Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea

Chapter 115

……Mr. Shin Haeryang. If you’re going to talk like that to someone who woke up to find water leaking and two team members missing, why didn’t you just watch me get beaten?

Vladimir seemed to be contemplating whether to hit me first with his captured right arm or to hit Shin Haeryang. The members of both teams swarmed around their team leaders. Then, leaving me gasping intermittently and the team leaders glaring at each other, they started chattering among themselves. They didn’t seem to have any intention of stopping this situation. Seo Jihyuk, yawning wide enough to split his mouth, slapped Nikolai’s forearm and said:

“Hey. I’m going to bet money that our team leader wins. You should bet on your team leader too before it starts! Hurry! I’ve got 5 dollars right now.”

“I don’t have cash. I ran out of my room without even putting on underwear, how would I have money?”

“Aargh! Gross! Why didn’t you just die in the dormitory!”

Baek Ae-young asked Sophia, whose face had turned pale:

“Where did your two kids go? ……Are you okay? What’s wrong with your face?”

“I don’t know. I don’t feel well. Maybe the salo I ate as a snack went bad. Ah. My hands are like ice, and I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“Turn your back to me and bend over.”

Baek Ae-young started pounding Sophia’s back with her fist, making loud sounds. Viktor, who had been sitting silently on the floor, half rose from his seat when he saw Baek Ae-young’s punching, but sat back down when he saw Sophia not avoiding it. Sophia, being hit on the back with thudding sounds, grimaced and said:

“……I feel like I’m going to throw up even more.”

“Go to that corner and throw up. Don’t let us hear it.”

Vladimir, who had been facing Shin Haeryang, caught Nikita’s eye standing and waiting beside him. Then, as if displeased, he let go of my collar. Unprepared, I immediately fell on my butt. As soon as I could breathe, Nikita grabbed my shoulder like passing a baton and asked:

“So where is Dmitri?”

“I don’t know.”

Now Nikita tried to grab my collar. Kang Soojung, who had been watching with her arms crossed, intervened and said:

“Easy now. You’ll kill the doctor.”

“He’s a little shit, but he’s our little shit. I don’t want to go home and tell Mom and Dad I escaped alone and abandoned my little brother!”

Nikita growled anxiously. I quickly shook my head.

“I checked all the lower-numbered rooms, but he wasn’t in the White Tiger dormitory. ……I didn’t see him in the Central Zone or the South District dormitory either.”

I’m not intentionally hiding anything. I’m telling everything I know. Nikita stared at my face intensely and said:

“Then he must be in the East District or the North District. Is it true that the Chinese in the East District have guns?”

“Yes. They’re all armed. They’ll be waiting for people coming towards the East District escape pods.”

“What about the North District?”

“I don’t know.”

It seems like I’m useful, but not really. Nikita spoke softly and then gestured towards the child, asking:

“Is that your kid?”

“No. His name is Henry. He’s the child of Leonard Sanders and Nevae Hopkins.”

“The one from the American team who drinks a lot?”

Kang Soojung, who was listening beside me, asked. Which one of Leonard and Nevae is from the American team? I’m not sure. Tumanako looked at us and said:

“To be precise, he’s Nevae’s child now. They divorced, and Nevae got custody of the child.”

“How do you know?”

“Nevae came to get her hair done. When you do hair for 5 hours, all kinds of stories come out. Uh… She said she was going to leave the child with her mother’s house in Brisbane. I don’t know why the child is here.”

It’s surprising that Henry, a minor, is in this undersea base, but it’s also surprising that someone would do something to their hair for 5 hours. What kind of hair treatment takes 5 hours? It’s not like it’s surgery. While rubbing my neck area with my hand, I asked Tumanako:

“Why did they divorce?”

“Ah. That’s a solid privacy bound by protein between a hairdresser and client, so I can’t tell you…”

When two men larger than doors, one angry woman, and one man sprawled on the floor urged her with their eyes, Tumanako quickly corrected her stance.

“Leonard is an alcoholic, they say. He drinks at least two bottles a day. He promised not to drink and broke that promise four or five times, and once he lost Henry while passed out drunk. They divorced right after that. She said she’d return to Australia once she sorted out their house in America.”

“That bastard Leonard brought him in.”

Kang Soojung casually said to her team leader who was looking at her.

“The most recent helicopter that came and left was from the Americans, wasn’t it?”

Nikita stared at the sleeping Henry for a few seconds and then let me go with a troubled face. As I awkwardly got up from the floor, I said to Vladimir, who had shaken off Shin Haeryang’s arm with annoyance:

“Thank you. Henry survived thanks to you.”

When Vladimir turned his gaze to me, tension filled the air again. He slowly asked me:

“……Doctor. What were you planning to do if I had just left that child in the room and came out? Were you certain I would bring him out?”

The worry that Vladimir might just leave after seeing Henry sleeping in room 80, even if he visited the room because of my lie, had been nagging at a corner of my mind. The thought that it might be safer, albeit slower, if I went and carried the child out myself kept tormenting me as I checked the empty lower-numbered rooms.

In the worst case, a child could have died because of my misjudgment. I looked at Tumanako for a moment and then said to Vladimir:

“You woke up your team members and checked the rooms before leaving last, didn’t you? I thought you were a team leader who knew how to take care of your team members.”

I had no certainty. I just believed in the morality I had observed in him during our brief interaction.

“I had no choice but to trust that you wouldn’t abandon a living child.”

Vladimir’s frowning gaze lingered on me for a few seconds. I thought he might attack me again, but soon he averted his eyes from me. He went to gather his team members who were sitting in corners, dozing off, or throwing up. I hurriedly asked Vladimir’s back:

“Was the snake not in the room?!”

“Don’t catch my eye. If you don’t want to die.”

So does that mean it wasn’t there? Or it was? Depending on whether the snake was in the room or not, the hypothesis that Emma, the cat, and the snake all no longer exist in the undersea base becomes clearer.

As I was about to call out to him again for confirmation, a startled Kang Soojung lightly covered my mouth with one hand. Maybe because her hand was big, it covered my nose too. Kang Soojung urgently whispered to me:

“Doctor. That man doesn’t have the best temper. The couple, both of them. Just! Ugh! This is actually an incredibly peaceful ending.”

Kang Soojung, shaking her head as if nauseated, slowly removed her hand from my face. Shin Haeryang, who was standing nearby, looked at Henry lying on the floor and then turned his gaze to me and said:

“I’m Shin Haeryang, team leader of Engineer KoreanTeam.”

“Ah, yes. I’m Park Moohyun, dentist at Deep Blue.”

I see. This person doesn’t know me. Shin Haeryang calmly looked at me and asked:

“Are you injured anywhere?”

“No, I’m not.”

Shin Haeryang nodded and pointed towards the escape pods. Following his hand, I saw that there was one empty escape pod left.

“I heard the broadcast. There’s an escape pod left, but we’re not using it.”

“Ah, yes.”

“How did you obtain the information you mentioned in the broadcast?”

How should I explain this? I learned it forcibly by experiencing this situation for the third time?

“I happened to learn about it by chance.”

Shin Haeryang looked at me once but didn’t say anything specific to my response, though he didn’t seem to trust the source much. Looking around, I could see Shin Haeryang, Kang Soojung, Baek Ae-young, Seo Jihyuk, and Lee Ji-hyun. ……Two people from the Engineer Korean Team were missing.

“Did you use the escape pods?”

“……Among our team members, Kim Jaehee and Jung Sanghyun escaped using the escape pods.”

“Why… why?”

“Kim Jaehee’s escape pod was launched just as the broadcast started, and Jung Sanghyun didn’t believe the broadcast content.”

“To be precise, that crazy Sanghyun disobeyed the instruction not to board and threw himself into the escape pod like he was diving.”

Seo Jihyuk rested his right chin on his right hand and drew a parabola with his left index finger, making a whoosh sound.

“In all my life, I’ve never seen that bastard move so fast.”

Kang Soojung, standing nearby, laughed while snorting. They say that Carlos, who had fled from the White Tiger dormitory, took one of the escape pods and left. ……I had guessed that some might not believe my broadcast, but actually confirming it like this felt strange.

Shin Haeryang was watching the escape pods that had just left the abyssal zone (3,000m-6,000m) and started ascending on a large monitor. He seemed to be checking the status of the escape pods and planning to move. With the team leader doing that, the team members were all sprawled on the floor or sitting around carelessly. Even Yoo Geum-yi, who had been standing next to Henry all along, and Tumanako, who had been looking around at people, sat on the floor after observing the behavior of those around them.

I can’t tell if they trust my words or not. Before, they had moved towards the South District without delay, at a sweeping pace. At that moment, a low voice asked from beside me:

“Was there a reason you made the broadcast?”

“Because I know the escape pods are broken. I announced it hoping people wouldn’t die by using them. The same goes for the other dangers.”

“……Then the ones who sabotaged them will be after you, you know.”

“I know.”

It’s okay. I’m prepared. ……Actually, I’m not sure how prepared I should be, but at least it should be less painful than having my side torn by a shark. In this situation, it was better to have even one more person survive than to gain an advantage through information inequality.

“I just shared what I know for survival.”

“Did you show all the cards you have?”

“Yes.”

Shin Haeryang said to me with an expressionless face:

“……Don’t play poker, doctor.”

“Pardon? Ah. It’s fine. I’m not doing this to win.”

I opened the zipper of the backpack I was wearing and fumbled to take out candies and a pad.