Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, the android raised its arm and opened its palm toward where we had been, as though guiding someone there. Seo Jihyeok and Yu Geum had already crawled away from that spot, barely managing to get out of the way.
The man immediately fired his gun indiscriminately toward the place the android had pointed at. “Aagh! Is he insane?! The jewels on display are getting shot too!” I covered my mouth with my hand, trembling violently. Apparently, another one of the cultists had the same thought.
“Have you lost your mind?! Each one of those jewels costs more than your life! We could hire you ten times over and still have enough left to hire your past and future lives!”
A sharp woman’s voice pierced even my frightened ears. What? They were that expensive? The man seemed to mutter some low reply, but I couldn’t make it out. Then I heard footsteps. Several people were moving around to find and kill us. What should we do? What could we do? Baek Aeyeong held out a handgun for me to take. Without making a sound, I accepted it from her, trembling so hard that the gun rattled in my hands.
Baek Aeyeong herself was holding the rifle she had taken from Tyler. Shin Haeryang also gripped the gun he had seized at the Third Undersea Base and waited. He didn’t look tense in the slightest. He appeared as calm as if he were resting on a park bench. How could a person be like this? Wasn’t he afraid?
The two of them waited in complete silence for the enemy to come. I prayed that they wouldn’t. Baek Aeyeong watched for the right moment, then told me to circle around beside the jewel display stand, so I crawled over. If they reached the far end where the benitoite was, the only way to keep ourselves out of sight would be to hide along the side.
The three of us—Baek Aeyeong, Shin Haeryang, and I—moved vertically from the place where we had been hiding, staying out of the people’s line of sight, and waited. The armed people seemed to have reached the place where we had been hiding. After checking our former position, someone shouted that we weren’t there. Then they spread out and began searching for us.
The footsteps coming this way were unmistakable. I clenched my teeth as I listened to the steady, thudding steps. If they came just a little farther and turned their heads to the side, they would immediately see the three of us hiding there. I trembled with the gun in my hands, silently sobbing inside as I prayed to every god I knew that the people hiding with me would not be discovered. But perhaps the prayers of someone who had once been an atheist had no effect at all, because one of them entered the place where we were hiding.
Shin Haeryang grabbed the person as they turned the corner, pulled the muzzle of their rifle up toward the ceiling, and pressed his own gun beneath their chin. The other person tried to shout, but upon seeing Shin Haeryang, they froze in surprise for an instant and then frowned. Baek Aeyeong also stopped with the muzzle of her gun aimed at the cultist with machine-like precision. The person who had come this way was a brown-haired woman, and all three of them except me seemed to know one another. The black, shark-like cap worn by the cultists had been knocked off in the course of their movements and came rolling across the floor. With his gun pressed against the woman’s chin, Shin Haeryang spoke in an extremely low voice.
“Brown. We didn’t see you. You didn’t see us either. Answer me.”
It seemed that if she refused, Shin Haeryang would pull the trigger at once. After he threatened her, the person called Brown stared for several seconds at Baek Aeyeong, who had her gun pointed at her, as though Shin Haeryang’s weapon didn’t even exist. Then she spoke in the faintest voice.
“I didn’t see you.”
The moment she said that, Baek Aeyeong picked up the cap from the floor and placed it on Brown’s head, which was slightly bowed. Brown watched Baek Aeyeong doing this for several seconds. Then, as though searching for someone, she turned her head this way and that before casually walking past us and off in another direction.
Just as I slowly exhaled a breath filled with tension, I began to worry about Seo Jihyeok and Yu Geum. Seo Jihyeok couldn’t even use one of his legs. Was he hiding safely? And Yu Geum? He probably couldn’t even shoot a gun. Baek Aeyeong furrowed her brow and wiped the sweat running down her cheek with the back of her hand.
“What should we do?” she asked Shin Haeryang in a voice as soft as the wind.
Her expression clearly showed that she wanted to gun down the people over there right away. The person called Brown seemed to be someone she knew, but did she want to kill her along with the others?
Shin Haeryang seemed to think that escaping this place without letting them discover our presence would provide an enormous advantage in getting out. Baek Aeyeong, however, seemed to think it would be better to engage in a shootout right now, even if it meant a nine-against-two gunfight. Her reasoning was that the three among them who didn’t possess firearms must be people of extremely high rank.
I intended to respect both of their judgments. The reason it wasn’t nine against three was that it was obvious I couldn’t properly fulfill one person’s role as a gunman. I could probably shoot, at least.
I thought the two of them would take quite some time to reconcile their opinions. But Shin Haeryang and Baek Aeyeong each voiced their thoughts only once. Shin Haeryang frowned briefly at what Baek Aeyeong said, then nodded. We didn’t even have time for this. Right. Of course. Seo Jihyeok and Yu Geum must be on the verge of being discovered. We couldn’t expect the same stroke of luck to happen again.
Baek Aeyeong told me where I should hide. She told me to pull the trigger from there, hide behind this jewel, shoot again, then hide again. She repeatedly stressed that I absolutely had to stay hidden. My position was behind a vivid blue jewel similar in color to the lapis lazuli Shin Haeryang had shown me on the stairs earlier. I stroked the jewel displayed in front of me once with my bare hand, praying that its smooth surface wouldn’t be vulnerable to bullets. All right. I was ready. I grabbed Shin Haeryang by the shoulder and asked:
“What’s the signal to start?”
“When you hear gunfire, begin. Assume you’re going to kill them all.”
“If we don’t shoot, we’ll die. Don’t die!”
“Don’t get hurt.”
With those words, Shin Haeryang and Baek Aeyeong, armed with automatic rifles, ran behind another jewel and hid. Then they moved forward. The cultists were heading in the direction where they had been earlier, and I poured all my concentration into gripping the gun, which felt as though it might slip from my palm. The backs of Baek Aeyeong and Shin Haeryang soon disappeared from my sight. Only several minutes later did the gunfire begin.
Bang! Bang! Ba-tat-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat-tat! Aagh! Aah! Agh! Ghk!
The screams of people echoed through the hall.
Two unarmed cultists began heading back toward the central exhibition hall. One was a white-haired woman and the other a black-haired man, both draped in snow-white jewels. The woman wore an incredibly extravagant outfit: earrings, a necklace, bracelets, rings, a belt, and even a tiara in her hair. She looked like a model posing for a jewelry catalog. Covered in diamond ornaments from head to toe, she was running as quickly as she could.
The black-haired man, too, was wearing a belt and necklace made entirely of deep green jewels. I hid behind the blue jewel on display and aimed my gun at them, but they still hadn’t noticed me. The armed people hadn’t come this way yet. If I was going to shoot, now—while I was aiming—was the time.
Then thoughts flashed through my mind in an instant.
What if those people were innocent?
What if they were being held hostage by the armed men, just like the people lying outside?
What if they died unjustly and pitifully because of me?
What if, like Brown earlier, they could simply let us go quietly?
What if this cult didn’t actually kill people, and everything smeared around the elevators was just paint?
What if everyone around me was lying?
Then how could I bear the deaths of the two people I had shot and killed?
What if those people, along with their parents, children, families, lovers, and relatives, sought revenge against my family for their deaths—as though it were only natural?
What if their corpses appeared in my dreams every night?
What if every day I was consumed by guilt over having fired that gun, endlessly regretting it and crying?
I was stunned by the thoughts that had swept through my mind in what was almost less than an instant, but I realized that my brain was inventing every excuse it could to keep me from pulling the trigger. I didn’t want to shoot. I didn’t want to shoot! Why me? Why me? Why me?! Why did I have to shoot people?! I was a guy perfectly content with a life spent fixing people’s teeth! I was someone who felt happy getting rid of cavities, not someone who killed people!
*Assume you’re going to kill them all.*
Shin Haeryang’s words came back to me. At the same time, I pulled the trigger several times, though the sensation in my fingers felt impossibly distant. The first trigger I had ever pulled in my life was incredibly heavy. I had never known that it took so much strength. The gunshots were deafening. Only when a tremendous *bang!* exploded in my ears did it truly sink in that I had fired the gun.
But when I came to my senses, I saw that I had shot at two people. The woman, whether silver-haired or white-haired, had fallen facedown on the floor, while the black-haired man had been shot in the leg and fallen backward. The woman lying there didn’t feel human. It felt as though a mannequin had toppled over.
Every time the wounded man tried to lift himself up, blood splattered across the floor. I stood blankly, seeing that the man—unable to rise because of the gunshot wound in his thigh—had no gun at his waist or in his hands. Then I hurriedly crawled behind the large pink, boulder-like jewel right beside me and hid.
Several seconds later, someone began shooting at the jewel I was hiding behind.
Bang, bang, bang!
I ducked my head lower, screaming. I had been told to shoot, hide, shoot again, and hide again, but I never got an opportunity to fire again. I could feel bullets raining down continuously on the place where I was hiding. I was too afraid to lift my head in case I was shot. If that person kept shooting at me, then when the hell was I supposed to shoot?! Bangbangbangbangbangbang! The gunfire made me feel as if my ears were going deaf.
“Elizabeth! Beth! Beth! Aaaagh! Beth! Wake up!”
The man who had been shot in the leg lay facedown on the floor, repeatedly calling the name of the motionless woman. Beth! Wake up! Get up! Gunshots rang out from all around us. The man’s screams were mixed in with the voices of people crying out.
If I remembered correctly, I had fired three shots in succession at the woman’s chest and shoulder, and two at the man. The woman had been running toward us first along the central passage, so I shot her down, then fired at the man running behind her. Of the two bullets, it seemed that only one had struck him properly. What should I do now? Was the woman definitely dead? If she wasn’t, could she still be saved if I administered first aid now? What should I do about the man who was still alive? And what about me, hiding here?