"Help me! Please, someone pull me up!"
"I cannot, I cannot reach you, I am sorry! We are all going to fall... we are all going to fall anyway..."
"Please, I do not want to die, I do not want to die, I am only sixteen, please! I still have a future, I am just a kid, please no!"
The cries layered on top of each other until they stopped sounding like individual voices and became one continuous sound of raw panic and despair.
They followed everyone else into the freezing sky that was about to become a deadly ocean.For a brief moment, as they turned over and fell, Serene saw the whole nightmare laid out above them.
The broken ship. The shattered ice. And under it all, a lurking darkness as large as a town, moving beneath the water.
Bodies falling. Pieces of the deck, chairs, glass, bags, everything tumbling together as if they had all been thrown into some enormous invisible mouth.
Then the ocean rose up and swallowed her view.
The water hit them with a violence that ripped the air straight out of her lungs.
It did not feel like water anymore. It felt like slamming into a wall made of knives and stone at the same time.
Her whole body screamed at once, nerves lighting up from the sudden cold.
Every sound became muffled. The world turned into swirling bubbles, murky shapes, and crushing pressure.
Debris sank around them. A broken chair drifted past her face. A backpack brushed her shoulder. A strip of someone's uniform floated upward like a ghostly flag.
Something hard and sharp scraped across her thigh and then cut deeper, tearing open skin and muscle. Heat erupted there first, then faded almost immediately into the endless cold as her blood spilled out.
Iskael did not let go, as his face contorted in worry and fear for her.
His arm stayed hooked around her, dragging her closer even as the current tried its best to rip them apart. The force of the water twisted their bodies.
Her hair floated around her like threads of pale light, tangling with his clothes.
Above them, the ship was still breaking. Massive pieces of metal continued to fall, slamming into the sea and sending waves downward that pushed them even deeper.
Shadows loomed and passed overhead, darkening what little light reached them.
Serene's chest burned. Each second felt longer than a minute. Her lungs screamed for air. Her mind started to blur at the edges, thoughts slipping apart.
Her free hand moved blindly through the freezing water, searching for something familiar to anchor to.
Her fingers brushed his wrist, then slid down and entwined tightly with his hand, overlocking them as lovers do.
She squeezed as hard as she could, as if trying to pour every last bit of her fear and gratitude into that one touch.
Through the distorted haze, she saw his face.
The fake, calm smile he always wore was gone. Neither his polite mask nor his usual gentleness remained.
His lips were pressed into a thin line, his eyes locked on her with a strange mix of fear and stubborn resolve, his brows drawn tight.
For the first time, he was looking at her openly, almost desperately. The intensity in that gaze made something inside her reach back for him, like a part of her soul leaned forward to meet his.
A unique longing between the two.
Iskael had the face of someone trying to refuse a fate he already knew he could not escape.
And for some reason, that expression hurt her more than the wound in her leg, and more than the cold that bled into her being.
Her thoughts should have scattered, maybe they should have run to her mother, or her siblings and friends, her dreams in life, the missed things she couldn't do or complete.
But they did not.
Everything seemed to narrow down to the boy in front of her. The boy she had called a dog as a child and then never let go of.
The boy who begged and tried more than anything for her to survive.The boy whose hand she was still clinging to at the very end.
'Ahh.
So it really is him.'
The one thing she truly did not want to lose in this very stupid, very unfair world.
Her lungs burned even more. Blackness crept into the edges of her vision.
She tried to speak, but when she opened her mouth, only bubbles escaped, rising past her face like tiny glass spheres that carried her unsaid words away.So instead she tightened her grip on his hand again, as if she could force the message directly through his skin.
'Thank you.
I am glad it was you beside me.
If I get another life, I hope it is…'
The thought faded before it finished.
The pressure around them grew heavier, like the ocean was slowly crushing them closer to each other and then even further down.
Her fingers started to lose strength. Her hand trembled, then loosened without her permission.
Iskael's grip fought it, his fingers clinging to hers desperately, but even that stubbornness could not fight against a world sized current forever.
Their bodies began to drift apart, pulled in slightly different directions by the swirling water.
Their arms stretched to their limit, their joined hands the last bridge between them.
For a moment, it felt like time had slowed just to watch that simple touch strain and hold.
Then, finally, her fingers slipped from his.
Her hand fell away.
The light from above grew smaller and smaller as they sank deeper into the cold, dark water, two silhouettes descending separately into the depths of a world that had only just begun to break.
And like that, the boy called the dog of Class 10D, and the girl who once claimed him as hers, died together without anyone on that ship truly knowing what those last few moments meant to them.