Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea

“There’s almost no cursing except for a few recent ones. …Did you know there were several questions asking if you’ve thought about the immigration proposal?”

“It’s been years.”

Shin Hae-ryang nodded lightly. Seo Jihyuk, who was walking while lifting and lowering the dumbbell in his left hand, said with a yawn:

“That guy. Looks like he still hasn’t given up.”

Yoo Geum-yi, hugging my bag in front of her, asked Shin Hae-ryang:

“Are you going to immigrate?”

“No.”

Judging by Kang Soojung’s silence beside him, it seemed she already knew about these proposals her team leader had received. A light silence fell.

Lee Jihyun was slowly scrolling up with her finger. As Lee Jihyun’s walking direction gradually shifted towards the wall while looking at the pad, Seo Jihyuk gently grabbed her forearm holding the pad and changed her walking direction. Yoo Geum-yi broke the settled silence.

“I’ve heard that engineers often get such proposals. For researchers, unless you’re at a professor level or a true genius among geniuses, such proposals hardly ever come. So I find it a bit fascinating whenever I hear about these things.”

“Is there any country you’d like to immigrate to?”

To my question, Yoo Geum-yi thought for a moment before answering:

“I guess the three Nordic countries?”

Nordic? We’re in the North Pacific.

“Then I guess that’s out of the question for the North Pacific underwater base. Pray that the North Sea underwater base construction is completed quickly.”

“…I pray. I pray. Please let me work as a professor there in a few years without worrying about research funding. Or at least let me quit everything and open a bakery.”

Seeing Yoo Geum-yi’s behavior, Shin Hae-ryang said:

“…Team leaders frequently receive immigration offers. If I had accepted every offer, my nationality would have changed about 7 times by now.”

“Isn’t that evidence that other teams recognize Shin Hae-ryang’s skills?”

At Yoo Geum-yi’s words, Shin Hae-ryang thought for a moment and then shook his head.

“They want to poach personnel. My skills themselves are like a minnow compared to our deputy team leader.”

As I listened, I remembered that protecting Korean civilian nationals was one of this person’s duties. From my perspective as a dentist, it seems like they’re trying to pull Shin Hae-ryang into their countries to protect the faces of their own engineers. I’m not sure how Engineering Team A members get along with each other, but when I checked Seo Jihyuk’s dental condition, it didn’t seem like Shin Hae-ryang was beating his own team members. Of course, if he’s hitting places other than the face, I might not know.

Is he the kind of person who would do that? …The total time I’ve spent with Shin Hae-ryang doesn’t even add up to a full day. Judging from the stories of patients who came to the hospital because of Shin Hae-ryang over five days, he’s a short-tempered bastard with iron fists.

But surprisingly, the image that remains most deeply in my mind is of him drinking. Isn’t he quite a remarkable guardian for not shifting the responsibility for failure onto me, who had been a constant stumbling block, even when we were alone? But in a corner of my mind, there’s a cautious voice of doubt crying out about work-related matters. How many times have the protected individuals who visited the dental clinic told me they fell, trying to hide the abuse from their guardians?

Kang Soojung, startled by Shin Hae-ryang’s sudden statement, answered:

“Suddenly praising me won’t get you anything. …Did I do something wrong without knowing?”

At those words, Shin Hae-ryang smiled and shook his head. Lee Jihyun frowned while looking at the team leader’s pad and said:

“Team Leader Sato sent messages of gratitude for cooperation every time we worked together. That’s unexpected. …Why does he write so long and verbose? Team lunch proposals, surfing proposals, asking when birthdays are, he asks all sorts of strange things? Ichida’s laptop went missing, and although he doesn’t think we did it, he’s asking if any of our team members saw someone. Yamashita wants to fight again and asks if you could lose just once, and if so, how he could show his appreciation, and so on. Can you mediate a work-related misunderstanding that occurred with Engineering Team Sa (Australia)? And so on. I gave up learning double honorifics, so I’m not sure how polite he’s being.”

“He used the messenger somewhat properly compared to the other guys? Is it because he’s a team leader?”

Kang Soojung said, seemingly surprised. Judging from the previous examples, she seemed to have expected this one to be full of profanities as well.

“Let me see too.”

“Mmph?!”

Sumire leaned her upper body heavily towards Lee Jihyun, and John was startled as the center of gravity suddenly shifted to the side. Having barely avoided falling, John vehemently expressed his dissatisfaction with his mouth still covered.

As neither the team leader nor the deputy team leader objected, Lee Jihyun slowly approached Sumire to show her the pad.

“I’ll do it.”

Seo Jihyuk took the team leader’s pad from Lee Jihyun’s hand and showed it to Sumire, whose upper body was elevated due to being carried. Lee Jihyun frowned and said to Seo Jihyuk:

“I can do it too.”

“What if she bites your fingers?”

Sumire glared at Seo Jihyuk for a few seconds at his words that treated her like an animal, but soon focused more on looking at the pad.

“Scroll up. …You scrolled too far. Slowly down!”

Sumire got irritated at Seo Jihyuk, seemingly unable to see the content she wanted because her wrists were tied in front. As if teasing Sumire, Seo Jihyuk played around by scrolling through months of conversation content in an instant with a single touch, then scrolling back down.

Even though I could only see the back of Sumire’s head, I could imagine her expression. Is she really going to bite his fingers? Somehow managing to read the messenger content in that situation, Sumire said to Seo Jihyuk in a stiff voice:

“You can take it away.”

“What did you want to see?”

“The tone.”

“How was the tone?”

“…Polite.”

Seo Jihyuk looked at Sumire for a moment before returning the pad to Lee Jihyun. Lee Jihyun sighed while looking at Seo Jihyuk.

“I don’t know how far she read.”

“Ah. Right. …Sorry.”

Lee Jihyun gave up on searching through the messenger content sent by Sato. She pressed the back button and started looking at Yamashita, who had sent the next most messages. It was overflowing with Japanese that wasn’t properly translated. Cartoon character images wearing boxing gloves and kickboxing videos were attached in between the messenger windows. Lee Jihyun sighed and asked Shin Hae-ryang:

“Team Leader. I was reminded of this because of the mention of the immigration proposal to Tamaki, but did you formally propose it to Engineering Team Na (Japan)?”

“I did about three months ago.”

“What did you say? Please tell me in detail.”

“We want to take Tamaki Yuzuru from your team to ours. We are having difficulty quickly filling staff positions, and we have a lot of work. This kind of proposal is a new adventure for both teams and gives the team member another opportunity to develop, so you should quickly find someone else. …It’s the typical phrasing used in immigration proposals.”

Seeing Lee Jihyun’s confused face, Shin Hae-ryang quickly added:

“What did they say?”

“When we asked the employee in question, they had no intention of immigrating. Thank you for your valuable opinion. We’ll take it into consideration for future team operations. I heard they received similar answers from everyone else.”

Does that mean Tamaki refused the immigration proposal? If I were Tamaki, I think I would have wanted to run away anywhere. Did she not like Korea or Engineering Team A? Shin Hae-ryang spoke slowly:

“I wasn’t the only one who proposed immigration. Hai Yoon, Richard, and Oliver also made proposals. As you know, Oliver is the type who enjoys watching others’ misfortunes, so it’s hard to know if he would actually go through with the proper immigration procedures. Hai Yoon said that since only three out of seven people in her team work properly, she doesn’t mind if the person is Japanese as long as they work diligently.”

Shu Ran, one of the employees who work properly in Engineering Team Ra (China), seemed to be hearing this story for the first time and gradually tilted her head towards Shin Hae-ryang.

“Richard was constantly looking for someone to replace a team member who had a heroin shock during vacation, and he seemed very pleased to learn that Tamaki was suffering from her own team. I know he tried quite actively to bring her over, saying he’d be glad if she would willingly use his country as a refuge.”

“Tamaki was quite popular, wasn’t she?”

“An employee who works as told from above without asserting themselves, and who quietly dies without complaining even when given an unmanageable workload? That’s the ideal subordinate that superiors want.”

Seo Jihyuk, seemingly deciding he couldn’t use it anymore, dropped a 15kg circular barbell on the corridor floor and said:

“Really? You’ve never ordered us to be such robots, Team Leader.”

Shin Hae-ryang looked at Seo Jihyuk and said somewhat gruffly:

“You’d run away immediately.”

“Ah. I wouldn’t even look back. I’d bolt while spilling screws and making whirring sounds.”

Kang Soojung and Lee Jihyun, who were nearby, laughed softly at Seo Jihyuk’s light tone.

“Which country’s team leader is this Oliver person?”

As far as I know, in alphabetical order, it was Shin Hae-ryang, Sato, Vladimir, Hai Yoon, Jennifer, Liam, Richard, and the last Canadian team leader’s name was Haley. To my question, Kang Soojung answered:

“He’s the New Zealand deputy team leader. He’s leading the team in place of Team Leader Liam, who is hospitalized for cancer surgery. He’s about 2 meters tall and has a huge build. He likes rugby, so sometimes he’s rolling around on the grass with his team members with a ball on Daehan Island, and he seems to have the worst personality among them? That’s Oliver Simon.”

Having experienced a lot, Kang Soojung shuddered even as she explained. Then Sumire, who had been quiet all along, suddenly spoke to Kang Soojung:

“He’s handsome, isn’t he?”

“If you’re going by that standard, your Sato Ryusuke is handsome too.”

“He’s married.”

“I’m surprised you have that kind of common sense in your head. I thought Japanese people didn’t care about that at all.”

Sumire seemed to lack the energy to get irritated at Kang Soojung, having caused a commotion not long ago. As she just glared silently, Kang Soojung also stopped talking to Sumire.

As we arrived in front of the escape pod port, the air entering my nostrils felt cool. The Engineering team members, wearing full-body suits, didn’t seem to feel the cold much. Tumanako, seemingly weak to cold, was chattering her teeth, and Yoo Geum-yi was also more huddled up. I checked to make sure Henry’s skin wasn’t exposed outside the cardigan.

Before entering the escape pod port, Shin Hae-ryang said to us:

“Stay here. I’ll go check and come back.”

He was about to enter the East District escape pod port with Seo Jihyuk, leaving one reliable gunman here.

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