“Maybe there was a little blip of a heartbeat.”

Water was everywhere. It brought mud, woods, and people. A woman, standing barefoot, stared at the water. The water continued. Her husband drifted away. She cried, but she couldn’t say a word. 5 years had passed since the day she witnessed their son’s death. She was as shocked as she lost the ability to speak. The water dragged their son away. They lived in grief. No argument. He always held his wine bottle. Wine painted their son’s face in his mind while his body was buried deep under the ground.

She couldn’t call for help, she jumped into the raging current. She would save him. Because this morning, she had finally managed to utter the vowel A from her mouth, and she wanted him to hear it. Then, she would be able to speak a full sentence, tell a full story and sing a full song. That was for him and the baby who was going up inside her uterus. But who could have known that this year’s flood would be that terrifying. Yesterday, the sky had been so warm and bright. But, now everywhere was filled with mournful screams.

Her body flailed uselessly in the water. She tried to push herself up to the surface, but wave after wave crashed down over her head. Again and again, relentlessly. The current swept her along. Purplish corpses drifted by. None of them were him. She trembled every time she looked at those bodies. Maybe there was a little blip of a heartbeat. She knew them all. One was about to marry. One just graduated. One’s dream was to become a nurse. All of them were dead.

She ran out of breath. She could no longer push her body to move. Every effort to resist nature became helplessness. Her head was dizzy. Darkness closed over her eyes. She had not a single breath left. She passed out. After all, she still hadn’t found him.

The water disappeared. The village returned to its sunlight. This year, there were far more funerals than in years past. Songs of mourning echoed throughout the region. But their house stayed silent. The rescue teams carried out search operations for three days and nights. Hundred bodies were found, including them. They were laid beside their son’s grave, faced oppositely.