Chapter 2: The Bathtub Revelation
The stairs had been a blur of concrete and echoing panic. The drive across the city was a nightmare of red lights and crawling traffic, every second stretching into a tendon-snapping eternity. Jihyo had called Mina twice, her voice a tight, professional monotone she didn’t recognize, leaving blunt, terrifying voicemails. "It's Jihyo. Nayeon's in trouble. I'm going to her apartment now. Call me back."
The sleek riverside building felt alien, its reflective glass facade holding the night sky like a dark mirror. Jihyo’s key—the one Nayeon had given her ‘for emergencies, but not, like, small emergencies’—slipped in the sweat of her hand. She finally jammed it home, threw her weight against the door, and stumbled into the space.
The apartment was cavernous and cold, all unfinished potential. Boxes were stacked like skeletal remains against one wall. The floor-to-ceiling windows showed the city’s lights smeared across the black water of the river, the view Nayeon had said would inspire her. It just looked desolate.
And then she heard it. A raw, animal sound from down the short hall. Not a scream, but a choked, continuous moan of pure terror.
"NAYEON!"
Jihyo’s medical training dissolved. She was just a body hurtling toward the sound. The bathroom door was ajar, light bleeding out. She shoved it open.
The scene processed in jagged, overlapping frames.
The tub.Full. Water, tinged a cloudy, diluted pink.
Nayeon. A pale shape submerged to the shoulders, head lolled back against the porcelain, eyes closed, dark hair floating like seaweed.
And a woman Jihyo had only met twice before—Mina—crouched in the water, fully clothed, her arms wrapped around her sister’s torso, trying to haul her up. Mina’s screams were the moans Jihyo had heard, rhythmic and hopeless, her face a mask of snot and tears.
"Oh god, oh god, oh god, nononono—"
Time didn’t slow.It fractured. Jihyo’s mind split into two parallel tracks. One was a twenty-four-year-old friend watching her world dissolve in a bath of pink water. The other was Nurse Park, clicking into a brutal, procedural gear."Out." The word came out flat, cold. "Mina, get out of the tub. Now."
Mina didn’t seem to hear, just kept pulling at Nayeon’s limp form, the water sloshing over the edge.
Jihyo moved. She gripped Mina’s sodden shoulder, fingers digging in. "Mina!Let go. I need to get to her. Get out."
The physical command broke through. Mina’s eyes, wide and uncomprehending, focused on Jihyo for a second. She released her grip, stumbling as she tried to stand in the water. Jihyo didn’t wait. She plunged her hands into the tepid water, the pink cloud swirling around her wrists. One hand went behind Nayeon’s neck, slick and cool. The other slapped against the side of her throat, searching.
Her own pulse was a jackhammer in her ears. She couldn’t feel anything else.
"Call 119. Now," she barked at Mina, who was crumpled against the vanity, trembling violently. "Tell them attempted suicide by exsanguination, possible loss of consciousness, unknown time down. Give them the address.Go!"
She didn’t look to see if Mina obeyed. Her fingers pressed deeper, a frantic prayer against Nayeon’s skin.There.
A flutter.Thin.Thready. But there. A pulse.
"Okay," Jihyo whispered, the word shuddering out of her. "Okay, you’re here." She immediately shifted her hands, tilting Nayeon’s head back, lifting her chin. Airway. She checked for breathing, her cheek close to Nayeon’s mouth. A faint, shallow warmth ghosted against her skin.Breathing. But too slow.
Her eyes scanned the water, looking for the wound. It was the left wrist. A single, deep, terrible line across the pale inner forearm, still seeping a slow, darker ribbon into the water. The right wrist bore angry, aborted scratches. She’d tried, and then she’d committed.
Jihyo tore the towel from the rack, folded it into a thick pad, and pressed it hard against the cut. She used her other hand to lift the arm above the water, above heart level. The basic steps felt absurdly small against the enormity in the tub."Mina! A belt! Or a phone charger, anything!"
Mina was on the floor, phone clutched to her ear, sobbing the address to the dispatcher. She scrambled up, yanked the tie from her own waistband, a thin silken thing, and handed it to Jihyo with shaking hands.
"Tighter," Jihyo instructed, her voice all business as she wrapped the makeshift tourniquet above the wound, cinching it hard. The pink seepage through the towel began to slow.
The clinical actions created a fragile dam against the panic. In the space they carved, the reality rushed in.
Nayeon’s face was waxy, peaceful in a way that was utterly wrong. This wasn’t the Nayeon who argued about color theory or made stupid puns. This was a shell. The buttercream walls of the bathroom, which should have been warm, looked jaundiced under the harsh light. On the tile floor lay a utility knife, the kind for scraping paint. Clean, except for a single, rust-colored droplet on the metal."Jihyo?" Mina’s voice was a child’s. "Is she…?"
"She has a pulse. She’s breathing," Jihyo said, not taking her eyes off Nayeon’s face. She used her thumb to gently pry open an eyelid. The pupil constricted slowly under the light. A good sign. "The ambulance is coming. Just keep talking to the dispatcher. Tell them the tourniquet is applied."
"Okay.Okay." Mina crouched down, her back against the wall, repeating the information into the phone.
The two women stayed there, anchored in the awful, silent tableau—one in the water, holding pressure, the other on the floor, holding a phone. The only sounds were the drip of water from Mina’s clothes, the distant wail of sirens beginning to weave through the night, and their own ragged breathing.
Jihyo looked at Nayeon’s face again. The resignation she’d heard on the phone was etched there now in the slack features. This was what ‘going somewhere quiet’ looked like.
"You don’t get to go," Jihyo murmured, her professional composure cracking, voice thick. "You hear me? You called me. You called me, so you don’t get to go."
The sirens grew louder, splitting the night. They were close. Help was coming.
But as Jihyo knelt there in the pink-tinged water, her jeans soaked through and heavy, the cold finally seeping into her bones, she understood the fight wasn’t over. Pulling Nayeon back from this edge was just the first, brutal step. Everything that came after—the hospital, the recovery, the silence she’d have to walk her friend back from—that would be the real battle.
The bathroom light glared, unforgiving. Outside, the river continued to move, dark and endless, whispering against the stone.