Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea-Chapter 153

Seo Jihyuk’s reaction was as expected, and I could only manage a bitter smile. If someone else were experiencing this and I was listening to it from a third-party perspective, I might react similarly, though perhaps a bit more tempered.

Seo Jihyuk whispered to Baek Ae-young. The space wasn’t that large, so their low voices echoed and I could hear everything. Look at his pupils. They’re completely dilated. No wonder he looked so troubled, after all, someone who only looks into people’s mouths for a living can’t be in their right mind. I could tell from the moment he put a drill in my mouth.

Hearing these rude comments, Baek Ae-young slapped Seo Jihyuk’s back with her palm.

“Ow! Ow!”

“Do you want to treat a sick person like that?”

Baek Ae-young looked at me and said one thing, as if feeling complicated.

“…Hah. Hang in there.”

“Excuse me? What do you mean?”

Updat𝓮d fr𝙤m ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com.

“Just… hang in there.”

“O-okay.”

“Life is hard and rough. It’s difficult to live with a clear mind, isn’t it? I understand. I hear there are a lot of good drugs these days.”

I’m not sure what she understands, but that doesn’t seem to be it. Baek Ae-young is going a step further. Heh heh heh. Then… is Baek Ae-young living a life that’s too hard to handle with a clear mind? I tried to somehow salvage my plummeting social image.

“I’ve never done drugs. And I think I’m pretty sane for someone living the same date three times.”

“Not even marijuana?”

“I’ve never tried it.”

When I quickly answered Seo Jihyuk’s suspicious look, additional questions came flying.

“Do you like alcohol by any chance?”

“I only drink beer occasionally.”

“Do you drink one can per minute?”

“…Is it even possible to drink like that? I barely drink one can a week, if that.”

Are they asking if my brain is damaged from alcohol? Are there that many heavy drinkers in this undersea base?

“Is there anything else you take regularly? Diet pills, maybe? Concentration enhancers or sedatives can also mess with your mind. Hasn’t anyone given you something strange, saying it’s good for headaches, toothaches, or muscle pain? Did someone suddenly act friendly and offer you a suspicious drink? Or strange candy or snacks? Or maybe patches you stick on your skin, or unknown perfumes or deodorants. Ah, right. Hair dye too.”

Tumanako perked up at the mention of hair dye, but realizing the question wasn’t directed at him, he closed his mouth and stared intently at me. He does want to dye his hair though.

“I don’t even take vitamin supplements regularly. There’s… nothing like that, I think. The sugar-free candies I shared were brought from Korea.”

For questions that seem to be thrown randomly by Seo Jihyuk, they’re too specific, aren’t they? Moreover, while Seo Jihyuk’s attitude was playful, he was waiting for me to answer. No. Surely not.

“Have these things you just asked about actually happened in the undersea base?”

Seo Jihyuk thought for a moment and then nodded vaguely.

“Well, I won’t give you horrifying examples since you’d be scared. We don’t even have to look far, there’s one guy in our team. Kim Jae-hee. Jae-hee picked up and ate something from somewhere, and he started saying that a feathered snake was flying around his room saying ‘Get ready, get ready.’ He became neurotic and obsessively stored food in his room. He made a fuss about buying parachutes, air tanks, BCD vests, fire extinguishers, makeshift gas masks, and MacGyver knives. He was frantically collecting survivalist items, so we thought he had suddenly become a prepper, but when we talked to him, it turned out that wasn’t the case. He would wake up in the middle of the night, rambling about possibly dying. He even took out three or four life insurance policies suddenly.”

What’s survivalism? Seems like there’s a separate term for it. Isn’t my normal life survivalist? I don’t think I’ve ever been death-oriented.

“As it turned out, some crazy Canadian guy gave him adhesive tattoo stickers or something as a gift when he retired. After he put long ones on both forearms, every time he applied them, LSD periodically entered his skin, and his mind went completely haywire.”

“LSD?”

Isn’t that a drug? I thought I had misheard for a moment, but Seo Jihyuk nodded and confirmed.

“Spouting nonsense about the age of destruction already arriving and whatnot, he was tap dancing around. He ended up getting hospitalized on Daehan Island. If he had been unlucky, he could have become a junkie.”

Is it okay for such dangers to be hidden in the workplace? In my work life, I only worried about caffeine addiction from drinking too much coffee, I never once worried about drug addiction. People usually worry about things like carbohydrate addiction or sugar addiction.

“Is that Jae-hee person alright?”

Please tell me he’s okay. Baek Ae-young frowned and answered my question.

“He’s fine now. He’s usually a person who smiles a lot, you know. People around him didn’t notice quickly. He already had a few tattoos and piercings normally. We should have thought it was strange that he was smiling too much.”

Is smiling too much a sign of danger too? Is there anything less dangerous in this undersea base? It seems like ordinary people like me shouldn’t be here at all. Suddenly, I remembered one of the rooms belonging to the Engineering Team D members.

“I guess the room piled with food is that person’s room.”

Was it Room 27 or 28? It was like a food storage room.

“We still haven’t eaten all the stuff he bought then. Thankfully it’s sterilized food. Did that parachute sell?”

Seo Jihyuk thought for a moment at Baek Ae-young’s question and then shook his head.

“I don’t think anyone’s bought that yet.”

“There’s a flea market on Daehan Island once a month where people sell things they don’t need. Jae-hee keeps trying to sell the gas masks and stuff, but no one buys them.”

Who would buy a parachute or gas mask here? Since it’s an island, it seems to take quite a while for packages and cargo to come and go, so it would be difficult to return something if you make a wrong purchase. Seo Jihyuk picked up the thread of the conversation from somewhere.

“Anyway, it’s a place where you need to be careful to keep your sanity. To begin with, there are several parts of your story that don’t make sense.”

“Which parts did you find strange?”

Seo Jihyuk thought for a moment after hearing my question and then said.

“You said I hurt my leg, but these two didn’t abandon me?”

Baek Ae-young smiled amusedly at Seo Jihyuk and said.

“You got shot~ You got shot~ You’re stupid~ You’re stupid~ We’ve already dumped you in a corner about a hundred times and ran away quickly.”

“Boo-hoo. That’s too much. …Well, let’s set that aside. A diamond bigger than a human fist? Come on. It must be zircon. How could there be a diamond that big? And where in the undersea base are there over four thousand stairs?”

“There are.”

The answer came from Shin Hae-ryang, who had been quiet. Seo Jihyuk asked the team leader in surprise.

“Huh? There are such stairs?”

“I heard they temporarily made stairs while building the Third Undersea Base.”

“But they’re not on the blueprints.”

“I don’t know about that. …Did you visit the Second Undersea Base exhibition hall yesterday?”

“I repaired a few disconnected lights with Jihyun. There wasn’t much inside. Just a few rocks? It took less than an hour to repair.”

“I see.”

And Shin Hae-ryang said nothing more. Even though asking about this probably wouldn’t lead to anything good, I couldn’t help but ask. It seemed that if I didn’t ask, the other person would never express their opinion. It’s good to be tight-lipped, but it’s extremely unsettling not knowing what they’re thinking. If I were this person’s team member, I think I would have been quite frustrated.

“What do you think, Mr. Shin Hae-ryang?”

“About what?”

“My story.”

Shin Hae-ryang looked at me silently and then said.

“It doesn’t seem to be a lie.”

“Is that so.”

Oh! He thinks my stories aren’t lies! Among the four people who just heard the same story, one thinks I’m a junkie, and another thinks I’m mentally ill.

A glimmer of joy welled up in my heart for a moment. And then silence fell. Shin Hae-ryang didn’t say anything more. He said it wasn’t a lie, but it doesn’t seem to mean he trusts or believes it. Should I be grateful that his attitude isn’t telling me not to bullshit?

“Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain a bit more?”

“…The only people who can request explanations or anything from me are my team members. Or if I owed you a favor.”

Was there a time when Shin Hae-ryang would have owed me a favor? I asked all sorts of stupid questions and trembled in fear. If anything, the people who were with me seemed to have had a hard time acting as guides and caretakers.

“I don’t think there was anything… where you would have owed me a favor, Mr. Hae-ryang.”

“According to what you said, you supported Jihyuk up the stairs without any compensation, didn’t you?”

“Well, that’s something you naturally have to do to get out, isn’t it?”

“…You told me the information you believe in without any lies. But looking at the current situation, there are quite a few parts that don’t match with what happened before, and there’s not enough time to verify or distinguish the truth of each one.”

“Ah. Yes. I see.”

“I won’t rely on what you’ve said, but I won’t ignore it either.”

I was a bit surprised, perhaps because I didn’t expect Shin Hae-ryang to listen to my story to this extent. The most realistic reactions seem to come from Seo Jihyuk or Baek Ae-young. Is it because he’s an agnostic?

Tumanako, who had been listening to the conversation while chewing on candy, was clicking the candy against his teeth. He seemed to be testing the hardness of the candy with his teeth. I wanted to stop him because it’s a bad habit for teeth, but seeing tear stains around his eyes, I held my tongue. Tumanako, who seemed to have shaken off his depression a bit by focusing on something else, said to me.

“It sounds like a myth from our side.”

“What kind of story?”

Something about escaping from this situation? Or about being able to run away? …This is the problem. When desperate situations come, people try to rely even on mythical old stories.

“Originally, they say the sun moved much faster than it does now. It moved incredibly quickly. The sun crossed the sky so fast that people couldn’t finish their work during the daylight hours.”

As he spoke, Tumanako quickly moved his long finger in a parabola from side to side, as if mimicking the sun’s movement.

“So there’s a Maori myth about capturing the sun to slow it down and give the world more time. Listening to your story reminded me of that.”

Tumanako’s finger moved slowly. With a crunching sound, Tumanako’s teeth crushed the candy.

Navigate to Other Chapters