My explanation apparently hadn’t convinced him. The man crossed his arms, looked at the dark water swallowing the second floor, and said,
“If we’re lucky, sure. I don’t want to go into that filthy water.”
……Well, even from here, the color of the water flooding the Deep-Sea Pollution Center wasn’t exactly beautiful. And water high enough to submerge the second floor and above? That meant it was at least six meters deep. Just imagining diving down through that depth to find some drainage valve on the floor and turn it was enough to tell me it would be hell.
But if not that, then how were we supposed to get out of here? Why were they so unenthusiastic about escaping? Was there another way besides the elevator? The man shrugged, then spoke as if he felt slightly sorry for me.
“You Asians are obviously Chinese, aren’t you? You people probably don’t even know the word ‘rescue team,’ but I’m American. A rescue team is going to come save me one way or another. I’m not wasting my stamina for nothing. I’m going to relax, rest, and wait. God bless America!”
At the man’s final words, after he’d curled his fingers in air quotes around the term “rescue team,” several other men whistled and high-fived. A sigh rose from the pit of my stomach. I was at a loss as to what to correct first.
I Jihyeon believed her guardian was God, and even she had dived into that polluted water and come back to try to get the stalled elevator working. And these bastards were spouting this nonsense because a country not even three hundred years old had their backs. I Jihyeon’s brows twisted, and she clenched her fists as her whole body trembled with rage. She looked like she wanted to punch one of those three in the face right then and there. Before I Jihyeon could say anything, Gim Gayoung spoke in a flat voice.
“Dustin. The connecting passage that had been sealed off between the Deep-Sea Biology Center and this Undersea Pollution Center is open right now. Either go to the Deep-Sea Biology Center before the third floor floods. If we lower the blocking wall, then even if the Undersea Pollution Center floods up to the seventh floor, the Deep-Sea Biology Center should still be relatively intact.”
“Ms. Kim,” Dustin said, addressing Gim Gayoung.
“After we go to the Biology Center, you people could open the blocking wall again.”
“It’s still more advantageous to go to the Biology Center. Between the two research centers, the Deep-Sea Biology Center you’ll be going to will flood much later than the Undersea Pollution Center we’ll be staying in anyway.”
Gim Gayoung was right. Seeing as the Rare Earth Center and the Undersea Pollution Center had cut themselves off from each other with a blocking wall, it seemed like the wall did hold back water. If they were planning to hold out in the underwater base for a long time, the Deep-Sea Biology Center, which hadn’t flooded yet, would be far better than the Undersea Pollution Center, where water was already rising.
Suddenly, I remembered the cable car crashing in my dream. Even thinking back on it now, it wasn’t a pleasant memory. The blood, the corpses, that despair. ……Ah, damn it. My stomach suddenly seemed to clench tight with tension. How long had it taken to collapse in the dream? It hadn’t taken very long. The fear that we had to get out of here as quickly as possible struck my brain. Even if I brought up my dream in this situation and said it felt like the underwater base was going to collapse, would they even listen to me? Wouldn’t they just treat me like a lunatic? Gim Gayoung pressed and kneaded her own shoulder and arm as she said,
“You’d better cross over quickly before this third floor floods. If you’re going to wait for rescue.”
“What about you? Are you going to stay here?”
At Dustin’s question, Gim Gayoung politely gestured with both palms toward where I Jihyeon stood, raised the corners of her mouth, and said,
“If my options are running away with you and waiting for a rescue team, or drowning in that polluted water with this young lady, I’d rather drown.”
It was quiet. As a sudden pause fell over the conversation, eyes soaked in anguish looked at one another. Soon, sighs and murmuring voices speaking to the people beside them began to grow louder. I Jihyeon scrubbed her hair roughly with the towel again, and once it was dry enough that water no longer dripped from it, she took back the pad she had entrusted to Yugeum. Then she looked around at the people once and said,
“Those of you who want to go to the Deep-Sea Biology Center, please get ready to leave now. I’ll lower the blocking wall in five minutes.”
I Jihyeon’s gaze took in the seawater. Then she tore her eyes away from that blue-black water and said,
“If any of you want to try escaping through the elevator with me, take off your shoes and outerwear, get ready to swim, and gather here in five minutes.”
I Jihyeon rubbed her hair with the towel one more time and let out a sigh that sounded like it might extinguish her. Then, holding the pad, she slowly walked into the office from earlier. When I followed her into the room, I Jihyeon gently placed the pad on the table.
From her expression, she looked desperate to punch something. I Jihyeon had irritation written all over her face, and when she realized I was there, she bit down hard on her lip and said,
“Fine, then, let’s die! Instead of working hard to repair that thing and go up, thinking that elevator must be the ark the Lord sent us! Let’s be like you people, drinking and doing drugs! Until seawater fills our lungs! Let’s wait for a rescue team that may or may not ever come until nothing but our bones are left! That’s what I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs! Agh!”
I Jihyeon huffed, her voice overflowing with pent-up rage.
“I should beat them up nice and pretty! ……I’m sorry. Once again today, I’ve failed to love my neighbors. Seeing how hard it is to put the Lord’s teachings into practice makes me think I still have a long way to go.”
I felt sorry for her. I Jihyeon paced around the room, prowling like a carnivore that had failed its hunt. I couldn’t even imagine how maddening this situation must be from an engineer’s perspective. Thinking of the actions of Team A’s engineers, who had been all about speed and maximizing efficiency, I murmured quietly,
“You held back well. ……Like an adult.”
“I held back because getting angry wouldn’t change anything.”
I Jihyeon, who had been wandering aimlessly around the room, sprawled into an empty chair, closed her eyes, and said,
“Ah. The team leader is good at this kind of thing, though. Was I lacking in ability? I’ve rarely ever been the one to take the lead and suggest or insist on doing something through leadership. I don’t like doing that kind of thing, either. I only had to do the work I was given well and follow orders.”
Then she sighed and continued,
“I’m good at doing what someone tells me to do. I haven’t needed much agency in my life. As long as I was good at saying yes, yes, yes, I could live an ordinary life. ……Today, there are too many things where I have to choose something or take the lead. The team leader is one thing, but how on earth does the deputy team leader endure this kind of thing?”
“Do you mean Deputy Team Leader Gang Sujeong?”
I’d thought that since she was similar in build and on the same team, Gang Sujeong was a martial type like Sin Haeryang. ……That was prejudice too, wasn’t it?
“Team Leader Sin is someone who thinks there’s no need to talk at length with people who won’t listen, so when he goes into a meeting alone, everything gets handled very quickly. When the deputy team leader goes into a meeting, she spends two, three hours in meetings, expressing her opinions to teams with differing views, discussing things, reaching agreements with the other party, then coordinating opinions again. ……It hasn’t even been five minutes for me right now, and I’m so angry I feel like I’m going to lose my mind. How does she live seeing people like that every day?”
Gang Sujeong must be holding something in too. To begin with, understanding someone through conversation isn’t easy. Everyone thinks differently, and if their areas of benefit don’t overlap, they won’t bother cooperating. If humans could solve everything through conversation, there wouldn’t have been a single war until now. To comfort the upset I Jihyeon, I said slowly,
“That can happen. I was incredibly angry too. You worked really hard today. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t have survived this far. It’s the same now. You realized how to escape before anyone else and are trying to attempt it.”
I Jihyeon rose from the chair, swaying like a zombie. Then she answered a little gloomily.
“……Any engineer would have thought the same thing. It’s not because I’m especially smart or anything.”
“In my eyes, you’re the best engineer, Jihyeon.”
At those words, I Jihyeon smiled and was shaking her head this way and that when Yugeum entered the room, glided over like a ghost, silently wrapped I Jihyeon in a tight hug, and patted her back a couple of times. I Jihyeon said to Yugeum gloomily,
“You’ll get wet.”
“Mm. It’s okay. You worked hard, Jihyeon.”
I watched the two of them with warm eyes, struggling not to scratch at the ticklish corner of my mouth with my hand, then asked,
“Should I go and try talking to them again? One or two of them might change their minds. They don’t seem to know how hard it is to just wait around for a rescue that may or may not come. And we don’t know when the underwater base might collapse, either. In my dream, it collapsed like a straw toy within a day. ……If I stir up their anxiety, there might be some people who reconsider.”
Gim Gayoung entered the room, heard what I said, and shook her head at me. Gim Gayoung also looked tired.
“I think it’s better to just leave them be, Muhyeon. Even if we talk to them, the ones who’ll understand will stay, and the ones who won’t will leave.”
I remembered Gim Gayoung saying that if she couldn’t communicate with someone, she gave up on them easily. We were the ones who’d suffer from having fewer people. After all, the side that wanted to escape through the elevator needed their labor right now. What was the best thing to do? Was there anything that could make the ones saying they were leaving stay? Gim Gayoung asked I Jihyeon,
“Jihyeon. Can you turn the lights back on toward the Biology Center? It’s still in a blackout, right?”
I Jihyeon checked the engineer system with her fingertips, wrinkled and swollen from the water, then said,
“Yes. That’s right. I’ll make sure the lights come back on.”
While I Jihyeon restored the electrical system on the Biology Center side, putting up another complicated approval request, I set down my bag, took off my shoes, and then my socks. Then I folded up my sleeves and rolled them up.
When I opened the bag I had set down, my eyes met those of the cat, who was swallowing a huge sigh. ……Would a cat really like being in a dark, small place like a bag, with its body squeezed tight? This one was an animal with free will too, so shouldn’t I let it out a little? I’d never raised a cat, so it wasn’t like I knew anything.
When I lifted the cat out of the bag, it hurriedly left in search of freedom as if that was exactly what it had wanted. It walked lightly around the room in a wide circle. When the cat brushed past her calf, I Jihyeon looked down under the table in surprise, then sighed.