rapture of the deep ; seodo

✯ chapter 18 ✯

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“Are you in pain?”

Geonhak asked after a while that had passed in too much silence than he liked.

He could only imagine the toll the poison was having on Seoho’s body and how impossibly exhausted he must have been feeling, but Geonhak couldn’t stand the thought of Seoho passing out on him and possibly never waking up again.

Seoho shook his head.

“Just a little dizzy.”

(Geonhak didn’t know whether Seoho cared to tell the truth or chose to downplay the situation because Geonhak had nothing in his hands to do anything about it anyways.)

Geonhak’s mind was so wrapped up in desperate attempts to find a way to fix this, to get the poison out of Seoho’s system, to allow him to breathe freely, to allow him to go back home, but brewing an antidote on the spot wasn’t an option and neither was sleeping it off.

This was out of his league, he knew it, and still, Geonhak chose to be a little too human in his mind, thinking of all the ways medics would work against a failing respiratory system.

Geonhak knew that performing lung transplant was a thing, but apart from the fact that he was no surgeon, he couldn’t exactly declare another mermaid his captive (sacrifice) or expect fish gills to be fitting.

The other measure he came to think of were nasal cannulas or the like; machines that took the load off struggling lungs, but Geonhak could hardly offer Seoho an alternative akin to a nasal cannula, an oxygen tank, or a trach tube; something that took over his inhibited and inoperative gills and still provided him with enough oxygen to be just fine.

Unless…

Geonhak jerked into an upright position, jostling Seoho in the process who could only offer him a confused shake of the head, but Geonhak didn’t register any of it because he didn’t know whether he should laugh, cry, or sit still and not get his hopes up – shifting all of his faith into a figment of his imagination seemed a little rash and careless after all.

“What is it?” Seoho asked, panting slightly as he shifted away from Geonhak’s lap and properly sat down in front of him.

“Spiraquatica,” Geonhak gasped a little breathlessly, air sucked out of his lungs from the shock-realisation, “you don’t need your gills for that.”

“You know that spiraquatica is not a permanent solution,” Seoho sighed, unconvinced, which was not the reaction Geonhak had been expecting.

Eyes casted downwards, Seoho didn’t radiate the same ambition and willpower that Geonhak had seen Seoho’s face light up with whenever Geonhak was on the brink of backing out from whatever exploit Seoho was about to take him.

Something inside Geonhak broke; how could he be so indifferent?

“And what if it doesn’t have to be? There’s a chance that the poison has an inhibitory effect and not a destroying one. We’ll just have to find a way to get through it until it gets degraded and subsides, and this might be it,” Geonhak went on, but the look of sympathy in Seoho’s eyes was squeezing his airways until the momentarily confident tone in his voice went back to being a frail plea.

Raw fear and despair struck Geonhak’s nerves; Seoho would tell him that it had already been tried, that the poison was already corroding away his gills beyond repair, that the effect could last up to weeks and that trying to stay awake and alert and concentrated and breathe would just elongate the torture until he would have to give in.