Last Girl Alive | Bangtan

70: Mermaids Can Swim

You gasp loudly as your head resurfaces. Gulping in the fresh air you feel your limbs thrash about violently. You hardly catch a glance of your surroundings before you find yourself buried under water again. Where did this water come from? What was happening? Where were the others?

None of those thoughts mattered anymore. They were extinguished just as easily as all the oxygen in the world. All you wanted to do right now was to survive. Your eyes flash open underwater. All about is the blurry blue haze of water, rushing violently past your eyes. You were being pushed along with a thrashing current. It was hard for you to control your own body. Everything about you was in this current's hands.

Your lungs burst to breathe. You look about frantically but nothing is clear to you. You need to breathe desperately but it's almost impossible to get to the surface. You're going to drown. Your greatest fear has finally come and you can do nothing about it. You'd never imagined you'd been in a situation were you would drown and yet here you were.

You mind works fast, as your arms and legs kick and punch about in every way possible. Your previous injury seems like nothing now. You need air, you need air, you need air. Or you are going to die. Your lungs are burning and you are at peak devastation. Your cheeks puff up and it's like you're going to vomit only you can't. You close your eyes, trying to think straight in this chaos. You couldn't give up...no you couldn't give up.

You're no fish, you're a mermaid.

Bubbles.

Your eyes open again more weakly this time as you look in front of you. Yoongi's voice comes to you as the light water begins to dim darker. Bubbles. Bubbles of water erupt in front of you, reminding you of a very important swimming lesson.

"First you have to learn how to hold your breath. If you can't breathe...don't panic. The surface is right above you."

Your head whips upwards to see the racing surface above you. Air. Air was right above you. You flip your feet trying to get upwards but instead of going up all you do is zoom sideways. Suddenly you catch sight of something else on the surface. Something that one wouldn't normally in water.

The leg of a table.

"If you can't swim, doesn't mean you're going to drown. If you know how to float, you can still survive. You just gotta lay down like a piece of wood."

Wood floats. You don't wait a second. The lack of air killing your lungs with every passing second lashes your arm out. Your grip onto the leg of the table. Immediately your weight pulls down the table but table remains on the surface. Using every molecule of willpower and strength in your body, you reach out with your other arm and grab onto it. Kicking like you've never done before you inch your way up the table leg. You feel the strength drain from you as you grow weaker and weaker.

"Don't give up. You're almost there."

Furiously your grips climbs higher and higher until you finally grab onto the surface of the table. You nails dig into the wood, scraping across the surface as you pull up with your arms. Hardly able to think anymore, you look up, trying get your mouth to surface. Air. Air. Air. You need air right now.

Finally your lips break through the water surface. You suck in the wind above you. Oxygen flushes through your body. You breath in and breath out, inhaling and exhaling faster than before as if pumping air into body. It gives you some strength despite the constant push and pull of your body beneath the surface. You slide your arms down the table reach for the other side until you've got your entire head and your arms above water. Just a little bit more.

This was the hard part now. You had to get your body out of the water. You push up with all you can. You toes grip onto the table legs as you gradually again move up the table. It wobbles unstable as you try to push yourself onto the table. You groan out loud, teeth gritting. Everything in your screams to give up. You've never wanted to do so more in your life.