You hadn’t always been afraid of deep water.

Having been born and raised in the little fishing village of Jungmun, Jejudo, you know the sea as much as the sea knows everyone in this community. Your grandmother had been a haenyeo before the practice went out of style side by side with the rise of technology that made marine-based livelihoods less laborious on the individual. In your early childhood, you’d gone with your mother to the market, where you’d learned about picking the right fish based on the glossiness of the eyes and the sheens on their scales. In the evenings, you’d watch your father repair his nets, a short glass of maekju at the edge of the table he sat at (if you were lucky, you’d even get to blow the froth off the top before he’d gulped it down). On weekends, you’d visit the shoreline with your grandmother, who’d walk with you towards the caves across the stretch of sand while recalling the stories of her diving trips, each one sounding more heroic and unbelievable than the last. Her excitement grew with each new tale, and your heart swelled in sharing her enthusiasm.  

It’s a completely different world down there, _______________, she’d muse, her gaze trained towards the open ocean. Her soft, wrinkled cheeks give way to tiny smiles — not meant for you, or for anyone else, for that matter. These smiles, she reserved for the great blue beyond. You think it’s all fish, all water, all sand, but it isn’t. There are so many things down there you can barely dream of, and they’re real.

Pearls, you thought. Sunken ships, treasure, coral reefs made up of diamond. Halmeoni had sounded so mysterious, so enthralled beyond clear words that you could only imagine what mystical things lay under those waters. Surely, they were invaluable.  

When you’d reach the caves, halmeoni would slowly, carefully sit on the rock formations by the entrance, letting the waters that splashed against them at her feet. She’d wiggle her toes, telling you to sit next to her and sing a song. Back then, you knew only three songs — your ABCs, gom se mari, and Twinkle Little Star (which was a cop-out, since it had the exact same tune as ABC). It was on those rocks that halmeoni had slowly taught you Arirang, a song you had never fully understood in your young age. Still, you liked listening to halmeoni sing the repetitive Arirang, long wisps of her gray hair whipping back and forth in the ocean breeze.  

It was in the fifth grade that the sea had become a dangerous place.  

School always impressed upon its students the idea that the sea was a place they needed to know like the backs of their hands; they scheduled field trips at the end of each year to allow the children both an opportunity to unwind and to learn first-hand how much importance the ocean held for the people of Jungmun. Four years of field trips had gone by without incident, but you had the grim misfortune of being stuck with a lax supervisor, a group of rowdy classmates, and mounting peer pressure.  

Despite your frequent visits, you had never entered the cave interiors; the rocks were too slippery, and it was dark, cold, and ultimately dangerous without an expert. When little Choi Sooyoung had wanted to go in with a few boys, you had outright refused. But your stance had softened when you’d found out that in the small band of adventurers, Shim Changmin was present — a tall-for-his-age, good-looking young boy that had stolen your heart in the middle of the year by off-handedly telling you that your hair pulled back apparently looked really pretty. Couple that knowledge with the fact that Choi Sooyoung was constantly asking you if you were too scared, and you found yourself, against your better judgment, agreeing to participate in the venture.  

The walk in seemed fine; for a while, all you could do was ooh and ahh at the sight, your voices echoing off the arch of the cave. But someone had suggested you go further down, and even if you personally and really didn’t want to, there wasn’t much room to turn back and leave. All the care in the world can’t prepare anyone for an accident, and despite your cautious steps, the water-beaten rocks were too smooth, too slippery, and you’d lost your footing. A horrible, blood-curdling shriek had escaped your lips just before you’d gone under. The last clear thought on your mind was the idea that Shim Changmin had seen you fall like a total idiot.  

Your friends would later tell you that you had swum back to the surface on the other end of cave; they had rushed over to the commotion you’d made doing so and had found you hacking up seawater in an obscene fashion. You can’t remember doing that, but, then again, you also can’t remember the drive to the hospital or the lecture the supervisor had given your classmates regarding breaking off from the group and putting themselves in dangerous situations, so you just had to believe them. It had been a dark, confusing, shocking scene, after all.  

That following summer marked the start of the end of your relationship with the sea.  

Still, in a village as small as yours, there was no way you could cut off ties with a friend completely and never see them again; the same could be said for the ocean, which was a stone’s throw away from your house. It would crash against the sand as though calling out to you, swell in waves as though trying to grab your attention, but you never paid it any mind. It was only on quiet summer nights, when the wind was low and the sea was quiet, would you spare it a glance, and if the ocean had eyes, it would see the sad longing that lay behind your fear.  

You had never made it to another class field trip, and when your halmeoni had asked you to come out for walks or picnics by the beach, you would refuse, citing homework, other engagements, fatigue as your excuses. You knew halmeoni could see right through you, but there was no talking around your fears. Slowly, the sea became background noise — ever-present, never seen.  

You’d graduated high school third in your class, an achievement that had allowed you a fair pick of universities in Seoul. For some reason, despite your long-nurtured fear of the ocean, you’d chosen to enter Seoul National’s Marine Biology program, a choice that had somehow baffled but ultimately delighted your family.

“Maybe it’ll help you kick that fear to the gutter,” your mom, always the optimist, had said the night before you’d left for the airport.

The flight from Jejudo to Seoul was insignificant time-wise, but it had felt odd, almost hollow, for reasons you had never fully understood; when you’d looked out the window during take-off and at different points of the one hour you were in the air, all you could see was the vast expanse of blue below, and you felt a little like you’d become some kind of a traitor.  

When you’d arrived in Seoul, you were greeted with a new kind of sea — an ocean of skyscrapers, an endless pool of new personalities that you could never easily match up to an equally bottomless pit of faces. The same fear that you had hoped to leave behind in Jungmun had returned, in a new form, with a strange new vengeance. For some reason, though, you’d forced yourself to stay afloat; it was never easy, but you tried to find any lifesaver you could hold onto — friends, mostly, that made you feel just a little bit safer.  

Six and a half years away from Jungmun blunted your pain, and Jejudo was once again reassociated with the fond idea of a good home rather than a bad memory. Your parents, who’d called everyday during your first two years in school, had slowly loosened their hold alongside their discovery of the wonders of text messaging and Facebook status updates.

Six and a half years away from the sea had allowed you to slowly, carefully resurface.  

  *:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ✧

Your final term in SNU was for independent study; all PhD hopefuls were required to do at least two, and you had already done traditional research for your first one. We want something more empirical, Dr. Park had said during your consultation. You can’t just keep reading existing literature and attempting to suggest areas for future research. Your second independent study has to be more hands-on.

And there returns the fear you had carefully smothered over your years in the city — the fear of actually going out into the sea, of doing something that required you to bethere. It seemed silly, but you had gotten through most of your higher education without spending much time near any bodies of water larger than those that could be contained in glass tanks, and if you absolutely had to, you would make Soojung, a friend from your