarre warning sound if any prohibited item entered the hospital. The patient entered the treatment room normally. They didn’t look like they were about to attack the dentist and try to kill him. The reverse was true as well. I received a delivery of disposable supplies, opened it, and put everything away in its proper place.

Director Park Muhyeon didn’t know this, but several parts of the clinic’s interior were not what he had requested. For example, the glass installed on the clinic’s exterior, in the hallway, and at the entrance had been ordered as ordinary laminated glass for a typical hospital interior renovation. The contractor’s documents stated that ordinary laminated glass had been used, and Director Park Muhyeon had paid for what he believed was ordinary laminated glass.

In reality, the installed glass was 100-millimeter high-performance bulletproof glass capable of stopping grenades. It boasted defenses strong enough to keep out even some lunatic who might casually pull out an AK-47 assault rifle and empty it into the windows, or point a shotgun powerful enough to bring down a bear. Since glass fit for the armored vehicles of presidents, heads of state, or drug lords had been installed in an ordinary dental clinic, the clinic’s glass doors were also heavier than the average adult. If they hadn’t been made automatic, half of the patients with appointments probably wouldn’t have been able to enter the dental clinic.

Park Muhyeon had briefly left the construction site to take his mother to an orthopedic clinic, and apparently panicked when he saw the altered interior later. The glass had definitely been a normal thickness while the construction was underway, but at some point it had been replaced with glass as thick as the length of his middle finger, while the thin concrete walls had also become twice as thick.

He hurriedly called the interior-construction company, but they had stopped answering his calls from that very day onward. He didn’t have enough money to replace the interior he had undertaken after making a major decision, so he had no choice but to use it as it was. During lunch, Director Park Muhyeon called a junior dentist who was preparing to open his own clinic and earnestly advised him to make sure the interior work was completely finished before paying the balance. I listened in on the call and smiled bitterly to myself, because that unreachable interior-construction company was one of the shell companies I had worked for until three months ago.

An artificial-intelligence X-ray system for identifying dangerous objects, the sort used at airports, passenger terminals, borders, and the White House, had been installed in the ceiling and floor at the clinic entrance. This was likewise not something an ordinary dentist could easily afford to install in a private clinic. I casually tried to sound Director Park Muhyeon out, but perhaps he didn’t understand my question, because his answer had nothing to do with it.

“X-rays? Of course a dental clinic has one.”

“……Right.”

He knew nothing. It seemed to have been installed without his knowledge.

To go even further, while cleaning the waiting room and lounge, I found a massive toxic-gas purification device in an unused storage room connected to the heating and cooling system. It was a device that used an adsorbent to rapidly purify contaminated facilities by absorbing any gas generated inside the building. I couldn’t understand why equipment using nanotechnology to remove toxic chemicals more effectively than military gas masks had been installed in an ordinary dental clinic. Even if large quantities of acidic toxic substances or nerve agents such as sarin gas were sprayed, this clinic would remain unharmed. Asking the owner of the clinic how it had been installed probably wouldn’t have yielded any answers.

There were other devices that had been cleverly concealed or disguised as household items. The palm-sized machine Director Park Muhyeon believed to be a Wi-Fi router was actually a Wi-Fi-enabled, always-on anti-wiretapping system. It detected frequencies across the entire spectrum within two seconds and blocked wiretapping attempts at super-high speed. No wonder I hadn’t been able to bug the treatment rooms or consultation room.

I wanted to ask what sort of relationship Park Muhyeon had with the bastard who had remodeled an ordinary dental clinic into something comparable to a fortress, disaster shelter, or protective facility. What would this poor dentist think if he found out that someone he didn’t even know had illegally modified his clinic?

Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (3)

Today’s lunchbox contained cheese pork cutlets, with mozzarella cheese stretching out like strands of taffy. I ate every last piece of danmuji and every shred of kimchi that came with the lunchbox, then polished it completely clean. Director Park Muhyeon said his mouth felt greasy and left the lounge to buy something refreshing. Ina-young and I sprawled across the lounge sofa like stuffed pigs. Ina-young, who had been fiddling with her phone, glanced up at the ceiling for a moment before speaking.

“I’m asking because the director isn’t here right now.”

“Yes.”

Was she curious about the clinic’s quarterly net profits? Or had another dental clinic offered her a raise and tried to recruit her?

“Do you perhaps have feelings for Director Park?”

The dental hygienist lying on the lounge sofa half sat up and gave me a cute smile. For a moment, I almost asked what kind of bullshit she was talking about, but I reminded myself that I was in an operational area and swallowed the words.

The moment I heard her question, I felt the pork cutlet I’d eaten so well refluxing up from my stomach, while stress made my lower abdomen cramp again.

“Teacher Ina-young, what made you think that?”

What had I done to make this dental hygienist develop such a ridiculous misunderstanding? Ina-young sent her eyes into the distance as if ruminating over the past, then answered with an awkward smile.

“Like the intense way you look at Director Park from time to time? And how you ask me questions about him.”

That was because at first I thought Park Muhyeon was a well-disguised criminal. I’d probably looked at him as if wondering what sort of secret a clean-cut guy like him could be hiding. And as for the questions, wasn’t asking the dental hygienist who worked with him the only way to find out what sort of person the dentist was? Had I asked about Park Muhyeon unusually often? I thought I’d balanced it out by asking an appropriate number of questions about Ina-young herself as well, so she wouldn’t get that impression.

Apparently, Ina-young had better instincts than Park Muhyeon. I laughed as if the question itself were absurd and answered.

“Me? Have feelings for Director Park? Not at all. ……I went through a terrible breakup not long ago, so I’m not looking to get involved with anyone right now.”

I had experienced a very difficult separation. Twenty centimeters of my small and large intestines had to part from my body forever. It had been such a sad farewell that I’d shed a whole mal of tears, and I couldn’t count the amount of painkillers they’d pumped into my veins. Even now, three months later, my lower abdomen still hurt.

To prevent intestinal adhesions, I had to walk at least ten thousand steps a day starting the day after my surgery, and every second, I found myself weighing the choice between dying comfortably and living painfully. Even these days, hatred boils up inside me every morning. After surgery on your lower abdomen, you can’t raise yourself from bed however you want, because you can’t put any strength into your abdomen at all. Watching my expression, Ina-young spoke to me in an apologetic voice.

“Really? I’m sorry. I completely got the wrong idea.”

“It’s okay. These things happen. Let’s just say it’s the director’s fault for still being unmarried.”

Inayeong let out a small laugh and lay back down on the sofa. She seemed determined to spend every last second of her break lying down. Did dental hygienists not have spines? Or had she, like me, taken a bullet from an automatic pistol to the lower abdomen?

“How did you two break up? Is it okay to ask something like this? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

She must have been terribly bored. Inayeong was the sort of person who watched every romance drama currently airing on television. As I lay on the sofa staring at the ceiling, the events of three months ago flashed before my eyes as vividly as if they had happened just moments ago. It’s a trap! Fall back! I said fall back!

“Mm. We got along well.”

My small and large intestines had been pretty decent guys. No matter how much garbage food I picked up and ate, they had digested it perfectly. Thinking about it now, I missed them terribly. I had eaten happily just twenty minutes ago, but even I had no idea whether this cheese pork cutlet would actually be digested properly.

“Things got bad, and we ended up breaking up suddenly. I’d liked them for a long time. When they suddenly said they were going to leave me, I couldn’t stop them. All I could do was let them go and wish them a good life.”

When two 9mm pistol rounds had bored into my stomach, crushing and lodging themselves in my intestines, I had no choice but to part with them by force. Only after they were gone did I realize how much I had loved those bastards.

These days, no matter how sad a breakup was, I couldn’t properly drink even a glass of alcohol. To be precise, I could drink it, but I lacked the confidence to deal with the consequences. When I joined the dental clinic and went out drinking with the staff, I lied that I was taking herbal medicine and drank only cider. Watching Bak Muhyeon and Inayeong drink beer made me want to snatch their glasses and pour them down my throat. Inayeong comforted me as though she had just heard a tragic love story.

“That must be really hard. You’ll meet someone good.”

“Yes. I have to get through it. Thank you.”

I lived each day with the single-minded determination to catch the bastard who had shot me in the stomach, pull out his small and large intestines, and use them to jump rope. He’d better be hiding well. I was going to be the one to finish him. I gave Inayeong a gentle smile.

I felt my cellphone vibrating in my pocket. I instinctively tried to sit up by using my abdominal muscles, then realized I couldn’t put any strength into my stomach. Cursing viciously in my head, I rose very carefully with both arms. It was only the vibration of a cellphone, but it felt as though my entire body were shaking.

“I’ll take this call.”

I quickly left the break room, passed through the waiting room and hallway, and entered the bathroom. For three months, I had ceaselessly called the temporary numbers of every bastard I knew. Repeating this routine by hand at the dental clinic made it look as though I was slacking off instead of working, so I had used an automatic repeat-redial program to make the calls. At last, I had managed to get through to one of them. I began the conversation by stating the prearranged code phrase.

“Hey. I heard you got shot. I heard the news. Well, well, well! He got shot! He got shot!”

“Want to take a couple of bullets to the head yourself?”

Whether he was listening to my threat or not, I heard him snicker on the other end of the line.

“I heard you became a pauper. Shouldn’t you retire? Going around getting shot in the gut and all.”

This bastard.

“Where are you right now?”

“Uh, uh. Can’t tell you.”

Seo Jihyeok’s voice kept cutting out, perhaps because of the poor connection. The noise was severe, so I hurled my questions at him before the call could drop.

“I couldn’t get in touch with Sin Haeryang. Do you happen to know what that bastard’s up to?”

“Don’t know. I’m busy with a separate job. The call’s going to drop. Hurry up and talk.”

“What about Aeyeong?”

“She said she was guarding someone or something. I can’t reach her either.”

“Sin Haeryang sent me to a dental clinic in Korea. Do you know anything about that?”

The other party asked in surprise.

“What’s the clinic called?”

“Bak Muhyeon Dental Clinic.”

“Huh? Oh. The dentist there is a decent guy. I sent him a toxic-gas purification device as a grand-opening gift. Was it installed properly?”

You crazy bastard. That was you? If I answered a question with another question, this lunatic would obviously keep doing the same thing for the entire call, so I answered first.

“It was installed very, very well. ……What does this dentist do?”

Had there been some detail I’d failed to uncover? Was this Bak Muhyeon fellow more extraordinary than I had expected?

“He’s an old benefactor of mine. A little while ago, I raided a cult compound, and there was a purification device that had only recently been installed in a storage room connected to the cult leader’s office. I guess he’d planned to pretend to commit mass suicide with the believers by gas and survive by himself. If I left it with the local police, it would rot indefinitely in an evidence locker, so when we pulled out, I slipped them some money, dismantled it, and shipped it over by boat. The shipping cost was pretty high, so I’m glad it was installed properly.”

“Why would an ordinary dentist need something like that?”

“What was it? That. Hang on. There are more religions with insane beliefs in this world than you’d think. What was it?”

When Seo Jihyeok was deployed on an operation as a sniper, he quit smoking indefinitely until the operation was over. He was a hard bastard, but heavy smokers seemed to lose intelligence when they couldn’t smoke. Judging by this bastard’s memory, his intelligence probably wasn’t very impressive even under normal circumstances. After wasting about five seconds, he finally seemed to remember and answered.

“……Right, right! The Infinite Sect! Sin Haeryang and I spent time dealing with those bastards, but as you know, cults don’t disappear that easily.”

Wasn’t the Infinite Sect the religious organization that had attacked an undersea base in the North Pacific? Before launching that terrorist attack, it had been a religion whose very name was unknown to the public.

“Keep it short.”

“I installed one as a precaution, just in case. I sent it in place of an air-purifying plant.”

The brain on this mercenary bastard. Who sends a 120-kilogram mobile toxic-gas purification device filled with chemical adsorbents instead of an air-purifying plant? Even if some unreasonable patient at the dental clinic smoked a hundred cigarettes in a row or someone set off a tear-gas canister, the air would be purified in less than a minute. As long as Bak Muhyeon stayed in the treatment room, he probably wouldn’t even smell it. Calling it a high-performance air purifier was a stretch. Unless it was installed in a government facility, it was wasteful both in price and specifications.

“You should’ve sent a plant instead. A rubber tree or a pothos.”

The potted plants occupying every corner of the dental clinic’s waiting room had foreign names like Tumanako written on them. Seo Jihyeok answered awkwardly.

“Mm. I did look into sending a plant as a grand-opening gift. He’s my benefactor, but to him, I’m just one of countless patients who passed through his life,”

I had a rough idea of what kind of relationship these guys had with the dentist.

“What are the bulletproof glass, the X-ray, and all the other things? Even the bakery’s window on the first floor is bulletproof. Why install bulletproof glass in a bakery? What are you protecting, the bread?”

“The X-ray was probably Aeyeong’s gift. She said she’d make it so that if anyone entered that hospital carrying a gun, a warning alarm would be heard all the way across the street. The bulletproof glass was probably that bastard Sin Haeryang’s work.”

“Then why did Sin Haeryang send me here?”

Seo Jihyeok answered carelessly, as if it had nothing to do with him.

“Don’t know. Didn’t you hear anything?”

“He told me to recuperate here. Does that make any sense?”

“……I’ve known that bastard for nine years. Don’t rack your brain trying to interpret his words as though they carry some profound meaning. Just understand them exactly as he says them. I’ve seen too many people ruin themselves by trying to read too deeply into things.”

Sounds like he knew because he’d ruined himself once, too. Fine. I was supposed to take his words at face value. But there was no way that sly bastard Sin Haeryang had sent me here to recuperate without a thought in his head!

“I feel like that bastard is using me even if all I do at this dental clinic is breathe!”

“Of course you do! Because Sin Haeryang is definitely using you where you’re most useful—”

When I could no longer hear his voice, I looked at my cellphone and saw that the call had already ended. I ran the automatic redial program, but the call did not connect again. I had gained absolutely no meaningful information. It would have been far better if Aeyeong had been on the other end. At least she gave back as much information as she received. Seo Jihyeok and that bastard Sin Haeryang, on the other hand, were not honest at all, and there was no way to tell whether the information I got over the phone was true or false.

Come to think of it, Seo Jihyeok had never once been of any help in my mercenary career…… No, that wasn’t quite true. He was one hell of a sniper. Once, he had gone without sleep for ten days while lying in wait, then performed the feat of assassinating a mad dictator by attempting a shot into a moving car from more than five kilometers away. It was an achievement worthy of a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, but because he had pulled it off on foreign soil, he had to insist that he had nothing whatsoever to do with it if he wanted to avoid being captured and tortured by the intelligence agencies involved. In the end, which country had killed the dictator became a source of conflict among the intelligence agencies of various nations and remained an eternal mystery.

Mercenaries had no reliable backing. The company that hired you would immediately sever ties if it decided the job might hurt them, even after ordering you to do it. Of course, they paid the agreed fee in full. If they failed even at that, the mercenaries’ eyes would turn toward the company.

The moment I came to my senses in the hospital, I learned that an enormous sum had been forcibly withdrawn from my account for the surgery, the emergency extraction operation, the helicopter, and so on. The operation had failed, and I was the only survivor. In a capitalist society, money was life. Now that my account had been drained so that I could keep living, was I really still alive? How was I supposed to live from here on out?

For a moment, I felt the urge to grab Director Bak Muhyeon by the collar and shake him until everything fell out. What do you want from me? Tell me everything you know! Sin Haeryang, you bastard, come out right now if you don’t want to see this guy die! ……With my intestines shortened, it seemed my patience had shortened as well.

When I staggered out of the bathroom, it was nearly 14:00, so I returned to the dental desk. A warm cup of rooibos tea had been left in my spot. Bak Muhyeon had probably placed it there and gone into the treatment room when he saw I wasn’t in the break room.

Of the drinks sold as side items at the bakery, the only things I could have were fruit juice and a few kinds of tea. Early on, I had ignored my physical condition and tried drinking a latte, only to have to rush straight to the bathroom. Rooibos tea was at least caffeine-free, and Bak Muhyeon now automatically bought my drinks for me.

Just as I observed the other person, the other person observed me. Just as Inayeong watched me, Bak Muhyeon was probably watching me as well.

I also abandoned the idea of threatening Director Bak Muhyeon while concealing my identity as an injured mercenary. As I sipped my tea, another day passed safely.

Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (4)

Before I started working at the hospital reception desk, I had never known that all kinds of people visited hospitals. I had assumed that only patients suffering pain or discomfort somewhere in their bodies, or people connected to those patients, would come. Based on my own experience as a patient, I had anticipated only things like ‘assassins who approach patients whose concentration has been disrupted by pain in order to finish them off,’ ‘visitors who come to mock the patient’s condition,’ and ‘guardians without money.’ Yet people with absolutely no connection to the patients sometimes came to the hospital.

Salesmen seemed to think small clinics were vending machines that spat out money when you put in worthless goods. They walked boldly into the hospital with shameless faces and asked us to buy all sorts of useless junk. Gum, snacks, fruit, scarves, instant glue, flashlights, magnifying glasses, picnic mats, pain-relief patches, pens and other office supplies, candles that appeared to be handmade, strange underwear covered in glittering sequins, fluorescent-colored long underwear, gloves and scrubbers that looked hand-knitted, suspicious medicines whose ingredients were impossible to identify, wilted vegetables, all manner of door-to-door cosmetics, every kind of cleaning implement, steamed corn and roasted sweet potatoes—which were the least objectionable of the lot—photocopier rental services, water purifier rental services, hospital equipment rental services, credit card salesmen, illegal loan brokers, employees from various insurance companies, and so on. All kinds of shady characters tried to crawl into the little dental clinic like cockroaches.

If a kiosk or an android had been here, it would have made an appointment as though it were a patient, entered the treatment room, and latched onto Director Park Mu-hyeon. Park Mu-hyeon instructed us to refuse and send away any strange peddlers who came by. He told us to treat them as nonviolently as possible, and to call him if that did not work. From what I had heard about how other hospitals handled them, they seemed to buy some suitably cheap item or press a few bills into their hands while telling them not to come back. I felt an urge to do the exact opposite of what Park Mu-hyeon had instructed.

“Go away. We don’t buy things like that. … We don’t need it. We’re not buying it. I said we’re not buying it!”

If I handled things according to my own nature, I wanted to put two bullets into each peddler’s head the moment they crossed the hospital’s doors. Fearless bastards. Did they not know what happened when they barged into someone else’s place of business? Of all the hospitals in the world, they had the bad luck to visit the one where I worked. If they weren’t patients, death was the only outcome. Unless they became patients by force.

I wanted to kill just five of them as an example and hang them in order along the entrance to the first floor. Even if it was unpleasant to look at for a while, it would at least convey a warning to the peddlers roaming the entire city: this building treated peddlers’ lives like flies. I wanted to punch the lower jaws of those who demanded cash as though they had left money in our care, or who asked for personal information, and turn them into patients in need of dental treatment.

There were countless people who did not listen even when refused verbally. Perhaps they had been coldly rejected by other stores so often that the warnings I spat out did not feel like threats to them.

“Why don’t you consider getting a photocopier?”

“We don’t need one.”

“How about getting a credit card this time?”

“We don’t need one.”

“Our electronics are on sale right now, so we’re selling them dirt-cheap.”

“We don’t need them.”

After the eighty-two-year-old security guard who had constantly watched over the first floor was hospitalized with norovirus from eating the wrong oysters, the entire building’s first line of defense had been completely breached. The peddlers had made it all the way up to the dental clinic on the third floor.

For a moment, I wondered whether we should turn the vacant second floor into a graveyard for peddlers. If I diligently killed the dozen or so peddlers who came to Park Mu-hyeon Dental Clinic, piled them up, and then vanished without a trace, who would become the main focus of the police investigation? The female hospital clerk who, on paper, looked incapable of killing even an ant, or the male dentist who diligently went to the gym and martial arts studio?

The moment a man in his fifties crossed the hospital entrance, he began scattering trash, dust, dirt, and sand across the floor with his hands. For an instant, my mind had trouble processing what was happening. The patient waiting room floor was covered in shoeprints, dirt, dust, and trash in no time. Director Park Mu-hyeon did not have enough money to lay marble across the entire floor of this small dental clinic. So he had compromised by laying marble-look tiles in the waiting room. They were not quite as good as marble, but their surfaces were smooth, they looked warm, and they gleamed like porcelain. When properly cleaned, they gave the impression of entering a high-end dental clinic.

Though my common sense and capacity for empathy were lacking after rolling around battlefields as a mercenary, I was still fully aware of the single most important thing for an employee of a dental clinic.

Hygiene.

Who would want to visit a dirty dentist? The floor, which I had scrubbed until it shone and squeaked beneath one’s feet, had become a complete mess in an instant. The man pulled cheap, hand-worn vacuum cleaners from a large bag and shouted in a voice that sounded as though he had swallowed a train whistle.

“If you’re wondering what this vacuum cleaner can do! It eliminates trash and dust in a single stroke! Featuring the finest angstrom technology of the twenty-first century! At a special price you won’t find anywhere else! Only fifty thousand won! At a sale price!”

That was where my patience snapped. A cramping sensation seized my lower abdomen.

“Get out! Get out! Get out unless you want to die!”

I grabbed a cushion rolling around on the waiting room sofa and beat the bastard with it. Until three months ago, my weapon of choice had been a Glock 17, and I had carried a twenty-five-centimeter stainless-steel greatsword strapped to my thigh. Now my primary weapon was a pathetic forty-five-centimeter square cotton cushion. Before, I had been busy targeting my opponent’s arteries, head, or vital organs. Now I was busy avoiding his attacks. How could a person fall this far? The stinking cockroach let out a tremendous shriek after being hit with a cushion a few times.

“Argh! Argh! They’re beating people in the hospital! Argh! Aaargh! Someone’s going to die!”

If I had intended to kill him, I would not have beaten him with a cushion.

“I’m calling the police! Get out before I kill you. If you come back, I really will kill you!”

The moment the elevator doors opened, I kicked the mad peddler inside and pressed the button for the first floor. Don’t ever come back. I might have to buy some salt and sprinkle it around.

“What happened?”

Perhaps the expelled madman had been so loud that Director Park Mu-hyeon stopped treating his patient and came running out. He looked at me coming through the hospital entrance and at the wrecked waiting room. I smiled at Park Mu-hyeon and said,

“Nothing happened. Go back in and finish your work. I’ll handle things here, so don’t worry about it.”

Teacher Lee Na-yeong had told me that doctors at other hospitals treated any disturbance as someone else’s problem and pretended not to notice unless the waiting room caught fire. Park Mu-hyeon, on the other hand, came running out even when the slightest commotion broke out in the waiting room. The hospital wouldn’t make money unless you worked, you know. Park Mu-hyeon checked the waiting room and my condition, nodded once, and went back into the treatment room where his patient was, leaving me with, “Call me if anything happens.”

Well. Unless a mob of drug dealers heavily armed with bazookas and assault rifles came in, or a group of suicide bombers wearing C-4 explosives around their bodies, I probably would never call you. Just look inside the patient’s mouth.

I brought out the vacuum cleaner, removed the dirt, dust, and trash, wrung out a wet mop until it was nearly dry, and scrubbed the floor several times. Just as I was about to attack the floor again with the steam cleaner kept in the clinic, a scheduled patient entered.

I greeted the patient, washed my hands, and returned to the reception desk. The old woman who had followed behind the patient like a shadow had made neither sound nor sign of her presence. …Impressive. I could barely even hear her breathing. Was she a family member who had come along? Unlike the old woman standing inside the hospital, however, the scheduled patient sat down in a corner the moment she entered and did nothing but look at her phone.

“Hello. Do you have an appointment? If you don’t, could you come over here and register first?”

The old woman ignored everything I said and swept the dental waiting room with a fierce gaze. With the eyes of a soldier who had fought in close combat, she grabbed all ten disposable coffee sticks placed beside the water dispenser in her left hand, then grabbed ten sugar-free snacks with her right. Without saying a word, she walked out the hospital entrance. She took the elevator and vanished without leaving a trace. Judging solely by her movements, she had the speed to slap both cheeks of a special-forces operative.

When I asked the patient playing a phone game on the waiting room sofa who the old woman was, the patient did not even know her. All I got in response was, “Huh? I came into the hospital with some old lady?” I refilled the empty coffee sticks and snacks, barely managing to unclench my trembling fist. Just try coming back. …I’ll kill you.

I would have been more at ease if the patient had been an unreasonable customer making absurd demands. Even when they shouted and got irritated, they were cute.

You’re still a patient and a customer of this hospital, aren’t you? It seems like something is bothering you, but we can work it out through conversation and find a compromise. What? You don’t want to pay the hospital bill? You want us to treat you for free? You’re not a customer? Don’t tell me you’re a bandit wearing a customer’s disguise. Do you…want to die? Are you willing to give up your life over a few teeth? No? Fine. You’re a patient, aren’t you? There must have been some misunderstanding. People can misunderstand each other in life. Though not in this dental clinic.

I did my best to prevent disturbances in the waiting room before they could happen. A faint song drifted through the quiet dental clinic. Was it coming from the first floor? I wondered if I had heard wrong, but it was definitely singing. When the elevator arrived on the third floor and the doors opened, I could clearly make out the lyrics. Four people had turned on a song and were singing along.

“Praise the Lord~. Praise the Lord~.”

I broke into a huge smile and ran out in my stockinged feet. Before they could even cross the hospital entrance, I wrapped my entire body around them. Then I spun around 180 degrees, put them back in the elevator, and sent them down to the first floor. I left them with a warning that if they came back, I would kill both the Lord and them as a set.

It had not even been thirty minutes since I had kicked out a bald-headed monk who had entered while striking a wooden fish. This time, two perfectly normal-looking people entered the hospital. Were they scheduled patients? Then they smiled at me as I greeted them and said,

“We came to share some good words with you.”

Members of pseudo-religions were the most ambiguous. It was difficult to tell whether they were same-day patients or lunatics who believed in a pseudo-religion. I mistook them for patients and even registered them for a same-day appointment. But when I explained that it would take some time because scheduled patients had to be seen first, they smiled as though that were good news and began spouting bizarre nonsense at me.

Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (5)

Members of pseudo-religions disguised themselves as patients to steal my kindness, smiles, and precious time, then tried to consume the dental clinic’s water supplies and stockpiled food like starving pigs. The moment I discovered their identities, I hurriedly grabbed them and threw them out through the stairs or elevator. Still, whenever I forgot about their very existence, they would attempt to invade the hospital again.

Members of pseudo-religions were utterly shameless about the trouble they caused in the hospital. They said that I was terribly wrong for not believing in their religion, and that I ought to be grateful that they were donating such valuable time to an ignorant, stupid person like me and giving me precious enlightenment for free. They had an unfounded certainty that, as believers, they were vastly superior and would lead happy lives. I had no idea where all that confidence and faith came pouring from. Did they gather somewhere and take drugs together? Their eyes looked perfectly normal.

I roughly shoved aside or kicked out those who adopted a condescending attitude toward me and announced that they would awaken my ignorant, unenlightened self. Most religions displayed some degree of self-righteousness, but if I had to distinguish ordinary religions from pseudo-religions, I classified them as ordinary religions if they left without arguing when I told them, “Stop spouting nonsense and get out.” If they refused to leave and loitered around the dental clinic, their religion was a pseudo-religion. What they worshipped and what they believed did not matter.

“Don’t treat us like a pseudo-religion!”

“Then get out.”

I dealt with members of pseudo-religions almost exactly as I did peddlers. Before long, however, one of them rose to become the most unpleasant, disgusting, and dangerous person in the entire clinic. I failed to screen out exactly one person. She was a middle-aged woman in her mid-to-late forties who had come with a daughter who looked to be in her early twenties. The daughter remained in the waiting room while only the middle-aged woman entered the treatment room. At first glance, they looked like an ordinary patient and her guardian. But the woman who had broken through my defensive line entered Director Park Mu-hyeon’s treatment room, clung to the dental hygienist by gripping both of her wrists, and revealed her hidden identity.

She began telling Director Park Mu-hyeon and Lee Na-yeong that their troubles and poor health were caused by their failure to properly honor their ancestors, and that they needed to pray and perform rites of devotion to correct it. Park Mu-hyeon realized in an instant that she was not a patient who had come for treatment. Lee Na-yeong froze in place, paralyzed with terror. Park Mu-hyeon pulled Lee Na-yeong’s arms free from the woman’s grasp, shouted at me to call the police, and, in a rare display of forcefulness, drove the madwoman from the treatment room while ordering her to leave immediately. In the meantime, I slammed the pseudo-religious woman onto the dental waiting room floor and called the police for the first time in my life. I remained wary of the young woman who appeared to be her daughter, but perhaps because she had seen her companion sprawled on the floor, she did not attack.

During the brief time it took to make the call and speak with the police, I checked hundreds of times in my head: Was I allowed to call the police? Would the investigation into my identity reveal anything that might draw police attention? As I spoke on the phone, the locations of every piece of evidence I had hidden in this country until then flashed before my eyes in rapid succession. Thoughts such as I wouldn’t have come here if I’d known I would end up involved with the police flitted through my mind every second.

At the same time, I wanted to drag out and torture the cultist who kept groaning that he was going to die and repeating that everything would work out if we performed a ritual, along with the other cultist who supported him and helped him to his feet. They wore expressions as if they were being persecuted despite being completely innocent, and I wanted to throw them into the vacant room on the second floor and remove their bones from their bodies one by one. Depending on the speed at which I removed them, I might even be able to determine whether those so-called ancestors of theirs actually helped them.

The police took as long to arrive as a rice cooker took to finish making multigrain rice. In the meantime, the two cultists attempted to escape from the hospital waiting room. As if I’d let them. Park Muhyeon stopped me when I naturally tried to catch them.

“They might be carrying weapons, such as knives. You could get hurt trying to catch them, Sowon. Let’s let them run.”

It took me about three seconds to understand what Park Muhyeon was saying. Since they hadn’t shown up on the X-ray, they couldn’t have any weapons. And did he really think I might get hurt? Perhaps Park Muhyeon simply wanted everyone inside the hospital to be safe as soon as possible, rather than risk the cultists harming more employees or patients while they remained there. I let the two of them go. I could chase them later. No matter how far you run, you’re not going to flee overseas, are you? Even if you do run overseas, that’s fine. The Earth is round. If I keep walking, I’ll run into you eventually.

The police arrived around the time I had removed the cultist’s 206 bones twice in my imagination, and about ten of my own, then asked how much damage had been done. All I had done was grab his wrist and refuse to let go. Fortunately, Lee Nayoung’s wrist was perfectly fine apart from having been grabbed and released. The police left after saying they would increase patrols. In my mind, I added the police to the torture chamber that the vacant room on the second floor had been transformed into, along with the cultists.

Steak made from oyster blade came in the lunch boxes at lunchtime, but I had no appetite. Lee Nayoung and Park Muhyeon were chatting amiably as they emptied their lunch boxes.

“Ms. Nayoung, how’s your wrist? Would you like to visit an orthopedic clinic?”

“I’m fine. I was just a little startled.”

The more I listened to their conversation, the less I had to say, even if I had a hundred mouths. I was too ashamed to raise my head. There was no greater humiliation than this. At the hospital where I was in charge of reception, a cultist had dared to get past me? Even the 9mm pistol rounds fired by insurgents lying in wait had lodged in my internal organs rather than pass through behind me, and yet some damn cultist had managed to get through? My hands trembled with shame.

“I’m sorry. Someone that strange got into the examination room because I failed to screen him in time.”

Seeing my expression and trembling chopsticks, Park Muhyeon asked if I had been badly shocked, then questioned me about my mood and emotions in an unusually careful voice. He told me that it wasn’t my fault at all and that I shouldn’t worry about what had happened today. People like that were always around, he said, but thanks to me, they had been filtered out until now, and he actually praised me instead. He even said something ridiculous about how people like that would come and go through the examination room as if it were their own home if we installed androids or kiosks, and that I was doing my job well.

Lee Nayoung went a step further, asking whether I had done some kind of martial art because she had seen someone float through the air and crash into the floor earlier. She said my actions had been incredibly cool, like something out of a drama or movie.

“You were both so reliable.”

Since I had yet to see this dentist and dental hygienist laugh at and tease other people, their words and attitudes were probably sincere. But in my ears, their words were replaced with, “How can you only handle things this badly?” “Even piles of scrap metal would do better than you,” and “You’ve made a complete mess of your work, and you can still swallow food?”

I declared war on the cult. Those sons of bitches had the nerve to start a war with me? I stealthily concealed the metal chopsticks twisting this way and that in my grip, then shoved the half-eaten lunch box into the refrigerator.

“I’m fine. I’ll take the lunch box home and eat it for dinner.”

“You must have been really shocked, Sowon. Normally, you wouldn’t leave even a single piece of pickled radish in your lunch box.”

“I just don’t have much of an appetite today.”

Park Muhyeon, wearing a worried expression, went to the bakery and bought two slices of cake and some tea for the staff. Afraid he would keep worrying about me if I didn’t eat, I attacked the cake with my fork. Until today, my routine had been to go home after work and sprawl out in the safe house, but I was going to be busy starting now. I would eliminate every religious facility within a three-kilometer radius of the dental clinic, whether licensed or not.

The dental clinic staff reflected on what had happened that day and talked about what frightened them most. Lee Nayoung, who said she had been so startled that she couldn’t move, said that what frightened her most was someone suddenly grabbing her.

I nearly said that what frightened me was waiting to see whether death or rescue would come first after being betrayed and injured so badly that my intestines spilled out. Instead, I answered that what frightened me most was becoming a beggar and sitting on the street.

I remembered something Baek Aeyoung had told me before. Aeyoung had been drunk out of her mind when she said that, right after graduating high school, she had gotten a job at a small company with fewer than ten employees. There, she cut off the heads of 3,000 fish a day and separated their guts, bones, and flesh. Listening to her story, it seemed the company itself had been completely illegal. Baek Aeyoung said she had rather enjoyed filleting the fish cleanly, removing as much flesh as possible while leaving only the bones. It smelled and was a little dangerous, but apparently the work suited her temperament. However, before she had even been employed for three months, five men who worked at the factory had confessed to her all at once. Four of the five were married. Baek Aeyoung said she had been so frightened that she simply stopped going to work the very next day. She said that if she went in, she would definitely stab some of those men with a knife in order to survive, and she was afraid her life would spiral completely out of control.

‘……Sowon unni. These days, what scares me most is having no money. Stabbing people doesn’t frighten me at all. I’m going to make a very, very large amount of money.’

Unexpectedly, Park Muhyeon said that what frightened him was falling from a bed onto the floor. Unless it was a bunk bed, no matter how high a bed was, it probably wouldn’t be more than ninety centimeters off the ground. It was strange that he didn’t say he was afraid of terrorists or cultists or something like that.

“Come on. Surely not.”

“It really frightens me. That’s why I don’t use a bed at home.”

Had Park Muhyeon ever suffered a serious fall from a bed? He had spent a long time hospitalized, so all sorts of things must have happened to him. The two civilians, recharged by their lunch break, returned cheerfully to work.

I prayed that the day would pass without anything else happening. But perhaps there was no such thing as a god in this world, because around 17:00, someone who looked suspicious at a glance stepped out of the elevator. He looked young, but his hair was completely white. Wearing piercings and earrings, he walked in on an extremely elaborate prosthetic leg.

His eyes, which looked as though his soul had half died, were suspicious to begin with. He was a male bastard who looked as though he had more estrogen than testosterone. His body was long and supple, but he appeared more muscular than he looked at first glance. His long hair had been braided into a single plait and tied back. I couldn’t even see the smooth outer shell of his appearance; all I could think was that he was dangerous. The instant our pitch-black eyes met, an alarm began ringing somewhere in my head, warning me to kill that bastard first. I stood up, rolling a ballpoint pen between my fingers, and greeted him with a smile. Whether he knew about my tension or not, he entered my range. I could kill him at any moment.

“Hello. This is Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic. Do you have an appointment?”

Get lost.

“No, I don’t have an appointment. I’m friends with Dr. Park Muhyeon. He said I could come by anytime.”

Dr. Park Muhyeon has no friends like you.

“Could I have your name?”

“I’m Kim Jaehee.”

“Would you mind sitting and waiting for a moment? The director is seeing a patient with an appointment right now.”

The man named Kim Jaehee obediently sat down on the corner sofa in the dental clinic waiting room, like a still life. After looking around the interior once, he stared at the plants placed in the corner. I immediately sent a message to Park Muhyeon, who was in the examination room.

[Director. Someone named Kim Jaehee came to the waiting room and says he’s your friend. Should I throw him out?]

Just say yes. I’ll make sure he can never come back. I’ll personally deal with him. I’ll fold his spine in half.

Even if it meant filling the waiting room with every peddler and religious fanatic in existence, I wanted to drive that bastard out. Where did he lose his legs? If he had lost them to a land mine or a bomb rather than an accident, had he been involved in this line of work? Then why was he so defenseless?

**Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (6)**

All sorts of people who came to the hospital waiting room claimed to know the hospital director or to be his friends. They would say things like, “I’m friends with your director! So lend me ten thousand won!” If I had acted according to my temperament, I would have punched a ten-thousand-won-sized hole in their faces. Our director has no friends like you.

How regularly did ordinary people have to contact each other to remain friends? Didn’t you have to see each other at least once every two or three months? When I tracked the contacts exchanged on Park Muhyeon’s phone over the past twelve months, there was no name called Kim Jaehee.

He had to be someone who hadn’t contacted him for at least a year. While waiting, Kim Jaehee touched the soil in the flowerpots Park Muhyeon had received as gifts. Just in case, I stared at him intently to see whether he was avoiding my eyes while spraying weed killer.

As I observed the suspicious bastard’s appearance, the one thing that stood out was that he was not at all from this line of work. Even so, there was an extremely limited amount of information I could obtain. Despite his white hair, he didn’t look anywhere near the same age as Park Muhyeon. Even considering that Park Muhyeon looked quite young for his age, this Kim Jaehee fellow seemed much younger.

What did he do? Had they met at the hospital, or had he come looking for Park Muhyeon after being released from prison?

Other people might be deceived by Kim Jaehee’s appearance and take a liking to him, or be drawn in by his empty-looking air. But he made me feel strangely uncomfortable. Looking at him, I felt as though he had no soul.

It felt like watching an insect whose metamorphosis had gone wrong. For an insect to gain wings, it has to shed its skin from the pupa. It isn’t an easy process, so only 70 percent of insects successfully emerge. The rest either die or live out their entire lives with damaged wings or bodies, unable to die. Wouldn’t killing this Kim Jaehee bastard here and now be for his sake as well as everyone else’s?

Perhaps Director Park Muhyeon had seen my message, because he flung open the examination-room door and came out. When he saw Kim Jaehee sitting in the waiting room, his face filled with surprise. Then he walked toward Kim Jaehee without a trace of fear, and I nearly stepped between them on reflex.

“It’s been a long time, Mr. Jaehee.”

Park Muhyeon greeted him warmly, as if he were seeing a friend. But one could greet an enemy like that, too. We exchanged words rather than bullets until the moment we attacked. For the first time, a light entered Kim Jaehee’s eyes, which until then had behaved as though he had sold his soul somewhere. It only made me think he was more dangerous.

“It’s been a long time.”

“Could you wait a little longer? Someone arrived before you.”

“Okay.”

Kim Jaehee obediently nodded. Was he really a friend? Park Muhyeon, take a good look. Isn’t he some kind of fake who came from somewhere? He’s obviously dangerous. Park Muhyeon had to return to the examination room, but Kim Jaehee seemed to be weighing on his mind. I went over to Park Muhyeon’s side and whispered.

“Director. Is he your friend?”

“Yes. It shouldn’t take long, but if he tries to leave, could you stop him? Or call me?”

……How did someone like that become his friend? Was he being deceived?

“Don’t worry about things here.”

Park Muhyeon went back into the examination room, while Kim Jaehee remained exactly where he was, utterly motionless. He sat still like a broken electronic appliance. I had been hoping to hit him once and tie him up if he moved, so it was a little disappointing. The empty waiting room now held only Kim Jaehee and me. I sent a single sentence toward him like a reconnaissance party.

“This is the first time one of the director’s friends has come to the clinic.”

Normally, people met after work in the evening or something. It seemed to take him a while to recognize that I had spoken to him before he asked,

“Is that so?”

Then there was no answer. A tattoo was faintly visible below his neck. What do you do for a living, you bastard? I swallowed the words that had risen to my lips and asked instead,

“You’ll have to wait a little while. Would you like a cup of tea?”

Let’s at least give him a sleeping pill. If Kim Jaehee falls asleep, I can make the excuse that I fell asleep while waiting for him. Kim Jaehee deftly avoided all the traps I had laid.

“Hmm. I don’t want any.”

I diligently set another trap.

“We have sugar-free cookies and candy, too.”

“I don’t want any. I’m fine.”

I don’t know whether you’re fine, but I’m not. Should I force-feed him? Just in case, I unplugged the phone. I blocked all reservations, too. Dealing with this one was enough for today.

Watching Kim Jaehee sitting in the waiting room while Park Muhyeon treated his scheduled patients made me feel as though even the cake I’d eaten at lunch was rising back up my throat. It was as if some gigantic, radiation-emitting insect had taken up residence in the waiting room. Emotionally, I wanted to turn my shoes upside down, beat him with them, and drive him out. As I went over the mistakes I had made today, I sized up the person in front of me······ This bastard. Could he be in a cult? No way. Right? You’re not in a cult, are you?

Lee Nayoung had thought Kim Jaehee was a patient with an appointment, but when I shook my head and indicated that he wasn’t, she silently mouthed, Wow! It was the expression Lee Nayoung made whenever she met a handsome man. After the last patient left the clinic, and before it was even 5:40 p.m., Park Muhyeon told Lee Nayoung and me to leave work early. Her face brightened, and the corners of her mouth rose all the way to her ears. She hurriedly began getting ready to leave, as if she didn’t care whether the guy in the waiting room was a patient, a ghost, or a monster. Unlike me, who dragged my feet, Lee Nayoung acted like she had been born to escape from the dentist’s office. Anyone watching would think she’d been locked inside the clinic. Was leaving twenty minutes early really that wonderful?

“Dr. Nayoung, make sure your wrist is all right. If it’s swollen or painful, stop by an orthopedic clinic in the morning before coming in.”

“Yes, Doctor. See you tomorrow! Bye, Sowon!”

And then Lee Nayoung, a seasoned office worker, disappeared faster than the wind. Waving at her back, I asked Park Muhyeon,

“Are you planning to stay, Doctor?”

“I’m going to do some scaling for a friend.”

“······I don’t want that.”

Kim Jaehee openly said he didn’t want it, but Director Park Muhyeon let the words go in one ear and out the other. I might not have been as fast as Lee Nayoung, but I needed to leave work at roughly the same speed to avoid arousing unnecessary suspicion. I couldn’t shake the feeling that while I was gone, this Kim Jaehee guy would chew through something like thirty dentist skulls. I sent my organic body home from work. Instead, I called a drone and had it monitor the treatment room from outside, pointed at its window in my place. The glass was so thick that I couldn’t hear their voices, but judging from their movements, Park Muhyeon seemed to have dragged Kim Jaehee in for scaling and filling his cavities.

When the treatment was over, the two of them went somewhere for dinner, then drank coffee at a café while talking. They asked each other how they had been, why they hadn’t been in touch, whether things were going well at the clinic, and if they were eating properly. Park Muhyeon also talked about the advantages and disadvantages of the finger prosthesis he was using, along with various unusual incidents that had happened since he opened the clinic. I eavesdropped on their conversation through the drone, but I was hungry, so I bought myself a drink. It was already well past dinnertime. I sat in the spot where the café music was least audible, sipping my drink and listening closely to their conversation.

Most of what the drone relayed was unbearably dull. Park Muhyeon showed a great deal of concern for Kim Jaehee’s physical and mental health, while Kim Jaehee seemed to have little interest in his own body. After listening to Park Muhyeon tell Kim Jaehee to floss properly about ten times, I wanted to disappear and go get dinner. Then, all of a sudden, my name came up.

“There’s a tall employee named Kim Sowon who works at our clinic. She’s at the reception desk, so you must have met her today, too. What happened today was—”

It felt as if my hearing had become four times sharper. But the story Park Muhyeon proceeded to tell was merely about chasing out the vicious cult member who had infiltrated the treatment room that morning. Right. Go ahead and spread my blunder throughout the entire neighborhood. Before long, people on the opposite side of the planet would know about it, too.

“Sowon reminded me of Ayeong, the girl we met at the undersea base. Dependable and cool. Are you still in touch with the people you worked with at the undersea base, Jaehee?”

I sprayed the tea I was drinking out through my nose. Kheuk. Cough! ······Let’s calm down. He can’t be saying this because he knows about my relationship with Baek Aeyeong. Surely this dentist isn’t thinking anything of it. Kim Jaehee shrugged and answered.

“No. I’m not in touch with them.”

No matter how I looked at it, they didn’t seem like friends. Park Muhyeon had been at the undersea base for less than a month before a terrorist attack took place, severing his fingers and forcing him to quit. Even if he had tried to make a lot of friends in that short time, how many could he possibly have made? Had I been mistaken? Had the hole in my abdomen made a hole in my judgment as well? Kim Jaehee asked Park Muhyeon a question.

“Don’t you still want to go back to the past?”

Park Muhyeon was silent for a long time, gripping his coffee cup, before answering.

“Yes.”

Kim Jaehee gazed quietly at Park Muhyeon, then replied.

“Someone contacted me out of the blue a while ago. He was a believer like me, but he hadn’t directly participated in the terrorist attack, so he was released. He asked me if I still wanted to go back to the past.”

“······What did you say?”

“I said I did, of course.”

I could hear Park Muhyeon sighing so deeply it seemed the floor might cave in. What was he talking about? If it was connected to the terrorist attack, was he talking about the Infinite Church? This bastard was a cultist who believed in the Infinite Church! I knew it! Even his eyes looked like those of a cultist!

“They think Sanghyeon is the messiah and savior of the Infinite Church. Funny, right?”

“What are you planning to do?”

“They told me to come to the appointed meeting place at a designated time one month from now. I’m asking because I was wondering if you’d go with me.”

“If I said I wasn’t going, would you go alone?”

“Yeees. Doesn’t it sound fun?”

“······I’ll think about it.”

Park Muhyeon saved Kim Jaehee’s contact information. What was there to think about? Had this dentist gone mad from staring at people’s mouths all day? What the hell was he thinking? Of course they shouldn’t go. Tell him to go alone. Tell him to die alone. If something happened to you and you died, Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic would close its doors on the spot. Then I’d lose my job. What the hell?

Park Muhyeon asked Kim Jaehee many questions. He asked whether Kim Jaehee was taking good care of the plant sent by a woman named Tumanako, and Kim Jaehee showed him photos directly on his phone. Through their conversation, I wrongly inferred that the plant was either a drug, the raw material for a drug, or an ingredient used to make one. But judging by Park Muhyeon’s tone and attitude, it seemed to be a completely ordinary plant. The two of them let the conversation and time drift by at the café before parting ways.

I was about to follow Kim Jaehee out of habit. I thought Park Muhyeon would be perfectly capable of getting home on his own. But the moment that thought occurred to me, I turned around and followed Park Muhyeon instead. Park Muhyeon didn’t get distracted by anything else and went straight home.

I returned to the safehouse, searched for the religious facilities clustered around the dental clinic, and devised a strategy. Some of them would disappear like ants that had lost their anthill if only their facilities were destroyed.

**Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (7)**

Shin Haeryang was still unreachable. There ought to be a law allowing us to kill people who were never around when they were needed or couldn’t be contacted. Baek Aeyeong couldn’t be reached either, and I was beginning to worry. She wasn’t out of contact because she’d been injured, was she?

**[Sowon: I heard that the Infinite Church was wiped out by Seo-bastard and Shin-dog-bastard. Why is it still around?]**

**[Namin: Getting rid of a religious group is harder than eradicating a virus. I think they removed the ones with financial resources or who looked likely to carry out violent acts, but I don’t know the details either.]**

**[Sowon: When can you send the information I requested?]**

**[Namin: Early this morning. After four.]**

**[Sowon: When do you sleep?]**

**[Namin: I don’t sleep.]**

Did hackers not sleep? Did they keep caffeine flowing through their veins like a river twenty-four hours a day? No wonder they got cancer. It sounded like they had a stroke scheduled, too. Please live a long time. Good hackers were hard to find.

**[Sowon: How’s your health?]**

**[Namin: I’m doing all right. How about you?]**

**[Sowon: The hole in my abdomen has been roughly patched up.]**

**[Namin: From what I can tell, Shin Haeryang bought you a place and enough time to recover safely. He also put a civilian who’d been caught up in the terrorist attack to work as your bodyguard. There isn’t just one person who wants you dead. If I were you, I’d stay hidden.]**

**[Sowon: I don’t know about Shin Haeryang, but can’t you reach Baek Aeyeong either?]**

**[Namin: She’s either hiding, injured, or dead. It’ll be one of the three.]**

That was how things worked in this line of work.

**[Sowon: Let me know if you hear anything.]**

**[Namin: I heard you’re working as a receptionist at a hospital. How’s the job?]**

**[Sowon: There are so many weird patients that I want to shoot them all with a gun.]**

**[Namin: Sounds like you’re doing well. I have something to say about the request for information on Jeong Sanghyeon.]**

**[Sowon: What?]**

**[Namin: He’s a selfish pig of a bastard. A cancer on society. He’s never once given up a seat for the elderly or disabled. If you’re going to kill him, I won’t charge you for the information this time.]**

It was rare for him to say something like this. I thought briefly about the request from a hacker who completely scrubbed and remade his identity—including his name—every six months to two years, then remembered my bank balance and asked:

**[Sowon: What about Kim Jaehee?]**

**[Namin: He costs money.]**

Then I suppose Kim Jaehee was someone who deserved to live. What criteria had he used to decide that?

After going jogging at six in the morning, I found two emails waiting for me. I roughly dried my hair, decrypted the files, and checked the information on Kim Jaehee first.

I skimmed past his name, date of birth, family details, and education. Nothing much here. ······His medical records were nearly as complicated as a person was tall. I read diligently at first, but the treatment history was so convoluted that I eventually just skimmed it with my eyes. A land mine? He was unlucky. There were many records related to burns. After his older brother died, he had been admitted to a psychiatric hospital twice in his early twenties. Apparently, he’d seen hallucinations after being caught in a movie-theater fire, and afterward had made several suicide attempts. Later, he drifted from one odd job to another before joining the undersea base. After quitting because of the terrorist attack, he had mostly been unemployed.

For the past two years or so, he had been consistently visiting a psychiatric clinic. What had he been living on? Had he been using the money he’d earned at the undersea base? For two years, unusually large sums had entered his bank account once every three months, but I couldn’t determine what the money was.

When I clicked the website Namin had added, a major online shopping mall appeared. As soon as I accessed the site, a video began playing. It showed Kim Jaehee wearing a white ivory prosthetic leg instead of the olive-tree prosthetic I had seen before. Draped in a white cloth over stark-white shorts and a lace shirt, he flapped up and down like a ghost as he walked. The camera followed him as he walked to the right, danced his way to the left, then leaped meaninglessly into the air. After closing in on Kim Jaehee’s soulless face, the video vanished, and the clothes sold on the shopping mall appeared. ······What was this?

On the shopping mall’s homepage, a huge photo of Kim Jaehee was displayed on the right side of the screen. He wore a white prosthetic leg and prosthetic fingers, his chin raised, dressed as though he wasn’t wearing a shirt and wearing a transparent skirt as though it weren’t there. Occasionally, only a pair of long white fingers fitted with white prostheses appeared, along with the peculiar sound of them tapping on white marble. They were probably Kim Jaehee’s fingers. It was a shop that sold both men’s and women’s clothing, and videos showed Kim Jaehee wearing all kinds of outfits, posing for photographs or walking around as if he were a mannequin.

When I clicked on the suit that looked the most normal, Kim Jaehee appeared swathed in a pitch-black prosthetic leg and black suit, wearing a black hat as he walked around what looked like a set or caused a tremendous commotion under the sunlight. Apparently, people like this breathed and lived in this world, too. I wondered whether anyone actually bought these things, so I searched the site. It turned out that the shopping mall had recorded sales of 300 billion won the previous year and was the second-largest clothing shopping mall in Korea that year. Korea must have collapsed while I wasn’t looking.

There were a few more sites Namin had linked me to. When I clicked on them, I found a hair salon that braided and styled Kim Jaehee’s hair. More than ten million people had watched the short video, and the salon had written in bright red letters that all dyeing appointments for the next two years were already booked. When I clicked on a few more of the linked sites, interview materials came up as well. Kim Jaehee was spouting complete nonsense in them.

[Mr. Jaehee, your hair was white. Why is it white?]

[I took herbal medicine incorrectly, so all my hair turned white.]

[Really? I’ve heard of that happening, but this is the first time I’ve seen it in person.]

[I’m lying.]

······What the fuck is he?

His family situation must have been complicated, because it seemed he hadn’t contacted his family in over three years. He had quite a few contacts, but apart from those related to work, it was practically as if he had no one. If the GPS records from his phone were accurate, he hardly ever left the house except to go to the hospital or the market. I had mistakenly thought that since he had contacted Park Muhyeon after a year, they must have been meeting again after a very long time. But looking at it now, Park Muhyeon seemed to be the closest stranger he had. There wasn’t a single bastard around him who looked like a friend. The people who had worked with him at the undersea base contacted him from time to time, but Kim Jaehee seemed reluctant to contact them from his side.

It seemed he had bought a rural country house that had been on the market for a long time, repaired it himself, and lived there. The money that came in every two or three months was enough for him to live on, but he didn’t buy much. Judging from Park Muhyeon’s card expenses, he spent a fair amount on food. Unlike Park Muhyeon, who bought groceries once or twice a week and diligently cooked breakfast and dinner, this bastard ate so little that I wondered if he survived through photosynthesis. There seemed to be a record of him shopping for groceries once a month. Then what did he eat the rest of the time? Did he dig up dirt and stuff it into his mouth? He didn’t order food, and it wasn’t even an area where food delivery was available.

He occasionally bought something, but whenever he did, it was dirt of some sort, a flowerpot of some sort, or nutritional supplements and fertilizer for plants. Could he be growing strange plants or turning strange things into fertilizer?

The books he purchased consistently were the one thing that caught my eye. He only read books with strange titles, too. The books he had read recently included [Physics Made Easy], [The Tragic Meaning of Life], [My Life and Thought], [For Sleepless Nights], and [The Sickness Unto Death]. After learning that the bastard I was investigating was a member of the cult that had attacked the undersea base, I searched only for the last book.

Had I discovered a terrorist manufacturing pathogens in a rural country house? But when I saw that the book was classified under Western philosophy rather than biology, I thought surely not. Then, the instant I saw the words ‘The sickness unto death is despair’ written in huge letters on the cover, I sighed and closed the search window. ······Reading things like this, he really did seem mentally unwell.

Estimating the time he would leave for work, I opened the records related to Jeong Sanghyeon. This bastard was the exact opposite of Kim Jaehee. Jeong Sanghyeon’s food expenses were more than ten times the combined monthly food expenses of Park Muhyeon and Kim Jaehee. He bought and ate everything imaginable. Sometimes he ordered hamburgers, pizza, and chicken for a single meal. What the fuck was this bastard doing?

He had holed up in a room, joined the undersea base, worked there briefly, and then quit. That was all. Afterward, there were practically no records for two years, but he had been living with his parents for the past four months. The materials Namin sent said that he seemed to be trying to make money by using a religion called the Infinite Cult, which worshipped him. No books purchased whatsoever. Such a stereotypical and easy-to-understand bastard. I nodded contentedly as I read through Jeong Sanghyeon’s information. He was much easier to understand than that Kim Jaehee bastard.

I moved my arm while holding a ten-kilogram dumbbell and finished reading the material related to the Infinite Cult attached to the supplementary document. Jewels? Traveling to the past? He believed in some ridiculous nonsense. My arm was beginning to ache. Ten kilograms in one arm was already too much for me. The misery of it brought tears to my eyes. I had only had a bit of my intestines removed, yet the muscles in my arms had disappeared in an instant. It made no sense. Had the medical staff removed my muscles along with my intestines during the surgery? My physical condition was abysmal overall. I had barely run five kilometers during my dawn jog, yet my body had screamed in agony.

When I went to work, the dentist’s condition was similar. Ever since meeting Kim Jaehee, Park Muhyeon had been going to the gym even on weekdays after his hapkido sessions ended. His legs looked like they had no strength in them at all. If someone hooked his foot, he looked like he would fall flat on his face. Unlike his trembling legs, the arms he needed for work seemed perfectly fine. Oh. He’s a professional. A pro.

Lee Nayoung went out to have lunch with her younger sibling, who had come to visit the hospital. Today’s lunchboxes were yukhoe bibimbap. When I asked whether Park Muhyeon wanted the yukhoe since I couldn’t eat it, he obediently held out his lunchbox. I transferred every bit of the raw beef from atop my bibimbap into Park Muhyeon’s lunchbox. How much I loved yukhoe! If only I hadn’t had intestinal surgery! ······Just endure it for six months. Six months from now, I’ll eat whatever I want. Even if it kills me.

“Director. May I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

Park Muhyeon’s spoon, which had been moving diligently, stopped.

“Your friend who came before. The one with the white hair.”

“Ah, yes.”

Park Muhyeon’s face, which had been suffering from muscle pain in his thighs and calves, brightened slightly.

“We talked for a little while in the waiting room, and he said he used to work at the undersea base.”

“That’s right. Jaehee used to work as an engineer at the undersea base. Are you interested in Jaehee?”

Park Muhyeon looked at me with an expectant expression and spoke.

“Jaehee is really handsome. He seems to be quite popular, too. Even when he goes out to eat with me or goes to a café, he gets a lot of phone numbers. He knows a lot, and he likes plants.”

Park Muhyeon seemed to be desperately squeezing out every good quality Kim Jaehee possessed so he could tell me about them. I didn’t think any of those compliments had anything to do with his character.

**Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (8)**

As I listened to Park Muhyeon describe Kim Jaehee, he seemed like a different bastard from the Kim Jaehee I had figured out. When I asked why he was trying to introduce me to Kim Jaehee, Park Muhyeon answered with a faint smile.

“He can be mischievous, but he’s quite a kind person. I think it would be good for me if he had someone around his age whom he could talk to. Maybe because I have a younger brother, I keep nagging Jaehee.”

“I see.”

“You and Jaehee might become good friends, Sowon.”

Park Muhyeon seemed intent on expanding Kim Jaehee’s narrow circle of acquaintances. Who knew? I had plans to shorten the bastard’s lifespan, but I had not the slightest desire to become close to him. Kim Jaehee had probably reached the same conclusion the instant he saw me. Pretending I knew nothing, I probed Park Muhyeon with my tongue.

“He isn’t a strange person, is he? Like a multilevel marketer or a cultist. These days, it’s so frightening to meet people.”

“······Jaehee was interested in a strange religion in the past. But not anymore. These days, he’s practically a religion-hater.”

“Really?”

When I heard Kim Jaehee’s voice through the wiretap, he had sounded like an excited cult member thrilled to be attending an Infinite Cult gathering. So Park Muhyeon thought Kim Jaehee had escaped from the Infinite Cult.

······Was Park Muhyeon being deceived by Kim Jaehee? What if he went trotting off to their meeting place only to be betrayed by Kim Jaehee while he was alone? This timid dentist might lose two more fingers, sob his eyes out, and show up to work on Monday with swollen eyes.

There were several traditional and famously effective investigative methods in our line of work for confirming the truth with someone else. One was pumping psychotropic drugs straight into their veins. Another was threatening to increase the number of their bones without limit. Or reduce it.

“I promised to meet Jaehee again next month. We’re going to stop by somewhere over the weekend and have lunch. Would you like to join us for lunch?”

Arranging a meeting between Kim Jaehee and me through Park Muhyeon sounded like a fairly good method. If I lured that bastard, who hardly ever left the house because he was taking care of his weeds, out in Park Muhyeon’s name and locked him up on the second floor of this building, I might be able to obtain more information than the amount I had paid the hacker for. I could also ask him how fervently he believed in the Infinite Cult, repeating the question until I got the answer I wanted.

Kim Jaehee had little surface area suitable for torture, and he was already short a few fingers and toes, so he probably wouldn’t last as long as an ordinary person. Judging by his personality, he didn’t seem to have much patience, either. If I seared him with a hot iron, wouldn’t any answer come out quickly?

I could also threaten him into staying away from the dentist’s life and Park Muhyeon’s life forever, for the sake of my smooth employment. The dentist lived a poor and exhausting life. A friend who believed in a cult was better off gone than present.

There were a few reasons, scant though they were, why I shouldn’t kidnap Kim Jaehee. Contrary to popular belief, torture had severe aftereffects but was not particularly effective at extracting the truth from someone. A person on the torture table would do everything in their power to produce the model answers I wanted. If it meant avoiding pain, even a dead great-grandfather could be resurrected twice, and several nonexistent undersea bases in the South Pacific could be created. None of it would have anything to do with the truth. If I inflicted unbearable torture for too long, they might give up on their goal of returning to ordinary life and spit out nothing but absurd wrong answers just to screw with the person torturing them.

Was it really possible that Kim Jaehee had escaped from the cult and was living a new life? People hardly ever changed.

I glanced at the yukhoe bibimbap Park Muhyeon was eating and his fingers made of prostheses. ······There was one question I wanted to ask a labor attorney personally. If I abducted and tortured the friend of my workplace superior, how long could I ordinarily continue working at that workplace?

“I’ll pass. You two have fun.”

After the meal, I put my plan to kidnap Kim Jaehee on hold while sipping peppermint tea. Instead, I chose to go to the meeting place ahead of time, observe the cult gathering with my own eyes, and destroy it preemptively. People familiar with my usual way of handling work would have found this choice quite puzzling. Why hadn’t I actively eliminated Kim Jaehee? Was there a reason I hadn’t dealt with him quickly despite judging him to be dangerous?

‘Don’t rack your brain trying to interpret things. Just understand them as they’re said. I’ve seen far too many bastards who tried to overthink everything end up ruined.’

It was an unreliable conjecture, but perhaps Sin Haeryang hadn’t stationed me here to dig up clues about the remnants of the Infinite Cult. Maybe he had really sent me here to rest. What if, while wiping out the remnants of the cult, I tortured and killed Kim Jaehee, only to end up killing the wrong person? What if the moment I kidnapped Kim Jaehee, I boarded a roller coaster that would ruin my life? Was this bastard Sin Haeryang dead? Why wasn’t he answering my calls?

I don’t know what other hospitals were like, but at Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic, there were occasionally quiet periods because there were no patients. Whenever we exchanged words like, “It’s quiet today,” and, “Isn’t it?” some bizarre patients would come barging into the dental clinic.

There had always been patients who didn’t want to pay, but there were also occasional patients who wanted perfectly healthy teeth pulled, or wanted their perfectly healthy jaws, philtrums, lips, gums, cheek fat, or tongues removed, reduced, or enlarged.

The patients believed doing so would make them more beautiful. The dentist tried to dissuade them, saying they would regret it later if they altered the human body so arbitrarily, but they were impossible to reason with. Patients who did not need treatment or have functional-improvement goals became a source of worry for Park Muhyeon, but I couldn’t understand what he was worried about.

Hey, Director. Are you kidding me? Just rip everything out and fix it however the patient wants. You need to make money! Get the consent forms signed properly and record the explanations in the chart! I felt the urge to take an advance payment from those patients, shove them into the treatment room, and operate. Otherwise, gather them all up and send them to psychiatry.

Truly unusual patients also occasionally appeared at the dental clinic. There were parents who asked us to cut out their child’s perfectly healthy tongue for the sake of English pronunciation, or demanded that we pull all twenty of the child’s baby teeth at once because they found visiting the dentist bothersome. A mad husband once asked us to pull out all of his young wife’s teeth and turn them into his own dentures, and even Guan Yu showed up from time to time, wanting all four wisdom teeth removed without anesthesia.

“Our hospital cannot do that for you. No, that’s impossible. What kind of nonsense are you talking about? It’s far too dangerous,” and so on. After repeatedly parroting such phrases and driving patients away, Park Muhyeon would sometimes collapse onto the break-room sofa with a look as though his soul had been wrung dry.

So patients could torture dentists, too. There was no way to filter patients like these out at my level. They made all sorts of absurd, bizarre demands only in the treatment room or consultation room, yet in the waiting room they pretended to be perfectly normal human beings, walked out on two legs, and disappeared into the crowd. If they had crawled around on all fours or barked, I would have realized they were insane. But they went out into the streets looking like ordinary people and vanished among the masses.

Only after hearing stories resembling ghost tales from Lee Nayoung, who would recount them with a dazed look and words beginning with, “Sowon, did you hear what the patient who just left was saying?” did I learn what had happened in the treatment room.

The dentist, who had talked so much that his lips had dried and cracked, was sprawled across the sofa. Lee Nayoung, whose face was similarly haggard, suddenly sprang to her feet and said,

“I’m craving sugar because of the stress, so I want an iced chocolate latte. Director, would you like something sweet, too?”

Park Muhyeon, who had been lying there limply like a corpse, weakly rummaged through the pocket of his gown, then held out a card to Lee Nayoung and said,

“……I’ll have an iced café mocha, please.”

I had thought Director Park Muhyeon was a machine that would break down if you poured sugar into it. Lee Nayoung swiftly snatched Park Muhyeon’s card and asked me,

“What about you, Sowon?”

“I’m fine without a drink.”

“I’ll be right back!”

Lee Nayoung left the dental clinic energetically. She had much better resilience. Park Muhyeon, still drooping like melted wax over the sofa, asked,

“Sowon. When is the next patient coming?”

“If they arrive as scheduled, in twenty minutes?”

“I’m going to lie down for just ten minutes.”

The dentist hadn’t taken a break even when five patients needing wisdom-tooth extractions came in one after another, yet he seemed surprisingly vulnerable to mental stress. Was it really all right to drive patients away like this? When was he going to make any money?

“Can’t you just do what they ask?”

Park Muhyeon’s head limply tilted in my direction.

“Wouldn’t it be all right if it’s something that won’t cause a legal problem like a lawsuit, or something that doesn’t seem likely to kill anyone?”

“……I can accommodate them as I see fit and give them what they want. But when you look back on it later, there may be something suspicious or something that keeps nagging at you. I want to sleep well at night. I don’t want to lie down to sleep and then regret something while thinking about a patient I treated a few days ago.”

Then Park Muhyeon curled up on the sofa and muttered,

“I always think about it. If I were the patient, would I have wanted this decision? Was there anything suspicious or strange? ……Can I take responsibility for it?”

He seemed to be worrying over some very strange things. Look at your bank loans and think about it again. Those worries will disappear. This dental clinic isn’t suddenly going bankrupt, is it? I’m still getting my salary in full next month, right?

I watched the dentist doze lightly on the sofa, then silently closed the break-room door. The patient arrived about ten minutes late and apologized for being late. I smiled broadly and replied good-naturedly that such things happened in life.

Lee Nayoung was already preparing for treatment while drinking her chocolate latte. Now I had to wake the sleeping bastard of a dentist.

Just then, Park Muhyeon’s scream suddenly rang out from the break room. It was as desperate as a scream from someone being stabbed. Had someone broken into the dental clinic while I wasn’t looking?

I kicked the break-room door open and charged inside. I reflexively drew the twenty-five-centimeter greatsword strapped to my back as I entered, but after quickly sweeping my eyes across the room, I saw no one except Park Muhyeon. He had fallen from the sofa onto the floor and was flailing around, swimming together with the blanket. Seeing the dentist drenched in sweat, I discreetly hid the greatsword in my left hand behind my back. No danger. Damn it.

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

Park Muhyeon looked around the break room, then at the floor and the sofa. He let out a deep sigh and said,

“It’s nothing. I had a frightening dream. It’s nothing serious.”

“Yes.”

There was a loud clatter behind me. When I looked back, the hinges on the break-room door had broken, and the door itself was falling over. The shocked expression of the patient sitting in the waiting room was plainly visible even from inside the break room. This was driving me crazy.

Park Muhyeon folded the blanket and placed it on the sofa, then washed his face at the sink. Good. He apparently hadn’t seen my knife. I could pass off the door as something I had roughly broken while rushing in after being startled.

“Sowon. What’s that greatsword?”

Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (9)

Why did she have to ask? If you see something dangerous, pretend you didn’t see it. If you hear something strange, pretend you didn’t hear it. That was how you lived a long life. She wasn’t even in good health. Why couldn’t she pretend not to know?

If a coworker came in carrying a knife as long as your forearm, glared at you, and then put it away, you shouldn’t ask what the knife was. You should leave as quietly as possible.

Things would have been easier for both of us if Park Muhyeon had screamed, rushed out of the break room, and started calling the police, or if she had been so frightened that she pretended she hadn’t seen anything. In the former case, one dental receptionist would have quit within three minutes of today onward. In the latter, she would likewise have worked until today and then stopped showing up without notice tomorrow. It would have been inconvenient to abandon my current identity and bothersome to get more than a hundred kilometers away from the dental clinic, but in the end, today’s incident would have become just one of the countless mistakes I had made. The brat had screamed like someone having his throat cut just because he fell off the sofa in his sleep. I had thought we were under attack. I’d probably have become infamous at that hospital as the crazy employee who walked around carrying a knife. Anyone who didn’t have a story more impressive than my mistakes couldn’t drink here.

But Park Muhyeon wiped her face with a towel and stood there staring at me. It was as though she wanted me to come up with a decent excuse. As though she would accept it and let the matter pass. ……At least she wasn’t thinking of attacking a master with a knife using the hapkido she had barely earned a black belt in.

Park Muhyeon’s reaction was not that of an ordinary person. Normally, people would act as though they hadn’t seen anything, or first question what exactly they had seen. Otherwise, with their eyes darting wildly, they would go somewhere safe and call the police. Or the more reckless and foolhardy types would charge at me, shouting, “What are you?” in hopes of creating a war story to tell over drinks.

The break-room door creaked and swayed as though it would make someone seasick just to stand there. I grabbed the door and tried closing it as a test.

Thud.

The two of us were now shut inside the break room, but Park Muhyeon did not look frightened at all. Rather……she’s only looking at my left hand. I casually answered her question with another.

“Are you referring to my self-defense equipment?”

“……What?”

I had to act confident. She would be suspicious anyway. I drew the twenty-five-centimeter greatsword strapped to my back again. It had been coated to prevent light from reflecting, so the blade itself looked pitch-black. I showed it to her as though it were nothing special, then calmly put it away. Park Muhyeon stared blankly as the knife appeared in my left hand and then vanished in an instant the moment I brought it behind my back.

“A lot of women carry them these days for self-defense.”

At that, Park Muhyeon’s expression became one of someone with an extraordinary number of things to say. I opened the door again, which had been creaking and shouting as though begging to be spared in place of the hospital director. Two hinges had come loose.

Park Muhyeon laughed hollowly, silently took a sip of the café mocha sitting on the table, then slipped the credit card beside it into her pocket. Just then, Lee Nayoung entered the break room.

“Director? You’re awake! Huh? What happened to the door?”

“……The hinges seem to have broken. I’ll fix it.”

“Sowon, you know how to fix things like this, too?”

“If I can’t fix it properly, I’ll at least get an estimate for repairs. Leave this to me.”

I had broken it by kicking it, so shouldn’t I at least pretend to repair it? Park Muhyeon sighed, examined the hinges, and said,

“Be careful with your hands, and if you don’t think you can fix it, just leave it alone.”

“Yes.”

“And when work is over today, talk with me for a bit.”

“Yes.”

“I’m only saying this just in case……don’t leave without saying anything.”

Park Muhyeon’s voice had gradually lowered, and our eyes met for a moment. Park Muhyeon and Lee Nayoung disappeared into the treatment room with the scheduled patient, who kept glancing this way with a startled expression from the waiting room. The patient grabbed the dentist and asked as though he couldn’t believe what he had seen.

“Did that employee just break the door?”

“There must have been a problem with the door. I think the interior construction may have been botched.”

Park Muhyeon’s clumsy excuse could no longer be heard once the treatment-room door closed. What would Park Muhyeon say after Lee Nayoung left work? Would he tell Lee Nayoung about what had just happened, too?

Just in case, I checked my personal belongings left at the hospital. I even opened the hospital’s front door and made sure there were no problems with leaving immediately. They were all things I could throw away without issue, and I hadn’t had many belongings there to begin with. It was somewhere I would leave someday. Since I had wiped off my fingerprints almost out of habit, the only things I would need to take from the hospital and dispose of somewhere far away were my toothbrush and the keyboard I had been using. I could change safe houses immediately, too.

After repeatedly handling reception and payments, cleaning, organizing paperwork and delivery packages, driving away those who weren’t patients, and answering the phone, I inspected the break-room door. I had worried that it might have broken in the shape of the kick, but fortunately, the door itself was fine apart from the hinges. In exchange, my knees, ankles, lower back, and entire lower abdomen continued to throb. With all the muscle gone from my body, I couldn’t even break a single door properly. In the past, doors had ripped apart like sheets of paper.

Muscle was essential for people who worked as mercenaries. When your muscles disappeared, not only could you no longer maintain your daily life, but all the old injuries you had accumulated came rushing back like creditors, causing immense pain. Then there were two options. Exercise hard while young and put off every bit of karma that needed to be settled until old age, or waste away without muscle, nursing an injured body and becoming addicted to painkillers. Injuries were unavoidable in this line of work, and you kept getting hurt before the previous injury had even healed. If a bombardment was about to fall on your head, was fluid in your knee really a problem? You had to run until your ass was on fire. If you couldn’t run, you had to roll away. Otherwise, you died young.

It was difficult to decide which was more embarrassing and humiliating: having my identity exposed to Park Muhyeon, or having deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t even break a wooden door. But I decided the latter was more shameful. There had been countless people who had made mistakes greater than mine today, and all of them were already dead. As I removed the hinge screws with a screwdriver, I pondered the cause of the mess I had created. As I put the hinge screws back in, I searched for a solution.

I had barely managed to reconnect the hinges and the door when Lee Nayoung, who had come to inspect the break-room door on her way to the bathroom, raised her thumb with a surprised look on her face.

“How did you fix it? You’re amazing, Sowon!”

It wasn’t perfectly fixed. When the door was opened, it was supposed to remain where it was, but now it slowly closed on its own. Even though there was no slope. I couldn’t solve it no matter how much I tightened or loosened the screws on each hinge. I wasn’t a door expert, so I had no idea what the problem was. Still, considering that the other mercenary bastards had remodeled the building without the dentist’s permission, wasn’t a door that closed automatically because of its hinge screws a minor issue? I rationalized it to myself, then tidied up the area.

Just then, a patient who had come out of the treatment room was complaining irritably to Lee Nayoung and Park Muhyeon.

“I’m missing two fingers, so give me a twenty-percent discount!”

……What was that supposed to mean? As a chill spread through one corner of my head, I found myself unable to speak. The moment I heard it, my brain had made an immediate judgment. There was no need to say anything; I was supposed to prepare my body for a fight. My hand instinctively tightened around the Phillips screwdriver.

“If the dentist only has eight fingers, you should’ve put it in huge letters right outside the hospital! Isn’t treating a patient without informing them beforehand deceptive? There are tons of dentists with all their fingers intact, so why should I have to come all the way to this dental clinic and get treated here?”

The hospital was screaming itself apart. The next patient, half-melted into the waiting room sofa while fiddling with his phone, jolted upright at the shouting.

“What are you better at than other dentists? You don’t even have all your fingers! Shouldn’t you at least charge less for treatment? This is fraud! I’ve been deceived!”

Lee Nayoung listened with her mouth hanging open, as if her mind had momentarily left her. Then, as though it had finally returned, her face flushed bright red with anger.

“No. Then you should have said that before receiving treatment! Who says something like this after getting the entire treatment? When we told you the cost, you said you understood!”

“I didn’t know the dentist was a cripple back then!”

What the hell did he just say? Lee Nayoung’s mouth fell wide open. …I’m probably going to fall out with Park Muhyeon anyway. Should I just kill this bastard and leave? The patient glanced at the hospital’s name, displayed in huge letters on the wall, and said,

“Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic? What’s Park Muhyeon better at than perfectly normal doctors with all ten fingers? What can you do better? If you can’t do anything, you should at least cut the price! I’m going to spread the word about this dental clinic all over the neighborhood! I’ll tell everyone a crippled bastard is working here!”

Park Muhyeon calmly looked at the patient making a scene and said,

“Either pay your bill now, or pay it in front of the police. Choose one.”

“I said give me a discount, you fucking bastard! Are you deaf too?”

“Are you going to pay more because I’m a polydactyl dentist? No. You’re going to spread the word all over the neighborhood? …Please do. It’s great that you’ll advertise my clinic for free. You asked what I’m good at? My skill is the best. Are you capable of recognizing that? No matter what you say, I can’t reduce your bill. …Sowon, call the police.”

Just ask me to kill you with my knife instead. I’ll quietly take care of him as a farewell gift before I leave. I stared at Park Muhyeon’s face for a few seconds, then grabbed the phone and began reporting him to the police. I was calling the police with my own hands for the second time. What if the police came and arrested me instead of this bastard?

“Hello. This is Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic. There’s a patient causing a disturbance and hurling abuse at the medical staff.”

“What? No! Wait a minute! When did I ever—!”

A flustered expression began to spread across the patient’s face. He must have expected Park Muhyeon to offer him a discount—or waive the bill altogether—and throw him out just to quiet the commotion in the waiting room. He apparently hadn’t expected him to keep him from leaving and call the police instead. The patient stomped around the waiting room, making a racket, then kicked over a potted plant in the corner. I’d just seen Park Muhyeon’s eyes spin with rage.

When the police arrived, the patient obediently paid his bill, as if he had never shouted or made a scene. Then he started spouting nonsense, admitting that he had indeed behaved excessively but insisting that the real problem was that Park Muhyeon, a dentist, was disabled. When the police asked about the damage, Park Muhyeon said that the culprit had broken hospital property and prevented him from treating patients by interfering with his work. At that, the bastard hurriedly set upright the potted plant he had knocked over.

“See? It’s perfectly fine!”

It didn’t look that way to me. The police took the patient away. Fortunately, they didn’t take me along as a bonus.

After apologizing to the patient who had watched the entire spectacle from the premium seat on the waiting room sofa for the delay in his treatment, Park Muhyeon comforted Lee Nayoung, whose face had gone pale from stress. Before long, all three of them disappeared into the treatment rooms. I scattered sea salt at the hospital entrance while cursing the filthy bastard and wishing that he would never cross the hospital’s doors again. Then, after taking plenty of pictures, I tried to figure out how to deal with the overturned flowerpot and the soil spilled everywhere. I’m good at killing people. Saving them, on the other hand, is really not my forte…

Time passed at the hospital as though nothing had happened. I went down to the bakery on the first floor and bought four warm chocolate lattes, asking them to put in extra chocolate even if they charged me more.

“These aren’t made with chocolate, but with chocolate-latte powder, so if we add too much, it might not dissolve.”

“Really? Then put in plenty of syrup instead. Make them sweet somehow.”

“…Did something happen at the dental clinic?”

“No. Nothing happened.”

When the patient came out after finishing his treatment with Park Muhyeon and Lee Nayoung, I forcibly placed a chocolate latte in each of his hands. Time dragged terribly slowly until six o’clock. It felt as if all the time in the world had gathered exclusively inside this dental clinic. Lee Nayoung left work with an exhausted look on her face. While I sat in the break room, Park Muhyeon came in carrying his chocolate latte.

“It’s been almost four months since you started working at our hospital, Ms. Sowon.”

“Yes.”

“To be honest, at first I suspected that you might be a believer in a cult.”

“Pardon?”

Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (10)

According to Park Muhyeon, everything about a person named Kim Sowon had been suspicious from the moment of her interview onward. Despite having far less experience than what was listed on her résumé, she was exceptionally competent at her job. And as if she had a radar installed in her eyes, she was remarkably good at identifying strange people and driving them out. Almost as if one cultist could recognize another. Her uncanny perceptiveness and knife-sharp actions had been something to behold. The fact that she was a new employee who had made only one mistake in three months was one of the reasons he had found Kim Sowon suspicious.

On top of that, whenever a cultist set foot inside the dental clinic, she chased them out with intense disgust. It was as though she couldn’t stand other cultists interfering with a place she had claimed first. Kim Sowon rarely spoke about herself, keeping herself shrouded in mystery, yet she was always eager to dig into other people’s stories. She was also astonishingly diligent and passionate about her work, acting as though she would never allow herself to be fired from this dental clinic, no matter what happened.

So a person could be mistaken for a cultist simply for being good at her job? …Come to think of it, cultists had to diligently offer money to their religion, so they probably did have to be conscientious at work.

In Park Muhyeon’s eyes, I possessed a peculiar charisma that made people shrink back. He also thought that I rather frequently treated people not as people, but as gigantic insects. That habitual disregard for life had felt like hatred toward those who held beliefs different from my own. That part had seemed cult-like as well. Cultists lived in worlds built around their beliefs, and in conversation he had occasionally sensed that I, too, lived isolated in a world different from that of ordinary people. As I listened to Park Muhyeon’s assessment, I ran through my behavior over the past three months in my head.

…Did I? I wasn’t really sure.

When Park Muhyeon opened his dental clinic, he had apparently judged that there was a high chance that a follower of the Infinite Church—or some other cultist—would infiltrate it. So he had decided to hire the most suspicious person among the applicants, observe her from up close, and then deal with her by calling on the authorities when the decisive moment came.

That person had been… me.

“You don’t seem to think that anymore.”

At that, Park Muhyeon smiled brightly and said,

“Someone who used to walk around with such an enormous sword once made an excuse much like yours when I caught them carrying a weapon.”

Could that have been Seo Jihyeok? Or perhaps Sin Haeryang? It must have been one of those idiots who got caught. It couldn’t have been our meticulous Ayeong. You fools. I’ll spread your blunder throughout the entire world.

“Really? Would you tell me that person’s name?”

“Oh, no. I won’t tell you. I have no way of knowing what kind of relationship they have with you, Ms. Sowon.”

…Oh. He really wasn’t afraid of anything. What was he going to do if I pulled the sword from my back right now and threatened him until he told me the name?

“What was the reason you came to work at my dental clinic, Ms. Sowon?”

“Someone I know told me to come here.”

“What’s that person’s name?”

“I’d rather not tell you.”

Well, bringing up Sin Haeryang’s name had never once done anything good for my career as a mercenary. Perhaps things would be different this time, since Sin Haeryang had sent a gift to the hospital. But did I really need to take that risk? In the past, the moment I mentioned Sin Haeryang’s name, someone had punched me in the face. Another lunatic had pointed a gun at me first. Neither was a particularly pleasant memory. Was this dentist going to make a fuss about pulling out my teeth?

Park Muhyeon stared at me with his mouth slightly open at my similarly evasive answer, then gave a small nod. After that, he asked something else.

“What did that person tell you to do at this hospital?”

“…I’d rather not talk about it.”

In truth, I didn’t know either. I suppose I’d have to squeeze the truth out of Sin Haeryang. If I told him I had come to work at a dental clinic to recuperate after taking a bullet in the stomach, he might actually believe it. But after working here, I knew that a dental clinic was not a convalescent hospital. Of course, I had gotten plenty of rest while recovering, but it wasn’t somewhere I could recommend to anyone. That bastard really did have something wrong with his head. When I shrugged, Park Muhyeon took a sip of his cold chocolate latte.

“I thought something was strange. I should have noticed sooner.”

There had apparently been more than one strange occurrence in Park Muhyeon’s eyes. For instance, one day a man had come to the hospital to sell kitchen knives, pulled several radishes as thick as thighs from his bag, and begun dicing them in the waiting room. Park Muhyeon had happened to see the man carrying a kitchen knife as long as a forearm while on his way to the bathroom, and all he had been able to think was that he should call the police. Then he had witnessed me throw the kitchen knife, the radishes, and the adult man into the elevator and drive them out as a matter of course. Compared to the peddling junk merchant who carried three radishes in his bag at a time, he had wondered what on earth Kim Sowon had done in her former life. He had even wondered whether undersea cultists and land-based cultists were really that different.

I was the one who was curious. Did ordinary people really not deal with situations that way? Did they call the police for every single thing? Park Muhyeon looked at me and spoke in a slightly regretful voice.

“If I’d realized who you were sooner, I would have treated you better.”

I doubt it. The best you could have done was buy me a few extra coffees or order me a more expensive lunchbox. What you’re doing now is already enough. When I remained silent, a brief silence settled between us. Judging by his attitude, Park Muhyeon apparently had no intention of forcing an employee to resign simply because she carried a forearm-sized knife on her back or occasionally kicked down a door.

“Director. Why did you try to introduce me to that Kim Jaehee bastard?”

“Ah. Jaehee used to be a follower of the Infinite Church. And apparently he’d tried just about every strange religion there was at least once. I thought that if he talked with you, he might be able to tell whether you believed in a cult. I also thought it might not be a bad idea for an isolated young man with no hobbies to at least have someone to talk to.”

“Director. I don’t like that Kim Jaehee bastard.”

“I understand. While you’re working here, I’ll arrange things so that the two of you meet as little as possible.”

It was nice that he gave up so quickly. Since things had come this far, I decided to tell him about the Infinite Church gathering as well. Could the owner of this dental clinic accept an employee who had been eavesdropping on his conversations?

“You said you were going to attend an Infinite Church gathering with that bastard three weeks from now.”

“How… did you find that out?”

“I was eavesdropping.”

“Eavesdropping? On me? …You mean secretly listening in?”

Park Muhyeon asked twice, as though he found it difficult to understand. I gave a vague nod and asked,

“Do you really have to go to the gathering?”

Park Muhyeon was a victim of the Infinite Church. He might end up being victimized again. And if there was no particular reason he had to go, it would be safest for him not to go at all. That would probably be better for his mental health, too. Park Muhyeon sighed and said,

“Jaehee seems to want to go because his life is too boring. He says he lived incredibly diligently for two years. What was it he said? He wanted to quit every three seconds and live like trash, doing nothing but killing time, but he worked hard and diligently while crying his eyes out, so he wanted to reward himself. He said he wanted to go have fun, like attending a class reunion to see what the people he used to know were doing with their lives.”

I had suspected the moment I saw that bastard that he was crazy.

“Are you not going to tell Kim Jaehee to go alone?”

“Actually… I’m a little curious too. I heard that the research center being rebuilt at the North Pacific undersea base is almost complete. If the Infinite Church has fallen into ruin unlike before, I’d like to see it with my own eyes at least once.”

Dr. Park Muhyeon seemed a little crazy himself, now that I thought about it.

“I’m going to bug our next meeting, too. Keep that in mind. And I’ll go to the gathering first and smash the place to pieces. Put Kim Jaehee in the car, drive her there yourself, and arrive an hour later than the agreed-upon time.”

Park Muhyeon stared at me with a bewildered expression before speaking.

“Ms. Sowon. Could you please not do that bugging thing?”

“No.”

“Then… could I help you smash Muhangyo, too? Or perhaps help you together with Ms. Jaehee? I think Ms. Jaehee would probably find it more fun to go there early and smash the place up than to attend the Muhangyo gathering.”

“I don’t need amateur help.”

“…Yes.”

Park Muhyeon seemed somewhat dejected, but he didn’t ask me for anything else. Taking the opportunity, I began telling him, one by one, the things I had been considering about this hospital.

“I’m telling you this in advance, but I don’t intend to stay here for long.”

“What?”

“I’ll quit and change jobs within two months.”

Park Muhyeon had shown little agitation even after hearing that a coworker at his company was bugging him and that I intended to ruin one of his weekend appointments in advance. But now he looked as if he had been struck by lightning. He practically leaped out of his seat before speaking.

“No. Don’t quit.”

“I’m returning to my original position.”

“I understand what you mean. Even so, please think it over once more. What is our hospital lacking? Holidays? Benefits? Workload adjustment? I even paid you more than the average salary at other hospitals.”

“You have plenty of time, so prepare yourself.”

A shadow fell across Park Muhyeon’s face. He hadn’t looked this sad even when a troublesome patient had come in that afternoon and showered him with curses.

“Do you know what the most troublesome thing is for a hospital director?”

“Labor costs? Or monthly rent? Loan interest? Consumables? Equipment leasing fees? Or difficult patients and all sorts of problems that could turn into medical disputes?”

Park Muhyeon’s expression changed from moment to moment, and he hesitated briefly as though overwhelmed by anguish. I had listed the largest expenses leaving Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic’s business account, in order.

“…Of course those things are a headache, too. But the most troublesome thing is when an employee who was doing a good job suddenly says they’re quitting and leaving.”

“Someone with my level of ability is one of the workers who can easily be replaced.”

Injured mercenaries were available in excess all over the world. If you returned to the company and threw a knife at some random person, the one who got hit was an injured mercenary. But Park Muhyeon’s expression hardened at my words, and he shook his head.

“That’s not true. Either employers don’t have the eye to recognize your abilities, or they say that to drive down your wages. Finding good people isn’t easy. Someone who works well, has a good personality, and is diligent is even harder to find. I’d really like it if you didn’t quit and continued working with us.”

Quit being a mercenary?

“Then can we negotiate a few things?”

“I’d like to reflect as much of it as I possibly can.”

“Good. Then first, spend just twenty million won on advertising.”

“What?”

Extra Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (11)

I raised the debt ratio that already made up most of Park Muhyeon’s assets a little higher, then scraped up his capital to the very last bit and got rid of it all. Looking at Park Muhyeon’s expression as he checked his bank balance, I felt as though I had punched a good-hearted doctor and stolen his money.

Park Muhyeon didn’t know it yet, but twenty million won was dirt cheap for advertising a small hospital. Mercenaries sometimes advertised themselves to raise their rates, and that cost more than twenty million won. Don’t worry. You’ll make it back soon enough.

Wondering if Park Muhyeon might have some money hidden away, I asked him carefully.

“Director. Do you have any investments your family doesn’t know about? Stocks, crypto? Futures? Real estate? Even if you’re in the red, just tell me.”

Let there be at least one thing.

“No.”

“What about under someone else’s name?”

Maybe the hacker had missed something while robbing him. Please.

“…You invest under someone else’s name?”

Park Muhyeon asked me in return, his voice sounding incredulous. When I asked if he had never encountered that kind of temptation in his life, Park Muhyeon said that most of the people he had met—including his friends, fellow dentists from school, seniors and juniors, and professors—had jumped into the investment market chasing a fortune, but that far more of them had ended up completely broke than successful.

Besides, he hadn’t been able to save enough money to call it seed capital. He had spent most of it on loan interest and principal, hospital expenses, and living costs. The dentist who looked as though he had miraculously survived the undersea base did not, unexpectedly, trust his own luck.

“Rather than stake my life on uncertain luck, I’ll bet on steady and diligent labor.”

His personality itself made it difficult for him to earn money. Park Muhyeon had been a dragon born from a small stream, but looking at his finances, it was astonishing that a dragon had emerged from that miserable creek at all. When I asked whether he had anything hidden away where nobody knew about it, Park Muhyeon gave a small laugh and asked me:

“Do you mean gold or jewels I happened to acquire?”

“Oh. You know about that. You haven’t pulled gold teeth out of patients and hidden them somewhere, have you?”

“…I hear that sort of side income occasionally exists in that line of work, but I possess nothing except my life.”

I gathered up every last speck of Park Muhyeon’s money and threw it at the hacker.

[Sowon: Do some marketing for the hospital.]

[Namin: There are lots of crazy people in this line of work, but you’re not exactly sane either. You know what I do, right?]

[Sowon: It’s better to spend it on you than waste it on an advertising agency. Do you have anything going on? Are you busy? Just promote us for as much as I pay you.]

[Namin: .]

The hacker asked for images of the dental clinic, so I spent thirty minutes photographing and filming the entire place. I took special care only when photographing people. I took dozens of pictures of Park Muhyeon and Lee Nayoung after they had been forced to brush their hair and put on makeup, then sent them to the hacker. All I got in return were curses asking whether I was taking dental mug shots.

There were no placards in the pictures listing their names, dates of birth, weights, and incarceration information, nor were there height markings on the walls behind them. Perhaps it was because a mercenary had taken the portraits. It seemed my subconscious had reflected the thought that photographs were a means of conveying information about the subject. The dentist and dental hygienist supposedly had gloomy, dark expressions. Perhaps that was because I had taken the sort of photographs I often saw or was accustomed to.

Lee Nayoung was good at taking selfies, while Park Muhyeon had hundreds of pictures of cats but almost none of himself.

Having learned about the problem at hand, Park Muhyeon called Kim Gayoung, a baker from the bakery, out to meet him. According to what I had heard, I’d thought she was a bread-making machine, but apparently she also photographed the products and uploaded them online for promotional purposes.

Kim Gayoung brought all sorts of strange props from the first floor—including lights, chairs, curtains, and unusual frames—as if photography were her actual profession, then took pictures with every ounce of her strength.

She looked as though she was incredibly happy to have escaped the bakery, even if only briefly. Was making bread really that exhausting? There was almost always some sign of life coming from the bakery on the first floor. It opened its doors at six in the morning, so when on earth did she sleep?

While I sorted through the pictures Kim Gayoung had taken and sent them to the hacker, Kim Gayoung grabbed the dentist, who was taking a brief break, and consulted with him. Apparently, with the research center under construction at the First Undersea Base of Daehan nearing completion, they were asking researchers currently on leave whether they intended to return.

Kim Gayoung said she was debating whether to return to the undersea base or live with flour for the rest of her life.

I couldn’t understand why Kim Gayoung was agonizing over it. Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic on the third floor had a much higher chance of going bankrupt and closing than the delicious bakery on the first floor. The more she heard about a researcher named Yugeum struggling to make a living at another overseas research institute as a PhD, the less she wanted to go back. But when she was running the dough for the day’s bread through the machines from two in the morning, she apparently started thinking that being a researcher might be the better option after all.

Returning to her position as an overseas researcher, or living the life of a self-employed business owner. At the bakery on the first floor, people occasionally appeared to cause trouble for the part-timers by demanding money out of nowhere or blocking the entrance with handcarts and carts, insisting that they be given free bread. Whenever I happened to be going in to buy bread, I would roughly kick them out, and Kim Gayoung would rush out of the kitchen and put free bread or drinks into my hands each time. On a personal level, I hoped Kim Gayoung would stay at the bakery.

After looking over the photographs of the dental clinic interior I had sent him, the hacker sent back a roughly made shark logo. The dentist, who hadn’t even known that a logo for his clinic was being created somewhere, was taken aback when he saw the vicious shark logo that looked as though it belonged in Hollywood, devouring people as its staple diet.

He said he had a whale plushie and asked whether we could change the logo image to a whale. The dental staff didn’t care in the slightest whether the logo was a shark or a whale. If it could attract patients, what did it matter? But the director seemed to think it mattered.

Perhaps Park Muhyeon had decided that he couldn’t spend the rest of his life with that great white shark. He gave me hundreds of photographs featuring the whale plushie as the backdrop for his cats, and I threw them straight to the hacker. A reply came from the hacker, who had been swimming through the cat pictures.

[Namin: I’m revising it this one time only. There won’t be a next time.]

A few days later, a website for Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic based on an orange whale logo was created, and the location of Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic was marked on every kind of map in existence.

Three days later, a package I hadn’t ordered arrived. I opened it carefully in case it contained a bomb or gas, but inside were countless promotional posters and printed materials for Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic. I put them in an unused storage room equipped with a toxic-gas purification device, then periodically took out a bundle at a time, stuffed them into my backpack, and carried them home after work.

I then changed my early-morning jogging route and stuffed small promotional flyers into the mailboxes of every company, business, private home, and apartment within a fifty-kilometer radius of Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic. I put posters up on walls approved for outdoor advertising.

After work, I occasionally demolished or eliminated illegally occupied religious buildings, and while making the rounds downtown and around middle and high schools, I threw a few punches at delinquents. I also scattered Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic leaflets around the people who got hit.

Using the images the hacker had made, I contacted a banner company and put up twenty large banners within a ten-kilometer radius. To summarize the advertisements, they indirectly stated that Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic had little interest in cosmetic procedures, so people seeking those should go to another hospital. Instead, they hammered home the message that anyone looking for a trustworthy dental clinic where they could receive treatment at a reasonable and ethical price should come here.

I hadn’t written the advertising copy. Apparently, my way of speaking made people run away. The hacker, who was exceptionally talented at smishing and phishing, wrote the copy. Even if people waiting at bus stops failed to notice the bus numbers, they would still notice the dental clinic banners.

One night, after setting fire to a pseudo-religious facility with my phone turned off and traveling beyond two cell towers before turning it back on, I found a message from Park Muhyeon. Apart from the website and logo, he knew nothing about what was going on.

He sent me a picture of a Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic banner, saying that his younger brother had seen something like this and asking whether it really was being done by our hospital. Hm. The promotional effect was undeniable.

As I scattered outdoor advertisements across trains, buses, and subways, I asked the hacker to make Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic appear at the very top whenever people searched major search engines using terms such as dental clinic, hospital, cavities, teeth, tooth, orthodontics, implants, and “got hit by a fist,” after entering the address or location.

The hacker sometimes purchased ordinary search-advertising products, but he also tore apart the search pages themselves so that Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic would appear in place of the other dental advertisements that were supposed to occupy the top of the page. For example, clicking the [A Dental Clinic with Strong Teeth Up to 120] website brought up the [Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic] website instead.

There were countless fake accounts created by advertising companies for viral marketing on social media and the cafes of major portal sites. At first, the hacker had apparently commissioned an ordinary advertising agency to promote Bak Muhyeon Dental Clinic. But when the marketing results failed to match the money he had paid, he hacked several advertising agencies outright, stole thousands of IDs, changed their passwords, and replaced the registered emails and phone numbers. Then he operated the fake accounts himself.

Deep Blue, the great white shark that had once been feared as the apex predator of the North Pacific, had been reduced in the cold capitalist world to nothing more than a mascot promoting a tiny dental clinic. This was a world where even organs and corpses were sold for profit. The bones of marine animals were hardly worth making an issue over. Patients visiting Bak Muhyeon Dental Clinic would sometimes take certification photos in front of the skull and voluntarily upload them to social media. Even after its death, the great white shark continued living alongside the patients in those photographs.

Once the clinic began screaming at the world that Bak Muhyeon Dental Clinic was here, it certainly grew busier. As one patient left, the next arrived; as that patient left, another came rushing in.

Unlike before, people were constantly filling the waiting room. With people around, fewer peddlers came by. I Nayoung was astonished by the hospital’s sudden transformation, but she was pleased, saying it was better than having no patients at all.

You said you’d compete through steady, diligent labor. I’ll acknowledge that tenacity.

The weekday appointments filled up. I left I Nayoung’s working hours unchanged while drastically adjusting Bak Muhyeon’s consultation schedule. He began seeing patients on weekdays, at night, on weekends, and, when necessary, even in the early morning. I could do that because I was handling patient registration myself.

Bak Muhyeon must have built up his stamina for this very moment. Sometimes, Chelony supported the dentist as he came to work at seven in the morning, letting out an awkwardly consoling voice. Three weeks passed in the blink of an eye.

“Mr. Sowon. I really try not to say things like this, but… I’m so exhausted I think I’m going to die.”

“People don’t die from this much. Don’t you want to make money?”

Extra Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (12)

The date when I was supposed to eliminate the Infinite Church’s prayer meeting—or sashimi gathering, whatever it was—was right around the corner. I inspected the location Bak Muhyeon had told me about twice. Once, I walked around and checked it out myself, and I also surveyed it from above with a drone. Other than being a defunct resort in the suburbs, about two hours from the airport, there was nothing particularly noteworthy about it.

The resort in question had been built forty years ago and had apparently managed to get by at first thanks to its hot springs. But as competitors increased and similar resorts sprang up one after another, problems began when the hot spring water—which everyone had thought would flow forever—dried up. After staggering under a continual decline in visitors and aging facilities, the resort rapidly collapsed along with the others when a prolonged recession struck.

The resorts that had not gone out of business struggled under severe financial difficulties, occasionally renting themselves out at bargain prices to people looking for somewhere to hold a party. The place rented by the Infinite Church was one of those crumbling resorts, and they had rented it for today alone. Since public transportation to the area was extremely inconvenient, the only people likely to come this far out of the way were members of a cult, criminals, or people with nothing better to do and no money to spend. I parked my bike five hundred meters from the target building and went the rest of the way on foot.

I covered my face with a mask and hat before entering the building. Even though I arrived two hours early, there were already several believers inside and outside the resort. They had probably learned overseas that the prayer meeting was being held today and arrived in advance. In the other cults I had infiltrated, whenever there was a prayer meeting like this, the members had been busy praying. So I couldn’t understand why these believers were smoking outside with troubled expressions, making phone calls, or sitting around in a daze. No one stopped me as they watched me enter. They merely shot me sidelong glances, as though they pitied me.

I pinned a large jeweled brooch to my clothes to make myself look like a believer, then opened the resort’s door, which looked ready to collapse, and went inside. The floor was covered in dust. I barely managed to suppress a cough.

According to the surveillance I had conducted with the drone, there had been no unusual movement until dawn, which I had found strange. But even though the prayer meeting was supposed to start in two hours, they hadn’t cleaned? And they intended to hold a prayer meeting here?

Religious facilities should radiate a solemnity or reverence that even someone who hated religion, like me, could feel. In fact, some of the religious facilities I had destroyed had chapels without a speck of dust, statues of overwhelming size, and altars so beautiful they were almost blinding. Even I, who knew nothing about such things, had occasionally stopped for about two seconds to take them in. But this place didn’t look like a religious facility at all.

In the lobby visible upon opening the first-floor resort doors, an anime character with long blond hair was playing on a gigantic TV screen. She exposed her bare thighs and shoulders and danced without pause. At the same time, lively songs presumed to be Japanese animation OSTs played continuously through the resort’s sound system.

“Lya-view! Lya-view! Suki! Suki!”

The character’s breasts and buttocks shook grotesquely.

I ran straight out of the resort, checked the shoddy standing sign with [Infinite Church Prayer Meeting] scribbled on it in ballpoint pen, and went back inside. I saw the people who had been smoking or crying outside shaking their heads at my behavior.

There was a large fountain in the first-floor lobby, and black liquid gushed wildly from it. Not bad as a visual effect. But when I saw the PET bottles strewn messily around the fountain, I began to wonder whether that black liquid was actually CoX and PepX. As I approached, I could see the bubbles characteristic of carbonated drinks. I wanted to taste it and confirm exactly what it was, but considering the sanitary condition of this building, if I drank even a single sip, my already wrecked intestines would probably keep me trapped in the bathroom with diarrhea.

I ignored the fountain spewing out carbonated drinks without pause and walked on. Flowers had been trampled into the floor. Judging from their condition, they seemed to have been picked up from the back of a flower market, already yellow and withered, and scattered across the ground. Some of the stems had been stepped on as well, as though they had not been properly separated from the flowers. Following that shoddy flower path, I arrived at a huge auditorium. The first thing that caught my eye was a massive offering box taking up half the hall. It was made of cast iron and looked more expensive and heavier than anything I had seen on the way there. Sitting at a dining table beside it was Jeong Sanghyeon.

It looked like one of the tables used in a resort buffet, but it was covered with pig’s feet, cream pasta, seasoned fried chicken, hamburgers, and a huge pizza. Jeong Sanghyeon appeared to be eating breakfast there at nine in the morning. A large electronic sign read, [The Savior Is Currently Having Breakfast]. Hadn’t the prayer meeting been scheduled for eleven? Weren’t clergymen usually supposed to fast before an important event?

Jeong Sanghyeon wore a white-haired wig and rings and bracelets of every kind. He was eating a seasoned chicken drumstick with his bare hand, and his current appearance was completely different from the photos the hacker had given me. He looked at least forty kilograms heavier than he had in those pictures. That bastard of a hacker! Just how old were the photos he’d given me? Even I, who was used to identifying targets in disguise, couldn’t immediately recognize who he was.

Jeong Sanghyeon bit into his hamburger so violently that his wig came flying off. A man beside him quickly put it back on. Jeong Sanghyeon held a two-liter cup filled with ice and soda in his left hand and drank from it frequently. The believers around him picked up pieces of pickled radish and put them into his mouth, or tore off pieces of pizza and placed them on his individual plate.

What was I looking at?

Jeong Sanghyeon had cheap gemstone necklaces hanging all over him. Whenever believers who had put money into the offering box approached, he placed a hand stained with seasoned chicken sauce on the heads of the male believers and told them lies such as, “I will save you. You can return to the past.” When a believer began telling him his life story, Jeong Sanghyeon cut him off, saying that the amount of money donated had to be large enough, and demanded a hefty offering. When asked when they would be able to go back to the past, he lied that they would be able to do so around this time next year.

Perhaps Jeong Sanghyeon had been wearing cheap earrings, because the moment he bent over, one of them fell plop into the pasta sauce. I had trespassed into countless cult buildings and seen all manner of garbage, but this was a first.

“Would you like to make an offering?”

A woman with vacant eyes asked me. There was madness in her faintly smiling lips. Were the people sobbing outside the building the ones who were at least faithful to the Infinite Church? Or were these believers attending to Jeong Sanghyeon the faithful ones? The frantic music continued stabbing into my ears.

“Lya-view! Lya-view!”

“I left my money in the car. I’ll go get it.”

The believer who heard me pointed somewhere with her fingertip. A large banner on the wall in the corner displayed what appeared to be an account number. When I asked what it was, she said it was Jeong Sanghyeon’s personal account. Apparently, they accepted wire transfers as well. I nodded and said,

“I left my phone in the car too.”

I had already installed bombs at sixteen locations throughout the building two days earlier. With the press of a finger, the entire building would collapse in an instant. It was similar to the blasting used in building demolition. The owner of the resort had wanted to raze the eyesore completely, but the cost of demolition was far from cheap, so he had been maintaining it unwillingly. I had thought, I’ll wipe it all out along with the Infinite Church while I’m at it! But after seeing this mess, I felt sorry for the money I had spent on those bombs out of my salary.

I recalled the hacker’s assassination request. What did it mean to kill someone properly? He looked like he would die of hyperlipidemia before long anyway. When I stepped outside the resort, even the air felt fresh, and with the noise gone, my head seemed to clear as well. Several people who looked like hardcore believers of the Infinite Church were crying, sitting blankly, or smoking as they cursed Jeong Sanghyeon and the Infinite Church with troubled expressions. I slipped in among them for a while and cursed Jeong Sanghyeon and the Infinite Church along with them before leaving. Then I eavesdropped in real time on the conversation between Bak Muhyeon and Kim Jaehee.

“Mr. Muhyeon. I’ve lived such a difficult life.”

“Almost no one lives comfortably.”

“I really worked hard for the past two years.”

“You did well. Keep working that hard.”

“Life is difficult, demanding, and lonely.”

“Everyone lives that way.”

“I didn’t particularly want to live well. If I could return to the past, then my current life would be meaningless. Aren’t you curious how the prayer meeting will go this time?”

“No. Next time, let’s go to a good restaurant instead.”

Stop whining. Why was a grown man with a dick whining so much? The dentist next to you had gone to work at seven in the morning, worked until ten at night, and then gone home, yet he’d asked for just one day off because he had to spend today playing with you. What a waste—to spend a golden day off with a white cockroach.

As we had arranged beforehand, Bak Muhyeon came up with every excuse imaginable: he needed to refuel, there seemed to be something wrong with the car, he was hungry because he hadn’t eaten breakfast, he needed to use the bathroom, and so on. We stopped at every rest area along the way, buying and eating hot bars, baked potatoes, coffee, and other things with Kim Jaehee. We did not arrive at the designated resort until noon, after the prayer meeting had ended.

When Kim Jaehee entered the resort and saw Jeong Sanghyeon, he laughed like a madman before saying to Bak Muhyeon,

“…Let’s go have lunch.”

Bak Muhyeon patted Kim Jaehee on the back and said,

“I hear there’s a good samgyetang restaurant around here. Or apparently there’s a hot pot place that uses handmade tofu.”

“Let’s go get samgyetang.”

I came back late at night to retrieve the bombs and left. After that, I never thought about the Infinite Church again.

That was because I was busy too, making the most efficient use of the advertising budget while Bak Muhyeon was confined to the consultation room. The number of patients coming to the waiting room had increased, and telephone work had increased along with it. Since the security guard on the first floor had been discharged from the hospital, the number of peddlers who came in person had been cut in half, but lately I had been receiving one or two calls a day unrelated to appointments.

“Hello. This is Bak Muhyeon Dental Clinic.”

[Put Director Bak Muhyeon on.]

“May I ask why you’re looking for our director?”

[Ahem. This is Jang Yongcheol, the dentist who’ll stay hale and hearty until he’s 120! There’s something for the directors to discuss. Give me that director’s cell phone number, or put me through!]

“Ah. So you’re a rival organization. Since you don’t seem to be a patient, I’ll hang up.”

[What? Wait!]

He said something, but I hung up. The call had come from a dental clinic within a twenty-kilometer radius of Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic. The directors of those clinics must have been taking things very easy. By comparison, Park Muhyeon acted like a built-in cabinet installed in the hospital, except when he was asleep. He seemed to have decided to spend his life and time in the consultation room. It was the exemplary attitude a clinic director running a small dental practice ought to have. Until now, he had been far too complacent.

Sometimes he put up minor resistance, saying that he had paid for a gym membership but couldn’t go, or that he had neither the energy nor the time to cook at home and had to eat delivery food. But a few simple threats—“Think of your family,” “Are you planning to run the clinic into the ground?” or “I’ll take Nayoung and change jobs”—were enough to make him stop rebelling and quietly return to work.

“Hello. This is Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic.”

[Park Muhyeon! Put him on!]

“May I ask why you’re looking for our director?”

[Park Muhyeon! How can you have no business ethics at all! Huh! The website! What the hell is this? What are you trying to do! Have you lost your mind or what!]

A man’s booming voice rang out from the receiver. He seemed to have excellent lung capacity.

“Are you calling our clinic from another dental practice?”

[Which university did Park Muhyeon graduate from! Huh? Your seniors are running clinics, and this is what you’re doing!]

“You’re not a patient, are you? Hey.”

[Hey?]

“You’ve been living peacefully and lazily until now, slowly fleecing patients’ wallets without much competition. The peace treaty tacitly maintained by you dental cartels has been broken. Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic will take every patient currently visiting your clinic.”

[What? What the hell are you talking about? You think you’ll get away with pulling this gangster crap! You think I’ll just sit still!]

“I’m an expert at fighting, so you can’t beat me. Either surrender, beg for mercy, and come under us, or prepare to shut down while sobbing your eyes out.”

[What kind of insane clinic is this! You—]

He started saying useless things, so I hung up. As the clinic’s revenue continued to grow, all kinds of vermin were beginning to swarm around us. Park Muhyeon came out of the consultation room and was on his way to the bathroom like a zombie when he heard my call. He stopped in his tracks, his face aghast.

“Where was that call from?”

“Some dung fly was buzzing around. You don’t need to worry about it, Director.”

“I think I do need to worry. Did another dental clinic call me?”

“Go to the bathroom already. The patients are waiting in the reception area.”

“It sounds like you’re mercilessly ruining my reputation right now, Sowon.”

“What use is a good reputation among other dentists?”

“Wh-what?”

Faced with a question he had never considered in his life, Park Muhyeon seemed to lose his voice for a moment.

“What good is it to be praised by rival businesses? It would be different if the patients liked you. Are you planning to betray us and take a job at the other clinic?”

“N-no. Still, there’s such a thing as business ethics. Even if it means never being able to attend my university alumni gatherings again, shouldn’t we at least compete fairly?”

“We are competing fairly. It’s not as if I went to a rival within ten kilometers carrying a bazooka and shot it, or rammed it with a tanker truck full of gasoline, or showered it with rifle rounds from a tactical drone before disappearing.”

“······Those are things you obviously shouldn’t do.”

This dentist really didn’t understand anything. I soothed the director, who was fearless yet occasionally showed a timid side, and continued.

“Of course, I know you prefer peaceful methods, Director. It’s not as if I threatened and bribed the dental hygienists at other clinics to lure them away. I didn’t threaten the building owners and raise the rent beyond what they could afford, forcing the clinics to disappear. I also didn’t gather evidence of our competitors’ misconduct and illegal activities and report them to the authorities, nor did I incite patients who were dissatisfied with competing clinics’ medical services. ······Not yet, anyway.”

Each time I added another sentence, Park Muhyeon’s face grew paler. Lowering his voice, he whispered.

“······You only said that two million won would be enough to make a website and logo and put up a few small outdoor advertisements. Sowon. What on earth are you doing?”

“I’m handling things as peacefully as possible, Director. There is no such thing as fair competition in this world. In a capitalist society, revenue depends on how much you pour into advertising. Do you really think a director like you, who can barely afford the rent, can compete fairly with the giant mosquitoes that hire celebrities on a regular basis and throw ten billion won at advertising? There’s nothing but zero-sum games and cutthroat competition.”

The dentist, who had unusually grabbed the back of his neck, seemed to have a headache as well, since he clutched his forehead with his other hand before asking me,

“······Have you never heard the words cooperation and mutual prosperity?”

“If you want peace, prepare for war. As long as I’m here, this dental clinic will become a powerhouse that achieves overwhelming victory. Our goal is to devour every small, medium-sized, and large dental clinic nearby and ultimately become the best clinic within a hundred-kilometer radius. Prepare yourself to become the director of a colossal medical corporation and dental hospital that won’t even flinch when every kind of bad news, from economic downturns to interest-rate fluctuations, blows in like a typhoon.”

Park Muhyeon let out a sigh deep enough to collapse the earth and looked at me with dirty eyes. His gaze seemed to ask whether everyone in my line of work was like this. I didn’t know who he was conflating me with, but it was extremely unpleasant. The modest dentist expressed his small dream.

“I just want to pay off my loans and earn enough to cover my living expenses and the employees’ salaries. What do you think, Nayoung?”

Lee Nayoung, who was coming out of the supply room, looked toward us and said,

“I think Sowon’s idea is wonderful. It’s rare to find an employee with such big dreams. I’ll be the director’s left arm, and Sowon can be the right. Cheloni is already handling the fingers.”

Lee Nayoung, who usually reserved judgment or took the director’s side, had sided with me for once. The dentist seemed to feel keenly that he had no one on his side in this clinic. Ms. Lee Nayoung. What an admirable dental hygienist. Once revenue went up, I felt I should raise her salary first.

Having reconfirmed that the employees had completely different policies for running the clinic, Park Muhyeon sensed the patients’ eyes on him and hurried to the bathroom.

### Side Story. The Great White Shark Is Alive (13)

I wanted to discuss cutting the lunch break from an hour to thirty minutes, but I held back because Park Muhyeon and Lee Nayoung seemed to love lunchtime far too much. Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic was letting time slip away—time in which they could have treated one more patient.

All so they could lie around pointlessly after eating or stare blankly into space while drinking coffee.

Today’s lunchbox contained kimbap. Two rolls of kimbap had been sprinkled with sesame oil and sesame seeds, and the meal came with ketchup-coated sausages, bright yellow rolled omelet, stir-fried kimchi, and a warm bowl of soup containing fish cake and green onions.

A call came in while we were eating. Park Muhyeon picked up one piece of kimbap, paused halfway to his mouth, and answered the phone. The call, which began with “Yes. This is Park Muhyeon,” continued endlessly in the corner of the break room.

The call still hadn’t ended after Lee Nayoung and I finished and cleared away lunch, then brushed our teeth. It continued even while Lee Nayoung took a walk to buy coffee and placed one cup in front of each of us. Park Muhyeon, who had spent a long time merely listening, kept repeating, “Is that so? I’ll check and get back to you.”

I had no idea what the call was about, but an inexplicable sense of unease swept over me, giving me the urge to take the phone from him and answer it myself. Park Muhyeon, sitting before his completely cold lunch, gulped down the coffee packed with ice before asking me, who was holding my phone,

“Sowon. There’s something you handled without telling me, isn’t there?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

In truth, there were so many things that I didn’t know which one he was talking about.

“I received calls from the directors of [Dental Clinic That Will Keep You Strong Until 120], [Always Red Dental Clinic], [Confidently No Dental Clinic], [Toothless Dental Clinic], and [Incurable Humanity Dental Clinic]. They say that whenever they click the website or reservation page to make an appointment, they’re redirected to our clinic’s website. And when they search the map for the nearest dental clinic, Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic comes up. In the case of Always Red Dental Clinic, even though it’s twenty minutes away by car, their navigation system says Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic is the closest one.”

“Couldn’t it be broken?”

“Someone from Toothless Dental Clinic applied for an advertisement in the subway and sent the image file to the person in charge. But when they checked the finished advertisement printed in the subway, it was an advertisement for Park Muhyeon Dental Clinic.”

“······”

Park Muhyeon stared at me before asking,

“Put everything back the way it was.”

“Can’t you just pretend not to notice for a little while? It won’t be long. Maybe six months?”

If the problem got bigger, he could blame me and fire me. I was someone who would quit the dental clinic and go seek revenge at any time anyway.

“If we keep going like this, we can pay off the loans in a year.”

“That’s a little disappointing.”

“You could become the director of a major corporate hospital.”

“I’m satisfied with being the director of this clinic.”

“You really could win.”

“Yes. I know how capable you are, Sowon. Like a gluttonous monkfish growing larger, you could devour every dental clinic around us indiscriminately. ······Let’s correct this before things get any bigger. Before the number of people I have to apologize to increases any further.”

“Why do you have to apologize, Director?”

Couldn’t he just make me take responsibility?

“Because an employer has to take responsibility for an employee’s mistakes. Anything that happens under this clinic’s name is my responsibility.”

Park Muhyeon skipped lunch and called the numbers from earlier. He apologized, saying he was sorry. He promised that nothing like this would happen again and that everything would be restored to its original state. As for compensation, he said he would contact them again later.

Have you ever stood beside a superior who apologized on your behalf for something you had done? My stomach and intestines twisted into pretzels at the same time. It was a terrible feeling, as if I had installed a bomb after misreading the address.

If he had at least made some excuse about a new junior employee making a mistake, my miserable mood would have improved a little. Instead, Park Muhyeon apologized by saying that he had made an excessive and mistaken decision while applying for the advertisements. The moment I heard him say that, I wanted to slam Park Muhyeon to the ground, snatch away the phone, and take over the call. Park Muhyeon sometimes listened to songs made entirely of curses, and at other times was told both not to do business in such a way and to conduct himself properly from then on.

The lunch break passed at the speed of light. The lunchboxes went into the refrigerator, and Park Muhyeon had to enter the consultation room practically on an empty stomach. At the reception desk, I greeted the patients with smiles while feeling as though I was going insane. Seething inwardly, I contacted the hacker.

[Sowon: They want you to restore what you hacked. Can you do it?]

[Namin: I can. Why?]

[Sowon: They say they don’t like anything illegal.]

[Namin: It’ll cost you.]

[Sowon: Can I pay in kind?]

[Namin: What do you have?]

[Sowon: Eighty kilograms of explosives for demolishing buildings, along with detonators.]

[Namin: What would I use that for? Did you kill Jeong Sanghyeon?]

[Sowon: The explosives are left over because he didn’t die. He’s not worth killing by blowing up a ten-story building. I’ll kill him in a more fitting way. Come to think of it, this is ridiculous. How could you send such an inaccurate picture of him?]

[Namin: What am I supposed to do when he’s gaining weight in real time?!]

While I was arguing with the hacker, my phone began ringing furiously. It was the keyword alert tone. More than a dozen mentions of the phrase “bombardment by fighter jets” appeared across my phone. Acting reflexively, I used the remote lying in the waiting room to switch the television to an international news channel.

Familiar places were being erased by bombardment. The news was reporting on a sea of fire created by an alliance of the United States, Britain, and various other developed nations. Black smoke covered entire cities and swathes of land. Places that had once been mountains had been hollowed out by the bombardment until they were little more than hills. The news anchor reported, as though it were nothing unusual, that the small city I had visited five months earlier and the surrounding mountainous terrain had vanished completely from the map.

A tugging sensation arose in my lower abdomen. My organs were crying out that they had to return there.

Other than “Launch Strikes,” the English barely registered in my ears. I had only been gone for about five months. News that should have been important to me was passed over to the next item in an instant, as though it had no value at all. It was a report that a baby great white shark, thought to be extinct, had been discovered after two years.

“Mr. Sowon?”

It took Lee Nayoung calling me twice for me to return to reality. I had no idea what I said at the reception desk after that. Since the patient with the appointment had entered the examination room properly and there was a record of payment, there probably hadn’t been any major problems. When I checked the bombing site, I confirmed that the bastards who had attacked and killed my men and me had all melted away without leaving a trace in this air raid. This was the most accurate information that had come through the company. The explosions from the bombing had spread densely and extensively not only throughout the city, but also into the nearby mountains. Not even a single bedbug could have survived within the range of that air raid. No deaths had been recorded.

If not for that bastard Shin Haeryang, I wouldn’t be sitting in a dental clinic the size of a palm. I would have left Korea two months ago, no matter how many holes had been torn in my stomach or how many of my intestines were missing. I would have been waiting only for a chance to take revenge. And then I probably would have died after getting caught up in that bombing. As I blankly absorbed the information pouring out of my phone, someone came to stand in front of the desk.

“You made quite a lot of calls.”

The moment I heard the voice, I raised my head and knew who it was. The instant I saw his face, a string of vicious curses sprang to my lips, but there were many patients sitting in the waiting room. I clenched my fist to stop my hand from instinctively reaching toward my back. He had come looking for me in person? I smiled and lowered my voice.

“Where have you been that you couldn’t answer your phone all this time?”

“I was busy.”

“Just you wait. This month—no, next month—I’m quitting this place and coming to kill you!”

Shin Haeryang looked around the clinic with curiosity. His left arm was in a cast, and it seemed to have been badly broken. I didn’t know what he had been doing when he broke it, but serves him right. He also looked about ten kilograms thinner. His arms and legs were covered in scratches, and he was no longer wearing the bracelet made from parachute cord that he usually wore. It looked like he had put it to some use somewhere, and judging from his condition, he must have nearly died. If I swung a knife at his throat now, he’d block it with that cast, right? Then where should I stab him so it would hurt the most and let him die slowly······.

“If you’d been out of contact because you were dead, I would’ve let it go. But you dump me in a dental clinic smaller than a fist for six months?”

Shin Haeryang looked at me and spoke in a disgruntled voice.

“I saw an advertisement on the way here. You seemed to be doing well.”

“Did I? I watched the news.”

“They dealt with it simply by bombing it. They have no intention of wasting any more resources or time.”

“You knew it would end up like this?”

“To some extent. I didn’t know it would happen today, though.”

When Shin Haeryang said he wanted to register without an appointment, I tried to postpone his treatment for as long as possible before restraining myself. Either way, if that bastard sprawled around in the waiting room for more than two hours, who would suffer more stress? Shin Haeryang went into the examination room, and I heard the dentist let out a horrified cry.

“Mr. Haeryang?”

I couldn’t tell what conversation was taking place in the examination room. So it couldn’t be wiretapped. Damn it.

I realized I could get in touch with Baek Aeyoung and made the call while avoiding everyone’s eyes. I only managed to get the general outline: Aeyoung had suffered alongside that madman. They had apparently been searching through a cave several thousand years old with Spanish researchers for something called the Holy Grail, or some kind of dog bowl, when the cave collapsed due to one researcher acting alone and they became trapped inside. Since it was in a region disputed over by different territories, it took a long time for them to be rescued, and they had supposedly survived on nothing but water for nearly a month.

What the hell kind of miserable ordeal was that? While lamenting the disappearance of ten kilograms of Baek Aeyoung from the world, Shin Haeryang came out after getting his teeth scaled. Then, as he left the dental clinic, he left me with a load of bullshit. The gist of it was that I should think carefully about how I wanted to live. Would I return and continue living as a mercenary? Or would I live here as a receptionist at a dental clinic?

When I sighed, Park Muhyeon approached me, apparently under some sort of misunderstanding, and offered consolation.

“It’s all right. I’ve been calling continuously, but not many people seem to want to fight you legally.”

“I feel good and terrible at the same time.”

“Mr. Sowon. While you’re at it, stop wiretapping me as well.”

“I stopped a long time ago. You have no idea how many resources and how much concentration wiretapping consumes, Director.”

“I don’t want to know even a little.”

Park Muhyeon looked toward the entrance where Shin Haeryang had disappeared and spoke.

“I hear a mixed martial arts gym is moving into the vacant space on the second floor.”

I felt unease creep up my spine as I spoke.

“That’s great. If everyone who gets hurt there comes to our dental clinic, we’ll be set.”

But why did I feel so uneasy?

“Mr. Shin Haeryang seems to be the owner and head instructor.”

Apparently, once these crazy mercenaries retired, they all wanted to live in this building. I decided not to sell the eighty kilograms of blasting explosives I had for demolishing the building, but to keep them instead.

Side Story. Knife Fighting (1)

An official notice was issued at the undersea base to all employees. The moment Seo Jihyeok saw the praise saying that his talents and abilities were at an extraordinary level, he sensed something ominous. The notice said that he should open a course and teach others, sharing and distributing those abilities with the people at the undersea base so that he could help the other employees develop and grow.

Seo Jihyeok read the notice as saying: “This undersea base will reduce the mandatory training expenses for employees and spend them elsewhere, so fill in your insufficient knowledge among yourselves and survive on your own.” Did this mean there would be no safety training this year? Had they finally gone insane?

Those shameless bastards at the undersea base. They could at least shorten the working hours, or set aside some time for them to develop other skills. Or they could provide educational support while paying them a lot of money. They should be grateful that their employees managed to live in this dangerous place without getting injured. They didn’t help with anything, yet they expected one individual to do a goddamn lot.

In his twenties, Seo Jihyeok had experienced all kinds of hardships several times while working as a mercenary: spending ten days like a living corpse, sleeping with scorpions in the desert, hiding in a pit of snakes in the jungle, and suffering severe injuries due to a betrayal by someone he worked with, nearly going to see the face of Jesus. Because of that, he had arrogantly believed that he had experienced his limits early in life. He thought working as an engineer at an undersea base would be far easier than living as a sniper.

Only after joining did he realize, with bone-deep clarity, how absurd that thought had been.

They assigned one person an impossible amount of work and worked him to the bone, all while paying him little. A mercenary could abandon a job and run if the pay did not make financial sense, if the client died, or if his life was in danger. But once he became an office worker bound by an employment relationship, he could not simply run away. From the day he entered the undersea base, which had nothing properly in place, he had suppressed the urge to quit and flee every thirty minutes.

Seo Jihyeok glared at the official notice displayed on his pad while clutching a copy of The Miscellany (1), borrowed from the Third Undersea Base. Who had come up with this kind of idea? They just had to join forces and refuse to create any courses. Wouldn’t the whole thing disappear on its own? You undersea-base bastards. Please, don’t do things like this!

However, countless courses had already been posted on the hastily created undersea-base education board. Baek Aeyoung and Lee Jihyeon were busy looking through the courses that had been opened. It seemed that the notice had already made its way around the undersea base while Engineer Team A was on duty.

[Making Natural Facial Masks], [Making Bracelets and Earrings from Radioactive Shellfish], [Making Environmentally Friendly Sunscreen], [A Simple Introduction to the Magic of Limb Amputation *Reattachment Must Be Learned Separately], [A Beginner’s Guide to Summoning Black Magic (Bringing 200 ml of Blood Is Mandatory)], [Learning to Use an Axe Easily], [Edible Jellyfish Course], [How to Drink a Lot of Gasoline Quickly], [How to Drink Paraffin Oil and Become a Candle], [How to Survive Brake Failure for $100], [Free and Easy Ways to Break a Car’s Brakes], [Basic Course in Delivering Bribes], [An Introduction to Horror Films Even Cowards Can Watch], [Easy Animal Taxidermy], [A Birthstone Course with Religion], [How Anyone Can Deal with Highway Robbers. Table of Contents: 1. Becoming a Highway Robber], [A Difficult Course in Telekinesis], [A Guide to Hallucinogenic Herbs for Beginners], [A Skinning Method for Losing 5 Kilograms in an Instant], [How to Live in Prison Without Trouble], and so on.

Judging only by the course titles, there were several whose contents he could not even begin to guess. The title How to Drink a Lot of Gasoline Quickly in particular filled him with an inexplicable dread that they might actually bring out gasoline and make people drink it. Seo Jihyeok looked down at the civilians on his team and let out a small sigh. With lunatics everywhere in this place, he thought it would be safer to lock them in their quarters rather than allow them to attend these ridiculous courses. Huh? Was he the more dangerous one?

The courses would probably be shut down early if a few students had to be sent quickly to the hospital or a grave. Seo Jihyeok cursed the course creators with his eyes before asking Shin Haeryang,

“Do we really have to do this?”

“I heard you have to create at least one course. Just make one that sounds like nobody will attend and take a break.”

“What kind of class are you going to teach? Don’t you have any good ideas?”

“No.”

He really was a team leader who was tremendously helpful in life. Seo Jihyeok asked the team leader, who was in the middle of knitting,

“Team Leader Shin, you could just open a knitting class.”

Shin Haeryang, diligently moving his hands while holding a pair of needles, rejected Seo Jihyeok’s suggestion.

“I’m not good enough to teach anyone yet. I can barely knit things like gloves and socks.”

Wasn’t that already pretty good? From Shin Haeryang’s explanation, it seemed that knitting had a fairly large community with many truly skilled experts, while his own skill was apparently no more than a grain of sand on the beach. He said there was no telling what kind of knitting masters might be among the students if he accepted them. Seo Jihyeok laughed inwardly at the absurdity of that statement. What did it matter how many knitting masters there were? If you slowly raised the knitting needles you were gripping while glaring at them, wouldn’t they all shut their mouths?

“What about you?”

“Me? Following the team leader’s advice, my goal is to create a course nobody will attend and sleep in the classroom.”

Lee Jihyeon, a civilian member of Engineer Team A, met Shin Haeryang’s eyes.

“I’m thinking of doing [An Introduction to Fountain Pens for Beginners].”

Lee Jihyeon wanted to teach the people at the undersea base how to disassemble and clean fountain pens, fill them with ink, and choose a beginner’s fountain pen. Apparently, almost no one here used fountain pens. She wanted to use this opportunity to increase the number of fountain-pen users at the undersea base. She even wanted to share her own ink with any students who wanted it. The moment Seo Jihyeok heard this, he thought to himself: These bastards don’t deserve your kindness. Can’t you just use up all that ink yourself?

From what he could tell, there was nothing strange in the course content, such as grinding down a fountain pen nib and unconsciously stabbing it toward someone’s carotid artery. The material was safe, intended purely to convey knowledge without any ulterior motive, and seemed quite useful. When Lee Jihyeon finished her brief explanation, Seo Jihyeok gave a small round of applause. In the undersea base, which was like a pit of water in hell, he felt as if his mind had been healed, if only slightly. Jihyeon was the best.

Seoin, sensing Shin Haeryang’s gaze, lifted his head from his laptop screen and spoke.

“I’m going to teach a class on disabling drones through high-difficulty network hacking that ordinary people can’t easily perform.”

The moment Seo Jihyeok heard the course title, he realized that Seoin’s goal was also to get a good night’s sleep in the classroom. Thinking about it now, perhaps the strange-sounding classes had been created to drive away students.

“Hey. Mister Baek. What class are you going to teach?”

“I’m still thinking.”

Seo Jihyeok dodged Baek Aeyoung’s flying kick and thought of the final member of Engineer Team A. There was one more civilian male engineer who had recently joined, a man named Kim Uju, but he was currently hospitalized at Daehando Hospital.

Looking through the official notice, there was no mention of having to open lectures even for patients lying in the hospital. Kim Uju said that not long after joining the company, he had received the room number for Cheongnyong-dong from a quintessential Caucasian beauty with waist-length blonde hair at a café in Jungang-dong. The sight of her blowing him kisses and winking had apparently left a tremendous impression on Kim Uju, who had never once been seduced by anyone in his entire life.

Having paid no attention to Shin Haeryang’s warning that he was absolutely not to act on his own without permission, Kim Uju kept watch for a chance to slip away, then lied to his teammates that he was going to wash up as soon as break time began. Pretending to head for the showers, he bought a fresh rose from the flower vending machine in Jungang-dong, then ran to the Cheongnyong-dong quarters with all his might. Seo Jihyeok somewhat regretted not realizing this disaster was coming when that bastard Kim Uju had started spouting the weird bullshit about whether he could still hold ancestral rites if he married a foreigner.

It was only fifteen minutes later that the people in Engineer Team A realized one of their members was missing while staring at the showerhead pouring out nothing but water. By then, Kim Uju was already hanging upside down, naked, from the Ophion snake statue in Jungang-dong, a rose stuck in his nose, screaming so loudly that the undersea base seemed ready to be blown away. Seo Jihyeok was the first to discover Kim Uju screaming while blood streamed from his nose, and he quickly called for a medic. Shin Haeryang climbed directly onto the gigantic statue, cut the rope connected to Kim Uju’s left ankle, and sent Kim Uju, who was swinging back and forth like a pendulum clock, plummeting to the floor.

Several engineers who had been laughing uproariously at Kim Uju’s appearance told Shin Haeryang things like, “Your teammate sure is hilarious.” Kim Uju’s left ankle, which had been wrapped in rope and subjected to a force equal to his body weight, had been cracked, while his right arm, which he had used to shield his face from the beating, was broken.

Admitted to a hospital on Daehan Island, Kim Uju shouted every three seconds that he was quitting and leaving this hell immediately. He went through the resignation process at practically the speed of light. The helicopter scheduled to arrive next Tuesday would leave Daehan Island with him aboard before it even reached the helipad.

On the Korean side, they heard that an employee who had only recently been hired had suddenly become a complete wreck and was quitting, so they summoned team leader Shin Haeryang and demanded that he take responsibility. Shin Haeryang was called in as the representative, chewed out here, summoned there, and chewed out again. So signing contracts with two places meant he had to take abuse from two places as well. Seo Jihyeok looked over the team with slightly depressed eyes. There were only five of them in total. The other engineer teams had seven or eight people, so it didn’t show if one guy slacked off or took a break. But with only five people here, the moment even one person stopped working, the gap was immediately obvious. It wasn’t as if they could kidnap some bastard from another team and bring him over.

After spending two days wondering what lecture to give and what lecture to attend, Baek Aeyeong suddenly announced that she would teach a class on handling kitchen knives. What? Kitchen knives? Shin Haeryang stared at Baek Aeyeong for a moment before asking,

“Do you really want to do it?”

“I do.”

Shin Haeryang, who seemed likely to oppose her with both eyes blazing, unexpectedly nodded and said he understood. Seo Jihyeok was inwardly horrified by Shin Haeryang’s approval. No. Was that it? They say being betrayed by an ally is more painful than being ambushed by an enemy. What kind of trouble was she planning to cause? Seo Jihyeok instead tried to dissuade Baek Aeyeong.

“You’re not going to teach a class on handling kitchen knives. You’re going to teach people how to kill with kitchen knives, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Is there some reason you need to kill someone during the class? Even if that doesn’t happen, who’s going to take responsibility if a student loses a finger?”

“I’ll teach the students to wear steel gloves for finger protection.”

“At the very least, let’s use plastic knives. No, teach them with metal chopsticks instead. That would be much better.”

“You can’t expect people who come charging at you with knives to charge at you with bladeless knives.”

Seo Jihyeok couldn’t even begin to guess what the students who took Baek Aeyeong’s class might do later.

“Those students will threaten you later. What if they go somewhere and commit a murder after taking your class? They’ll stab someone with a knife, then try to pin the blame on you by saying it was thanks to you.”

“I’m only teaching them how to handle kitchen knives. If someone can kill a person with just two hours of training, then they have talent. Unless the judge is an idiot, I don’t think a two-hour daily lecture is going to turn me into a criminal.”

“Right. The people coming to the lecture aren’t going to seriously study it. It’s only two hours. They say even cross-stitch takes three hours to finish. With something you taught them that briefly, they couldn’t catch a person, let alone a squirrel. Team leader, please talk her out of it.”

As Seo Jihyeok pleaded with Shin Haeryang in exasperation, Shin Haeryang took his eyes off his pad for a moment and said,

“With Aeyeong’s personality, if you stop her, she’ll just do it secretly. It’s better to keep an eye on her in front of us.”

Baek Aeyeong spoke to Seo Jihyeok triumphantly.

“You heard him? No discouraging me.”

“Go clean your room. It’s so filthy I could die.”

“No talking like a fictional mother.”

Seo Jihyeok repeatedly urged her to teach another class, but Baek Aeyeong’s stubbornness never wavered. Seo Jihyeok grabbed Lee Jihyeon, whom he had considered an ally, and asked her for help.

“Jihyeon. Talk Aeyeong out of it. She says she’s going to teach a kitchen knife class. Does that make any sense? She should be cleaning her own room and learning how to live like a human being during that time. It’s so filthy even ghosts would come in and run away.”

“I’m taking that class too.”

“You are too? Why? You don’t need to learn it.”

Knowing that Baek Aeyeong was glaring at him, Seo Jihyeok lowered his voice and said,

“Guns are the best. Nothing is more efficient for killing people than a gun. Shooting from a distance is best. Allowing an opponent to get this close in the first place is incredibly dangerous. It’s far better to learn how to hide in a safe place and shoot a gun. This isn’t the Stone Age. Why fight with knives in this ultra-advanced age?”

“But I still want to learn. You never know when something might happen.”

“It’s my job to make sure nothing happens to you.”

Seo Jihyeok opened his mouth at that, then lost all his words and fell silent for a moment. Then, in just two seconds, he changed his attitude and nodded at Lee Jihyeon.

“······That’s true. You’re right.”

Guns were cooler. Of course, sniper rifles were merely heavy, difficult to conceal, troublesome to set up, and required you to wait desperately, like a corpse, until the target arrived. The moment you fired one shot, your location would be discovered, and the countdown to your death would begin. Still, guns were cooler.

Regardless of Seo Jihyeok’s opinion, Baek Aeyeong limited enrollment to ten students and opened [How to Use a Kitchen Knife]. The class sold out at astonishing speed. People working in the cafeterias of the Fourth Undersea Base and the First Undersea Base, including Wang Wei, applied for Baek Aeyeong’s class as though they had been waiting for it. All ten students were men. Six of them were cooks, while the other four had various occupations.

Curious about what on earth had motivated Wang Wei to apply for the class, Baek Aeyeong went to find him and ask. He spoke in a rare voice filled with excitement.

“Born in a rural village in Sichuan Province, I entered a restaurant kitchen at the age of twelve and have lived the life of a cook for thirty-two years! After spending so long as a master of the chopping board, I thought I had already conquered kitchen knives, but a Korean teaching the use of kitchen knives! My blood boils with anticipation at the thought of gaining new knowledge!”

“······I don’t think there’s anything I can teach you.”

Several people took notice of the instructor for that class. Most of them were bastards hoping Baek Aeyeong would come to their rooms and give them private lessons after class. Whether the subject of Baek Aeyeong’s class was kitchen knives, bread knives, or knife wounds didn’t seem to matter. Realizing what mistake she had made, Baek Aeyeong cut all the students from the roster. Then she changed the lecture title.

[How to Use a Kitchen Knife for Women]

Side Story. Knife Fighting (2)

After she changed the title, no one applied for Baek Aeyeong’s class. Baek Aeyeong stubbornly waited for students. While waiting, she tapped the corner of her pad with her finger, ceaselessly creating dissonance, until the number of students increased by one when Lee Jihyeon silently applied for the kitchen knife class.

There was still only one student until Seo Jihyeok told her to keep her finger still because she was making it impossible to concentrate. Seoin sighed, then examined Baek Aeyeong’s class and said,

“Write in the detailed course description that the purpose is to kill a talking pig. And charge for it.”

“Wouldn’t charging make even fewer people apply?”

“These guys don’t trust anything that’s free. They think you’ll only teach as much as it’s worth. And reduce the number of students to five or fewer. Ten is too many. Charge at least a hundred dollars so they can think of it as an advanced course for an elite few.”

“Then I really don’t think anyone will come.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If no one comes, Jihyeon can just have private lessons by herself.”

Seo Jihyeok checked that the number of students in [Understanding Poet Gi Hyeong-do], which he had opened, was zero and smiled in satisfaction. He then saw that the number of students in Lee Jihyeon’s [An Introduction to Fountain Pens for Beginners] was zero and smiled happily, but when he confirmed that Baek Aeyeong had one student, he burst into uproarious laughter.

Baek Aeyeong looked at Seo Jihyeok, moving as though her right fist was itching. Seo Jihyeok spoke as if trying to soothe her.

“Look on the bright side. It’s more comfortable when no one applies.”

“Oh, honestly. Go on living like that, then. I’m not going to think that way.”

Following Seoin’s advice, Baek Aeyeong changed the detailed course information. Once she made it paid and reduced the number of students, the class strangely sold out in an instant. Baek Aeyeong smiled hollowly and said, “I really can’t understand human psychology, even when I think I do.”

In any case, Baek Aeyeong wanted to sincerely pass on her secret techniques to the students who had chosen her. In the end, she wanted to create Baek Aeyeong 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, but the two mercenaries with some experience handling knives shook their heads simultaneously the moment they heard this grand ambition.

Seo Jihyeok nagged her that this ridiculous undersea-base lecture program wasn’t a disciple-training course, and that although he understood she was excited, she should remember that the students might not be as diligent or earnest as she expected. Shin Haeryang pointed out a more practical issue. It would take the students at least five hundred hours to complete the curriculum Baek Aeyeong wanted. To begin with, even the instructor, Baek Aeyeong, hadn’t learned how to handle a knife in two hours.

Whether they listened or not, Baek Aeyeong was writing down everything she needed to teach on her pad as it came to mind. Seo Jihyeok watched her secretly as she hummed and scratched her terrible handwriting across the pad, then asked,

“What are you going to teach first?”

“Obviously, I have to teach them how to hold the knife first. And their stance. I should focus on how to attack rather than defend!”

“······Make sure you include the locations of the organs in the human body, with an anatomical diagram.”

“My students aren’t that stupid.”

“Go grab any random guy wandering through the hallway and ask him. There are tons of people who don’t even know where their own kidneys are. There are also tons of people who die without knowing what part they’ve been injured in.”

Baek Aeyeong looked at Seo Jihyeok with distrust, then turned to Lee Jihyeon, the team’s civilian and one of the students.

“Jihyeon unni! Can you point to where the stomach is with your finger?”

“The stomach? Where is the stomach?”

Lee Jihyeon, who had been writing a personal report on her pad, naturally pointed to a spot over her clothes, and Baek Aeyeong looked extremely satisfied.

“See? I told you it wasn’t necessary.”

“······Jihyeon is a highly educated Korean. You need to know how much and what exactly is inside your students’ heads before you can teach them anything. Go grab the student who looks the stupidest and ask him.”

Baek Aeyeong was about to ignore Seo Jihyeok, but just in case, she found a student to test.

“Point to where the stomach is.”

“The stomach?”

The student quite naturally pointed at his heart with a finger. Baek Aeyeong asked again in confusion.

“The stomach. The stomach?”

“Isn’t it here?”

“Th······then where’s the heart?”

The student pointed at his lungs. Seeing this, Seo Jihyeok laughed until the corners of his mouth nearly split and said,

“Uahahahahaha! See? See? Ha. I told you—listen to me, and even while you’re sleeping, rice cakes, meals, and bread will appear!”

Upon checking, she discovered that half the students had no idea where their own organs were located. Baek Aeyeong began seriously wondering what kind of public education the eight countries had.

They needed to cut blood vessels or stab organs, but she couldn’t very well teach a class that people were paying for by telling them to stab randomly and wildly. Of course, she could teach it that sloppily, but Baek Aeyeong’s pride wouldn’t allow it.

To use a knife well, one had to know the human body well. At the very least, they needed to know where the blood vessels that would be dangerous if pierced by a knife ran, and which organs had to be defended at all costs even if it meant losing an arm.

For the class, Baek Aeyeong bought steel gloves to protect the fingers, six sharpened knives, and six blunt plastic knives. Then she began quickly putting together audiovisual lecture materials. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say she extracted—or stole—knife-related audiovisual materials used by some special forces unit. Thanks to the Americans she had asked to purchase them, the knives arrived on Daehan Island first.

The problem was that the seller had apparently scammed them. The knives that arrived had almost no edges at all. They were little more than metal clubs. Seoin ran a finger along a knife’s edge and said,

“You’re supposed to slit someone’s throat with this? You could probably tickle them.”

Baek Aeyeong tried contacting the seller, but there was no response, and the phone didn’t work either. Someone had to sharpen the edges of the six or so knives. Carrying six metal clubs, Baek Aeyeong barged into Seo Jihyeok’s room. Seo Jihyeok, half-asleep on his day off, merely raised his head to check the intruder, then pressed it back into his pillow.

“You have time, right?”

“Go away, gnat.”

The gnat placed a foot on Seo Jihyeok’s stomach. Cough.

“You’re not doing anything right now. You’re just playing around.”

“I’m going to read. I have to gather information. I have intelligence work to do.”

“Cut the crap. What kind of information gathering do you do while kicking a ball around and smoking? You were dozing off just now.”

“Go see Team Leader Sin.”

“He hasn’t come back from the meeting yet. Sharpen these knives while I make the audiovisual materials.”

“Find someone else!”

“I can’t ask Sister Seoin or Sister Jihyeon!”

“They’ve never sharpened kitchen knives before?”

“They haven’t.”

Groaning, Seo Jihyeok got to his feet. Baek Aeyeong, as if she had been waiting for that moment, immediately held out a black whetstone. Seo Jihyeok sighed the instant he saw it.

“Who sharpens knives with a whetstone like this these days?”

“Uncle Wang Wei uses it.”

Does that old man sharpen kitchen knives with this? There were so many good knife-sharpening tools available. Seo Jihyeok accepted the whetstone, which looked at least fifty years old, and sat down on the floor. Functionally, there wasn’t much difference between a kitchen knife and a knife meant for killing people. With a sigh that seemed to split his mouth, Seo Jihyeok prepared a bowl of water and a towel, then placed the blunt knife against the whetstone and began sharpening it.

Unless a knife was outrageously expensive, Seo Jihyeok preferred to buy a new one whenever its edge was damaged or broken. It had been a very long time since he had sharpened a blade himself.

Scritch, scritch, scrape, scrape. As he sharpened the knives for the class, Seo Jihyeok initially tried his best not to put too fine an edge on them, so the students wouldn’t get hurt.

The most common mistake made by beginners handling knives was cutting their index fingers. Or their thumbs. Seo Jihyeok was repeating the monotonous task without thinking when he came to his senses and realized he had sharpened the blade enough to pierce even elephant hide. ……Habit really was terrifying. He could only hope these wouldn’t be used as weapons later. Right. It would be better to sharpen them properly. That way, people would get hurt less.

By the time Seo Jihyeok was sharpening the third knife in a trance, Sin Haeryang returned from the team leader meeting with an expression that suggested he wanted to demolish the entire undersea base. Then he tossed an apple he had brought toward Seo Jihyeok.

Seo Jihyeok raised the knife in his hand and caught the flying apple. Looking at the knife that had pierced straight through it, Seo Jihyeok felt pleased inside. Nice. Whoever sharpened this knife did an excellent job.

“Who gave you the apple?”

“Sato.”

“It’s not poisoned, is it?”

“Try eating it. If anything seems wrong, tell me. I’ll get revenge for you.”

“Take me to the hospital instead. Jeez. Seriously.”

Seoin came over to Seo Jihyeok with a laptop in one hand, stole half the apple, and ate it as she spoke.

“Once you’re done sharpening the knives, do my scissors too. I saw there’s a home haircut lecture among the daily classes. I might have to sign up for that. My hair’s a mess.”

Seo Jihyeok wiped his wet hands on the towel, touched his bangs, and said,

“Yeah. I need to get my hair cut too. My bangs keep poking me in the eyes. Why is there no hair salon here?”

“Looking at your face, I think you’re better off with longer bangs.”

“Hmm. I think so too, but sometimes they do get inconvenient.”

Sin Haeryang took a look at the edges of the knives Seo Jihyeok had sharpened, then quietly placed his own diving knife beside the hairdressing scissors Seoin had left there. ……I thought only Baek Aeyeong was a genius at creating extra work for people.

Yi Jihyeon looked at Seo Jihyeok, who had spread various blades across the floor and was sharpening them, and asked,

“What are you doing?”

“Daily blacksmithing.”

Yi Jihyeon watched him for a while, then brought over some scissors and a few tools and placed them beside Sin Haeryang’s diving knife. Seo Jihyeok rearranged the order of Yi Jihyeon’s belongings and moved them to the very front.

Since he was doing it anyway, Seo Jihyeok decided to work as hard as he could and brought out every bladed tool he owned. Baek Aeyeong came by to check on his progress, praised him for doing a great job, gave him some iced apple juice, added two more personal knives to the pile, and left. Seo Jihyeok thought as he drank the juice: ……I’m going to spend the entire day sharpening knife edges.

At last, when all the blades had disappeared, Seo Jihyeok looked at his underwater diving knife. He played with it, spinning it around three times in his right hand, then shoved it into its sheath and returned the blades to their owners.

Sin Haeryang, who had spent the weekend writing reports in both English and Korean, asked Seo Jihyeok to spare him fifteen minutes. When Seo Jihyeok went to Ophion as requested, a long mat had been spread across the floor.

Seo Jihyeok’s eyes nervously swept over the area around the mat. Sin Haeryang placed the pad he had been carrying on a prepared table and adjusted its height for a moment. Then he pressed the video-recording button and beckoned lightly to Seo Jihyeok.

“What?”

“Come at me with your fists. Attack slowly, using only your upper body. Don’t use your feet.”

“Now?”

“I’m putting it in the lecture materials.”

“……What kind of lecture did you say you were giving?”

“Self-defense.”

“You crazy bastard.”

No wonder he had so readily agreed to the kitchen-knife lecture. They really were exactly alike. Cursing him viciously in his head, Seo Jihyeok asked,

“How slowly?”

“Slow enough to be boring.”

Sin Haeryang captured himself dodging, deflecting, and counterattacking Seo Jihyeok’s punches at an agonizingly slow pace. It was so slow that even when Sin Haeryang lifted Seo Jihyeok bodily and dropped him onto the mat, it felt as though everything were happening in slow motion.

Next, Seo Jihyeok had to attack Sin Haeryang with kicks. If he had attacked that slowly in a real fight, dozens of bullets, knives, fists, or feet would already have come flying at him. Seo Jihyeok! You slow-ass bastard. Do you want to die? A gruff instructor’s voice, from somewhere he couldn’t remember, seemed to hammer the back of his head every second.

After slamming Seo Jihyeok into the mat here and there for exactly fifteen minutes, Sin Haeryang reviewed the footage and said there were parts that hadn’t been recorded properly. He made Seo Jihyeok kick twice more and filmed them again. Then he thanked him for cooperating, tidied up the mat, and left. ……What the hell was this supposed to be?

The men who had been exercising looked at Seo Jihyeok, sitting collapsed on the floor, with sympathetic eyes. Some patted him on the shoulder, while others muttered things like, “Forget it,” before passing by.

Ten minutes later, Seo Jihyeok realized that Sin Haeryang had actually been the better option. When he returned to the dormitory, Baek Aeyeong greeted him cheerfully.

“Seo Moron.”

“What?”

“Stand right there and don’t move.”

Baek Aeyeong approached with a knife whose edge had been sharpened to a fine point. Seo Jihyeok instinctively backed away, placing his center of gravity over his rear leg. When confronted by someone holding a knife, the best option available to an unarmed person was to run so fast that their feet barely touched the ground. Suppressing the instinct to turn his back and flee at once, Seo Jihyeok said,

“Fuck. ……Go find a mannequin. Or an android.”

“How am I supposed to suddenly find a mannequin in this undersea base? I won’t make any holes.”

“That goes without saying!”

“Don’t want to do it?”

“No!”

“Sister Jihyeon! I’m trying to make some lecture materials! Could you stand still for just a moment?”

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it! I said I’ll do it!”

Seo Jihyeok cooperated as Baek Aeyeong filmed herself placing the knife against his major blood vessels and organs. His mind was going blank. Every second, he had to restrain himself from snatching the knife away from Baek Aeyeong or kicking it aside and retreating.

“You need to stab here with the sharpened side like this. The blade has to go in at least the length of your thumbnail.”

After standing in as a mannequin for twenty minutes and cooperating with the filming, Seo Jihyeok, looking exhausted, watched the materials Sin Haeryang was making on efficiently beating and evading people. He saw Sin Haeryang type sentences such as “Press down until the victim cannot be revived” into the lecture materials, but Seo Jihyeok had no energy left to criticize him and pretended not to notice.

As the date of the lecture drew closer, Baek Aeyeong seemed to have tried to buy something from Australia, but perhaps the delivery wasn’t arriving, because she clung to her phone and kept saying that this wouldn’t do.

Seo Jihyeok went to the helipad to receive a delivery and was bewildered when he saw the unexpected shipment of fruit. They were all watermelons as big as human heads. Suhyeok, who had helped carry them, asked,

“It was quite a struggle carrying these. Are you planning to make and sell watermelon juice as a side business?”

“Watermelons? Watermelons arrived?”

“Ten watermelons arrived under Baek Aeyeong’s name.”

“No. What was she thinking, ordering this many watermelons? Ah…… She said she was buying lamb, but I guess that didn’t work out. Honestly, I thought the class was fake and that Aeyeong’s real goal was to assassinate me.”

“Why would kind and adorable Ms. Aeyeong do that?”

“……Don’t say ridiculous things. Just take some bread.”

Seo Jihyeok stared glumly at the ten watermelons rolling around the helipad, then called Medic. Lifting the round, heavy objects one by one and tying them to his body, Medic asked what he was carrying. In order to expand the AI’s knowledge, Seo Jihyeok told Medic they were ten human heads. Medic drew a tearful expression on his screen and descended to the Fourth Undersea Base.

There was nowhere to put the watermelons immediately. Seo Jihyeok tried to borrow the storeroom near the cafeteria, but it was already packed wall to wall with ingredients, making it difficult even for a person to enter. The timing happened to coincide with the arrival of a new shipment of food supplies.

There was no spare room in the women’s quarters. Baek Aeyeong put five watermelons each into the rooms of the two men who didn’t keep many belongings. Sin Haeryang, who had suddenly begun living with five watermelons, allowed them to roll around the floor without a word. Seo Jihyeok, however, kept forgetting about the watermelons living with him and kicked them every now and then. Oh no! The watermelon is attacking someone!

Extra Story. Knife Fighting (3)

[Practical Combat for Self-Defense], the class opened by Sin Haeryang, sold out in the blink of an eye as soon as registration opened. Sin Haeryang had expected a large number of men who were constantly looking for an opportunity to beat him up due to the class’s name and content, as well as his notorious reputation and the grudges people held against him, to sign up. However, all ten people who successfully managed to register for the class were women.

Listening to Sin Haeryang’s story, Seo Jihyeok thought: So there wasn’t a single man who managed to hit the registration button quickly enough? Or were the women’s fingers simply faster? Sin Haeryang had intended to question the students about the Kim Uju assault incident, but he was momentarily thrown off.

Together with Yi Jihyeon, Sin Haeryang approached the students and asked, in the least threatening manner possible, why they had signed up for the class. The students, all barely half Sin Haeryang’s size, were curious how he had managed to beat up those coworkers he normally found so unbearable. They wanted to protect themselves in a lawless region overrun with crime. And, if possible, they also wanted to beat up those coworkers of theirs every now and then. Otherwise, they said, they at least wanted to learn how to beat them up in a satisfying way.

Sin Haeryang bent down to hear the trainee’s increasingly faint voice more clearly, bracing one hand against the doorframe so he would not hit his head. Even that small movement startled the trainee. Sin Haeryang listened to the trainee’s opinion, someone who was afraid of his large frame yet eager to learn, and pondered it for a moment.

At first, contrary to Baek Aeyeong, Sin Haeryang had intended to cut all the female trainees and rent the best soundproofed lecture room available. There, he would select the male trainees who had signed up with the intention of committing legal assault and pound them like drums under the pretext of teaching hand-to-hand combat. On the way back to the quarters with Yi Jihyeon, who had played the role of a plant, Sin Haeryang had asked,

“Do we really need a self-defense class? Wouldn’t a hand-to-hand combat class be more useful?”

“Not every woman has a bodyguard like me. Personally, Team Leader, I’d prefer it if you taught a self-defense class.”

After a brief deliberation, Sin Haeryang decided to teach self-defense and asked Seo Jihyeok, who had been slammed into the mat about ten times for the sake of the video materials, to assist with the class.

If there had been even one male trainee among them, Sin Haeryang would have used him as training material. The moment Seo Jihyeok heard Sin Haeryang’s request, he felt an urge to hide himself aboard the Canadian helicopter arriving that day and flee in the middle of the night.

“By tomorrow, I might swim all the way from Daehando to Hawaii to escape. Can’t you change your mind even now?”

There was a shark zone and a jellyfish habitat along the way, but if he was lucky, he might be able to swim around them. Sin Haeryang’s kicks, however, could not be avoided through luck. Of course, since Sin Haeryang had said he would use him as an assistant instructor, he would not attack him in earnest.

Still, mistakes and accidents could happen in any situation. Was Sin Haeryang the kind of man who would deliberately attack him and then claim it had been an accident? …He absolutely was. He had evaded Baek Aeyeong’s assassination attempt, only to have Sin Haeryang try to kill him.

“I already told the trainees I would do it.”

“……It sounds like you need a dummy for martial arts practice. Find someone else. How about Yamashita? If you tell him you’re going to use him as a punching bag in your class, he’ll happily volunteer. He might even be waiting in the classroom ten hours before class starts because he’s so excited. Or what about that rude bastard Nikolai, or Daniel, or Hailey, who called someone Chinese the other day?”

Seo Jihyeok began listing everyone he disliked, figuring this was the perfect opportunity. If he firmly refused, perhaps Sin Haeryang would kidnap someone like the researchers at the undersea base, use him to his heart’s content, and then set him free to live in the ocean.

“……Yamashita wants to be a trainee. He asked me to increase the enrollment limit. Judging by his attitude, he’d only disrupt the class.”

A few posts had appeared on the undersea base’s message board from people asking to buy Sin Haeryang’s class or exchange it for another class they had enrolled in, but none of the trainees had responded.

“Ha. What are you going to do if I disrupt the class?”

“I need you even if you disrupt it.”

Sin Haeryang, who had raised his head from the lecture materials he was preparing, looked at Seo Jihyeok and spoke.

“The part where you demonstrate with me won’t even take five minutes. It’s to prevent any unforeseen accidents during the class. You’re not going to take the class anyway. You’ll just be resting.”

Once the class began, the actual demonstration really did take less than five minutes. There had been no lie. Seo Jihyeok had expected the trainees to sell their spots to men for a premium or something, but he was inwardly astonished when they entered the mat-covered classroom with blazing eyes and participated enthusiastically.

“Whoa! Be careful! Concentrate! If you make a mistake, you’ll become friends with an orthopedic surgeon! Shout louder!”

“Hyah!”

“You think you can take down our team leader by pushing like that? Hit him harder! Harder!”

“Yaah!”

Seo Jihyeok enjoyed watching Sin Haeryang—the man who had thrown him around ten times—get knocked down about forty times by the trainees. However, he had to keep his eyes open for nearly two hours to prevent the ten trainees from throwing, tripping, or pushing Sin Haeryang during practice and then falling over with him because they lacked the strength, slipping, injuring themselves with their own force, or rolling off the mat.

By the time the class ended, Seo Jihyeok was more exhausted than the trainees. He felt as if his very soul had been drained. While the trainees clung to Sin Haeryang and asked whether he would teach another class sometime, Seo Jihyeok quickly escaped the classroom.

When Baek Aeyeong had asked Seo Jihyeok to assist with her class, he had refused before she could even finish speaking. Baek Aeyeong had merely snorted at his reaction. She had tried giving the class once in her room without any trainees, then borrowed Team Leader Sin’s old white T-shirt, saying there was something lacking.

Since it was her first time drawing on clothing, Baek Aeyeong did not know how easily she could ruin it. She drew the lungs, liver, heart, and intestines all at once, creating an extraordinary picture in black marker. At a glance, it looked like the work of a master of abstract art, but it also looked as if a blind art student, hopelessly drunk on alcohol and despair, had waved a marker around at random.

Baek Aeyeong tried to erase the strange ladders scattered across the team leader’s shirt and draw them again, only to realize that the marker she had used was designed not to wash off easily, even in the deep-sea water. She tried to return the borrowed item, but its owner refused to take it back. Thus, Team Leader Sin’s old white T-shirt went into the trash.

Next, Baek Aeyeong seized Seo Jihyeok’s pale-yellow T-shirt, which he had been noisily babbling beside her in. The shirt, which must once have been bright yellow, had been so worn down by the sea wind and seawater that it had faded to pale yellow. It was a battered shirt stretched at the collar from passing over its owner’s head hundreds of times, and Baek Aeyeong had decided to recycle it with a merciful heart while she was at it.

Baek Aeyeong poured her heart into it. Using her previous failure—drawing the heart first—as a stepping stone, she drew the two large lungs first and then the heart, but to anyone else it looked as if the shirt had three lungs. There was no room left to draw the liver.

Passing by, Sin Haeryang saw Baek Aeyeong’s artwork and commented,

“If a human being like this existed, they could hold their breath underwater for ten extra minutes.”

Seo In laughed every time Baek Aeyeong added another line and called it an alien dissection diagram. And so Seo Jihyeok’s pale-yellow T-shirt went into the trash as well.

Baek Aeyeong quickly admitted how little talent she had for drawing. After ruining two more shirts, neither Sin Haeryang nor Seo Jihyeok was willing to lend her their clothes anymore. Baek Aeyeong decided to entrust the drawing to the only person on her team with any artistic sensibility. She said she wanted that person to draw the organs on a T-shirt, then put it on a human mannequin and explain where everything was so that she could teach the trainees where to stab—and where to avoid being stabbed.

Daehando’s vegetation resembled that of South Pacific countries more than North Pacific ones. An amateur watercolorist who occasionally painted Daehando’s exotic trees and flowers as a hobby was taken aback when suddenly asked to draw human organs.

Seo Jihyeok, who had constantly criticized Baek Aeyeong’s drawings and had already lost one shirt to her, thought that Yi Jihyeon might be willing to draw on his clothes. He dashed into his room, looking as if he intended to bring back every piece of clothing he owned. Yi Jihyeon, who suddenly found herself about to draw human intestines, sacrificed Seo Jihyeok.

“Wouldn’t it be better just to bring Jihyeok to class and point at the places with a pen while explaining what’s what?”

Baek Aeyeong had already ruined two shirts, and there was not enough time left to order something by delivery, so she accepted the opinion of the trainee cornered into a desperate situation. Then she looked at Seo Jihyeok. Seo Jihyeok glanced at the two shirts in the trash and at Yi Jihyeon, narrowed his eyes, and nodded.

Baek Aeyeong extended a fist toward Yi Jihyeon, who, without thinking much of it, bumped her own fist against it.

“Why all of a sudden?”

“No reason. I’m just really happy you’re taking my class, unni.”

“I’m happy too.”

The long-awaited day of the class arrived. As soon as the classroom became available, Baek Aeyeong rushed in, cleaned it, and began preparing everything until just before the trainees arrived. Six watermelons and knives, safety stab-resistant gloves, supplies for stopping bleeding, and even a medic were arranged in place.

“Kiki Warnock, the master of knives, once said this: ‘The simplest way for a woman to become equal to a man without investing in countless moral lessons for men is to carry a sharpened dagger at least eighteen centimeters long. No matter how rude a man is, one stab will make him behave politely. The side is particularly effective.’”

Baek Aeyeong swept her gaze over the five trainees, then took out a knife and drove it vertically into the old wooden table in the classroom. Beneath the fluorescent lights, the knife’s blade looked pitch-black, but fairly threatening.

From the back of the classroom, Seo Jihyeok looked at the blade of Baek Aeyeong’s favorite knife and felt slightly troubled. I sharpened that blade so diligently, but under fluorescent lights it looks like a toy knife. The fact that Kiki Warnock was skilled with knives but also a Glock 19 enthusiast rose to his throat. Seo Jihyeok, however, clamped his mouth shut, placed both hands on his waist, and waited quietly.

Baek Aeyeong began by teaching the trainees how to hold a knife. The theory covered things they mostly already knew. Seo Jihyeok felt a yawn coming on, but he could not show his boredom in front of Baek Aeyeong, who was lecturing so earnestly, or the trainees.

His eyes kept drifting toward the watermelons lined up on the table. He did not know which one it was, but there was one that had repeatedly attacked his ankles whenever he let his guard down. I wonder if it’s ripe. When he came to his senses, every trainee and the instructor was staring at him.

“You want me to take it off?”

Seo Jihyeok was slightly flustered by Baek Aeyeong’s demand. This had not been agreed upon beforehand. Then again, apart from a few major points, almost nothing had been agreed upon. Sin Haeryang had been much better. He had discussed several techniques beforehand, how they would be used in class, where he would fall, where the mats were thickest, and what the trainees needed to focus on to avoid injuring him while applying the techniques.

As soon as the lengthy theory lesson ended, Baek Aeyeong suddenly told him to take off his shirt. Seo Jihyeok was overwhelmed by the desire to run straight out of the classroom. Six women were looking at him with expressionless faces. If he had known things would turn out like this, he should have lent them a few more shirts.

When Baek Aeyeong had made everyone chant “A mannequin has no ego” three times before class, he had wondered what on earth she intended to do. He had not expected her to make him do something this atrocious. In front of twelve pairs of eyes, Seo Jihyeok threw off his T-shirt.

“Wow!”

“Wheeeew!”

“Jesus!”

“Kyaaaah!”

What kind of person whistles at a time like this? Since he often had to strip down to his upper body because he spent so much time in seawater, it was not unusual for him to take off his shirt. But standing there alone with his upper body exposed in front of a group of fully clothed women was unbelievably embarrassing. Damn it.

In particular, Yi Jihyeon was staring at him with her mouth slightly open, and Seo Jihyeok really wanted to know what she was thinking. He instinctively tried to cover his chest with one hand, but decided that would look even stranger and placed both hands naturally on his waist instead. This was driving him insane.

Baek Aeyeong used Seo Jihyeok like a living mannequin. This is the liver. And this is the lung. She wrote the words liver and lung in English on Seo Jihyeok’s body with a pen. She scrawled heart, spleen, large intestine, small intestine, gallbladder, and stomach in terrible handwriting.

At Baek Aeyeong’s request, he turned around so she could draw the kidneys on his back. But when the itching made him try to twist his body, a plastic knife immediately flew into his side. Standing bare-chested in front of women carrying knives, Seo Jihyeok felt as if the enemy had been shown all his sniping points and a massive bombardment could begin at any moment.

Side Story. Knife Fighting (4)

Seo Jihyeok felt as if the trainees’ concentration had doubled. What was wrong with them? There were more than a few well-built men at the undersea base. Seo Jihyeok took a deep breath and waited for time to pass.

I am a mannequin. I am a mannequin. A mannequin has no ego.

“If you’re aiming for a blood vessel, you don’t need to stab deeply or use much force.”

Seo Jihyeok found it extremely irritating as Baek Aeyeong’s plastic model blade wandered around his chest, back, and legs. Unless it was a mistake, Baek Aeyeong would never stab hard enough to pierce his flesh with a real knife. Still, mistakes and accidents could happen at any time.

Was Baek Aeyeong the sort of person who would deliberately attack him and then claim it had been an accident? ...Come to think of it, she absolutely was. “Oops, my hand slipped. Put some disinfectant on it,” or something like that was exactly the kind of thing she would say. Was I going to die here today?

As soon as Baek Aeyeong finished explaining, the trainees all stood up in unison, gripping their plastic knives and staring menacingly at Seo Jihyeok. ...I really might die.

It was time to test the theory they had learned. In front of Baek Aeyeong, the five trainees had to come forward one at a time and poke Seo Jihyeok’s skin. Brachial artery! Radial artery! Whenever Baek Aeyeong called out the location of an artery, the trainees tapped or pressed that spot with their plastic knives. Then Baek Aeyeong suddenly ambushed one of the trainees with a question.

“How many centimeters deep do you have to stab the carotid artery?”

“Four centimeters...?”

“Next!”

Seo Jihyeok clenched his fists and waited, afraid his body might move reflexively as the trainees came unnecessarily close and attacked his major blood vessels with objects shaped almost exactly like real knives. Wow. This wasn’t easy. I feel like I’m the one who’s going to cause an accident.

His entire body twitched with the urge to instinctively shove away the trainee who was poking his wrist and forearm. They’re holding plastic knives. Plastic knives. Seo Jihyeok stiffened his body and tried to stand as still as possible.

Several trainees approached Seo Jihyeok, who was standing there naked, and poked his skin while trying to suppress their laughter. It didn’t hurt. More precisely, since they were plastic knives, wherever they poked him, all he felt was something touching his skin, along with a ticklish sensation. Whenever a trainee stabbed too hard, he exaggeratedly cried out something like, “Ow, ow, ow!” and the knife was immediately withdrawn.

After the trainee pressing on his forearm passed by, Lee Jihyeon appeared. Seo Jihyeok held his breath. Then he tensed his body. See? You have to get incredibly close to attack. It’s dangerous. Following Baek Aeyeong’s commands, Lee Jihyeon pressed the plastic knife repeatedly against Seo Jihyeok’s wrist and arm. She answered a question about the subclavian artery, then returned to the very back of the line.

Baek Aeyeong had them stab other arteries as well. Subclavian artery! Carotid artery! In the case of the carotid artery, Seo Jihyeok tried to raise his chin so it would be easier to stab, but when he heard, “The mannequin doesn’t move,” he lowered his head back into position. Well, of course. In a real fight, the opponent wouldn’t help make it easier to stab them.

Once the trainees had stabbed the major blood vessels at least twice each and were waiting according to Baek Aeyeong’s instructions, Seo Jihyeok let out a sigh as though he were about to expel his lungs. One of the trainees raised her hand with a bright smile and asked Baek Aeyeong a question.

“Why aren’t we stabbing the femoral artery?”

That was Victoria, or something like that, wasn’t it? I knew she was trouble the moment she started whistling. Small laughs and cheers arose among the trainees. Lee Jihyeon was smiling along as well, like an angel. ...This is insane. Seriously.

Depending on Baek Aeyeong’s answer, Seo Jihyeok was prepared to abandon all pretense of being a mannequin and sprint out of the classroom. Baek Aeyeong gave him a sidelong glance and said,

“Since it looks like the mannequin is about to scream in terror and run away, let’s stab all six internal organs first and think about it afterward.”

Baek Aeyeong began explaining the locations of the organs, how much force to use, and how deep the blade should go. At last, her terrible handwriting and drawings were proving useful. When Baek Aeyeong called out the stomach, the trainees brought their plastic knives to the spot where Seo Jihyeok’s stomach was located. When she called out the lungs, they brought them to his lungs, and when she called out the liver, they brought them to his liver.

Seo Jihyeok bitterly regretted not lending Baek Aeyeong money immediately when she had complained that buying a mannequin meant to be used only once and then thrown away was too expensive. If he could go back to the past, he would even have bought one for her with his own money.

Aiming for the heart was inefficient. The sternum blocked it, and the ribs protected it. Besides, even if one avoided the bones and stabbed accurately, a knife would have to be driven in more than eight centimeters to reach the heart. With so many other organs available to stab, why target the heart? Still, there was no telling what might happen in this world.

When Lee Jihyeon brought the fake knife toward the left side of Seo Jihyeok’s chest to aim for his heart, Seo Jihyeok, unable to completely discard his sense of self, whispered softly,

“A little to the right.”

The heart was located in the center of the chest. It was merely shifted slightly to the left. Lee Jihyeon adjusted the position of the plastic blade. When she placed the knife precisely where it could stab the heart while avoiding the sternum and ribs, Seo Jihyeok felt the corner of his chest grow cold and ticklish at the same time, despite being targeted by a knife. Lee Jihyeon pressed the plastic knife into his chest and moved on. I’ve died once now.

Baek Aeyeong taught them to focus on the blood vessels in the arms and legs rather than directly targeting the organs. Her reasoning was that, in actual situations, the trainees would most often use what they had learned not to kill their opponent outright, but to temporarily deprive them of their ability to fight, escape a dangerous place, and flee somewhere safe.

Seo Jihyeok also learned a few things during the lesson. First, a short person attacking a tall person from behind carried a fairly significant risk. Seo Jihyeok had approached opponents from behind, strangled them with a garrote, and slit their throats without difficulty.

Since most men were between 170 and 185 centimeters tall, Seo Jihyeok, at 196 centimeters, had little trouble killing someone with a knife. He would embrace them from behind and cover their mouth, quickly cut the carotid artery, then briefly lift their body to prevent them from kicking something or making noise while collapsing. Once they had lost consciousness completely, he would quietly lower them to the floor.

During that process, they might kick him in the calf or thigh, try to counterattack, or attempt to scream, but such situations never lasted long. Most people lost consciousness within around thirty seconds.

It was even easier if they weren’t carrying something on their back or wearing protective equipment. There was no need to go through the trouble of cutting the throat; he could simply stab them in the back.

As Seo Jihyeok listened to how a smaller person could use a knife efficiently and overcome the difference in height, he admired it inwardly. Ordinary mercenaries might know such tricks, but they would use them only for themselves in the field rather than teach them in a class like this.

The trainees who had initially entered Baek Aeyeong’s class laughing and chatting, listening inattentively, became more serious and diligent as time passed. It was as though they believed they would never be able to attend a class like this again, no matter where they went. Although recording and taking notes were impossible, requiring them to memorize everything on the spot, the trainees’ eyes shone with passion and intelligence.

At Baek Aeyeong’s command, all the trainees put on the protective gloves laid out in front of them. Fortunately, the mannequin portion of the lesson seemed to be over. Seo Jihyeok picked up the T-shirt he had taken off and put it on at lightning speed. It had been better when the trainees were holding fake plastic knives. Seeing them wielding actual blades made Seo Jihyeok feel as though a headache he hadn’t even had before was coming on.

Baek Aeyeong emphasized practical training. They had to try stabbing something themselves. She was right. Stabbing a watermelon and stabbing a person were completely different, but once they tried stabbing anything, it would probably be easier the next time. They would also learn how little strength they had in their arms.

“Never walk while holding a knife! I’ll say it again: never walk with a knife in your hand! Why shouldn’t you walk while holding a knife?”

At Baek Aeyeong’s question, the trainees shouted in unison,

“Because we could slip and get hurt!”

The round, smooth watermelons began to fill with countless tiny holes, which soon turned them into honeycombs. The knives were driven vertically into the watermelons, then horizontally. They made shallow cuts, then deep ones.

Red, sweet juice poured from the watermelons and pooled on the tables before spilling onto the floor. The savagery and cruelty of the trainees, concealed as though it did not exist beneath repeated conditioning and education, was all poured out upon the watermelons.

Seo Jihyeok watched the red liquid and tissue falling onto the waterproof sheets Baek Aeyeong had spread across the floor, keeping an eye on the trainees to make sure no accident occurred because someone lacked strength in their wrists or had too much of it.

A knife was driven deep into a watermelon. Baek Aeyeong taught them how to retrieve it even if they had to force it, as well as how to give up entirely and leave it embedded. If the opponent acted threateningly, it was better not to try to retrieve the knife, but to run away. These knives were consumables anyway, costing less than thirty thousand won. Besides, if someone attacked with a knife tried to chase after the trainee, the more they ran, the worse the bleeding would become.

You only had to stab properly once. There was no need to stab two or three times. One good attack was enough to incapacitate someone immediately. If they weren’t incapacitated, stab harder and run.

Baek Aeyeong watched the trainees, who were sweating all over and gasping for breath from swinging their knives. Class was almost over. She instructed the trainees to put down their knives and remove their gloves, then said,

“Please use what I’ve taught you only for slaughtering pigs. There are far too many talking pigs in this world, and it’s far too dangerous a place for people to live. I hope this class never proves useful to you for the rest of your lives, but if the need arises, don’t hesitate. Remember that becoming a criminal and spending a few years in prison is better than living your whole life with a terrible memory. Next, I’ll tell you how to dispose of pork. The easiest way is to make a liquid called a pork-dissolving cocktail and pour it over the meat. It doesn’t hurt to memorize one cocktail in your life. I’ll recite it, so memorize it. Ah. Under no circumstances should you bury pork in a deserted mountain or field. It gives off heat as it decomposes, and it can all be found. That doesn’t mean you can throw it into a river or the sea, either. The police can easily search depths of around twenty meters. And don’t leave fingerprints before throwing it into the sea. Seawater doesn’t erase fingerprints.”

Baek Aeyeong also mentioned several reputable knife retailers as a final note. The trainees who had butchered the watermelons accepted Baek Aeyeong’s information while breathing heavily.

Class was over, and it was time to create the evidence. Four of the five trainees refused to take a watermelon to their rooms. Some of them didn’t eat watermelon, either. Seo Jihyeok cut up four watermelons into more than forty pieces. He divided them between two large trays and only had to take the central elevator once to get downstairs, but by the time he reached Baekho Building, less than half remained.

Everyone they met greeted them once, then their hands began creeping toward the trays. Each person took a piece of watermelon. Seo Jihyeok had expected the watermelons not to sell particularly well, so he was surprised at how quickly they disappeared.

As it turned out, all eight countries at the North Pacific Undersea Base lived on watermelon. These bastards weren’t starving, so why were they eating like they hadn’t seen food in years? As soon as he came down the stairs of the dormitory, some Russians who looked as though they had just woken up made off with half a watermelon. Apparently Russians ate watermelon too. That was something he’d learned for the first time.

When he entered his room, freshly laundered clothes were piled haphazardly in his laundry basket. It seemed the team leader had run his own laundry and put Seo Jihyeok’s clothes through the washer and dryer as well. Seo Jihyeok shouted toward Shin Haeryang’s room, telling him to come eat watermelon, but there was no sign of him, as though he weren’t in the room. Seo-in poked her head out and ate two pieces.

“My stomach hurts.”

“Are you allergic to watermelon?”

“No, but...”

“Do you need painkillers?”

“No.”

“Go see a doctor.”

“I don’t want to.”

“A hospital isn’t somewhere you can simply avoid because you don’t want to go. Go to the hospital.”

Baek Aeyeong only came down to the undersea base after cleaning the classroom. One watermelon went to Wang Wei as payment for borrowing his whetstone.

Side Story. Knife Fighting (5)

Seo Jihyeok offered the tray of watermelon to Lee Jihyeon when she returned after changing clothes. Lee Jihyeon, who had spent a long time stabbing watermelons, shook her head and refused. She seemed too exhausted to have an appetite. Shin Haeryang arrived late, picked up a piece of watermelon from the tray, and asked Baek Aeyeong,

“Did the class go well?”

“Yes. It ended without incident.”

Shin Haeryang devoured the piece of watermelon in an instant, picked up another, and said,

“I mentioned this once before, but starting next week, Daehan Island will be opened to civilians.”

Seo-in raised one corner of her mouth and said,

“Why would civilians come all the way here?”

“It seems they want to turn Daehan Island and the undersea base into tourist attractions.”

At those words, Seo Jihyeok frowned and said.

“Sightseeing, my ass. This is a place where they drill for oil and natural gas. There are plenty of restricted areas, and it’s dangerous. There are lots of crazies, too. The researchers here are holed up in the research center every day, but I don’t even know what they’re researching.”

At Seo Ji-hyeok’s final remark, Baek Ae-yeong clicked her tongue and said,

“That’s because you’re stupid.”

“They might mistake you for an octopus or squid, catch you, and use you for experiments.”

When Seo Ji-hyeok said this as though he was looking forward to it, Baek Ae-yeong snorted.

“There’s nobody here less interested in people than the researchers.”

Baek Ae-yeong spun the plastic knife they had used in class around in her hand as if she were playing with it. When Lee Ji-hyeon stared at her, Baek Ae-yeong naturally handed him the knife. Lee Ji-hyeon could not even make it turn halfway with his hand before flinging it onto the floor. He asked Shin Hae-ryang, who had picked up the knife by his feet,

“Are there any civilians coming from Korea?”

“Other than Su-hyeok asking if he could come here with his family during his vacation, no.”

“Here? That guy who flies the helicopter? With perfectly good Hawaii right next door? There are so many great tourist destinations in the world. Jeju Island, Cancun, Hua Hin, Saipan, Da Nang… Did they all go out of business?”

Seo In spoke as if utterly dumbfounded. Seo Ji-hyeok scratched over the places the plastic knives had scraped across his clothes and said,

“Team Leader. Tell the story in a little more detail. A lot more detail.”

Shin Hae-ryang slowly demonstrated how to roll the plastic knife around with his hand to Lee Ji-hyeon. Lee Ji-hyeon took the knife and tried to imitate him, but dropped it on the floor again.

“He said he wanted to spend about a day sightseeing before heading to Hawaii. He also asked how to get a job here.”

“Here?”

Seo In asked with a stiff expression. Seo Ji-hyeok picked up the knife that had fallen by his feet and handed it to Lee Ji-hyeon as he said,

“I heard he made some kind of Oath of the Peach Garden with the helicopter, swearing to live and die alongside it. Did the helicopter break down or something? Or did he have a fight with that guy who flies it with him, Kim Su-ho or whatever his name is?”

“I mentioned before that we’re constantly hiring because the undersea base is short on personnel. Seems Su-hyeok’s older sister wants to join.”

“The older sister who quit boxing and supposedly goes around repairing pipes? What did you tell her about the undersea base?”

“The truth.”

Seo Ji-hyeok would never recommend working at the undersea base to women living in Korea. Security at the undersea base was better than in Russia, but slightly worse than in Canada. In other words, people were not dying one every twenty minutes, and while the place appeared to be free of racism, it did exist. Theft and assault occurred frequently in places no one could see. Since the police never investigated anything, the base appeared safe on the surface, but in many cases the victims simply had to swallow their resentment.

As far as Seo Ji-hyeok could remember, Lee Ji-hyeon had lost his phone twice not long after joining. The first time, some bastard had snatched the phone right out of his hand less than a week after he started work and run off. Seo Ji-hyeok could have caught him if he had chased after him, but he gave up for Lee Ji-hyeon’s safety and stayed by his side instead. When he told Michael Roaker about it, the man had said things like, “That’s never happened to me. Aren’t you exaggerating? What a ridiculous story.” From that moment on, Seo Ji-hyeok began compiling a list of the undersea base’s nuclear-waste humans in his head, placing Michael Roaker near the very top.

The second time, the phone was stolen from his pocket. Lee Ji-hyeon said he had never imagined someone would put a hand inside his outer clothing and take it. He was right. In Korea, something like that almost never happened. He and Shin Hae-ryang had searched together and found the culprit an hour later. Inside the thief’s room, they found every kind of game console, electronic device, tablet, and more than thirty cell phones. Once everything was confiscated, the bastard must have lost his mind, because he started screaming and spewing verbal shit. He had said things like, “That stupid bitch didn’t even know who snatched her phone, so she deserved to lose it,” and wound up losing a front tooth to a fist. According to Shin Hae-ryang, the nearest dentist was in Hawaii, so he would have quite a time getting treatment.

Seo In checked the phones once, and they were all returned to their owners. More than half of them had already given up on their stolen phones and bought new ones. They were extremely surprised to have their phones returned free of charge. Apparently, that thief had previously either demanded money before returning them or sold them elsewhere. Because of this incident, Lee Ji-hyeon judged that Koreans’ reputation at the undersea base would improve a little. He seemed to think people would be grateful. Instead, rumors spread that the Koreans were accomplices of the thief, that they had assaulted someone over nothing more than petty theft, or that Koreans were spineless. Attempts to snatch the necklace from Lee Ji-hyeon’s neck or steal Lee Seo In’s laptop increased noticeably.

One night, Shin Hae-ryang left the room saying he was going for a short walk. He went around punching people who had been particularly hostile toward the team, wearing an unwilling expression all the while. Since he announced his name and beat them like a gangster while shouting, “Don’t mess with Koreans,” no one openly attempted to rob them anymore.

While living at the undersea base, Seo Ji-hyeok had one modest wish: after the helicopter dropped off the deliveries and left, he wanted the packages to still be there when he went to collect them after work. The Na engineering team had once had all their deliveries stolen, and the people at the undersea base had been using their belongings right in front of them, as though deliberately mocking them. The members of the Na engineering team had timidly asked for their things back, but all they received in response were remarks like, “Do you have proof they’re yours?” and, “If you leave things in a place anyone can take them from, doesn’t that mean anyone’s allowed to pick them up?” It became an everyday occurrence for them to go out personally to retrieve their belongings whenever a ship or helicopter came in, or to bring someone along with them. It was a place with absolutely no social trust, yet there were far too many people who accepted—or even enjoyed—such a low-trust society as though it were perfectly normal.

If Shin Hae-ryang had told the truth, he would have described the undersea base exactly as it was, without hiding a thing. After hearing how utterly screwed-up the situation was, wouldn’t she decide not to apply at all? Seo Ji-hyeok was going crazy trying to divide the work of seven people among five, so part of him desperately wanted anyone at all to join. At the same time, he hoped that Kang Su-hyeok’s sister would not have to suffer horribly in this wretched place.

Please. I wish some big, strapping bastard of a man would join us. Whoever the crazy bastard was, as long as he didn’t quit, Seo Ji-hyeok intended to take good care of him in his own way. Let’s roll around in this shit field together. You’re always soaked in seawater, the work is brutally hard, and something breaks every day, but I’ll make sure you stay alive. I can’t promise anything else.

“She’s applying?”

“I told her to apply if she had the guts.”

“Who would apply after hearing that? At a time like this, you should be lying that it’s an island flowing with milk and honey, not saying things like that.”

“Who knows? Maybe she has guts.”

Shin Hae-ryang gave a faint smile, placed the rind of the watermelon he had finished eating on the tray, and said,

“She asked if it would be all right to mention my name in the interview and say she knew me. I told her it would be much better if we were strangers.”

It seemed the people in Korea were desperate to get Shin Hae-ryang fired. The people he beat kept filing complaints in English to Korea, saying that he was a madman. How dare some lowly contract worker beat up an employee from another country? If Shin Hae-ryang’s contract was not renewed, there was a high chance he would leave before Baek Ae-yeong or Seo Ji-hyeok. Someone who knew Shin Hae-ryang applying for a job here? She would be rejected the moment she entered the interview. After Lee Ji-hyeon dropped the knife about five times, Baek Ae-yeong picked it up, performed an acrobatic trick with it in her hand, and asked,

“What does she plan to do while she’s here?”

“She said she wanted to look around Daehan and try some marine sports.”

“Oh. Then we should show her around. Team Leader, do you think this place will become a famous tourist destination?”

“Maybe they’ll open it up as far as the Second Undersea Base someday. I doubt I’ll still be here by then, though.”

The watermelon, which had only consisted of eight slices, disappeared in an instant once Shin Hae-ryang joined them. When Seo Ji-hyeok returned after taking the tray back, Shin Hae-ryang, wearing a navy hoodie, said,

“I’m going for a walk. Stay put.”

Seo Ji-hyeok waved him off, since they were planning to attend the home haircut class or whatever Seo In had signed them up for. A Black man appeared in class holding a single pair of hair clippers and singing cheerfully, but he looked startled when he saw the classroom packed with students. He seemed flustered because most of the students taking the class were women.

The women with shaggy hair stared at him like hawks preparing for a hunt, intimidating him. After a brief silence, he spoke honestly. He had only ever diligently shaved Black men’s hair. With men, it did not matter what their heads looked like after he finished shaving them; as long as he took their money and chased them out of the barbershop, there was no problem. He was a terrible barber and could not handle the resentment that would come after shaving women’s hair with this one pair of clippers, so he advised anyone who did not mind becoming bald to remain in the classroom. The students poured into the classroom like a rising tide, then rushed out like an ebbing tide. Seo Ji-hyeok also hurried out after Lee Seo In.

Back in the room, Lee Seo In found the video with the highest rating on the internet and used hairdressing scissors on his own hair, treating it like a lesson. His bangs, which had grown down to his nose, became fairly neat. He then gave Seo Ji-hyeok a quick, rough lesson on how to cut hair. Lee Seo In told him to hold the scissors vertically and cut a little at a time. Seo Ji-hyeok did as instructed, only to find that more than half his bangs had disappeared. Did the scissors eat hair as well? He brought the scissors to the rest of his hair in an attempt to make the overall length even, and although he knew he had ruined it, he could not stop cutting.

When Seo In saw Seo Ji-hyeok’s bangs, he rolled around laughing like a madman and said things like, “Looks like you were born under an unlucky star.” No matter how Seo Ji-hyeok combed his hair this way and that, there was no way to save the missing bangs. Covering his forehead with one hand, Seo Ji-hyeok sighed and knocked on Baek Ae-yeong’s door.

“Hey, Baek Ae-yeong. Lend me a hat.”

“No. Go buy one at the store.”

“All the hats there look weird. Just lend me any hat until my delivery arrives. You have a lot of hats. You don’t have ten heads, so what are you going to do with more than ten hats?”

“Why! I said no—Whoa. That’s really ugly. Wahahahahahaha! What is that? I’ll sell you a hat for ten thousand won out of pity!”

Seo Ji-hyeok decided to become one with the yellow baseball cap for the rest of his life. No one could make him take it off. No one. Not a single person. Even if some being called God were to return to the world as its savior, he still would not be able to take this hat off.

Lee Ji-hyeon came out of his room after hearing Baek Ae-yeong and Lee Seo In laughing. After hearing what had happened, he asked Seo Ji-hyeok, who was lying on the bed on his side in despair,

“I heard you ruined your hair. Can I see?”

“……Yeah.”

Lee Ji-hyeon took off Seo Ji-hyeok’s hat and looked at his bangs, then laughed, “Hahahaha,” before putting the hat back on him.

“It’ll grow back. It’s cute.”

At those utterly innocent words from Lee Ji-hyeon, Seo Ji-hyeok imagined ending his mercenary life, going through a long courtship, proposing, getting married, honeymooning, and eventually building a warm, dazzling family in a thirty-pyeong apartment with two children. Then he hurriedly beat the hell out of his own imagination.

Get a grip, you bastard. You’re on duty. She’s the civilian you’re protecting!

There was no shortage of mercenaries who died screaming in their twenties and thirties. In particular, the number of them who got themselves lovers and then irresponsibly dropped dead was impossible to count. Looking at the ashes and corpses he had once taken care of, Seo Ji-hyeok had made a vow. I’m not going to live like that. I’m not going to die saying things like, “I’ll propose when this operation ends,” “I’m going to get married,” or “My kid is two years old.”

It varied depending on their age, but they began suffering minor injuries in their twenties, and by their thirties they were already a complete mess. Men in their forties were practically cyborgs. When those cyborgs died and were cremated, screws, bullets, and metal pins embedded in their bodies would come tumbling out. Gathered together, there was almost more than a handful. Of course, they had to survive that long before they could have screws in their bodies at all.

Even staying alive and apparently well was a problem. There was no counting the number of men who looked fine on the outside but were constantly groaning in pain. After difficult operations, more men than one could count on both hands suffered ruptured spinal disks, and once their muscles began to waste away, they would complain that their injuries hurt, moan about dying, and easily fall into drug or alcohol addiction. Many failed to adapt to their new jobs, wandered for several years, and eventually returned to the mercenary life. Either retire early—or stay in it until death.

Many had ruined their hearing from explosions and gunshots, while quite a few had brains addled by concussions or suffered mental illnesses after seeing too many horrific sights. More than one or two had been shot in the groin and were left with only a single testicle. There were also plenty who had committed countless crimes in other countries but had clean records in the country where they wanted to live. Those men always said they wanted a stable family and wished to get married. They wanted to hide their flaws thoroughly and survive the rest of their lives by feeding on the blood and souls of women who knew nothing. I’m not going to live like that. Lee Jihyun mustn’t get involved with someone like me.

Seo Jihyeok pressed down his hat and asked,

“Does my hair look funny?”

“Next time, make sure you go to a salon and get it cut.”

Shin Haeryang made a circuit of the undersea base, found Kim Uju’s stolen wallet and phone, and returned. Then he saw Seo Jihyeok’s hair and stared at him silently, mouth agape, as though he had witnessed some strange creature. Seo Jihyeok would have been less hurt if Shin Haeryang had simply laughed.

Shin Haeryang sent the phone and wallet to their owner by courier, then, following the students’ requests, held another self-defense class. Fortunately, one man joined the class of ten. He was an employee of Engineering Team Four, and he had intended to record the video and sell it. Instead, he was slammed into the mat about thirty times in Seo Jihyeok’s place and ended up hospitalized. He lodged a formal complaint through Michael, and when that complaint was accepted, the self-defense class was permanently discontinued.

Side Story: The Moth to the Flame (1)

When Kim Jaehee first visited a shaman’s house, dragged there by his parents, it was around thirty days after his brother’s funeral had ended. During that time, Kim Jaehee had made two suicide attempts and spent ten days in a locked psychiatric ward.

The moment Kim Jaehee stepped into the shrine, he felt as though the incense smoke would suffocate him. As soon as he smelled it, he frowned and thought of his lungs and bronchial tubes. There had been one other survivor of the theater fire, but he had suffered breathing difficulties from tracheal stenosis caused by inhaling smoke and eventually died in agony. Kim Jaehee, too, had sustained damage to his bronchial tubes and was constantly coughing, while sinusitis had him living with tissues in hand. He had only just begun to recover after a month, but damaged lungs never fully recovered. There was nothing he could do except manage them so they would not deteriorate further. Forced to exercise for the sake of survival, Kim Jaehee listened to the doctor’s admonitions and thought, Is managing myself so I don’t get worse what my life is going to be? Why can’t I ever get better?

The shaman he finally managed to meet while enduring his cough and headache was merely an ordinary middle-aged woman wearing heavy makeup and an old-fashioned hanbok. Kim Jaehee found the shrine’s gaudy, multicolored design fascinating. How badly must someone’s brain be malfunctioning for them to develop such atrocious aesthetic sense? Looking around the shrine, Kim Jaehee first wondered whether no one had ever offered the shaman advice about interior design. The shaman demanded that his parents provide every bit of personal information about him, then said she would ask her spirit and began shaking a bell.

Listening blankly to the bell in the shaman’s hand, Kim Jaehee thought, My nose hurts, and my mouth hurts, and now coming here has made my eyes and ears hurt too.

The result of taking their apparently insane second son to a famous shaman was that they needed to hold a gut ritual. The spirit of their eldest son, who had burned to death not long ago, had supposedly been unable to attain release and had attached itself to the second son. The shaman said that they needed a talisman to ward off the Three Calamities and Eight Hardships, and that a Jinogi gut ritual had to be performed to send the eldest son’s dead spirit to the Western Paradise. The moment he heard this, Kim Jaehee burst out laughing. The second son shook his entire body and laughed like a madman until a fit of coughing brought his laughter to an end. Then he said to his parents,

“You actually believe this nonsense?”

They did. His parents trusted the words of a shaman, an expert on the afterlife, more than the hallucinations their second son had been seeing all this time. Even before the gut ritual began, Kim Jaehee could smell the fraud on the shaman. It was less nauseating than the smell of burning corpses, but just as acrid as incense. He had at least tried to dissuade his parents, thinking he would play the part of a good son in place of the dead eldest, but it was useless. Watching the shaman pretend that his brother had possessed her body during the ritual, Kim Jaehee laughed uproariously as if he were watching a third-rate play.

“Did you see her just twisting her body around while she acted? ‘Jaehee, you’re all right now.’ Ha-ha. That’s hilarious. My brother always begged to be saved at the end. He said he didn’t want to die like that.”

Kim Jaehee had held on to a faint hope that the shamanic faith he had never encountered before might somehow work, but he was disappointed yet again. In his dreams, he was always in a theater with the others, red and hot and impossible to see through because of the smoke. People rushed out in an attempt to survive, made the wrong choices, and burned fiercely like candles, or quietly suffocated to death in the smoke. Whether they were kind and good or ruthless and selfish, the result was the same. Crawling across the floor toward those who had collapsed, Kim Jaehee said, “If I do it again, I can do better. I’ll find a way.”

The result had been predetermined. Despite spending a fortune on the gut ritual, nothing changed.

“I’m not crazy. Wouldn’t it be a good thing if my brother attached himself to me? And you said the Jinogi gut ended successfully, but I’m not even sure whether my brother left. He keeps appearing in my dreams, burned to death. Why did you give that fraud so much money?”

Looking at his bandaged hand, Kim Jaehee thought, If I’d fallen at an angle only three centimeters different, it would have been my neck that broke instead of my fingers. But I survived, so there’s nothing to be done.

Kim Jaehee could no longer remember what his personality had been like before he entered the theater with his brother to watch a movie. According to his friends and parents, he had been playful but positive, shrewd yet kind. The more he heard, the more alienated he felt from that description. If someone had died and come back to life more than thirty times, wouldn’t it be natural for his personality to change? Or perhaps, as the doctors had said, he had inhaled too much smoke and his brain had been ruined by carbon monoxide.

With the three fingers remaining on his right hand, Kim Jaehee grabbed the shaman by the collar and shook her, demanding a refund because he had not received the results he had paid for. Or else she could provide after-sales service. He had spent tens of millions of won. The Kim Jaehee of the past would never have done anything like this.

Either summon his brother properly, send him away properly, send Kim Jaehee back to the past, or return his money. Wasn’t she obligated to do at least one of the four properly? Making a scene, Kim Jaehee kicked in the shrine’s door after they had thrown him out and shut it in his face, smashing it to pieces with his titanium leg.

When the cheap plywood door split in two, he marched inside as though it were his own house, kicking each dish laid out on the ritual table and sending it tumbling to the floor. Then he perched on the table and punched the ugly Buddhist paintings hanging on the walls. The shaman screamed furiously at the back of Kim Jaehee’s head. She had smiled so broadly when accepting his cash. By the time the statue of some man called General this or that was rolling across the floor alongside the rice, Kim Jaehee had been seized by several large men he had never seen before, showered with a measure of salt, and thrown out onto the street.

For a month, Kim Jaehee diligently loitered around the shaman’s house, turning away anyone who tried to enter, carrying a banner that read [This Shaman Is a Fraud], or making leaflets for the purpose of public-interest reporting and handing them out to people who came for fortune-telling—or scattering fistfuls of them across the street. Whenever the shaman shouted that he was obstructing her business and would suffer Heaven’s punishment, Kim Jaehee brought a loudspeaker and shouted even louder that he would sue her for fraud.

When his throat, not yet healed from the fire smoke, hurt too much to shout, he sobbed into the loudspeaker—heh, heh, heh—like the unjustly killed ghost of someone who had died a sudden death. The expensive loudspeaker he had bought was powerful enough that Kim Jaehee’s sobbing could be heard even a kilometer away. People walking through the alley would come for a fortune reading, then get gooseflesh at the sound of Kim Jaehee crying and hurry away. Whenever he sensed the police approaching, Kim Jaehee fled like a shot, then returned with his loudspeaker as soon as they were gone.

“You thought I’d left, didn’t you? I’m not going anywhere. The living are much scarier and more persistent than earthbound spirits.”

When people who had come to the shaman’s alley for fortune-telling, unable to overcome their curiosity, asked what had happened, Kim Jaehee wailed and mourned, crying that he had lost his leg because of the shaman, lost his fingers, lost his head, and lost his brother. Had the shaman heard him, it would have been a tale both absurd and outrageous. As Kim Jaehee caused a commotion in the shamanic district every single day without fail, complaints began coming in from the other shamans, and every customer stopped visiting the house. The shaman could no longer pretend not to notice. At last, she realized that Kim Jaehee had lost too much to back down before getting what he wanted.

Kim Jaehee spent hours singing Christmas carols at the entrance in a shrill voice—“Jingle bell! Jingle bell! Jingle all the way!”—until the shaman could bear it no longer and burst out in disgust. The shaman cursed him as a wicked thing, a vicious thing, someone who would suffer Heaven’s punishment and be struck dead by lightning, then offered a second-best solution: she could not give him a refund, but she would perform another gut ritual for him. Kim Jaehee considered it briefly, then handed her the loudspeaker and accepted.

And so the gut ritual was held again. Kim Jaehee stared at the shaman performing the ritual, shaking her fan and bell, his eyes empty of spirit. Unlike before, two more shamans had come for the after-sales ritual. Does a gut go better when there are more shamans? There had not been a single musician the first time, but now there were two. The number of dishes on the ritual table had changed as well. Once again, that fellow claiming to be his brother possessed the shaman’s body. Just as he had said before, the spirit stubbornly refused to leave, crying, “Save me! I don’t want to die!”

The shaman worked desperately to soothe his brother’s spirit, sweat pouring from her entire body like rain, while his parents sobbed at the sight. Kim Jaehee did not cry. Just as he had coldly watched his brother’s back as he abandoned Kim Jaehee and ran out alone, he calmly observed everything taking place during the ritual.

The gut ritual held in the mountains took even longer than the first one, but they said it had ended successfully. In an exhausted voice, the shaman told Kim Jaehee’s family never to come back again.

Hoping that the after-sales service had been properly carried out, Kim Jaehee went to bed in a cheerful mood, carrying a sliver of expectation. But, as expected, his brother appeared in the dream, well-done from the flames. The people in the theater screamed at the top of their lungs, playing an orchestra with their shrieks, while the theater and concession stand, brightly lit by the fire, reeked of burning food, melting rubber, and roasting people. On the screen, the same movie he had watched so many times played again, and everyone who had melted in the fire or suffocated in the smoke glared at Kim Jaehee in unison.

“Jaehee. I’m so scared. I’m sorry.”

One of the charred figures spoke to him. His brother. Was this ritual just as useless?

Kim Jaehee received after-sales service three times in total. In the end, the shaman refunded him, begging him to take the money, saying it was the first refund she had ever issued in her life as a shaman. Kim Jaehee nodded and said,

“Everyone has a first time. How does it feel to lose both your legs?”

Kim Jaehee tried to return every penny he had received from the shaman to his parents, but they refused to take it. His parents, who had been forced to participate in the third gut ritual, seemed to believe that their second son had gone completely mad. Listening to the stream of verbal abuse, Kim Jaehee neither denied it nor protested. He simply nodded. After that, he never returned home.

From then on, Kim Jaehee consulted ten spiritual diviners, had his tarot cards read ten times, and had his saju read six times. He received refunds for most of them. He had made an appointment two months in advance to meet a shaman who had only recently received her divine calling, and drove four hours to see her, but she failed to get a single thing right. There were more than 700,000 diviners and shamans in this cramped little country. Unified Korea had a population of 70 million, meaning one person in every hundred was a fraud. Was there really not a single one of them who was any good?

Strangely, the shaman’s shrine he visited today did not ask for his date of birth. She only asked his name for the sake of conversation, then quietly stared at Kim Jaehee. The female shaman, dressed in a hanbok, spoke.

“Lady Kim Jaehee, the spirits say you’ve suffered greatly throughout your life.”

How many people in Korea had lived carefree lives without hardship or worry? Most shamans were experts at cold reading and gaslighting, seasoned con artists. Some even stalked people’s social media or hired others to investigate their backgrounds. Kim Jaehee gave a halfhearted nod at the shaman’s words and replied.

“That’s right. I’ve suffered a lot.”

The shaman’s eyes lingered on the earrings Kim Jaehee was wearing and on the white hair hidden beneath her beanie before she spoke again.

“You’ve lived your life like a moth flying into a flame.”

“That’s true too. I burned fiercely in the fire.”

“Last year was very difficult, wasn’t it? The spirits say things will be all right starting this year.”

Kim Jaehee nodded without any expectations. Who knew? If that so-called spirit had even the slightest bit of sense, it wouldn’t be saying things like that.

“Really? When this year did it say things would get better?”

“Just a moment. At least… it says things won’t improve until after summer. What would you like to know?”

“I got a job recently. I was wondering if it’s all right for me to keep working there. I want to know whether I’ll be able to do the work well, whether I’ll get along with the people at work, things like that.”

“Where did you get hired?”

Did your stupid spirit not know that either? Kim Jaehee swallowed the answer that had risen to her throat. She had already been pelted with salt and thrown out by countless shamans. She had even made two con-artist shamans cry right in front of her, to the point that their spirit-daughters and spirit-sons had fled after witnessing the scene.

Extra Story. The Moth (2)

Kim Jaehee had once shouted back in informal speech at a shaman who had berated her in informal speech the moment she entered, cursing each other’s looks and character before walking out. On another occasion, she had sat silently before a shaman and engaged in nothing but a staring contest for ten minutes. When the shaman finally asked why she had come, Kim Jaehee had snapped that she couldn’t even guess that much and still called herself a shaman before leaving in irritation. She was about to tell the woman in front of her to figure out where she had gotten hired on her own, but she suppressed her temper. Then, with a sigh pulled up from the depths of her lungs, she answered.

“It’s a small franchise café. They said they need someone to work short-term while they repair a broken machine.”

The shaman stared at Kim Jaehee with an ambiguous expression before speaking.

“Hmm. A café… A café is fine. You’ll get along well there. The spirits say you should work somewhere with a lot of water.”

Kim Jaehee nodded absentmindedly. Work somewhere with a lot of water? Shamans like this always spoke vaguely. They never clearly said where to go or what to do. Get a cleaning job at a swimming pool. Get a job as a scrubber at a public bathhouse. Join the Korea Water Resources Corporation. Wash dishes nonstop at a restaurant. Board an illegal deep-sea fishing vessel. There were countless jobs related to water in this world. Besides, these days, there were hardly any workplaces without a water purifier and a bathroom.

“What location did the spirits say would be good?”

Incheon, perhaps, or Suwon. Mississippi, perhaps. Arkansas, perhaps. There were countless place names associated with water, too.

“Ah, no. They just said somewhere with a lot of water. And the spirits say you shouldn’t drink alcohol.”

“I don’t drink.”

“They say you shouldn’t smoke.”

“I don’t smoke.”

“They say you should… exer, exercise.”

“I exercise five times a week.”

“……”

“They also say you shouldn’t do drugs.”

“I’ve never done that.”

The shaman seemed flustered by Kim Jaehee’s firm voice. Sweat visibly gathered on her forehead. Is that it? When Kim Jaehee merely stared at her in silence, the shaman began sweating profusely as she shook her bells for a long time without saying a word. Then she stopped and spoke.

“The spirits say your life is very lonely.”

What on earth could this shaman get right? Since she couldn’t guess anything, was she resorting to cursing her? There was no one in this world who was never lonely. That was why people made friends, dated, got married, had children, and brought animals into their homes—to escape that feeling. No matter how desperately they struggled to cast off their loneliness, in the end, they entered the grave alone. That was why, in the past, people had been buried alive alongside the dead in groups of six.

Kim Jaehee thought she might not be lonely until the moment she died. In her dreams, all sorts of people jostled and crowded around, each trying to emerge.

“Your saju indicates a lonely life. You’ll receive love, but your life will be lonely. You won’t have anyone around you whom you can truly trust. Still, you’ll benefit from the help of a benefactor.”

“A benefactor? Who is that?”

“You’ll meet them as you go through life. That benefactor will help you a great deal.”

In the course of a lifetime, even the vilest villain in the world would probably meet one decent person at least once. Was this what she considered fortune-telling?

“Really? Will that person at least lend me a huge amount of money?”

Or did they possess the ability to go back into the past and bring the dead back to life? At Kim Jaehee’s question, the shaman became flustered, her eyes darting from side to side.

“The spi, spirits didn’t tell me that much.”

“Is the benefactor a woman?”

“I, I don’t know.”

“A man?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are they good-looking?”

The shaman, faced with Kim Jaehee’s outlandish question, was literally at a loss for what to do. She barely managed to answer.

“I don’t know.”

“Then what does that spirit actually know?”

“……”

Kim Jaehee could not endure it any longer. The shaman, who had received her spiritual calling only nine days ago, was sweating so heavily while reading the fortune that it was literally pouring off her like rain. Kim Jaehee’s parents had reclaimed the eldest son’s car that Kim Jaehee had been driving. The designated driver had parked it in a no-parking zone, and the fine had been sent to their house.

To reach this shaman’s shrine, buried in the countryside, Kim Jaehee had spent three hours on a train and another hour on a bus, then paid fifty thousand won for a taxi. It was an extremely remote rural area with nothing but bamboo groves nearby, and she had come so far that even the taxi driver had complained irritably about not wanting to drive such a long distance. Having come all this way, she couldn’t return without getting anything out of it. Kim Jaehee sighed loudly enough for the shaman to hear and said, “Haa.”

“When am I supposed to meet this benefactor?”

“I know this! The spirits said they’ll help you when you’re at your lowest, when things are most difficult. You need to accommodate the benefactor well.”

“Really? Right now, I find it incredibly difficult even to stay alive and breathe.”

“Please endure just a little longer. Better days will come.”

“I don’t think I can endure any longer. Are you saying they’ll leave me to languish conspicuously, then only help me when I’m gasping for breath and about to die? What a splendid benefactor. …If I hang myself from the entrance here at dawn tomorrow, around what time will this benefactor come to help me?”

Faced with Kim Jaehee’s wild-eyed, realistic threat, the shaman looked as if she were about to cry. She gripped her bells so tightly it was as if they were her lifeline. Or perhaps she was preparing to suddenly smack Kim Jaehee with them. Seeing that, Kim Jaehee frowned, then gave up on pressing her further and asked something else.

“Will I make a lot of money in my life?”

The shaman’s face brightened as if she had been waiting for precisely that question.

“What? Yes! The spirits say you were born clutching the food you would eat in your own hands! You’ll never have to worry about making a living. But you have to work hard! Money will come in proportion to your efforts. If you don’t make any effort, no money will come in. You were born under a fate that makes you loved by everyone. Whatever you work for, you’ll somehow achieve.”

Kim Jaehee wondered whether this shaman had ever told anyone, “You were born fated to be a beggar. You came into the world with your rice bowl smashed to pieces. You’ll have to mooch off others for your entire life. Don’t make any effort from the beginning. You won’t accomplish anything anyway.”

Most shamans simply told their visitors a few vaguely pleasant things before irresponsibly sending them away. It wasn’t their life, after all. Otherwise, they threatened and frightened people into holding a gut ritual, removing a ghost, writing a talisman, or performing some kind of countermeasure. Only after twenty minutes had passed since entering the shrine did Kim Jaehee finally explain why she had come.

“…I want to bring the dead back to life.”

“That… would be impossible.”

“It was possible. It couldn’t have been a hallucination. There must surely be someone who knows. Out of eight billion people, wouldn’t at least one know exactly how to return to the past?”

The shaman met Kim Jaehee’s eyes, swallowed, and spoke in a tense voice.

“Ever since you came in, there’s been such a strong smell of burning that my head hurts. The spirits said you should stop clinging to the impossible and get yourself a proper job. They said you should stop doing strange things and meet good people. And they told you not to come to places like this again.”

“Why?”

“They said you shouldn’t waste money going around paying divination fees. Use it for transportation instead. And they specifically told me to send you away without accepting payment.”

“I have money. I withdrew three hundred thousand won in cash and brought it with me.”

“The spirits said that if I accepted your money, somehow, you would end up taking it back.”

Maybe she wasn’t entirely fake, after all. It had been worthwhile in its own way. For the first time since entering the shrine, Kim Jaehee smiled at the shaman.

“I came from very far away, but at least I don’t feel like I was completely scammed, so I’m in a decent mood.”

“Live a good life, Jaehee. Share a little with the people around you as you go.”

“…If everyone in the world becomes good, then I’ll live that way too.”

Kim Jaehee called for a taxi, but none would come for a normal fare. They said they needed to charge at least one hundred thousand won. The customer after the customer after Kim Jaehee overheard her phone conversation and became indignant, then offered to drive her into town himself, so she had to wait outside for an hour. Kim Jaehee absentmindedly watched the bamboo grove behind the shrine sway despite the lack of wind, then went for a walk there. Not far from the shrine stood a small Dragon God shrine. Kim Jaehee placed a five-hundred-won coin there and made a wish.

“Please save me. I’m so tired of living. If you don’t help me, the next time I come back, I’ll smash everything.”

There were already more than ten places Kim Jaehee had promised to destroy if they did not help her. Since she had nothing to lose by making threats, she badgered every mountain spirit, Dragon God, Jade Emperor, and other spirit to grant her wish.

After waiting, Kim Jaehee arrived in town and handed the person who had helped her one hundred thousand won. The person said they hadn’t done it for the money, that they had briefly worked as a taxi driver back in the day and that people like those drivers ruined the image of decent taxis, then took one look at Kim Jaehee’s legs and told her to go, saying they didn’t need the money. After thanking them, Kim Jaehee was on her way home when she encountered members of a cult while waiting for her train at the station.

“You have so many worries written across your face. Something bad must have happened to you recently.”

“Yes. Many times. Very many times.”

“What’s your name, young lady?”

“Kim Jaehee.”

“Where do you live?”

“Hell.”

“Oh, dear. You look young, but you must be going through a lot. We can help you.”

“Really? Can you help me?”

Kim Jaehee’s one hundred thousand won was practically coerced out of her by the cult members and offered on a strange ritual table. All of Kim Jaehee’s personal information was stolen, and she was only released after bowing several times to honor her ancestors’ virtues. After that day, Kim Jaehee stopped visiting fortune-tellers’ shrines. Instead, she began throwing herself into every religion she could find. There were more than five hundred religions in Korea alone. If even one of all those religions could explain the mystery she had experienced and send her back to the past, Kim Jaehee would become an ardent fanatic devoted solely to that religion.

For three months, Kim Jaehee met every ambitious cult leader and believer, as well as every person with some strange faith. She used any means necessary to do so. The cult leaders claimed they were saviors and gods who would save humanity, and that they possessed omnipotent powers. They claimed to have cured incurable diseases, made people who could not walk rise to their feet, restored sight to the blind, reattached severed fingers, and taught fluent English to people who did not even know the letter A. Some even claimed they could easily cure disabilities and bring the dead back to life. Kim Jaehee earnestly pleaded with every religious figure she met.

“Kill me and send me back to the past! To the scene of the fire back then!”

The charismatic cult leaders were reluctant to publicly execute Gim Jae-hui live in front of so many people. We’ll send you back to the past someday. But I’m a little busy right now. The passionate believer, filled with the desire to die and return to the past, could not help but feel disappointed as he watched his saviors run away at the decisive moment.

“Cowardly con-artist bastards.”

Gim Jae-hui cast aside his saviors with a cold gaze and a string of curses, then robbed the branch of every last bit of cash before fleeing. He took up membership in ten different cults, moving between them like a squid, until one day he returned home, lay down, and stopped moving. He had lived as a passionate young man who spent around twenty hours a day outside, but he suddenly shut down like an Android whose battery had died and did not set foot outside his home. As if this were the backlash of all his frantic running around, he lay motionless in bed.

Gim Jae-hui occasionally sobbed quietly while doing nothing but breathing, drinking water, and consuming electricity. When he got hungry, he picked up and ate whatever happened to be in the refrigerator. He did not wash, change his clothes, or sleep. His dreams were filled only with people burning to death or suffocating to death without making a sound. He did not even stretch. He did not want to leave the blankets, and even breathing felt like a chore.

His rent, electricity, water, and phone bills were automatically deducted from his bank account. Gim Jae-hui spent three months lying in his room and doing nothing. His muscles disappeared, his weight dropped, and his hair fell out, but he ignored it all. Even getting out of bed to go to the bathroom and then returning to bed was exhausting and difficult. He knew his body was deteriorating, but he did not particularly care. No one would come looking for him anyway.

Human relationships were built through effort. Since he made no effort at all, nothing remained. As soon as his friends heard the rumor that he had joined a cult, they immediately cut ties with him. After he changed his phone number six times, the last cult he had belonged to still tried contacting him by text and phone, but when he ignored them, they too stopped reaching out.

Gim Jae-hui scoured the internet like a ghost, roaming through every corner for nearly twenty hours a day. He searched for everything—urban legends, evil spirits, ghosts, hallucinations, life flashing before one’s eyes, the past, eyewitness accounts, fire scenes, fatal accidents, religion, salvation, poisonous gas, side effects, survivors—and actively joined every community he found, reading everything that came up in his searches. It was as if the body of the human being named Gim Jae-hui had shattered into pieces, leaving only his mind behind to live like a ghost on the internet for twenty to twenty-two hours a day. Sometimes his consciousness cut out. That was when he fell asleep. One day, after three months of living with only his phone in his hand, Gim Jae-hui discovered the Infinite Church that summer.

The Infinite Church seemed like a religion custom-made for Gim Jae-hui. From the moment he learned of its existence, he was so happy and delighted that he could hardly contain himself. I wasn’t crazy. Those loops weren’t hallucinations. After voraciously absorbing all the online information about the Infinite Church, Gim Jae-hui could not hide his excitement when he learned that it had a branch in Korea. He had not felt this happy since his older brother died.

Side Story. Moth to a Flame (3)

Gim Jae-hui wanted to attend a meeting at the Korean branch of the Infinite Church. A religion that could send him back to the past. The mere thought of becoming one of its believers filled him with joy. In reality, however, he had not left his bed for over three months except to go to the bathroom, and even going to the bathroom had become so physically taxing that he had to use a wheelchair or drag himself there with the strength of his arms.

He felt as though even stretching was something he needed permission from the world to do. His body, unwashed for over three months, was dirtier than if he had fallen into a sewer and climbed back out. The things left in his refrigerator were no different from Gim Jae-hui, who had been left to rot for three months. Every item of food inside was either rotting as it oozed black liquid or had established its own new ecosystem in order to survive. The onions, sweet potatoes, and potatoes had either rotted or sprouted. Gim Jae-hui was amazed that the radishes and carrots he had nibbled on bit by bit when hungry had managed to survive so intact without rotting.

Cult religions existed among people. Gim Jae-hui looked in a mirror for the first time in ages. Anyone would have taken him for a sick man. He had lost flesh, muscle, and hair all at once, and after living like a shut-in without sleeping, the skin beneath his eyes was black and his skin was flaky and parched. Every blood vessel in his eyes stood out, leaving them bloodshot, while his lips were all cracked and he was so thin that his clothes hung loosely from him. Even sitting in his wheelchair was exhausting. To top it off, his hair had turned white, making it look as though he had gone prematurely gray. I look just like a real ghost.

Gim Jae-hui’s feelings alternated between wanting to continue living slightly out of alignment with society until he melted away like rotten lettuce and thinking that he needed to acquire at least the minimum amount of social ability necessary to join even a cult.

After a long time, Gim Jae-hui cleaned his room and washed himself. That alone drained all his strength. He ordered food, but he did not have the energy to finish even a single serving, nor the ability to digest it properly. He had lost so much muscle that he could not use his prosthetic leg. He had lost fifteen kilograms, and if he forced himself to use the prosthesis fitted to his original weight and fell, he would be seriously injured. He had to exercise by force. Looking like this, he would be rejected by any community. Even if a cult was a mosquito that sank its proboscis into human bodies, it would spit out the blood of someone like him without drinking it.

I have to look like a human being worth using. That’s the only way I can join a cult.

Depending on the religious organization, there were some that ran labor camps, some that established farms and made money from the products they produced, and some that owned several businesses where they made their believers work for almost no pay or demanded large donations. Gim Jae-hui did not know how the Infinite Church made its money, but he had to become an indispensable talent to them.

Even washing himself and drying his hair was difficult because he had no strength. On the third day, Gim Jae-hui wanted to abandon everything he had been attempting—cleanliness, eating, cleaning—and just continue lying down. He wanted to do nothing, simply lie there like this, and never open his eyes again.

Then a voice spoke from one corner of his mind. They were words he had ignored for three months.

Wouldn’t it have been better to die there at the cinema with everyone else? Why did you want to live so pathetically? Were you simply afraid of dying? Was that little bit of fear worth more than everything you had? If you don’t want to do it, you can die even now, can’t you? You know at least five ways to die without pain, so why are you still alive instead of just dropping dead like this? What possible reason do you have to be alive? If people other than you had lived, everyone would have been able to leave that cinema without anyone getting hurt.

Half sobbing, Gim Jae-hui dried his hair and did push-ups. He could not even do ten properly before burying his face in the floor. Why is living so difficult? Because of the state of his body, Gim Jae-hui began going to the hospital again.

He did not have the strength to go grocery shopping. The daily necessities he ordered online began arriving one after another by delivery. But he did not want to open them, and organizing them felt like too much trouble. He already knew what was inside, so there was no joy or anticipation. Did he really have to eat the food he had bought? Why did he have a body that was so troublesome and required so much effort?

Because he had not used his vocal cords at all, even simple words like “Hello” or “Nice to meet you” would not come out properly. He could read letters, but this was the first time he had learned that one’s linguistic abilities could deteriorate so rapidly. Gim Jae-hui repeated every conversation broadcast on television, moving his tongue until his jaw hurt. Even after learning of the Infinite Church, it took him over a month to make himself look human again. During that time, Gim Jae-hui spent his days talking to the sweet potatoes and onions that had sprouted. He grew quite close to them, but after he joined the Infinite Church, they all rotted and had to be thrown away.

Gim Jae-hui cut and dyed his hair, then met with the people from the Infinite Church. The Infinite Church welcomed Gim Jae-hui enthusiastically. Countless religions had already sunk deep roots in Korea, and the sudden appearance of the Infinite Church left it with little influence. It had aggressively attempted to gather followers, but the established religions did more than keep it in check—they tried every method imaginable to smash the upstart church that had rolled in from nowhere.

There was no reason to turn away a young man in his twenties who wanted to join of his own accord. Moreover, in the eyes of the Infinite Church, Gim Jae-hui was a thoughtless young man with no opinions of his own, someone who had embraced Western culture simply because it looked cool and had even taken an interest in a foreign religion. His bright red dyed hair, earrings, piercings, tattoos, shallow manner of speaking, pockets that were practically empty, discord with his family, and nonexistent plans for the future—all of it made him a perfect puppet for the Infinite Church. The fact that his mind was sick made him even better. Everything he did was precisely tailored to suit the Infinite Church.

Gim Jae-hui danced as the Infinite Church instructed, and the Infinite Church was reasonably satisfied with the dance of a puppet who was not particularly intelligent but moved exactly as he was told. At the time, the Infinite Church was preparing a massive project upon which the survival of the entire denomination depended. They needed young people in their twenties and thirties who could infiltrate the North Pacific subsea base and would obey their orders even in the slightest. The Korean branch of the Infinite Church was delighted to be able to recommend Gim Jae-hui, who displayed fanatical faith, while Gim Jae-hui was delighted to receive an opportunity to draw closer to the core of the Infinite Church.

After joining the North Pacific subsea base, Gim Jae-hui noticed unfamiliar people gradually approaching him. They were believers of the Infinite Church. The Infinite Church wanted its believers working at the subsea base to form a community under the name of the religion and share their lives and fate. It seemed to want them to live an intangible, collective religious life with faith until the day they were saved.

It was not easy for Gim Jae-hui to do as the Infinite Church instructed. Whenever he tried to associate with people who seemed even slightly suspicious, Team Leader Sin Hae-ryang would appear like a ghost and drag him away. The moment Gim Jae-hui took hold of a beer bottle secretly handed to him by another believer, it was snatched away by Team Leader Sin.

Gim Jae-hui had been looking forward to the words that drinking after a dive would make him spectacularly drunk and feel wonderful, but the moment he saw the beer bottle in Sin Hae-ryang’s grip, he gave up his expectations and merely smacked his lips. When Sin Hae-ryang threatened the workers to get lost before he smashed the bottle and swung it at them, the men—who had intended to get drunk to the tips of their heads on nitrogen and alcohol after finishing their long diving shifts—hurriedly disappeared.

Sin Hae-ryang glared at the backs of the departing workers and said to Gim Jae-hui,

“Don’t associate with people like that. Let’s go back to the dormitory.”

“I’ll go back on my own.”

“Don’t lie.”

Gim Jae-hui’s lies did not work on Sin Hae-ryang. He not only prevented Gim Jae-hui from meeting other believers, but also kept him from doing anything bad. Moreover, he had been caught so many times that Gim Jae-hui began to wonder whether the footsteps of his prosthetic leg were particularly loud. So he switched to an electronic prosthesis that made almost no sound.

Even then, whenever he tried to distance himself from the dormitory or his teammates, Seo Ji-hyeok’s question would fly toward the back of his head and strike him.

Where are you going?

Gim Jae-hui was forced to associate with the people from the Engineering Team A and spend time with them. Whenever he turned his head, his eyes would meet those of Sin Hae-ryang or Seo Ji-hyeok, as if they were watching him, before their gazes naturally shifted elsewhere. Once he became aware of it, it seemed as though the two men’s eyes never left him.

Only after a dragon-shaped statue was installed in Cheongnyong-dong, winding around the elevator, did Gim Jae-hui remember the shamanic fortune-telling he had received long ago. He had forgotten about it because his head had been filled with the Infinite Church, but when he came to his senses, he realized he was working in a place where seawater overflowed.

He obtained his license, rented a car, and headed back to the fortune-teller’s place. There was no sign of anyone. The rafters had collapsed and dust had settled inch by inch; no one lived there anymore.

At the Dragon God Shrine tucked away in a corner where the bamboo grove swayed coldly, the only thing still shining was the five-hundred-won coin he had placed there. The nearest inhabited area was over a kilometer away, but when he drove there and asked around, all he heard was that the fortune-teller’s shop had already gone out of business and closed.

Gim Jae-hui placed another five-hundred-won coin at the Dragon God Shrine. Then he made his wish.

“Please save me. You already know my wish, don’t you? If that’s impossible, then please let this wretched life come to an end.”

After returning to the undersea base, Kim Jaehee looked around for a benefactor among the people he knew. He immediately ruled out Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyeok, who nagged him at every opportunity. Among his teammates, the only person he liked even a little was Baek Aeyeong.

Baek Aeyeong would sometimes stare at him in silence, with eyes that seemed to say she wanted to kill him. A chill ran down his back whenever he saw that gaze. It was similar to the way Baek Aeyeong looked at Jeong Sanghyeon, and after the day Jeong Sanghyeon was actually taken to Daehando Hospital with a heart attack, Kim Jaehee began hoping that Baek Aeyeong would be his benefactor.

You might be able to end this all at once. Maybe that would be salvation. Hyung. I’m not giving up. This isn’t giving up. What if we really can’t go back to the past? Don’t I need insurance too?

Shin Haeryang took leave and went ashore. Perhaps people he knew died often, because he had taken leave several times on the pretext of attending funerals. Fortunately, all he had to do was avoid Seo Jihyeok’s eyes. With Halloween approaching, the inside of the undersea base had been decorated with all sorts of strange objects.

Kim Jaehee took part in the demon-summoning gathering he had been keeping an eye on. It was a gathering that believed goats were demons, and participants had to pay fifty dollars in advance.

Westerners said goats were demons, but Kim Jaehee couldn’t understand at all why goats were supposed to be demons. As long as a demon was summoned, he didn’t care whether it was a pig, a goat, or a sheep.

As long as it granted his wish.

Whether it was the Infinite Cult, a demon, an angel, Cthulhu, or any god or savior of any religion—if only one of them could send him back to the past. He didn’t care what he had to give in return.

The others seemed to hesitate at the part where they had to offer blood, hair, or pieces of flesh. Kim Jaehee stepped forward first and cut off the part the demon supposedly wanted.

**Side Story. Moth to Flame (4)**

Blood dripped from beneath Kim Jaehee’s thumb, where he had cut it with the knife. He quickly held out his finger so the blood would fall into the old ceramic bowl the organizer had handed him. Since he had sliced it thinly, almost as though filleting it, he would probably have to wear a bandage for two weeks. Seeing Kim Jaehee’s actions, the others timidly nicked their fingertips as well. One person bit the inside of his mouth, then spat blood-tinged saliva into the bowl. The organizer spoke irritably.

“You have to cut it with that knife and make it bleed!”

The person had no choice but to poke a hole beneath his pinky nail with the knife and let the blood drip out again.

Beneath the black cloth, a rooster writhed. Its beak had been tied shut with thread and its eyes covered, yet even while standing still, it would shake its body uneasily and try to flap about. But its body had been wrapped in cloth, so all it could do was occasionally rock its torso.

It was the offering for this demon-summoning ritual. The organizer, wearing a white stag-skull mask, explained that he had originally planned to bring a black cat as the sacrifice, but most animal shelters stopped adopting out black cats beginning in October. Rather than go through the trouble of bringing a black cat into the undersea base in September and hiding it somewhere, the organizer had chosen to catch a black feral chicken roaming freely around Hawaii.

Kim Jaehee listened to the organizer’s explanation with his face hidden behind a fox-skull mask, harboring doubts. Would a goat-headed demon really come just because they caught a chicken? The engineer team’s snack yesterday had been boiled corn. If it were a goat, wouldn’t it prefer corn? Shouldn’t an offering be something the recipient would like?

The participants giggled, played pranks on one another, and secretly took several commemorative photos with their phones while pretending to take pictures. Watching them, Kim Jaehee felt deeply skeptical about the demon-summoning ritual. Would a demon really be summoned in this situation?

Two of the seven participants took quite a long time. A man wearing a pure-white wolf-skull mask kept making pathetic excuses, insisting it wasn’t because he was scared. He cut the tip of his finger less than half a centimeter with a knife, then, when no blood appeared on the shallow cut, pressed the skin as though trying to squeeze it out.

The person wearing a bear-skull mask asked whether he could disinfect the blade, saying it was unhygienic to pass the knife around. The organizer swore at him. At last, the old ceramic bowl containing tiny amounts of blood, flesh, and hair from six people was returned to the organizer. When the organizer told them to hold up the paper with Latin written on it, the participants searched for and picked up the sheets they had received upon entering through the conference room door.

“Let’s chant the spell together. Just start reading from the first line. Hail Satan!”

“Hail…”

Before they could even chant the first phrase of the spell, the locked conference room door flew wide open. All the lights had been turned off, leaving only the candles burning, but when the door suddenly opened, the candles were extinguished by the difference in air pressure. The participants’ gazes shot toward the uninvited guest.

The intruder who had interrupted the demon-summoning ritual was a very tall man wearing a grinning pumpkin mask. As fluorescent light from the hallway spilled into the conference room, the organizer seemed to come to his senses. He drew in a startled breath. During the summoning, the candles had to remain lit until the end, unauthorized people could not enter, and no other light was permitted. Every taboo was being violated. Wearing a white T-shirt beneath a hazelnut-colored cardigan that seemed coordinated with his pumpkin mask, along with faded jeans, the man sauntered into the conference room.

He reached toward the area around the entrance and brought light into the room, which had been dark until then. The participants, who had grown accustomed to the darkness after spending a long time with only twelve candles lit, felt blinded by the fluorescent lights that suddenly came on.

“Ah. My eyes.”

The organizer, interrupted in the middle of the ritual, shouted at the pumpkin mask.

“Turn off the lights!”

The man in the pumpkin mask answered boldly.

“Don’t feel like it.”

“What the fuck are you doing? Get out of here! We reserved Conference Room Two first!”

“I’m looking for someone.”

The instant Kim Jaehee heard the pumpkin mask’s voice, he recognized the other man as Seo Jihyeok. From the moment the door had opened and he saw the familiar pumpkin mask, he had desperately tried to convince himself that someone else must have bought a similar one. But after hearing the voice, he had no choice but to be certain. While checking whether the fox-skull mask was sitting securely on his face, he stood close beside the demon summoner wearing a jaguar-skull mask, pretending not to know Seo Jihyeok. Fortunately, perhaps because his face was concealed by the white bone mask and his entire body hidden beneath a black cloak, Seo Jihyeok did not seem to notice him.

The grinning pumpkin head leaned crookedly against the conference room wall and said,

“I’ll keep interrupting you until I find that guy and leave. What’s this smell? …Did you shit in here? What is that smell?”

The pumpkin head tilted to the right, then to the left. The incense lit in preparation for the summoning was all escaping through the half-open conference room door. The pumpkin head also pressed the conference room’s ventilation button beside the fluorescent-light switch.

[Ventilation commencing.]

Upon hearing the announcement, the demon summoner in the stag-skull mask dashed across the conference room and tried to drive Seo Jihyeok out.

“Get out! Do you want a curse so horrible you’ll wish you were dead?”

While the others muttered about what the hell that bastard was, Kim Jaehee was curious about who would win between the organizer and Seo Jihyeok. Ideally, he hoped the organizer would manage to chase Seo Jihyeok out. He wanted to complete the summoning ritual. He had cut his thumb; he couldn’t be dragged back to his quarters with nothing to show for it.

Hang in there, organizer!

Perhaps Kim Jaehee’s encouragement had borne fruit, because Seo Jihyeok silently faced off against the man in the stag mask before suddenly lowering his head. Then he turned off every fluorescent light in the conference room. Darkness swept over the room once again in an instant. He slowly retreated until he stood beside the door. Then he grabbed it as though he intended to close it.

Hurry up and get out!

The organizer glared at the pumpkin-headed man, then began walking toward the back of the conference room.

But Seo Jihyeok did not leave obediently. Instead, he flung the half-open conference room door wide. This time, he flicked the fluorescent-light switch on and off, creating lights like those found at a party. As if that weren’t enough, he used one hand to play the latest hit song loudly from his phone. People passing through the hallway began approaching the conference room, asking what was going on. They probably thought someone was throwing an incredible Halloween party in Conference Room Two.

The organizer ran back in a frenzy, nearly kicking over the ceramic bowl of blood, and tried to shove Seo Jihyeok outside and lock the conference room door. But he was no match for him in strength. Seo Jihyeok headbutted him, slamming the pumpkin head into the stag skull. At the sharp crack, the stag-skull mask split and broke, revealing the organizer’s face. He was one of the mining team leaders. His face flushed bright red with anger, veins standing out on his neck as he shouted,

“What does it matter to you what we do in here?”

“It doesn’t matter much. Once I take the guy I’m looking for, you can roast a whole chicken over the candles or play Ganggangsullae for all I care.”

As he spoke, Seo Jihyeok played a hymn on his phone. A song about the world being covered in God’s grace filled the conference room. When it ended, he played the Thousand-Hand Sutra. The amateur demon summoners gathered in the conference room realized that this pumpkin-headed bastard had no intention of leaving until he accomplished his goal, and that he meant to disrupt the summoning ritual by any means necessary.

The organizer seemed to decide that losing one participant would be better than trying to persuade the mad pumpkin-headed bastard. Perhaps he had struck his face against the mask when he was headbutted; he pressed a bloodied cheek against the edge of his cloak and shouted at the participants,

“Which one of you is involved with this lunatic?!”

Kim Jaehee could no longer pretend not to know him. Reluctantly, he raised his hand. He could feel the gazes of everyone in the conference room turning toward him.

“It’s me. …I’ll leave.”

With a sigh, Kim Jaehee gathered his belongings and asked the organizer in a dejected voice,

“Since I’m leaving halfway through, can I get a refund?”

“Do you think that’s going to happen?!”

The organizer seemed exasperated that there could be someone so crazy. Unable to let go of his disappointment, Kim Jaehee asked him,

“Then can I participate online by myself?”

Before the organizer could answer, the pumpkin head tilted to the side and said,

“You coming out or not?”

Kim Jaehee said nothing while traveling with Seo Jihyeok to White Tiger Block of Undersea Base Four. He had even injured his finger, yet he had not gotten to chant a single Latin spell, and he repeatedly sighed in regret. After a while, Seo Jihyeok entered Kim Jaehee’s room, removed the ridiculous pumpkin mask, and leaned against the wall, glaring at him without a word. He looked as though he wanted to headbutt a hole through Kim Jaehee’s face as well, but was holding himself back. Seo Jihyeok studied Kim Jaehee’s left thumb, which had been wrapped tightly in a handkerchief, and asked,

“What happened to that thumb? Did they cut it?”

“No. I just nicked the very tip.”

“Did they threaten you?”

“I did it voluntarily.”

“What about anywhere else besides your thumb?”

“My bank account was hurt. If I’d stayed there, I could’ve gotten my fifty dollars back.”

Seo Jihyeok spoke to Kim Jaehee in a voice of utter disbelief.

“Good job. Very good job. Why didn’t you just chop off all your fingers one by one? Hm?”

“That would’ve been a waste. I only have eight left, anyway.”

“…Jaehee. You were lucky the team leader was away today because of a funeral. If he’d been there, those people and you would both have really died today. Hey. Just quit. I’ll put in a good word for you. I think they’ll be horrified even if they just report what happened today to Korea. You’re never getting your contract renewed.”

“It’s not easy to experience things like this in Korea. You can even wish for a permanent position. Anyway, aren’t you curious whether a demon will really be summoned?”

“So if you chant Latin and kill a chicken, a demon appears and grants your wish? At your age, you believe that? You’re better off doing good deeds and believing in Santa. Everyone who participated looked like demons to me.”

“Everyone has wishes.”

Seo Jihyeok confirmed with his own eyes that Kim Jaehee had no injuries besides his thumb, then frowned.

“Don’t rely on demons. Try accomplishing it yourself. What’s your wish?”

“To go back to the past—to before I lost my finger.”

“Even now, you could start studying physics again and develop a time machine. Rather than wearing a weird mask and self-harming while inhaling hallucinogenic smoke with those stupid mining bastards, I think you’d fulfill your wish much faster by starting your physics studies again.”

“Hyung, don’t you have a wish?”

“My wish is to live a peaceful life, you crazy bastard. I’m telling the team leader and assistant team leader everything.”

Although several participants claimed they had actually seen demons during demon summoning rituals, the employees who were caught in the regular drug tests at the undersea base soon disappeared from the base. After that, Kim Jaehee succeeded in joining a Cthulhu séance while avoiding the eyes of Seo Jihyeok, Kang Sujeong, and Shin Haeryang. However, during the second gathering, Shin Haeryang appeared as if he had been summoned there, and the séance itself ceased to exist.

After Shin Haeryang smashed every occult group Kim Jaehee joined, none of the groups would accept Kim Jaehee anymore. Forced to join the Engineer Team A community, Kim Jaehee had to remain there, flapping wings that could not burn away. He had to remain Kim Jaehee of Engineer Team A until the seawater covered everything that had burned away.

Side Story. Insomnia (1)

Could a team member’s concealed illness or injury lead to a serious operational failure? Baek Aeyeong recalled something that had happened to her on another team. The male team member, an alcoholic, had secretly gulped down liquor that morning before coming in and pretending he was fine. While driving a truck loaded with illegal weapons and several team members, he nodded off, delaying the entire operation. The team members inside the truck and the pedestrians crossing at the crosswalk had all ended up in the hospital.

The bastard was arrested by the local police, and even as his nose was being broken by the team leader, he stubbornly insisted that it wasn’t his fault. He shamelessly said that people could make mistakes, couldn’t they? Thanks to him, all the illegal firearms were confiscated, and once every team member was discharged from the hospital, they all had to spend time behind bars at the local police station.

The injury Baek Aeyeong had sustained back then had caused a hairline fracture in her left wrist. The hospital had said it had healed completely, but it still ached when it rained, and she had lost around thirty percent of the strength in that wrist. During her life as a mercenary, Baek Aeyeong never told anyone about her weakness. If she had gone around announcing the state of her body to everyone, she would have had to quit the mercenary business long ago.

To prevent such accidents and risks before they happened, the team leader circulated a brief anonymous survey among the members. Was there any personal secret the leader absolutely needed to know for the sake of the team? Did they have any health problems? Unless they were planning to snitch, no one answered the questions.

There was even a pathetic team where the leader made everyone raise their hands. If there was anyone who needed to go find the bundles of cash a drug lord had hidden in the mountains but would have to sit out because they were unwell, who would honestly raise their hand with only two hours left before the operation began? They would rather be irresponsible than expose their weaknesses.

Those who were perceptive or persistent sometimes succeeded in ferreting out other people’s physical weaknesses. At some point, Baek Aeyeong had apparently carried several heavy loads filled with weapons with both hands, even when she naturally would have carried them with her left hand, and had used her right hand for tasks she could have handled with her left. She had done those things almost unconsciously rather than deliberately. And a large, foul-smelling mercenary who had been staring only at her from before the mission began had said, “Your wrist’s bad, isn’t it? After the job, I’ll take responsibility for your wrist and break it all the way.”

Baek Aeyeong knew that if she told her team leader, the answer would obviously be something like, So what? Is your wrist really bad? So instead, she prioritized figuring out how to break that bastard’s neck while making it look like an accident over successfully completing the mission. The difficult operation barely succeeded, and the completion fee was deposited into their account, but what pleased Baek Aeyeong most was seeing the head of that teammate smashed open.

“There’s a problem. I can’t sleep.”

Shin Haeryang spoke in the same tone one might use to say, There’s a leak in this pipe, so only Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong were startled to hear it. Mercenaries hid the state of their bodies if they could, but they never brought it up first. Even when working with the same team for long periods, they were desperate to conceal their chronic problems.

Alcoholism and painkiller addiction, ruptured discs, joint injuries in the ankles, wrists, neck, and knees, all kinds of PTSD, panic disorder, depression, and insomnia, aftereffects from injuries and surgeries such as gunshot wounds and stab wounds, and side effects from medication—they hid all of it thoroughly. Or at least they performed their missions while pretending they were fine.

If others learned about their physical condition or injuries, they would be excluded from the next operation or have their weaknesses used against them someday. Shin Haeryang had repeatedly told the team members that if they were injured or fell ill while working at the undersea base, or if their condition was not as usual, they had to inform him immediately. To Baek Aeyeong, accustomed to life as a mercenary, it sounded like nothing more than, Manage yourself properly.

Even if it meant becoming addicted to sleeping pills, Baek Aeyeong would rather die than tell her teammates that she suffered from insomnia. Of course, she suspected Shin Haeryang would notice and interrogate her before she was taken to the hospital or became addicted to sleeping pills, but she had no intention of saying aloud that something hurt. Like an animal living in the wild, she intended to conceal and hide any painful spot as thoroughly as possible. And yet here was a team leader openly saying, I’m sick.

“How long have you been unable to sleep?”

At Lee Jihyeon’s question, Shin Haeryang hesitated for a moment before answering.

“I’ve only slept ten hours over the past ten days.”

That meant one hour a day. Given the nature of their work at the undersea base, a mistake caused by impaired judgment could kill the entire team. In particular, during exterior-wall repair work, accidents occurred almost every day even when they went to work in perfectly normal condition. No team member wanted to die at the company because of nothing more than the team leader’s insomnia.

Baek Aeyeong had seen far too many weaknesses discovered during work quietly buried, turned into blackmail material, or sold for a small amount of money, so she had suspected Shin Haeryang’s insomnia for four days already. Even so, she had kept silent.

When he was awake, Shin Haeryang would leave his room and sit blankly in the corridor, or leave the quarters and wander around. Whenever he returned to his room, the sound of his presence would wake Baek Aeyeong, and she would fall asleep again afterward.

If she knew, surely Seo Jihyeok already knew as well. Baek Aeyeong looked at Seo Jihyeok, but all she met was his stupid-looking face, so she turned away.

Shin Haeryang revealing his poor physical condition in his own words was also a declaration that things had reached the point where he could no longer hide it from the team. The team members decided that repairing a team leader with insomnia was better than replacing him and looking for a more capable one, so they began pulling out whatever treatments they knew.

Naturally, Baek Aeyeong recommended exercise.

“Try increasing the intensity of your workouts. Push yourself until you practically pass out the moment your head touches the bed.”

“I’m already doing that.”

Seo Jihyeok, who exercised every other day in Ophion, frowned and spoke.

“No wonder the other bastards suddenly started asking who Team Leader Shin wanted to kill. But my solution is similar to Aeyeong’s. Why don’t you try swimming in the ocean? If you swim until your arms and legs cramp up, you’ll probably fall asleep even while showering.”

“I’m doing that too.”

Since Shin Haeryang was in good shape and had excellent stamina, even tiring himself out was difficult. It seemed that he had been abusing his body through intense exercise to force himself unconscious, securing ten hours of sleep at best. He appeared to spend nearly all his time outside of work exercising. He said that even if he pushed his body until he was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion, he would sleep for about an hour before his eyes suddenly flew open. Seo Jihyeok shook his head with an expression of disgust. Lee Jihyeon looked up from her phone and said,

“Didn’t you say that freediving, which you call your hobby, uses an incredible amount of stamina?”

“If I dive in my current condition, there’ll be an accident.”

Fortunately, the other engineer teams were handling the diving-related work this month. Just as they were offering advice such as trying sleeping pills until he ended up dead, Lee Seoin spoke without looking away from her laptop screen.

“Try eating some lettuce.”

Lee Seoin knew that everyone in the room was looking at her, and she frowned uncomfortably as she continued.

“It worked for me. If you eat a lot of lettuce, you sleep well.”

That kicked off a flood of all kinds of folk remedies that had supposedly worked for the people around them. Suggestions came pouring in to eat plenty of foods rumored to help with sleep, such as bananas, walnuts, chicken, pork, duck, peas, and peanuts, or to drink herbal teas said to aid sleep.

Some advised using a pillow lower or higher than the one he currently used, or a blanket thicker or thinner than his current one. Others suggested spraying aroma oil around the room or burning incense. Someone advised him to read a difficult book until just before falling asleep, while another recommended taking the opportunity to study a foreign language.

“Do you drink a lot of coffee?”

“About one cup a day?”

“Then how about avoiding caffeine altogether, drinking a cup of warm milk, and going to bed early? You could keep the room warmer, too. It might help you sleep if you relax.”

Lee Jihyeon pulled a blanket more tightly around her shoulders and spoke.

“I think the indoor temperature at the undersea base has dropped a little, to twenty degrees. Maybe you can’t sleep because you’re cold.”

“Have you never had trouble sleeping before?”

“When I couldn’t sleep, I either solved whatever was bothering me or exercised for about thirty minutes and came back. Then I could fall asleep again.”

The opinions split between those recommending even more intense exercise and those suggesting different solutions. In Baek Aeyeong’s view, exhausting exercise that left sweat pouring down was the only answer to sound sleep, but trying several different methods did not seem like such a bad idea.

Getting medication from the hospital was postponed as a last resort. The team members had quite a supply of sleeping pills among them already.

After finishing work, the members of Engineer Team A worked to create a comfortable and quiet sleeping environment. Baek Aeyeong borrowed some lavender aroma oil from Kim Gayoung—the kind she used for yoga—and dropped a single drop into Shin Haeryang’s room. The scent was so strong that, with her keen nose, Baek Aeyeong immediately thought the room had turned into a flower garden and that everything was ruined. To remedy the situation, she aired out the room and then ran her own humidifier in Shin Haeryang’s room to raise the humidity.

Seo Jihyeok lent Shin Haeryang the low pillow he used. The room temperature was raised to a warm twenty-five degrees. Shin Haeryang received every soft blanket the team members could spare. All the lights in the rooms and corridor of Engineer Team A were turned off. After being forced to drink chamomile tea with the team members, he went into his room and lay in bed for an hour before getting up again.

From the signs of movement in the room, Shin Haeryang realized that everyone except Lee Seoin, who occasionally tapped at her laptop, had fallen asleep.

Shin Haeryang turned on the light in his room and began reading Faust, which someone had given him along with the pillow, saying he could read it if he really couldn’t sleep. When he had read about a quarter of it, an alarm rang in one of the team members’ rooms. It seemed to be Baek Aeyeong’s room. Baek Aeyeong groaned in disgust, turned off the alarm, and went back to sleep, only to be woken five minutes later when it rang again. He could hear her turn it off once more. After battling the alarm like that, Baek Aeyeong came out of her room with her hair looking like a bird’s nest.

“Did you get some sleep?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t sleep, did you?”

“No.”

“Why can’t you sleep?”

Baek Aeyeong yawned so widely her mouth seemed to split apart and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.

Side Story. Insomnia (2)

To Baek Aeyeong, Shin Haeryang seemed hardly any different from usual. He appeared tired, sleepy, headachy, and not to be in a particularly good mood, but almost none of it showed on the outside. In fact, the more days he went without sleep, the kinder he became toward the team members. It seemed that trying to treat them well regardless of his physical condition or mood was making him unconsciously more considerate. Only Seo Jihyeok said Shin Haeryang’s attitude gave him chills, but Baek Aeyeong did not think the insomnia was having a significant effect on Shin Haeryang’s attitude or behavior.

It seemed Shin Haeryang had chosen to wander the undersea base like a ghost rather than waste time lying in bed with his eyes shut while trying all sorts of things to fall asleep. At the undersea base, some people called Shin Haeryang a bastard who swung his fists like the Thousand-Armed Guanyin, but his average reputation had settled at something more like a bomb without a detonator: taciturn, but always answering when spoken to, and unlikely to explode as long as nobody went out of their way to bother him. Recently, however, the nickname “homemade bomb” had been added. It meant he was a bastard who had been thrown together so sloppily that nobody could tell what would set him off. As an example of that nickname, people frequently brought up one of the shattered walls of Opheon, which had collapsed not long ago.

Baek Aeyoung suddenly heard, “Your team leader broke through a wall with a person,” and immediately said, “What the hell are you talking about? Our team leader isn’t that kind of person.”

According to the posts left by witnesses on the undersea base’s bulletin board, there were plenty of people who exercised noisily at Opheon, the sports center. Among them was Charles, an employee of the mining team who was especially famous for working out on the Smith machine while making unnecessary noises like, “Hoo! Ha! Hoo! Ha! I can do it! Woot-sha! Woot-sha! Gyaaaaaaaah!” James, one of Opheon’s trainers, had tried soothing Charles, warning him, and even kicking him out whenever he got too loud, but Charles merely pretended to listen each time.

He was a strange bastard who considered any advice from those around him to exercise quietly an unreasonable interruption of his freedom to work out as he pleased. Whenever anyone tried to stop him, he would exercise even more noisily, screaming louder than before. He was over 180 centimeters tall and weighed more than 100 kilograms, and whenever that enormous body rampaged as it pleased, ordinary patrons gave up on even speaking to him for the sake of their safety. Besides, many people exercised while listening to music, so when Charles started making noise, most simply compromised by turning up the volume on their headsets or earphones and enduring it. Even Baek Aeyoung knew Charles well enough to recognize him by sight, even without knowing his name, if someone described him as the bastard who suddenly started screaming in the middle of a workout at Opheon.

Until then, Shin Haeryang’s exercise hours had not overlapped with Charles’s because he had been asleep, and he was not particularly sensitive to noise. Yet one day, in the middle of exercising, he approached Charles and politely suggested that he either work out quietly or leave the gym. Charles responded by making a racket and deliberately fooling around obnoxiously right in front of Shin Haeryang. The people at the sports center thought, That crazy bastard’s started again, but then they heard a noise that sounded as though the undersea base itself had collapsed. When they looked over, the body of a man weighing over 100 kilograms was lying unconscious with his head embedded in the wall. The moment Baek Aeyoung heard the story, she thought someone was spreading an impossible rumor.

Shin Haeryang avoided using violence whenever it was not necessary for work. Rather than throwing someone into a wall and dealing with them noisily for the whole neighborhood to see, he preferred to quietly knock them unconscious by hitting them once in the head or ribs hard enough to hurt.

After calling a medic, Shin Haeryang gave the people who were being noisy at Opheon, failing to wipe away the sweat they had left on the exercise equipment, or neglecting to put away the barbells a chance to correct their behavior. Charles, unconscious with his rear end sticking up in the air, was being dealt with by the medic in real time. As people watched the cleaning robots quickly wipe away the blood and sweat on the floor, they either shut their mouths or hurriedly wiped their own sweat off the equipment with towels.

One final bastard threw a barbell roughly toward the floor as if to show off, saying that only losers put away the last one. Then he charged at Shin Haeryang like a gorilla stung by a bee. Later, after regaining consciousness in the hospital, the man said he had thought the person lying on the floor had slipped by accident. Since he had only recently joined the base, he had assumed some Chinese guy was picking a fight with him. Shin Haeryang had reportedly slammed him into the wall in less than ten seconds.

Until then, as long as no Korean was harmed, Shin Haeryang had mostly ignored rude jokes or senseless provocations directed at him personally with an expressionless face. Although some people had called him a bastard, such incidents had always happened in places without CCTV or witnesses. Thus, the people at the undersea base had assumed that Shin Haeryang’s exploits were nonsense made up by people from countries on bad terms with theirs, or groundless rumors invented by someone who had lost money at a gambling table.

After hearing this much, Baek Aeyoung asked the strange question of how many witnesses had been at Opheon that day. But far too many people had seen the two men unconscious at Shin Haeryang’s hands and the medic carrying them away for anyone to cover it up.

Shin Haeryang had exercised quietly until then, and there were so many people who used the sports center even worse than he did that opinions split broadly into two camps: “I’ve wanted to teach those mannerless bastards a lesson for ages. Thanks for doing it in my place,” and “Why the hell did that bastard suddenly start acting like that?” People had to choose between ending their workout there for the day or continuing to exercise in an incomparably more pleasant environment while even breathing as softly as possible. Most chose the former, but those brave enough to choose the latter became witnesses who gave statements about the incident.

The third person slammed into the wall was a bastard who shoved his nose into places where women had exercised and left, or licked the handles. While working out with an unconscious awareness of Shin Haeryang’s scrutiny, he automatically fell into the habit and did it again—only to be slammed into the wall at once. The partition wall, which had cracked badly from the first man’s impact and was already on the verge of collapsing, could not withstand any further shock and developed a huge hole. The corridor beyond was plainly visible.

Opheon was forced to close for repairs, and as a result, people flooded into Sesha, a sports center located on Daehando. As an engineer, Shin Haeryang had to repair the wall he had broken with his own hands.

While Shin Haeryang was repairing Opheon’s wall with his own money during his personal break, his team members approached him and asked why he had done it. It seemed the only answer Shin Haeryang could give was that they had been too irritating at the time. Baek Aeyoung suspected it was because his exercise schedule had changed, his insomnia had made him sensitive, and his concentration had deteriorated, causing every kind of bullshit behavior to catch his eye. Afterward, Emily, one of Opheon’s trainers, made Baek Aeyoung a bizarre request.

“Could you ask your team leader if he might come work out during my shift? There are about three—no, four people I can’t stand. Every time James brags about it, I’m so jealous I could die. Tell him I won’t say a word even if he breaks down every remaining wall.”

Baek Aeyoung had gone to buy some buttered popcorn when she ran into Luca, an employee in charge of maintaining the cinema facilities, and heard that her team leader had visited the theater not long ago. It was unusual for Shin Haeryang to come to the cinema alone, though he occasionally came with his team members to watch a movie. What made it stranger was that he had appeared just before the late-night screenings were about to begin. Luca said he had been nervous, wondering whether the man rumored to have smashed through the sports center wall like an excavator was planning to destroy all the cinema’s walls too. But Shin Haeryang had walked in with a tired expression and asked which of the currently screening movies was the most boring and sleep-inducing. When asked why, he had replied that his goal was to watch about half the movie and then fall asleep.

As luck would have it, the classic films [Gone with the Wind] and [Dawn of the Dead] were both about to start. Luca, who knew every movie being shown at the undersea base, took one look at Shin Haeryang’s bloodshot eyes and recommended [Gone with the Wind]. It was a movie with its own share of bloodshed, of course, but Luca judged that Shin Haeryang would find [Gone with the Wind] more boring than [Dawn of the Dead], which constantly spewed blood, survival instincts, zombies, and adrenaline. Following Luca’s recommendation, Shin Haeryang entered Theater 2. When the movie ended, the doors were left open, and Shin Haeryang emerged with ominously bloodshot eyes and gave Luca an unexpected answer.

“It was a good movie. I couldn’t fall asleep, though.”

At a base overflowing with people who demanded their time back because a movie had been boring even after someone recommended it to them, Luca was touched by the answer. But before long, Shin Haeryang vanished as if he had never visited the cinema in the first place. Only after an uncalled-for medic arrived from the direction in which Shin Haeryang had disappeared and carried away someone who had been knocked unconscious in the middle of the seating area did Luca realize that Shin Haeryang’s visit had not been a dawn mirage. The unconscious man was notorious for illuminating the cinema with his cellphone screen. Attacked in the darkness, he did not even know who had knocked him unconscious.

Luca asked Baek Aeyoung to tell Shin Haeryang to visit again, saying that he had carefully selected ten movies guaranteed to make him sleepy in preparation for his next visit. Baek Aeyoung had already heard similar requests at the café and convenience store, so she nodded like a familiar messenger. At the same time, she thought that her team leader was wandering through every possible place because he could not sleep, and worried that his insomnia might be growing increasingly serious.

Many of those working at the undersea base rested in the Garden of the Hesperides, located in Undersea Base One. There were plenty of plants and soil, and the heavy sense of stability provided by the smell of grass helped them forget the feeling of being abandoned in the middle of an endless ocean. The temperature inside the artificially constructed greenhouse was warm, and its humidity was far higher than in other places. There were quite a few benches arranged for people to sit and rest comfortably, and from the overhead fountain installed in the center of the garden, water poured endlessly down like a circular curtain.

Music and laughter never stopped in the plaza around the fountain. Since the Garden of the Hesperides was the only place in the undersea base where playing instruments was freely permitted, many musicians who had been cursed out and driven from their lodgings came to the fountain and burned through the musical souls they had kept hidden. From time to time, people confident in their singing or dancing would show off their talents, and it was also a designated venue where famous singers visiting the undersea base performed.

Baek Aeyoung had searched the undersea base for people who liked classic rock, but every time it ended with something like, “Why don’t you come to my room and listen to music?” In the end, she had to settle for forcing her team members to listen to music. Perhaps one day she would brainwash them, and at least one of them would become addicted to rock.

Baek Aeyoung, who lived while nurturing many grand dreams, spotted the back of her team leader’s head as he sat on a bench installed near the fountain. His enormous build made him impossible to mistake. She was about to speak to the team leader, who was staring blankly at the fountain, when she noticed a dangerous figure approaching from a distance and threw herself into the grass. It was Sato Ryusuke, carrying an instrument case and greeting Shin Haeryang cheerfully.

“Did you actually have any musical aptitude, Shin? I thought those ears of yours were merely model decorations attached to your face.”

“······I can’t hear what you’re saying very well. Sato. It seems your awful playing has damaged my ears too.”

Side Story. Insomnia (3)

Sato said something, but it was difficult to hear. The sound of a trumpet coming from nearby, in the direction of the bushes where Baek Aeyoung was hiding, was simply too loud. Toot-toot-toot-toot! Pah-pah-pah-pah!

He was fucking terrible. Baek Aeyoung suppressed the urge to snatch away the trumpet from the man playing it and throw it away. Fortunately, perhaps he had run out of breath after a single song, because Sato’s voice soon became audible again.

“No matter how much you struggle, the Korean team is already finished. Why not give up and come comfortably to Japan instead?”

“Are you inviting me to immigrate?”

Baek Aeyoung held even her breath and listened. What the hell was this bullshit?

“I’ll promise you better treatment than you receive now. In the past, Team Leader Jo begged me so pathetically to let him come to Japan, but I refused. You’re different, though. I know how to recognize talent.”

Baek Aeyoung could only see the back of Shin Haeryang’s head, but no matter what kind of bullshit was being said beside him, he seemed to be staring only at the falling water of the fountain. Baek Aeyoung looked around, wondering whether there might be a good-sized rock among the plants where she was hiding. How could she shut him up? It would be a shame to reveal her knife and identity because of that bastard.

“I really like you. I’m not lying. You don’t seem to have a girlfriend at the moment. Fortunately, my family has a younger sister who has just reached adulthood. She hasn’t been of much use so far, but if I can bring you, Shin Haeryang, into our family, she’ll finally have fulfilled her value.”

Is this bastard insane? Baek Ayeong regretted not having thrown her knife at Sato’s skull a few seconds earlier. Timing was always the most important thing in the world. Baek Ayeong felt as though her heart had rolled somewhere into the grass.

Looking at the back of the team leader’s head, he seemed to be gazing at the fountain as motionlessly as ever. Neither Baek Ayeong nor the people from Engineer Team A ever brought up girlfriends in front of Shin Haeryang. They lived as though the word did not exist in this world.

Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyeok had suddenly taken extended leave without explanation. Shin Haeryang quietly returned after ten days of vacation. Among the employees at the undersea base, Shin Haeryang’s sudden absence was taken to mean that he had gone somewhere far away for a trip. Rumors about his girlfriend dying in an accident or anything of the sort did not spread at all.

Even if one’s personal affairs became known at the undersea base, they would only become a source of ridicule and offer no help whatsoever, so the Engineer Team A members who knew the circumstances kept completely silent.

Baek Ayeong had wanted to attend the funeral as well. However, with Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyeok away, she could not leave the civilians behind too. Losing someone close was hard enough; if one’s work at the company fell apart on top of that, it would only make things worse. Baek Ayeong thought the best thing she could do was to clean everything up so that there would be no problems when the two returned and went back to work.

Baek Ayeong stuck close to her team members, staying alert as though they were in a quasi-wartime situation, took excessive care with their safety, and prioritized making sure they remained unharmed even if it delayed their work in the repair zones assigned by Maris.

Baek Ayeong jabbed her finger into the side of Seo Jihyeok, who had returned several days before Shin Haeryang, until it felt as though she had bored a hole through him, but not a single word came out of Seo Jihyeok’s mouth.

‘I’m a professional trained to withstand torture! Even if you bite my side to pieces and rip my liver into ten chunks, White Shark, I will never yield to this kind of vicious torture······. Aaargh! Stop poking me! I don’t know! If you’re curious about something, ask Shin Haeryang himself!’

He was every bit the idiot who talked readily about useless things while saying nothing about what actually mattered.

The first thing Shin Haeryang asked Baek Ayeong after returning to the undersea base was how far the work had progressed in the zones currently under repair and whether any team members had been injured.

Baek Ayeong asked whether he had no intention of taking more leave, but all she received in reply was that he would take a few more days later. She could not know what kind of storm and lightning were raging inside his head, but aside from eating less, Shin Haeryang seemed the same as ever. He had returned as a decent deputy team leader to his own team, and a fucking awful deputy team leader to everyone else’s.

Once, Baek Ayeong worked up her courage and told Shin Haeryang, “If you’re going through something difficult, you can talk to me about it.”

Shin Haeryang smiled for the first time in a long while, then laughed and shook his head.

Seven weeks later, Shin Haeryang took another vacation by attaching it to a day off. It was only when Baek Ayeong saw him pack a suit when leaving the undersea base that she realized he had taken the time off for the forty-ninth-day memorial rite. Honestly, they were a bunch of idiots who never said anything that mattered.

Watching people who refused to share their stories, Baek Ayeong understood, thinking that she did not share her own worries either. At the same time, though, she felt an urge to torture them in her room’s jewelry box until they told her what they were thinking, what troubled them, and what kind of help they needed. And if she could help them, she wanted to. Was she sticking her nose in where it did not belong? Were they really all right? Did the people of this world even need her help?

Baek Ayeong had met countless people over the course of her life, but every time, she felt that measuring the proper distance between people was incredibly difficult. Was it because she was in her twenties? Would it become easier once she reached her thirties or forties? Would she even still be alive by then?

Shin Haeryang, who had gone out to Korea without fail to spend his days off there with a spring in his step, gradually began spending more and more days at the undersea base. Unless it was for work or a family event, he now rarely went to Korea.

The people at the undersea base went around with the words “That is none of your business” constantly on their lips. Though they did not care what others did as long as it caused them no harm, it seemed they had enough interest to wonder whether Shin Haeryang had broken up with the girlfriend he had been dating in Korea. In response to Sato’s nonsense, Shin Haeryang slowly opened his mouth.

“Recently······ I’ve lost a lot of my patience. Before I knew it, I was swinging my fists. I unintentionally sent a few guys to the emergency room. Did you happen to hear about it?”

“My ears work perfectly fine. One of my team members was carried out too.”

“Sato. If you don’t want to be carried out on a stretcher, get the fuck out of my sight.”

“We’ll talk again later.”

Sato turned around without a shred of hesitation and quickly disappeared. He was good at knowing when to strike and retreat, which only annoyed Baek Ayeong more as she watched his retreating back. While Baek Ayeong was wondering when she should finally leave the bushes, Shin Haeryang’s voice reached her.

“You’re trying to persuade me because threats don’t work on me. Team Leader Yang threatened me, while Team Leader Jo didn’t even need to.”

It took Baek Ayeong several seconds to realize that he was speaking to her. She emerged from between the trees and brushed grass blades off herself as though she had somehow rolled through the field. Then she brought up what she had come to say to the team leader.

“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.”

“I know.”

“Team Leader. There’s an employee at Headquarters named Lee Se-eun. She also lives in the Daehando dormitory.”

Shin Haeryang took his eyes off the fountain pouring down water and turned his head to look at Baek Ayeong.

“She says someone’s been harassing her around dawn. I’d like to stay in Ms. Se-eun’s room with her for a few days.”

“How are they harassing her?”

“They keep knocking on her door at three in the morning. When she asks who it is, they apparently keep kicking the door. She said she was so scared that she couldn’t sleep for several days.”

After thinking for a moment, Shin Haeryang said to Baek Ayeong, “I’ll stay in that room and open the door if someone knocks. I can’t sleep at night anyway.”

Baek Ayeong asked Lee Se-eun whether it was all right if she went to the dormitory now, and Lee Se-eun readily agreed.

The dormitory where the Headquarters employees stayed on Daehando was a shabby, mixed-gender, two-story building thrown together out of plywood. It had originally been used as temporary housing for civilian mining-company employees, then as quarters for construction workers when the undersea base began to be built. After being noisily flooded by a typhoon, it underwent one replacement and reinforcement project and became what it was now. The Headquarters dormitory was one of the oldest buildings on Daehando. Rats and insects flew in asking to be friends, and rusty water sometimes leaked through. A ghost story about someone having died in one of the rooms came free of charge.

It was so decrepit that people said flying fish swept into the dormitory by the strong winds whenever a typhoon came could hear the screams and prayers of the Headquarters employees living there. There had been repeated mentions of building a new dormitory, but when that would actually happen was unknown. At present, all of the undersea base’s capital was being invested in the Zhuque reactor and the construction of Undersea Base Five.

Lee Se-eun opened the door when she heard Baek Ayeong’s voice, but she became extremely flustered when she saw Shin Haeryang standing behind her like a folding screen and closed the door again.

“P-please wait a moment.”

Then a succession of clattering and crashing sounds came from Lee Se-eun’s room. She was probably smashing all the furniture to pieces or taking care of a corpse she had hidden in the room. Only after five minutes had passed did Lee Se-eun open the door and let Shin Haeryang and Baek Ayeong inside. As Shin Haeryang entered the room, he said,

“Excuse me.”

Lee Se-eun could not take her eyes off Shin Haeryang as he entered her room, a man larger than the door itself. Baek Ayeong noticed that the door of the old wardrobe had been blocked with a clothes hanger. It seemed Lee Se-eun had cleaned the room by cramming every object in it into the wardrobe.

Baek Ayeong looked apologetic as she stared at the wardrobe, which seemed ready to burst, regretting that she had not called ahead to tell Lee Se-eun that she was bringing the team leader. Sorry. I was distracted by that bastard Sato’s bullshit.

Lee Se-eun seemed to have realized that the sudden arrival of two people had made the room feel as though it were about to explode. She quickly pulled several cans of soda out from beneath the desk, pressed them into their hands, and began babbling.

“My room isn’t tidy. I don’t usually live like this. And it’s so small, but the Headquarters dormitory is just so old.”

“It’s fine.”

“Mr. Shin Haeryang, please sit in this chair.”

The only furniture in the room was a bed, a desk, a chair, and a wardrobe. When Lee Se-eun hurriedly cleared away the coats hanging over the back of the chair, Shin Haeryang’s gaze lingered briefly on the cheap, low-grade chair.

Most chairs like that could not support a hundred kilograms. Shin Haeryang had no intention of coming to someone else’s room and breaking what little furniture they owned, so he immediately refused.

“It’s fine. I’ll sit on the floor.”

“Then would you at least sit on the edge of the bed?”

Shin Haeryang refused and simply planted himself in a corner on the floor. He hunched his body as much as possible. Baek Ayeong occupied the chair, while Lee Se-eun sat on the bed. When Shin Haeryang suggested that they switch rooms for just a few nights, Lee Se-eun had been extremely grateful, but seeing the state of her room had left her troubled.

“You can use anything in my room. Just please don’t open the wardrobe.”

Shin Haeryang looked at the very old wooden bed frame Lee Se-eun had been using and the mattress that seemed to have been bought only a few years ago, then went through a thought process similar to the one he had with the chair. He told Lee Se-eun not to worry about him, as he would manage on the floor.

Lee Se-eun packed a light bag and went down to the undersea base, while Shin Haeryang brought a book and waited for her with his back against the wall.

According to Seo Jihyeok, a book was either a substitute for sleeping pills or something one could read over and over without getting tired of it. The Faust he had lent the team leader seemed to be the former. Shin Haeryang visited the book café in Seo Jihyeok’s place and returned Faust.

Following Seo Jihyeok’s recommendation, he seemed to have borrowed Wuthering Heights, which belonged to the latter category. Fortunately, perhaps because few people read books there, nothing happened at the book café, and Baek Ayeong inwardly breathed a sigh of relief. After watching the team leader concentrate on his book, Baek Ayeong returned to her room.

It seemed the madman who had been pounding on Lee Se-eun’s door at dawn had skipped tonight. Baek Ayeong slept for seven hours and woke to find the team leader still reading the book in exactly the same position, which startled her.

“What’s it about?”

“······It’s a story about madmen each bringing about their own destruction.”

“Is it interesting?”

“It is.”

**Side Story. Insomnia (4)**

For two days, Baek Ayeong exchanged greetings with Shin Haeryang, asking whether anything had happened. During those two days, Shin Haeryang sat in the exact same position and read the same book twice, and nothing happened. Lee Se-eun felt extremely sorry watching Shin Haeryang live on the floor of her room.

The madman who appeared every dawn had been stressful enough, but it seemed equally stressful that after she had asked Shin Haeryang for help, the footsteps had abruptly ceased as though the incidents had never happened. Lee Se-eun seemed afraid that she would become a liar.

Lee Se-eun babbled to Shin Haeryang about what had happened at dawn, insisting that it had not been a lie. Sitting quietly on the floor, he listened and gave a slight nod.

“Understood. Starting tomorrow, I won’t be able to come at night because of work hours. Sleep in my room.”

“You believe me?”

“Yes.”

“But nothing happened for two days. How do you know I’m not lying?”

“······I’ve seen too many people lie. And when it comes to preparing for safety, it’s better to go too far than not far enough.”

Shin Haeryang seemed to have taken apart a pair of scissors he had found in Lee Se-eun’s room and sharpened the blades to a keen edge. When she asked how he had sharpened them, Shin Haeryang indicated the desk with his chin. An overturned mug sat there. He seemed to have used the bottom of the ceramic mug, which was decorated with a cute marlin.

Baek Ayeong looked at the stationery scissors, their blades sharpened blue and keen enough to slit someone’s throat, and thought that the team leader must have been dreadfully bored in the middle of the night. Whoever that person was, if he had come during the night, he might have died an unnatural death.

The team leader was probably controlling his strength to some extent, but with his temperament made sensitive by insomnia, someone really could die if they had bad luck.

Baek Ayeong left one half of the disassembled scissors beside the front door, where Lee Se-eun would notice it easily if she panicked, and placed the other half beneath the pillow.

“If someone breaks into the room, stab them without hesitation.”

“With those? What if I kill them?”

“If you have that level of skill… I recommend changing jobs.”

“What?”

Shin Haeryang spoke to the flustered Lee Se-eun as if telling her there was no need to worry.

“The hospital is right next door. It’ll be difficult to die. Call the medic stationed on the first floor and have them deal with it.”

“That’s true, but… No, that’s not the problem…”

“If you’re hesitant to use a blade, smash one of those ceramic mugs until it breaks, or stab it until the chair falls apart.”

Lee Se-eun looked back and forth between Baek Aeyeong and Shin Haeryang with bewildered eyes, then let out a small sigh and nodded with an expression that had given up on everything.

The two of them rode down together in the central elevator, but Shin Haeryang got off at Undersea Base Three. Having read Wuthering Heights twice, Shin Haeryang seemed to be going to return the book to the book café.

Baek Aeyeong went down to Undersea Base Four, woke her team members, and took them to the cafeteria for breakfast. Lee Seoin in particular had to be practically dragged there. She yawned so wide every three steps that it looked as though her mouth might split open, then grumbled that she was nocturnal and wanted to sleep until the shift began. Baek Aeyeong only half-listened to Lee Seoin’s complaints.

Lee Jihyeon seemed to be walking down the corridor with her eyes closed. Judging by the way her upper body swayed this way and that, she appeared to be asleep, but her legs were still walking, so it was hard to say. Seo Jihyeok seemed to have already gotten up an hour earlier to go exercise. Watching Lee Jihyeon follow along properly, Baek Aeyeong said,

“Seoin, an irregular daily rhythm is bad for your health.”

“Let me live irregularly. The people at this undersea base exercise too much, eat all three meals on time, do physical labor, and work exactly according to schedule. It doesn’t suit me at all. I’m the exact opposite.”

“You have to live healthily.”

“Just wait until my contract here ends. You’ll see whether I ever come out to work like this again.”

Then where did she normally live, in some hole in the wall? Just in case, Baek Aeyeong had tried letting Lee Seoin sleep without waking her, but she slept endlessly. When she still had not gotten up past three in the afternoon, Baek Aeyeong initially thought there was something wrong with her health. How could a person sleep even when the sun was already high in the sky?

Lee Seoin said that she normally got up late and did not sleep at night. Baek Aeyeong must have inadvertently looked at her with an expression of pity. Lee Seoin made the absurd excuse that this was what the daily routines of people who lived in close companionship with computers were all like.

She skipped breakfast, ate lunch halfheartedly, and ate dinner with great enthusiasm. She also devoted herself to late-night snacks. She kept coffee at her side twenty-four hours a day, spent all day holding either a phone or a tablet, and was constantly exposed to electromagnetic waves. At least Lee Jihyeon was relatively decent. She slept well and ate properly, but she had an especially hard time getting up in the morning.

As long as they worked properly during their eight-hour shifts, Baek Aeyeong could pretend not to see how disastrously they lived the rest of the time. However, she could not stand there with her eyes wide open and watch her team members ruin their bodies through disorderly habits instead of being injured by an external threat to the team. Every team member had to eat at least a little three times a day, wash at least once, and sleep for at least seven hours.

Baek Aeyeong pushed Lee Seoin’s back whenever she stopped and kept talking to her so she would wake up at least a little. When she turned Lee Jihyeon, who had been heading toward the wall, back toward the corridor, occasional responses like “Mmm” came back.

“You were curious about the Maris system, weren’t you?”

“Closed systems with strong external defenses like this are often vulnerable to attacks from within. I wanted to check for security holes and backdoors in the system. Protecting you guys from cracking attacks and acting as an encyclopedia were just bonuses. And while I was at it, I needed to set up a VPN hub for Daehan too.”

Baek Aeyeong learned that Lee Seoin owned three famous web-security companies in North America and managed more than five thousand websites. It seemed that the number of companies Lee Seoin had either purchased or founded was close to a hundred. In particular, she apparently owned three companies related to VPNs. From the rough explanation she gave, if they made a free VPN available for use, greedy idiots would flock to it, allowing them to spy on the information inside those users’ electronic devices.

Several websites that allowed people to create email accounts without entering personal information, as well as a few messenger programs, had been made by companies Lee Seoin operated. Judging from the stories she occasionally told, she seemed to have data centers set up somewhere as well.

Lee Seoin had five laptops, each of which had a different purpose. Sometimes, as a hobby, Lee Seoin attacked pornographic websites and wiped out all their data, or plastered the personal information of their administrators and users across Internet communities in huge letters. She also seemed to have reported human-trafficking locations to the police often enough to send officers rushing over. There were an incredible number of people who wanted Lee Seoin dead. She seemed to be quite a legendary figure on the Internet. From time to time, she changed her first and last name, along with her other personal information.

Lee Seoin told Baek Aeyeong that if she died while working there, Baek Aeyeong had to destroy the remaining laptops and deliver the blue laptop to the designated person, offering an absurd amount of money in exchange. Even while they were having that conversation, hacking requests continued to pour across the screen.

In lieu of money, Baek Aeyeong accepted Lee Seoin’s promise to live a regular life. Lee Seoin had agreed to the deal after deciding she had nothing to lose, but as a result, she now had to wake up at seven in the morning and go eat breakfast.

Shin Haeryang had normally slept well and merely developed insomnia, but Lee Seoin seemed to have a routine of not sleeping at all except for occasionally passing out as though she had been knocked unconscious.

“If you keep living like this, you might get cancer.”

“I’ll stop it with money.”

“You can’t buy health with money.”

“Of course you can. Didn’t Jihyeon just walk down that corridor with her eyes closed?”

Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyeok were already seated in the cafeteria. Seo Jihyeok waved toward them. The food on their trays was piled so high it looked ready to burst. Those two seemed to take it in stride even when their team members slept longer or skipped meals.

Baek Aeyeong thought that was a form of laziness or neglect, but not everyone could share her opinion, so she merely gave them a displeased look without saying anything.

It took five days of stakeouts for Shin Haeryang to catch the culprit. He was a headquarters employee who lived in the room next to Lee Se-eun’s, not far from it. He had been caught kicking at her door, thinking Shin Haeryang would not be there. When Baek Aeyeong arrived at the dormitory room with Lee Se-eun, Shin Haeryang had bloodshot eyes and seemed intent on cutting off one of the man’s ankles. He had already bound the man’s left ankle tightly with parachute cord in preparation for the amputation.

The headquarters employee screamed in English for them to spare him, but no one came to Lee Se-eun’s room. Listening to the frightened man’s screams, Baek Aeyeong snorted. No one had come out even when he had kicked the door hard enough to shake the entire dormitory, so did he really think screaming for help would make anyone assist him? They would all just think, “None of my business.”

“What will be the price for making you live uncomfortably until now?”

When Lee Se-eun heard Shin Haeryang’s question, she hesitated before answering.

“At first, it was scary, but now I’ve had fun chatting with the engineers or stealing Haeryang’s nuts with Jihyeok. It felt like I was camping in your room, Haeryang. What about you? Was it very inconvenient?”

Shin Haeryang’s eyes lingered for a moment on The Count of Monte Cristo and Pride and Prejudice, which he had borrowed on Seo Jihyeok’s recommendation. Keeping the culprit pinned down by the back of his neck, Shin Haeryang whispered, “Thank her for her mercy.”

The culprit was released after being scared out of his wits. He was given one last chance, on the condition that if he disturbed Lee Se-eun’s sleep one more time, he would wholeheartedly agree to losing both ankles. The decision was made because they did not want the perfectly intact room to become a sea of blood, and because it respected Lee Se-eun’s wishes as someone who would have to continue working in the same building.

Shin Haeryang and Baek Aeyeong withdrew from Lee Se-eun’s room. Baek Aeyeong was worried that the man might harm Lee Se-eun under cover of darkness. Remembering the scissors in Lee Se-eun’s room, she thought that perhaps things would be a little less dangerous if women could become accustomed to handling blades like that.

“If it were me, I would have at least asked him to pretend to chop off the toes one by one, but Se-eun seems to have a different opinion.”

“Maybe that’s the ordinary opinion. I agree with you, though. I…”

Shin Haeryang fell silent for a moment, then said,

“I think I’m the kind of person who has to take revenge, even if it’s meaningless, in order to survive.”

After returning the two books to the book café, Shin Haeryang spent quite a long time on the phone. Judging from what Baek Aeyeong overheard now and then, the conversation mostly concerned pensions, valleys, mountains, and dump trucks.

Side Story. Insomnia (5)

The longer Shin Haeryang’s phone calls lasted and the more frequently he went to Korea, the more Baek Aeyeong wanted to uncover the secret he never revealed himself. Judging only from the fragments of his conversations she overheard, Shin Haeryang gave the impression that he had killed several people in Korea and buried them en masse in the mountains to destroy the evidence.

Whenever suspicious circumstances arose in her life, Baek Aeyeong followed her instincts. Even when working with others, if a strange atmosphere arose, she did not go to the final meeting place, even after completing the mission. If a job offered a lot of money but had extremely difficult and illegal conditions, she refused it—or, even if she did get involved, she pulled out quickly. She even left a place if three men merely made eye contact with her, looked at one another, and laughed. Whenever food, alcohol, or beverages handed out by soldiers seemed suspicious, she did not consume them and threw them away. Sometimes she even refused food that everyone was eating together, claiming she was not hungry.

Thanks to that instinct, Baek Aeyeong avoided the misfortunes of mercenaries being found dead with unidentified identities after fighting over the mafia’s gold bars they had secretly hidden during a job, or being poisoned by their commander even after completing a mission.

The soldiers called to hurry her along, asking when she would arrive because they were starting the party first, but for some reason, Baek Aeyeong did not feel like getting out of the hotel bed that day. She dawdled for over an hour, unlike her usual self, and when she finally arrived at the meeting place, she assumed they would be rolling around with liquor bottles, singing with slurred speech while drunk.

The soldiers she had worked with were indeed rolling around on the floor. Their entire bodies had stiffened from poison, and they were dead or dying as they rolled in their vomit across the floor. Baek Aeyeong learned from the local newspaper that the soldiers had been killed with tetrodotoxin. She had called an ambulance anonymously, but it was too late. Of those who had died without even being able to scream because their muscles had seized up, the only body missing was that of the unit commander.

There were more than 350,000 mercenaries scattered across the world, and around two hundred official companies involved in mercenary work. There were also about fifty unofficial ones. Developed countries considered it more convenient to pay mercenaries to fight in their place than to send the regular forces they had trained at great expense to dangerous places, only to have them die amid opposition from their own citizens. After all, even if mercenaries died, they had not died as regular soldiers, so their deaths did not appear in the records. And even if mercenaries assaulted or killed local residents or looted resources and sent them back to developed countries, it was not the regular forces who had done it, so the citizens of those developed countries had no need to feel moral responsibility or guilt.

War was one of the oldest ways of making money. In every powerless country to which mercenaries disguised as security-specialist companies were dispatched, civilians were killed and resources were looted, and those resources were ultimately consumed cheaply in developed countries.

Most of the official mercenary companies backed by developed countries—BlackXter, VagX Group, and so on—preferred former members of their own countries’ special forces. Moreover, they had strict cutoffs involving continuous blood tests and fitness tests, minimum height requirements, and a preference for white men. Applicants from the United States or Britain were sometimes paid about twice the annual salary. Applicants from Asia, on the other hand, were paid even less.

The remaining companies were less particular about experience and qualifications. As long as they did their jobs well, even dishonorably discharged soldiers addicted to painkillers could survive as mercenaries, but the problem was that there were that many more lunatics. Dirty acts such as betrayal, assault, and intimidation occurred on a daily basis. In addition, mercenaries were often under multiple contracts with several companies. Causing trouble at one company and moving on to another was nothing unusual.

Baek Aeyeong only learned later why Thomas, who had been in the industry far longer than she had, had spared her life instead of killing her, even though she was still a newcomer who had joined only a few years earlier. Her name spread throughout the industry as that of a person who, blinded by money, had poisoned the members of her own team and fled. They had needed a living lightning rod to draw the resentment of the enraged people in the industry.

That bastard Thomas moved to one of the most vicious yet famously well-paying security companies. Thinking about it now, one of the conditions of his transfer must have been eliminating the team members he had worked with, to keep them quiet. Whenever Baek Aeyeong recalled Thomas, with snake tattoos on his forearms and legs, grinning slyly while baring one broken tooth, she felt her indigestion flare up again.

No one believed a word she said. The people who had worked with the dead men or been close to them were constantly looking for an opportunity to kill Baek Aeyeong. Those without enough passion for that merely inflicted indirect disadvantages on her. It was miserable that no one believed her even when she denied having done it, but there was one good thing: no one was willing to drink with her. They probably feared in advance that she would lace their drinks with poison. It was absurd. If people she had happened to become acquainted with through occasional jobs had not introduced her to others or arranged work for her, praising her clean and efficient handling of assignments, Baek Aeyeong would never have survived in the mercenary industry.

One day, Baek Aeyeong happened to meet Sin Haeryang, whose face was covered by a balaclava, and learned that Sin Haeryang had known one of the team members who had been poisoned in the past. One of the members she had worked with back then had claimed to be Vietnamese, but thinking about it now, there had been something extremely strange about that. It had probably been a lie. Baek Aeyeong’s impression upon seeing Sin Haeryang remove his balaclava, which was covered in sand, was that he was so broad and tall that trying to kill him with a knife would be like attacking him with a toothpick.

Sin Haeryang politely asked her to spare him a moment, then, with his chapped, dry lips, asked if Baek Aeyeong had been the one who poisoned and killed those people back then.

Yes. I killed them all.

Baek Aeyeong was tired even of telling the truth. The man who had suddenly come looking for her stared at Baek Aeyeong for a while before saying,

“It wasn’t you. Thank you for confirming that.”

Then he left without a sound, just as quietly as he had come.

Some time later, Baek Aeyeong heard a rumor that Thomas had been found dead in Africa. The moment she heard it, she was certain that man had done it. After raising her value through frequent transfers, she eventually joined her current company, where she met Sin Haeryang again, the infamous man known throughout the industry. They had occasionally seen each other when briefly assigned to one-off jobs or short-term operations, and had worked together a few times, but this was their first long-term assignment together.

Baek Aeyeong sensed that the team leader was hiding something. What possible reason could there be for a team leader who worked as an engineer at an underwater base to buy tons of rocks and dirt on land? Even if he were building someone’s grave, he would not put this much effort into it. It was probably related to his private life and would have little effect on her. That judgment was almost instinctive. After all, she was the sort of person who would refuse even when offered a transfer with better conditions.

She knew that in her heart, but Baek Aeyeong could not stand it when someone serving as commander hid something. Sin Haeryang’s insomnia gradually improved as the days went by. After people began saying they were frightened of him wandering around on walks at dawn or sitting near the deep-sea aquarium, Sin Haeryang started carrying a drink in a mug. After the mug had been smashed against people’s heads several times, he began carrying a book in his hand. Once the book had cracked someone’s head, the objects he carried changed through several different types, until eventually he started carrying knitting. Baek Aeyeong did not know why, but people seemed to find those who knitted less threatening.

After hearing a location and place mentioned in passing during one of Sin Haeryang’s phone calls, Baek Aeyeong hesitated for three months. At last, she took leave and went to the place herself. According to the online map, it was a perfectly ordinary rural valley. In the upper reaches of the valley, where summer had just begun, several vacationers could be seen playing in the water.

As she wandered around, wondering if this was really the place indicated by the coordinates, Baek Aeyeong noticed that the enormous amounts of rock and dirt supposedly transported by dump trucks were all spread across the ground. She observed the upper reaches, where the water looked deep, and asked the people playing there about it. They gave her the absurd answer that the depth was uniform throughout almost the entire valley, with the water reaching only an adult’s waist.

They had surveyed the places that were usually three to seven meters deep in advance. Then, during winter, when the valley’s water naturally receded, they had filled the bottom with earth, sand, and rocks, and leveled it using large stones. The construction had taken ten days. Thanks to it, the depths at the most dangerous spots in the valley had been reduced to the height of an adult’s waist or chest.

Moreover, on closer inspection, the valley itself was much wider than it had appeared on the online map from a year ago. They had probably widened the valley to reduce the flow and speed of the water, lowering the risk of accidents even during torrential rain.

All kinds of safety equipment had been installed outside the valley. Baek Aeyeong stared fixedly at the spot where the small, faded No Swimming sign she had often seen in photographs of the valley—and which had been on the verge of falling down—had disappeared. In its place stood gleaming new signs bearing large warnings: No Swimming, No Swimming After Drinking, and Avoid Swimming, as This Is a Dangerous Area. The old ropes, worn out and about to fall apart, were all gone as well. Sturdy new ropes had been installed along with tubes, almost encircling the valley.

Resuscitation machines for drowning victims had been installed every ten meters. As she checked while riding her bike over, she found that a road had been cut almost in a straight line between the valley and the hospital.

Baek Aeyeong went into the café closest to the valley, ordered the most expensive drink, and ate about fifteen madeleines baked by the owner herself until her cheeks bulged. Since there were no other customers, the excited café owner happily kept her company.

The county office had apparently considered the valley a major headache because four or five drowning accidents occurred there every year, but they had been forced to leave it unattended due to a lack of disaster-prevention funds. Then, all of a sudden, an anonymous donor contributed an enormous sum specifically for the valley, allowing the county office to carry out the construction on the valley floor that they had been waiting so long to undertake.

“Last year, I think. It suddenly started raining here, and the water in the valley swelled up like crazy. Quite a lot of people who were swept away died then. Five or six people must’ve died that summer. Three or four people died in this valley every year, without fail. It was strange—the locals who lived here didn’t die, but outsiders who came to visit did. There were probably some bodies they never found, too. There was a time when they couldn’t find the bodies for quite a while because of the rain, and a shaman came. The shaman said that everyone who had fallen into the water and died here had become water ghosts. She said that unless they drowned people, they couldn’t leave this valley for the rest of their lives as water ghosts. She probably said they’d have to hold a ritual if they wanted to find even the bodies swept away in the valley.”

Baek Aeyeong frowned and swallowed the mouthful of madeleine she had been chewing before asking,

“Really? So what happened?”

“The parents of the dead kids wanted to hold a ritual even though they had no money and would have had to overextend themselves. But a man who was either the dead person’s boyfriend or husband got incredibly angry while crying. He said he’d somehow retrieve the body. I remember that.”

“Did they find it?”

“I don’t know. I only remember that the man got angry because he was handsome. …Do you like the madeleines? These ones were oddly shaped, so I didn’t put them out for sale, but they taste the same. I’ll give you these for free, so try some more. You eat so heartily. Anyway, they’ve done such a good job with the construction that, barring something extraordinary, no one should come here to play and drown anymore.”

Baek Aeyeong returned to the underwater base, bought twenty madeleines, and handed them out to the team members. She lied that the place she had visited was Busan. Sin Haeryang, who noticed her lie, met her eyes for a moment, but said nothing, as though he had decided it was an acceptable lie.

Side Story. Documentary (1)

When I woke from sleep after falling out of bed, water was seeping slowly into Room 38. I was terrified, breathing rapidly. Without taking anything from the room, I opened the door barefoot in a panic. Seawater had already risen to my calves in the hallway, and it surged into the room as though it had been waiting for me. There was no one in the hallway.

The lights illuminating the corridor of Baekho-dong’s living quarters all went out at once, then flickered several times before coming back on. In the unstable, flickering lights and the shadows glimpsed at the end of the hallway, I thought I saw someone.

I shouted at the top of my voice.

“Is anyone there?”

Even when I screamed with all my strength as I waded through seawater close to freezing, the living quarters remained silent. Only the dull thuds of objects floating or sinking with the water and striking the floor or walls, the sound of water dripping from somewhere, the evacuation alarm ringing far away, and the strange music produced by malfunctioning electronic devices answered me.

“Is no one there? Somebody, answer me!”

Why was no one there? I walked around checking the other people’s rooms, but there was no one anywhere. I could not walk properly, as though someone without a form had seized my legs. I made my way down the corridor at less than a quarter of my usual speed, feeling as though my entire body had been caught in a noose. The seawater rose silently past my waist, up to my chest, then over my shoulders.

Drowning in fear, I frantically climbed the stairs leading out of the living quarters. Just before leaving, I turned around and looked at the living quarters, where the water had risen to the very top of the ceiling. In the darkness inside, where even the lights could barely illuminate anything, someone called out to me. I thought I faintly heard a scream for help. The voice sounded familiar, like one of my family members, and yet it also sounded like that of someone I had never met.

Even the emergency lights installed in the hallway seemed to have gone out, leaving the water pitch-black. Unable to summon the courage to enter it, I fled the living quarters, trembling with fear. My feet would not move properly. Perhaps my body had frozen, because no matter how much I ran, I felt as though I remained in the same place. It felt as though countless shapeless hands had seized my body all at once, preventing me from escaping.

When I headed for the escape-pod port, the number of escape pods remaining was zero. I held back the urge to burst into tears and turned around. There was no time to despair. When I headed toward the nearest Jungang-dong to escape Baekho-dong, portraits of people I had never seen were hanging on the walls of the passage connecting the two. As I walked between the portraits, I soon realized that the eyes in the paintings were watching me. Even the paintings I had already passed followed me by rolling their eyes backward. I kept my head facing forward and ran down the corridor with all my strength.

The passage ended, and I entered Jungang-dong of the underwater base, but every scene in sight was completely submerged. The only thing moving was Medic, crawling along the ceiling while displaying a sad-face emoticon. The seawater continued to rise, though I could not tell where it was coming from. Far away, I saw an android sink beneath the water.

Was no one there? Even when I screamed until my throat was hoarse, it seemed there was no one to hear me. The lights of Underwater Base Four flickered precariously, then all went out before coming back on. I boarded the central elevator, but it did not operate, submerged in water. I pressed the buttons that were still lit several times, but the elevator doors would not close. The only thing that came from the ceiling was a bizarre female voice saying that the elevator was no longer operational. Then I suddenly realized that someone was waiting for me in the main operations room.

I left the central elevator and headed toward the main operations room, but the seawater had already risen to my chest, making it difficult even to walk. Don’t fall. Don’t fall. My shoulders felt heavy. When I looked behind me, something pitch-black and formless was clinging to my back. Who are you? The moment I asked, I slipped and fell into the water.

My feet kicked at the water as I tried to right myself, but I could not find my balance at all. Help me! Seawater filled my mouth, lungs, and ears. When I could no longer breathe, pain spread through my chest. Tears poured down my face. I thrashed about for my life, but I could not breathe. I could see light above my head, but when I suddenly turned to look down, there was nothing beneath my feet but darkness.

Something heavy was pressing down on my chest, making it hard to breathe as though someone had placed a huge boulder on top of me. Through my tears, I saw the cat repeatedly pressing down on my chest with its forepaws.

“Bada. You’re awake? You’re so······.”

The time was 5:04 a.m. I let out a long sigh of relief, then spoke to the creature pressing on my chest.

“······You woke up early. What a diligent cat. How about going to work in my place?”

My entire body had stiffened with fear, but as time passed, my muscles slowly relaxed. I tried to grab the cat that had disturbed my sleep and pull it into my arms, but it slipped out of my embrace like smoke, as if it were used to this. Instead, I ended up embracing the dawn air and my blanket. With the warm, soft bedding wrapped around my body, all I wanted was to sleep longer. Even if the world were about to end, I wanted to greet it while lying beneath my blanket. Why did people have to live by working? Damn capitalism.

Seeing that I was not getting up quickly, the cat let out a bizarre cry. In my experience, that sound meant either that it wanted food or that it wanted me to clean its litter box. Or perhaps it was cursing its lazy owner. I wiped the tears from the backs of my hands, yawned widely, and sat up. Familiar household items emerged beyond the gray dawn. I took care of what Bada wanted first, then quickly got ready for work.

I was currently in Korea, and I was safe. But even though two years had passed since my escape, I still occasionally dreamed about the underwater base. I had gotten much better than before. Not long after my escape, everyone I met seemed like a member of the Infinite Church or some other cult, and I was afraid of tomorrow because I might wake up in the quarters of the underwater base. The dreams I had back then were also far more intense than they were now, and many of them made no sense at all.

I sometimes dreamed that my mother and Mujin had joined the Infinite Church behind my back and were opening the front door for its believers, forcing me to work hard to drive them out. I also had numerous dreams in which my younger brother or mother was offered up as a sacrifice in my place. In another dream, members of the Infinite Church brought their lips to my skin as though worshiping me, then tore off and ate a bite before leaving.

The dreams in which the dead Anna appeared were even more horrifying. With my arms and legs bound, I was chopped into tiny pieces with a large knife, like cubing radish kimchi, while Elizabeth scooped me up with a teaspoon and ate me. When the altar overflowed with my blood and flesh, the believers rejoiced, only to weep or despair when they realized they could not return to the past. I also dreamed that Kim Jaehee blamed me, asking why I had to live and saying it would have been better if I had died. There were many dreams in which the survivors appeared one after another and grabbed me by the collar, shaking me.

I even dreamed that tens of thousands of scales grew from my body and turned me into a huge dragon. I crossed the sea, summoned clouds, and made it rain, while every ship passing beneath me overturned or sank. In the dream, people wearing brightly colored clothes would appear and scold me, saying that I must not change the weather so carelessly. I would apologize all over the place, saying that I was sorry, but I had only recently become a dragon and did not know any better. They were truly absurd dreams.

I also deliberately avoided articles related to the underwater base. For about half a year, I hardly dreamed at all. Watching the cat stretch, I patted its back and rump and said,

“Bada. Dad has to go to work. Keep a good eye on the house. I’ll make lots of money and come home.”

Kim Sowon had said that the four-a.m. start time was temporary, but something that did not change even after two months could not be called temporary. I staged a sit-in in the examination room, insisting that I absolutely could not do it, and fortunately managed to push my start time back by two hours. As a result, I had to open the hospital at six in the morning. You might wonder who would come to a hospital at six a.m., but surprisingly, quite a few patients sought out the hospital from the early hours of the morning.

Some office workers came in for early appointments because they had been unable to take any leave, or had already used up all their vacation days. Others had broken, lost, or cracked teeth after an eventful night, while still others suffered from acute pulpitis and waited for the dental clinic to open. I was going to protest to Kim Sowon once again. Maybe I could get my start time adjusted to eight o’clock.

If I had to find one advantage to starting work before dawn, it was that the roads were not congested in the early morning. That was because there were no cars on them. I could get to work faster than anyone else. ······That hardly sounds like an advantage.

The sky was a terribly dark gray. Was it going to rain? When I arrived at the hospital, Kim Sowon was already there. When did this person sleep? I had heard people say that you lost the ability to sleep late as you got older, and I was getting older, but sleep taken before dawn was a treasure I would never exchange for anything.

“Good morning, Sowon. It’s quite windy this morning.”

“Good morning, Director. They say there’s an eighty-percent chance of rain today. It might rain a lot. We could have quite a few appointment cancellations.”

Kim Sowon looked at the clouds beyond the window and spoke as if she did not approve of them. As a dentist, however, I secretly hoped that the heavy rain would keep patients away. My dreams had been unsettled, and I did not particularly feel like working hard. If an appointment was canceled, I could fiddle with my phone until the next patient arrived, shop, read the news, eat snacks, and restore my mental and physical well-being. I wanted to make excuses about the rain and say, “There aren’t many patients today. It can’t be helped. I’ll be lazy too.” I hoped it would rain heavily.

Once it passed six, the sound of raindrops began. Perhaps because of the weather, an appointment patient failed to show up, so I checked my email and found a strange message waiting for me. Someone was making a documentary about the underwater base and wanted to know whether I would be willing to give an interview.

The documentary was titled [The Underwater Base of Nightmares: The People Trapped in the Sea]. I froze for a moment as I looked at the title. The description read: [Uncovering the worst terrorist attack in history to occur at an underwater base in the North Pacific, as the survivors recall the harrowing memories of that day and confront the truth]. It said I could participate anonymously. In that case, my face would be pixelated and my voice altered. The email stated that it had been sent to every survivor of the underwater base. It seemed they had sent it to all the former employees as well. I think I lost myself for a while as I read the email about four times.

It was 6:20 in the morning. There were······many people I could contact and ask about this at such an hour. Bakeries and gyms opened at six in the morning too. ······Come to think of it, perhaps it was only natural for a dental clinic to open at dawn. What was so special about a dentist that it could not open alone at dawn? Was I the lazy one?

Side Story. The Documentary (2)

All the shop owners whose businesses occupied the first, second, and third floors of the building gathered in the dental clinic’s break room. A patient with an appointment had overslept, and had sent a message apologizing that they could not possibly make it on time because of the rain. Kim Sowon’s expression was sour, but I cheered inwardly as I called Kim Gayoung and Shin Haeryang.

The heating in the break room had only just been turned on, so the air was still chilly. I brewed some hot coffee and handed a cup to each of my guests. Kim Gayoung sipped hers with an extremely haggard face. She had not even been open for an hour, yet she was already exhausted. At this time of day, I had seen her packing and displaying bread, so apparently baking was no ordinary kind of hard work. Kim Gayoung spoke with lifeless eyes.

“I’ve already emailed them saying I’ll do the interview. The documentary director knew that I’d been trapped in the room and said they really wanted to interview me.”

“I see.”

An answer came before I could even turn my head toward Shin Haeryang.

“I’m not doing it.”

“I see.”

Shin Haeryang, who seemed to be busy day and night with the interior construction of his gym, looked to be in the best condition of the three of us. I had heard that he had been in a cast on his left arm until recently and had barely survived after nearly dying in a cave, but none of that showed on the outside. Compared to Shin Haeryang, Kim Gayoung and I looked like patients. Starting work before dawn had to end. Working more than five hours a day should be declared illegal.

“What about you, Muhyeon?”

Kim Gayoung asked while leaning back against the sofa and letting all the strength drain from her body. After leaving the underwater base and touring hospitals in Korea, I had gone around looking for all kinds of people, trying in my own way to investigate what I had experienced there. I emailed all kinds of physicists, and told an old high school classmate who had become a physics professor what had happened to me, asking whether it was possible in reality. My classmate, whom I met for the first time in a long while, did not nag me as he used to, telling me not to study physics. Instead, he said he had heard I had been involved in a terrorist attack and that I must have been deeply traumatized, then urged me to seek treatment for PTSD. When I told him I was already going to a hospital, he told me to keep going more diligently. He encouraged me awkwardly, looking at me with deep pity.

When I told an orthopedic surgeon friend, he stared intently at me, activated the memo function beside the medical chart, and typed away at the keyboard. Then, in a serious voice, he suggested that I get a blood test. Or perhaps a brain CT. Had my story made him suspect a brain disorder? I had a blood test and a brain CT, but nothing unusual was found. I······was friends with these idiots?

I could not tell my family. It would have been the same as telling them that I had lost my fingers, lost my job, and was not even mentally sound anymore. I could not bring myself to confess everything to my mother, so I told my younger brother only ten percent of what had happened at the underwater base. When Mujin said things like, “Hyung, I understand. It must have been really hard,” I gave up trying to explain. What did he understand? Good grief. Just study.

If I had been an exceptionally remarkable person who could obtain far more information than ordinary people, or if I had extensive connections somewhere and a highly active personal network, I might have been able to learn hidden truths or secrets. Perhaps I could even have interpreted what had happened to me scientifically or religiously.

If I had been rich enough to have money rotting away, I would have offered a huge cash prize to scientists around the world and held a competition titled [A Scientific Interpretation of the Strange Phenomena Experienced by Park Muhyeon Due to a Cult].

But I had nothing but debt, a disability, and no job, so I could not pour all my limited time, money, and emotions into something I had experienced for only a single day at the underwater base. Time no longer sent me back into the past. It simply walked steadily along its own path. Sometimes its footsteps felt heartless, but in a way, I found enormous comfort in knowing that time flowed in only one direction. I invested all the resources I had into returning to ordinary life. I decided to fill the hole in my chest with things other than the truth and go on living.

Sometimes I felt an impulse. An impulse to spend the rest of my life explaining that extraordinary day. There were moments when I wanted to throw away my family, my cat, my career, and the rest of my life and devote myself to finding out why it had happened to me. Kim Jaehee had probably searched for answers in all kinds of religions around that time too. That was how she found the Infinite Church. What would I end up finding?

Whenever I felt self-destructive, I went out to eat with my family, volunteered for free, and played with my cat. And sometimes I went on long rants about cults.

Get a grip. You can’t go back to the past. No matter how hard I struggled, I would not be able to find out the truth, and it was already over. If that day had been so extraordinary and intense, then each of the days I had left might be more meaningful and memorable than that one day at the underwater base.

Once I opened the dental clinic, the days passed in a literal blur. Sitting in the warm clinic with a steaming mug of coffee cupped in my hands, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that two years had already passed since the day of the terrorist attack. During the loops, I had never imagined that Kim Gayoung or Shin Haeryang would be drinking coffee at my dental clinic at this hour of the morning. I was happy that I could offer the survivors of the underwater base a place to rest and something to drink. I gazed warmly at Kim Gayoung and Shin Haeryang, touched my lips to the hot coffee, and after a brief silence, said,

“I’m still considering it. Part of me feels that doing an interview might only stir up trouble for no reason, so I’m leaning toward not doing one if possible. In any case, the interviews with the other survivors besides me will probably contain plenty of sensational material, so won’t the documentary production team focus more on them?”

That was just my impression, but if they gathered interviews with people—including the Infinite Church’s followers—then the name Park Muhyeon would probably come up quite often. I had no idea what the documentary team intended to do with all that footage. There were still quite a few criminals awaiting trial. I had thought that once the terrorist attack was over, things would be sorted out as quickly as possible, but that hadn’t really happened. Even after two years, the aftermath of the North Pacific Undersea Base terrorist attack was still being dealt with.

Many of the Infinite Church followers who had been afraid to carry out the terrorist attack had mixed sedatives, anti-anxiety medication, and the like with alcohol and drugs. The survivors, myself included, had flooded our brains with enormous quantities of alcohol and psychoactive drugs, including painkillers, sleeping pills, sedatives, and antidepressants. On top of that, we had spent about a day steeped in terror and fear. After investigators from various countries filtered out all the unbelievable parts of the survivors’ testimonies and made their report, the whole thing ended up being summarized as the armed followers of the Infinite Church taking over the torpedo-struck undersea base, building a horrific altar, and worshiping a demon called the Savior. Everything else was treated as secondary.

Shin Haeryang spoke as he drank coffee from a mug.

“Whether you do the interview or not, there are no longer even enough people left in the Infinite Church to be called followers. Most of those who were deeply devoted are in prison. You don’t need to worry too much.”

“Yes. I’ll take it into consideration.”

Before long, our interest in the documentary interview shifted to the name of the martial arts gym that would be opening soon and Kim Gayoung’s story about deciding to return to work as a researcher. Kim Sowon knocked on the break room door and told us that a patient had arrived, bringing our short gathering to an end. What a shame. I wanted to keep talking and spend more time with them.

At the reception desk, Kim Sowon glared at Shin Haeryang as he emerged from the break room with the eyes of a hawk. She had stared at him silently like that when he came into the dental clinic, too. It was as if she thought that the moment she took her eyes off him, he would close the distance in an instant and launch an unexpected attack. Kim Sowon spoke to Shin Haeryang as though she found him deeply objectionable.

“I can’t believe I have to see your face first thing in the morning.”

“Yeah. I’m glad to see you, too.”

At Shin Haeryang’s reply, Kim Sowon merely raised a clenched fist without actually throwing it. There was a patient in the waiting room. I supposed that was how those two people greeted each other in the morning. Realizing that it wasn’t yet time for Lee Nayoung to come to work, I hurried into the treatment room. Once the patient left, I would have to think about a potted plant that would make a suitable opening gift.

I wondered whether to ask Kim Jaehee about the interview, but decided against it, thinking it was far too early. Surely she wasn’t awake at this hour, either. When I asked her after nine o’clock, Kim Jaehee replied that she had decided to do the interview. I worriedly asked if she was planning to say anything strange, and all I received in response was a single grinning emoji. When I asked her to recommend a potted plant as an opening gift, an overwhelming flood of suggestions poured in.

After much deliberation, I decided not to do the interview.

The documentary was completed only about three months later. I was surprised that a documentary about the undersea base had come out so quickly—much faster than I had expected. I wondered if they had collaborated with the people who had continued filming with their phones during the terrorist attack in the auditorium, insisting that they were going to make a documentary. I also suspected that they might have already had part of it prepared.

[The Nightmare Undersea Base: People Trapped in the Sea]

A large title swept across images of Daehando and the First Undersea Base before the camera turned to the waters around Daehando. Soon, a marine ecology expert named Celine appeared, giving an interview with the First Undersea Base in the background.

“It was five in the morning. I was in the middle of shopping online. I was looking at a T-shirt I liked when suddenly the image wouldn’t load. I thought, ‘I guess the internet’s down.’ These days, whenever the internet goes down, it’s almost always because someone did something wrong. They say sharks used to bite through undersea cables, but that’s impossible nowadays, right? Do you know how sturdy undersea cables are? Even if a shark bites one, its teeth would break before the cable did. There was an incident before when the internet went down at the undersea base, but that happened because an underwater drone was trying to cut and remove an old cable and ended up cutting an intact internet cable as well. So I posted on the undersea base’s message board early that morning. I wrote that it seemed like the internet was down.”

The production team brought up the undersea base’s message board on screen, displayed the post, and asked,

“Celine. Is this the post you wrote?”

[You engineering bastard bugs who are sleeping right now! Stop sucking down your paychecks, get your asses up, and fix the damn internet! You fucking assholes! Fix it quickly! Before I come rip your heads off!]

Celine read the post she had written, then looked at the production crew and said,

“Looking at it now, I think I may have written it a little······ aggressively. You’ll edit that out, right?”

Park Muhyeon sighed as he watched the documentary. Good thing I hadn’t done the interview.

Side Story. Documentary (3)

The documentary showed what had happened at the undersea base on May 31 in chronological order, beginning at five in the morning. Because of the nature of the jobs that operated on rotating shifts at the undersea base, it seemed that about twenty percent of the people were always awake. Interviews with other people followed in order, one after another.

On the Infinite Church’s side, a man using the pseudonym Ryan appeared, though his face was hidden in darkness.

“The Infinite Church followers’ objective was to cut off Daehando’s communications network and isolate it before six in the morning. To do that, the first thing we had to do was thoroughly destroy the communications infrastructure. We destroyed wired and wireless telephones, smashed routers, cut fiber-optic cables, jammed the signals of long-distance wireless communication networks, destroyed satellite transmission and reception equipment······. We had to destroy communications first. Everything had to be damaged beyond the point where it could be repaired easily. Transportation came next. We had to cut off the people on Daehando from all outside contact and make sure they couldn’t receive any external assistance.”

Another Infinite Church follower’s interview followed. He was a man with extremely thin arms and legs, and his face was hidden as well. He used the pseudonym Jackal. Perhaps all the people from the Infinite Church used animal names as aliases. Jackal gave his interview while wearing handcuffs.

“Our team’s assignment was to illegally park cars on the helipad so helicopters couldn’t take off or land, set fire to the remaining helicopters, and destroy the helipad equipment. It didn’t take as long as we’d expected. It was almost boring. Our team worked perfectly together when it came to pouring gasoline and starting fires. We understood each other without needing to say a word. We used an engineer’s employee ID to turn off the sprinklers through the Maris system, then set fire to the helipad. But Maris seemed to interpret the situation as a crisis-response drill in which an undersea base employee had deliberately started a fire. It kept sending alerts telling people to put out the fire or evacuate, but it didn’t seem capable of imagining that someone might have set fire to the helipad as part of a terrorist attack.”

I thought of Celloni, whom I had left at the dental clinic. It seemed that what Maris had failed to understand was human malice. The production team spoke to the Infinite Church follower named Jackal.

“Please tell us about Mr. Aslan as well.”

“Who’s that?”

“Aslan Trofimov. The man who was injured trying to stop the helicopter fire. The pilot who specialized in medical evacuations.”

“Oh. That bastard. We were watching to see whether the helipad was burning well enough when some guy suddenly ran into the flames carrying a fire extinguisher. Our team had been hiding nearby, so we caught him and tied him up. When he saw the air ambulance burning, that grown man bawled like a child even though it wasn’t even his helicopter. He screamed so loudly that it sounded like the helipad would be blown away, so we poured gasoline into his mouth and set it on fire. Once his mouth had all burned up, he quieted down. You know how there’s always some tactless bastard who insists on butting in? He seemed like one of those people. If he’d just stayed still, he wouldn’t have ended up like that.”

Did I really have to keep watching this? Curses came from behind me. They were probably from Baek Aeyoung. Kim Gayoung said while crunching popcorn,

“They say he survived.”

“······That’s fortunate.”

I let out the deep sigh I had been holding back. All sorts of people had gathered at my closed dental clinic to watch the documentary air that day. Each person had brought some kind of snack with them.

As soon as the documentary began, I completely lost my appetite. Kim Gayoung, Shin Haeryang, Baek Aeyoung, and Lee Jihyeon, however, continued eating without a care, entirely unaffected by the documentary’s content. They had eaten so much even before it started. When I asked if they had come without eating breakfast, it didn’t seem to be the case.

There were assorted soft drinks and popcorn, hot dogs and churros, pretzels and nachos. My dental clinic had never had this much food in it before. Only Kim Jaehee didn’t touch any of the snacks.

“Next, our team went to the boat launch at the beach. There were more than enough things waiting for us to lay our hands on. The newer boats have completely different hull designs. They’re beautiful, aren’t they? There were quite a few that felt like a waste to burn. To think I had to destroy these sleek, gorgeous beauties with my own hands. If they’d been my boats, I really would have cried. But there was no helping it. The communications functions and networking equipment installed in newer boats these days are so advanced that rescue operations can be carried out from the other side of the planet. The boats’ communication equipment was good enough to call the Alaskan Coast Guard from Daehando. Honestly, it was a little fun. As I smashed everything I could and splashed gasoline around, I thought, ‘The owner must have taken out decent insurance, right?’”

Jackal snickered, and the interview with the Infinite Church follower named Ryan appeared again.

“Our team had to install an EMP generator that had been smuggled onto the island, along with a cooling system, and activate it at the appointed time. It was a difficult job that required a lot of work. Once it activated, electronic devices would all break down at once. It was also delicate work—something the simple-minded fools who damaged the wires at the helipad and the boats couldn’t handle. After we used the EMP generator, the radios worked intermittently. Most of the work had to be done by people.”

Ryan hesitated for a long time before continuing.

“I informed Jamal Green, David Knight, and Elizabeth Hoover that the system had finished coming online, then guarded this place with the rest of my team. Instead of attending the prayer ceremony at the First Undersea Base, our team had entrusted our jewels and wishes to Ms. Hoover. Every member of our team had done so. We pledged our loyalty to the Infinite Church by offering up our souls. We guarded this place until a woman knocked us unconscious.”

“What time did the EMP activate?”

“It must have been 6:45 a.m.”

The person being interviewed suddenly disappeared, replaced by an animation showing Daehando and the First, Second, and Third Undersea Bases. As it explained the Fourth Undersea Base, the camera moved through Hyeonmudong, Jungangdong, and Jujakdong in sequence, then passed through the connecting corridor inside Jujakdong and entered the research center.

The screen passed by the Deep-Sea Life Center and the Undersea Pollution Center in turn before stopping at the Rare Earth Center. At 7:01, it showed the lounge in the central plaza of the Rare Earth Center through CCTV footage.

There were more people than I had expected. Perhaps they didn’t want to go in and start researching first thing in the morning, so they were sitting in the lounge. Several people were either resting or chatting with mugs in their hands. Even though it was only 7:01 in the morning, quite a few people were moving around in the lounge.

The moment it became 7:02, the documentary showed a torpedo completely destroying the Rare Earth Center building. Water surged into the fourth-floor central plaza of the Rare Earth Center in an instant, and the people visible on the CCTV footage were swept away, vanishing without a trace.

Someone introduced as an expert appeared and began explaining while coloring in sections of a blueprint of the Rare Earth Center.

“As you can see from the CCTV footage installed on the fourth floor, where the researchers are swept away by the current in an instant, the people at the scene wouldn’t have been able to do anything. Under such overwhelming water pressure, a person would be swept away almost like a fallen leaf. According to the simulation, the torpedo bored precisely into this spot. Most of the people on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors would have died instantly from the impact. Even if they hadn’t, they would have been swept away by the tremendous water pressure and lost consciousness within two or three seconds.”

Seawater bored into the Rare Earth Center through the gaping hole as though it had been waiting for this moment. I was dumbfounded, completely focused on the reenactment footage. A hole had appeared in the upper floors of the M-shaped building, yet the water was rising on the first floor.

“When holes appeared on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors of the building constructed at -3,000 meters, water began pouring down from the upper floors to the lower floors, causing the water to rise from the first floor upward. From that point on, even drainage efforts would have been useless. Nothing could have held back 301 atmospheres of pressure. It would have taken approximately forty seconds for the water on the first floor to rise over the occupants’ heads.”

In the CCTV footage just before it cut out, people struggled to avoid the water pouring down like a waterfall, like swarms of ants being swept away by rainwater. But as time passed, the footage was cut off.

“The researchers at the Rare Earth Center evacuated to the nearby Subsea Pollution Center. Those who were fortunate enough to be in the third-floor passage evacuated immediately. There were also many who were not so lucky. At that moment, Belial Riley, the director of the Subsea Pollution Center, saw the water pouring into the third-floor passage and the people being swept along with it, and closed off the connecting passage between the Rare Earth Center and the Subsea Pollution Center entirely.”

A scene appeared showing a massive barrier descending between the two centers and separating them.

“There had been 122 people working at the Rare Earth Center. With a split-second decision made in barely five seconds, Riley sealed off the Rare Earth Center. Once sealed, the Rare Earth Center collapsed in four seconds. As you can see in the simulation, the building is crumpling inward. It looks as though it’s being crushed by a giant’s hand, doesn’t it? The concrete could not withstand the weight of the fifth and sixth floors, which had lost their support after being struck by the torpedo, and bent along with the steel framework.”

A male researcher, apparently wanting to remain anonymous, had his face blacked out and spoke under the pseudonym Balloon Eel.

“I think Belial Riley might as well have killed the employees of the Rare Earth Center. I know I’ll be criticized for saying this, but someone has to say it. There were three more researchers running behind me! If he hadn’t closed the passage on his own like that, the survival rate of the Rare Earth Center’s employees wouldn’t have been nearly so low! He isn’t a hero!”

A small researcher appeared for an interview under the pseudonym Red King Jellyfish.

“I think Bel saved the researchers. No matter what anyone says, that’s what I believe. I came out because I think it’s important to say this.”

The scene flashed by in an instant. The production team turned to an expert with a question.

“What do you think would have happened if Mr. Riley had not sealed off the Rare Earth Center?”

“I… think it was a cold but sound decision. It allowed the 345 people in the Deep-Sea Life Center and the Subsea Pollution Center to survive. If Riley had not sealed off the Rare Earth Center, the aftershock of the torpedo strike and the collapse of the Rare Earth Center would have engulfed both the Subsea Pollution Center and the Deep-Sea Life Center. There is a fairly thick bulkhead between the main operations area and the research center, and it automatically blocks the water, but under pressure like this, it can occasionally malfunction. There are records of engineers having to repair it several times. If it had failed to function properly, the seawater that entered the subsea base because of the torpedo strike on the Rare Earth Center would have spread throughout the entire Fourth Subsea Base.”

The water that had entered from the Rare Earth Center spread in the blink of an eye, taking over the research center, passing through the main operations area, and reaching the central building. …Uh-oh. No way. During the loop, the central building had flooded once.

“The central building would definitely have been submerged. Eighty percent of the Fourth Subsea Base’s personnel would have died, swept away by the current. The terrorists’ bullets would have been the least of their problems. The torpedo would have killed nearly everyone.”

An employee from Azure Dragon Building who requested anonymity said:

“It was around seven in the morning. I rolled out of bed while I was sleeping. At first, I woke up thinking someone had hit me. When I got up from the floor, someone was running through the hallway, screaming. But when I listened, there weren’t just one or two people running. Some were crying, and others were shouting while pounding on every door. I was too scared to go out into the hallway, so I stayed in my room. There are quite a few people here who aren’t exactly right in the head, you know… But then the emergency alarm started ringing. The moment I heard it, I knew. I had to get out of my room immediately.”

Interviews with the survivors began to follow.

“When the alarm went off, I got up without knowing what was going on and ran out of my room. I just followed the person running ahead of me, watching their back. I didn’t even know why I was running. Everyone else was running, so I ran too. It wasn’t until I slipped in the hallway that I realized it. Ah. The water had gotten in.”

“When the evacuation alarm first sounded, honestly, I thought some idiot was playing a stupid prank. Or that it was a malfunction.”

“The woman running ahead of me slipped while she was running. I leaped over her so I wouldn’t accidentally kick her.”

“It was horrible. The water just kept coming in. I can’t describe how frightened I was. This is my room.”

Gim Gayeong shouted as she pointed at the screen with her finger.

“That’s me! Me!”

Extra Story. Documentary (4)

Gim Gayeong in the documentary footage and the Gim Gayeong sitting beside us felt like two different people. The production crew was filming her flooded room with an underwater drone. Among the furniture inside, the desk, wardrobe, and bed were all fixed in place, so only the chair and the remaining belongings floated around in the water.

A long black skirt undulated underwater, resembling a ghost with its hair hanging down. Perhaps because only two years had passed and there had been nothing in Gim Gayeong’s room that deep-sea creatures would find appealing, the room’s interior did not seem to have changed much from two years ago. It did not even look particularly messy. It had been preserved so well that it seemed as though the room could be used again if they simply pumped out the water.

A small, nameless fish caught on the drone’s camera swam slowly through the water. Gim Gayeong sat in a chair and spoke in English. Korean subtitles appeared beneath her words.

“As soon as I heard the evacuation alarm, I immediately searched for my passport and wallet and held them in both hands. Even in a disaster, you absolutely need your passport. Even if you have one, you can’t get help, but without one, people won’t even treat you like a human being. No matter where I go overseas, I never forget where my passport is. It also means that I’m a foreigner.”

Until now, I had never had the time to observe the inside of Gim Gayeong’s room at leisure, but seeing it through the screen gave me a strange feeling. Gim Gayeong seemed less interested in interior decoration than the others. The rooms in White Tiger Building alone had their walls covered with all sorts of posters, framed pictures, and fake windows that let in light.

The moment I saw the basic room layout of the subsea base and the flooded room, I felt as though I were submerged in Room 38. Some things had been corroded by seawater, but whenever the drone’s light moved, familiar Korean writing appeared on ramen packets and snack bags.

“All I could think about was getting out of my room. But the door wouldn’t open. At first, I thought someone was playing a prank. Then, when water began rushing into my room, I panicked. I could hear people running through the hallway, asking why everyone was running, and screaming. I shouted that my door wouldn’t open, too.”

The underwater drone illuminated the thick door to Room 77. I had struggled so much to open that thing. Still, when four people hung from it at once, it finally opened. The blade of an emergency axe was wedged into the gap beneath the door.

Beside me, Gim Gayeong was crunching on nachos. Seeing her looking perfectly fine gave me a great deal of comfort.

“There were researchers outside the door. They were all people I knew. All of them. Some had worked with me, and others lived in the rooms right beside mine. I could feel them trying to open the door from the other side. Some people even said that I was just unlucky. I kept hearing the sound of running water and footsteps, until someone said to me, ‘The door won’t open. I’m sorry.’”

After the underwater drone had thoroughly filmed the room filled with water, it began recording the hallway of the main operations area. The places untouched by the drone’s lights were pitch-black, making it feel as though we were experiencing a ruin firsthand.

“I had planned to call out every single person who left me behind during this interview. I wanted their names to remain in the documentary. I wanted revenge that way. It was also why I didn’t want to return to being a researcher. But what good would that do…? If those people had been put in the same situation, would they have stayed to save me? I survived, and now I can spend the rest of my life watching how they behave.”

A man who seemed to have requested anonymity appeared in the darkness with his upper body obscured. His voice had been altered. But despite the production crew’s efforts, Gim Gayeong recognized him the moment he opened his mouth. Terry Turner?

“While I was escaping, I heard a woman screaming for help because she was trapped in her room. She was asking for help, but I thought, ‘What does that have to do with me?’ My life was the most important thing, after all. You know what I mean, right? I ignored the screams behind me and ran. I don’t regret running away. In a situation like that, you have to escape faster than anyone else. But ever since then, every now and then, I hear the screams of someone trapped in a room at the edge of my ears. Even after I learned that the person trapped in the room was Researcher Kim Gayeong… and that she had escaped safely.”

Baek Aeyeong sprawled on the sofa, raising her middle finger as she chewed popcorn and began hurling curses. The documentary only indicated that Gim Gayeong had later been rescued by the people from Engineer Team A. Rather than saying that Shin Haeryang himself had rescued her, it seemed to be referring to the members of Engineer Team A currently working at the subsea base. When I looked at Gim Gayeong, she shrugged and said:

“Mr. Haeryang didn’t want his name mentioned in the documentary, and there are parts that would be awkward to put on the air exactly as they happened.”

The story of Gang Sujeong, who escaped while carrying the sleeping Henry, came up. Gang Sujeong had come to Korea on vacation, and every time we met, she complained more and more about the subsea base.

She had even seriously asked me things like, “If I beat people’s mouths in, could I make house calls?”—which made me uneasy. Gim Sowon might schedule a house call for her over the weekend. Unless I were making a house call to the northernmost tip of Hamgyeong Province or Dokdo, I would never go to the subsea base.

While watching Gang Sujeong’s interview, Lee Jihyeon stopped eating popcorn and casually asked Shin Haeryang:

“Team Leader Gang told me to ask if you had any intention of getting rehired at the subsea base.”

“No.”

After Gang Sujeong’s soulless interview ended, the interviews with Nevaeh and Henry followed in succession.

“My ex-husband contacted me for the first time in a very long while. I thought he might have been contacting me to apologize. We had hurled curses at each other because of the divorce. My ex-husband Lenny… Leonard told me that Henry was at the subsea base.”

A photograph of Henry sleeping and pictures of the inside of a room at the subsea base appeared, presumably taken at the time. The message sent along with the pictures contained all kinds of profanity, along with the words, I’m going to destroy what you cherish.

“It felt as though someone had poured ice water over my head. That mad dog… My ex-husband had kidnapped Henry and put him there. It’s horrifying every time I think about it.”

They say other people’s children grow in the blink of an eye. When I exchanged emails and messages on social media with him asking how he was doing, he had looked so young, but on television he seemed to have grown into such a fine young man. The child who had once been the size of a fist had grown until he was the size of a palm. Henry smiled shyly and said:

“I think I was scared because I woke up in an unfamiliar place. My mom and dad weren’t there, and there were only strangers around me. When I heard that I had to take an escape pod, I thought it sounded cool. I thought I should brag about it to Mom and my friends.”

……Thank you. Thank you for thinking that way. Uncle is very happy that you thought so, Henry.

Interviews with people who had struggled desperately at Undersea Base 4 and fled to escape the seawater passed by one after another. Then a map of the undersea base appeared, and the entirety of Undersea Base 3 began to glitter.

A man spoke with his face shrouded in darkness and his voice distorted. This man, known as Blue Marlin, had a distinct musical cadence in every word he spoke, even through the voice modulation.

“I was working at Undersea Base 3. When the base first began to shake, I didn’t think anything of it. I just thought, ‘The building’s shaking.’ But when I saw strange masked men pouring out of the central elevator, I threw down all the shoes I was sorting and ran for the escape pod port. Do you know what was funny? The owner of the smoothie shop came running out, saying he would be the first to get on an escape pod. He was always putting on airs about how he had a handgun and would be the first to take care of anyone who robbed his store or caused trouble. He was an old man who picked fights with me whenever I passed by his shop, saying I looked like a thief. But when the terrorists invaded, he was the first to run. Wasn’t he going to take care of them? It was ridiculous.”

Someone presumed to be a member of the Infinite Church gave an interview while wearing a prison uniform, under the name Hyena.

“There was no reason for us to go down to Undersea Base 4. Engineer Teams Na and Ra were there. Our team was supposed to wait at Undersea Base 2 or, depending on the situation, search and take control of Undersea Base 3. To be honest, we went down under the pretext of searching the place, but really it was because of the chocolate cookies, the convenience-store food, and the bakery in the middle of Undersea Base 3. I was a terrorist carrying a gun. I could take whatever I wanted from unmanned shops without worrying about anyone’s opinion. Why would I let such an opportunity pass me by? Of course, there were times when we went down after noticing something suspicious, like when someone pressed the elevator button at Undersea Base 3. But then they suddenly told us we had to search Undersea Base 4 and find the Savior.”

The interviews with the people of Undersea Base 3 flashed past, and the documentary crew showed footage of Undersea Base 2.

It was a reenactment of all the hostages lying facedown on the floor with their hands and feet bound. A member of the undersea base staff who had been taken hostage, known as Black Devil Anglerfish, appeared in the reenactment only through his voice.

“They told me to look at the floor. They said that if I raised my head, they would shoot me in the back of the head. They tied up my hands and feet, too. I couldn’t move at all. I was so frightened that cold sweat poured down my back. The terrorists would jab our waists or buttocks with their gun barrels or kick us for fun. There were even terrorists who had worked at the undersea base, and that bastard Jeffrey especially enjoyed tormenting the hostages. He was like a fish in water.”

Among the damaged CCTV footage, they showed a recording that had apparently been restored by chance, in which a terrorist kicked a hostage.

“It was complete chaos. While the terrorists were watching us, Bill, who was lying next to me, started beating up a guy named Muller, who was lying beside him. He said that if he was going to die as a hostage at the hands of the terrorists anyway, he might as well beat up a subordinate he disliked a few times before he died. The problem was that he was lying right next to me. I lowered my voice and said, ‘Bill! You idiot. I don’t want to attract the terrorists’ attention, so stay still!’ Bill told me, ‘Go fuck yourself.’”

“What happened after that?”

“What do you think? He shouted to the terrorists that he had freed his arm. Jeffrey flew over like a jet and struck Bill with his gun, then kicked him repeatedly. And then Jeffrey kicked me, too.”

Then, without warning, Elizabeth’s photograph suddenly filled the television screen, and I sucked in a breath. Elizabeth’s figure could also be seen in the faintly restored CCTV footage.

“Among the terrorists, there were also some unusual people who wore neither masks nor guns. They were covered in jewelry from head to toe. They seemed to be rather special, even among the terrorists. Even the ones who looked like nuclear waste spoke to them in a gentler tone. I especially remember a white-haired woman. She didn’t seem like a living person. She carried herself as confidently as if this undersea base belonged to her. She was like a merciless goddess. She frightened me a little.”

A man introduced as Baek Songjeong, an expert on pseudo-religions, appeared on the screen and began explaining. Is she Korean?

“What makes the North Pacific undersea base terror different from previous terrorist attacks is that it took place in a location surrounded by a pressure of 301 atmospheres. To escape the terrorists, the staff had no means of fleeing except through escape pods, submersibles, and elevators. We must pay attention to the fact that a disaster and a terrorist attack occurred simultaneously. The more hostages the Infinite Church took, the more leverage it would have in addressing the eight countries involved. But the Infinite Church had no intention of keeping the hostages alive. Of course, that included their own lives as well.”

The documentary showed a succession of people from the Infinite Church, along with paintings and symbols representing infinity.

“The Infinite Church is a religion that worships gods associated with time. It is a minor religion that worships Ra of Egypt, Cronus of Greco-Roman mythology, Kali of Indian mythology, and so on. They believed in every god said to possess the power to manipulate time. They built ancient temples from a very long time ago, and the religion continued steadily until the Middle Ages, before nearly disappearing in modern times. They believed that by possessing jewels, they could receive a share of that power.”

It was black-and-white archival footage of people who appeared to be members of the Infinite Church bowing their heads and worshiping one person.

“One religious symbol appears in the Infinite Church: a figure known as the Savior. It was believed that this Savior could travel backward through time. But there is always a price.”

Kim Jaehee grinned as she watched the documentary.

Author’s Note

Greetings. This is Yeon Sanho.

Thank you for reading [the work].

Thanks to the continued interest and love of my readers, I was able to serialize it this far.

If this work has inspired you to take even the slightest interest in flossing, exercising, learning to swim, and being kind to the weak, then I will be happier than I could say.

Though it may be difficult and exhausting, let us become one another’s lanterns so that we can maintain our humanity and morality and live good, righteous lives.

While writing this work, I drank one cup of coffee per chapter, so I ended up drinking nearly 400 cups by the time I reached the conclusion. One cup of coffee is about 500 milliliters, so 400 cups makes a total of 200 liters. A 60-kilogram human has about 5 liters of blood, so I suppose that is roughly equivalent to sucking the blood of forty people. I should cut down on coffee.

Although the work has come to an end, through several side stories that will be serialized in about a month, you will once again be able to experience the stories—including life at the undersea base.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Yeon Sanho