Chapter 3
Gold coins.
And perhaps the freedom I would finally be able to enjoy.
"Why are you looking at me like that?"
My wife asked first.
"Just because."
"What?"
"Nothing."
That was the end of the conversation.
We had been married for more than twenty years.
There had once been a time when it felt as though we had endless things to say to each other.
I didn't know when it had changed, but now, even in the same house, there wasn't much left for us to talk about.
In the awkward silence, my wife played with her coffee cup before speaking again.
"What are you doing this weekend?"
"Don't know."
"The kids said they wanted to go somewhere."
"Really?"
"What about you?"
I couldn't answer immediately.
I was planning to go to Sinan.
Actually, I wasn't even planning to wait until the weekend.
"I haven't decided yet."
It was a lie.
I had already made up my mind.
I went to work that morning, but I couldn't focus properly.
My body was at the work site.
My mind was constantly wandering through the waters off Sinan.
The documents I'd found online.
Videos.
News articles.
Records of shipwrecks.
They kept resurfacing in my head.
Especially the story of the treasure ship that had been discovered off Sinan.
Countless relics.
Silver coins.
Ceramics.
Ancient goods.
All recovered from beneath the sea.
Of course, a great deal had already been excavated.
But I didn't believe that was everything.
There's no way that's all of it.
The ocean was far too large.
Humans had directly inspected only a tiny fraction of it.
Exploration required equipment, time, and money.
The deeper you went, the greater the danger.
But I was different.
At lunchtime, I sat in a corner and looked through my phone, calculating again.
If I really found a gold coin, how much would it be worth?
Tens of millions of won?
Hundreds of millions?
Then I shook my head.
The price of one gold coin wasn't the important part.
I could teleport.
I could survive deep underwater.
I possessed strength beyond human limits.
A normal diver needed an oxygen tank and diving equipment.
I didn't even need that.
It meant I could do alone what no diver anywhere in the world could do.
"This could be a business."
The more I thought about it, the more I smiled.
Then Seungman approached carrying coffee.
"What's got you so happy?"
"Lottery."
"You win?"
"Something like that."
"Bullshit."
Seungman drank his coffee without taking me seriously.
Then he stared at me for a while and narrowed his eyes.
"But seriously, you've been weird lately."
"Why?"
"Your eyes look different."
I laughed it off.
Then his next casual remark left me unable to answer.
"You planning to quit?"
Quit.
That word had been circling inside my head since yesterday.
Why did I still need to stay here?
Wake up before dawn.
Take the commuter bus to the factory.
Carry steel plates.
Get yelled at.
Sweat all day.
Go home.
Drink.
Sleep.
Then repeat the exact same life the next day.
I had lived like that for twenty years.
Wasn't that enough?
"I don't know."
This time, I meant it.
Seungman chuckled.
"Hey, if you're quitting, start a business with me."
"What business?"
"A fishing boat."
"No."
"Why?"
"I get seasick."
Seungman burst out laughing.
"Hahahahaha!"
I laughed with him.
But inside, I had another thought.
I don't think I can even get seasick anymore.
After work, I returned home and immediately turned on my computer.
I searched everything I could find.
Records of shipwrecks around Sinan.
Underwater maps.
Satellite photos.
Ocean currents.
One article led to another.
Then another.
Hours disappeared in an instant.
Eventually, I reached a conclusion.
"All right."
There was no need to wait for the weekend.
I could go tonight.
It was eleven at night.
The kids were already asleep.
My wife was working the night shift.
There would never be a better time.
I put the lamp in my pocket, grabbed my phone and wallet, then pictured the sea off Sinan.
The world shifted.
Whoosh.
When I opened my eyes, I was standing on a breakwater.
"...Wow."
It hadn't even taken a few seconds to travel from Ulsan to Sinan.
Even the wind against my face was different.
The smell of the ocean was different.
Beyond the darkness came the endless sound of waves.
Far offshore, the lights of fishing boats gently swayed over the black sea.
I watched the sight and smiled.
"This is travel."
No plane ticket.
No fuel cost.
No hotel bill.
If I wanted to go home, I could teleport back whenever I wanted.
True freedom.
I stared at the black sea for a long time.
Somewhere beneath it, objects that had waited hundreds, perhaps even over a thousand years for human hands might be sleeping.
Just thinking about it made my heart race.
I removed my shoes and socks and placed my phone inside a waterproof pouch.
Then I slowly walked into the sea.
Splash.
Cold water surrounded me.
But as I'd already tested off Ulsan, it didn't bother me.
I didn't need to breathe.
Water pressure wasn't a problem.
I continued downward.
The deeper I went, the weaker the light became.
Before long, the world around me was almost completely dark.
A normal person would have lost all sense of direction and panicked.
Strangely, I remained calm.
I didn't know whether it was because of the tardigrade survival ability or my superhuman body.
Maybe both.
After descending for quite a while, my feet finally touched the seabed.
Mud.
Rocks.
Rusted pieces of metal.
Abandoned fishing nets.
I'd imagined the bottom would be overflowing with centuries-old treasure.
Reality was far more ordinary.
"Hmm..."
I was just starting to feel disappointed when something caught my eye beneath the sand.
A long metal object.
I approached it and swept away the surrounding sand.
Rustle.
As the sand scattered, the buried object took shape.
"...Huh?"
A gun.
An old, rusted handgun.
"What the hell?"
Obviously, it wasn't the treasure I'd hoped for.
But something felt wrong.
When I dug around the area a little more, other things appeared.
Guns.
Knives.
Spent shell casings.
I stopped moving.
"Wait."
No matter how I thought about it, this was strange.
This didn't look like a place where ancient cultural artifacts had been buried.
Judging by the condition of the guns and shell casings, someone had probably dumped things here relatively recently.
Then...
A faint light moved in the distance.
A light appearing in the middle of the seabed.
Instinctively, I hid behind a nearby rock.
The light slowly approached.
And it wasn't alone.
Three lights.
Soon, three people wearing black diving suits appeared.
I watched them from behind the rock.
Three people were moving around this deep underwater at this hour.
They didn't look like ordinary divers.
Together, they were dragging a large steel crate.
At first, I couldn't see what was inside.
But as the crate moved, its contents became visible through a gap.
My eyes widened.
Firearms.
And ammunition.
Smuggling?
The divers repeatedly checked their surroundings as they moved.
They looked extremely cautious about being discovered.
Their destination was a huge underwater cave.
One by one, they dragged the steel crate into the darkness.
I watched until all of them disappeared.
I had come to Sinan for treasure.
Old gold coins.
Ceramics.
An undiscovered shipwreck.
But right from the beginning, I'd discovered something completely unexpected.
An underwater cave.
Three suspicious divers.
And an unidentified steel crate filled with guns and ammunition.
A slow smile spread across my face.
"I came looking for treasure..."
My gaze remained fixed on the cave entrance where the divers had disappeared.
"And found something strange instead."
The first treasure hunt of a forty-eight-year-old man from Ulsan.
Apparently, it wasn't going to end normally from the very beginning.
