I was drowning, a fact I knew after being stuck in an unknown dark state for a long time.
Even I was unsure whether it was really a long period or I was just passing out from the collision.
Although my eyes won't open and my body didn't have any strength left to move inside the thick layer of water, some of my senses remained to be a little functional.
The water was filling my mouth and nostrils, practically choking my throat with the overwhelmingly salty taste of the sea. Multiple parts of my body that I assumed had broken from the fall were hurting so much to the point of just becoming numb.
Throughout the time of my descend, my body was being unresponsive so I waited the moment of my last breath. When I thought about all of it, the reason for my death was so stupid and pitiful as I even failed to protect Aria. What was the point of all my endeavors if I didn't even manage to pull off the main task.
All my efforts were useless.
I continued to curse myself for my uselessness.
I was being too optimistic and soft when she chose to pick me up again. It was proved to be a fatal, irredeemable mistake.
If only I was more persistent when she forced me to go with her, then maybe she would have enough time to find her way to the beach without getting surrounded by the enemy. She wouldn't have gotten hit by the enemy's spear and her life would be much guaranteed that way.
If only she was being selfish, it would ironically be the thing that saved her. Knowing her, she would also blame herself if she survived on her own, but she was a strong girl in my eyes, therefore I was sure that she would get over it after some time.
If only...
If only...
My mind kept on exploring the memories which I wished I could go back to and change the way of how it played out altogether. Such nonsense wishes I had as I knew it wasn't anything possible.
When I dwelled deep in my thoughts, I felt a faint sensation in my left hand. Her hand still tangled with mine, cold, but not the kind of cold that would shiver anyone in the night, rather it was like the refreshing temperature of the seawater at noon. I blamed my dimming senses for giving an ambiguous signal to my mind when It suddenly detected her slight movement.
Her fingers were twitching in my palm, begging it to hold them harder which I did afterward. My grip had never been weaker but she was clinging tenaciously. There was a click of warmth that spread all over my body, saving me from all the bad things which drowned me altogether. And with each thump in my chest, I counted down for the moment when my stomach would be full with the salty water.
I felt serenity blooming inside me within my slumber. Swaying limply from the water, it was the best sensation I had for a while. The water pressure was mimicking the gesture of the sea waves I remembered in my early years, back when my grandfather used to take me fishing near the corals.
His spear tip would always skewer the fishes right on the spot and I could count the only times when he missed with my fingers alone. We then brought a few fishes to our home to be eaten while we sell the others to fetch some money. Those were the most peaceful days of my life and I dearly wished for those days to remain forever if not for the countries' conflict.
I just wondered, when did things really go wrong?
Before I could find the answer deep inside my head, my body finally gave up against the streaming water. My hand lost its control in a gist and my mind,... my mind was somehow still holding on to the last consciousness it could grasp. I waited almost impatiently for the moment when the darkness would completely overwhelm me,...
...but it never came.
My own talking was still heard inside my head, becoming the sole thing that accompanied me in the thick black mist of uncertainty. Did I face death that time? I was pretty sure I did, but it was much more threatening than the one I assumed my whole life. The experience of being trapped in the dark, alone, was unpleasant to me.
Just being idle in that state already scared me more than being ambushed by enemies with their weapons held high. All of the people said that we would be seeing our ancestors after our life's end, however, there wasn't anyone or anything around me for the whole time. Panic overtook my mind, I didn't even highly hope about seeing my grandfather or Aria after death anymore, I only wanted to free myself from this shackle at the very least.
Would someone or something come to pick me up? For how long was I in that place? My mind filled itself with questions I never dare answer. I swore I could go insane if it went on any longer, and that was the first time I genuinely wished to vanish forever and cease from existence.
Suddenly everything went too bright, or rather, everything became much more clear. All the pain which caused my death had neglected my body, making me feel lighter as if I was healthy from the very beginning.
I unexpectedly could see with my own eyes, and then I saw them, the litters of immobile sea animals all around me in the poorly lit water. They seemed lifeless with a strange glow of whitish tinge around their body and I swore I could see through them.
When I looked down, my eyes jolted open after seeing my body state which was similar to those sea animals, all white and stuff. Gazed through my own semi-visible body, I found it lying there, my body which supposedly lost its life not long ago.
What in the world happened to me?
I froze upon the view which presented itself in front of me as I couldn't believe everything that had happened on our end's night. Deep down under the seawater where I couldn't spot a single light from the surface, viewing a slow rain of glowing sea animals was too stellar of an experience.
At that time being, I was already starting to consider the possibility that I entered a weird dream phase but retracted after encountering the very person who was experiencing the same confusion as I did.
"Aria!" I shouted. However, there was nothing that could be heard from my mouth. She was in a daze and my lack of voice couldn't bring her out of it. She looked down towards her own bare body with a frown, shocked and also doubting her own condition.
Aria stood before me while being so focused on swaying her hands quickly on top of each other, inviting my curiosity. To my surprise, despite all the touching she made to her own arms, they didn't even make a single contact and just phased through them like there wasn't anything present.
I tried to do the same thing to my upper body, tapping my chest with enough force and then landed on the same result as hers. I kicked my legs to the ground below me but strangely I felt the brushes of the soft sand that warmly welcomed my feet and also the hard rocks that hid underneath them.
"Hey, Aria!" I tried shouting again but the sound somehow refused to escape my throat, resulting in me making efforts of repeatedly shouting the same thing in a hassle like a fool would do. Gulping down air, screaming from the top of my lungs, again and again with nothing happening.
Apparently, she was opening her mouth to talk to me, but since she was stuck in the same situation as mine, I couldn't comprehend the babbling of hers. I also noticed that everything was too silent to my inconvenience as my ears didn't pick up any kind of sound other than the pressuring amount of water gushing into my ear lobs.
Confusion became the sole thing that lived in my mind since I couldn't process anything with my minuscule knowledge about death. A strange mixture of full consciousness of the mind and also the lack of connection in my body was definitely a sensation I never hoped for.
Certainly, no one I had met in my life would expect such a thing could happen after death because of the null possibility of someone correctly predict the afterlife. Everyone kept convincing everybody that our demise was the path to a gathering with our predecessor, but there I was, witnessing firsthand the aftermath of our lone deaths as we became visages of ourselves.
Our bodies were nearby beside me, unexpectedly shown a spectacle by remaining on holding hands sturdily even after losing our life. It would be a mesmerizing sight if not for the fact that my face and her physique were so obliterated from the rock's collision. Upon further glance, our real faces were clearly not showing any content or even a sign of peace after our death, displaying only regret that plastered on our stiff expression.
I scanned my surroundings on the dark depth where the glow of sea creatures' corpses enlightened the place although dimly, and then I realized there were none of the real bodies present besides mine and Aria. Small fishes, big fishes, squids, eels, and another bunch of sea animals I couldn't name; their glowing forms descended slowly through the murky water but I still couldn't spot the original figure they supposedly came from.
They were also too passive unlike us, only swaying alongside the water flow and resting against the sand that was becoming their blanket of eternal sleep. My inner thoughts ached for an answer as the volley of spirits must have a source from somewhere. If our bodies were able to be preserved, then why didn't the same thing could happen to them?
My mind explored every kind of possibility I could come up with and arrived at a conclusion. The reason we couldn't find their normal bodies was probably due to them not having their death near us. Fishes and other animals were known to feed on each other, so their spirit must have been stranded long after their bodies were gulped inside something else's stomach.
It was solely us who had the peculiar cause of death and managed to drag our body that far. With all that being said, it was just a piece of speculation I created on my own to somehow calm myself as it might not be the case after all. However, there was a sensation of dread looming around me the whole time for being ignorant of the unknown.
My gaze returned to Aria when she was already in the middle of putting herself together and also shaking her hand to attract my attention. She opened her mouth to say something but it was too fast for me to read between the motion. I pulled out a confused face and uttered, "what?" demanding her to repeat her sentence. Therefore, she replied to my request shortly afterward.
"Are... we... dead...?" she spelled the sentence slowly word per word, inquiring as if she didn't know the obvious. I nodded to her as an answer, but it seemed that she wasn't truly asking about our end anyway and was just making sure that all of this wasn't an illusion.
"Then...," she started speaking again before pointing her own body with a finger, "What now?" she continued as I had a sudden burst of realization. That question of hers alone fully explained the anxiety I struggled to understand during the whole occurrence.
If I could provide an answer, then it would only amount to something similar to 'I don't know'. Since we had left our original form and transformed into a new one, what would happen to us then? Would we be able to roam free around this world without worry or would we find a passage to meet our ancestors that everyone talked about?
What was next for us?
Before I could find even a speck of answer, the corpses of the sea animals suddenly crumbled altogether around us, perishing slowly like dust on wind and getting absorbed by the sand below them.