Yesteryear

Act III: Norway

The first step into the third part of Wooyoung's open-ended research already promised a lot of trouble. Wooyoung stepped from the safety of the cosy time travel institute right into a body of cold water. Abruptly, it seized his body to limit his disorganised movements. With no time to waste to figure out whether that would leave a puddle back at home, he instantly kicked out harshly. The sea was icy cold, and he felt it chill his bones within seconds. The time it took him to gather his bearings already had him shivering and lethargic with shock.

Wooyoung had landed outside the trapdoor of a sunken ship. Its wooden boards were covered in barnacles and squishy with how much the water took them apart. When Wooyoung's boots found purchase on the surface of the closed hatch to push off, the rotten surface carved in underneath him. Desperate, he fought to get upwards. The weight of his outfit dragged him down, but the added struggle brought some heat back into his over-working limbs.

For a few panic-stricken moments, he just tried to live. With hands and feet, he clawed his way up from the bottom of the shallow waters and towards the glimmering water surface above him. What took only seconds felt like an eternity. His lungs burned up and his body froze from the inside out. He didn't feel his toes anymore after seconds.

When Wooyoung's head broke through the water's surface, his loud gasp rang through the frosty air. A white landscape shrouded in thick, grey clouds greeted him far on the horizon. He must have landed in the ocean near a corner of Norway. The temperatures were freezing and snow tumbled from the skies to land on his wet hair.

He basically felt a fever getting cosy in his insides.

Shivering, Wooyoung willed his body forward. He had to reach land as fast as possible and warm up. As long as he swam, he should be fine for a few minutes.

Wooyoung channelled all of his energy into the workout. His blond hair stuck to his nape and spread the chilliness of the air on his skin. The heavy grey woollen clothes that Seungyoun had given him were soggy and dragged him down.

Struggling for his life, Wooyoung swam and swam. He was far slower than he would have liked and the ocean seemed to yank him back a meter for every two meters he swam. It would take him hours to get to land and he barely had minutes before his shivering body would give out on him. As he choked on the chilly air that froze his lungs and made it hard to breathe, his movements gradually dulled.

Wooyoung cursed himself in his mind. He needed to go on, needed to push himself harder. But every desperate advance seemed like the last. Every raise of his arm got heavier. Soon, he could do nothing more but float in the water while his entire body turned blue and white.

Horrified by the imagination, Wooyoung sobbed around yet another lethargic arm stroke. The limb splashed into the water with no grace. The spray hit him in the face and had him splutter and gasp.

In all the scenarios that Yongguk and he had feared happening once he arrived here, this had not been one. Dying out in the wintry ocean with no way back was nothing Wooyoung had anticipated.

Ridiculed by the unnecessary means of his own death, Wooyoung felt his last strength drain out. He floated like a dead animal in the water. Icy stabs of coldness penetrated his skin like knives, but he couldn't care. After the pricks came blissful numbness.

Wooyoung was about to close his eyes and call his life a day so he could pretend it was all just a bad dream and he would wake up in the present time, when a current picked him up. A shove of water came from behind him and launched him forward. Limp, he paddled through the boost, but it only aided in distancing him from the land.

Bewildered and half dead, Wooyoung put up a fight once more. And as he kicked and gasped to stay afloat, he heard the creaking for the first time. Looming and elongated, like a hundred old doors opening at once. It seemed to resonate in the water and his body, impossible to tell from the shivers that wracked his form.