drabble meme: onepool: write our characters swimming together( present day; potentially canon )
{ tw: asphyxiation, gore ?? }
the thing about magical hero duty is that it doesn’t stop for anything.
for kana, the meaning of that runs deeper than most: the literal end of the world, for example.
then again, maybe that’s not true for everyone. maybe it’s just her. even in her last life, she preferred to hunt cards than rest. she couldn’t sleep with the thought of them out in the world, tearing apart families like they did to hers. it’s different for her now, but so much is the same, too. there’s always more to be done, and every second of life feels so precarious. she catches herself on edge, always anticipating the next beginning of the end– the next supermassive chimera, or an explosion of dark magical energy, or the hanged man himself sucking the hero headquarters through the center of the earth and into hell. anything and everything seems possible.
today, magical hero duty doesn’t stop for the winter, and the freezing waters off the coast of busan. seamonsters just don’t give a shit, and so by extension, kana doesn’t either, because she can’t let them win, obviously.
she defeats this particular monster by wrapping her whip around its body, squeezing, and constricting its gills until it suffocates. she wasn’t sure it would work, nor was it necessarily her intention; she was aiming to sever it in half with the barbs of her whip, but that works too. even after the creature’s struggle ends, she still plunges under the water’s surface, holds her breath, and pulls tighter at her whip, until its tail falls off, just to be sure. she returns to the surface to take another breath, then goes back under to untangle her whip and let the monster’s body drift to the sea floor.
it’s then that she feels a hand on her shoulder, tugging at her, and the sheer shock of it makes her suck in a gulp of water.
the hand jerks her to the surface, and she coughs violently.
“don’t worry!! I’LL SAVE YOU!” wonshik announces, wild and determined, and kana curses her lungs for incapacitating her at this moment, because all she wants to do is yell at him for being such an idiot. he wraps a protective arm around her while she continues to wheeze, like he’s the only thing keeping her afloat. kana flails her arm out, and shoves wonshik’s head underneath the water.
he splashes frantically, like a fucking maniac, and looks like a drowned rat when he returns to the surface again. he gives her the most offended look, and kana just yells, “I WAS FINE UNTIL YOU GRABBED ME LIKE THAT! NOW WE’RE BOTH GOING TO GET HYPOTHERMIA, YOU IDIOT!”
if it was possible to cower while treading water, wonshik would be doing it right now– as frozen in fear as he can be without sinking. kana coughs one last time, rolls her eyes, then pushes him toward the shore.
