As they followed the blood-stained footprints, Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyuk were looking at a woman sitting next to the washing machine in the corner of the laundry room. The woman was surrounded by all sorts of blood-stained clothes. The smell of blood permeating the floor was giving them headaches.
Shin Haeryang didn’t say anything upon seeing us enter the room, but Seo Jihyuk frowned after seeing us, saying, “Why did you bother coming here instead of waiting outside?”
Before I could reply, Yoo Geum-yi squeaked, exclaiming, “The hallway is scarier!” her voice trembling.
At her words, Seo Jihyuk opened his mouth in astonishment and started complaining, “You’ve only been waiting for 2 minutes. Both of you are unnecessarily scared.”
‘Only 2 minutes? To me, it felt like 20 minutes.’
As I approached the seated woman, Shin Haeryang looked up at me.
“It seems she died from excessive bleeding. She’s Victoria from Engineering Team A.”
‘Engineering Team A consisted of Canadian nationals, if I remember it right. It appeared that she had injured her leg, but despite wrapping it in clothes and pressing down on it, she couldn’t stem the bleeding. She’s no longer breathing. Her heart’s not beating either.’
As I announced her death for the second time today, Shin Haeryang took a picture and covered the woman’s head with one of the large towels scattered around the laundry room.
Yoo Geum-yi sighed in relief as the corpse’s face was covered by the towel. She then turned her head away, making an effort not to look in the direction of the deceased’s whereabouts and asked Seo Jihyuk with an uneasy look, “Can someone die like that from a thigh injury?”
“If the femoral artery is severed, even a surgeon couldn’t save you after 15 minutes.”
Looking around, there was nothing that could have been used as a weapon. In a laundry room like this, the only things available were clothes and towels left behind by those who had used the washing machine, and a few half-opened hoodies, possibly left behind by someone. It seemed that she had walked here injured, entered the laundry room to stop the bleeding, and died.
Yoo Geum-yi frowned as she pondered over Seo Jihyuk’s words. “So, she was attacked and died within 15 minutes’ distance from the laundry room?”
Seo Jihyuk merely scratched the back of his head. There was no place to hide in the laundry room. With this affirmative silence, Yoo Geum-yi started staring at the laundry room door we had entered through as if someone might burst in at any moment. I moved away from the corpse and approached Seo Jihyuk.
“Did you know her?”
At my question, Seo Jihyuk frowned. “There are less than 100 engineers here. After about three months, you get to know everyone’s faces and names. Team leader, Isn’t she a close friend of a girl from our team…?”
“She was close with Kang Soo-jung from our team.” Completing Seo Jihyuk’s failed recollection, Shin Haeryang got up and handed me one of the hoodies on the table along with a pair of training pants, ordering, “Change into these.”
“But… they’re someone else’s clothes.”
In response to my reflexive objection, Shin Haeryang shook his head. “You’ve lost too much body heat.”
And with that, he swiftly took the two backpacks on my back and left the laundry room. Yoo Geum-yi followed him out, and Seo Jihyuk, urging me to hurry up, also left the laundry room. Well, Shin Haeryang, Seo Jihyuk, and Baek Ae-young were all wearing suits from head to toe, so it didn’t matter even if they got wet.
I started to unbutton my wet shirt one by one, but halfway through I just let them all fly off and took it off. As I took off my wet jeans and socks soaked in water, I finally realized how soaked I was. Just not wearing wet clothes gave me an immense sense of liberation. At the same time, I felt cold. I turned my head looking for a dry towel and felt a shiver run down my spine.
Because where I turned my head, I felt a tremendous presence. The thought of being in the room with a corpse, sitting with a towel over its head, made me want to bolt out of there. No matter how much I tried to ignore it, my gaze naturally drifted towards the corpse’s face. Even though the face was covered by a towel and could not be seen, my gaze seemed to be looking for the face of the deceased.
There was only one corpse and me in this room. It was a relief that Shin Haeryang had covered the face; otherwise, I would have screamed and ran out, unable to bear the goosebumps rising on my body. ‘Do dead people naturally have such a large presence?’ I held back a slew of curses and simply wiped the moisture off my body with a towel left next to the dryer.
Then I put on a light blue hoodie and black training pants. I gave up on the underwear and socks because they were too wet. I threw away my socks and wore wet shoes barefoot, but wearing dry clothes made me feel much better than before. ‘I don’t know whose clothes they are, but I’ll wear them gratefully. If I ever meet you, I’ll compensate you. Please let me borrow them just this once.’
As soon as I put on the clothes, I felt a shiver run through my body again. With a feeling that someone was about to grab the back of my head, I ran out of the laundry room. Outside the laundry room, Seo Jihyuk, Shin Haeryang, and Yoo Geum-yi were waiting for me, looking surprised at my almost tumbling exit from the laundry room. Yoo Geum-yi jumped up at the sight, and Seo Jihyuk stroked his surprised chest and said incredulously, “Did the corpse get up or something?”
“No. No. Nothing happened.”
“Let’s go…”
After shooting me a look for a few seconds, Shin Haeryang started off without a word.
I had felt weird earlier when Yoo Geum-yi praised that wearing bright colors, like what I had on now, made me look much neater and harder to dress than the striped shirt I had been wearing previously. That striped shirt had been my favorite, too. We walked towards the exit port, being careful not to step on the bloodstains on the floor.
In the distance, I saw the door to the exit port. To keep my mind off the pool of blood and the dead body I had seen not long ago, I focused on the approaching door, staring at it intently. Now that I looked at it, the doors to the laundry room, bathroom, and living quarters were all different.
It seemed that sliding doors were used in places where complete sealing was necessary. Seo Ji Hyuk heard my thoughts and corrected me. It wasn’t a sliding door style. It was like the door of an airplane that opened to the side. Moreover, he explained, doors that opened automatically were too heavy to be opened manually. They were designed this way to withstand high pressure.
I had been here for five days, and whether the door opened to the side, upwards, or downwards, or if it was the type to turn the handle to open, I had used it without thinking much. Just assuming there must be some reason for it. But now, I wondered if I had been too thoughtless in using the facility.
When I shared my curiosity about the doors with Yoo Geum-yi, she said that even the doors at the Main Research Center were slightly different. Some doors inside the lab were transparent, and some doors were thicker than 7cm. I remembered Kim Ga Young’s room door when I heard Seo Jihyuk’s grumbling about how well he knew the doors here were breaking down.
‘…Perhaps it would be safer to remove the door in places where privacy is not required.’
Shin Haeryang cut off Seo Jihyuk’s chatter when we were just a few meters away from the exit port.
“As you’ve seen what had happened in the laundry room, the area near the exit port could be dangerous. This time as well, Jihyuk and I will go in first. Come in when we signal you.”
“What kind of signal?”
Shin Haeryang seemed a bit flustered by Yoo Geum-yi’s sparkling eyes. “We’ll just call you in normally.”
“Oh. So, it’s not like knocking on the closed door?”
Seo Jihyuk chuckled at Yoo Geum-yi’s words. “Like, knock twice if you shouldn’t come in, and knock three times if you should?”
“Oh, I like that.”
‘Come to think of it, this was the first time Seo Ji Hyuk, who had been chattering a lot, had laughed since discovering the body in the laundry room. Is it that he talks a lot when he’s anxious?’
Only then did I realize that Yoo Geum-yi had lightened the mood of the serious group with just a few words. It was one of the skills I lacked. Besides, it felt like I had become a supporting character in an action movie, which excited me a little.
I spoke with a smile, “That’s good. we’ll go in when you knock three times.”
“If there’s no signal or sound, or if we knock twice, run away immediately and join Baek Ae Young. She will understand if you explain the situation and say you are giving up on escaping through the East district.”
The atmosphere turned heavy in an instant at Shin Haeryang’s words. ‘That’s quite a skill,’ I watched as a single word from a blunt man changed the mood of the people who were just starting to lighten up. ‘Definitely a skill I don’t have. And, I’m not good at handling such a heavy atmosphere.’
“Instead, if you can escape right away, please tap on the door and play a song.”
“…… Alright.”
Unexpectedly, Shin Haeryang, who I thought would refuse, gave a firm reply and handed back the two backpacks he had been holding. I shouldered the two backpacks I was now used to. As for Seo Jihyuk, he entrusted Baek Ae-young’s heavy food bag to Yoo Geum-yi. Lastly, after checking the pad, Shin Haeryang and Seo Jihyuk walked towards the escape port.
Yoo Geum-yi and I stood far away, pressed the button next to the escape port door, and watched as the two walked in. As the two entered the escape port, the door closed immediately.
Whether it was me carrying the two bags, or Yoo Geum-yi carrying Baek Ae-young’s bag, we both felt like starving children waiting for their parents to return home. ‘I hate waiting, but I had to wait several times today.’
As we were waiting and staring at the door, Yoo Geum-yi straightened the strap of her overturned bag on her shoulder and said, “But I feel a bit relieved thanks to the others.”
“Right? If I had discovered a body in the laundry room alone, I would’ve screamed and run out.”
“Me too. I probably would’ve screamed louder. It’s such a relief to have composed people around.”
“That’s true. Not only Baek Ae-young-ssi, but those two also didn’t even flinch when they saw a human corpse.”
“Aren’t they incredibly composed? I think they’re really amazing.”
Just then, we heard a loud thumping sound from the door. It sounded like someone was kicking the thick door. We waited for the third noise. However, no matter how long we waited, there was no sound.
That’s strange?
‘Now that I think about it, we didn’t specify how long we should wait between knocks. Why didn’t they knock a third time? Should we wait longer? Was it right to knock three times? Was it two knocks to enter? I’m sure they knocked twice? Why aren’t Seo Jihyuk and Shin Haeryang laughing and opening the door surprised?’
At that moment, Yoo Geum-yi unexpectedly grabbed my hand before tugging it.
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