Student_Voice: The treasure I found at the bottom of the sea

Baek Inhoe

The author is a student at North London Collegiate School Jeju.

I was alone in the ocean off Guam, maybe 200 meters from the hotel, when the bottom disappeared. My feet couldn’t reach the ocean’s floor. A moment later, a wave crashed into me. My mind was racing. Maybe I went too far. Maybe I crossed the line. Maybe I was falling into unstoppable danger. I guess I didn’t hear my mom shouting. Then I did — her scream was as frightening as a shark’s mouth, deep, deep underwater. Because there was water in my ears and I was so far from my mom, the scream sounded like a fire alarm.

A few hours ago, everything was peaceful. From my hotel balcony, I looked down at the beach in Guam, the yellow sand shining in the sun. The clouds above my head were different from those on Jeju Island, where I live. When I think of Jeju clouds, they remind me of long white chocolate bars. In Guam, the clouds were so puffy, and all shapes and sizes were rolling over the clean, blue ocean that stretched in every direction, going on and on forever.

Before I went into the ocean that morning, a hotel employee warned me that the water would suddenly get deep. But I wasn’t worried. I had my snorkel, goggles and swimming cap. I was finally ready. I ran across the beach, leaped into the water and swam far, far away.

When I put on my snorkel and went under, it was like entering a fantasy world. Fish above, fish below, fish beside me and fish in front of me.

I thought, “My dad would love this — I wish he could see it!”

Since he couldn’t come to Guam with the rest of my family, I decided to give him a detailed report on everything I saw, committing each detail to memory. Near a coral shelf, there was a fish with yellow lips sticking out and blue stripes over its eyes. It looked interesting, so I followed it for a bit. But then it started to attack me, poking at my legs. I thought, “Oh, I need to get out of here!” As I swam away, I noticed a white fish about the size of a watermelon. It wasn’t traveling in a school like the others, but it seemed happy being by itself, eating something off a big chunk of coral shaped like a purple cupcake. A bit farther on, I saw a long, flat fish moving along the bottom, which reminded me of sushi and made me a little hungry.

Only a few minutes later, the ground I was standing on vanished. When I looked around, I didn’t know where I was. Then the wave crashed into me.

With my mother’s screams ringing in my ears, I knew that I needed to find her. I needed to get back to shore. Water kept rushing into my nose. Everything was blurry. I was thinking:

“What if I can’t go back?”

“I want to go home!”

“Where’s the bottom? It disappeared!”

“I have to get out of here!”

“Will I ever see my family again?”

My mom’s face flashed into my mind — her eyebrows curved down, her mouth wide open. Tears started to form until her face was as wet as mine. I wanted to say, “I’m okay, I can come back, I’m on my way,” but my mouth was full of water. I thought of my dad: How will he feel when he hears about this? I thought of my brother waiting for another moment to play games with me.

I was desperately doing the backstroke, looking up at the clouds as my arms flailed and my legs kicked. I remembered the shapes of the clouds I saw from the hotel balcony. No, these clouds were nothing like Jeju. But I felt like I could trust them. They were the map I followed toward the shore, until I felt the sand on my back and my legs.

When I got up and turned around, my mom was running toward me. As she wrapped me in a hug, I felt so grateful to have her. To still have my family. That’s what the ocean helped me to see. A happy and healthy family is a very lucky thing to have. It’s as valuable as treasure.