Seo Jihyeok said in a low voice.
“When the team leader suddenly contacted me back then and asked for help, I swear I nearly dropped dead from shock. Even now, whenever I think about it, my heart starts beating three times faster and all that. Three people got swept away then, but they couldn’t find them, so the team leader called every guy he knew who could swim at all. I grabbed all my gear and ran straight to the valley. If it hadn’t suddenly started pouring, no one would’ve died. Anyway, one person got caught somewhere with a lot of rocks, so they found him in a day, but they said the team leader’s ex-girlfriend and the other person couldn’t be found. Sanghyeon and I came running like mad, and all the kids we knew dropped everything and came too, so there were seven of us in total. Back then we went around saying bullshit like, since our number was lucky seven, we’d find them within seven minutes. But because of the downpour, the water was muddy, and once you went in, you couldn’t even see your own arm. Their parents came to the river every day, crying and searching, poor things, and that goddamn rain wouldn’t stop. It was freezing. They even talked about pulling us out of the search for safety reasons.”
“And then?”
When I asked, Shin Haeryang, who had been quiet, answered.
“We thought they would have been swept downstream... but they had sunk to the bottom of the valley. There was a light shining in the darkness.”
“Isn’t it a miracle she was even wearing that necklace? When you go into the water, your clothes, your necklace, everything’s supposed to be gone. The river strips it all away. Most drowning victims are found naked, with nothing on them.”
“But you’re still wearing the necklace now?”
Even though I had been told that the necklace glowed fluorescently, and that the one hanging around my neck now was not the same necklace that had been on the drowned body, I was swept up in emotions more complicated than before. The bright blue light made me feel as if the darkness were closing around me. I had to remember to give it back as soon as we got out of these stairs. No, I wanted to give it back right now. Shin Haeryang had worn this for three years after that? Didn’t it bother him?
“Is there a reason you keep using it?”
I shook the necklace glowing blue. Unless Shin Haeryang was unbelievably dense, he would have understood what I meant. I sensed him hesitate beyond the darkness.
“...I made a promise.”
“With the person who died, that you’d both wear your necklaces until you died?”
“Not exactly. Lapis lazuli, in Latin, literally means blue stone. It is considered a divine gemstone with a spirit that guides one to truth, and they say if a person lacking love wears it, it grants love; if a person lacking luck wears it, it grants luck. I’ll omit the love story. Let’s only talk about luck... At the time, I was heavily into freediving.”
“...Could you tell me what freediving is?”
“It’s diving down into the sea without an air tank or fins.”
“How do you breathe without an air tank?”
“You descend about a hundred meters on a single breath.”
According to Yu Geum’s explanation, one floor was three meters, wasn’t it? Then you had to go down into the sea to the height of a thirty-three-story apartment building without breathing, and then come back up? Why... would anyone do that? That was completely insane, wasn’t it? Sixty-six floors. I was exhausted after climbing a hundred and eighty floors just now. And he did that underwater? Why? No matter how I thought about it, that was something that needed luck far more than love. You could die just walking around normally, so why would you deliberately do something that raised your chances of dying? I did not say what I was thinking. Because I am a socialized human being.
“That’s something you’d need luck for.”
“...Lapis lazuli is a gemstone weak against water and pressure. The longer and more often it goes into the sea, the higher the chance it will be damaged. We promised to wear them around our necks until the stones cracked.”
“Huh... So it still hasn’t cracked.”
“Yes. It still hasn’t cracked.”
Then Shin Haeryang closed his mouth. Seo Jihyeok shifted his center of gravity toward me with the strength of his arms and spoke.
“...This is my first time hearing that too. I thought you wore it because of luck.”
“You never asked.”
“I didn’t, no.”
Seo Jihyeok scratched the back of his head fiercely, then said to Shin Haeryang,
“You lent me that necklace when I took my exam, and to Jaehee when he took his driving test, didn’t you?”
“You were crying and making a fuss that you thought you’d fail.”
“...I did pass. I didn’t think there was a love story mixed in.”
“Only luck is left in that necklace now.”
“...Do you really have to keep that promise?”
“Is there a reason not to?”
Seo Jihyeok looked like he was about to burst as he spoke, and I felt like I was going to burst too. How Shin Haeryang interpreted our silence, I didn’t know, but he said to Seo Jihyeok,
“My counselor told me not to obsess over the necklace. They said I should sell it or throw it away for the sake of my mental health. But in any case, it’s mine. No matter who I lend it to, it’s bound to return to my neck. Until it breaks. Right now, I lent it to Muhyeon because we needed light.”
That was true, but. As I looked at the blue light shining from my neck and wondered if it would be rude to take it off and hand it over right away, Shin Haeryang said,
“Please return it once we’re out of the darkness.”
“...Yes. I’ll give it back to you promptly.”
Seo Jihyeok found the end of the conversation that had flown off somewhere.
“Uh... Anyway, for four days we kept switching air tanks and diving like crazy, and found both bodies. That was the first time I went to a funeral for someone my age, and I’d never seen anything so depressing and quiet. Our stamina was seriously good back then. Even after swimming for four days and staying up all night at the funeral, we were fine the next day. If someone told me to do that now, I couldn’t.”
“You’re climbing the stairs just fine even now.”
Of course, he wasn’t climbing them well on his own; he was climbing with other people’s help. If Shin Haeryang and I hadn’t been distributing Seo Jihyeok’s weight, there was no way Seo Jihyeok could climb these stairs on one leg. At my words, Seo Jihyeok waved his arm as if he felt deeply wronged and said,
“A few years ago, I would’ve flown up stairs like these.”
Shin Haeryang stroked the back of Seo Jihyeok’s head as if scratching it. I couldn’t tell whether it meant he should shut up now, or whether it was his own way of comforting him.
“Once you get surgery, you’ll be flying around again.”
“...”
After that, Seo Jihyeok said nothing. We climbed the stairs in silence. I didn’t really know how long it took to fully recover after being shot in the knee. Even ten years ago, people said joints were tricky to heal perfectly. Hadn’t medical technology advanced a lot by now?
When the three of us had once again crawled up the stairs, panting, and stopped to rest, I was told that if the number of stairs was exactly 4,300, then we had about 600 left. The water bottle that had been passed around among everyone came back with about one mouthful left in it, and after asking if everyone had drunk, I took the last sip and threw the bottle on the floor. I thought we had packed about nine bottles of water and drinks, but that had just been the last one.
There was probably a bottle of alcohol Seo Jihyeok had packed in Baek Aeyeong’s bag, but no one drank it. Even Seo Jihyeok, who had insisted we bring it, refused to drink. He said if he drank even one sip in his current state, he’d get completely drunk. Soaked in sweat, I lay down and groaned.
“...I want to go to a bathhouse.”
Yu Geum heard my voice and spoke while sighing and yawning at the same time.
“...I want an iced Americano.”
“Any carbonated drink.”
“Water.”
“Beer.”
At Seo Jihyeok’s last word, Baek Aeyeong frowned and said,
“Be grateful I’m not throwing away this Ballen-whatever in the bag right here and now.”
“Thank you, thank you. Let’s drink it when we get out. When we get out.”
I lay on my back on the dusty floor, letting the wind that blew in with a whoooosh every now and then shake out my clothes. The chill of the floor washed away at least some of the heat in my body, and on the stairs, a wind from who knew where dried my sweat. Still lying down, I looked up at the pitch-black ceiling and said,
“What are you planning to do first once we get out of the stairs?”
No one answered my question for a while, until someone spoke in the darkness. It was Shin Haeryang.
“The Second Undersea Base is located 200 meters below the surface. The three fastest ways up include the central elevator, and there are escape boats and submarines. I think escape would be easiest in the order of submersible, escape boat, then elevator. Even a manned research vessel would be fine. I want to take anything and get to the surface.”
“If it’s that height, can’t you swim up to the surface with scuba diving gear?”
Because I had heard about freediving earlier, I asked, but everyone fell silent at my question. If people could go down more than a hundred meters bare-bodied, wouldn’t going up two hundred meters with equipment be much easier? Shin Haeryang and Yu Geum answered together.
“Impossible.”
“At minus two hundred meters—”
Because the two answered at the same time, Shin Haeryang spoke toward where Yu Geum was.
“Please go ahead.”
“Yes. At minus two hundred meters, by simple calculation, the pressure is roughly around twenty atmospheres. That means, um... it’s the same as putting about twenty kilograms of weight on top of your little fingernail, which is about one square centimeter. Imagine placing twenty kilograms on every fingernail-sized patch of your entire body. A person’s skin surface area is around twenty thousand square centimeters, right? Then, hmm... it would be like taking the impact of about four thousand kilograms all at once on your body.”
As I listened to this detailed explanation, I had the impertinent thought that Yu Geum would probably do really well in mathematics education too. Around then, Baek Aeyeong said as if sighing,
“That’s the weight of two Porsches.”
Seo Jihyeok asked in surprise at that.
“A Porsche weighs two thousand kilograms each?”
“Is that what’s important?”
While Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong were bickering, Yu Geum calmly spoke in my direction.
“Minus two hundred meters is biologically deep sea. It still isn’t an environment the human body can withstand without equipment. All right. My turn is over now. Shin Haeryang, please speak.”
“Even experienced scuba divers avoid letting beginners scuba dive below fifty meters because it’s dangerous. And the diving equipment is at the First Undersea Base. From there, it’s possible.”
“I see. Thank you both for your kind answers.”
Listening to those two dignified explanations made me feel like I had become a university student again. Of course, the professors I had met had not been even a quarter as kind as those two. At least they hadn’t cut me off by saying it was a stupid question. As I sat on the floor, something approached through the darkness and settled heavily on top of my stomach. My whole body stiffened from shock, and only after touching it did I barely realize it was a cat.