While the elevator passed the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors, the lights illuminating the inside of the building came into the transparent elevator, so it didn’t feel all that dark. But the moment the elevator left the Deep-Sea Contamination Center building, it was briefly swallowed by the darkness of the seafloor.
The fluorescent lights inside the elevator meant the sudden contrast of shadow wasn’t terribly frightening, but for me, riding the main cargo elevator for the first time, that overwhelming sensation I’d felt when I first rode the central elevator returned. It felt as though a rectangular box, completely submerged in the sea and carrying a tiny light within it, was rising through the darkness of the deep seabed.
But the sensation I felt in that instant seemed to be entirely different for those already accustomed to riding this elevator. Unlike me, who was a little startled, everyone else relaxed in relief and sprawled out, sitting or lying on the floor.
In Kim Ga-young, Yu Geum-i, and Lee Ji-hyeon’s case, they leaned against the elevator wall, soaked in exhaustion, only blinking from time to time. As soon as the elevator started moving, I thought of the disasters that had happened in the dream and opened my pad to time it, while Yu Geum-i occasionally turned her head to look at the time ticking by on the pad.
James and Sam chatted and snickered, saying they were finally escaping, and Canoe put out his cigarette after being scolded by Lee Ji-hyeon. Carter lifted his phone and waved it toward the ceiling, while Benjamin glared at Logan with dissatisfaction.
But when Logan glared back, Benjamin turned his head away. Kevin was looking out at the darkness, gripping the handle of his axe. Emma sat leaning against the elevator wall, not even blinking, like a doll.
I was looking around at everyone when I raised my head and noticed the Chinese characters written on the elevator ceiling. Why were Chinese characters written here?
[自燈明 法燈明]
What characters were those? I asked Yu Geum-i, who was blankly watching the time pass on the pad beside me.
“Geum-i. Do you know what’s written on the ceiling?”
Yu Geum-i raised her head, looked at the characters, and furrowed her brows.
“I’m not sure.”
I see. ……I don’t know either. I only know the character for “self” and the myeong for “bright.” Kim Ga-young, who had practically lived in this Deep-Sea Contamination Center, haltingly read the characters.
“Jadeung. Is that middle one deung? Or not? Jadeungmyeong beopdeungmyeong?”
“Ooh.”
As Yu Geum-i and I let out stupid sounds of admiration, Lee Ji-hyeon raised her head, glanced at the ceiling, and spoke. And the person who could speak four languages drove the nail in toward us.
“In Chinese characters, it does say Jadeungmyeong Beopdeungmyeong.”
What did that mean? Kim Ga-young stretched both arms high above her head and frowned.
“My grandma told me what that meant a long time ago. ……I can’t remember.”
Then Carter, who had been holding up his phone and waving his arm in the air, looked at the Chinese characters on the ceiling and spoke to us as if we were pathetic.
“Are you guys even Asian? Those are Chinese characters. Then isn’t it something related to Buddhism?”
“I don’t have a religion.”
“I believe in science.”
“I’m an instant Buddhist who goes to a temple once or twice a year.”
“I believe in the Lord.”
At the string of answers from the Asians, Carter looked flustered, clicked his tongue, and shook his head.
“Right before Shakyamuni died, his disciples asked him, if you leave, who should we rely on, who should we believe in, and how should we live? That’s the answer Shakyamuni gave before entering nirvana.”
When Canoe, who had been looking up at the ceiling, said that, everyone’s gaze gathered on him.
“Make yourself your own lamp, and rely on it.”
……That’s a good saying. But how am I supposed to move by making myself a lamp? Canoe, who looked like he had absolutely no connection to Asia, explained a phrase written in Chinese characters to a group of Asian people, then let out a big yawn. Logan looked at the ceiling, pointed with his finger, and said,
“I heard they originally planned to engrave something in English there, but the Asian countries fought like hell to get Chinese characters put in.”
When I looked around at the people from Asia, they all seemed bewildered. Mm. I don’t know anything about it either. I thought the researchers who practically lived here would know the undersea base well, but judging from Kim Ga-young and Yu Geum-i’s expressions, that didn’t seem to be the case. They said they spent most of their lives in the lab doing research. I asked Canoe,
“Like the Bible verse engraved in the central elevator, did they carve a line of something into every elevator?”
“Probably. I only ride the ones I usually ride.”
At Canoe’s words, Kim Ga-young snapped her fingers and said to Yu Geum-i,
“Ah. No wonder. You know that elevator. Pilsa jeuksaeng pilsaeng jeuksa (必死則生 必生則死).”
Yu Geum-i, whose eyes had been drooping from fatigue, opened them wide and said to Kim Ga-young,
“That’s the elevator that runs between the First Undersea Base and Daehando!”
“What’s that?”
At my question, Lee Ji-hyeon spoke with a reluctant expression.
“There’s one elevator where Korea actively participated, and the phrase was engraved there. According to Team Leader Shin, some lunatic at the undersea base headquarters threw a fit saying they absolutely had to engrave at least one. They engraved Pilsa jeuksaeng pilsaeng jeuksa in Korean on an elevator at the First Undersea Base, and every time Sanghyeon rides it, he talks nonsense about how the elevator feels like it’s going to fall.”
After hearing Lee Ji-hyeon’s words, Kim Ga-young answered as if pleased.
“Still, whenever I miss Korean, I go ride that elevator just to look at it.”
Kim Ga-young stared into the air as if looking somewhere far away. I mulled over the eight characters in my head, then said,
“They really engraved that in an elevator? How did that get approved?”
No matter how I thought about it, it wasn’t a phrase suited to be engraved in an elevator moving through the deep sea. When I asked Lee Ji-hyeon, she shrugged.
“I heard that person talked up a storm to the undersea base headquarters and the navy, saying it was the reality of twenty-first-century humanity, forced to abandon the land and live beneath the sea. Originally, what was it again? That…… It was so unusual that I memorized it. It was something even more obscure. What was it?”
Lee Ji-hyeon fell into thought for a moment, then said to me,
“……Ah. Was it, ‘If you cast away your life, you shall gain it. Tomorrow becomes a lamp’? I heard that person was barking about engraving it like that, but our team leader stopped them, asking if they’d lost their mind, whether that was really something to write inside an undersea elevator, so it got changed to Admiral Yi Sun-sin’s famous quote.”
Kevin, who had taken his eyes off the darkness of the deep blue sea, glanced up at the ceiling. Then he said to us, looking slightly flustered.
“……Canada engraved ‘From sea to sea’ (a mari usque ad mare).”
Among everything I’d heard so far, that sounded like the most normal phrase. ……Or maybe not. Depending on how you looked at it, that also gave the impression the elevator might sink into the seawater. Couldn’t they have chosen something brighter and more positive?
If it were me, I’d probably engrave something like, Regular brushing habits guarantee lifelong health. ……That isn’t exactly a phrase suited to an undersea elevator either.
We were talking about how the eight countries had struggled and clawed to claim even one more name or phrase they recognized in the undersea base when, all of a sudden, the lights went out and the elevator stopped.
When the elevator abruptly stopped, dizziness and nausea surged up from the inertia. Don’t be scared. I can’t be scared. Let’s not be scared. You know what this is. The elevator stopped. It’s just a temporary blackout.
After enduring that nausea for a few seconds, I could now see the numbers constantly moving in front of my eyes. I looked at the light of the pad I’d turned on and stopped the numbers passing on the pad first. Five minutes and thirty-one seconds. At that moment, screams burst out all around me.
“Kyaaaaaaaaaaaak! Aaaaaak!”
“Uwaaaaaaaaaak! Aaaaaaaaak!”
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaak!”
“Kyaaaaaak! Kyaaaaaaaaak!”
“My God! Jeeeesus! Oh! Gooooood!”
……Thankfully, since everyone had been sitting or lying down, it didn’t seem like anyone had been injured by the elevator stopping.
Instead, people were screaming wildly in the darkness. They had probably never experienced a blackout like this while riding the elevator. If I hadn’t experienced it in the dream, I’d be screaming along with them by now.
The terrified people screamed for one or two minutes, then got startled by their own voices and started screaming again, and only after about three or four minutes did they slowly begin to calm down and close their mouths. But one man kept screaming without end.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaak! We’re all going to die! We’re all going to die! Fuck! We’re all dead! Uwaaaaaaaaaak!”
“Shut up!”
I heard the sound of someone kicking him hard. And at last, the inside of the elevator grew quiet. Canoe lit his lighter, and I turned on the light of my pad, then reached into my backpack to look for the flashlight that should have been at the very bottom. Lights from pads and phones appeared here and there.
I found the flashlight in my backpack and cranked it diligently. Only after a while did the flashlight turn on, and it was the brightest light source inside the elevator. Since there wasn’t a good place to shine the flashlight, I pointed it toward the window showing the dark sea. Seeing that, Emma nearly had a fit and said,
“Point that light somewhere else! What if someone sees your flashlight in the deep sea and comes here?!”
I don’t think there’d be anyone capable of coming to this depth of the seabed after seeing this light. Wouldn’t it just be fish at most? Ghost fish? Vampire squid? Tripod fish? If we were lucky, maybe something like a fanfin anglerfish might show up. Depending on the depth, maybe a giant squid. Could those even see well enough to notice this? Logan sneered in Emma’s direction.
“Wouldn’t it be better if someone came?! Submarines, rescue teams, fish—tell them all to come!”
“Move the light somewhere else!”
Emma looked frightened, so I immediately pointed the flashlight up at the ceiling. Emma moved away from the front window and crawled through the darkness toward the elevator doors.
I tried to ask as gently as possible to someone who seemed terrified.
“Are you scared that someone might come? Don’t worry. I won’t shine the flashlight at the window again. We’re trapped in an elevator during a blackout. It’s natural to be scared.”
Only after several seconds did Emma, staring at the flashlight beam on the ceiling, whisper in terror.
“……Dagon.”
What was Dagon? Some fish I didn’t know? Beside me, Kim Ga-young asked Emma with a sour expression.
“What’s Dagon?”
The answer came not from Emma, but from Lee Ji-hyeon.
“A demon. A demon.”