He groaned lowly, clutching his wet hair.

            “I almost turned my birthday into a death day. If you had been any later…”

            “Beodeul.”

            Then he looked at her with vacant eyes, seemingly unable to grasp what had just happened.

            She crawled towards him and tightly wrapped her arms around his soaked shoulders. He allowed himself to be pulled into her embrace, taking small breaths to steady himself.

            “Why did you save me?”

            His voice was strained.

            “What, should I have left you to drown? And you can’t even say thank you!”

            “You’ve done something you shouldn’t have. You’ve upset them.”

            “What do you mean…”

            The young master wrapped his cold arms around her neck, patting her back as if to comfort her shaking form more than his own.

            How can someone be so calm after nearly dying? She felt an unfamiliar bubbling anger.

            “You knew they were water spirits from the start, didn’t you? Did you mingle with them knowing that?”

            She let go of his shoulders and confronted him.

            “You knew and still…”

            “Yes.”

            “Why? Out of loneliness?”

            “…”

            “Really, for just that reason, you brought those not human to your side?”

            When rage and disbelief peaked, sometimes one doesn’t even feel angry anymore. She understood what blood-chilling anger meant. People avoid water spirits, yet he, knowing his own frailty, should have been more cautious. Instead, he brought them into his life to ease his loneliness?

            “Do you have a hobby of hastening your death?”

            She asked with a frosty voice, and he evasively looked away.

            “Do you realise what you’ve done? Knowing they are water spirits, you should have shunned them immediately, not socialised fearlessly!”

            “I tried to shake them off. Now that you’re here.”

            “So this is the result of shaking them off? Becoming fish food?”

            Tears stung her eyes. Some fight to live another day, others don’t care if they’re on the path to the afterlife. There are people who take their own life as a joke.

            “I was trying to chase them away when they asked me for one last favour. They told me to come to the water’s edge. If I didn’t listen, I’d earn their grudge.”

            She laughed bitterly. After risking his life to save him, it turns out he knew everything all along. Even today’s lure to the water’s edge was the water spirits’ doing.

            The young master carefully wiped away her tears. She pushed him away hard. As much as she was angry, the thought that he sought to ease his loneliness that way made it hard to rebuke him completely. Her heart felt tight and painful. She didn’t understand herself.

            “They were waiting for you to become a corpse, to snatch your soul. Did you think they would leave you alone after granting them a favour?”

            Just thinking of the young master’s reckless behaviour made her tremble with rage.

            “What if you had died?”

            His expression washed away as if it didn’t matter whether he lived or died.

            “This doesn’t concern you.”

            She grabbed the collar of his clothes, sitting there absent-mindedly. He didn’t resist. She wanted to slap him, to shake him, but his hollow eyes troubled her. They seemed to ask if she blamed him, and she couldn’t bring herself to curse him.

            “Why, because the high-ranking father considers you a disgrace to the family’s honour? Wishes you were gone? And so you easily throw away the body you’ve barely managed to keep alive?”

            “Beodeul.”

            “I didn’t know this whole madness was self-inflicted by the young master. I kept my guard up all day fearing something might happen to you. And after saving you from near death… I was a fool. You must have found it amusing when I tried to drive away the water spirits with talk of fate and appearances.”

            She shook off her hand and coldly turned away.

            Footsteps followed her like a magnet, but she walked home without looking back once. At some point, the footsteps stopped, but she could still feel the piercing gaze on her back.

            Now she understood. That man, whether he lived or died, didn’t value his life and was ready to accept death. She had tried to save such a person…

            “Are you afraid of dying?”

            She ignored the soft-spoken words behind her.

            “Beodeul. My father… when I fell into the water, he just stood by and watched.”

            She turned around involuntarily. The young master looked smaller in the distance, the trail of his wet steps cut off abruptly. He made a sound that seemed to tear at the edges of her heart and then did not come any closer.

            “I don’t understand anymore. Whether it’s the high-ranking father who doesn’t care if his useless child dies, or the young master like a candle in the wind. A family twisted and tangled. With such agitation in my heart, it would be no surprise if water spirits nested and laid their eggs.”