rapture of the deep ; seodo

✯ chapter 16 ✯

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. .⃗ .3,1k

Side by side, they swam for a while, the boat following suit only reluctantly, but at some point, Seoho announced that the shoal was right in front of them and Geonhak proceeded to fasten the anchor to the seafloor.

“Geonhak, I’m sorry,” Seoho said as Geonhak broke through the water’s surface and swam towards where Seoho had claimed a place on the sandbank, voice flat and a little strangled. “I’m sorry.”

“Hey, why are you apologising?”
Geonhak now knelt next to Seoho, up to his waist in the water as drops from his blonde strands were tumbling into his eyes.

Instead of answering, Seoho let his head fall on Geonhak’s shoulder and heaved a tense sigh, and Geonhak wrapped his arms around the older’s broad shoulders despite the tightening knot in his stomach.

“We’re gonna figure this out, whatever it is,” Geonhak tried again, feeling Seoho’s muscles tense under his palm as he shook his head.
He reached for Seoho’s shoulders and shifted him into an upright position again, so he would have to look Geonhak in the eyes.

“Seoho, talk to me. Please. You’re worrying me.”

Seoho’s hair had fallen into his eyes from letting his head collide with the younger’s shoulder, and Geonhak brushed the tangerine strands out of his face, the tackiness of the water holding them in place.

And as Geonhak’s hands cradled the pearly skin of Seoho’s jaw and cheeks, his eyes landed on the thin streak of foam that fizzed from his gills.

“Hey, what’s with your gills?” Geonhak asked softly, trying to use the voice that would surface almost unintentionally whenever he would be around his toddler cousins – whatever Seoho was scared of, Geonhak needed to make sure that he wasn’t scared of him.

Seoho placed his hand over Geonhak’s and interlaced their fingertips until Geonhak felt the thin webbing between Seoho’s fingers brush against his hand.

“Gill poison.”

Seoho finally locked eyes with Geonhak, catching the puzzled flash in his worry-glazed eyes.

“Geonhak, the trial was this morning,” Seoho then voiced as he gave Geonhak’s hand a squeeze and offered him a sad, almost apologising smile – but Seoho didn’t look sorry for himself, didn’t look close to bursting in a flood of tears; Seoho looked tired and lenient, like he had accepted and didn’t see the point in fighting whatever lay ahead of him, and Geonhak found this type of composure deeply unsettling.

“What?” Geonhak hated how his voice shook and cracked at the edges, how Seoho squeezed his hand a little harder, and how the look in his eyes resembled the same empathy and the same apologetic warmth of a mother that was forced to break it gently to her child that their favourite plushie had been torn to shreds by the neighbours’ dog.

“The poison will disable my gills little by little. That’s why nobody was standing watch… why I could leave so easily… why nobody is looking for me.” 

I’m as good as dead. Seoho didn’t have to say it for Geonhak to have the words ring inside his skull, and what little triumph and comfort he had felt upon running into Seoho’s embrace crashed at once and left behind a gaping vacuum.

Geonhak felt Seoho’s hands shake against his limp hold, and he was sure that he wasn’t doing any better with numbing ice cursing through his veins and freezing him in place.

But Seoho didn’t look like he was shaking from fear; if anything, the faint wheezing in his breath that Geonhak could swear hadn’t been there before and the sickly bluish pallor of his skin that Geonhak now realised had not entirely been the likewise blue glim of the alleyways, it was evidence of exhaustion from simple tasks such as swimming and talking.