—Just set me up already!

—No, no. Look at me! Listen. Assess whether you can come back out before going in, and always check your oxygen level

—Save the safety lecture for someone without experience.

— Oh, shut up. You may have a lot of experience, but going into an unmapped sea cave is no joke, even for someone like you. I’m not trying to be a jerk, you know, I’m just worried about your safety.  

—I know, I know. Thank you, boss.

—Just… When you have to choose between exploring deeper and your safety, choose the latter. You can always dive back in, but you can’t undo death. It’s never worth the risk.

Finn zips his suit and jumps into the cold water. His diving partner, Mason, follows suit. The slow descent starts with Finn diving slower than he usually does, to allow his inexperienced diving partner to keep up with him. Meter by meter, breath by breath, they slowly go deeper and deeper. When they approach the 25-meter mark, or rather the 25-meter mark, Finn is roughly guessing in his head from his many experiences, he looks back at Mason. By forming a circle by touching his thumb and index finger together, he creates a "C" shape, one of the many common gestures divers use underwater to communicate, this one meaning: “Are you okay?”. Mason quickly makes a thumbs-up, signaling that he is, and smiles. It’s clear from his face that he is enjoying this experience very much, but that he is also very anxious. Finn infers this almost immediately and smiles back to ease his diving partner's emotions. Cave diving is almost always done in pairs, and your partner is often the thin line between life and death. The two keep on descending into the vast darkness, with Finn checking up on Mason every 25 meters. With each meter, the task gets all the more serious, the pressure on their shoulder exerted by the vast ocean stacks, and it becomes all the harder to see one another. At the 175-meter mark, Finn signals Mason to come closer, knowing the cave entrance is somewhere nearby. Both have now acknowledged that there is no going back, and while this causes Finn to wear a very serious expression uncommon for him, it only increases Mason’s anxiety. The fact is, Finn is also feeling a bit anxious. Going into an unmapped cave at this depth without advanced equipment is no joke, and although the possibility seems slim, he knows he might not make it out alive. Mason’s inexperience and nervousness scare Finn a bit, too, knowing that he might not be able to rely on Mason. However, as the more experienced diver, it is his responsibility to conceal his emotions, not to stress out his partner even more. He knows this very well, and how things can spiral for the worse if he cannot keep his and his partner's emotions in check. He makes a hand sign for Mason to hold his dive torch to the ground. Finn gently places his hand on the rough, rocky seabed, carefully searching for the cave entrance. “Damn it!.”, from the shaking of the light Finn infers that Mason's hands are shaking. “They could have at least sent me to the bottom of the Atlantic with someone who can hold a torch straight. If you’re gonna get this stressed, why cave dive in the first place?” Finn thinks to himself. He, of course, doesn't show his emotions to Mason, instead turning back to him with a light smile, signaling “It’s okay.”. Finn keeps looking and looking, but the flickering of the light makes the already hard task even harder. His face turns red, his forehead veins bulging with anger. The frustrating search comes to an end when his hand finally grabs a L-shaped rock formation, and he gives a big sigh of relief. “It’s never worth it, huh? With this fool besides me, I’m seriously doubting whether to go in or not, but I guess I can’t turn back after coming this far.”. He signals for Mason to come, and goes in from the narrow entrance. Unlike its entrance, the cave is surprisingly large. “It seems like it gets wider the deeper it goes. At least I won’t need to navigate narrow spaces with an idiot who can’t hold a torch straight.” Finn takes a deep breath and goes in deeper. Mason enters too and holds the torch to the way ahead. “What the…”. The light from the torch reveals sharp spikes big enough to penetrate through a diving suit covering the entirety of the cave. The cave almost resembles a giant, flesh-eating worm, with deadly teeth all over. Mason starts freaking out while Finn is unsure whether to return back or go forward, but goes forward anyway. The pair goes in deeper and deeper, finding their way through the giant spikes. Suddenly, an ear-bursting noise is heard from the entrance of the cave, both quickly look back to see that the cave entrance is now closed. Mason freaks out, his pupils enlarging like a rabid dog’s. Finn's heart starts beating like a drum. “That  #### idiot! I guess it ought to have happened. There is no way I can calm him down now.” He hurriedly rushes to the cave entrance to see whether there is any way he can open the large rock that now covers the entrance of the cave. Mason, on the other hand, is swimming around uncontrollably, breathing like a racehorse. When Finn lays his hand on the hard rock, he understands deep down that there is no way for him to move it. However it landed there, in this most unfortunate of positions, it is going to stay there as it is.  Finn musters up his courage and throws himself at the rock with full force, but the rock doesn’t budge. His hands start shaking, “Shit. So this is how Mason was feeling, huh?.” Finn comes to understand that there is no way of him going out from the main entrance of the cave, admitting defeat, he turns back to look for another exit. “Where the hell did Mason go? That scrawny bastard took the torch with him too.”. In a state of panic, he once again starts his descent deeper into the cave, trying to avoid the spikes on intuition alone. The cave gets narrower, wider, deeper, scarier, and darker, and he continues, now barely avoiding the spikes. One slashes the shoulder of his dive suit, Finn now bleeding, struggles to keep his cool, cocky attitude, spiraling into hopelessness. Finally, he sees a glimmer of light, too tired to even think, he rushes to the source of it with all of his remaining endurance. That’s when he sees it, another exit, although narrow, he somehow makes his way outside through sheer willpower. He looks up, and at last, he is out of that hellhole. “When I get out, this will be a story I’ll tell my grandchildren over and over again. God, I promise, just let me get out and I will never dive again. I will live life to the fullest and be an ideal man. Just please let me get out.”. Looking at the dim sunlight coming from above, his fear turns into relaxation. Before going up, Finn looks to check his oxygen levels just like he does every time before starting an ascent. But this time, something is different. The shocked Finn, not believing it,  checks it again and again, but to no avail. He has no more than a couple of minutes' worth of oxygen. Finn lets out a scream, a shriek even, as loud as his diving suit allows. The fear sets in, and he remembers his instructor's words, “Nothing is worth the risk.”