Chapter 11
At the dock, where the waves swirled and crashed, Yoonhui had come out alone covered with a ripped plastic rain poncho and was starting the sputtering engine.
The fishing boat, fluttering in the waves like an autumn leaf, already looked like it was about to fall to pieces.
Nearby spread the shattered wreckage of a few small boats that had been rotting, eaten away by lichen.
A boat isn’t something that floats on water by nature.
I remembered the refrain I had heard from the villagers.
In the wind and rain, the undulating waves can form unexpected curves, lifting boats up high then sending them crashing down.
A sailor charting a course into wind and waves is no different from a sparrow flying into a typhoon.
Without saying a word, Yoonhui helped me onto the boat.
After letting me take the wheel, she matter-of-factly informed me of the basics.
“This red dot is the boat. The red line is your direction of travel. Keep to that line. Listen carefully. If a wave comes, meet it head-on. It mustn’t hit you from the side. And make sure you don’t turn the wheel too fast. If you remember only that, the boat won’t flip over.”
Yoonhui didn’t bother telling me how to anchor or turn the boat around. She knew that I had no intention of coming back. I nodded, only half paying attention, staring all the while at the island. Hold out just until there. It’s fine to sink, but we have to get there first.
A round windshield wiper spun like an electric fan. The propeller turned, churning up the remains of dead fish. The half-rotten stuff tore like tissue and turned to mush.
Standing on the wharf, Yoonhui sent me off in silence with a look that seemed to say, “What does it matter if it makes sense or not, how can anyone change the mind of a person set on walking straight into hell? I guess it’ll be a different hell to the one she’s lived in. A new hell, if nothing else.”
The waves rose higher than the boat, and tumbled down across the window and onto the deck. With a crash, something collided with one side of the boat. I didn’t care to check on it. Even if the boat did take on water, it only needed to make it a little way.
As I approached the islet, the rash that had come out on my arms spread rapidly up my neck and onto my face.
Red boils appeared on my body, blistered, and burst. My eyes hurt as though they were about to pop, and my scalp felt ready to peel right off my skull.
The pressure in my eyes expanded my pupils, transforming the scenery around me.
The darkness that had obscured everything gave way, and my surroundings became rainbow-colored as though fireworks were going off in every direction.
The driving rain became indistinct and the sky shone so bright that I had to squint.
The sea scattered dazzling light in a kaleidoscope of colors.
The strange rock formations of the craggy islet stood out so clearly it was as though I could reach out and touch them.
The scene was resplendent, more brilliant than anything I had ever seen.
And there, looking my way with its arm draped around the rocky outcrop, I saw it: the vast mountain of a being.
Its body spanned my entire view of the sea. Its sleek skin was coated with ooze, and a fin and webbed flippers and feathers and wings stuck out from its towering body. In its bottomless and unfeeling eyes, there was an abyss like the darkest depths of the sea.
That thing must have been there since the day the volcano erupted and the sea was wrenched out of shape.
It merely couldn’t be sensed with shabby human senses.
We’d stayed oblivious because the light it emitted was outside the visible spectrum.
But the fish, the birds, the insects, and the shellfish all knew.
That’s why they chose to gather at the coast and die, unable to bear the terror.
Those whose bodies changed with the infection must have known too.
When they opened their eyes in the morning, they would have been able to see this thing standing outside their windows.
A being that would drive you crazy, make you flee, make you end your life, or fall to your knees in worship; its terrible presence allowed no other option, no other way to survive.
Right, I had known all along. A smile came to my lips, and I mumbled with perfect certainty, “It was you who spread this plague.”
The disease poured from your body, from your indifferent spite. You lingered there to transform us into your kind, to increase the subjects of your kingdom. Be gone, you monster. Go back to where you came from.
A crash shook the fishing boat, louder than last time. I could hear the bow smashing. Blackened water gurgled and gushed into the cabin.
With the boat breaking apart all around me, I shot toward the colossal monster.