She drank like a drowning man helplessly swallowing sea water, in accordance with some law of nature. To ask for nothing means that one has lost one’s freedom to choose or reject. Once having decided that, one has no choice but to drink anything — even sea water….

Afterwards, however, Etsuko felt none of the nausea of a drowning person. Until the moment of her death, it seemed, no one would know she was drowning. She did not call out — she was a woman bound and gagged by her own hand.

Yukio Mishima