FLATLINE| JK

twenty seven

JEONGGUK'S POV

Drowning happens in stages. Every doctor knows them.

First, it's the obvious plunge into the water, and the submersion beneath the surface. People think that drowning is a lot more dramatic than it truly is. There isn't any thrashing or gasping for air, or even screaming. Drowning is oddly soundless, due to laryngospasms, when you first begin to aspirate water and your vocal cords block off your airways inadvertently to prevent water from breaching your lungs. Laryngospasms do the job for a moment, but they also prevent you from making any sound. That's why drowning can happen so easily. A silent killer.

You stay can only stay this way for so long, since your body stops receiving any oxygen—hypoxia sets in. You feel so much internal pressure that you feel your head might explode, and finally, your body forces you to let the water in. You fall unconscious. Your organs relax, and the pain subsides. Your lungs fill up with water. It's at this point that, even if you are rescued, you can undergo brain damage or cardiac arrest, depending on how long you were under water.

If the water is cold enough, that tacks on another slew of concerns, like hypothermia, which causes slowed heart and metabolic rates and even death. However, hypothermia can be inhibitory to hypoxia, since it can cause blood vessels to constrict and preserve oxygen levels. Blood oxygen is then diverted to only the places that need it most direly, like the brain, and it decreases the amount of oxygen the body's tissues need, therefore reducing tissue damage. As potentially damaging as hypothermia is, it has equal potential to play a role in survival when it comes to drowning.

I nearly drowned when I was eight. My parents had taken my nanny and I to their private Jeju vacation home, and she and I had been playing in the water. I had been caught up in the riptide, and my saving grace was being tossed upon the sharp, craggy rocks of the jetty by the waves. I was barely unconscious, and my nanny came to my rescue. She administered CPR and saved my live. I survived to tell the tale.

My parents fired my nanny for her initial recklessness. I loved her. I never saw her again.

While I've never had another personal experience with drowning since, I've come to find that living with the pure guilt and remorse for what I did to Bong Soon is similar to drowning, in a weird way.

The equivalent of playing in the ocean was confessing to Bong Soon, holding her in my arms, her smile. The riptide pulling me under was the photos, and the submersion was of my own doing; my own words, selfish and careless and hurtful. Bong Soon telling me what I did wrong was the moment I first began to breathe in water, and the laryngospasms came when I sat there, speechless in my own guilt save for weak and underwhelming apologies. My version of hypoxia had been the painful ache in my chest as Bong Soon avoided me. I had messed up and cost myself probably the best person to walk into my life, and now I was experiencing deprivation like a drowning man does of oxygen.

The interim period I'm currently in is the hypothermia. It could end in metaphorical death, the complete and total end of any relationship Bong Soon and I may have shared. Or, it could end in resuscitation—she could forgive me. I know I don't deserve it, but selfishness dies hard. I want her in my life again. I lost her once after the brothel, and for years. I'm not giving her up again, not without a fight to fix things.

The past two weeks have been spent scheming at ways to get Bong Soon to talk to me. That's all I want, just one conversation. If she then decides she's had enough of me, I'll give in. I want to abide by her wishes, but part of me can't let her go without doing everything I could possibly do to make sure she knows I value her more than my words showed. She's the only thing that has come into my life that is worth a fight. I've always felt so indifferent about anyone else—friends, colleagues, meaningless hookups, my parents. The only thing I've ever given a shit about is work, but that all changes when Bong Soon enters the picture. I feel like my purpose is more than to be this neuro god that everyone is terrified of when I see her.