Taoyu would always remember that last jump. “Three, two, one,” he could still hear his words echoing from the past. He bent his knees and raised his arms alongside Hai, and realized that they were not going to be together, not beyond that water, not in this life.
"A brief vision floated through his mind. He could stay on the board. He could leave his life, leave Hai and start over. Almost immediately, he rejected the idea. Taoyu knew that he could not do that to Hai. They had spent their whole lives together and Hai was his closest friend. Hai was the love of his life. Not jumping would mean ruining Hai’s life, everything they had worked for.
Taoyu’s only option was to jump, to dive below the water and stay there. He would be trapped in his love for Hai. His life would be a paradox, both lonely yet never alone. He sensed Hai’s muscles tensing, preparing to dive. When the moment came, he jumped. The water enveloped him, the cold water sending chills through his body. He grasped for Hai’s hand but felt nothing but the empty water. He burst out of the water, looking around desperately. His eyes widened in disbelief when he saw Hai standing at the top of the diving board. Taoyu smiled."
I reimagined the end of Vaulting the Sea in this way since I wanted to explore how the story would change if Taoyu’s love for Hai was no longer unrequited. When Dr. E said that we were starting a unit on love stories, I expected the stories to have happy endings and have classic features of romance. However, even though the ending of Vaulting the Sea is not necessarily sad and might have been the best thing for Taoyu, the romance in the story still failed and was not a “happy ending.” Taoyu spent several years grappling with his love for Hai, but he never tells Hai and the real ending does not feel fully complete. There is a lot of unresolved tension, evident in moments such as when Ning comes to find Taoyu and Taoyu simply says “No” because he feels that she does not need or deserve an explanation.
Though the story does not go into much detail about Taoyu’s process of deciding not to jump, it most likely would not have been an easy decision. Taoyu’s love for Hai seems like a major focus in his life, and he and Hai would have spent hours together training and talking. It would not have been easy for Taoyu to not jump, and I reimagined the ending so that it would include a little bit more about his thought process.
Since I wanted to make the ending more traditionally “happy,” I thought that the most realistic way of doing so was to switch Hai and Taoyu’s roles to maintain the drama of the moment. If Hai liked Taoyu, then he would have also had to conceal it since Taoyu had no indication that Hai liked him and had come to the conclusion that it would be impossible for them to be together. Hai would have struggled like Taoyu did and might have even come to the same conclusion to not jump. Unrequited love is always scary since it means that one person is being vulnerable when they have no idea how the other person is feeling, and I thought that having Taoyu jump and Hai stay on the board would show Taoyu’s surprise and hopefully be semi-realistic. I thought that Wang’s original ending was masterful in that the story broke the synchronicity of Taoyu and Hai as they dived while simultaneously signifying the end of their relationship, and I wanted to maintain that aspect of the story.
“Vaulting the Sea” is a beautiful love story and coming-of-age story even though it did not end with the two main characters together. Taoyu grows and learns to accept himself and his feelings. By reimagining the ending, I came to the conclusion that the original ending is much more realistic and fits with the themes in the rest of the story better.
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