Chapter Two
Apparently, I was pretty hard to kill. I ached from the top of my head to the very tips of my toes, but my lungs still worked, and my heart still beat.
I think I’d been slammed into the hull of the boat, but had bounced back to consciousness fast enough that I didn’t drown when I hit the sea.
Now, as I treaded water, the shock of being thrown overboard wearing off and the shivering beginning to set in, I was suddenly aware of two stark realities:
I needed to get out of the water soon, or I would die of hypothermia.
I needed to get out of the water soon, or I would grow too tired to swim and drown.
As I bobbed up and down in the rough water, I could occasionally hear yelling before the sound was snatched up by the wind.
The shouts had come from somewhere behind me, but because of my lifeguard training, I knew that drowning, dying people are the most dangerous type.
Unconsciously, they will hold you under the water, as you squirm and writhe for air, just to get one more breath.
I could make out a large dark blob, shrouded in mist. It seemed close-ish, and I could maybe get to it, but it would be risky if my rapidly numbing limbs were any indication.
The water lapped against my cheeks, the downpour causing rain to run into my eyes, blurring my vision.
I took one or two strokes towards the maybe-land-blob, but something like guilt or fear of future regret gripped me.
Maybe this was my opportunity to do something good in my life.
Maybe I would drown trying to save someone, but I could die regardless; I might as well try to leave a mark.
Turning towards where the voices had come from, I took large smooth strokes, breathing as deep breaths as I possibly could, trying to prepare myself for what awaited me in the water just ahead.
A couple of yards into my swim without seeing anyone, I began to wonder if I had been too late, too slow, and that I was now the lone survivor, when a flash of burgundy caught my eye.
I picked up my swimming speed and swiftly arrived at what I quickly learned was part of the railing.
Clinging onto the railing was a young man, his red shirt was what had caught my eye.
He was still, his pale skin almost blue, and once again, the worry that I had come too late filled me.
“Hello?” I called out stupidly, my voice distorted and quiet to my waterlogged ears. After a long moment of no response, I began to turn around, despair nipping at me, when I heard,
“Hello?”
The man’s eyes were cracked open, and he stared directly at me, lucid, if in bad shape.
I swam closer but not too close; I still didn’t want him to grab me.
“I’m Mina. I think there’s some land over there, do you want to go to it with me?”
Again, stupid! This wasn’t a social engagement, this wasn’t some cordial meeting, this was life and death, and here I was offering invitations!
The man nodded, or kinda half-nodded, his chin hitting the railing of the boat with a clunk that must have been painful.
“Yes, yes, please, but I’m not a strong swimmer.”
He had an international school accent. The accent you got from learning from a jumbled mess of British, American, and Australian teachers at a bougie boarding school where you had little to no access to the outside world. It seemed out of place.
“Not an issue, I can tow you, and we’ll get there safely, I guarantee it,” I lied.
“Did you see anyone else, my—my fiancé…” he trailed off, and I could feel my eyes tear up.
That used to always happen when I was getting yelled at by my boss or when things got too hard.
I had pretty much beaten my tendency to tear up into submission after years of practice, but apparently, being in this shit-show of a situation had shaken apart all of my carefully curated self-control.
“Can they swim?” I asked him as I grasped one side of the railing.
“He can swim, but we were both thrown into the air.”
As he spoke, I began to tow him towards the blob, frog-kicking to preserve my energy.
“It’s going to take a lot of effort and energy to make it to land, and in these conditions, it would be super unlikely that we would find him, and we would most likely lose each other. If he can swim, maybe he’ll also head the same way that we are. Okay?”
He nodded again.
It was hard to pull the railing; the wood was slippery, my passenger was heavy, and my legs were starting to ache. The man didn’t seem to be doing well either. I glanced at him as often as I could, and saw his head begin to nod; he was shivering as well, his eyelids fluttering like butterfly wings.
I was honestly surprised that he had been holding on so long in this state.
The water was frigid, the air cold, and he didn’t have the benefit of doing vigorous movement like I did.
He needed body heat, and I cursed myself and blamed the shock, and well, everything fucking else, for not realizing what I should do sooner.
The wood easily slipped from my numb hands, and in a bit of awkward maneuvering, I was next to him, my sopping wet, but warm side pressed close, one of my arms slipping over his; an extra layer of security just in case he couldn’t hold on anymore.
Bright, too shiny, dark eyes became affixed on me, once again lucid, as if my touch had awoken him. It was a bit odd, but who knew what was normal, and I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Hey, you. Looks like we’re going to be snug together for the next however-long-it-takes-to-get-to-the-island. Why don’t we get to know each other a bit?”
The smudge was definitely getting closer, pokey bits distinguishing themselves as tree-like shapes, but it still seemed far too far away.
“So what’s your name? I’ve been calling you ‘Tall, dark, and clinging to a railing’ in my head, and honestly, that name is waaaay too long.”
I was babbling, my feet kicking at the same staccato pace that my words tripped out, but the man kept his eyes on me, and under my arm, his grip on the wood didn’t slip.
“Oh Jin Woo, Jin Woo.”
“Well,” a particularly aggressive wave splashed the side of my face, “that’s a much better name than the one that I gave you.
So, tell me more about yourself. As payment for my scintillating company, I must demand one juicy secret, one boring fact, and one interesting fact.
Dealer’s choice on where you want to start. ”
The man’s arched eyebrows raised slightly, and I thought that there was a whisper of a smile on his face for less than a second.
“A boring fact—I’m from Seoul, South Korea. An interesting fact, hmm…”
His ‘hmm’ vibrated through me, the refrain of a song with a great bass line, the first sip of a strong drink that sends shivers down to your fingertips.
“When I was young, like Kinder-aged, I thought that cars and buses were animals that swallowed up people and then spat them out. I couldn’t comprehend how people were getting the car-animals to spit them out where they needed to go.”
He chuckled at himself.
“I think that I had decided that people tickled the stomachs of the cars and that’s how they did it.”
“What? You’d never ridden in a car? That’s crazy!”
Immediately after the words slipped out of my lips, I regretted them.
His family could’ve been poor, still could be poor.
I had just called what must have been his experience crazy.
It must have been a particularly smarting comment.
Poverty, poverty deep enough that he had never seen the inside of a car, especially in a country as wealthy and industrialized and technologically advanced as South Korea was, must have been soul-crushing.
If my blood wasn’t too busy rushing around my body desperately trying to keep me warm, no doubt I would be blushing up a storm.
He didn’t seem too bothered, though.
“Right?! Umma was in a phase when I was little where she hated even the idea of traffic; we’d take a helicopter for short distances and one of the jets if she wanted to go further afield.”
“Oh, thank God, you’re rich!”
Apparently, the filter between my brain and my mouth was completely disconnected.
“Oh, oh sorry! I was just worried that I had super, super offended you by calling you too poor to be in a car.”
There was definitely a start of a smile on his face, and I would take it. He had a nice mouth, with full lips that were not too full.
“I’ve never heard someone say ‘thank god you’re rich’ aloud, but I have no doubt that many people have thought it. You couldn’t tell I was wealthy?” he asked, seemingly genuinely puzzled.
“Yes, while that boat was capsizing, I was very worried about trying to discern whether the Gucci you were wearing was real and how many hundreds of dollars your cologne costs.”
Some people preferred my cheerful, eager-to-please self, but Jin Woo seemed to like, or at least not mind, my snark.
“Gucci is gauche, and I’m quite certain that my cologne is definitely in the thousands plus range, but I couldn’t really say.”
“You don’t buy your own cologne?”
“No,” he paused for a particularly aggressive shiver to pass before he continued, “I have a guy for that.”
“Oh, a guy,” I said mockingly, “ Ok, rich boy.” I elbowed him as gently as I could so as not to dislodge him from the bannister.
There was that flash of a smile again.
“But, I continued, “you still owe me a juicy, juicy secret.”
The blob with the trees was further separating, letting me see its parts.
First, a gravelly beach, interspersed with large rocks that sloped upwards, and then behind what was beginning to show itself as a thin fringe of trees, was a large hill, the whole place currently looking like an old-fashioned friar with a thin circle of hair and mostly bald pate.
Of course, my salvation would look like a balding old man; it seemed I couldn’t get away from them!
Jin Woo shifted next to me. He was so pale and getting paler by the minute.
It looked like it was only a hundred or so meters to the island, maybe five minutes of swimming time with my extra burdens, but Jin Woo was truly flagging.
I moved my arm from across his on the log to around his waist, hauling him up higher on the wood, hopefully helping him stay a little drier.
Even with him being a bit more out of the water, I knew that I had to get him to land as quickly as I possibly could. I started kicking with all my might, physically feeling the energy and warmth run out of me rapidly as I propelled us to land.
“My secret,” Jin Woo croaked into my ear. I could barely hear him over my own splashing.
“Save it. You can tell me when we are dry and warm and drinking hot spiked cider, with so much booze it makes our eyes water, yes?”
“No, I have to tell you,” his voice was fading but adamant, as the salty, fishy water seeped into my mouth, my toes and fingers numbing quickly. I had no more energy to fight him. Let him tell me his secrets if he wanted.
“I’ve…I’ve never told my fiancé that I love him.”
In a normal circumstance, I would be shocked, would be curious, but not now, now my toes brushed slimy rock and gritty sand. We’d made it!
Half in a mad haze, I dragged Jin Woo, both of us stumbling, up onto the beach and over the small open area into the brush. It wasn’t exactly a sanctuary, but at least we were not exposed to the elements as much.
Cold radiated from the large rock against my cheek, but it was much warmer than water had been, and Jin Woo’s heat was at my other side. I should be doing things, I knew, life-saving things, but at that moment, all I wanted to do was sleep.
I had almost managed, my eyelids fluttering, when a weak shout rang out. Jin Woo was upright in a second, despite the cold and his shaking.
“Ettore?” he whispered, pulling himself into a standing position using the rock. He stood looking out into the sea for a moment until a faint,
“Help!”
He lurched forward as if he was going to run into the ocean, but I grabbed him. He wouldn’t even make it to the water.
“Jin Woo, relax, relax,” I tried, running my hands over his shaking shoulders as if he were a nervous pony, not a dangerously cold man, “is that your fiancé?”
“Yes, yes, please, I have to go to him, I have to help him!” Jin Woo pleaded, swaying as he did so.
He wouldn’t make it. He had said that he wasn’t a strong swimmer, but I was sapped, chilled to the bone. Jin Woo’s fiancé didn’t seem too far out, but in my state, he could’ve been on the moon.
Jin Woo’s dark, expressive eyes looked down at me, so sorrowful, so desperate, and I knew that I was going to do something so very stupid.
“I need you to look on the beach for anything that can maybe cover all three of us. Don’t go too far, and sit down if you feel weak, ok?”
It was like dawn had broken over Jin Woo’s face.
“You’re going to get him? You’re going to save him?”
I nodded once before I turned and ran back into the sea.
***
I was so weak, horrible shivers wrecked my body as I dragged the unconscious man (oh I prayed he was only unconscious) onto dry land. Teeth-rattling coughs were beginning to shake me, and my vision faded in and out as I sank to my knees on the sand.
It would be so easy to fall asleep. To roll over and let someone else deal with everything else.
I had brought the man to land; couldn’t that be enough?
Couldn’t I sleep? My eyes pulled downwards, but that grating, irritating voice of reason and duty and fucking guilt wouldn’t let me rest. It jabbed over and over again until I pulled my eyes open, rolled the man over, and, after checking and seeing that he had no pulse, began CPR.
It was a horrible haze, my arms pressing down, and down and down again on his chest, my mouth on his too-cold lips.
Jin Woo was next to me, silent. He had arrived sometime in the rush, but I kept going, thirty compressions and then two rescue breaths over and over again until the man below me gasped and sputtered.
He suddenly rolled over and vomited, and then, as my vision faded in and out, he began to breathe on his own. I collapsed next to him, suddenly not so cold anymore.
Before everything faded to black, I heard someone call my name with a strangely familiar voice.