The Door That Wouldn't Open

Seawater shoved its way into my mouth. Swallowing that salt-bitter flood left my head reeling, and my lower back hurt as if it had been snapped clean in two. When I opened my eyes, Shin Haeryang was hauling me and Seo Jihyuk up out of the water and onto the stairs. The pain climbed until a scream was right at the edge of my throat, and only then did I understand how he had found the two of us in water black as pitch and dragged us out.

Without my knowing it, the parachute line cinched around my waist ran straight to Shin Haeryang's forearm. Seo Jihyuk was tied the same way. Haeryang had been winding those lines in, hand over hand, and pulling us up.

Seo Jihyuk came to and half-crawled up the stairs toward the man fishing us out of the water, sloshing at every step. I crawled after him. Yook Geum-yi and Kim Ga-young, waiting at the top, grabbed Seo Jihyuk and dragged him the rest of the way.

So stairs could be climbed on all fours. Today was turning into a crash course in things I had no desire to learn. I swallowed the wretched feeling and finished the climb on hands and knees. When Shin Haeryang came up last, Baek Ahyoung lowered the bulkhead to the quarters again. The water that had chased us so relentlessly was gone. I sucked air in and out until my lungs felt ready to burst, then dropped flat on my back, arms and legs flung wide. Shin Haeryang's voice rolled out, low and muffled.

"Seo Jihyuk. The leg?"

He must have asked because he'd seen him go down.

"It's fine."

"Doctor. Are you hurt anywhere?"

He seemed to be talking to me, so I looked up at him from where I lay. My clothes were soaked through with seawater, and I didn't have the strength to stand. Still on my back, wringing the water out of them in long twists, I answered.

"My heart's hurt."

"Then you're fine."

His blunt reply reached my ears. Why was everyone down here so cold? Too long under the sea? Shin Haeryang came over without a sound. I thought he meant to help me up and held out a hand, but he unwound the parachute line from my body as if by magic and took it back. I groaned my way upright. Yook Geum-yi and Kim Ga-young were locked in a hug, both of them crying.

"Waaaaah, unnie! I thought you were dead!"

"Huuuuh, I thought I was dying too!"

"Ga-young unnie! Why were you locked in that room all by yourself? Waaah! You said if something like this happened you'd bolt like lightning and get yourself out!"

"The door wouldn't open! Huuuuh! The door! It just wouldn't open! Waaah! Everybody else's must have! Only mine didn't! I was screaming for help, and they all ran off to get on the escape pods by themselves! Waaaaah! They heard me screaming to be saved and they still ran! Huuuh!"

Through the sobs, Kim Ga-young got the story out. A tremendous impact had hit all at once, and she'd rolled off the bed onto the floor in the middle of reading. Then someone had tripped the emergency alarm and the forced unlock, and she'd heard every door opening—except, for whatever reason, hers.

She'd pounded on the door and shouted to be let out. People had murmured on the other side and tried to open it, and after that all she heard were fleeing footsteps. From then on she had hammered the door and screamed, and started plastering the undersea base bulletin board with posts begging to be saved.

The door still wouldn't open. Water had begun to seep in, and then the power died. Afraid no one would come for a woman trapped alone, she had lied that five people were in the room and kept sending rescue requests.

After crying for a long while, Kim Ga-young thanked everyone for coming to help and apologized for the lie. She had wept so hard in that darkness that her eyes and nose were bright red. I remembered being shut in the quarters myself, back when I had been checking rooms in Baekho-dong all the way to the last one. If I had known then that I could call for rescue with a post—and that more people meant a faster rescue—I would have lied that all one thousand souls on the base were in there with me and written please save us.

Yook Geum-yi's eyes were crimson too. I looked with a quiet warmth at the people who still had some living feeling left in them, pulled on the socks I had taken off, and wrung out my shirt until the water shook free. With only two Korean researchers among more than a thousand people on the base, the two of them must have grown quite close. Baek Ahyoung, watching them with the same warm look I had, said gently,

"Ga-young unnie. Don't cry so much. You'll dehydrate and lose your strength."

Really… were all the engineers like this? I rustled my backpack open, and an orange whale plush pushed its smiling face out. I pulled the towel from beside the doll and draped it over my head. Then, telling myself that getting bitten by a snake once was plenty, I reached in among the things and took out a few pieces of candy.

Was handing these out really for their sake? But if I didn't eat them now, when would I? Let the teeth rot a little. I can fix that. Feeling the illusion of a snake climbing my arm, I yanked my hand out of the bag. Then I passed one sugar-free candy to each of them. I gave my name along with the candy, and Kim Ga-young, a sugar-free grape candy in her mouth, wiped her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. Once she had calmed, she looked at the child lying on the floor and asked,

"Whose kid is that?"

"We don't know either. We picked them up in an empty room in Baekho-dong."

At my light tone, as if we had simply brought an object back with us, Kim Ga-young said, incredulous,

"Minors aren't allowed on the undersea base."

"Neither is seawater."

Seo Jihyuk, chewing a sugar-free plum candy, unwound the parachute line from his waist at a gesture from Shin Haeryang and handed it over. Kim Ga-young, shifting her candy from one cheek to the other, spoke as if she had only just remembered.

"This isn't the time! We have to get to the escape pods and get out right now! Everyone else already escaped!"

One look at Yook Geum-yi's face and I could guess my own well enough. A few seconds of silence passed. Baek Ahyoung said, awkward,

"That's…"

"We've given up on escaping through the pods in Jujak-dong."

Shin Haeryang crunched a sugar-free strawberry candy, shook his wet hair out like a dog, and said,

"We'll make for Cheongryong-dong. It's closer. We take whatever pods are left, or we take the elevator."

"The direct elevator in Jungang-dong?"

"No. First we go up to minus one thousand meters."

"If the direct elevator is intact, that's the simplest way out. Or what about Baekho-dong? It's as close as Cheongryong-dong."

At Kim Ga-young's suggestion, Yook Geum-yi shook her head.

"We came from Baekho-dong."

While the engineers and the researchers debated the fastest way out, I quietly eased open the backpack where I had shut the cat. It hadn't so much as stirred while we were moving, and I wanted to know if it was all right. When I opened the bag, the cat stayed still, then met my eyes.

Maybe it liked tight spaces. It simply remained inside, and I looked at that small muzzle and zipped the backpack shut again. Well-behaved. Unlike the ferocious thing it had been when I stuffed it in, there wasn't even the sound of breathing. Are cats always like this? I had never kept an animal, so I had no idea.

The brief discussion, not even five minutes of it, seemed to be over. They were already preparing to move east, toward Cheongryong-dong. If the pods there were unusable, the plan was to take the Cheongryong-dong elevator up to the 3rd Undersea Base anyway.

From Yook Geum-yi's grumbling, I gathered that the external elevators meant for Jujak-dong had all been crammed into the research center instead. Elevators were essential there, she said. But whenever the researchers had to go up to the surface, or had some piece of official business, they all squeezed into Jungang-dong and used the direct elevator—because you could use the cafes in the Central Sector, and a researcher was happy just to get out of the research center at all. From Geum-yi's telling alone, the place sounded like a prison for researchers. Nah. No way.

I hoisted the child who had been lying there onto my back and slung both backpacks across my front. A little ashamed that I had missed the talk while my mind was elsewhere, I asked Baek Ahyoung beside me,

"What about the direct elevator in Jungang-dong?"

"Too dangerous. It was rejected."

We weren't going to Hyunmu-dong? Why not? Shin Haeryang came over and reached for one of the packs I had slung in front of me. I startled.

"Ah. That one's heavy."

To be precise, there was a cat in it, so it weighed at least six kilograms. Shin Haeryang lifted the pack one-handed as if it were nothing and slung it onto his back. Then, just loud enough for me to hear, he said,

"Is this your pet, Doctor?"

"It smells like an animal."

At those words I was so dumbfounded I let out a dry laugh. A good nose, too. I couldn't have told, not with all that seawater. Now that the two of us were splitting the contraband between us, I walked slowly at Shin Haeryang's side and said,

"I picked it up."

"You do pick up a lot of strange things, Doctor."

I opened my mouth to argue and shut it again. Among the things I had picked up recently, a pack of dead-drunk Russians came to mind. With no sign that he meant to announce to the others that there was an animal here, Shin Haeryang carried the cat-sack and walked on in silence.