Spare the Teeth

Room 38 in Baekho-dong was a typical compact studio: a bed, a desk, a chair, and a wardrobe. Whether no one else had used it, or it had already been cleaned, the room was spotless from the moment I arrived. Baekho-dong itself, I was told, was the newest building on the base aside from the research quarter, Jujak-dong.

Even five days later, the flutter of having a room of my own still lived in my chest. It was a narrow space made of nothing but a bed, a desk, a chair, and a wardrobe, and yet the moment I lay down I was the happiest man in the world. Why did lying down feel this good? My body went looking for the soft bedding of its own accord, and I found myself wondering why human beings were obliged to spend their lives walking on two legs.

If I had enough money, would I still work? I didn't know. No matter how I turned it over, labor that wasn't for the sake of earning seemed as if it would be the happy kind. If I were rich, I would first press a sum into my mother's hands, pay my younger brother's university tuition in full, and then lie on the bed and never get up. I rolled this way and that across the mattress, brainwashing myself that this, too, counted as stretching, until the thought that I really ought to brush my teeth slowly levered me upright.

The 4th Undersea Base itself was built in the shape of an enormous cross. To the north lay Hyunmu-dong, where the mining technicians lived alongside their mining robots; to the east, Cheongryong-dong, home of the engineering teams; to the south, Jujak-dong, packed with researchers and research facilities; and to the west, Baekho-dong, where resident staff like me—specialists, cleaners, cooks—kept their quarters.

Each of the four sectors held lodgings, facilities, all manner of equipment, escape pods, showers, a laundry room, and lounges. In the early days, I had heard, people kept their rooms on Daehando at Level Zero, came down to the undersea base to work, and went back up to Daehando to sleep.

Once the base began running shifts around the clock, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, temporary quarters were built inside it, and as the facilities expanded those quarters became proper housing. In time, most of the personnel who worked beneath the sea stopped living on Daehando at all and simply lived down here.

Before I signed on, I had agreed to the collection of data on the mental and physical changes that came with living inside the base. The records of the thousand or so people at this North Pacific Undersea Base would, in all likelihood, become someone's research material, or feed the construction of the Atlantic Undersea Base to come. While I was here I was also supposed to gather data on the dental condition of the people living in the undersea base, though far fewer of them had come pouring in than I expected.

Most seemed to be on four teams rotating through eight-hour shifts, and unless my hours happened to line up with theirs, they didn't come. Nearly all of their time off went to sleep and meals, and since the internet reached this far down, plenty of them spent it on dramas and films.

There were people who made calls, played games, or—just as Kang Soojeong had said—exercised, and there seemed to be quite a few of them. I had meant to take up exercise as a new hobby. My new hobby turned out to be the aquarium inside the base where they kept the jellyfish.

Some research team, I had heard, was raising jellyfish down here for a study. The first thought that struck me was that no one could possibly have the heart to keep the things alive. Watching them flash and glimmer, though, was as dazzling as the lights on a Christmas tree. I would think how beautiful they were, drifting through the water, and then some practical worry would surface—how did anyone even clean that tank?—and I would head somewhere else.

Lately my route had settled into a ritual. I brushed my teeth at the clinic, walked to the aquarium to look at the jellyfish, spat the last of the foam into a sink in a Jungang-dong restroom, looked at the jellyfish again, and only then went back to my room. It was a sight I could never have seen, and a luxury I could never have had, anywhere but an undersea base. I scrubbed with the toothbrush and stared at my pad. In five seconds, unless something urgent came up, I would officially be on holiday. Toothbrush still in my mouth, pad in hand, I left the clinic and started walking.

Four. Three. Two. One. Zero. The instant it hit zero, On Duty flipped to On Leave.

Leave. Ah. What a sweet word. This wasn't merely Resting because the work was finished. It was truly On Leave. I let out a long, satisfied breath. Too good. I was glad I wasn't on a four-shift rotation like the others. Four teams covering four shifts wasn't a bad system, of course, but a human being who had grown used to five days of work and two days of rest was simply more comfortable when the holiday was given to him as its own thing.

In exchange, I didn't get the ten days every three months that only the shift workers received. I could envy them when that time came. For now, the holiday in front of me was entirely too good. I was on my way to the laundry with Noel, the whale plush my patients had worked half to death, meaning to wash the doll along with my clothes.

Once the laundry was done, I would go to the beach. Did they sell beer near the shore? I hoped so. I wanted to walk the waterline with a beer in my hand. Had someone said they didn't sell alcohol on the artificial island? Even sparkling water would do. I was turning that over when a voice came from the utility room right beside the laundry.

"You think you're worth that much!"

A rough voice. When I turned my head, all I could see was a man's back. Only after the cursing reached my ears did I register, of all things, that my interpreter translated profanity too. The man, who looked to be over a hundred and eighty centimeters, staggered and gave ground, and only then did I see the woman standing in front of him.

Before he could so much as raise both arms into a guard, she drove a fist into his jaw. She hit him so hard that his head, which I had been seeing in profile, snapped up at a right angle. As if the fist itself hadn't spent its anger, it slammed into his unguarded solar plexus. There was no time to intervene. In an instant a grown man was stretched out on the floor.

The one who had thrown the punches was a small woman, perhaps a hundred and sixty centimeters tall. She wore long training pants and a short-sleeved T-shirt, her hair tied back in a single tail, and she was as quick as a squirrel. I stood there with my mouth stupidly hanging open, having just witnessed an assault, and the woman—the back of her hand faintly split—came toward me.

The undersea base had CCTV in every sector, so there was practically no such thing as a blind spot, but when I craned my neck like a crane to check, the place where the two of them stood sat just outside the camera. Was I about to be dealt with as a witness? I took one step back. The woman lifted both palms, smiled brightly, and said, a little sheepish:

"Hello."

She was speaking clear Korean. She had probably chosen it after seeing the title in my hand, Undersea Base Guidebook, Korean Edition. No matter how I replayed it, the man had taken a one-sided beating, thrashed like a dog, and passed out. She came closer at a light, quick step.

"I don't recognize your face. You can't have been here long."

"Ah… yes. Hello. I'm Park Moohyun."

Only after the words were out did it cross my mind that I might have been better off shutting my mouth and running. I couldn't help it. For five days I had been greeting, on reflex, anyone whose eyes met mine.

"Baek Ahyoung. It's nice to meet you."

She offered her hand, and I took it before I quite meant to. I pretended not to notice the bead of blood on the scraped back of it. I didn't want to let go of that hand, in case the fist came flying, but the handshake ended at a length that wasn't awkward, and then I made the request that mattered most.

"Um… when you hit someone, please avoid the teeth."

I was the only dentist on this undersea base, and on Daehando. Baek Ahyoung waved her small hand, as if I had misunderstood.

"Sorry? No. I'm not the sort of person who beats someone for no reason."

I had seen something twenty seconds ago. I couldn't believe it.

"That… gentleman."

"A woman, living the way we do, picks up all sorts of reasons to use her fists."

Right. For one very brief moment I nearly let it pass, on the assumption that there had been a just cause.

"Doesn't he need medical help?"

I asked it while looking at the man, who had gone and lain down quietly on the floor. She shook out her hand and gave a light shake of her head. Baek Ahyoung herself might not need help. The man who looked unconscious seemed to need it desperately.

"Ms. Baek, are you by any chance an engineer on Team A?"

"Yes. You're the new dentist, aren't you?"

"Yes. That's right."

So Engineer Team A was a place that settled things with fists. Either that, or the undersea base's boxing team was simply named Engineer Team A.

"You're the most famous person on the base right now, Doctor."

"Because I'm new?"

"That too. Nobody really thought a dental clinic would actually open in a place this cramped. This isn't the kind of place that builds whatever you ask for."

"Is that so? …How is life on the undersea base? I'm curious."

I said it while indicating the fallen man with my eyes. I thought the question had two meanings. Baek Ahyoung gave a wry smile and shook her head.

"I'm a bit past it, these days."

"Why?"

"You'll find out if you stay here. I'll come in for a cleaning later. For now, go on ahead."

"There's an injured person."

What if I left him there and he died on the spot? When I refused to vanish the way she wanted and kept standing my ground, Baek Ahyoung let out a long sigh. The sigh seemed to catch my small courage square in the body and knock it flat.

"He was talking shit at me, and he threatened me because his body's bigger than mine."

"If we go by your account, it sounds as if he was entirely in the wrong. …Still. He won't die like that, will he?"

I said it looking at his back, flopped on the floor like a frog. Baek Ahyoung answered coldly.

"He won't die. Honestly, I handled this one quite gently."

Terrifying. His nose looked smashed. Had the first punch gone to the nose? I couldn't tell about the ribs. Having watched a fist drive into a solar plexus, I nodded with tremendous awkwardness.

"…If a fistfight is the gentle method, what does the rough and vicious method look like?"

"Well. Suddenly not being on the undersea base anymore."

I couldn't hide how appalled I was. Was this place, in fact, a den where violence was routine, and where an ordinary person like me could be swept into it by nothing but bad luck?

"Are the engineers gangsters?"

"Oh. Please say exactly that to the Chinese team and the Japanese team, too. Their rate of accidental deaths is insane. Oh, and Canada and Australia. Those ones play dirty on the quiet."

"…What are you going to do with that man?"

"There's nothing to do. I'll kick him in the side a few more times, dump him here, and go. When he wakes up he'll find his own room. Or he'll go to the hospital."

I wanted, desperately, to run. Not because I was afraid of the person swinging the fists, but because I hated standing beside someone who could do violence to a person as if it were nothing. If I left Baek Ahyoung here, though, I didn't know what would happen. The man stretched out on the floor might spring up in an instant and come at her in the name of revenge, or she might wreck him past a broken nose and broken ribs.

"…Come with me."

At that she looked at me, thought for a moment, and nodded. I took the cleanest-looking towel from my laundry and held it out so she could wipe the back of her hand. She looked at the towel and shook her head.

"A towel with blood on it. Washing it is a pain, isn't it?"

Was it? I tucked the basket under my arm and went to the café with her. Only on the way did it occur to me that I should have dumped the laundry in the laundry room and come back, and by then it was too late. Along the walk she high-fived the people she met, tapped fists, or put up her middle finger. She must have been something of a celebrity. Nearly everyone we ran into knew her.

Meeting people and hearing voices made the remnants of the violence I had just seen feel as if they were washing off, little by little. Coming out where there was CCTV and plenty of light settled me, at least somewhat. My head, contrary to my heart, was flustered, and when I started to lose the way to the café, Baek Ahyoung guided me as if it were natural.

Her hair, long as a horse's tail, swayed with every stride she took ahead of me. Jungang-dong, in the 4th Undersea Base, had two cafés. One was Red Coral. The other was Agulhas Current. I had no idea where the Agulhas Current was, which probably meant it was not a current of the North Pacific.

I ordered coffee, took both cups, and handed one to Baek Ahyoung. With a warm cup in my hand and a table under me, all of creation felt trivial. I kept turning that feeling over and, inwardly, drew several long breaths. She looked at the guidebook on top of my laundry basket and asked:

"Who gave you that book?"

"I only had the English edition and said I was in a bind, and Seo Jihyuk was kind enough to help me."

"As far as I know, they only printed about ten copies and handed them out to the engineers. I was curious when I saw you had one."

"Did the leader of Engineer Team A make it?"

"Uh… I know he contracted the translation out. I heard he paid quite a lot to get the quality right. A few copies probably went to the naval base, too."

"I see. I've been reading it to good effect, thanks to that."

"If you meet Team Leader Shin later, tell him. He might like it."

Then silence closed over us. While I sipped my coffee and set about treating those hours of horror—the blood, the body on the floor, the sound of breaking bone—Baek Ahyoung chewed her small lip for a long while with the cup in her hand, and then she spoke.

"What just happened. I'd rather Team Leader Shin didn't know."

Did the team leader evaluate his people? Or had Baek Ahyoung already finished someone Shin Haeryang was supposed to handle with his fists?

"Why… is that? I'm asking because I don't know anything."

"I don't want to worry Team Leader Shin. He's delicate."

"…Right."

A tremendous number of words were climbing my throat. Had the people coming into the clinic simply been mispronouncing someone's name, over and over? Or were there several more men called Team Leader Shin?

"I see."

Fists of iron, and a heart of glass—was that it? Or was the body delicate too, and only the fists made of iron? I couldn't tell.

"I've never even seen Team Leader Shin Haeryang. And I would like to treat today as something I didn't see."

She had only been holding her coffee. At my answer, she sighed. Revealing one's age was forbidden here as well, and for East Asians it was forbidden even more strictly. Relief passed over a face that looked young—early twenties, perhaps the middle of them, mid-twenties at the very most. Keeping this story out of the team leader's ear must have been that much of a comfort.

Seo Jihyuk was the same, and so was Baek Ahyoung. They wanted to hide the unethical things they themselves did from their own team leader. Strangely. Shin Haeryang did not seem like a man who lived in any particularly moral way.

"Thank you."

Then she drank the coffee she had only been holding. For a while the only sound was the quiet noise of coffee being sipped. I looked at mine, a thought occurred to me, and I asked.

"They say the beach is beautiful. Would you happen to know how I get there?"

"You can take the Central Elevator and walk from Level Zero, though it takes a while. Or take the Cheongryong-dong elevator or the Hyunmu-dong elevator—they're close to here—up to the 3rd Undersea Base. On the 3rd, turn the corner at the bakery and the elevator to the 2nd Undersea Base is on your left. Ride that up, then take Elevator 3 on Undersea Base 1, and that brings you to Level Zero. Walk a little farther from there and there's the beach."

"…Thank you."

I had no idea what she had just said. I would take the Central Elevator up and do my walking on the surface. Surely I couldn't miss a beach once I was up there. She had probably explained it in as much detail as she could, but right now my only talent was walking as far as the bakery on the 3rd Undersea Base without getting lost. Either that, or making my way up while getting thoroughly lost.

I didn't want to spend the first rest I had earned down here—time as precious as gold—on losing my way. I only wanted to finish this coffee and go back to the laundry room. If that unidentified man was still lying there, I would contact the hospital or call a Medic and see that he was treated. If, as Baek Ahyoung had said, he had already woken and gone somewhere, then I would know nothing about it. If his jaw or his teeth were damaged, he would book himself as my patient.

We were sitting at the table right in front of the café, and I could feel eyes on me. The looks of people passing, or sitting, were enough to make my face itch. I turned my head and met a man's eyes.

He had been waiting for his coffee. Our eyes met, he scowled, and he left. A man drinking coffee two tables over did the same the moment I looked at him. Wondering why, I whipped my head around. Then, in the space of a second, I realized I was not that attractive a human being, and I looked at the woman in front of me.

Baek Ahyoung was, quite literally, as pretty as a doll. Her face was very small, her bangs cut even so they just brushed her eyebrows, and her hair fell ebony-black to her waist. To retie what had come loose, she pulled the tie free, held it in her mouth, and gathered the strands around her forehead and her ears with both hands. She sat so straight that the eye went to her of its own accord.

"The men are staring at me with tremendous passion. I'm afraid a love letter is about to arrive at my room."

At that, she lifted the corner of her mouth and lost the hair tie she had been holding between her lips. Afraid it would fall into the coffee, I snatched it and appointed my hand the official repository for hair ties. She took the tie from my palm and finished tying her hair. A very fine ponytail was the result.

When both the things left to say and the coffee had nearly run out, I stretched and said we ought to get up. Baek Ahyoung nodded, then tipped her coffee—literally—into her mouth in a single swallow. She spoke to me as I stared blankly at the sight.

"Wear sandals to the beach. Lunatics drink beer out there and smash the glass bottles."

And with that she was gone, off toward the far side of the café. I picked up my laundry again and started for the laundry room. The man who had been beaten unconscious was already gone. There wasn't even a bloodstain. Had a cleaning robot come through? If I had arrived only now, I would have thought that nothing had happened at all.

The feeling was a very strange one. All at once the undersea base seemed like an enormous prison. Was violence like this breaking out dozens of times over, in places I knew nothing about? I was turning that thought over as I stepped into the laundry room, and a man in a T-shirt with a large shark across the chest greeted me. I greeted him in return and introduced myself. He was running black clothes and the like in a dryer. I was in the middle of slamming every piece of my laundry into one machine when I pulled the whites back out and ran them in the washer beside it.

I got the machines going, returned to my room, and lay on the bed with the undersea base guidebook in my hands until my arms hurt and I rolled onto my stomach. The very first chapter was how to escape the undersea base. A guidebook, I thought, ought to begin with an introduction to the place, and when I looked the book over I saw that the page numbers were a wreck, as if a chapter that had once been at the very end had been moved to the front in editing. I rolled this way and that on the bed and read.

When I arrived, I had been told the 4th Undersea Base held something like four or five hundred people. If we boarded in order, then, I would not be getting a pod. I pressed my chin down into the pillow.

The print was packed tight. Shin Haeryang must have received the translated materials and then diligently covered them in notes. Looking at a page filled with the guidebook's instructions for escape, and with the criticism of those instructions by someone who had actually read them, I felt sleep come over me of its own accord. At some point I had my head pillowed on the guidebook, and in the dream I swam among the fish, the way a mermaid would.