“This is my first time using the stairs since I got here. There’s an elevator on each side of every hallway, so researchers don’t need to walk around. Plus, there’s a cafeteria inside the research center, free vending machines everywhere, and if you apply for and win the lottery for the on-site housing, you don’t even need to leave the center at all. People like me who didn’t win the lottery use the Jujak-dong dormitory shared by about a hundred people.”
The researchers hardly ever leave the research center, it seems. Well, it’s a place that provides all three meals, has housing, and work hours are strictly set. It would be heaven for some, but hell for others.
“Which floor is Geumi-ssi’s lab on in the Deep-Sea Biological Center?”
“The lab is on the second floor. It used to be on the seventh, but our professor got into a fight grabbing the next-door professor by the collar, so Malone moved us to the second floor. I remember the day we moved. We moved the equipment ourselves, or the medics and assistants helped. Thinking about it now, it was a good move from the seventh to the second. In a situation like this, it’s much easier to escape from than the seventh.”
“......Do professors fight too?”
At my question, the researcher Gim Gayeong exchanged glances with Yu Geumi and giggled.
“Oh, of course.”
“When professors fight, they fight over everything like elementary schoolers. Research funding, whose name goes on a paper and whose doesn’t. How much you contributed. Why you’re even breathing. Whether you ate together or not.”
I see. What I’d seen...... no. Our side had its share of crazy professors too. Some who were perfectly normal but spewed nonsense at residents during rounds, and quite a few perverts. I could understand if the violence was vertical, but I’d never imagined professors would brawl with each other horizontally. Come to think of it, dentistry is pretty brutal too. It wasn’t unheard of for fights to nearly break out with someone saying they’d smash the other’s face in and do their implant.
I Jihyeon practically ran down the stairs first and waited for us on the third floor. As we turned onto the third floor, the smell of burning grew even stronger.
We made it all the way down the stairs without falling and found several corpses lying on the floor, turning our heads away. Following what we’d seen with Angela Malone, we kept discovering more corpses with chunks of flesh gouged out as we walked the hallway.
I checked whether they were alive, and I Jihyeon took only facial photos before we moved on. Some lab doors were wide open, so we stepped inside while walking and found no people, but several places where tanks holding deep-sea creatures had been opened to let them escape. Yu Geumi glanced inside the ransacked lab and said,
“They let them all out before leaving.”
I Jihyeon, who followed us in, looked at an empty tank with what seemed like curiosity for about two seconds, then quickly exited the lab, saying,
“We’re busy as hell trying to escape, and the researchers remembered to do this kind of thing?”
Yu Geumi walked on, thought about I Jihyeon’s question for a moment, then spoke.
“If they didn’t, they’d remember it for the rest of their lives after getting out of here.”
“They’re fish, though.”
“Whether they’re fish, jellyfish, coral, or anything else. It’s best if we can achieve our research goals without necessarily using marine life in experiments. If we can’t replace them with tissue cultures or simulations, then we have to make the most of existing experimental records statistically, or handle the marine life as humanely as possible. That’s the ethics researchers ought to have.”
“They don’t have souls.”
“Excuse me?”
“They don’t have souls.”
Yu Geumi stopped walking, taken aback by those words. Behind her, Gim Gayeong, who had been walking even more slowly due to the pain in her legs, pushed Yu Geumi’s back with both hands. Prodded forward by that push, Yu Geumi began to think quietly as she walked.
Hmm. Most of the bullshit I’d ever heard was steeped in religion or power anyway. Conscious of the heavy bag on my back, I asked,
“Do you think that from a religious point of view?”
“It’s not my opinion, though.”
I Jihyeon answered, looking slightly uncomfortable. After walking down one side of the corridor in the ㅁ-shaped structure on the third floor, Yu Geumi slowly replied to I Jihyeon’s question.
“Before the nineteenth century, intellectuals ridiculed people who felt sympathy for animals. They thought animals simply reacted mechanically to external stimuli. They treated animals like noisy machines, like cell phone alarms. It wasn’t a crime to beat a dog or cat to death. And women, Africans, and Asians were treated exactly the same—as animals. All beings that feel pain are equal, and must be free from that pain.”
Yu Geumi continued as she looked at the open labs.
“......Actually, I might not have a soul either. I can’t even count the number of marine creatures that died innocent deaths by my hands. Anyway, since the topic has come up, I’ll tell you: rather than following you three out of this Deep-Sea Biological Center and into the Seafloor Pollution Center, I’m going to my lab on the second floor.”
Gim Gayeong, who had been pushing Yu Geumi’s back, asked,
“Alone? You’re going alone?”
“Yes. I don’t want to feel guilty every time I go to an aquarium or a sushi restaurant because of something I didn’t do.”
I Jihyeon listened quietly, then asked Yu Geumi in a small voice,
“......Do fish feel pain?”
“Yes.”
I Jihyeon stopped and asked Yu Geumi,
“Is Geumi-ssi’s lab very far?”
I smiled quietly at I Jihyeon’s words. Then I met eyes with Gim Gayeong, who was raising the corners of her lips.
I Jihyeon asked me and Gim Gayeong if we could stop by Yu Geumi’s lab on the second floor and then go to the Deep-Sea Biological Center via the third floor. Gim Gayeong raised her hand slightly and asked,
“I wholeheartedly approve, but I’m curious—what happens if we don’t approve?”
“You can stay here, or you can go on ahead.”
“I’ll go with you.”
At Gim Gayeong’s answer, I quickly spoke up too.
“I’ll go too!”
Wander around alone where corpses are lying in the hallway? I hated the thought alone. I recalled the flooding cable car and the snake placed on top of my head, then lightly shook off the memory.
I didn’t want to be alone anymore, no matter what happened. Trembling lightly from the surging fear, I saw Gim Gayeong wipe away the tears at the corners of her eyes with her fingertips,
I Jihyeon told us to return to the hallway with the stairs right away, so we walked without rest. I Jihyeon took the lead with Yu Geumi, who knew the way, while Gim Gayeong and I walked behind. Gim Gayeong smiled lightly at me and said,
“Yeah. ......It’s just that I can’t control my emotions well these days. I tear up for no reason when I see something moving. These days, even if I watch a sad movie, I end up crying along with the crying scenes.”
“Isn’t that natural?”
“I didn’t use to be like that. But these days I really cry over nothing. When I see good people, I just start crying. Funny, right?”
Gim Gayeong wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and muttered lowly. Tears come when I see people doing good things. Is it because I’m getting older? Then, as if making excuses, she spoke quickly.
“I think it’s because I’ve been repeating the same pattern—going back to the dorm to rest and sleep after work, then going to work again in the morning, then back to the dorm to rest and sleep.”
“Don’t worry too much. Everyone else is like that too. Talking with people more will make you feel better.”
I’d lived at this undersea base the least among the people here. Would I end up like this too if I stayed here long? I remembered Baek Ayeong saying that life here was a bit like that.
I thought I had quite a bit of work experience, but maybe it was because I was less isolated than I’d realized. Frowning, Gim Gayeong spoke carefully as she descended the stairs.
“Here, there’s almost no occasion to talk with people. Besides talking in the lab, there’s really nothing to say. Ordering coffee at the café is the extent of it.”
“Then why don’t you talk more in the lab?”
“......No one wants to talk a lot with coworkers. Everyone’s swamped with exhaustion. It’s better to talk less for each other’s sake.”
“Watching daily-life videos or dramas might help too.”
“That’s a good idea. Do you think I’m being too emotional?”
Well. While on my way to rescue her, I’d cried, screamed, and laughed so many times that I couldn’t count the emotional roller coasters. From my perspective, she seemed fine.
“I don’t find anything particularly strange talking with you. I ...... try to talk a lot with my patients who visit the dental clinic.”
“Why?”
“Whether only this spot hurts or that one doesn’t; where exactly hurts where; which part feels cold. What they’ve been eating to make their teeth look like this; they tell me they floss, but I wonder how it can look like this if they do; they say they brush more than twice a day, and I wonder if that’s really true because it sounds like a lie; they ask if I can’t lower the drill sound, and I wonder why they don’t tell me about any groundbreaking technology that could make such a drill instead; why they haven’t been to the dentist for so long; why they distrust dental treatment so much while readily believing in folk remedies; why they don’t believe the doctor when they say it’s a cavity, insisting it’s just a spot on their tooth; how they reek of alcohol despite claiming they don’t drink; and why heavy smokers with yellowed teeth come to the dentist when tobacco is clearly a banned item at this undersea base—that sort of thing.”
At my grumbling, Gim Gayeong let out a hollow laugh, and I chuckled softly too. I heard I Jihyeon, who was quickly descending the stairs past the hallway, speaking quietly to Yu Geumi,
“If Team Leader Gangbu or Jeong Sanghyeon were here, something like this would never have happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“This detour to let some fish or whatever go so inefficiently. I’m not trying to criticize Geumi-ssi’s actions. It’s just ...... I’m surprised I’m making this choice. Engineers are obsessed with efficiency.”
“This is about saving lives, though?”
“......They’d weigh which life is more valuable. My life, or the countless fish in the ocean.”
“That could be true. But these creatures were kidnapped from the ocean where they lived well and forced to come to the lab because of our research. Especially some species in our lab are being raised for conservation purposes, so if they die, it’s the end.”
As the two who had finished descending the stairs entered the second-floor hallway first, Yu Geumi took the lead and said,
“This way. It’s right up ahead. Room 210.”