Looking at the small standing sign in front of the exhibition hall that read Modern Jewelry Exhibition, Sin Haeryang asked with a puzzled expression.
“You’re interested in a jewelry exhibition?”
“Team Leader. I’m a delicate man.”
“······.”
Sin Haeryang only glared at him without saying a word. He had merely looked quietly at his face, but three seconds later, Seo Jihyeok spilled the entire truth.
“They said only a few lights weren’t working, so I went, helped with the installation, and smoked a bit. Who’s going to steal that stuff in the middle of this vast ocean? Why lock it up? You’ll know when you see inside, but they’ve got rocks and all kinds of ridiculous things on display.”
Was that some kind of interrogation technique? Sin Haeryang looked as if he had shot beams from his eyes, but it was a skill I had no need for. People who came to the dentist knew exactly why they were there. What mattered was, when they said, This side, right here, hurts like this, how perfectly the dentist understood and found the spot.
But to Yu Geumi, it must have looked rather fascinating. She lightly snapped her fingers at Sin Haeryang, making him meet her eyes. Fluster spread across Sin Haeryang’s face, but the two of them only stared at each other for a few seconds. It had no effect whatsoever on Yu Geumi. After Yu Geumi’s smile and my own, with Baek Aeyeong snickering beside us, we decided the order in which we would cross.
First was Baek Aeyeong, second were Seo Jihyeok and Sin Haeryang, third was Yu Geumi, and fourth was me. If Baek Aeyeong failed, none of us would be able to get to the exhibition hall. And if Seo Jihyeok and Sin Haeryang failed, we would simply be split between the exhibition hall and the deep-sea aquarium. If Yu Geumi or I failed? I didn’t know.
Baek Aeyeong fastened her own bag snugly against her back, then asked for my bag with the cat in it. When I handed it over, Baek Aeyeong wore that bag in front. Then, after sticking her head out and watching the situation outside for a long while, she glided five meters and slipped through the exhibition hall door. She was silent and graceful, almost like a hawk descending. In less than twenty seconds, the door opened a crack. Judging from Baek Aeyeong’s hand signal, it probably meant we could come in.
I peeked out through the windows of the deep-sea aquarium and looked at the people moving around the central plaza. Every one of them was armed with guns, and in the center of the plaza, there were people lying facedown on the floor with their heads lowered. There were bloodstains, large pools of blood, and quite a few people collapsed on the floor, not moving at all like corpses. The area around the central elevator was covered in blood. A group of people stood nearby, talking with their gun barrels pointed toward the elevator, while armed men moved around.
As I looked at the floor made a mess by blood, my head seemed to go numb. It felt as if my heart were beating in my ears. I took a moment to calm myself, suppressing the urge to vomit somewhere and the urge to burst into tears for no reason. I waited until everyone was not looking toward the deep-sea aquarium where we were, then signaled Sin Haeryang to run.
Sin Haeryang practically hoisted Seo Jihyeok onto his back, and even carrying that weight, he disappeared into the exhibition hall as if flying, his feet touching the floor only about three times. It probably took less than three seconds for him to move. Baek Aeyeong timed it perfectly and caught Seo Jihyeok and Sin Haeryang, and the open door naturally swallowed the two of them. Since Baek Aeyeong did not come back out even after several seconds passed, Yu Geumi and I waited.
Baek Aeyeong was once again looking at us with the door slightly open. Yu Geumi looked down at her sneakers, and perhaps something about them displeased her, because after retying the laces several times, she held the shoes in her hand and prepared to run in her socks.
“My heart feels like it’s going to burst.”
Yu Geumi’s voice came from beside me. Same here. If a shock could make my heart leap out of my mouth, my heart would already have escaped my body back at the Fourth Undersea Base. Two men with guns turned their heads this way, so I quickly pulled my head back inside the aquarium door. The crack of the exhibition hall door that Baek Aeyeong was holding narrowed until it was less than half a handspan.
“······Mine too, Ms. Geumi.”
“I want to go home.”
“Same here.”
“Why is making a living as a marine biologist so hard?”
“I didn’t know making a living as a dentist would be this hard either.”
Yu Geumi let out a deflated little laugh, wiped the tip of her nose once with the back of her hand, then sighed. Her eyes behind her glasses gleamed. Her left hand, gripping the tied shoelaces tightly, was trembling, but her socked feet were rubbing against the floor several times. I tried to peek my face out again to look outside. But a sound came first, so I froze as I was. Footsteps. Two men were walking this way. Yu Geumi covered her mouth with her right hand. I also waited silently. Please. Don’t come. Don’t come. Don’t come.
As the sound of footsteps in the distance grew closer and closer, we tensed. The deep-sea aquarium was laid out in a straight line, so in order to hide ourselves, we would have to walk at least twenty meters back before we could barely conceal ourselves behind the tanks. If we ran back now, wouldn’t the sound of our footsteps give us away? No, shouldn’t we be running right now?
That was what my head was thinking, but my body would not move at all. Yu Geumi and I were simply crouched and trembling at the base of the deep-sea aquarium’s two large doors. Yu Geumi was covering not just her mouth but almost her entire face with one hand, while clutching the laces that tied her two sneakers together and shaking violently. I probably looked similar to Yu Geumi. I was so frightened that saliva pooled in my mouth, yet I could not swallow.
Suddenly, Yu Geumi opened one of the deep-sea aquarium doors, which had been slightly ajar, all the way, then crawled behind my back where I was pressed against the other door. I was asking with my eyes what she was doing, but Yu Geumi only shook her head. Two armed men walked between the exit of the deep-sea aquarium and the entrance door of Exhibition Hall 1. My breathing grew ragged. Hahh. Hahh. Hahh! What should we do?
The men came right up to the entrance of the deep-sea aquarium. Because Yu Geumi had opened one door, the two of us were pressed against the other door, and from where the armed men stood, they would be able to see all the way inside the deep-sea aquarium. If they turned at just the right angle, they might even see Yu Geumi hiding behind me. I stopped breathing. My heart pounded as if it would burst, and my vision went dark. The sound of footsteps came from right beside the door I was hiding behind.
The two men were talking, and most of it was cursing Tyler. They were asking which bathroom he had gone into that he still hadn’t crawled back out. One of the men near the door kicked the closed deep-sea aquarium door. Bang! My mind snapped awake. The impact came next. It felt as if my side had been kicked by a foot.
Even though that lunatic had kicked the door, the door we were hiding behind did not get pushed back. The entire right side of my body was leaning against the door, and Yu Geumi was leaning beside me. With the weight of two people pressed against it, the door the man kicked did not move, and I heard the man who had kicked it cursing as he shook out his foot. I also heard the other man snickering.
The sound of the two of them talking gradually moved away. I heard the other man mocking the one who was cursing, asking if his leg was all right. The footsteps grew farther away. The moment Yu Geumi reached out and placed her hand on my back, I jumped in fright. But Yu Geumi was only stroking my tense back several times with her hand. Only then did I slowly let out my breath. The pain in my head, waist, and arm where I had hit the door only now came rushing in.
“How. Why. The door. Why. How did you only—”
“Calm down, Mr. Muhyeon. I just······ thought that if I left the door open, they wouldn’t open it.”
“······What if they had stuck their heads inside the door to check?”
“Then there would have been nothing we could do.”
That simple answer was so absurd that I laughed. I had been inflated with tension to the point of bursting. Once the footsteps had moved quite far away, Yu Geumi only slightly stuck out the side of her face to look outside and said no one was looking this way.
Yu Geumi and I rested there for about two minutes. We had been so tense that there was no strength in our legs, so we could not run without resting. As we kept staring at the exhibition hall without even closing the door she had opened, the crack in the exhibition hall door gradually widened. Then Baek Aeyeong’s eyes appeared. Baek Aeyeong, Yu Geumi, and I all looked toward the central plaza.
“Ms. Geumi. You go first. I’ll go last.”
While looking outside, at a certain moment I told Yu Geumi to run, and Yu Geumi scampered out like a squirrel, slipping right through the exhibition hall door Baek Aeyeong opened for her. Worried that someone might have seen, I quickly looked toward the plaza, but no one was looking this way.
Damn it. Now it was my turn. Ha······ I’m losing my mind. I checked my shoes first. I tied my sneaker laces tight, and in case the laces came undone, I tucked the remaining ends under the crossed laces. Was I good at running? I wasn’t all that fast. Come to think of it, I didn’t have much talent for sports. What ability did I have? None. Damn it. I now slightly stuck my head outside the door to catch the timing for when I had to run.
Over in the plaza, many people were lying facedown with their hands stretched behind their backs and tied. A woman whose blond hair was a disheveled mess wriggled, then met my eyes as I looked that way. Even though she clearly saw me poking my head out from the exit of the deep-sea aquarium, she immediately turned her head away.
It was Jennifer Smith, the leader of the engineering team. If not for that long blond hair, I would not have recognized her. I was so startled that for several seconds I could neither go to the exhibition hall nor look farther out, but Jennifer did not tell the people with guns that I was hiding there. She simply stayed still as if she had not seen me, then wriggled forward like a worm. Then she clamped her teeth down hard on the ankle of the man in front of her, who was likewise tied up like a worm.
“Aaaagh!”
When the man in front of Jennifer screamed, every gaze of the people with guns gathered there. The instant people turned their heads, I immediately ran out and sprinted toward the exhibition hall. As I ran, I clenched my teeth. It was only five or six meters, but mentally, it felt like twenty. I could not even feel whether my legs were moving.
Baek Aeyeong, who was right in front of the exhibition hall door, pulled me into the exhibition hall and closed the door without a sound. I let out my breath and pitched forward.