Seokjin felt painful tingling under the soles of his feet and up the length of his body when he suddenly pierced the surface of the cold water. His cry died away when his mouth and then his throat filled with a burning salt water.

Instead of sinking deeply, dragged down by the heavy ball at his ankle and the shackles binding his wrists, Seokjin was yanked back toward the surface. The rope around his waist pulled him violently, dragging him beneath the ship.

Eyes wide with horror and burned by the salt of the sea, Seokjin saw the keel of the ship coming dangerously close to him and it didn't take long before his shoulder hit it hard. Blood mixed with the water around him, his pain spread as he was being pulled along the keel and every irregularity of the barnacle-encrusted hull which came into contact with his body and tore his flesh. If the cannonball had not been there to keep him partly away from the hull, his body would probably have been torn to pieces in a matter of seconds.

The pain was everywhere and at the same time, Seokjin was suffocating. It seemed to him that his body had already filled with water and that he was one with the sea. 

The sea beneath the ship was like the monster named Keelhauling he had imagined as a child: it was devouring him. So that was what the man he had seen undergoing this torture had felt? What he had imagined as a child was nothing like what he felt now. It was much worse.

He felt a feeling of infinite solitude in this nameless suffering. He knew that above him, the pirates would no doubt rejoice in his fate and that his death would not mourn.The dreadful realization dawned on him as his heartbeat weakened and his mind darkened: this time, he would not survive, he could not survive the deadly grip of the sea. Because this time, Jungkook wasn't there to save him.

Jungkook...

A burst of life filled him for a moment as that name came back to him. It enveloped him like a lifeline thrown into the depths: he desperately wanted to live to see him again. He had really believed that he could find him to repair things between them, that the precious bond that had united them as children could be reconnected.

I will always find you...

That was what he had often said to Jungkook. Why couldn't this be true today? Jungkook couldn't find him at the bottom of the sea so he had to come to the surface, he had to survive. If only he could hold on just a little longer...

That thought gave him strength, the pain in his chest eased slightly and it seemed to him that he could hold out for a few more seconds, he just had to be pulled faster.

It was at this moment that the rope caught, slamming his body against the keel, leaving him immobilized in the suffocating darkness. Seokjin's brief hope faded along with his consciousness, Jungkook's face disappeared and death enveloped him in its coldness.