As I climbed the stairs, rested, climbed, and rested again, I thought of Kang Sujeong and Yu Geum-i. Objectively or subjectively, they were good people. I couldn’t live suspecting everyone around me. Of course, there were probably people who did live that way. But I wasn’t that kind of person. Nor was my mind sturdy enough to keep enduring that kind of mental stress and still live well.
I should believe that the kindness they showed me back then was genuine, and be grateful for it. I didn’t want to sink into some bottomless swamp of distrust and flounder there. Seo Jihyeok’s opinion is actually rather helpful. But if Seo Jihyeok was… let’s stop there.
“Geum-i-ssi!”
“……Yes.”
A powerless voice came from far above. As I climbed the stairs, I saw Yu Geum-i’s dark silhouette standing still, swaying like a zombie. At that distance, she was probably about twenty steps ahead of us. By now, whether someone called from behind or from in front, she would climb if she had to, but she would never come back down. She simply rested while waiting for the people below to come up, and if someone above called her, she climbed with a sigh. Efficient. Watching her movements, limp as a kite in the wind, I barely caught my breath and asked.
“How many stairs have we climbed?”
“……The step I’m standing on now is number 3,025. There’s probably an error margin of about plus or minus ten.”
We had rested five times so far, and it was already three thousand. It seemed Yu Geum-i and Baek Aeyeong had said we would rest every 450 steps or so, while actually making us climb five or six hundred steps each time before stopping. No wonder it had felt like death. It was dark, so I couldn’t see anything either. Of course I’d be fooled easily. I almost wished they’d lied more and said we were on the four-thousandth step now. ……Humans are truly treacherous. No, I am truly treacherous.
“We’ve come a lot farther than I thought. I figured we’d only just passed 2,000.”
“There are still about 1,300 left.”
“Still, at least we’re more than halfway there.”
Seo Jihyeok, panting just like me, said,
“I am never taking the stairs again. Just wait until my leg gets better. I’m going to set up a bed in the elevator and live there. Seriously.”
“Sounds nice. I’m not leaving the lab either. I’m sick of stairs.”
Sin Haeryang, who had been listening to Yu Geum-i, checked his watch and said,
“We have not been delayed as much as expected.”
“How long has it been?”
“Approximately forty minutes.”
“Is that fast? Or slow?”
“……With this number of people, we are doing well.”
He probably couldn’t see me in the dark, but I nodded. As long as this taciturn man wasn’t saying things like We’re in serious trouble or We’re all dead, then we were probably fine. Seo Jihyeok spat out a bucketful of curses like he was rapping. The gist of it was that his knee hurt very badly, and he wanted to make the person who shot him hurt about three times more than this. When he said he wanted to make them hurt ten times more, but was holding back because he was such an excellent person of character, I laughed and missed a step. To be precise, I stepped into empty air.
“Huh?”
The instant I tilted, Seo Jihyeok had his shoulder hooked around mine, and since Seo Jihyeok was also being supported by Sin Haeryang, the two of them grabbed me at once. One of my feet was completely hanging in the air, but the two of them yanked my shoulder and arm back at tremendous speed, and I barely avoided falling into the darkness.
Sin Haeryang told Seo Jihyeok and me to stay against the wall, then checked the floor with the light from his pad. Looking at the stairs, the width of the step I had been walking on had narrowed by two or three centimeters compared to the previous steps. Baek Aeyeong and Yu Geum-i, walking ahead, had been going along the center of the stairs, and in the dark it would have been hard to notice that the steps had shrunk by just a few centimeters.
“Sir. You almost went right over.”
“That was dangerous. ……Thank you, both of you.”
Sin Haeryang looked at the stairs and frowned.
“Would you like to walk on the outside? That would be safer.”
The outside meant walking farther, so it would be more exhausting and difficult, but I changed positions without a peep. Better than falling.
Sin Haeryang touched around his neck and took something out. Even in the darkness, something small was shining at his throat. Sin Haeryang unfastened it and came closer. When he came right up to me, I realized it was a necklace. Since he was wearing a special suit that came up to his neck, I hadn’t known, but it seemed Sin Haeryang had been wearing a necklace underneath it. In the bewildering situation of a man trying to give me a necklace, I drew back and frowned.
“You really don’t have to go this far.”
“I am lending it to you. Please return it when we get out of the darkness.”
Sin Haeryang’s necklace was soon around my neck. I didn’t know what material it was, but in the dark it shone with a light the size of my little fingernail. With my tiny bit of mineralogical knowledge, I had yet to hear of a gemstone that glowed in the dark without a light source. Looking at the luminous blue hanging around my neck, I asked in a voice full of concern.
“What is this made of?”
I just hoped it wasn’t radioactive. If a gem glowed, wasn’t that it? That. Radiation.
“It is lapis lazuli coated with a fluorescent substance.”
I let out an inward sigh of relief. But I was not the only one walking in the dark. Looking somewhere into the darkness, I asked,
“If it’s a necklace, wouldn’t it be better for Geum-i-ssi to wear it?”
The three of us were at least going up together as a set, but that young woman was going alone. How frightening must it be in the dark?
“Yu Geum-i-ssi has not fallen once in three thousand steps.”
“How do you know?”
“The sound.”
At Sin Haeryang’s words, I could no longer refuse and shut my mouth. My calves and knees were already throbbing. They were probably a total mess of bruises. In the darkness, the steps were uneven in height, rising and dipping, and walking while supporting another person was no easy task—but in Sin Haeryang’s judgment, it seemed I had fallen too many times for that to be an excuse. Well, if things went wrong, all three of us could fall because of one person. The stone dangling from my neck gave off a lone blue light in the darkness. It was only a thumbnail-sized glow, but that alone made me feel a little more at ease.
Looking at the necklace glowing blue, I asked Sin Haeryang,
“This is the first time I’ve seen someone coat a necklace with a fluorescent substance.”
I heard Sin Haeryang say yes. I realized Seo Jihyeok had gone quiet at some point as he climbed. I had thought he would tease me to his heart’s content about missing a step on the stairs or wearing Sin Haeryang’s necklace, but unexpectedly, he said nothing.
We climbed the stairs in silence for a long while. Sin Haeryang seemed naturally quiet, and I wasn’t exactly an outstandingly sociable person, not to mention that just climbing the stairs was already too much. Seo Jihyeok was usually the one to bring up conversation topics, but perhaps his conversation pouch had run dry, because he was silent. Then, in the darkness, Seo Jihyeok sniffed and said,
“It reminds me of when the team leader made that necklace.”
I touched the raw stone of the necklace with the tip of my right hand. It was smooth and glossy. Lapis lazuli. If I remembered correctly, under the light it would probably be the color of a blue sea.
“Did you make it yourself, by any chance?”
“No.”
“Team Leader, please explain a bit longer. He’s wearing it around his neck, so he should at least know what it is.”
Before, whenever Sin Haeryang’s team members asked him to explain at length, Sin Haeryang would do so. Was there a reason for that? Seo Jihyeok laughed at my question.
“It’s a rule made because the team leader talks too little. If we ask him to explain long and in detail, the team leader is obligated to do it. Otherwise the team members go insane.”
“……I was lucky enough to obtain a piece of lapis lazuli in Afghanistan. They said it was small, so if it were made into necklaces, two would be possible. After receiving the finished gemstones, I applied a non-toxic dye so they could be seen in the dark, dried them, applied it again, dried them again, and repeated the process several times. After confirming that the fluorescence came out properly, I added a coating agent, let it dry completely, and gave one as a gift.”
“Then this was made as a set?”
“Yes. There were originally two.”
A chill ran down my back. Don’t tell me I was wearing around my neck something that lovers used to wear as a matching set. No, right?
“By any chance, is the other one something your lover is wearing around their neck right now?”
An ambiguous voice came from the darkness.
“Uh…… no. That one is mine.”
It was the first time Sin Haeryang had ever answered so ambiguously. Damn it.
“I’ll give it back right now. Good grief. What kind of curses do you want me to earn from your lover, Haeryang-ssi? Why am I wearing this?”
“……They are deceased, so nothing will happen.”
At his calm voice, my neck, where the necklace hung, went cold. It seemed Seo Jihyeok, who was shutting up in the dark, hadn’t wanted that kind of explanation either. Seo Jihyeok withdrew the hand he had been leaning on me with, scratched the back of his head roughly, and said,
“No, I thought you’d briefly explain something like why you made it visible in the dark.”
“……You told me to explain at length.”
“Well, now I’m wide awake.”
“Jihyeok-ssi. Were you dozing off?”
“Try climbing stairs in the dark nonstop. See if you don’t get sleepy.”
With that leg, in this situation, after talking that much, he was getting sleepy?
“I don’t.”
“Then you and I must just be built different, sir.”
And silence fell. I felt as though the weightless necklace had grown heavy. I also had the eerie feeling that some woman was glaring at me from somewhere in the darkness. After all sorts of thoughts ran through my head, I asked Sin Haeryang a question. I…… had only learned after coming here that I was this much of a coward. I had never known it in ordinary life.
“It’s just that wearing this around my neck feels like an enormous burden.”
“Yes.”
“If it isn’t rude, may I ask how they passed away? I can’t see a thing ahead, and I don’t care if I fall with every step—I’d rather just give it back to you. If it’s a difficult question to answer, please ignore it.”
“Three years ago, they went to play in the water with friends and were swept away by swollen water in a valley.”
“Ah…… May the deceased rest in peace.”
“Yes. I think so as well.”
Then Sin Haeryang quietly continued up the stairs, and I felt so uncomfortable I thought I might go mad. It seemed Seo Jihyeok felt the same. As we climbed silently, Seo Jihyeok suddenly smacked Sin Haeryang hard on the back with his palm and said,
“No, this is the part where you’re supposed to explain more. You communication-challenged team leader.”
“……Suddenly, I find myself deeply agreeing with Seo Jihyeok-ssi.”