Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea

As Baek Ae-young was calming herself with her own pleasant imaginings, Tumanako, the newcomer to the underwater base who had been listening to the story in a daze, asked Shu Ran:

“Can’t you cancel the contract? Like quitting midway? Or reporting to the authorities that your life is in danger because of your coworkers?”

“Then I’d have to return the six-month advance payment I received, but I had already spent it and had no money. Even if I decided to quit that very day, I’d have to work at least six months. I contacted the labor office and inquired, but there wasn’t really a good solution. Moreover, when I contacted the HR department of the company I contracted with, they asked why I had an interview if I was going to quit after just a month. The company didn’t really do anything wrong to me, after all. I even requested and had counseling within the underwater base, but they asked if I had done anything wrong since I had just met these people after recently joining.”

I wanted to quit after just five days of joining, so isn’t Shu Ran’s patience quite remarkable for deciding to quit after a month?

Thinking about my employment contract, I don’t remember there being any specific clause about quitting. Was there such a thing? People don’t think about quitting when they’re joining a job. As Tumanako seemed to be pondering her own employment contract, Yoo Geum-yi anxiously asked Shu Ran:

“How did you manage after that?”

“I told my team members that if such an accident happened to me again, after my death, pre-scheduled emails would be sent to all sorts of newspapers, broadcasting stations, and foreign media about my mysterious death. I also threatened that my parents and siblings would dedicate their lives to uncovering what happened to me and ruin their lives. …I practiced saying this for three days.”

Shu Ran’s face looked proud as she uttered the last words, but I felt even more anxious. If you die like that, it’s just dying at work, isn’t it? Isn’t this like locking the stable door after the horse has bolted?

“Did that work?”

“It worked ambiguously. It’s been almost two years now. As I adapted to them, they adapted to me too. I act as if I don’t exist, and they treat me like breathing furniture. They don’t act as severely as when I first joined. Things got much better after Team Leader Hai Yoon joined.”

Baek Ae-young, lowering her gun barrel, said:

“…You’re amazing. You managed to stay because you have a good personality. I couldn’t live with those bastards for even 3 seconds. Ah, of course, I would have sent one as an example to the dragon palace (Baek Ae-young glanced at Kang Soojung), and then tried to have some dialogue. I’d have to ask if anyone wanted to be the second one.”

Kang Soojung sighed lightly and said to me, Yoo Geum-yi, and Tumanako, as if making an excuse:

“Our Ae-young isn’t usually this violent. She just talks a bit roughly. It’s because she has a quick temper. Usually, she’s so kind and gentle.”

Kang Soojung was trying her best to maintain Baek Ae-young’s image. However, she seemed to have forgotten that this gentle person was currently walking around hugging a rifle as big as her upper body. I heard laughter and looked over to see Seo Jihyuk saying with twitching lips:

“Ae-young’s personality is a bit… like a mackerel, isn’t it? …Ow! Ouch. That temper.”

Seo Jihyuk, who had been hit on the back, pretended to hide behind Lee Jihyun to avoid Baek Ae-young, but his body was barely half-covered. Watching this, I asked Yoo Geum-yi, who was laughing:

“What kind of personality does a mackerel have to say that?”

“They say mackerels have a quick temper because they die as soon as they come out of the water. Actually, mackerels need to breathe constantly through their gills, so they die when they leave the water. He’s sleeping.”

“Pardon? The mackerel?”

“No, no. Henry. He’s sleeping.”

Maybe the effect of the medicine hasn’t worn off yet. Or is he sleeping because he’s being carried on my back? With two people carrying others, our walking speed was quite slow. Yoo Geum-yi, holding my bag, looked at Henry’s back and said. Her voice was filled with sympathy.

“I know Henry’s mother, Nevada. There was a free Skittles vending machine in our research center, so she would come once in a while to get some. She would occasionally brag about her child, but I never thought I’d see that child here in this underwater base.”

I expressed my empathy with Yoo Geum-yi’s words.

“I’ll never forget when I first saw Henry in Room 80 of the West District.”

Even now, thinking about it feels like a punch to the brain. Snakes or cats would have been much more understandable. There must be things that are hard to compromise on when joining an underwater base. But when I saw the child sleeping in the bed, no matter how I thought about it, I couldn’t understand the situation.

As soon as I thought about the room I couldn’t understand, Room 20 suddenly came to mind. Why grow such things here? If you’re in pain, take painkillers, and if you want to feel good, eat something sweet.

“Come to think of it, I’m curious about who owns Room 20 in the West District.”

What kind of person would grow such things in their room? There was no response from the West District residents, but Shin Hae-ryang, who had been walking silently ahead, asked me from behind:

“How much do you know about that room?”

“I only know that the room owner decorated it like a flower shop or a pharmacy.”

“Room 20 in West District officially has no owner.”

“I thought it was a room with an owner.”

I don’t know much about the cultivation process of such illegal plants, but doesn’t it take a lot of care to grow them well enough to produce fruits?

Even growing lettuce on a balcony requires constant watering, so to a layman’s eye, it seemed like an extraordinary amount of care had been put into growing them so well.

“Since it’s a room without an owner, there shouldn’t be any grievances even if a sudden fire of unknown cause breaks out.”

…It seems Shin Hae-ryang can’t understand the room’s owner either. Kang Soojung, who had been listening halfway through her conversation with Lee Jihyun, asked in surprise:

“Excuse me? Did I hear that right? Did our team leader just say he was planning to set fire to an empty room without an owner?”

“I never said such a thing.”

Shin Hae-ryang denied Kang Soojung’s words in a monotone voice. That’s how it sounded to my ears too. Kang Soojung, wondering if she had misheard, asked the team leader again:

“If a fire of unknown cause breaks out in an empty room, how exactly does it happen?”

“Assuming I’m not the one doing it, a can of gasoline and a lighter would suffice.”

Kang Soojung suddenly asked Team Leader Shin with an expression of getting a headache:

“What about the fire sprinklers?”

“Unfortunately, they might not work due to sensor malfunction.”

“You know you’ll be kicked out immediately if caught committing arson inside the underwater base, right?”

“I know.”

Shin Hae-ryang answered Kang Soojung without hesitation, and Kang Soojung looked at her team leader as if she couldn’t trust him.

When Kang Soojung turned on the messenger content on Shin Hae-ryang’s pad she was holding, it showed 999 messenger contents from Li Wei and Sato. Wei Qi and Hao Ran were not far behind. Below that, there was a long list of messages sent in various languages from different countries.

Kang Soojung opened Li Wei’s messages at the top, and they were all in Chinese. The underwater base pad didn’t seem to translate profanity properly, so all the Chinese was displayed as is. When Kang Soojung showed it to Lee Jihyun and asked, “What does this say?” Lee Jihyun took Shin Hae-ryang’s pad.

“Whose pad is this? …Ah, it’s our team leader’s pad. It’s all curses. Thug, lunatic, mentally ill, digging up your ancestors’ graves for 18 generations and so on and so forth.”

Kang Soojung asked Lee Jihyun with a bitter expression:

“Is there nothing important? Like requesting peace or cooperation first. Which escape pods are intact, where the Muhangyo guys are, that kind of thing.”

“Not among what I’ve seen so far.”

Lee Jihyun, who had been looking at Li Wei’s messages while walking, sighed at the endless scroll. Then she asked the pad’s owner:

“Since when have you not been checking this?”

“I haven’t looked at it at all since becoming team leader.”

“It’s been almost two years, hasn’t it?”

Lee Jihyun scrolled through frantically, but it seemed she was giving up reading as Li Wei’s messenger content was endless. Then she pressed the back button and clicked on Wei Qi.

When she opened Wei Qi’s messenger, she looked at the endlessly stretching scroll with a sigh. Then her finger started climbing like a salmon towards the past.

Lee Jihyun occasionally read the Chinese as is, but spoke to her deputy team leader in Korean:

“What’s this about a boat? I’ll offer you as a sacrifice instead of my boat. Something about being fish food and so on. The curses are endless.”

Lee Jihyun, who had been looking at the contents sent by Wei Qi and Hao Ran, was getting fed up and was about to click on Sato, the next top messenger chat requester. They’re grouped by country. To my curious question about the order of checking messages, Lee Jihyun answered simply:

“After looking at one language completely, I need to switch to another for my brain to click. If I look at Chinese, then Japanese, then English, my brain gets all mixed up.”

Suddenly, Li Wei, Wei Qi, and Hao Ran’s messengers started popping up with an enormous number of notifications. Looking at the contents that were being translated into Korean, I saw messages like “This guy seems to be reading this! Are you reading? Why aren’t you answering! Shin Hae-ryang! You crazy bastard!” popping up frantically.

After that, the translation wasn’t working properly. Chinese characters were popping up in huge numbers. Then suddenly, messages like “If you let us out of West District right now, we’ll forgive everything you’ve done until now! Answer!” were popping up frantically.

Lee Jihyun was about to read Sato’s messages but hesitated and asked the team leader and deputy team leader:

“They say if we unlock the West District barrier, they’ll forgive everything we’ve done so far. What should we do? Should we answer?”

As Kang Soojung looked at Shin Hae-ryang in confusion, Shin Hae-ryang answered simply:

“Who are they to forgive me or not? They haven’t come to their senses. Ignore them.”

Shu Ran, who had been tense beside us, sighed in relief upon hearing those words. Baek Ae-young patted Shu Ran’s shoulder and said:

“Our team leader is the craziest one.”

Lee Jihyun nodded at Shin Hae-ryang’s words and then started looking at Sato’s messenger contents. There were quite a lot of untranslated Japanese there too. However, after scrolling up to a certain point, many long, extensive messages became visible. Lee Jihyun frowned for a different reason.

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