The water had risen so high that walking was exhausting and even breathing was difficult. Kim Gayeong, the shortest among us, kept her mouth tightly shut and raised her chin as far as it would go. She seemed to be employing a strategy of making sure only her nose stayed above the water.
I walked with only my head above the surface, watching the two dark silhouettes ahead make their way forward. We had made it a little over halfway when suddenly—ack!—a black mass believed to be Lee Jihyeon let out a cry and vanished before my eyes along with her light.
“Jihyeon!”
I could see the flashlight that had fallen into the water casting its glow beneath the surface. And mere seconds later, Kim Gayeong, who had been walking about sixty centimeters ahead of me, silently submerged as well. What. What! Why did both of them disappear into the water!
The instant fear took me, I instinctively grabbed the wall and jumped with all my might from where I stood. Something struck my calf hard. I saw stars flashing before my eyes. I opened my mouth in agony, and a bowlful of water poured in; I swallowed it and immediately pulled myself upright. At minimum, my calf was bruised or cracked. If I was unlucky, it was broken.
I thought the pain would kill me, but I scraped my fingers along the wall and barely managed to stand. And even if I died, I wanted to know what the hell it was, so I reached down and felt around in the water. It was a bed.
Fucking hell. Almost all the furniture in the underwater base was fixed in place. With the dormitory doors all open and everything floating in the water, it seemed a bed that someone had purchased separately, not being fixed down, was what was drifting around like this. The bed, toppled on its side and being pushed every which way, must have smashed into everyone’s calves. Puhah! Lee Jihyeon thrust her face out of the water. The light shook wildly before illuminating my face.
“Where's Gayeong unni!”
“She's underwater!”
At those words, Lee Jihyeon plunged her head into the water without hesitation. The flashlight went under too. I also used my hands and feet to flail my limbs like a goalkeeper as I walked forward. Plastic objects, books, chairs, a wig (I was startled), clothes, and more brushed against my body as they drifted past. When my light and Lee Jihyeon's light drew close, something touched my arm. The fine hairs on my back and nape all stood on end. Wondering what I'd bumped into, I grabbed an arm and pulled the person up, but their body slumped limply. It was like a water ghost, but I hurriedly slung that arm over my shoulder. When Lee Jihyeon surfaced again, I shouted in haste.
“I've got her on my back!”
“Let's go!”
This was the second time I'd carried someone out of the water like this. No, counting what happened in the dream, was it the third? It wasn't heavy. It was just hard. My leg hurt so much, and with Lee Jihyeon walking ahead, I figured no one would see my face, so I sniffled and cried in the dark. Because I was crying, my tears blurred my vision and made it even harder to walk. Damn it. Crying like this, I could get dehydration or go into shock, and although my reason was making cold, third-party judgments about my physical condition, tears streamed down like an idiot's and wouldn't stop.
The water level had now risen above my neck. Kim Gayeong, having come to, coughed heavily against my back and then, hanging limp, spoke to me in a ragged voice. Leave me behind. Go alone. I'll be fine.
The moment I heard that, I burst into tears even harder. Waaah! Why did we come in here! Did I come here to go alone! Waaah! All sorts of things were floating past my face, and occasionally they struck my crying face as they drifted by.
But then Lee Jihyeon—my hope up ahead, our light—suddenly flipped backward with a splash. The light shone on me from two meters below the ceiling, then plunged into the water with a loud splosh. Now wailing, I approached the spot where the flashlight glowed.
The absurd thing was that while I was sobbing and crying my eyes out, in my head I was thinking that the flashlight must be waterproof, judging by the situation so far. Fortunately, the lanyard at the end of the flashlight was wrapped tightly around Lee Jihyeon's wrist, so she was easy to find.
Huffing and puffing, I approached, shifted Kim Gayeong from my back onto my shoulder, and draped Lee Jihyeon's arm over my other shoulder. I grabbed both their arms and looped them around my shoulders—a configuration where, if luck was against us, both would end up with dislocated arms or separated shoulders. Their faces were out of the water, yet I couldn't think of any evacuation method for carrying two people at once. Why isn't there a carry technique for one person transporting two? Is it because no one does it? Then what am I supposed to do in a situation like this!
Crying, I held onto both of them, muttering that I mustn't fall, and walked forward. Another chair floated past me. What was truly fortunate was that, since we were fully submerged in water, the buoyancy meant the weight of two people didn't pose as big a problem for my walking as I'd feared.
I accidentally swallowed a gushing mouthful of water that had reached my chin and lips and barely arrived near the stairs. Something grabbed Kim Gayeong in the darkness, and I jumped in fright, pulling away, when the dark lump spoke.
“It's me! Yu Geumi!”
Supporting Lee Jihyeon, I climbed the stairs, and when I saw light, I closed my eyes and walked. If the Jujak-dong dormitory had been pitch-dark with all the lights out, having already adapted to the darkness, tears trickled from my eyes due to the sudden brightness. I felt like a bat with terrible eyesight exposed to light.
Only when we emerged into the corridor leading from the dormitory could we see each other. Lee Jihyeon's calf and the shoulder area of her suit were torn, and blood was seeping out. After laying Lee Jihyeon down on the floor, I went back down to help Kim Gayeong and came out together with Yu Geumi.
Kim Gayeong's jeans were torn at the calf. When I glanced at the calf, I saw blood. Wondering if I looked the same, I rolled up my pants. My calf was bruised red and blue, but it wasn't so bad that I couldn't walk, nor was the flesh badly torn. ...It seemed the bed had hit the two of them and slowed before striking my calf.
Lee Jihyeon was unconscious, so I first checked whether she was breathing and if her heart was beating. I tilted her head back to open her airway, and within seconds, Lee Jihyeon woke with a gasp. After confirming she had regained consciousness, I tried to tear the suit around her calf to look at the wound and grunted with the effort. I didn't know what they were made of, but the black suits the engineers wore were tough and incredibly stiff. Lee Jihyeon worked her mouth, then spat out seawater and spoke.
“My shoulder is killing me. At the very end, a chair leg hit me here, and suddenly I couldn't see in front of me. ...I saw the face of the Lord.”
“What hit all our calves was a huge bed.”
Suddenly, while sitting, Lee Jihyeon waved her hand and shouted behind me.
“Close the door! The door! Close the maw of that hell quickly!”
In the confusion, I had left the door leading down to the Jujak-dong dormitory wide open. I quickly went to close and lock the door to the quarters. Before closing it, I could see the water chasing us from just three steps below.
While stopping Lee Jihyeon from waving one arm around, I used all my arm strength to tear open the suit around her calf; the leg wasn't as gruesome as I'd expected. I had been terrified that the bone might be showing, but it didn't look that bad on the outside. I pressed the injured area with my thumb and asked. Every time my finger moved, Lee Jihyeon's face twisted.
“Does it hurt when I press like this?”
“Everything you just pressed hurts.”
Lee Jihyeon answered, grimacing with her fist clenched tight. I knew pain was only natural. I flinched, worried her trembling fist might fly at me, and asked.
“Can you stand?”
“I don't know.”
“Try it. I'll hold you. To see if you can stand or not.”
While Yu Geumi was struggling with Kim Gayeong's waterlogged jeans, I supported Lee Jihyeon and helped her up. The moment Lee Jihyeon stood on both feet in that spot, she began spewing a stream of curses laced with blasphemy. A torrent of profanity burst forth about the bed being roasted in hellfire and the underwater base construction personnel being grilled alongside it. She was wishing that the foreign engineer team members, the demons who had launched missiles at the Fourth Underwater Base, and the bastards who had bought chairs and beds with their own money without bolting them to the floor would all roast in hell at temperatures of at least 180 degrees for over thirty minutes.
Surprised by my companion's sudden outburst, I ignored it and quickly examined the calf. Damn it. What we needed here was a skilled orthopedic surgeon. Not a dentist.
“Which crazy lunatic bastard uses chairs without bolting them to the floor? That son of a bitch needs eight bolts driven through his skull, I swear. He needs to try floating around on a plane with his seat unfastened to come to his senses!”
Lee Jihyeon barely stood there, sublimating the pain in her calf and shoulder into profanity. Kim Gayeong gave a waterlogged cough and gave a thumbs-up at Lee Jihyeon's cursing.
This is a rare sight in a dental clinic. You can't swear when your mouth is open. She seemed to be doing it, but you couldn't properly make it out. Besides, the dental drill is called a handpiece, and it's rare to find someone with the guts to spew abuse at the doctor while holding that whirring thing. More people curse at the reception desk to avoid the doctor.
Can you walk even if your bone is broken? You can. You can walk if you endure the surging pain and cry on the inside. If we can't walk right now, we'll be enormously restricted in movement. And when would we even find splints around here?
If I could have it my way, I'd tell those two to go to a hospital and get X-rays immediately. Her legs were swelling up, but both legs were swollen, so I couldn't compare them to tell which was normal. I sat Lee Jihyeon back down and approached to look at her shoulder. Lee Jihyeon touched her own shoulder and spoke.
“I think my shoulder is dislocated.”
It looked that way even at a glance. The skin was torn and bleeding, with dark bruises rising, but when I felt it with my hand, there was nothing weird protruding. Like a bone fragment.
“First, there's a way for me to pop the shoulder back in roughly. I don't really recommend it. The second way is to not set it, but immobilize the arm and shoulder with clothes or cloth, then have a doctor set it at the hospital.”
“Do you think we can reach a hospital within two hours? Given our current situation, and including the revelation Muhyeon received in his dream.”
I looked around my surroundings and shook my head.
“...No.”