Chapter 166
Inside the escape pod port, all the familiar faces were already gathered, with only one person I hadn’t seen before. At first, I thought he was a foreigner due to his light red hair, but after hearing him converse with Jeong Sanghyun, I realized he was Korean.
His bangs fell to his eyes, and perhaps because his hair had grown long, he had tied the back into a small ponytail. He had multiple earrings in both ears along with piercings, and tattoos peeked out from his neck and beside his ears, not fully covered by the engineer suit.
From a distance, I thought he was wearing an engineer suit, but upon closer inspection, I noticed that the pants portion of the suit had been cut off above a certain point. Below both knees were prosthetic legs.
He was sitting on a waiting chair next to the escape pod with his hands clasped, but when he saw us, he stood up. The man, who was over 180cm tall, waved his right arm towards us.
Up close, I could see that the little finger and ring finger of his right hand were also prosthetic. The black matte prosthetic fingers made it look like he was wearing finger gloves from afar.
I’ve seen quite a few due to spinal and eye issues in the ward, but this is the first time I’ve seen one inside the underwater base. Prosthetic limbs and braces vary depending on the body part, but they’re not usually very noticeable unless the user undresses. Moreover, these days they’ve become so sophisticated that they’re hard to quickly identify with the naked eye, and since most people use electronic prostheses, it’s not easy to notice them.
If it weren’t for his hair, his legs would have been the first thing I noticed. I thought he was wearing black pants with a unique pattern. Or maybe he had plucked a few grape vines from the First Underwater Base’s vineyard and wrapped them around his ankles and calves.
Upon closer observation, they were state-of-the-art electronic prosthetic legs, elaborately decorated in black with green and light green accents. I know this prosthetic series because it’s supplied to my friend’s orthopedic clinic; they’re typically shipped from the factory in white. This is to allow buyers to customize the design to their taste, and it seemed he had opted for a black base with green vine-like imagery. Does he like plants?
Many patients order custom exterior designs to match their skin color, so it’s been a while since I’ve seen one decorated in black like this. My friend ordered a bright red one, calling it “passionate red,” but recently he switched to a pitch-black one, spouting nonsense about it being “stylish black.”