17 Prelude 2 - Bright-Colored Words, Part 9

Deep from the seabed and up to the ocean floor in a matter of seconds, Lauren pulled Zachary out of the water.

She could not understand why this had happened.

One moment, Zachary was diving into the water in front of her, and in the next, he did not come back. For a second, she thought he was joking around, but then a second passed, and then the next, and the next… There was no sign of him, he was just not swimming back.

There was only one conclusion: drowning.

When she came to that realization, she almost froze before she thought of acting quickly to save him.

And just so it happened, she was now carrying his body and pulling him out of the ocean after he had drowned.

Thankfully, they were close to the beach right beside the docks, which served as a safe place to reach for now, and a place they could head back up from.

「We were just having fun. Why did it come to this?」

Simply put, she did not account for the other person that was with her. All she cared about was showing off everything that she had experienced and was capable of. It wasn't to that extent of self-absorption. There was still goodwill in her actions. She merely wanted to share her secret source of joy and passion with someone else and recklessly thought they'd feel the same.

「But he was smiling… he looked happy. Was I too forceful?」

Nothing of what she thought mattered now. She had to save Zachary.

Walking up to the shore, she placed Zachary on the sand before lying on her knees next to him. She tried her hardest to think of how to save him.

She knew nothing whatsoever about CPR. There was, of course, the option of running with him to the nearest hospital. But she wasn't going to make it on time considering they were off at the edge of town.

「You gotta do something, Lauren.」

Just as she was about to place her hands on his chest…

His eyes suddenly opened.

Following that were a couple of coughs that spilled out the water trapped inside him. He breathed heavily after recovering as he tried to grasp the world around him.

Zachary was back in the world of the living.

※※※※

"Oh thank god!" Lauren gasped in relief, "Are you okay? Can you see me? What happened down there? Why did you jump if you didn't know how to swim? Why didn't you stop me? How could you let yourself drown there?"

Even after escaping the brink of death, there was no escaping the questions. However, the plethora of questions this time were coming from the girl he never expected to see with a panic-stricken face. It was obvious how bad she was in her panicked state. Most of her questions didn't make sense and were unreasonable to ask.

Coming back to his senses, Zachary noticed that Lauren had both her hands tightly gripping his arms as if she was trying to hold him from running away.

Her eyes were filled to the brim with worry. There was sweat dripping from her side (or maybe it was just from the water). If what he had experienced was just a hallucination, then what could have happened to him in the real world? Whatever happened to him, it must have worried her a great ton.

"What…" He tried speaking.

After seeing him gradually returning back to consciousness, she shook her head in an attempt to ease her worry.

"Hey hey, it's me. Don't worry…," her voice was soothing.

Solace gradually seeped into his mind, putting him at rest.

It was as if he was a lost child who was reunited with his parents after some time. In this case, it was a hopeless idiot pulled back into reality by the only one who believed in him, a girl that he had just met the other day, yet felt like he had known her for decades.

"Why…," her voice still had bizarre cracks in tone, "What happened to you?"

Zachary remembered what happened clearly. But he didn't want to worry her even more with something that wouldn't make sense to her.

He tried to laugh it off, "Hey… I was just… taking it all in... like you said before."

Hearing that awful attempt at a sense of humor eased her distress and made her almost laugh for a second — which was exactly what he intended — but her eyes were still struck with fret.

「Was she… crying?」

Before he could dwell on that thought further, she replied to his joke.

"I don't… I don't think that same method applies here," she chuckled.

"I guess not… Wanna see me try again?"

"Oh shut up, this is nothing to joke about."

Lauren was irritated by the fact that he was smiling so casually. Yet, she let a chuckle escape her breath. She was laughing about this entire scene. A worrisome idiot tending to a careless idiot that she had just met the other day, both alone on that dusk-coated beach. It was a fact that they both believed: they were idiots.

She sighed, "I have a feeling this partnership of ours is going to be quite troublesome."

He coughed two times instead of laughing, before clearing his throat to answer her properly. "You don't say."

And just like that, the two were enveloped within a world of their own.