“Why aren’t you coming up!”
I didn’t know how long I’d been standing frozen on the stairs, but at Baek Aeyeong’s words I flustered like a whipped horse and nearly fell over. So Park Muhyeon’s quiz time ends like this. Next time, I want to put up prizes or something.
Baek Aeyeong, holding a flashlight, was waiting for us at the top of those high stairs. Walking up each step with patience, irritation, and patience again, I finally reached a point where Baek Aeyeong’s face was visible. He had stopped on the stairs and wasn’t going any higher. Yu Geumi was also standing beside Baek Aeyeong, hands on her knees. The two of us, merged into one, panted as we looked at the two figures standing atop the stairs.
“Are you resting there?”
“This is the end.”
At Baek Aeyeong’s answer, I shook my head and looked around. Beyond Baek Aeyeong’s back, there were no more stairs except for a few dark ones leading upward. No more stairs. No more stairs! Yay! I let out a small cheer and waved one arm at the sky. Forgetting the hardship, a smile formed on its own.
Yu Geumi just lay on the floor, panting, and shouted “I’m excited!” in a small voice. Seo Jihyeok also giggled and sat down on the floor. Shin Haeryang took the flashlight from Baek Aeyeong and began touching the wall. For a few seconds, I was incredibly happy. When Yu Geumi informed us that the number of stairs was roughly 4,320, I even thought that I wouldn’t need to exercise this week.
The problem was when Shin Haeryang was touching the wall, tapping and rubbing it as if trying to clean it with his hands and entire body. Everyone was just watching Shin Haeryang’s back as he wandered around in the darkness with the flashlight.
“Did something go wrong?”
Yu Geumi asked, sounding frightened. Shin Haeryang said while looking at the group.
“There is no door to exit the stairs.”
It felt like scissors had been stabbed into the back of my head. Wondering if someone had actually stabbed me, I was touching my chilly nape and the back of my head when the astonished Seo Jihyeok asked.
“Th-… Team Leader. Please. …Don’t tell us we have to go all the way back down. Going down is harder and more difficult than going up.”
A desperate voice pierced my ears. In the daze of my tingling head, the moment the thought arose that going down should be easier, Shin Haeryang frowned at the wall, looked around at us, and said.
“Wait here.”
And then, holding the flashlight, he began going down the stairs alone. Perhaps we looked like corpses lying all over the floor right now. At those words, Yu Geumi lay flat on the floor and didn’t move, like a protruding stone statue. Seo Jihyeok lay down making sounds like “kill me, kill me,” and it was impossible to tell if he was sleeping or dead. Baek Aeyeong was also stretching his limbs out, and since he was pushing his body to the point where you’d wonder if human joints could bend like that, groaning sounds came out.
As no one moved according to Shin Haeryang’s words, I got up writhing. No, I couldn’t let him wander around in the dark alone. As Shin Haeryang moved away from the group, darkness immediately swarmed in. Relying on the blue light hanging around my neck, I repeated to myself that I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t scared. Having been lying on the floor, when I stood up my legs trembled. Even a newborn foal could walk better than this. Thinking that I’d be fine today but wouldn’t be able to walk tomorrow after a night’s sleep, I followed Shin Haeryang down the stairs.
He only looked back once at me coming down from above but didn’t particularly try to stop me. Shin Haeryang came down one more landing and examined the surrounding wall through the flashlight for a while. He knocked and scratched the wall too. And then went further down the stairs again. He repeated similar actions at the next landing. Every time he went down the stairs, he shone the light on the wall and checked, and watching him silently descend into the darkness, I was swept up in despair at having to do this all over again.
Do I have to walk 4,000 stairs back to the Third Undersea Base? After coming up with such difficulty? A feeling of wanting to burst into tears surged up. Perhaps because my body was so exhausted, my mind had become exhausted too. A typhoon of pain was raging in my head, on the verge of demolishing all the well-built houses of confidence.
Shin Haeryang stopped at a landing and rapped the wall with the back of his hand. A hollow sound echoed. The wall was completely covered in mold. It made sense, since this place was full of moisture and water. Since bugs crawled around too, it made sense there would be mold. Shin Haeryang touched the wall, then knocked it with his fist, and rummaged through the bag on his back to pull out a screwdriver. He had probably taken it from Baek Aeyeong’s bag at the Third Undersea Base. And Shin Haeryang stabbed the wall with the screwdriver with all his might.
I expected it to bounce back, but the tip of the screwdriver went straight into the wall. Watching Shin Haeryang pull it out and throw it on the floor, I asked.
“Is it hollow?”
“Yes.”
It felt like my heart was pounding in my ears. Something welled up in my chest. A ray of light came through the small hole the screwdriver had pierced. The moment I saw that small light, my eyes flooded with tears. Even though he wasn’t next to me, I could almost hear Seo Jihyeok cursing Shin Haeryang in my ears. You damn team leader.
“Please explain a bit more!”
“They’ve covered it with two layers of drywall. Because of the moisture, mold formed and it rotted, so as you can see, if it’s soft enough for a screwdriver to pierce, we can tear it off and get out.”
He was saying things like “So this is a partition wall connected to the stairs,” but my legs just lost strength and I sank down onto the steps. I don’t have to go back to the Third Undersea Base. I don’t have to go back down those damn 4,000 stairs. We can get out of here. Tears spun in my eyes.
“Wait here. I’ll bring the others.”
I bowed my head and nodded. As Shin Haeryang passed me and went up the stairs, I shouted at his back.
“Will they come if you call them?!”
Nevertheless, Shin Haeryang kept going up the stairs. Only when the sound of him climbing stopped did my dazed mind realize that Shin Haeryang had gone up because of Seo Jihyeok. I must be out of it. I began to hear people coming down the stairs. I didn’t have even a speck of strength to climb back up. I crawled to where Shin Haeryang had been standing earlier and swept my hand across the floor. My hand caught the handle of a flathead screwdriver.
With the thought that I should dig out the drywall at least a little before people arrived, I hammered at it with the tip of the screwdriver, but the hardness was no joke. No, how did Shin Haeryang stab this with a screwdriver? Is drywall usually this hard? I couldn’t tell if my hands had no strength or if the part I hit was unexpectedly harder.
While sitting and gripping the screwdriver with both hands, striking the wall several times, I heard footsteps behind me. Then someone tapped my shoulder and extended a hand beside me. Because of the necklace, the approaching palm looked blue. When I handed the screwdriver over to the expert, a large hand gripped it and began punching toward the light. In just four blows, a palm-sized hole formed in the wall. Shin Haeryang smashed the wall with the screwdriver, his fists, and forearms. It was almost at the level of a human excavator. Eventually, Shin Haeryang kicked the wall to make a hole.
Dust was thick, but an enormous light could be seen coming from outside. Having walked through the darkness, I couldn’t adapt to the light and it was hard to open my eyes. When a hole big enough for one person to pass through was made, Baek Aeyeong whistled softly and slipped out through the wall like a cat. Then he knocked on the wall three times toward us. From behind, Yu Geumi’s laughing voice reached my ears.
Shin Haeryang explained that the place we had come out was one of the partition walls located inside the deep-sea aquarium of the Second Undersea Base. The deep-sea aquarium located at -200m was scheduled to open next year for civilians visiting the undersea base, so only the construction had been done first and only a few species of fish had been brought in early. People came and went to feed the fish, clean the tanks, plant aquatic plants, and so on, but fortunately there was no sign of anyone.
Following Baek Aeyeong’s opinion, we went first to the nearest bathroom from our location. Shin Haeryang seemed to already have the shortest route to the First Undersea Base mapped out in his head like a robot, bathroom or no bathroom, but people couldn’t move like robots.
In particular, Yu Geumi and I were saying we’d die on the spot if we walked anymore from here, and Seo Jihyeok, who was lying down groaning, unable to curse out even his own team leader, was in a similar state to me. Baek Aeyeong said a word to the team leader who was glaring with arms crossed at the people lying on the floor complaining.
“You shouldn’t think that other people have as much stamina as you or the team leader.”
Seo Jihyeok looked at his team leader with eyes like a cow before slaughter, and Yu Geumi and I also began looking at Shin Haeryang together. Shin Haeryang sighed and said to rest for a moment. Baek Aeyeong suggested washing up with water while resting in the bathroom. He said that alone would make us feel much better.
Saying we’d meet in 10 minutes, we split into men and women in the bathroom. Even with one leg, Seo Jihyeok was the first to hurry into a bathroom stall. My reflection in the mirror was a sight to behold. My head was caked with sweat, and my whole body looked like I was wearing a suit of dust. My face and palms were black with something stuck on them.
I even considered putting the hoodie I was wearing straight into water to wash it, but instead of making a fuss about doing laundry in the bathroom, I chose to compromise appropriately with my own hygiene standards. Instead, I went into a corner stall, took off all my clothes, and held my breath. Then I shook out my hoodie and training pants thoroughly. If I could have opened a window, I would have shaken them outside. Outside the window, there was still nothing but water. Air circulation system. Hang in there.
By the time I had shaken off the dust moderately, I put my clothes back on and washed my sweat-soaked hair and face with liquid soap at the sink. I simply couldn’t stand the grossness. I wiped my wet head with a suspicious towel from the cleaning supplies cabinet—much cleaner than my clothes—and rinsed out my sweetish-smelling mouth with water. Just that made me feel much better.
I washed the necklace clean in water, wiped it with a towel, and returned it to its owner. After using the bathroom, washing his hands, rinsing his mouth, and washing his face, Shin Haeryang stood next to the door as if standing guard the entire time. He seemed to be watching for anyone approaching.
Seo Jihyeok came out of the bathroom stall using the strength of both arms and one leg, saying he felt like he’d been born again, and washed his hands. Watching him wash his hands at the sink while standing on one leg was enough to make me anxious, but Seo Jihyeok didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Then he leaned against the wall, standing on one foot, and began looking at his own left leg that hadn’t been reborn, with a displeased face.