rapture of the deep ; seodo

✯ chapter 14 ✯

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Somewhere way beyond the coastline, with the sea as his only witness, Geonhak came to the conclusion that becoming somewhat psychic overnight was not as desirable as it sounded.

Feelings were hard enough to pinpoint and deal with, and now that somewhat of a sixth sense had taken up abode in his chest and tortured him towards following an intuition that was as untenable as Geonhak was actually supernatural, Geonhak wanted to tell his younger scout-self that he should have never complained about having to take compass courses, seeing that there was an actual formula for its way of functioning.

The pinching and pulling and calling around his heart had no such thing.

Technically, it was a bit like a compass, with the huge difference that the compass needle didn’t follow such thing as the magnetic field of the earth, but Seoho and his gravitational pull (at least that’s what Geonhak hoped; for all he knew, he could have steered the boat in circles for the past hour without noticing or worst, mistaking an enormous pit of anxiety for this eerie hunch of his.)

Geonhak hated this, the uncertainty; he was a head-person, not someone to trust gut feelings, but with Seoho in his life, he had been making more exceptions than not lately.

The inflatable dinghy jerked a few times as Geonhak turned the motor off and it glided over the water’s surface with the last of its momentum before it finally came to a stop.

While the faint swaying of the boat under the flow of the wavelets underneath it wouldn’t have irked Geonhak normally, he now felt the nausea crawl up his throat the longer he sat there staring at the dark blue water and wondered whether the wistful burning in his chest was to be trusted.

If the worst came to the worst, he did take his phone with him and the coastguard was merely a call away – that is assuming he had any signal – but he really wasn’t too eager to take his chances.
And unable to control his impatience and his racing thoughts, it had been just about the only thing he had packed, the bare necessities that had hardly found their way into his bag being a large towel, a lantern, and a bottle of water.

Geonhak bent over the rim of the boat to cast a glance at the seafloor but even with crystal water that seemed polished to a mirror, there was merely the ghost of coral imprints at the verge of his range of vision.

Geonhak casted the anchor.

The sun was still scorching Geonhak’s nape despite the afternoon setting in gradually and pushing the sun further towards the horizon, and Geonhak suddenly remembered the lantern he had packed and how he didn’t think of having to use it as all too desirable.

Geonhak changed out of his tee, which was hanging loosely and baggy from his shoulders through wear and how the wind always tested the seams, and slipped into his wetsuit – the warm, 7-millimeter-thick one that he had picked up at the dive centre before setting out so as to be prepared for whatever depth he would have to acquire.

Geonhak jumped into the water before he could change his mind.

The short-lived icicle shock didn’t shake his skull as much as he hoped – hummingbirds’ wings were still hitting his ribcage in a frantic heartbeat, guilt still clawing at his soul, the impassable fear of the uncertainty of the situation still deafening and numbing.

He had left the last of his comfort at home by choice – because what use would Keonhee have been sitting around, worrying, and thinking himself to madness while waiting for Geonhak on the boat – but right now, now that he was leaving the surface behind and giving himself up to the silent static of the sea, Geonhak suddenly wished that he had taken Keonhee with him, regardless.