I wondered how different all these developments would be from the dream. The control panels for the escape craft in Baekho-dong had either been damaged by the impact—nothing appeared on their screens, and pressing the buttons did nothing—but when we went to Jujak-dong, we might find the escape craft there still operating normally. The people who had left in the escape craft might not have died. And maybe there wouldn’t be a shootout in Cheongnyong-dong.
I watched Kang Sujeong turn away, then shouted out, seized by an inexplicable unease.
“Be careful! More prohibited items might have been brought into the undersea base. If they even smuggled in a child, what wouldn’t they have brought in?”
Kang Sujeong looked at me with an intrigued expression, waved broadly, then caught up with Jung Sanghyeon, who was walking ahead.
Yu Geum, Lee Jihyeon, and I began walking toward Jujak-dong. Yu Geum kept glancing back at the people, who were now the size of his little finger. Seeing that, Lee Jihyeon asked him,
“Are you worried?”
“Yes. ...I don’t know about anything else, but I’m worried about the kid who went with them. What if the child gets hurt? Jung Sanghyeon doesn’t like the idea of escaping with a child, does he? Rather than entrusting a sleeping kid to someone like that, wouldn’t it have been safer for us to take the child with us?”
“It’ll be fine. The Deputy Team Leader has at least a minimum moral line she won’t cross. And no matter how reckless Sanghyeon gets, he can’t ignore the Deputy Team Leader’s orders.”
At that, I asked her out of pure curiosity.
“Why can’t he ignore them?”
Lee Jihyeon laughed lightly. As we passed Central-dong’s First Theater and she looked toward Jujak-dong, she said slowly,
“Deputy Team Leader Kang was a heavyweight boxing champion. There was a time when Sanghyeon openly ignored work she had instructed him to do. She let it slide once, but while Team Leader Shin was away on vacation, something blew up in a big way.”
Ah. So that was why her teeth... To ordinary people, they might have looked perfectly fine, but to my eyes, I could see several teeth Kang Sujeong had had restored after fractures. The undersea dental clinic Deep Blue had no policy at all regarding mouthguards.
We had never made one here, but at a dental clinic, you could make a mouthguard separately for a patient. Once in a while, boxers or taekwondo athletes would come in to have mouthguards fitted. Of course, more often, they came in after not wearing mouthguards and breaking teeth, losing teeth, or cracking their jawbones.
“Did he get beaten up?”
“According to Sanghyeon, after exchanging a few words with the Deputy Team Leader, they peacefully cleared up the misunderstanding between them.”
“Huh...”
“The Deputy Team Leader isn’t the kind of person who sees someone deliberately messing up their work or refusing to handle it properly and thinks, Oh, that’s just how that person is, so I should give them less work, or not give them any. She makes them do the work, one way or another, even if she has to force them. Because if that person doesn’t handle it properly, the coworkers working with them have to bear the burden instead.”
That was something a superior should naturally coordinate, but once you went out into society, there were plenty of people who didn’t. I had seen it many times: a subordinate who didn’t work and lazed around, a superior who got along with that subordinate and played along with them, and the other employees who were unfairly forced to take on both of their work.
After my father passed away and our family’s fortunes declined, I did all sorts of part-time jobs, and more than once, work from the people who played around was dumped on me simply because I worked diligently. The superior would say things like, That’s just how they are, and give me their work. Without paying me any more money for it.
“She’s fair, then?”
“She’s the best person to work with. Team Leader Shin, too. I’ve worked in a few other places besides here, and quite often I quit not because the work was too hard, but because my bosses or coworkers were a mess. At least here, the work is tough, but there aren’t many outside factors to stress over.”
I recalled hearing that Shin Haeryang had thrown punches for Baek Aeyeong’s sake. Maybe Team Leader Shin was keeping that stress from reaching his employees. Yu Geum seemed reassured by Lee Jihyeon’s words and said with a sigh,
“Then that’s a relief, at least.”
“Right now, that guy is probably desperate to get away from the Deputy Team Leader’s side somehow.”
“Why?”
“He must want freedom.”
“Is he very unfree right now?”
Lee Jihyeon smiled vaguely and was about to open her mouth, then hurriedly lowered her body. Krrrrrrrrrrrrrk! A huge sound came from far away, and the floor shook. Rrrrrrrrrumble! The entire ceiling and walls were vibrating.
I swayed back and forth along with the building, and afraid that if I fell backward, I might crush the children in my backpack, I rolled forward toward the floor instead. Oof. I’m dying. When I looked to the side, Yu Geum had already fallen steadily to the floor. The only one still standing among us was Lee Jihyeon. Only after two or three minutes did the shaking subside somewhat. Lee Jihyeon checked our surroundings, helped Yu Geum up first, then took hold of me and said,
“Let’s move a little faster. With that impact just now, the accommodations in Jujak-dong might be sealed off.”
“Was it an earthquake?”
When Yu Geum asked that, Lee Jihyeon shook her head and said,
“I don’t think so. Probably.”
Lee Jihyeon frowned, looked up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then said,
“If it were an earthquake, it would be magnitude eight or higher. In that case, the fact that we’re alive here would be a miracle in itself.”
Our pace quickened even more. The feeling of being trapped somewhere as the water level kept rising—I had experienced it twice, no, three times... no, if you counted that damn cable car, four times. I did not want to experience it again. Every time I went into the water, I was afraid.
We walked without rest until we reached the corridor connecting Central-dong and Jujak-dong. After walking in silence for a long while, Lee Jihyeon asked me,
“Muhyeon. What did you mean when you said there might be more prohibited items?”
Hmm... uh. I shouldn’t talk about the animals.
“There were Russians who drank and fell asleep, people who hid somewhere to smoke and then came to the dental clinic pretending they hadn’t, and even a child hidden in an empty room. So it wouldn’t be strange if guns or drugs showed up, would it?”
Now that I thought about it, drugs hadn’t appeared. Please never appear. Guns alone are more than enough. My remark had been an indirect way of warning Kang Sujeong that she might end up in a fierce fight with people, but I didn’t know if she had understood. Lee Jihyeon seemed to sink into thought. Then she asked me,
“Doctor. Does Jihyeok smoke?”
Whoa. At the sudden, piercing question, I spent a few seconds wondering how I should answer before replying. Hadn’t Seo Jihyeok said he liked Lee Jihyeon?
“I cannot disclose a patient’s medical information to another person.”
“He said he quit. Yes, all right.”
How on earth did she infer that information from what I said? Before I could get flustered, Lee Jihyeon naturally looked at me, and since saying anything more in Seo Jihyeok’s defense felt like it would only confirm the kill, I hurriedly shut my mouth. Lee Jihyeon continued,
“Let’s go to the escape craft ports first, then head to the accommodations.”
“Why not go to the accommodations first?”
“There are several reasons, but in this situation, if any escape craft remain, it’s better to get people aboard and send them off as quickly as possible. There’s no need to suffer for long in the middle of this sea.”
Lee Jihyeon spoke while looking at Yu Geum’s back as he walked ahead. Then she looked at me.
“And the reason I’m going to Jujak-dong is partly to rescue the five people who are supposedly trapped in the accommodations, but the most important objective is securing the remaining escape craft. That takes priority over the rescue.”
As we walked down the corridor connected to Jujak-dong, I noticed Lee Jihyeon muttering something under her breath and asked what it was. Lee Jihyeon said, looking slightly embarrassed,
“Well... I’m Christian. I’m praying to the Lord to save us.”
“Does it work?”
“I’m not dead yet.”
Yu Geum heard our conversation and laughed softly. After quickly crossing the corridor without taking a break, we encountered a large statue of the Jujak at the entrance into Jujak-dong. When entering Baekho-dong, there had been a four-legged animal statue there too, though it looked nothing like a tiger.
At the mouth of Jujak-dong, Yu Geum headed straight toward the research center. Then he stopped when he came face-to-face with what looked like a huge slab of metal. I didn’t think that had been there before. Yu Geum frowned at the door, which seemed to completely block the entire path to the research center, then placed his hand on the panel beside it.
[Beep. Jujak-dong Research Center has been sealed.]
Lee Jihyeon approached Yu Geum as he pressed his hand to the panel several times. Then she tried placing her own hand on it as well, but being an engineer didn’t make it open. What about me? I pressed my palm to it too, but of course, it didn’t open. Lee Jihyeon examined the panel, then said to Yu Geum,
“This has been locked so no one below center director level can enter.”
“When does it get sealed?”
At my question, Yu Geum chewed on his lip and said,
“There are plenty of reasons. It could be because of a fire, or because of a gas leak. Research labs are sealed for laboratory safety, after all. The closest center to here among the research centers is the Deep-Sea Biology Center, so it’s most likely that the director, Angela Malone, sealed it. Each center’s director bears full responsibility for all safety management in their research labs.”
The moment I heard that name, I thought of the long blond hair I had seen swimming in the sea. It had been the first time I’d encountered something like that while looking outside the undersea base. Had Director Angela Malone perhaps been on her way to seal the path leading to the research center? Lee Jihyeon quickly reached a conclusion.
“Now that we know we can’t get in, let’s go check the escape craft.”
Yu Geum looked at the door, then turned away regretfully. Had he said his academic advisor and the researchers were all in the research center? Since I had never gone through a master’s or doctoral program, I couldn’t deeply understand how he felt, but after hearing people around me complain while doing their master’s programs, it was probably as if several years of Yu Geum’s career had been left hanging in midair. On top of that, the people whose faces he knew had all vanished after he woke up.
I knew that the Yu Geum in the dream had naturally given up heading to the research center for the sake of rescuing Kim Gayoung. But the current him didn’t know who was waiting to be rescued. Would it be better to tell him? But right now, I was someone who didn’t even know who Kim Gayoung was. As I walked, I opened my pad and checked the undersea base bulletin board.
Title: People are on their way to the Jujak-dong accommodations.
Content: For reference in the rescue, please accurately state the number and identities of those trapped in the room.
Comments
HELP: Actually, there aren’t 5 people in Room 77. There’s 1.
...I could feel how much Kim Gayoung must have agonized before writing that comment. I told the people ahead of me about the comment.
“They say the person trapped in the Jujak-dong accommodations isn’t five people, but one.”
“Did they give a name?”
“No.”
“Smart.” Lee Jihyeon said it lightly and nodded.
“I thought that would be the case.”
“Pardon?”