LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 119
Spark (1)
by BlossomTL
Beacon of Light in the Dark Sea
I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. Trying to act nonchalant, I asked Kang Soojung:
“How is Deputy Team Leader Kang’s relationship with this Pamela Brown? Are you close?”
“Huh? My relationship with her is fine. She’s good at teaching and has a nice personality. I didn’t know this, but apparently I’m the type who sleeps like a herbivore. It seems I subconsciously think it’s dangerous to fall into deep sleep. So I keep waking up and falling asleep again······.”
Kang Soojung, who had been talking while looking at her pad, suddenly looked up at me in surprise. Then, with a seemingly kind smile, she asked me:
“What kind of person do you think Pamela Brown is, to ask such a question?”
“Uh······.”
I hadn’t anticipated how difficult it would be to tell someone to their face that the person they knew was actually a cult follower worshipping an insane ideology. There’s a world of difference between telling someone the truth and realizing it yourself.
Kang Soojung quickly spoke as if trying to ease my concern:
“That person isn’t as valuable to me as the Engineer A Team. So you can just tell me.”
“Whew. Since when has our Deputy Team Leader cared so much about team members? This is the first time I’ve heard such words while working here.”
“You? How well do you know Pamela Brown without me knowing?”
“I just know her face. Just her face.”
Seemingly displeased with Seo Jihyuk’s answer, Kang Soojung turned her head back to her pad and asked while pointing vigorously:
“How do you know her face?”
Seo Jihyuk answered Kang Soojung’s question, seeming a bit flustered:
“I’ve just seen her face a few times passing by in the Central Zone. That’s all. It’s not like I have any interest in her, unlike some other guys.”
“What kind of interest?”
“You know, how when a new woman comes to their work area, those guys scan her face and figure with their eyes, wondering if she might be their potential girlfriend. And while they don’t give a rat’s ass about what she’s saying, they pretend to be serious insomnia patients and say things like ‘Can I sleep in the counselor’s room tonight~’.”
Kang Soojung looked up from her pad at Seo Jihyuk and frowned.
“······Every time you talk about men’s courtship ecosystem in that tone, my stomach acid rises and my fists clench automatically.”
“Deputy Team Leader, you know who I’m interested in.”
“······Doctor. While I’m not, Jihyuk also says he has no particular connection with Pamela.”
The words “Who is Seo Jihyuk interested in?” rose to my throat, but I held them back. That’s too personal a question. It seems neither of them is a close friend or lover of Pamela. Then she must be someone only associated with Shin Haeryang or Baek Ae-young.
“Pamela Brown is a follower of Infinity Church. I saw her walking around the Second Underwater Base armed with a gun.”
“That’s news to me. There was no hint of that in her content or the conversations we had while eating together.”
Hearing this, Seo Jihyuk laughed and said:
“It’s not like religious people walk around with their beliefs written on their faces.”
“You’re right. I wish we could make them write it clearly on their foreheads.”
Despite hearing that someone they knew was a cult follower, surprisingly, neither Kang Soojung nor Seo Jihyuk denied or refuted my words. I’m not sure if they believe me or if they’re just not expressing their current novels on fɾēewebnσveℓ.com.
As we walked, the floor occasionally shook like an earthquake with rumbling sounds, so we sometimes stopped or waited briefly before moving on.
As we were about to turn into the South District corridor, Seo Jihyuk, who was walking ahead, suddenly stopped us. He suddenly grabbed my shoulder, turning me halfway around.
“The armed religious group you mentioned in the broadcast is Infinity Church, right?”
“Yes.”
Kang Soojung turned off the pad she had been looking at and asked me:
“What kind of religion is it?”
“Their goal is to turn back time, but they seem to call sharks friends, carry guns, and collect large jewels.”
“These cult bastards are up to all sorts of things. Did you hear who the leader is?”
“······Well, I don’t know that.”
Come to think of it, I don’t know who the leader is. Even the Infinity Church followers I’ve met so far haven’t mentioned the leader, and I haven’t been curious about who the leader is until now.
Well, with events continuously happening and being in a constantly unsafe state, there hasn’t been time to think about anything. You need some peace of mind to be able to think.
“You seem to know bits and pieces of information.”
Kang Soojung briefly assessed my current state. I was reminded of Nikita, who had grabbed my collar and said I was both useful and useless. Seo Jihyuk looked at the window and then told us to start moving. Kang Soojung asked Seo Jihyuk:
“Why did we stop here?”
“A huge ghostfish passed by the window. What if you two screamed when you saw it?”
As Seo Jihyuk made a fuss while measuring an enormous size with his arms, Kang Soojung shook her head.
“Are the doctor and I children?”
Seo Jihyuk started walking forward again. Kang Soojung began walking while checking her pad again. I wonder if she doesn’t get motion sickness looking at an electronic device while walking like that.
After a few steps, I remembered that I had seen Angela Malone’s hair, the head of the Deep-Sea Life Center, at that window. Seo Jihyuk, who occasionally looked back while walking forward, made eye contact with me as I silently pointed at the window. Seo Jihyuk’s index finger lightly touched his lips and then fell away. ······There must have really been hair there.
When we had walked more than half of the corridor leading to the South District, Kang Soojung said to me worriedly:
“I’ve been checking the underwater base bulletin board constantly, but Ga-young isn’t posting any messages requesting rescue. When will they be posted?”
“What? That can’t be. Weren’t there posts saying she was trapped in Room 77 of the South District?”
“No. There aren’t any.”
I took out my pad from my backpack. I still wasn’t used to not having to be careful about the cat and snake when taking things out of my backpack. As soon as I turned on the pad and quickly checked the underwater base bulletin board, the posts that Kim Ga-young had almost spammed before were nowhere to be found. I stared stupidly at the bulletin board and said in confusion:
“Huh? Why aren’t they here?”
This can’t be right. As I recklessly flipped through the posts on the pad, Seo Jihyuk calmly said to me and Kang Soojung:
“They should be there, right? Why, why aren’t the posts here?”
“Let’s get out of the corridor first. I don’t want to stay long in an open space with nothing to hide behind.”
Seo Jihyuk forcibly took the pad from me, who was distracted looking at it. Then he started striding quickly down the corridor.
Why. Why are there no rescue request posts? Did the water rise faster than before? Was there not even enough time to write a post asking for help? Did something even more terrible happen? Did she lose consciousness in the water-filled room, or is she injured or in a dangerous situation to the point where she can’t write a post? Is the pad broken? All sorts of thoughts chased each other, and my chest felt like it would burst from tension.
I realized I had stopped breathing and barely managed to take two deep breaths. ······No. She must be alive. Kim Ga-young wouldn’t die so easily. Let’s try to think a bit more positively.
Maybe Kim Ga-young managed to open the room door by herself. ······You know that’s impossible. It was a door that took three people to open. What’s going on? Why aren’t there any rescue request posts?!
·····Calm down. The reason there are no posts is that Ga-young doesn’t need to request rescue from others right now. She didn’t write rescue request posts because she’s in a safe situation. Okay. Then, why wouldn’t Kim Ga-young need to ask others for rescue? Why did Kim Ga-young have to write posts asking to be saved on the underwater base bulletin board in the first place?
That’s because the people in the South District desperately ignored Kim Ga-young’s cries for help as they passed by, trying to board the escape pod first. People who paid attention to my broadcast know they shouldn’t board the escape pod. Maybe, just maybe, those people rescued Kim Ga-young. ······Or someone deleted all the posts Kim Ga-young wrote.
When we arrived at the South District, Seo Jihyuk returned the pad to me, who was panting from running. Cold sweat was running down my back, but even after checking again, there were still no posts at all.
Since Kang Soojung also said she didn’t see any rescue request posts, it seems my eyes aren’t especially malfunctioning. It was around the time Seo Jihyuk approached the vermilion bird statue with its wings spread and was touching it. Kang Soojung asked me, who was lost in thought while looking at the pad:
“Should we go back? Or should we continue to Room 77 of the South District?”
What if I decide to go back and end up ignoring Kim Ga-young dying alone in a small, flooded room? ······But what if we go to Room 77 of the South District and no one’s there? If the room is empty when there are no rescue request posts, the three of us will have entered a dark, flooded dormitory room for no purpose.
I took my eyes off the pad and looked far away towards the research center where the barrier wall had come down. Then I looked at the corridor we had walked through and the path to the South District dormitory.ƒreewebɳovel.com
As I failed to make a quick decision, Seo Jihyuk left Kang Soojung and me here and went towards the research center, tapped the barrier wall a couple of times, and said as he came back:
“We can’t go that way.”
“Why not?”
“Judging by the pressure written on the barrier wall, it’s water right beyond the wall. If we open the barrier wall door, this place instantly becomes a water park.”
Kang Soojung frowned and said:
“I don’t know who lowered the barrier wall, but if they hadn’t, this place would already be a water park. I guess most of the people in the Deep-Sea Life Center are dead? Didn’t you say it was a torpedo that attacked the research center?”
Angela Malone must have lowered the barrier wall near the South District with her pad authority and died.
“Huh? Yes.”
I feel dizzy. I went this way before. It’s not that we can’t go because it’s flooded. Surely before, the research center was fine, so I ran away from the gunfire.
·····Come to think of it, Angela’s corpse I saw then was in bad shape, but it wasn’t exposed to 301 atmospheres at -3000m underwater. What’s going on here? Does the torpedo blast range change with each iteration?