Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea

I took out the cardigan I had put in my bag instead of the whale doll and put it on Henry. It was too big, and even after diligently rolling up the sleeves, the hem still dragged on the floor. Seeing this, Yoo Geum-yi swapped her cardigan with mine. It barely avoided dragging on the floor, but the sleeves still needed to be rolled up.

I wrapped Henry in the cardigan and carried him on my back. I thought the child might be less cold due to my body heat. Shin Hae-ryang checked the indoor temperature on his pad. Looking from the side, it was 22°C.

“The life support system must be malfunctioning,” he said.

Lee Jihyun, looking at the pad with Kang Soojung, added:

“The air volume is decreasing too.”

“Is there no way to fix it?” I asked.

“To repair this, we’d need to bring down equipment from the 3rd Underwater Base, evacuate everyone from the East District, and then work on it. Our team doesn’t know how to fix it. It’s not our responsibility. The Russians would know how to fix this. They brought it from their country. I’m not sure how many hours the repair would take either,” Kang Soojung answered while scratching her chin ambiguously.

So the engineering team can’t fix everything. But wouldn’t it be better for the sober Team A to fix it rather than leaving it to the drunk Team D engineers? While I was thinking this, Shin Hae-ryang said to me:

“Repairs are a problem to deal with later. Let’s focus on getting out of here first.”

“What should we do? Should we keep going? I don’t think the Chinese or Japanese would have started this without preparing an escape route from the East District.”

Sumire, who was licking her burst lip and grimacing, said when people looked at her:

“Why? I don’t plan to leave the underwater base. I’m going to stay here.”

“West District is leaking water, and the South District Research Center was destroyed by a torpedo. You still want to stay here?” Lee Jihyun said.

Even after hearing this, Sumire replied with an expression that suggested it had nothing to do with her:

“East District should be fine.”

Kang Soojung looked at Sumire with disgust and said:

“The temperature in the East District is dropping. The temperature control system itself isn’t working properly. The oxygen concentration will keep decreasing, and we don’t know when we’ll be unable to breathe. We might be able to ride the escape pod if we get there and it’s available, but if not, it could be dangerous even while we’re looking for a submarine. Don’t you understand?”

Sumire wiped her snot, nosebleed, and tears on John’s shoulder and back, then said to Kang Soojung:

“Do what you want. Just take me to my room.”

“…I can’t believe I’m having this conversation with this thing.”

Kang Soojung clicked her tongue. I sighed and asked Sumire:

“Did you leave something important in your room? Why are you so eager to go to your room?”

“Why do I need a reason to want to go to my own room? I’m tired from carrying that heavy thing around since morning. Crying made me even more tired.”

Sumire gestured with her chin towards Baek Ae-young’s gun, then closed her mouth and stared blankly at Shin Hae-ryang.

The people who had stopped in front of the East District elevator discussed whether they should change direction and go to the North District right now.

Wouldn’t some of the Russians be alive in the North District? That old man Vladimir seems like he wouldn’t die even if you killed him, Seo Jihyuk was saying while yawning when he suddenly turned his head sharply towards the corridor. At the same time, Baek Ae-young raised the gun she had been lowering, and Shin Hae-ryang stepped in front of Tumanako, who was standing at the outermost edge of the corridor among the group.

A human figure was visible in the distance. Someone was running at an incredible speed from the direction of the East District escape pod. The running person was a woman with long, loose brown hair, carrying a rifle on her back as she ran frantically forward. When she was close enough for her face to be recognizable, the woman smiled widely with a welcoming expression, but Baek Ae-young said while aiming her gun:

“Stop right there!”

At Baek Ae-young’s sharp voice, the other person stopped abruptly, almost falling over. Shin Hae-ryang shouted:

“Put the gun on the ground and raise your hands!”

The woman was startled for a moment but then threw her gun on the floor as if shedding her skin. Acting as if she had been liberated from a heavy burden, she raised both hands high. Then she looked at us with an expectant expression. It seemed like she was trying to hold back from running over immediately.

“Kneel down and wait.”

Shin Hae-ryang approached and picked up the gun that the woman had carelessly tossed on the floor. The tension in the corridor noticeably decreased. Baek Ae-young slowly approached and looked the other person up and down slowly. Then she took her finger off the trigger and opened her arms to embrace her. The woman hugged Baek Ae-young back and said with tears in her eyes:

“Ae-young. I was so scared.”

Then she burst into tears.

“…You’re okay now that I’m here.”

After patting the other’s back several times, Baek Ae-young released her arms with a contorted face. Baek Ae-young briefly explained about the tall beauty with disheveled hair:

“This is my friend, Shu Ran.”

“Hello. sniff Nice to meet you.”

The Engineering Team A members seemed to know that Shu Ran was Baek Ae-young’s friend. Seo Jihyuk was saying something to Shin Hae-ryang while pointing at the gun but ended up with just two barbells.

“Hello. Nice to meet you. I’m Park Moohyun.”

“I’m Yoo Geum-yi.”

Henry, who was on my back, greeted Shu Ran:

“Hello.”

Shu Ran, who was combing her hair with her hand, saw Henry and froze for 2 seconds before answering:

“Uh… Oh my. He-hello.”

Tumanako recognized Shu Ran and greeted her with a smile:

“You came to the salon for hair coloring before. You remember me, right?”

“Yes, Tumanako. I saw you before. …But that’s not important! There’s an escape pod! That’s why I came looking for you!”

Surprised by those words, Kang Soojung asked Shu Ran:

“The escape pod is intact? Is it okay there?”

“The one in the East District is fine. Didn’t some broadcast say the escape pods in South District and West District were broken? The one in the East District is fine. We can ride it.”

Then Shu Ran looked at Baek Ae-young and poured out her worries like a waterfall:

“Do you know how many messages I sent trying to contact you?! The phone wasn’t working either! I couldn’t contact you because the internet wasn’t working! I was so worried!”

Baek Ae-young said to Shu Ran, looking perplexed:

“I haven’t checked that in a while.”

“I couldn’t contact your team leader either, he wasn’t checking his messages! Your deputy team leader wasn’t responding either!”

“Our team leader hasn’t checked that in even longer. The deputy team leader… said he lost his pad.”

Shin Hae-ryang asked Shu Ran:

“How many are left?”

“If Hong Tao or Zhu Xuan took one up, then three. If not, five.”

So they had left a total of 5 escape pods? There are 7 people in Engineering Team Ra (China), but they didn’t prepare at least 7 to escape from here? Then how does Engineering Team Na (Japan) plan to get out of here? Kang Soojung must have had similar thoughts because she asked:

“There are only 3 escape pods left?”

“Ah. Hong Tao and I aren’t treated as humans. They probably planned to kill us after everything was over. But then that broadcast… Who was the first person to broadcast?”

I always get nervous when stepping up to answer these questions. I raised my hand and answered:

“It was me.”

“Did someone from our Engineering Team Ra tell you? How did you know we were at the East District escape pod port?”

Everyone looked at me at Shu Ran’s question. What should I answer?

“Someone who wished to remain anonymous came to the dental clinic and informed me.”

In fact, no one had told me. I just said it as a preventive measure based on what I had experienced. Somehow, it seems that broadcast led to internal strife between the two engineering teams. Shu Ran smiled and said:

“Thanks to that broadcast, they were busy fighting among themselves about who leaked the information. Moreover, thanks to Team Leader Shin’s broadcast, they all rushed to the West District.”

“What about Hai Yoon?”

“She went with them to try to stop them.”

Shin Hae-ryang nodded. In the end, the opinion converged on heading towards the East District escape pod. I thought we would split into groups going to the escape pod and the submarine like before, but this time we didn’t. They say that without Baek Ae-young, just Seo Jihyuk and Shin Hae-ryang can’t protect the 9 unarmed people here.

Tumanako said she would sit and wait in front of the East District elevator, but Yoo Geum-yi wouldn’t let her. When Yoo Geum-yi forcibly pushed Tumanako’s back from behind, Tumanako stumbled forward like a scarecrow.

“You have to walk to stay warm. You can’t just try not to move like that. Don’t just stand still shivering, you need to keep moving.”

“I’d rather freeze to death sitting here listening to music.”

As Tumanako walked trudging along, complaining, Yoo Geum-yi shook her head.

“You’re not a grasshopper. The harder it gets, the more you need to move.”

“What’s that?”

“The Ant and the Grasshopper. It’s an Aesop’s fable from when I was young.”

“Is the translation weird? Isn’t it the ant and the locust? …Nowadays, locusts sing and live so well.”

It got colder and colder as we walked quickly through the East District corridor. At first, it felt like a summer evening, but now it was like walking down the street in winter wearing just a shirt. Only my back was warm due to the child’s body heat.

Occasionally, Henry would swing his legs widely, perhaps feeling playful, and I would sway my body to the right and left in rhythm with it. I borrowed Tumanako’s headset, put it on Henry’s head, and played songs in English.

Kang Soojung, who had been staring at Shu Ran talking with Baek Ae-young, slapped Sumire’s back with her large palm and asked:

“Hey. Didn’t your team have anything like that? Like fighting over who leaked information after hearing the broadcast?”

“Ow! …Huh? I don’t know.”

“You don’t know anything. What do you know?!”

“I don’t know. I don’t care who said what. It was probably Tabuntama. All I heard was that in the morning, we should just shoot anyone we see while carrying guns.”

Worried that Tamaki might be falsely accused as a traitor, I quickly explained:

“Tamaki didn’t say anything to me.”

“Hmm. Is that so?”

Then Sumire, who had been quietly riding on John’s back, suddenly said to me:

“…Then there’s no one.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s no one in the team besides her who would ask to stop us from indiscriminately killing people while carrying guns. Do I need to say it twice for you to understand?”

As my feet were going numb from Sumire’s statement, Lee Jihyun, who had heard the Japanese, glared at Sumire and said stiffly:

“Watch your mouth. This doctor is the only person in this group who’s being kind to you.”

Sumire sneered at Lee Jihyun.

“I know that best. You’re just an ear stuck to the wall, eavesdropping on others.”

Sumire was about to snap back at Lee Jihyun but turned her head to the side when she saw Seo Jihyuk standing behind Lee Jihyun.

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