NOVEL NEXT Chapter 11-2
“Let’s go together.”
Upon hearing my suggestion, Baek Ae-young looked at me, hesitated for a moment, and nodded. I handed her the cleanest towel I could find in my laundry to wipe her hands. However, she shook her head after looking at the towel.
“I don’t want to dirty a clean towel. Washing it would be bothersome.”
Really?
I went to the café with Baek Ae-young while holding the basket of laundry. It was only while on our way that I thought about just leaving the laundry in the laundry room, but it was already too late. Baek Ae-young exchanged high-fives with people we met on our way, bumped fists, or gave them the middle finger. It seemed like she was very well-known, as most people we encountered recognized her.
Meeting people and hearing their voices made me feel like the remnants of the earlier violence were slowly being washed away. As we went to places with more CCTV cameras and lights, I felt more at ease. However, contrary to my feelings, my mind was so flustered that I got lost on the way to the café, so Baek Ae-young naturally led the way.
Baek Ae-young’s long hair swayed with every step she took as she walked ahead of me. There were two cafes in the central building of the Fourth Underwater Base. One was called “Red Coral,” and the other was “Agulhas Current.” I didn’t know where the Agulhas Current was, but judging from my lack of knowledge, it probably wasn’t in the North Pacific.
I ordered coffee and handed one of the two cups to Baek Ae-young. As I sat down at the table with the warm coffee in my hands, everything seemed so trivial. I took several deep breaths in my mind, trying to maintain that feeling. Baek Ae-young asked while looking at the guidebook on the top of my laundry basket.
“Who gave you that book?”
“Since I only have an English version, Seo Jihyuk kindly provided it for me.”
“I thought they only made about ten copies and distributed them exclusively to the engineers, so I was curious when I saw you had one.”
“Did the chief of the EngineeringTeam create it?”
“Well… I think he outsourced the translation. He paid quite a lot to get it done with high quality. He probably gave a few copies to the naval base too.”
“I see. I’m reading it well, thanks to that.”
“When you meet the new team leader, you might want to mention it. He might be happy to hear that.”
Then we were enveloped in silence. As I sipped my coffee, trying to heal the horrifying times filled with the sound of people collapsing and broken bones, Baek Ae-young bit her lower lip while holding her cup of coffee and spoke, “I’m talking about what just happened. It would be better if the new team leader didn’t know.”
Did the team leader give evaluations to the team members? Or did Baek Ae-young preemptively take down someone that Shin Hae-ryang had to deal with using her fists?
“Why… is that? I’m asking because I don’t know anything.”
“I don’t want to worry the new team leader. He’s sensitive.”
“I see.”
There were so many thoughts rising in my throat. Did the people at the dentist’s office mispronounce someone’s name several times? Or are there several more people with the title of “new team leader”?
“I understand.”
Is it that his fists are strong, but his heart is sensitive? Or is it that his body is delicate, but his fists are strong? I can’t tell.
“I haven’t seen Team Leader Shin Hae-ryang before. And I want to pretend I didn’t see what happened today.”
Baek Ae-young held her coffee cup and sighed after hearing my response. It is forbidden to reveal one’s age here, especially for East Asians. Early 20s? Mid-20s? At most, she looked to be in her mid-20s. Relief washed over her face. It seems that she feels reassured that this story won’t reach the team leader’s ears.
Seo Ji-hyuk and Baek Ae-yeong both wanted to hide their unethical deeds from their team leader. Strangely enough, it seemed like Shin Hae-ryang wasn’t exactly living a moral life either.
“Thank you.”
Then, she drank the coffee that had been in her hand. The sound of her sipping coffee filled the air. I looked at the coffee and suddenly had a thought, so I asked.
“I heard the beach is beautiful, where should I go to see it?”
“You can take the South elevator to the ground floor and walk, but it takes some time. Or you can take the nearby East District’s elevator or North District’s elevator up to the third undersea base, then after reaching the third undersea base, if you turn left at the bakery corner, there’s an elevator to the second undersea base. If you take that elevator up and then take the third elevator at the first undersea base, you’ll reach the ground floor. From there, just walk a bit more and you’ll find the beach.”
“······Thank you.”
I didn’t understand at all. I’ll have to take the South elevator up and walk around on the ground. I won’t miss the beach from the ground, will I? Baek Ae-yeong probably tried her best to explain in detail, but all I have right now is the ability to walk to the bakery at the third undersea base without getting lost. Or I could try my best to wander around and find my way.
However, I didn’t want to spend my first golden break time at the underwater base getting lost and wandering around. I just wanted to finish my coffee and head back to the laundry room. If that unidentified man was still lying there, I’d call a hospital or summon a medic to get him treated. If Baek Ae-young’s words were true and he had woken up and gone somewhere, I wouldn’t know. If he had injured his jaw or teeth, he would make an appointment as my patient.
Our table was right in front of the café, and I could feel people staring. People passing by or sitting in the café were looking at me so much that it made my face itch. I turned my head and made eye contact with a man.
He was a man waiting for his coffee, and when our eyes met, he frowned and left. A man sitting at a table opposite also showed a similar reaction when I looked at him. Wondering why they were like that, I glanced around. Then, I realized within a second that I wasn’t such an attractive person and looked at the woman in front of me.
Baek Ae-yeong was, as they say, as beautiful as a doll. She had an incredibly small face with neatly cut bangs slightly covering her eyebrows and waist-length, ebony-like hair. Baek Ae-yeong untied her hair to retie it and held the hairband in her mouth while gathering the hair around her forehead and ears with both hands. Moreover, she sat with perfect posture, which naturally drew attention.
“Men are staring at me quite intensely. I’m scared that love letters will arrive at my room soon.”
At my words, Baek Ae-young nearly let the hairband in her mouth slip as she smiled. Worried it would fall into her coffee, I quickly caught it and took on the role of a hairband holder. Baek Ae-young took the hairband from my palm and finished tying her hair, resulting in a perfect ponytail.
As our conversation neared its end, and our coffee cups nearly empty, I suggested standing up and stretching. Baek Ae-young nodded and literally downed her remaining coffee in one gulp. As I stared at her in amazement, she spoke:
“Put on sandals if you go to the beach. Some crazy people break beer bottles and leave the glass all over.”
With that, she headed to the other side of the café. I picked up my laundry and started walking towards the laundry room. The man who had been knocked out earlier was gone, and there were no traces of blood. Had a cleaning robot come by? If I hadn’t witnessed the incident, I would have never known anything happened.
I felt very strange. Suddenly, I thought the underwater base seemed like a huge prison. As I entered the laundromat, imagining that such violence occurred dozens of times in places I didn’t know, a man wearing a t-shirt with a large shark drawn on the chest greeted me. I also introduced myself while greeting him back. He was putting black clothes in the dryer. I stuffed all my laundry into one washing machine, except for the whites, which I washed separately in the machine next to it.
After setting up the washing machines, I went back to my room, lay down on the bed, and read the underwater base guidebook until my arm hurt and I had to lie on my stomach. The first chapter of the guidebook was about escaping from the underwater base. Shouldn’t a guidebook start with an introduction to the base? As I looked through the book, the page numbers were a mess, as if the last chapter had been moved to the front during editing. I tossed and turned on the bed as I read the book.
[There are currently 234 employees at the 4th underwater base, and there are a total of 220 escape pods (218 available, 2 under repair). The base was originally designed to accommodate 300 people, so the number of escape pods is not in compliance with safety regulations. Despite repeated requests to ISO to increase the number of escape pods per person, it has been on hold for two years.] When I arrived, they said there were about 400-500 people at the 4th underwater base, so if everyone boarded in order, I might not be able to get on an escape pod. I pressed my pillow under my chin, deep in thought.
[The guidebook’s evacuation guidelines state that escaping through the 3000-meter vertical elevator should be prioritized. However, in the event of an issue at the underwater base, the high water pressure makes it highly likely that the elevator would be unusable. If an external shock occurs, all elevators connecting the underwater bases will automatically stop. Even if engineers manually force the elevator to operate, the probability of death before reaching the destination is high. Therefore, it is recommended to run towards the escape pods, depending on your current location, as the survival rate is higher than using the 8 elevators-.] The text was dense. It seemed that Shin Hae-ryang had added extensive annotations to the translated material. As I looked at the pages filled with escape information and criticisms from those who had read it, I felt drowsy. Before I knew it, I was using the guidebook as a pillow, and in my dream, I swam with fish and mermaids.