Baek Aeyeong and Yu Geum came out of the women’s restroom. Their faces were free of the clumps of dust and soot that had been stuck to their hair.
“You’re much cleaner now.”
“So are you, Muhyeon.”
As we walked beneath the light, the memory of wandering through the stairs in the darkness grew so distant that it almost seemed like a dream. I desperately wanted to lie down and sleep for a while. Shin Haeryang and I were supporting Seo Jihyeok as we were just about to leave the restroom when Baek Aeyeong, who had gone out ahead of us and was standing in the hallway, beckoned to us. It seemed to mean that we should go back inside.
I practically dragged Seo Jihyeok back into the men’s restroom in my arms. Immediately afterward, Yu Geum and Baek Aeyeong both entered the men’s restroom as well. Looking outside, I saw Shin Haeryang, who had left Seo Jihyeok in my care, slipping into the men’s accessible restroom right beside the men’s restroom.
Through the crack in the door, I saw a man in a black hat approaching the restroom. He had no shark brooch. Seo Jihyeok and Baek Aeyeong were poised with weapons I had no idea when they had drawn. Tension filled the air. The man glanced at the symbols indicating the men’s and women’s restrooms, hesitated for a few seconds, and then entered the women’s restroom.
No, why?
“?”
“?”
“No, why did he go in there?”
“That perverted bastard.”
The plan seemed to be that if the man entered the men’s restroom, Shin Haeryang would ambush the cultist from inside the men’s accessible restroom, while Baek Aeyeong and Seo Jihyeok dealt with him from the front. Shin Haeryang came out of the men’s accessible restroom with an utterly dumbfounded expression and immediately entered the women’s restroom. Baek Aeyeong followed him in. Seo Jihyeok didn’t go and stayed with us.
The man was captured with ease. Apparently, they had caught him while he was relieving himself in a sink.
No, why in the sink?
So many incomprehensible things had happened all at once that it felt as though my mind had stopped functioning. No, why?
“You shouldn’t try to understand someone like that. It’s something normal people can’t understand.”
“Yes.”
I nodded at Seo Jihyeok’s words and went to look at the man they had caught. Instead of a brooch on his chest, he was wearing only a black hat. If the brim of his cap had been just a little softer, it probably wouldn’t have brought a shark to mind. The man obediently raised his hands, had his gun taken away, and knelt down. His profile looked no older than his early to mid-twenties. The cultist who had been alive earlier had looked nearly forty.
It took me looking at his face twice more before I realized that he was a patient I had treated. The man was kneeling with his head bowed, so he hadn’t noticed me. I pointed at him with two fingers after covering my own eyes with my index and middle fingers as I stood across from Baek Aeyeong. Then I mimed rubbing my face. Baek Aeyeong’s expression became strangely subtle.
“You want me to gouge out his eyes and skin his face?”
The captured man looked horrified. When Yu Geum also stared at Baek Aeyeong and me with a bewildered expression, I hurriedly explained.
“……I know his face.”
“Oh. I suppose it could be interpreted that way.”
No…… Why did she make it sound so terrifying…… Never mind.
“His name was Tyler Jones, and he was an engineer.”
Tyler’s head snapped up. He looked around at the faces of the people surrounding him, frowning at all of them, but when he saw me, he recognized me. I suppose the engineers all already knew one another, but they seemed to dislike each other so much that they didn’t even want to speak.
“You’re the dentist!”
“Hello, Tyler. There are a few things I’d like to ask you.”
I almost said something like, “As long as you answer my questions properly, nothing will happen to you,” but swallowed the words. I had absolutely no way of guaranteeing Tyler’s safety. I truly had no intention of doing anything to him, but I didn’t know about the people around me. It was rare for us to meet others without violence breaking out. Baek Aeyeong, standing beside me, looked as though she would already have fired dozens of bullets if she could shoot people with her eyes. Shin Haeryang looked much the same.
“Uh. Have you been flossing properly?”
At that question, Yu Geum and Seo Jihyeok looked at me as though I had become something strange. Then they took about three steps away from me. I had no idea what they had misunderstood, but it wasn’t like that at all. I sat down on the restroom floor so that I could meet the eyes of the man kneeling with his hands on his head. The cleaning robot was probably doing a good job. These clothes were ruined anyway. Even though I was sitting facing Tyler, neither Shin Haeryang nor Baek Aeyeong tried to stop me. They would if I went too far.
……Right?
“I haven’t used it yet! I still have it just as I received it.”
“You absolutely must floss. But were you a member of the Infinite Faith?”
Tyler glanced around at everyone’s eyes before nodding.
“Yes.”
“When did you join?”
“About half a year ago.”
“How many members are there?”
“About……sixty, from what I’ve seen.”
“Are there about that many armed people in the undersea base?”
“Yes. There are a few on the surface too.”
He answered the questions quite readily. At his words, Shin Haeryang, who was aiming a gun, and Yu Geum, who was standing in the corner, both frowned. Seo Jihyeok let out repeated, heavy sighs. That was different from what the person we met at the Third Undersea Base had said. Hadn’t he said there were about twenty? I didn’t know whose words were correct. Only Baek Aeyeong kept her gun trained on the man’s head, as if he were nothing more than a barking dog.
“Why today?”
“What?”
“Why did you take over the undersea base today? Is there a reason?”
More than anything else, this was what I wanted to know now.
Why? Why? Why!
Why did it have to be today of all days? It would have been fine if they had thrashed each other a week before I arrived. Why did something like this have to happen five days after I got here?
Why!
“Uh…… They said today was the best day. The Day of the Sea. Apparently, it increases the chances of gaining eternal life.”
After hearing that, Yu Geum scratched her cheek and said,
“World Oceans Day is June 8. Are you sure it’s today? Not eight days from now?”
Today was May 31. Could they have moved the event forward by eight days?
“Yes. Our leader said we had to carry out the great undertaking today.”
“I see. But what’s the difference between people with shark brooches and those without them?”
When I pointed at his empty chest, Tyler glanced at my fingertip and said,
“Oh! That. It’s whether you’ve gotten dentures or not.”
A chill ran down my back at those words.
Dentures?
“Dentures? You mean dentures. No, wait. You mean putting in fake teeth?”
“Yes. If you get dentures made from shark teeth, you can receive a brooch. But it’s not forced. Only people who want to do it do so. I didn’t want to, so I didn’t. They said they’d cover all the costs for free, but pulling out perfectly good teeth seemed a bit much.”
At those words, I felt everyone’s eyes boring into the back of my head.
Wow…… Please, don’t suspect me.
“Do you happen to know where the previous people received their dental treatment? Have you ever heard?”
“They said they went to Hawaii for it. But apparently the dentist there wasn’t very good, so the dentures came loose easily and hurt.”
If Tyler had said, “Here! In this undersea base! You treated them!” Baek Aeyeong’s gun might have turned toward me. But whether Tyler was incapable of thinking that far or simply said whatever came to mind, I was barely able to breathe an inward sigh of relief.
Now I understood why the cult had investigated me. It must have been inconvenient for them to travel all the way to Hawaii for dental treatment every time. Once a dental clinic had appeared inside the undersea base, they had apparently tried to recruit me because I offered free treatment and could make dentures out of shark teeth.
The thought sent a shiver down my spine.
What if I had been a devout Christian? Or a Buddhist, or a Muslim? Suddenly, Baek Aeyeong’s words came back to me: “Their accidental deaths are really something.” And Seo Jihyeok had said it would take the police more than two hours to arrive.
If I had belonged to a religion, would I have quietly disappeared?
I mulled over Tyler’s words before asking,
“Are there any benefits to joining the organization? I mean, there has to be some advantage to joining.”
“They say it’s a little different for each person. I was given a lot of money.”
Oh, that was an appealing benefit. Who didn’t like money?
“How much?”
“Enough that I don’t regret joining.”
“I have quite a bit of student loan debt. Do they give you enough to pay that off for you?”
When I asked with a smile, Tyler unexpectedly nodded with a serious expression.
“They also give you money to find a place to live and cover your medical expenses.”
I closed my mouth.
That religious organization must have had an incredible amount of money. Whose blood had they squeezed out to amass that much? There was no way those cultists had earned money normally by working themselves to the bone and paying taxes. Someone had definitely been bled dry.
“Are there any conditions you have to follow when you join?”
“Uh…… Other than swearing to help on the Day of Infinity, not really. I didn’t think the Day of Infinity would ever come either. I only joined for the money. I never imagined I’d have to walk around carrying a gun and shooting people! There are things like getting shark teeth implanted or getting pierced with jewels, but they don’t make those mandatory. You pray to the god of the sea once a month. Oh! And not dumping trash into the ocean, helping sharks, our friends; opposing shark fishing, opposing shark finning, opposing the dumping of radioactive waste into the sea, opposing the construction of undersea bases, things like that? I thought they were some organization like Greenpeace, but I was introduced to them and joined because they paid an enormous amount of money.”
Tyler looked the youngest among us, though he seemed to be about the same age as Baek Aeyeong. Judging by the way he complained as he spoke, he didn’t seem to have joined a place like this out of any great conviction or determination. For an organization armed with guns and shooting people to death, what they did was surprisingly decent.
Yu Geum, who had been standing nearby, let out a long, exhausted sigh after hearing Tyler’s words.
“Ms. Geum?”
“Greenpeace began as an organization that flew a green flag from a ship to protest nuclear tests being conducted in the sea and on islands. Well, the Infinite Faith is using tactics that make it look similar to organizations like Greenpeace. They oppose whaling, preserve wildlife habitats, oppose nuclear development, and so on.”
Hearing that, Tyler defended his organization as though he were speaking on its behalf.
“Oh. So we are similar. We even sank a fishing boat that was catching sharks once. We really are protecting nature!”
Geum stood frozen with her mouth hanging open. Baek Aeyeong shook her head in disgust at Tyler’s stupidity, while Seo Jihyeok, who was standing beside her, narrowed his brow and said,
“Sank a fishing boat? Greenpeace is a nonviolent organization. What kind of bullshit are you saying so proudly?”
“……Uh.”
I was at a loss for words too.
The people on that fishing boat all died, didn’t they? Well, shark fishing was prohibited, but still.