The Siren's Song

Chapter 70- if we hold on tight can we remain afloat?

HABAEK POV:

I hadn't died, I hadn't yet reached the end of my life to know what lay beyond it. Whether heaven or hell existed, whether an afterlife existed for us- when it seemed like our life was eternal and endless and damned. But I learn in the past few days that this is what hell felt like. This is what writers and preachers and holy figures meant when they warned of an eternal blaze consuming you, burning you, searing your flesh- that to be eternally engulfed in it, tortured and tormented by it.

Because ever since the Ocean had allowed us to see the boys' boat sail back, Her waters safely guiding them back to sure- where their crushed grieving figures unwillingly departed, left the boat with shattered haunted expressions, since then there had been no sight of (Y/N)- the Ocean's voice ringing in our ears, the five of us shivering and drenched and unwilling to leave the beach in her wait, for (Y/N) to wash ashore. But she didn't turn up, she didn't turn up as the day turned to night and the clothes became second skins on our chilled bodies, she didn't turn up even as Won-Bin hyung sighed, gently drawing us up to drive me and Mi-sun back.

And time passed. Seconds turning to minutes turning to hours. Hours stretched into days, the sun rose and set, the night came and went and she didn't appear.

Three days.

Three days of no sight of her, no sound of her, the house a skeleton- an empty, deserted desolate place all of a sudden. Three days of getting a hint, a taste of what hell is. Of what awaits my damned soul after I die, an eternity of this anguish, this pain, this inferno that consumes me from the inside out.

And three long, infinite days later do we both feel a tug, a tug towards another beach, a rocky beach- not an urgent calling but a call, nonetheless. Three days since we'd gotten the boys' messages and reassured them that (Y/N) had made it back home, that she was stunned and shocked but home.

I couldn't get their relieved cries out of my head, their sobs of joy and then their urgent voices begging, beseeching to see her.

Always the same response.

When she's better.

When she feels upto it.

And the silence that had descended like an ominous layer on our house, on us shattered as we rushed to follow that tug, voices tearing out of our throats because the sight of her sprawled across the rocky terrain, unmoving, still and drenched, skin tinged blue had my heart in my mouth, feeling sick and desperate and frantic as I tripped and stumbled over the rocks to get to her, crying out her name and holding her close.

It hadn't felt like hell, but it had felt like I was dying, air leaving my body and heart beat thudding too fast, as if it was about to give up on me as I turned her over, saw her shut eyes and pale face, slightly gaunt and scraped with the force she'd been flung onto the rocks with, found myself begging with every bit of me for her to open her eyes, beseeching the Ocean that it couldn't end like this, that she couldn't do this to her, to us.

And a blessed miracle when her eyes slowly dragged open, focusing on me and yet almost as if she couldn't see me, and she's uncooperative, horrifyingly lifeless and still as we take her to the car, legs failing her.

The only sound she makes is when we get inside the house, asking, no pleading to be taken to the bathroom. My heart shatters as I draw her to my chest, feel the weakness, the loss of strength in her as we take her upstairs, soul screaming to stay once she's on the edge of the bathtub.

And the two of us sit with our hands tightly gripping each other's, laced together and squeezing and hearts shattering as her sobs and cries came out over the loud battering pour of the water, her grief unable to be silenced.