pointed teeth || iz*one

23

"Let's discuss this in the hotel," Hyewon suggested. Miyun and Sakura went 'yea' and started adjusting their masks again.

Sakura put her snorkel back in and disappeared under the surface, leaving Hyewon and Miyun to exchange looks.

Cool fish, Sakura thought, ditching her thoughts of collecting info and poking around a large coffee brown coral instead. A little yellow angel darted out of a hole, and her gaze drifted to a long snakelike creature slithering across the dark sand.

She caught sight of a tiny scuttling mottled crab running back to its group. Curiously, she prodded a large one with her thumb.

It pinched her and she opened her mouth in a yelp. The snorkel slipped out and a few bubbles escaped past her lips.

She swivelled around in the water to adjust it.

She paused. A sharp searing pain on her thigh made her jerk and grip onto the plastic tube. She felt the end of an invisible object zip past her ankle.

Were there eels here? Or large fish? She didn't think shark pups could bite either. It could be a classmate; a playful pinch to scare her...

But the water around her started spiralling with black.

She glanced at the wound under her swimsuit and swam upwards. She ripped the mask and snorkel off roughly and burst through the surface with a gasp, eyes stinging from salt and air.

She kicked Hyewon in the process of thrashing upwards.

"Sakura- watch your feet-"

"Hyewon, I'm hurt," she said. "I have to get to shore..."

Hyewon stayed there, still for a while, treading water to stay up. She was confused. Hurt where? The water wasn't red...

The water was turning dark around Sakura very quickly. It looked like ink had been poured into the water.

"It's blood, my blood is black," she sputtered. Hyewon smacked her forehead, remembering it, and removed her mask and snorkel. She turned around sharply and grabbed Sakura around her waist.

"Tread water, come on Kkura, keep treading," she mumbled in attempt to calm the other girl down, laying on her back and pedalling backwards towards the sand.

Sakura kicked furiously and pressed a palm to her thigh. 

...

"Are there squid in Jeju?" someone asked.

"I dunno," a friend replied, watching a fish swim into a hole in a coral. "Why?"

"Oh. There's like, a spiral of ink there."

...

The beach was lined with gazebos and tents. A few tourists were having snacks in them. Hyewon guessed someone was taking a nap in their tent from the way two feet stuck out limply. Two parents and a pair of twins were having a picnic.

"Aish, oh no, what happened to her?" Conan woman tutted as Hyewon dragged Sakura onto the sand.

Professor Kim rushed out of a nearby gazebo. His loose shirt flapped in the wind as he ran down the sandy slope.

"Something cut me. I think I brushed against a point in the rocks," Sakura muttered apologetically. "I'm sorry..."

Hyewon pinched her shoulder lightly. "Not your fault," she whispered.

The woman tutted again. She brought out her phone.

"Can you walk?" she asked in a curt voice. Sakura nodded meekly. Professor Kim was already strapping a tourniquet around Sakura's upper thigh to stop the bleeding.