Baek Seonwoo collapsed on the sand like a doll, and Yeo Dowoon lifted him up to check his breathing.
Wiping his face, covered in blood flowing from every orifice, he promised that it would be okay, that everything would be alright now.
But when Baek Seonwoo parted his lips and uttered the word ‘Captain,’ he had no choice but to realize what had caused this current silence.
Every action has a cause and effect, and there is also appropriate retribution for it.
“Kwon Jeonghoo!”
The one who had saved Baek Seonwoo and Ko Ijae was moving his steps onto the ice. Bearing all the chaos and weight they should have had to endure on his own shoulders.
Just like that time when he burst into the wavelength examination room and stole away Yeo Dowoon’s pain, Kwon Jeonghoo advanced, voluntarily taking on the tragedy someone else would have had to experience.
Into the embrace of the sirens. Into the black sea.
Yeo Dowoon, who had laid Baek Seonwoo down, threw himself after him without caring that the glacier was breaking. A well-sharpened ice fragment fell, cutting the siren that had been reaching out to Kwon Jeonghoo in half.
Bizarre screams filled the sky, and Yeo Dowoon sank deep into the sea while holding Kwon Jeonghoo in his arms.
As if wishing for their eternal rest, towering waves rose up.
***
Perhaps due to the humiliation of being toyed with by mere humans, the sirens burned with hostility and swung their steel-like tails even more fiercely.
Just getting hit once made his body burn as if he’d suffered a fracture. Yeo Dowoon struggled to endure the pain while embracing Kwon Jeonghoo.
Their claws were sharpened so pointedly that as soon as his cheek was scratched, dark red colors bloomed in clouds above the seawater.
Yeo Dowoon, who was holding Kwon Jeonghoo face-to-face as if curling up, desperately blocked the sirens.
“Haa, ha….”
The threatening feeling that he might really get his throat cut and die here, Kwon Jeonghoo and all, chilled his spine.
<Sssss, ssssss!>
Yeo Dowoon, barely opening his eyes in the navy blue waves, frantically worked his mind.
Fuck. Sinking below sea level would be an unjust end, but he didn’t want to become the sirens’ punching bag and have his entire body butchered by their claws and tails either.
The salty seawater prickled at the whites of his eyes.
Yeo Dowoon, barely regaining his concentration, created an ice sphere to protect them from the sirens’ attacks, then breathed heavily and repeatedly.
Damn it…, oxygen was woefully insufficient.
“Captain, Captain!”
But no matter how much he slapped his cheeks and shook his body, Kwon Jeonghoo couldn’t regain consciousness. Only large and small capillaries bulged out, writhing as if angry.
The sirens pounded away as if they would shatter the ice sphere, creating chaos.
“I’m going crazy, really.”
Watching that scene in dismay, Yeo Dowoon arrived at the conclusion that perhaps Kwon Jeonghoo had cut off his own consciousness to escape from the signs of going berserk, and let out a hollow laugh.
If that wasn’t the reason, there’s no way he wouldn’t open his eyes even while getting beat up this much, right?
The sirens surrounding the ice sphere threatened Yeo Dowoon by raising their hair that writhed like snakes. Nevertheless, Yeo Dowoon only looked at the underwater scenery with an indifferent attitude.
The ice sphere would surely remain unshaken no matter how much the sirens’ attacks poured down, but he couldn’t just keep sinking forever without being able to do anything about it.
“…Hyung. What should we do?”
Yeo Dowoon, who had placed the unconscious Kwon Jeonghoo’s head on his thigh, asked in a low tone.
He’d worried about dying with his stomach ripped open by monsters, but he’d never once anticipated being buried alive on the seafloor. Kwon Jeonghoo’s situation probably wasn’t much different.
“Hyung, are you okay with dying here with me?”
“……”
“If you’re not okay with it, hurry up and open your eyes. I’m dying of frustration here.”
Kwon Jeonghoo’s face, with his black hair soaked in seawater sticking to his forehead, was particularly pale and wan, making it seem like he was looking at a dead person.
Frail breaths continued raggedly. Yeo Dowoon muttered while adjusting his posture to make him more comfortable.
“That’s why you had to go and take Ko Ijae’s berserk state…”
If he’d gone berserk on land, he could have at least received guiding, but if he was dragged away by monsters and went berserk, it was a perfect death sentence without question.
Even if he could take a few monsters as sacrifices, it would never be a death worth celebrating. Still, honestly, he could vaguely guess Kwon Jeonghoo’s intentions.
“Did Captain only learn how to take the fall?”
Delta’s command tower was a consistent person who would sacrifice himself in place of his team members no matter what situation arose. That’s why he could have gathered the notoriously picky S-class Espers and bound them together as one team.
Yeo Dowoon, who let out a big sigh, sprawled out spread-eagle next to Kwon Jeonghoo.
His head wasn’t working well so he’d chosen to try to rest, but when his eyes met directly with the siren clinging to the upper surface of the ice sphere, it only made him feel worse.
<Kisssss!>
The siren, dripping viscous saliva as if just looking made its mouth water, stuck out its long tongue and licked the ice surface.
He didn’t know why he overlaid Yoon Minoh at that moment, but anyway, Yeo Dowoon clicked his tongue while thinking of the rookie Esper who constantly performed perverted acts on him.
It seemed that bastard being born as a monster would have been better for his status and beneficial for his own life. He could have been the boss while leading around friends like those.
But Yeo Dowoon’s imagination didn’t last very long.
“Crazy!”
Sirens belong to A-class, famous for being cunning and clever even among intelligent monsters.
<Sssss……?>
The siren that had been licking the ice with its tongue flashed its eyes brightly seeing the ice sphere, which had remained perfectly intact no matter how much it scratched with its claws or struck with its tail, corroding.
“……Fuck!”
It was a situation where he couldn’t help but curse. Yeo Dowoon urgently watched the siren crying “kissss kissss” while informing its companions of the information it had learned.
There was the option of layering ice over it again and again, but that was also a countermeasure he could only attempt when the sirens moved away from the ice sphere.
When the sirens with their long, reddish tongues stuck out began licking the ice in unison, Yeo Dowoon’s face looked like he was about to faint as he shook Kwon Jeonghoo.
“Captain, we’re about to have a joint funeral here, so please open your eyes.”
“……”
“There’s a limit to dying young…, this isn’t right.”
To engage in underwater combat, backup was absolutely necessary.
Especially for Yeo Dowoon, who absolutely needed freedom of vision, it was nearly impossible to face the sirens alone in this dark sea.
But Kwon Jeonghoo still didn’t budge like a mountain of rock.
Bang! One siren that swung its tail at the melting ice sphere pointed at the thick barrier cracking and laughed ferociously.
Bang, crash!
The other sirens also poured out attacks simultaneously. So whether he liked it or not, Yeo Dowoon had to find a solution as soon as possible.
‘……I wonder what the success rate would be.’
He, who had barely thought of one low-probability method in his empty head, gripped Kwon Jeonghoo’s arm tightly. A voice filled with determination flowed out.
“I’m going to do what I was taught, so don’t nag me when you wake up.”
Defend the worst situation with the next-worst situation.
Yeo Dowoon, who carefully confirmed the positions of the squeaking sirens, clenched and unclenched his fist while watching for the timing.
Three, no. Two would be enough.
That much smell of blood would be enough to summon the real predator of the coastal gate. Since they said it was a gate connected to the North Atlantic, it seemed okay to expect a blue whale or humpback whale.
The bigger the better, the longer the better.
‘That way I can be digested as late as possible.’
It was when the ice sphere was beginning to split in half with a crack.
Yeo Dowoon gathered all his remaining strength to create a sharp glacier spear. The sirens, their chests pierced by ice fragments flying from front and back, wailed as if in agony and vomited black blood.
<Kisss…, sss!>
One siren that had been rushing over stopped its movement, sensing a wave incomparably stronger than before.
Swoooosh, the sound of cutting through the water surface resonated majestically.
It was when white foam rushed in with the internal waves. Yeo Dowoon trembled upon encountering for the first time a marine creature larger than an apartment building.
Even during the whale hunting project he’d completed a few years ago, a monster with this kind of size hadn’t appeared. Was it a humpback whale? A blue whale?
“Khup……!”
Fierce currents wrapped around his entire body and pulled him in.
Yeo Dowoon, burying Kwon Jeonghoo in his arms so as not to lose him, was sucked into the whale’s mouth, which was as big as a decent cave.
The salty seawater burrowing into his eyes, nose, and ears was as bitter and acrid as another’s tears.
His insides felt so nauseous and queasy that it wouldn’t be strange if he vomited right now. Damn it.
‘Come back without getting hurt.’
He was clearly told not to get hurt…, but there was no denying the fact that he was going to return in a complete mess. Yeo Dowoon felt pathetic anticipating that he would shamelessly ask for guiding again.
Cha Haseong’s beautiful face, which would extend a hand to him while hiding contempt, was already flickering before his eyes.
Even as he fainted from hitting his head on something hard, he couldn’t let go of thoughts about Cha Haseong. Thinking he should have transferred the building titles to the Guide-nim before dying.
But such a pitiful compensation wouldn’t pay for the sin of taking away someone’s dreams and future in an instant. Bubbling foam rose from between his lips.
His eyes, which he’d been forcing open, ached as if they would fall out, and strength gradually left both arms as Kwon Jeonghoo’s body slowly floated up.
“Ah……”
Yeo Dowoon lowered his eyelids while watching Kwon Jeonghoo, who was slipping from his arms and disappearing like a mermaid. The regret hanging at the corners of his mouth mixed with the dark blue seawater and settled.
If I lose hyung here…, I’ll never find him again.
While worrying that we’re going to become hairtail food.
