“Uh…… Let’s search the Center Director’s office.”
There might be a first aid kit or something, right? With that, Kanu rose from his seat. In the distance, Gim Gayeong and I Jihyeon were approaching together with a man named Sam. I Jihyeon seemed to be saying something to Gim Gayeong about her hand, but they were too far away to hear properly. Gim Gayeong’s hand was wrapped up tightly in someone’s clothes. It seemed her hand wasn’t in very good condition.
I told the two of them not to take their eyes off Yu Geumi and walked toward the bathroom. I wanted to run there quickly, but it hurt every time I moved, so I was forced to walk. My side ached with every breath.
Did I break a rib? No. If I’d broken one, it wouldn’t hurt this much. If it were that painful, I’d already be wailing and rolling around on the floor in hysterics. ……I’ll be fine. Let’s not worry before getting an X-ray. Even if I worry now, I’ll only have more things to worry about. Let’s put off worrying for later. Let’s focus on the present.
When I looked in the mirror, the color of the right and left sides of my face was different. The left was fairly fine, but the right was bright red and dark purple. And it was completely covered in blood. Wow. Is this what I look like? Moreover, the right side of my face was swelling up. Unlike my fine left side, the area above my right eyebrow was torn, but it had scabbed over with towel fibers or thread, so the bleeding had at least stopped. I looked around and took off my top. The left side was fine, but my right shoulder, arm, and side that Arthur had beaten were bruising red from the punches.
……It’s okay. I can walk. I can move. These are just minor injuries. I tried hard to instill some confidence in myself.
When you’re alone in a bathroom looking at the spots where someone hit you with a blood-soaked face, your mood naturally hits rock bottom. Thinking about it now, I feel fortunate it was dark. I couldn’t properly see the face of the person hitting me. And because of the darkness, I couldn’t properly see the face of the person who’d swung at me melting away. I didn’t want to clearly see those sights with my own eyes and revisit that scene someday, on a night when I was alone.
To pull myself back from falling into depression, I forcibly showered myself with praise. It’s in the past. It’s way better than seeing I Jihyeon, Gim Gayeong, or Yu Geumi getting beaten up like this. It ended at this level because it was me. Isn’t my left side perfectly fine? I’ve seen much worse things while working.
First, I carefully washed and wiped my blood-soaked face and the parts of my neck where blood had flowed down with water. Faces tend to bleed a lot when wounded. Was the bastard wearing a ring? Did he have long fingernails? ……I don’t know. I can’t remember. Once the blood was wiped away, my reflection in the mirror at least turned into the face I always saw. My elevated heart rate had returned to normal as well.
I washed the wounded areas under running water too, took out a towel from my bag, and pressed it against the wounds. I looked this way and that inside my mouth in the mirror to check if my teeth were okay, sighed once, and then shook it off. I rummaged through the bathroom drawers and found toothpaste, a toothbrush, and mouthwash that someone seemed to have left behind, so I gargled with the mouthwash. My torn inner mouth seemed to scream in pain, but it was better than not doing it, so I rinsed twice and spat it out. I came out into the hallway feeling somewhat better. A man named James saw me and pointed with his finger toward the opposite corridor.
When I went there, it was the Center Director’s office, and people were lying on the floor. Thinking they might be sleeping, I looked closer, and one person had an axe buried in their stomach, and another looked like they’d been struck in the skull with a hammer, their head caved in here and there. There was even someone who looked like they’d been hit in the mouth and jaw with a hammer, all their upper and lower teeth knocked out. What the hell.
Seeing the corpses of people densely packed like Tetris blocks, clearly more than ten even at a glance, I hurriedly passed through that office and went further inside. Inside were the people Kanu had referred to as “those becoming corpses,” lying here and there on the sofa. One man had office scissors stuck in his head and a ballpoint pen lodged in his eye. And next to him lay someone with a broken glass bottle stuck in their stomach and neck, and another person with arms and legs broken in various directions, blood gushing from the back of their head. Fortunately, all three appeared unconscious.
……There doesn’t seem to be anyone here who particularly needs a dentist. An emergency medicine specialist should be here, not me. After that, general surgery, orthopedics, thoracic surgery, ophthalmology, and so on—all the internal medicine and surgical departments from a university hospital need to come. ……Not me.
Kanu was taking out a dusty first aid bag that had been placed up near the ceiling beside those people. When he wiped away the dust with his hand, a red and white cross became visible, so it at least looked like a first aid bag. Oh. It’s not a cheap first aid kit? ……But when opened, its contents were similar to a cheap first aid kit. Still, having hydrogen peroxide and gauze is better than nothing. I was rummaging through the first aid bag, checking what was inside, when the woman positioned closest to me spoke to me over the rustling.
“Are you the rescue team?”
Her voice, coughing repeatedly, was composed. Had she regained consciousness now? Kanu flinched and turned his head, and I was so startled I nearly jumped. ……What am I supposed to say?
“……No. I’m not the rescue team.”
The thought of giving false hope and lying flashed through my mind for a few seconds, but I simply couldn’t do it. The woman asked again while looking at the ceiling.
“……Is my injury serious? I can’t move my neck.”
I took my hand away from the first aid kit and approached the woman. Then Kanu closed his eyes, looked far into the distance, and spoke to her.
“Bel. You fell from the sixth floor. Remember? People threw you.”
“……Eunladi. What happened to Tina? Did Tina escape?”
“Tina is dead.”
Then Kanu paced around the sofa where Bel was lying before dashing out of the room entirely. I was left alone in that room, clutching the first aid bag with a dying person. I’d unconsciously grabbed a bottle of normal saline, and I felt this situation bearing down on me as an enormous burden.
A situation where someone is dying right beside me and I can’t do anything. ……Good God. I want to get out of here too. Bel. Probably Belial, right? Is there anything I can do for her? Belial asked me, still looking at the ceiling, as I awkwardly rose.
“Are you still beside me?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
Belial was swallowing something, but I couldn’t tell if it was vomit or blood. Every time she breathed, it gurgled, and bloody foam rose up.
“I want to be beside Tina. Is she by any chance next to me?”
“……What does she look like?”
“Martina Sanchez. Long, wavy brown hair…… wearing black jeans…… a green knit sweater and a white lab coat. She’s probably wearing Crocs for shoes.”
“She’s probably in the next room. Everyone here is just injured.”
“I want to hold her hand until I die.”
Feeling relieved that there was something I could do, I immediately grabbed the first aid bag and left the room. Outside, Kanu was lighting a cigarette with trembling hands. I didn’t even feel like asking why he was smoking at an undersea base. I was the kind of person who, if I were a smoker and could suppress my anxiety and sorrow with something like that, probably would have snatched it away to smoke too. I urgently asked Kanu.
“Where is Martina’s body?”
“Probably in the next room.”
Following the direction of his trembling hand, I ran to the room next to the Center Director’s office, but it too was filled with corpses laid out everywhere. There seemed to be over thirty bodies just by themselves. It was my first time seeing so many dead people gathered in one place.
I’d thought finding someone I’d never seen before in a place where they’d been laid out to avoid overlapping wouldn’t be easy. But surprisingly, I found her quickly. It was because Gim Gayeong was in that room, bending down to look at people’s faces. Gim Gayeong, her two hands wrapped tightly in towels, was startled to see me suddenly enter the room and asked.
“Is there someone you’re looking for?”
“Martina Sanchez!”
“That’s her.”
The person Gim Gayeong pointed to with her chin was a very small woman. I slipped my hands under the corpse’s back and knees and lifted her with both arms. She hadn’t been dead long, so she just looked like someone sleeping. I entered the space that looked like an inner reception room connected to the Center Director’s office. Bel was still looking at the ceiling. Worried that I might be too late, I quickly asked.
“Bel? Bel? Are you alive?”
“……I’m still alive. *Cough.*”
I made it so that Bel’s fingertips touched the dead Martina’s hand. I don’t know if she had any sensation left. Around the time Bel intertwined her fingertips with Martina’s fingers, I racked my brain trying to think of something good to say.
No decent phrases came to mind. Religious people might have been able to say something here. Or people who were eloquent. Or someone who majored in linguistics, or studied humanities extensively. Damn it. I should have read more books.
I wanted to praise Bel for being someone who had tried to evacuate people orderly even amid the chaotic situation at the Undersea Contamination Center. That might not have meant anything or helped this person at all. But if I didn’t say anything, I felt like I’d be crushed by the silence.
“I heard you tried to evacuate people.”
“…….”
“I think that was amazing. You could have escaped first, but you didn’t, and you did everything you could here.”
“……Tina yielded her escape pod to me when I said I’d stay behind. *Gurgle.*”
Bel spoke, swallowing bloody foam before vomiting it out.
“And while shielding me, she was hit by fists. By kicks, too. And knives. *Cough.* She held onto me as I was thrown into the air, and we fell to the floor together.”
With her arms and legs twisted at odd angles and several ribs protruding outward, the woman explained the past, tears of blood streaming as blood flowed from the back of her head.
……What do I do. What do I do! Watching Bel, who could no longer swallow the bloody foam and began spitting it out, I felt immense sorrow. Why do I feel so distraught and angry? I felt a burning pain in my chest. Trying to restrain my emotions as much as possible, I spoke to Bel.