GB 78

The confusion burned away completely, and Haero felt like his body might burst. He was numb with unbearable jealousy and the realization that Yoon Moo-hwa was still pushing him away.

It’s irritating. Why worry about a change of heart? It’s his own feelings. Why talk about getting bored when he won’t even accept them?

The tone, unmistakably one of genuine concern, made it even harder to accept. He couldn’t understand what Yoon Moo-hwa was worried about. 

‘He’s hiding something from me. But I can’t figure out what it is. Is it because of the difference in our life experiences?’ 

It angered him that Yoon Moo-hwa was sincerely worried about him, but he couldn’t even understand the meaning behind it. It felt like proof of how young and immature he was…

Why couldn’t he have Yoon Moo-hwa as he wanted? If only he could save not just his life, but his heart too.

Ah… really. Maybe it’s time to give up now. He’ll give up today. He doesn’t know about tomorrow, but for today, he’ll stop… Just for today…

“Ah.”

Haero’s footsteps stopped. Around him, people were jumping up and down, singing along to the music. But the noise didn’t reach his ears, and everything gradually became quiet.

He remembered last night’s dream. He had lost his balance. He was falling over the railing. Of all times, his feet got tangled. It was because he was drunk. As his upper body bent backward and his feet lifted off the ground, there was a hand that grabbed his shoulder. Reflexively, Haero gripped it tightly too. To stop his accelerating body, he scratched what he grabbed and then desperately held on.

Was it the night sky, or the night sea?

Was it a hallucination, or reality?

In that confusing moment, what Haero grabbed became reality, and Yoon Moo-hwa’s greatly shaken expression filled his vision.

“I didn’t know you could make such an expression, hyung.” As Haero asked with a grin, Yoon Moo-hwa, who had caught him just before he fell into the sea, let out a laugh mixed with a sigh and frowned.

“It’s probably an expression only you’ll see.”

‘If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t be shaken like this…’ 

Haero closed his eyes, relieved by the fact that Yoon Moo-hwa had caught him, even though his body was still precariously suspended. He had the leisurely thought that it would be fine to fall asleep like this.

“Hyung.” Haero looked up at Yoon Moo-hwa standing in front of him. “Did we kiss yesterday?”

At that weak question that sounded almost foolish, Yoon Moo-hwa’s eyes widened for a moment before he laughed briefly. He seemed annoyed. “You call that a kiss?”

‘So we did.’ 

He remembers. He remembered. Everything.

“You promised. If I remembered…” Haero muttered, still as if in a trance, “If I remembered this time… you said you wouldn’t consider my future anymore.”

“…”

The loud music cut off abruptly. A brief silence filled the gap before the next song. Haero wondered if the world had stopped for everyone except him and Yoon Moo-hwa.

Yoon Moo-hwa sighed. “Yes. I did say that.”

That self-reproaching look didn’t reach Haero. Haero was just in a dream. More precisely, in a memory he thought was a dream.

“That promise…” Haero’s voice spread out dreamily.

The music didn’t start again. Instead of a new song, a siren sounded. Along with an announcement that this was a real situation, there was a swift and noisy broadcast warning people to evacuate, cautioning about a tsunami caused by seawater occurring along the coast.

The crowd and sailors ran in opposite directions.

Haero and Yoon Moo-hwa watched the people moving urgently, then turned their heads back to meet each other’s eyes. Haero’s dreamy eyes and Yoon Moo-hwa’s bitterly sunken eyes entangled sharply.

Words weren’t necessary. The promise was suspended. The festival was over. Now, instead of laughter, screams full of anxiety and fear burst out everywhere.

Yoon Moo-hwa grabbed Haero’s hand and ran. 

Haero shouted, “I can run by myself!” and shook off that hand. 

No matter how chaotic things were, it was crazy for a captain to be seen running while holding his subordinate’s hand. 

‘This is the honor I tried to protect for hyung.’ Haero gritted his teeth.

The sound of footsteps on the gangway was noisy. There was no time to change into uniforms as they exchanged signals until the satellite phones were about to burst. It was to prevent collisions between warships.

In the rush to set sail, a quasi-civilian fleet belonging to the Western Australian Parliament scraped the breakwater. It wasn’t a collision.

“Report!” Yoon Moo-hwa, who had almost jumped onto the bridge, said briefly. 

The tactical action officer standing by next to him recited as reported, “It’s a shark-shaped seawater often found in the Indian Ocean. The danger level is Class A, and the size is A. An ocean-going fishing vessel discovered and reported it, and the current location of the reporting vessel is…”

The bridge door closed.

Even at a glance, the atmosphere was ominous.

A large harpoon, likely used on now-banned large whaling ships, was mounted on the stern, and they were busy preparing torpedoes as well. After setting the course, they were moving at the fastest possible speed, causing continuous loud “thump, thump” noises from the ship. It was the sound of smashing through the sea. There was no such thing as soft water.

Haero held his breath, wearing a life jacket and preparing stretchers and first aid supplies.

The Indian Ocean, especially the coast of Western Australia, has long been plagued by man-eating sharks. Those that had tasted human flesh and blood occasionally endangered people surfing or fishing. They were extremely threatening, very fast, with tough skin and teeth as hard as armor that kept growing. The only reason they weren’t classified as S-class was because that spot was taken by the crazy crocodiles that chased people onto land.

“If, if the size is Class A, roughly how big is that?” A trembling medical sailor asked. 

He seemed like he couldn’t be more skilled when holding barber tools as a barber, but looking at him now, he was just like a young kid who had just turned twenty.

“Three stories high…”

Class A ranged from three to five stories high. 

Haero swallowed a curse at that large and vague category, ‘How big of a difference is that?’

Above all, the reason for this full-scale deployment as soon as a shark appeared was because shark-shaped seawater brought a very troublesome problem.

With the appearance of a predator, the semi-predators in the middle of the food chain go wild. Instead of scattering, they charge forward and leap towards the warship, flapping. Injuries from this were countless. In the threatening marine ecosystem, the evolution of creatures that had reached the predator position easily cut and sliced humans with their still soft body structures.

“Prepare plenty of bandages and compressed cotton. Stopping the bleeding is the top priority. Painkillers and antibiotics are a later concern, stopping the bleeding is absolute.” Haero ordered seriously. 

He also had his pockets full of compressed cotton. Nothing was better for penetrating wounds. Although the patient might faint from pain when stuffed into the wound, at least the chances of surviving and waking up were higher.

Haero had no religion. But many people he had seen did. They made the sign of the cross, sought God, or prayed even in inappropriate situations. So, even if Haero, who had no religion, made the sign of the cross in a situation like this, God would probably forgive him.

He made the sign of the cross, and the first collision occurred.

The small flying fish-shaped seawater began to jump onto the warship.

Haero recalled in his mind the maximum casualty rate he had memorized countless times through simulation training. The total crew was 400. According to the ratio…

After the first impact passed, sobbing sounds began to be heard after a small commotion. Haero estimated the number of people injured by those sounds. It seemed to be the minimum number or even less than what the simulation could capture.

“Let’s go out.” Haero got up and headed to the deck.

He couldn’t collapse. He couldn’t get hurt either. Even if there was a medical ambulance to transport critically ill patients, he was the only one who could keep patients alive until the ship arrived.

At this moment, he couldn’t think of Yoon Moo-hwa, the promise, his background… nothing else.

* * *

Haero’s first impression upon actually encountering a Class A seawater, which he had only seen in textbooks or reference materials, was…

‘Shouldn’t such a creature not exist?’

However, if other creatures on Earth could think in the same way as Haero, they would have had the same thought about humans.

Humans live by wrapping themselves in all kinds of technology, hiding their inherently powerless existence. But in front of a truly overwhelming being, even a huge warship seemed powerless.

‘Surely the warship must be larger than or equal to that 6-meter seawater, so why does it feel so small?’

Haero gasped as salty seawater, soaking his body and threatening to sweep across the deck, sprayed around.

‘How can we beat that?’

Such a thought suddenly arose, but unlike the frozen Haero, the warship maneuvered in perfect unison.

They surrounded the seawater in a circle and shone searchlights at the center of the circle. They fired torpedoes after trapping it within the encircled area, preventing it from escaping by emitting modified sonar ultrasonic waves that sharks find difficult to endure.

With a whooshing sound tearing through the sea, a red explosion occurred within the circle moments later. An enigmatic light spreading as it met the blue waves was visible below the surface before disappearing.

Naval battles at night were situations to be avoided if at all possible. The tension was greatly heightened by the dark vision that made even easily visible changes during the day unpredictable. Thoughts narrowed to the point where one could only think about the given mission, rather than wanting to run away.

After all, where is there to run in this sea?