“People should live kindly. That son of a bitch, even normally… He wasn’t my junior or senior in the lab, so I didn’t raise much hell about it, but… Hah… I don’t really want to talk about it. Anyway, good people are attractive simply because they’re good. They give you the feeling of being complete human beings. People who seem to show you the answer to how a person ought to live just by watching them. I like people like that. Even if you’re not kind, you should at least try to live that way. Considering what a total piece of trash he was, I can’t imagine anyone helping him. Well. If someone saves him and he lives, then I guess that’s his luck.”
I couldn’t tell whether the disinfection had been done properly or not. Ngh! That stings! Whether Kim Gayeong had rubbed it with gauze soaked in alcohol or what, the area around my mouth hurt fiercely, intensely. I endured the burning parts of my face while swallowing my breath. After Kim Gayeong smeared ointment on her fingertips and brushed it over the wounds, she announced that the treatment was over, and I was finally freed from the brief torture.
…I’ll have to treat Yu Geum and Lee Jihyeon’s wounds myself. To shore up my soft, frightened, and thoroughly disordered state of mind, I asked Kim Gayeong with a sigh.
“Let me ask one last thing. …Is there some secret to having a strong heart like yours, Gayeong? Some way to steel yourself mentally, maybe.”
“A lotus is not stained by muddy water? Even when terrible, painful things happen, don’t take them too much to heart. Think that no one can hurt you without your permission.”
In the distance, Yu Geum was slowly walking over while holding her waist. Her whole body smelled of pain-relief patches.
“But aren’t the situations we’re facing right now too terrible? Unni. I want to live without getting hurt.”
“Mm. That’s true too.”
As she said that, Kim Gayeong smiled gently at Yu Geum. I swept my eyes over Yu Geum as a whole and asked.
“Geum, how’s your back?”
“I want to go to an orthopedic clinic right now and get manual therapy, then go to a sauna and soak in hot water for a while, then sleep for about ten hours.”
I found myself thinking something like, She’s fine, then realized that was someone’s manner of speaking and tried to remember whose, but it didn’t come to me right away. Too many things had happened all at once in too short a time, and it was hard to remember everything. I treated Yu Geum’s wounds lightly. She said she didn’t want to show me her back or waist, so I didn’t touch those areas.
Lee Jihyeon, who said she had gone down to the second floor and come back, was soaked to the bone and panting. She came into the room barefoot and asked me.
“Muhyeon, have you ever escaped by elevator in a dream?”
“…Yeah. When I took the elevator from Cheongnyong-dong to the Third Undersea Base. But on the way up, it stopped several times because of power outages. Why?”
“I’m going to try operating the freight elevator here and escaping. If it goes well, everyone here will reach the Basic Area, floor zero. We’ll get out and see the sunlight.”
I’d heard the freight elevator moved between the Fourth Undersea Base and all of Daehan-do, the artificial island, like the central elevator did. When Lee Jihyeon voiced such a positive opinion, my head was glad, but my heart braced itself and I poured cold water on it.
“And if it doesn’t go well?”
“We all go to the Lord’s side at once.”
I see. Simple enough. …Lee Jihyeon might go to the Lord’s side, but as someone without religion, I had it drilled into my head that I’d just be going straight to corpse status. What an incredible day off. If I get out of this undersea base, I’m never looking at the ocean floor again. I won’t use stairs, I won’t take elevators, I’ll just shut myself inside my room.
I opened my bag and took out the towel lying under the cat. The cat, as if used to it now, avoided my hand. When I handed the towel to Yu Geum beside me, she immediately passed it to Lee Jihyeon. Lee Jihyeon wiped her seawater-soaked face with the towel and drank some of the water Kim Gayeong handed her, then shook her head when I said we should treat her.
“There’s no time.”
“You know this too, Jihyeon, but treatment is something you make time for.”
“If time passes, the elevator and everything else will break down. We have to drain the water right now.”
Then Lee Jihyeon, with the towel draped over her head, left the room and shouted at the top of her lungs to gather the remaining people. Eight men and the three of us came out awkwardly. Because of Lee Jihyeon’s voice, a few people on the upper floors were looking at us as well. Lee Jihyeon said loudly.
“I’m Lee Jihyeon from Engineering Team A. I just swam through the second floor and went to the elevator stopped on the first floor and back.”
So that was why Lee Jihyeon was soaked from head to toe. Panting as if exhausted, Lee Jihyeon coughed a few times and said.
“There’s no major problem with the elevator. I can make it work. The problem is the water. Because of all the water filling the elevator with its doors open, it’ll be too heavy for the elevator to rise. If we want to escape, we have to drain the water!”
At that, James listened to Lee Jihyeon, looked over the railing at the rising water, and answered uneasily.
“How are we supposed to drain it? Seems like the water’s coming in faster than we can drain it.”
When we first arrived, the second floor had been flooding, but now more than half of the second floor was filled with water. Sam Young, standing nearby, said worriedly.
“Look, the second floor’s already submerged. The water’s going to reach the third floor soon.”
Lee Jihyeon scrubbed her short hair once with the towel and answered.
“We have to activate the automatic drainage system and turn the manual drainage valves on the first floor to drain the water. It won’t drain a dramatically large amount. Like James said, I don’t know where it’s leaking in from, but the inflow will be faster than the drainage. We just need the water to go down enough for the elevator to work.”
Wiping her hands and fingertips with the towel she had placed on her head, Lee Jihyeon continued.
“The elevators here are resistant to seawater, and they were made on the assumption that even if they’re submerged, drainage will be performed. Normally, cleaning robots run around the floors here and clean everything, so there isn’t a single water stain or dirt mark, but in the early days, when this place was being built, it wasn’t just full of water, it was all water and mud everywhere, so it should be fine.”
One man who had been quietly listening to the explanation grinned at Lee Jihyeon and said.
“So all we have to do is drain the water? But that’s your job as an engineer, isn’t it?”
“…What do you mean?”
“You can do it, so why are you making other people do it?”
Hearing that, Lee Jihyeon frowned, the veins in her neck standing out.
“What I want is for the water to drain enough that more than half of the first floor is exposed. Whether that means running the drainage system, or people turning the manual drainage valves buried here and there in the floor corners of the first floor by hand! Or scooping it out directly with buckets! Or you personally drinking the water like a whale! That water has to be drained. If draining this entire huge research center was something I could do alone, why would I call people and stand here saying all this? I’d just do it all by myself and escape by myself!”
“Yeah. Then you can just do it all yourself, can’t you?!”
Lee Jihyeon glared at the man, who was smirking with a swagger, and asked.
“Aren’t you going to leave?”
“No. If you get the elevator working, I’ll ride it.”
The way they were talking and the atmosphere felt strange, and when I looked, people like James Darnell, Sam Young, and Nzadi Kanu had slightly different attitudes from the others. Several men stood with strange smiles and their arms crossed, watching what Lee Jihyeon was saying as if a cute monkey were performing tricks.
I couldn’t understand this situation. Why were they acting like this? And what on earth was that man talking about? Weren’t we all supposed to help Lee Jihyeon drain the Deep-Sea Contamination Center?
She said the elevator couldn’t go up because of the weight of the water. It had been the same with the Cheongnyong-dong elevator, but it seemed that the elevator doors were open and the inside had completely filled with water. Since the freight elevator was stopped on the first floor, even when I looked over the railing on the third floor, I couldn’t see it because it was submerged. It was a transparent elevator, so since it wasn’t visible between the third and seventh floors, I could only guess it was sunk somewhere in the water.
According to Lee Jihyeon, the water level would rise quickly, so if we were going to start draining or doing anything at all, we had to start as soon as possible. Even I, who knew next to nothing about engineering work, understood that. There was no way the people who worked at the research center didn’t. Was I the only one who didn’t understand why these people were acting like this?
Until just a moment ago, Yu Geum had been rubbing her waist with both hands, but now, as if her head hurt, she took one hand off her waist and started rubbing her forehead. Kim Gayeong leaned against the wall at an angle, looking at the men with no expression at all. The blond man beside the one who had been sneering earlier said to Lee Jihyeon.
“Why should we get soaked doing what you tell us to do? Like you said, if the inflow is faster than the drainage, huh! No matter how much we bust our asses, the water might rise faster anyway. If we try and can’t drain enough water to make the elevator work, then we just waste our strength and that’s it! And that freight elevator’s been underwater for more than thirty minutes, so what if it doesn’t work properly? And if we get hurt or die in the process of doing what you tell us to do, are you going to take responsibility for all of it?!”
The man, who had been getting closer and closer, shouted right in Lee Jihyeon’s face. Lee Jihyeon took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out. Then she stepped back two or three paces. When her arm bumped into mine, she stopped, clenched her left hand into a fist, and muttered. Lord. Today, too, I am having a difficult day. Even if it cannot be a peaceful day, please help this lamb so that I need not commit murder. The murderous prayer brushed past my ear in a very low voice. Another man nearby looked the soaked Lee Jihyeon up and down and said.
“What you engineers do is fix broken stuff here, so why are you making a fuss telling us to do it? You guys can do it. That’s your job. And if you’re asking other people for a favor, shouldn’t you say it a little more prettily?”
Lee Jihyeon couldn’t close her mouth and stared blankly at him. I was looking at him in much the same way. …Is my translator broken? Or did I wash my brain too when I washed my face? In place of Lee Jihyeon, who had momentarily lost the ability to speak, I answered the man from beside her.
“Why are you doing this? You all know everything Jihyeon said is right. Of course, even if everyone here dives down to the first floor and tries to drain the water, the elevator might not work, or the water might come in faster than expected and we might fail. Even if the elevator moves, there might be a problem with the electrical system or an unexpected malfunction, and we could end up swallowing water for nothing. But we can at least try. If we’re lucky, we might be able to get out of here. Why are you trying not to even attempt it?”