Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea

Sumire glanced at Seo Jihyuk cautiously before turning to me and saying:

“Aren’t you curious about who they’ll choose to ride the three escape pods?”

Hearing this, Baek Ae-young pointed at John’s head and said:

“If you don’t keep your mouth shut, I’ll make you just like him.”

“Mmph! Mmph! Mmph!”

As John started mumbling as if asking to be untied, Sumire completely closed her mouth. Seeing this, Tumanako asked the people walking ahead:

“That’s right. There are three escape pods, but who’s going to ride them?”

Kang Soojung counted Lee Jihyun and Yoo Geum-yi on her fingers, then sighed and answered that Henry should ride. Kang Soojung seemed to be compromising as much as possible. She probably wants to put three Koreans on board. Seo Jihyuk actively agreed with her statement.

“As expected of Deputy Team Leader. Your opinion matches mine perfectly.”

“Your agreement with me makes me feel like I’m making the wrong choice.”

Shu Ran chose Baek Ae-young and Henry, then looked back and forth between Tumanako and Yoo Geum-yi before selecting Yoo Geum-yi. Baek Ae-young quietly observed everyone before picking three people: Henry, Yoo Geum-yi, and Shu Ran. Shu Ran, her eyelashes still wet, looked at Baek Ae-young with a touched expression, but the other coldly added her reason:

“You’re too soft-hearted to even kill a bug.”

Hearing Baek Ae-young’s words, Shu Ran retorted immediately, seemingly dumbfounded:

“I might not be able to kill it!”

“You lack spirit. When a bug enters your house, you should shoot it with a flamethrower, thinking ‘How dare you crawl into my house?'”

“What if you burn down the house doing that?”

“Amateurs might clumsily just burn the house, but a professional like me would burn the house, the bug, and myself all at once.”

“…I won’t call you when there’s a bug. I’ll just leave the house.”

Baek Ae-young explained that she excluded Lee Jihyun because she knows how to shoot.

“Jihyun unnie is my protégé.”

Lee Jihyun nodded and said to me, as if boasting:

“I went to a shooting range in Hawaii with Ae-young and Jihyuk. Ae-young taught me in great detail. I still remember the grip methods and gun names. MP5, AR50, AK47, Sig Sauer P320…”

Hearing this, I realized I don’t even know the name of the gun I held and fired. As soon as I thought that, I remembered that I know even less about the names of the people I shot. I hope I never have to shoot a gun again. I remembered Baek Ae-young once saying that you can live your whole life without needing to do that. It’s true. I didn’t know until I actually experienced it.

It seemed to have been quite a beneficial experience for Lee Jihyun, as her voice was a tone higher. Seo Jihyuk, who had been quietly listening to her shooting impressions, started to contradict each of her statements.

“Shooting like that is just like playing a gun game at an arcade. You were terrible at it. Watching you, I doubt you could hit an elephant even if it was right in front of you. And is shooting at cans the same as this situation? You couldn’t even hold the gun properly because of its weight.”

“You’re the one who told me to go. Didn’t you say I shot really well? That I could even be a sniper?!”

Lee Jihyun glared at Seo Jihyuk and said that Yoo Geum-yi, Henry, and Tumanako should leave. Hearing this, Tumanako gave a thumbs up and said:

“Thanks for including me as a candidate for the first time. I’d like it to be me, Henry, and Park Moohyun. …Sorry, Geum-yi.”

Tumanako whispered to Yoo Geum-yi. I was surprised to be included as a candidate for the escape pod.

“Thank you. But is there a reason I’m included as a candidate?”

“Partly because you helped me at first. And I’d like people to leave in reverse order of arrival.”

“What about Moohyun?” Yoo Geum-yi asked.

I answered simply:

“As long as Henry is included, I’m fine with whoever the other two are.”

I said that, but the truth is I want to leave. Me. Me! I want to leave! Right now! I swallowed these words along with a sigh. Probably others feel similarly.

Shin Hae-ryang, who was walking at the very front, gave a hand signal to stop. Everyone stopped, and we were next to the laundry room. Unlike before, there were no blood droplets in the corridor. Previously, someone had died inside. Shin Hae-ryang and Seo Jihyuk entered the laundry room to search, then came out signaling that no one was there. Then we started walking again.

Seo Jihyuk, who had been scolded by Baek Ae-young, the former instructor, more than Lee Jihyun until just now, looked desperately at his team leader and asked:

“What do you think, Team Leader?”

Shin Hae-ryang answered without even looking at Seo Jihyuk:

“My opinion is the same as the Deputy Team Leader’s.”

Seo Jihyuk grinned widely at these words and looked at Baek Ae-young with a “see?” expression. As Baek Ae-young was about to look at Seo Jihyuk as if he was pathetic, Kang Soojung elbowed Shin Hae-ryang’s side and said:

“Do that more often in normal times too. …I really want to record it and play it back whenever we have disagreements.”

Baek Ae-young pointed at Shu Ran and vented her complaints to the two:

“Please give her a spot. She didn’t take her own escape pod and came looking for me.”

Shu Ran, standing nearby, was startled and said:

“I’m not going to leave alone. I don’t want to unless we’re leaving together.”

“This is not the time to be stubborn.”

“You did the same thing!”

Baek Ae-young was at a loss for words and closed her mouth. Only after a few seconds did she add:

“…This and that are different.”

Seo Jihyuk said something like “Are you two having a lover’s quarrel?” and got smacked on the back by both Kang Soojung and Baek Ae-young. I looked at Shu Ran and Baek Ae-young with warm eyes and asked:

“Did you two become friends in this underwater base?”

“Yes.”

That’s somewhat hopeful. Making friends even in a place like this.

After encountering dental patients from assaults, cult followers, terrorists, drug offenders, child abusers, pet neglecters, sociopaths, psychopaths, and so on, seeing two people of different nationalities and personalities being friends warms my heart. Even if my body is a bit cold. It seems the temperature in the East District is just getting lower and lower. Shu Ran asked me:

“I became close with Ae-young while scuba diving. Have you ever tried scuba diving, doctor?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“That was my first time diving in the sea too. It was surprisingly doable.”

Baek Ae-young, while keeping watch behind us, said to Shu Ran:

“I still find it terrifying when I think about that time.”

“I didn’t think it was that bad.”

“I think it’s more amazing that it didn’t remain a bad memory for you.”

“It didn’t become a bad memory because you were there.”

“…I’ll talk to our team leader, so you should immigrate too.”

“How can I when all my family is in Hong Kong?”

Baek Ae-young walked about 3 meters, then after getting Shu Ran’s permission, she said to the group:

“It was when Engineering Team Ra (China), me, and Soojung-unnie went scuba diving early in our employment. Everything was fine until we dove to 40 meters, then Shu Ran gave me a hand signal asking for help. She urgently signaled that she couldn’t breathe. She was almost at the point of passing out, so I immediately lent her my spare regulator (octopus).”

I’ve never been scuba diving, but I don’t want to try it because I’m afraid something like that might happen to me. Isn’t the reason humans don’t have gills a sign that we shouldn’t go down to the seafloor to do anything?

“We ended up sharing the air from my tank between the two of us. This was her first time in the sea, so she didn’t even have an Open Water certification. I was already used to periodically drinking seawater, so I was at the very back, but beginners like Shu Ran are supposed to move in the middle of the group, right? But in a state where she couldn’t breathe, she signaled for help to everyone beside her, and when no one helped her, she came all the way to me at the back. I lent her my regulator when she was on the verge of death.”

Wasn’t it an accident? Don’t all the others have two regulators too? Why didn’t they lend one?

“Didn’t the others all have only one regulator?”

“Some people have two, some have one. But even with one regulator, you learn how to breathe by exchanging the main regulator with your partner. Because accidents can happen to anyone. My buddy was Soojung unnie. She signaled to abort the dive and surface.”

“I really thought I was going to die then.”

Shu Ran spoke as if it was no big deal, but it sounded terrifying to me. Don’t you die if you can’t breathe while diving?

“The three of us – me, Soojung unnie, and Shu Ran – stopped at a safe area and waited for 15 minutes. Then we surfaced. She cried endlessly even on the boat. She kept talking while crying in Chinese. I don’t understand Chinese. We didn’t have translators because we were going into the water. But Soojung unnie seemed to understand roughly. She said no one but you helped her. When we checked why Shu Ran’s regulator malfunctioned, we found that her air tank was completely closed. It shouldn’t be fully closed. It should be slightly open. That’s how the air from the tank enters the regulator in your mouth through the hose. But it was completely closed. As if to kill her. Someone must have approached Shu Ran’s back and closed it. Moreover, there was also a small hole in the hose part.”

“Who would do such a thing?”

Shu Ran smiled bitterly and said:

“I understood why Hong Kong people before me had accidental deaths or suicides. When a new employee joined, they would say they’d teach scuba diving and keep doing things like this. It was like saying, ‘If you don’t want to die so stupidly, listen well to what we say.'”

“What made me angriest was that when we came up to the boat, all the guys from your team acted like they couldn’t understand why you suddenly surfaced with us. And then they just brushed it off as if nothing had happened.”

“There was nothing I could do. I had just started working, having signed a contract to work at the underwater base for two years, a month before this happened. Even if I confronted the team members about these incidents, who would admit they did it? And anyway, talking about it would only make me seem crazy and increasingly isolated.”

“If it were me, I would have slit the throats of all those bastards there and thrown them into the sea. The only reason there wasn’t a knife fight was because of you and our deputy team leader.”

Kang Soojung sighed deeply. Then, looking around at the others, she said:

“Ae-young. I told you to use polite and kind words when you’re with other people.”

“I’m sorry. But how can I control my anger every time I think about it?”

“Try to imagine something pleasant. Imagine happy things.”

“I’m imagining slicing that bastard Li Wei in half from his Adam’s apple to his navel and making sashimi…”

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