SOLDIER | K.TH

Competition

YOUMIN

I gape at the white bandages covering his hands.

How did I not notice that four days ago?

"Get here. Or did you already lose your will?" He growls, and I quickly run over to where he is.

Remember to thank him.

"Uh," I start, tugging at my fingertips. "I just want to say thanks— for not dismissing me, and also about your hands..."

I look up.

And then freeze when I realize he's not paying attention to me whatsoever.

"Three straight laps." He says, ignoring a furious blush up my cheeks. "And then you're going in the water."

I jerk. "Water?"

"Yes, water." He says, lip curling. "Swimming is a basic here. What did you think when you came to be trained?"

"That it was all going to be easy?"

I put my gaze down and shake my head.

"Then run."

Biting down on my lip, I break into a steady pace. But still he pushes me, driving me to go faster.

By the time I'm done, I'm a sweating, gasping mess.

He tilts his head towards the lake.

Breathing harshly, I stumble into the water. It's cold against the heat of my body, and soon I'm shivering again.

"Stay in."

I swallow. His dark eyes sweep over the waterline, and I start to lose the sense of my body as seconds tick by.

Come on, come on...

"One minute. Dive."

What?!

I stare. But I shouldn't have. I should've known already.

"Fine. One minute and a half. If you come back out before that ends, I'm lengthening the time."

I push down the panic as my face meets the cold darkness of the lake.

I'd heard an average person could only hold their breath for thirty seconds. And I was just a slightly fitter average person.

I didn't even know how to swim.

"Relax." I hear him call, but his voice is all muffled. But I understand, and pull the tension out of my body.

It feels like two minutes when I rush back up to the surface, coughing and sputtering water.

His features are cold.

"That was barely a minute. Again."

I look up at him dazedly. But taking another deep breath, I sink back under the lake.

My body feels much relaxed than before.

But then something brushes against my clothed leg, and that's what makes me shoot back out of the water.

I scramble out to shore.

"T-There's something in—"

"I don't care. I never said you could come back out."

My face goes paler than it already is. "But it might be, I don't know, a—"

"Get dismissed then."