I asked Jihyeon the thing that worried me most about the dream connected to the elevator.
“Will it be all right even if the power goes out several times?”
The despair I felt when I realized the elevator Yugeum and I had been riding had stopped with about 160 meters left to go to the Third Undersea Base. I wasn’t confident I could get even three meters upward, whether by jumping straight up or flying.
The freight elevator in this Jujak-dong Research Center was an elevator that moved three thousand meters in a straight line. If it went up without stopping, we would reach Daehan-do—Floor 0—right away. But I didn’t even want to think about what would happen if it stopped midway. It would be all right this time too, even if the power went out several times, right?
“If the power goes out, the elevator will probably stop. To be honest, elevators aren’t exactly my specialty, so I’m not sure.”
What was that supposed to mean? Jihyeon saw my expression and let out a low heh-heh-heh. The droplets of water clinging to her short hair trembled finely with her laughter before falling to the floor. In a tone utterly free of worry, Jihyeon said to me,
“Don’t tell the others this. ······Honestly, I am worried. My major is naval architecture and ocean engineering, so I learned things like this after coming here. Aeyeong is the one who’s good at fixing elevators. Every engineer has something they’re good at, or good at repairing. Jihyeok is good with fully automatic doors or lighting. There are people who are good at things like outer wall repairs, and the only ones who can fix everything are the engineering team leader and deputy leader. We don’t have a single tool or anything right now, and I’m the only engineer here. So, well.”
I was inwardly horrified at Jihyeon’s shrugging words. No. To be able to act with such clear confidence in a field she herself couldn’t be certain of, while directing ten people around? Even now, Jihyeon spoke as though she felt no anxiety about her own attitude.
I imagined myself giving a similar explanation to a patient lying in a unit chair. I’m not sure whether I can fix your tooth or not, but I’ll give it a try. ······If I were the patient, I would run out of that dental clinic. She herself was fearless, but I was the one who grew scared and asked Jihyeon,
“Can you······ actually fix it?”
Jihyeon, who had raised her head to watch the water draining from the first floor, said,
“We’ll have to go find out in about five minutes. I know the basics.”
······She would still be better than the people here. Rather than leave elevator repairs to me or that man with the axe, it would be more trustworthy for Jihyeon to fix it with her eyes closed. I let out a sigh dragged up from the pit of my stomach.
“They said this place runs on cogeneration or something, right?”
I didn’t really know what that was, but it was probably dangerous. Jihyeon looked at me, her eyes sparkling. Then she answered with a faint smile.
“You must have read the undersea base guidebook. Most people usually skip parts like that and only read about the convenience facilities.”
I hadn’t exactly read it properly either. On the convenience facility pages, I only looked at things like the restaurants, restrooms, laundry room, exhibition hall, coffee shop, and bakery, then diligently read the section on free facilities. The only reason I had been forced to learn anything about the escape pods or elevators was that, unlike the English edition, the Korean translation had placed the escape and undersea base equipment sections right at the front. I asked, with a bit of worry in my voice,
“Will the Research Center be all right until we escape?”
“I was surprised the Research Center was in better shape than I expected. Though it does look like the Rare Earth Center’s been ground into powder. Look. All of us swam out of the water, but we’re not freezing or anything.”
True. When I entered the water, it had been as cold as plunging my body into ice water. But after wiping myself down and putting my clothes back on, it didn’t feel like my body heat had been stolen that badly.
“The temperature is steady. It’s being maintained at twenty-five degrees. Wouldn’t that mean it’s still okay for now? Though even if something were broken, it’s not like we could do anything about it.”
The engineers I’d seen in the dream all seemed to have a lot of worries. But Jihyeon seemed to worry less the more difficult the situation became. Was it because she handed her worries over to God? At least that was fortunate. Among the people here, it was something to have even one person who was less crushed by the pressure and anxiety of survival.
Stopping my conversation with Jihyeon, I approached Yugeum and Gim Gayoung. The two of them had been talking to each other, and when they saw me, they asked with their eyes what was going on.
“May I ask what your religions are?”
“Religion?”
“Why?”
“When the elevator starts working, we’ll have to ride it with those people, so I’m going to pray. If there are more gods listening to prayers, won’t they listen better?”
Gim Gayoung laughed hollowly, then said as though troubled,
“I don’t really believe in anything in particular. My grandmother is Buddhist, so there are times I go to the temple with her. Should that count as Buddhism?”
“I suppose so. Let’s count it as Buddhism.”
Yugeum answered while leaning against the railing.
“I don’t have one. If I had to say, I believe in science.”
“I see. I believe in science too.”
······There’s no one among the three of us to pray, then. I’ll have to do it myself.
O scientists. Please get me out of here. O eminent physicists. Please disregard every law of physics you have discovered thus far and send me and these people home immediately. If everyone in the undersea base returns home safely, then in honor of you and your achievements, I’ll light a candle on this date every year until I die. I’ll burn incense too. Please. Get me out of this shitty undersea place right now!
As I poured out that disastrous prayer and threat in my heart, I felt it would be fortunate if dead physicists didn’t come swarming over to beat me up.
I glanced at the woman standing far away from the others, then gave Gim Gayoung a slight tilt of my head and asked,
“Do you know her?”
“Well. I do know her. But we’re not that close. Emma mostly went around with a guy named Lucas she started dating in her lab. We’d say hello when we saw each other.”
Seeing as that woman was alone, I couldn’t know what had happened to this Lucas. He had escaped, run away, or died.
Now that I knew at least one person’s name, it was time to ask about someone else. Without realizing it, I steadied my breathing and tried my best not to look in that direction as I asked,
“Do you happen to know who the person carrying the axe is?”
“I know him.”
Unlike me, Yugeum openly looked toward where the man was as she spoke.
“He’s Kevin Roy from the Deep-Sea Biology Center. He’s Canadian, and usually, in the lounge, he always walked around laughing heartily with a cup of coffee in one hand. ······This is the first time I’ve seen him like that. He’s someone who usually likes riding bicycles, and he used to brag about the bicycle he rode around Vancouver. I think he asked whether he could ride a bike inside the undersea base, and they concluded that he couldn’t.”
Gim Gayoung snapped her fingers and said,
“Ah. I remember that. Starting with bicycles, they concluded inline skates, electric scooters, electric wheels, and whatever else were all banned. I think everything except mobility aids for disabled people and medics was prohibited.”
The Fourth Undersea Base was wider than I’d thought, but did that mean we had to walk or run on our own two feet everywhere? There were more things you couldn’t do in the undersea base than I expected.
“Why? Is there a reason you’re not allowed to ride them?”
Gim Gayoung struggled to recall what had happened before as she said,
“They said if you rode those around, because it was a building constructed in the deep sea, vibrations would this and that, and because of continuous noise, the stress of deep-sea creatures without even brains would this and that.”
As she listened to that jumbled explanation, Yugeum, who studied deep-sea creatures, giggled. When everyone nearby looked at her because of that laugh, Yugeum’s laughter gradually died away.
Yugeum, who had covered her face completely with both hands under the weight of their gazes, asked me from behind her palms,
“Why Kevin?”
“I thought it might be good to have a weapon like that. If we stick together, we can fend off attacks from outside.”
“If we’re a mess of an allied force, wouldn’t having a weapon make things more dangerous? The blade would end up pointed at each other.”
Hearing Yugeum’s words, Gim Gayoung lowered her voice and said,
“What’s with the axe? Huh-huh-huh. Since our engineer isn’t saying anything, I guess she’ll just take him along and ride the elevator together.”
From Gim Gayoung’s uncomfortable expression, it seemed she was thinking that if that man went berserk with the axe inside the elevator, no one would be able to stop him. I looked at the towel wrapped around the man’s calf and asked Yugeum,
“If I approach that man saying I’ll treat him, will I get hit by the axe blade?”
Instead of the towels that had been in my backpack, I had stuffed it full of things from the emergency bag. Whether that man was our ally or not, treating him as much as possible here seemed better than him going into the water while blood streamed from his calf. If the water didn’t completely drain anyway, then everyone would have to ride together in an elevator filled with the blood he was shedding and water.
Just imagining it made me feel like I would go insane from how unsanitary it was. I felt the same revulsion as if I were putting blood-soaked gauze used in one patient’s mouth into another patient’s mouth.
Besides, looking at Yugeum, Gim Gayoung, and Jihyeon, it seemed I was the only one with even the slightest knowledge of treatment. And among them, I was also the only one who had supplies that could be used for treatment.
I wasn’t a doctor, but not doing something I was capable of doing felt like turning a blind eye. Even if the scope of what I could call professional treatment, if viewed generously, ended at about the head.
Hearing my question, Yugeum let out a long sigh.
“The Kevin I saw in the lounge or cafeteria was just an ordinary person, but I don’t know about now.”
As Yugeum watched Kevin rolling the axe handle and shook her head this way and that, I looked at Gim Gayoung. Gim Gayoung stretched her neck and shoulders as she said,
“For me to tell you not to······ Since I’m someone who was rescued, I’m not in a position to say anything. Who am I to comment on you trying to help someone else?”
Looking around, I saw that everyone was trying hard not to concern themselves with one another. Or else they simply had no interest at all.
I slowly approached the man named Kevin in a straight line. The man, who had been touching the axe handle with his fingertips, immediately looked at me. To be precise, I felt the gazes of everyone around us drive into my back. Being hit by those gazes made my back and the back of my head sting.
“Hello. I’m working as a dentist in this undersea base······.”
“Get lost!”
Kevin shouted at me in a hoarse voice, loud and clear. Uh······. Judging just from the shouting, he seemed pretty all right.