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Filing back through the twenty-nine years of his life, it's hard to say when Seokjin started to truly fear the water. Maybe it was when he nearly drowned in the kiddy pool at his brother's twelfth birthday, or when he dropped his superman figurine in the lake just outside his childhood home while his mother was feeding the ducklings.
His brother had always teased him when they visited their grandmother's beach home. A quaint home located just off the shore on one of Busan's many beaches. They'd visit her a couple of times in the year, and it usually ended with tears streaming down the apples of Seokjin's chubby cheeks as his brother once again pressured him into the water.
From what he can remember, his mother always called the water beautiful. Yet, despite the calmness of the shore as the water slowly crept its way up, Seokjin found nothing but chaos—an infinite space of unknowns.
And yet, here he is again—treading the shoreline of the water just outside his grandmother's lakeside home—another pathetic attempt of getting over his fear.
He’s barefooted—having abandoned his shoes just outside his grandmother’s front door. He foolishly thinks this will somehow get him used to the water as if the flecks of sand sticking to his ankles will erase twenty-something years of fear.
Seokjin thinks back to his mother's stories about the ocean—how the moon loved them so dearly and wished nothing but to have its calm waters back in its grasp. And he fully believed his mother’s stories—the moon’s possessiveness, the ocean doing everything in their power to return to the moon. Of course, this was all before he learned the concept of tidal force.
But there’s something endearing about choosing to believe the words you were fed as a child. The unbridled innocence that comes with carrying a childhood story into adulthood, the irrational fears you keep closely clutched to your heart. As if cradling a cup of boiling hot water between your palms in fear of it spilling over to scald the skin, letting go of an old fear is always scary.
Because Seokjin knows that being afraid of the water is a perfectly rational fear. But, for most, it’s one grown out by the time they reach their elementary years. He scoffs inwardly at himself, a grown man still petrified of the water.
He wonders what his brother would say if he saw him now, and immediately, he wonders what his mother would say—if she would still scold his brother and share a soft glance of pity over to Seokjin, or maybe she’d tell him it was high time he got over his fears.
Probably not the latter, his mother is a gentle soul and still claims she sees Seokjin as her precious son, even despite his age and maturity. If she were here right now she’d most likely offer an outstretched hand to Seokjin to walk along the shore with him.
He knows this is something he is meant to do on his own. The longer he looks over the water, a heavy feeling of unease settles deep in Seokjin’s stomach. He has troubles discerning if it’s his body’s way of telling him he’s in danger—to run away from the water and never look back.
Because realistically speaking, the world will still turn on its axis if Kim Seokjin refuses to get over his fear of the vast ocean. There is nothing special about his fear, nor is he special for standing on this beach with his heart in his throat, toe-to-toe with the calm waves.
There is something unsettling about the ocean. He doesn’t quite know if it’s the unending expanse of water, or if it’s because so little is known about the water, or maybe it’s because Seokjin is twenty-nine and still doesn’t know how to swim. Trying to understand his fears feels like trying to take hold of water, so close in his reach yet time and time again it only slips through his fingers and Seokjin is once again left empty-handed.
But, as he stands here toeing at the shoreline, he can’t help but notice the desperation of the water as it stretches itself across the sand and tickles at his feet—a pathetic yet admirable attempt at reaching out.
Distantly, Seokjin thinks he’s in no position to call the ocean pathetic. Because yet again, he’s the one standing on the shore of an empty beach at one in the morning, because he thinks that if he stands here long enough, the ocean will come to him (and maybe this hope is true to a certain extent, but it’s up to Seokjin to take the first steps forward—to meet in the middle).
At some point he begins to walk along the shoreline again, growing sick of standing in place. He avoids the waves crashing along the shore—Seokjin tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want to get his feet wet.
The moon glimmers brightly in its reflection in the water. It reminds him of his mother’s stories, that maybe the moon’s reflection in the water is the closest it’ll ever get to the ocean.
Fleetingly, Seokjin thinks this is the closest he’ll ever get to the water. And there’s a moment where Seokjin believes that the moon would be enraged at his choices—how he’s so close to the thing it longs for the most, yet he has instead chosen to fear it rather than embrace.
And then he laughs. Because there is nothing funny about this situation, but at the same time it’s all so hilarious to him. He, a twenty-nine-year-old man who is terrified of the water, believes that his mother’s bedtime stories have any weight in this matter.
At the end of the day, the ocean is the ocean and the moon is the moon—nothing more and nothing less.
Just as Seokjin is nothing but a twenty-nine-year-old man with a fear of the water—nothing more and nothing less.
So as he stands with his feet sunken into the cool sand, Seokjin laughs wholeheartedly. He can’t remember when he had last laughed quite this hard—he remembers distantly how his brother once made him laugh so hard he had spat his banana milk all over him, causing the elder to cry to their mother. He still remembers how she did her best in stifling her own laughter.
Facing your fears is quite funny, Seokjin thinks.
Then, he stops laughing—a slow diminuendo that leaves his chest heaving with every exhale. He takes a step forward, looking down onto the foamy waves as they break against the shore—the stark white now embracing his ankles, washing away the sand as they recede into the water.
He flinches back as he takes another step when a hard edge digs into the sole of his foot. Crouching down, Seokjin uncovers a seashell from the waves.
Much to his surprise, there’s no blood or cut where the shell had dug into the skin.
Perhaps it’s an offer, he chuckles to himself.
Another wave crashes along the shore, enveloping Seokjin up to his ankles. He straightens himself upon impact, shoulders stiff as a board.
And suddenly, between the crest and the crash of the waves, something clicks.
As each wave crashes along the shoreline, Seokjin can’t help but realize two things. The first—the water has a serene edge to it, how could it not when it lays the shells in the sand so gently despite the violent, crashing waves? The second—it isn’t the water he’s afraid of.
No, it isn’t the water that scares him, it's what comes with it. The unknownness of it all—the vastness of the unruly tides and how you can never quite see the end of the ocean.
Seokjin likes routine and predictability. It’s his fatal flaw.
And the water… is everything Seokjin isn’t. Perhaps this is the scariest part.
Because Seokjin knows a lot of things. He knows how to cook, he knows his dogs are waiting for him back home and that they’re currently being taken care of by his parents, and he knows that there’s an empty can of air freshener at the foot of his bed back in Seoul (because isn’t it still organization if you know where everything in a messy room is?).
What comes with the water with every crash? Without the sand, the sky, and the moon? What is left when you strip it of its necessities?
Seokjin doesn't quite know the answer to this. He knows that the ocean is deemed as beautiful yet unparalleled with its cruelty. But, this is all he knows—a description that is both terrifying yet calm.
His fear of drowning isn’t paralyzing, he realizes. After all, he nearly drowned in a kiddy pool at his brother’s twelfth birthday, but the fear subsided once realizing he could simply stand up. He may have never gotten his superman figurine back, but there’s comfort in knowing it’s with the sea. Perhaps the water is treating it as gently as it does the seashells.
There’s an agreement of trust between the water, the shells, and the ocean. The ocean trusts the water to return, the water trusts the ocean in surviving the drift, and the shells trust both the ocean and the water to be gentle in its tides.
Another wave crashes against the shore, tickling Seokjin’s ankles.
He lets out a breath.