Room Seventy-Seven

Baek Ahyoung started with the bulkheads inside the dormitory block. From the numbers, a residence built for five hundred now had a bulkhead dropped at every fiftieth room. Before they took the intermediate stair between 50 and 100, the wall ran a pressure check on its own. One knock from Baek Ahyoung was enough to make the bulkhead display the load bearing down on it. When I asked why she was bothering, she smiled.

"Because if we skip this and open the door, and our luck is rotten, this whole corridor is an ocean in a second. ...We can go down. It isn't completely flooded."

Shin Haeryang set the child on the floor and pulled the emergency axe from the wall. Handsome as that face was, an axe in his hands made him look like a serial killer out of a movie. He spoke to Baek Ahyoung with the axe still in his grip.

"Open every dorm door."

"The system says they're all open. Whether they actually opened, I couldn't tell you. Power's dead from 61 straight through 120."

"Seo Jihyuk."

"Yeah, yeah."

Seo Jihyuk stripped off his cardigan and flung it to the floor. He hesitated over his shoes, then peeled his socks off too and stood barefoot. Then he drove a fist into the wall beside him. A panel popped loose with a clunk, and he hauled out a flathead screwdriver, a flashlight, electrical tape. Did the engineers stash tools in the walls all over this place?

Shin Haeryang, like Baek Ahyoung, was wearing something cut like a diving suit, and he saw no reason to take it off. He only started unwinding the cord bracelet at his wrist.

"What's that?"

"Parachute cord."

What even is that? And why is it on his wrist? I swallowed the useless questions. Instead I eased the two packs off my back and set them carefully on the floor. I debated the shoes, then decided to take them off. Shin Haeryang saw and shook his head.

"Jihyuk and I will go. Please stay here, Doctor."

Of course I wanted to stay where it was dry. But I was the one who had first said we should save the researchers in Jujak-dong. I still had enough of a conscience not to wait up here while the two of them swam the flood and hauled people out on their own.

"You said there were five people in that room. Will the two of you manage?"

At that, Seo Jihyuk looked at Shin Haeryang.

"If there's a kid, or someone hurt, we'll be short on hands. Fine if they come along, isn't it?"

Shin Haeryang scowled and thought for a moment, glanced at the child lying on the floor, and nodded. They opened the bulkhead into the dorms, and Seo Jihyuk aimed the flashlight down. In the dark, water was rising.

I followed Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyuk down the stairs and into it. I had gone in full of myself, and within three seconds I regretted not staying put when he told me to remain above. It was too dark. The power was out, and there wasn't a single point of light. The instant I came down those stairs and put my body in the water, it felt as if every degree of heat drained out of me—and the water was already at my neck.

I'm 175 centimeters, and it was kissing my chin. I looked to see whether the others were in the same state, and the taller Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyuk had it only to their shoulders, walking as if this were an ordinary hall. Regret washed over me again. Seo Jihyuk took the lead with a pen-sized flashlight clenched in his teeth.

I stuck myself to the wall and started moving in a way that was neither quite walking nor quite crawling along it. I kept going, using the doors as a countdown. I shoved aside a water bottle bobbing beside my face and kicked chairs and pillows out from under my feet. Seo Jihyuk reached it first and hammered on the closed door of Room 77. A scream burst out from the other side. Hadn't they said the doors were all open?

"Someone's in here! I'm trapped! Please, help me!"

"Get away from the door."

Shin Haeryang drew in a breath, took the flathead from Seo Jihyuk, and went under. Seo Jihyuk hurried the flashlight beam down into the water. Watching him, I asked Seo Jihyuk.

"Why won't the door open?"

"Power's out, so maybe it can't. Pressure difference. Something jammed in the track. Plenty of reasons."

"Shouldn't we help Mr. Shin?"

"The engineering team leader? Me not helping is how I help."

Where the light moved, I could see Shin Haeryang underwater, striking the bottom of the door a few times with the axe, then driving the screwdriver in. I had no idea what he'd actually done, but when he came up, the door stood open a gap of about five centimeters.

"Grab it and shove!"

I jammed my fingers into that narrow slit. Six hands locked onto one door and heaved it left with everything we had. One, two, three—heave! A door that normally opened on its own was so thick and heavy under raw muscle that a curse climbed all the way to my throat. So this is why it seals, I was thinking, some useless thought like that, when a small hand came out from inside the panel I was gripping.

A pale, small woman's hand reached from the dark room and touched my fingers, and I screamed for an entirely different reason. Aaagh! Aaaaaagh! Seawater poured into my mouth, and the scream vanished under the water.

Three of us, each nearly the size of the door itself, hung off one sliding panel, and slowly it was forced back into the wall. Once the gap was just wide enough for a person to squeeze through, we let go. There was already no strength left in my hands.

Seo Jihyuk swept the flashlight through the room. Only one person. The beam skimmed the face of a small woman. I knew someone was in there, and still the light finding a human face startled me worse. She was soaked through—seawater or tears, I couldn't tell. Recognizing her, Seo Jihyuk asked.

"What? It's just you, Ga-young?"

"Didn't you say there were five?"

I asked it blankly, staring at the empty room, and Kim Ga-young answered on the verge of tears.

"...It's only me. I'm sorry."

"We're going back."

Quickly. Shin Haeryang pressed us as if another second would cost too much. Then he hooked an arm around the waist of Kim Ga-young, balanced precariously on a chair, and hauled her up onto his shoulder. The water had already climbed past my chin to the edge of my mouth. Seo Jihyuk, then Shin Haeryang, then me—we started back toward the stairs in that order.

More precisely, I was falling behind even Shin Haeryang, and he was carrying someone. A woman had to weigh sixty kilos at the least. How was he walking that easily through the water with a person on his back? A robot? I clung to the wall and fought my way along, five paces behind him, seriously doubting what Shin Haeryang even was.

I bounced forward in steps that might have been swimming or jumping, and every time I mistimed a breath I had to gulp seawater. Once it reached my mouth I tipped my head back and kept going, and it was a misery fit to kill me.

If I get out of here, I am not going near the sea for ten years. Damn it. Shin Haeryang shouted something, and Seo Jihyuk, out in front, came back and had already caught me by the collar, giving it a small tug. My nose, about to go under, barely cleared the surface. I envied every centimeter over 190 more than I had ever envied anything. The only member of this rescue party in possession of light, Seo Jihyuk mumbled around the flashlight still in his teeth.

"Doctor, why are you drinking all the seawater?"

"Trying to drink it all away—hrk!"

I'd meant to answer the laugh in his voice with a joke, and then the nausea surged and I threw up.

"Agh! What are you doing!"

I'd vomited on his arm, and I was genuinely sorry, but it had not been by choice. One good bellyful of seawater, and everything in my stomach came right back up. In the dark, Shin Haeryang cut through cold water well over 175 centimeters deep, finally set a foot on the stairs, and put Kim Ga-young down.

Then he turned his head toward me. In that instant Seo Jihyuk, hauling me along by the collar to keep me up, stepped on something and pitched straight forward. The flashlight vanished in a blink. A body plunged into the black water, and with my collar still in his fist I was dragged under with him and slammed into the flood.