All three of us began crawling. We’d only crawled for about thirty seconds, but I thought I was going to lose my mind. When the gunfight had broken out, I’d been so terrified of getting shot that no matter how much I crawled, I hadn’t felt any pain. But after crawling about five meters through the darkness, my entire body hurt.
Newborn babies crawl for about eight months, as far as I know, so how do they get around like this? The strain on my arms and legs was no joke. No, wait, the person crawling ahead of me should be Baek Aeyoung—was she a lizard in a past life? How is she so good at crawling? My forearms gave out, and I collapsed on the floor, panting, rubbing my cheek against it. I had no room to think about dust or anything else.
Then someone suddenly fired a gun. Aaaagh! The scream rang out, and at the same time, gunshots began echoing everywhere again. I sobbed as I crawled across the floor. Then, when the parachute cord around my wrist pulled taut, I crawled in that direction again. The gunfire didn’t stop. At first, Baek Aeyoung and Shin Haeryang fired, then stopped, but the gunshots kept ringing out. It seemed people were firing wildly in the darkness, unable to tell friend from foe. Screams, ragged breathing, and groans of pain continued to reach my ears. The bang, bang, bang of gunfire left my ears muffled and my head aching.
Even as I crawled along the floor, gripped by fear, thoughts like, Do I really have to survive this? rose in my mind. But then I looked at the parachute cord tied around my wrist and pulled myself together. Think about that later. I’ll think about it later. First, get out of here, then think. Go home and think. Exhausted from crawling, I lifted my head from where it had been pressed to the floor, and a bullet grazed past beneath my chin. Goosebumps prickled all over my back. If I hadn’t lifted my head from the floor, that bullet would have killed me. Was it a stray bullet? Or did they see us in the dark and shoot? When I rubbed my chin with my palm, something slick came away. Reflexively, I shouted.
“Someone’s aiming at us!”
“Run!”
At Shin Haeryang’s shout, which rang out along with the gunshots, I came to my senses and found myself already running madly forward. Every time the parachute cord wrapped around my wrist pulled taut, I ran with all my strength to keep up with Baek Aeyoung, who must have been running ahead. Baek Aeyoung must have been a cheetah in her past life. They said she was fleet-footed, but wasn’t she faster than a horse? No matter how fast I ran, the parachute cord stayed taut and didn’t slacken.
Then I missed my footing, slipped hard on the floor, and went tumbling with a crash. It hurt so badly I thought I might pass out. It felt as though my right side and thigh had vanished, and at the same time, my body was screaming that there were muscles and bones there. In that instant, Shin Haeryang yanked my arm with tremendous force. I barely managed to get up because it felt like my arm would be torn off if I didn’t.
All I wanted to do was lie down and faint on the spot. Shin Haeryang fired loudly into the darkness, and I limped forward, crying as I ran. He said he couldn’t abandon me, didn’t he? It was because I thought my existence mustn’t become any more of a burden to Shin Haeryang. If not for that, I would have given up on everything and sprawled out on the floor.
I thought I had wandered through that pitch-black darkness for about an hour, but only later did I learn that not even ten minutes had passed since the blackout and all of this began. Shin Haeryang ran up from behind, grabbed my arm, and ran forward. Occasionally, he fired behind us, but I couldn’t understand why he was shooting when he couldn’t even see.
Shin Haeryang shoved me into a room, then felt along the wall, closed the door, and locked it. Even in the blackout, there was a faint light in that room. Looking around, I saw it was the cable car station. We made it to the right place! I followed, winding up the parachute cord wrapped around my forearm, only to find it tied beside a pillar in the cable car station. The parachute cord tied to Shin Haeryang’s forearm was the same. Just in case, I went over to untie the cord fastened beside the pillar so I could give it to Shin Haeryang, but the parachute cord was covered in blood. The moment I saw it, a high-pitched ringing seemed to pierce my ears. Where was Baek Aeyoung?
Shin Haeryang brought over several chairs from around the station and overturned them in front of the door. I walked around the station to look for Baek Aeyoung, and found her in the inner control room, pressing buttons. Her fingertips were soaked in blood, so blood smeared onto the buttons as well. Baek Aeyoung had been covered in blood since earlier. Frightened, I asked.
“Aeyoung. Are you hurt?”
“Yes.”
“Wh… where are you hurt? Is it bad?”
“That’s not important. What about the team leader?”
“He’s stacking chairs in front of the door.”
“You look hurt too, Muhyeon.”
Baek Aeyoung pointed at my leg. I thought maybe I had injured my leg when I fell, rather than just bruising it, but when I touched it, I realized it wasn’t my leg—the bag was soaked with blood. I opened one of the bags on my back. The cat was covered in blood. I didn’t know when it had been shot, but its body twitched intermittently. The cat made a rattling, gurgling sound as it breathed. As I froze, clutching the bag and not knowing what to do, Baek Aeyoung zipped it shut again. Then she shook her head and said.
“You shouldn’t give your heart away so easily.”
“…What?”
“Living things die quickly, so you shouldn’t give them your heart. You’ll only be the one who gets hurt.”
Baek Aeyoung was clutching her side with one hand. With that hand still gripping her side, she pulled the trigger with her other hand and fired two shots into my bag on the floor. Stunned, I stared blankly at the bag with bullet holes in it. The person who had taken care of that nameless cat the most was Baek Aeyoung. If it wasn’t inside my bag, then Baek Aeyoung had carried it in her arms all the way up those four thousand steps.
Baek Aeyoung pushed the bag with the cat in it into a corner. A trail of blood marked the floor as the bag slid. Only now did I realize the floor was a mess, covered all over with drops of blood. Baek Aeyoung looked at the cable car that had started operating, then coughed quietly.
My head hurt. It felt like someone was hammering a nail between my brows. Enormous pain shot through the space between my eyebrows and across my forehead. For a moment, I thought someone had shot me in the head. When Baek Aeyoung grabbed my shoulder, I barely managed to turn my head toward her. It seemed she had shaken my shoulder because I was kneeling on the floor and not moving. I thought it wasn’t my blood, but it turned out it was bleeding from my nose. Blood was streaming from it. Baek Aeyoung pointed at my face and asked.
“Why… why is that happening?”
I swallowed the blood from my nose as it was, or lowered my head to let it drip, and barely managed to speak.
“It’s okay. I think this is happening because of stress.”
Whether it was really because of stress, whether some disease had broken out, or whether a bullet had lodged somewhere I didn’t know about, I had no idea. As soon as I looked at the cat’s bag, my head hurt as if it would split open. I brought it here but couldn’t even treat it well. But I couldn’t have left it to die in that water either. So, thanks to you, that cat must have lived such a wonderfully happy life until now. Did I bring it all the way here just to have it killed? Blocking my nose with one hand and lifting my head, I saw that the cable car control panels were all in complete disarray. I pinched the bridge of my nose hard and asked.
“Can it still run like that?”
“Yes. I made it so it can’t stop. It receives power from both sides.”
“Ah.”
Shin Haeryang was coming toward the cable car. I was supporting Baek Aeyoung as we headed for it, but the two of us were walking almost as slowly as zombies. In my case especially, my nosebleed wouldn’t stop, so half of it was dripping down my hands and arms, and half of it I was swallowing. Shin Haeryang came out through the nearest open door of the cable car and pushed Baek Aeyoung inside. Baek Aeyoung and I fell to the floor side by side, and only after we fell did I realize someone was shooting. Shin Haeryang was firing back in that direction, but there wasn’t anything in particular I could do to help, so I practically covered Baek Aeyoung with my body.
“Get up!”
Shin Haeryang was shouting. I barely lifted my head, and if what Shin Haeryang was shouting was right, he was telling us to get out of here immediately. If I had one wish, it would have been to close my eyes right there, lie down, and never get up again. But if I had to compare who was lazier between the person shooting at the fanatics approaching from far away with barely any cover and the person lying on the floor, even if I had a hundred mouths, I would have had nothing to say. I shook Baek Aeyoung, who was sprawled on the floor.
“We have to get up!”
“…I don’t want to.”
“You have to even if you don’t want to!”
I slung one of Baek Aeyoung’s arms around the back of my neck, grabbed her waist, and stood. It was the first time I learned Baek Aeyoung was so good at swearing. An immense barrage of curses was directed at the bullets flying toward us, the bullet lodged in her waist, the fanatics, the undersea base, the people with rotten personalities we had met in the undersea base, and the Chinese, Japanese, Canadians, Americans, Australians, New Zealanders, and Koreans. Even in a state where just breathing wrong made me swallow blood through my nose or mouth, I giggled when I heard those curses. There really weren’t many decent people, were there? Just saying that one sentence made me gulp down mouthfuls of blood.
When Baek Aeyoung and I practically rolled out of the cable car, Shin Haeryang ran over and told us to get into the cable car in front of us. The cable car’s smooth, gliding movement was much faster than the speed at which I could support Baek Aeyoung and walk. Just as I thought there was no way we could board it, Shin Haeryang tucked both me and Baek Aeyoung under his arms and ran to get on the cable car. Even then, I thought, I don’t think we’ll make it, and the moment that thought crossed my mind, Shin Haeryang threw me first into the cable car with the open door at tremendous speed. I flew without even being able to make a sound and crashed inside the cable car. Then, with Baek Aeyoung tucked under his arm, he leaped into the cable car before the door closed.
The cable car doors closed, and an announcement said it had been sealed normally. Why did it need to be sealed? I lifted my head while pressing hard on my nose and saw that the oxygen and nitrogen concentrations were displayed beside the door. Were cable car doors normally equipped with things like that? Was it because this was an underwater cable car? It was the first time I learned that when bullets were fired into the sea, they shot through it in lines. Once the cable car was soon completely submerged, the figures of the fanatics visible in the distance disappeared as well.
Only then did I realize that the cable car we had boarded at first had been showered with bullets, and that Shin Haeryang had made us get off that cable car and board one that was just about to enter the sea. No wonder the doors closed as soon as we got on. Shin Haeryang leaned against the cable car door, breathing in and out, while I lay crumpled inside the cable car and looked out the window. It was so dark outside that for an instant, I thought I had gone blind.