TREASURE: The Ring of the Sea.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Legends will be legends.
pairings: ot8!ateez x f!reader, pirate au
chapter warnings: prophetic dreams, supernatural knowledge, sexual tension, forced proximity, wound care, blood, wounds, dangerous men with control issues, protective/possessive undertones, emotional tension, morally grey pirates, weapons, knives, Aurora doing wtf she wants, everyone pretending they’re not starting to care, Yeosang's being flirty, Theo and Kheo as Wooyoung's victims, Seonghwa being a pain in the a$$, Jongho and Yunho being cuties.
Your heart is pounding so hard it hurts, your mouth dry, your skin damp with sweat, and for one second you don't understand where you are... until the dimness of the cabin returns to put everything back in place: the wood, the smell of the sea, the silence of the ship.
You lift your hand with an instinctive jerk, as if fearing there will be nothing there anymore.
The ring is there. You feel its weight.
You rise slowly, as if the dream has left a sticky film on you that won't come off even with fresh air, and while you fix your hair with your fingers — a nervous, almost automatic gesture — you feel the ring pulsing beneath the glove like a small foreign heart, stubborn, impassive to your doubts, and precisely because of that, you decide to do something that until a few days ago would have been unthinkable: you open the door without asking anyone's permission and slip into the corridor.
Outside the cabin, the ship is alive despite the hour; the wood creaks beneath you with that ancient voice you now recognize, and the air smells of salt, tar, and wet rope, but also of something more familiar that pulls you like a thread: the scent of food, warm and simple, coming from the kitchen like a promise.
You go down the stairs and, while crossing a narrower stretch of corridor, you realize how much your perception of sound has changed: the sharp knock of a bucket against the deck, a distant laugh, an «aye!» thrown by someone you cannot see, and then the clinking of dishes bumping together.
When you arrive, the door is half open and the light strikes you at once, yellower, fuller, and the smell of bread, broth, and spices enters your nose. It's something you hadn't expected to find on a pirate ship, just as you hadn't expected to suddenly feel your stomach growl.
Inside the kitchen-mess there's movement, but not chaos: cabin boys pass with plates and pitchers, someone exchanges a few quiet words, and for one second you feel watched without anyone truly staring at you, like when a new animal enters a place where everyone has already learned the scent of the others.
You find her almost immediately.
Lina is near a stack of plates, her sleeves rolled up and her face focused in that seriousness that comes over her when she wants to act grown-up, and when she sees you she lights up at once, as if the whole world has become lighter simply because you are there, standing, and not locked behind a door.
«Aurora!» she whispers, and runs toward you with that short, quick step of hers, her hands still damp, paying no attention to anything.
You catch her and hold her, briefly but tightly, as if that hug is an anchor you are not ashamed to use, then you pull back slightly to look at her face and check, truly check, that there are no bruises or hidden fear beneath her eyes.
«Are you all right?» you ask.
She nods immediately, too fast for it to be natural, then lowers her gaze for a moment and looks back at you with a smaller, truer smile. «I'm all right... they make me work a lot, but... I'm all right.»
You move aside when a cabin boy passes with a pitcher, and an older man throws you a curious glance before minding his own business; you, instead, lean against a wooden edge and pull off the glove just enough to feel the ring breathing against your skin, without showing it too much, without tempting luck.
«I need to eat,» you tell her, and you almost laugh at how normal it sounds.
Lina takes you by the wrist and drags you toward a corner where a steaming bowl seems to have been waiting for you all along, as if someone had left an empty place in case you appeared, and you sit, take the spoon, feel the heat rise from your fingers to your chest, and realize how much you had missed something so ordinary.
You eat two spoonfuls before speaking, because your throat is tight and because you don't want the first thing coming out of your mouth to be fear again.
Then, while Lina watches you with wide, attentive eyes, as if waiting for a verdict, you lower your voice.
«Lina... about that ring... did you tell me everything?»
She stiffens, as if the word is a guilt returning to her, and you see that tremble on her lips that she tries to hide by being brave.
«No,» she says immediately, and this time there is no escape in her voice, only sincerity. «They told me to take it and that was all. The Captain... the one from before... only said it was worth a lot and that... that whoever had it commanded the sea.» She breaks off, clasping her hands as if trying to wring the guilt out of herself. «I didn't want to... I didn't want to die.»
You close your eyes for a moment, because inside you an anger is moving with nowhere left to land — on the Empire, on pirates, on fate, on that man in your dreams — and when you open them again, you don't pour it onto her.
«I know,» you murmur, and touch her hand, a small gesture that costs you more than you would like to admit. «I'm not angry with you.»
Lina inhales as if she has been holding her breath for hours, then nods and forces herself to smile again, but curiosity remains on her like a fever.
«And now... what are you going to do?» she asks.
You look at the bowl, then at the ship's wood, then at the glove in your hand, and you realize the answer comes to you in a strange way, as if someone else had already said it and you only had to repeat it.
«Now I'm going to look for someone who might know more than he pretends,» you say, and even as you pronounce it, you see in front of your eyes the way Wooyoung, during the meeting, had opened his mouth slightly as if about to tell a story, then had held back, amused and serious at once.
You finish eating without hurry, because the warmth puts you back on your feet from the inside, and when you stand, you put the glove back on carefully, making sure the fabric covers the metal properly and that no one can guess too much.
Lina catches your sleeve. «Aurora...»
She hesitates, then spits everything out in one breath. «Don't trust everyone. Even if they smile at you.»
You give her a tired half smile, one of those that is not a promise but at least an attempt. «I know. And you stay here, all right? Be good, be the little invisible girl, until I understand how to get us out of this.»
Lina nods, then runs back to the plates as if work were her favorite blanket, and you leave the mess with the feeling that every step now matters more than before.
In the corridor, the air is cooler, and the ship feels different when you know you can move without a lock deciding for you; yet, as you walk, you feel that granted freedom always has a price, and the price is that someone is watching you even when you cannot see them.
You have a question, and you have a name.
You search for Wooyoung by following what you know of him: you look for him where there is air, where there is height, where there is risk. Every time you turn a corner, you expect to hear him whistle before you even see him, that sound that until a few days ago irritated you and now almost feels like a signal, like the call of an animal that doesn't want to be tamed.
You climb toward the deck, pass beside a stretch where ropes and sails rest like muscles ready to tense, and when you step into the open air, the light hits you full in the face, clean, sharp, filling your eyes with sea.
A short whistle, cut in half, as if he noticed you at the very same instant you were looking for him.
Wooyoung is there, higher than would be reasonable, with a line between his hands and his body leaning against the ship as if the ship were a natural extension of him. When he sees you, he doesn't laugh at once, he smiles slowly, But it's different, more attentive, as if he remembers that words, now, can truly hurt.
«Princess,» he calls down, his voice reaching you like a thrown rope. «Did you lose someone, or were you looking for me on purpose?»
You take a step forward, grip the rail, and realize the question comes out without a shield.
«I was looking for you on purpose, Wooyoung. Do you have a minute?» you ask, keeping your voice light even though inside you still feel full of splinters, as if the dream has left thorns under your skin.
Wooyoung tilts slightly, with that shameless grace he uses like a weapon, and his smile opens as if he is about to offer you the world in exchange for nothing. «For you? I have at least three. Four if you promise not to hit me while I talk.»
You look at him, pretend to consider it, then lift one shoulder. «I can't promise anything. It depends on what you say.»
He laughs, a low, brief sound, and for a moment he seems truly... normal, before turning toward the mainmast and whistling two precise notes, like a signal of understanding.
«Theo! Keeho! Come out, up you get.»
They emerge from behind the mast as if they had been leaning there waiting for the right moment: one with the air of someone who always observes before speaking, the other already ready to say something too honest, and when they see you, they greet you almost in unison, with that slightly awkward courtesy of cabin boys who still don't really know what place you occupy on this ship.
«Hey,» you say, and you are surprised by how easily it comes. «How are you? Still in one piece? No one threw you into the sea, I hope.»
Keeho gives you a quick half smile. «We're alive. Around here, that's already a good grade.»
Theo nods, then studies you with open but not intrusive curiosity. «Are you... alright?»
The question pricks a delicate place, because for a second you remember all the times you told yourself "I'm fine" without truly believing it, but this time you only give a firm nod. «I'm standing. I'd call that progress.»
Wooyoung, meanwhile, has already lowered himself down with irritating ease, sliding along the line as if it were part of his body, and he lands on the deck with a light thud of his feet, without even a hint of uncertainty, as if gravity were an opinion.
As soon as he touches the ground, he slips his hands into his pockets and nods toward the mast. «Boys, finish my work. And if you get the knot wrong...» he spreads his arms with false innocence, «...let's say Seonghwa will finally have someone to take it out on who isn't me.»
Theo huffs quietly, already annoyed. Keeho mutters something that sounds like a curse invented on the spot, and you hear them move away while exchanging half-voiced comments — one protesting, the other telling him not to complain, and between them the sound of lines scraping against the wood.
You and Wooyoung remain side by side, and when you begin walking, you feel that despite the sea and the days and the threats, there is a part of you that relaxes simply because he doesn't look at you like a mystery to dismantle or a problem to control, but like a person.
«So,» he says, tilting his head toward you with that accomplice's tone that makes you want to answer in kind, «did you look for me to confess that you miss me, or to give me a serious speech that will ruin my day?»
You look at him sideways, letting the game stay upright for one more step. «I looked for you because I have a question. And if you try to dodge it, I swear I'll truly ruin your day.»
Wooyoung places a hand over his heart as if wounded. «How cruel. Tell me everything, princess. I'm ready to suffer.»
«Last night, when I asked about the legend of the ring...» you begin, keeping your gaze ahead because it feels easier not to look at him while admitting it, «I saw you. You had considered speaking, then you stopped as if someone had pulled a rope around your neck.»
Wooyoung slows by half a step, that ready smile that always trembles on his lips cracking slightly. It doesn’t disappear, but it changes texture, as if he suddenly remembers he too has a weight to carry and not only jokes to throw.
«Oh,» he says, and the "oh" comes out lower than usual. «You watch me, princess.»
«I keep an eye on you,» you reply, with an air meant to be light but not quite managing it. «And I want to know more. Seriously.»
He sighs theatrically, then gives you that sidelong look of "I shouldn't, but..." and shakes his head. «And why come ask me, exactly? I'm the least reliable one aboard. You say that yourself every other day.»
You stop as well, because the question is not a joke and doesn't deserve a false answer, and when you open your mouth, you are surprised to be... sincere. Truly.
«Because you listen,» you say, and the words come out without too many ornaments. «Not only to what is convenient. And because yesterday, for half a second, I saw that you didn't want to mock me. You wanted to say something... and you bit your tongue.»
Then he moves toward the rail and leans against it with one forearm, looking at the sea as if that is where he can hide what passes through his eyes. You join him and lean beside him, close enough to feel the wind catching both of you.
For one moment you see him truly lose himself: his gaze slips far away, beyond the line of the water, and his face becomes younger, more exposed, as if the mask of "the Cat" weighs on him and he’s trying to understand where to set it down without letting anyone steal it.
«Do you know the problem with legends?» he murmurs at last, quietly, almost unwillingly. «People use them to feel safe. They listen and think, "Ah, then all I have to do is this, say that, find that." As if the sea respected stories.»
You turn toward him, and this time you really look at him. «And the ring?»
Wooyoung laughs softly, but it is an empty laugh, with no mischief. «The ring...» he repeats, and passes his tongue over his lips as if tasting a name to see whether it burns. «It's not a tavern story, but a word people say quietly when they think no one is listening, because even thinking about it brings bad luck.»
«So there is a legend,» you insist, calm but stubborn.
He gives you a sideways look, but then goes back to staring at the sea and, in an almost involuntary gesture, taps two fingers on the wood of the rail.
«There is... something,» he concedes. «A heap of versions. Some say it’s a key, others that it’s a sentence. Some swear it chose only one person in its life, and others say it always chooses the wrong one.»
Your stomach tightens, but you don't interrupt him.
Wooyoung inhales slowly, then continues, more serious, as if he has decided to walk a wire without looking down.
«The part that made me shut up yesterday is that... it's not the ring that is dangerous. It's the fact that, when it truly wakes, it doesn't just show you the way.» He finally looks at you, and there is a lucidity in his eyes that catches at your throat. «It changes you. Pushes you. Puts words in your mouth that you didn't want to say and takes you where you didn't want to go, making you believe it was your choice.»
The wind lifts a lock of your hair, and for a moment you seem to hear that phrase from the dream again — What ring? — and a shiver runs along the back of your neck.
Wooyoung watches you, attentive, and lowers his voice slightly, as if even the ship might listen.
«And if you really want to know why I saw it yesterday and stopped...» He pauses, brief but full. «It’s because I didn't want to tell you that, in certain versions of the story, whoever carries that key never goes back to being only a person. They become a target. For everyone.»
He stays leaned against the rail, motionless, then convinces himself completely — you can see it clearly in the way he straightens his shoulders, as if he has made an annoying but inevitable decision — and adds:
«And now the target is you. And I...» He stops, irritated with himself, and pulls up a crooked smile that cannot save the sentence. «...I prefer knowing who I'm dealing with before the sea decides for me.»
You slide down with him onto the steps that lead to the helm, where the wood is worn by the passage of a thousand boots and the wind arrives cleaner, saltier, as if up here the sea breathes better, and when you sit beside Wooyoung, you feel for an instant that the ship is not only a prison or a battlefield, but a living animal that listens, creaks, and keeps secrets among taut ropes and folded sails.
He remains with his knees bent, one forearm resting on his thigh, his gaze lost beyond the bow, and although he still looks like Wooyoung, now there is a different attention on him, more cautious, as if he is choosing each word so it doesn’t explode.
While you wait for him to continue, you lift your eyes toward the mainmast and see Keeho and Theo doing his work in his place with almost comical caution, as if every knot could bite, as if every line could run away. You find yourself thinking that the "Cat" doesn't merely move up high: he lives there, talks there, flirts with the wind, while they look like two guests in a room that is not theirs.
Wooyoung notices, follows your gaze, and makes a faint grimace.
«If I annoy them too much, one day they’ll really tie me to the anchor,» he murmurs. Then he inhales slowly, «So... there’s a story that has circulated among sailors longer than any flag,» he begins, «It's about broken promises, and men who swear they have seen things no one should see.»
He turns slightly toward you, as if checking whether you are about to interrupt him, and when you stay there with your back straight and your eyes attentive, his expression softens so quickly you almost think you imagined it.
«It‘s about the God of the Sea,» he continues, and the word "God" leaves him with a strange respect, not devout, but superstitious, as if naming him is already an invitation. «One of those who don't have a fixed name because a name, they say, is a chain, and he doesn't want chains.»
The wind lifts your hair, caresses the nape of your neck, and for a moment it almost feels as if the ring — beneath the glove, hidden like a sin — becomes more present, as if the story is calling it.
Wooyoung runs his tongue over his lips, then continues, more serious.
«And it’s about a mortal woman,» he says, and he says it like that, woman, as if it is the most dangerous part of the story. «Not a queen, not a witch, not a heroine. Just a woman who loves the sea because it promises her something the land never gave her: space, silence... and the feeling that, if you throw yourself far enough, maybe no one will find you anymore.»
Your stomach tightens for a reason you don’t want to name, and Wooyoung notices, because Wooyoung notices everything when he decides to.
«He sees her on a foggy night,» he goes on, «when the world is so full of water that you no longer know where you end and where the rest begins, and instead of dragging her down, instead of taking her the way bad stories do... he looks at her. He lets her go. And then he looks at her again. And again.»
You realize you are holding your breath when he lowers his voice, as if afraid the ropes too might hear you.
«And by watching her, he falls in love,» he says, and for one second the word seems too large to stand on the Black Fever without breaking. «But a God cannot love the way we do, understand? He cannot simply... stay. If he stays, he drowns everything he touches. If he leaves, he takes something away. Always.»
He pauses, and the sound of distant sails fills that emptiness, along with the sharp snap of a badly pulled line — Theo muttering something, Keeho shushing him — as if even they have understood that something dangerous is being said down here.
Wooyoung looks at you again, «The real version isn’t a love story. It's a story of betrayal, of fear... and of a woman who understands too late that the worst thing about gods is not cruelty. It’s the fact that they never feel guilty.»
He looks sideways at you, a quick flash in his eyes, as if making sure you are truly following him, then continues, marking the words more precisely, as if every detail is a splinter to be handled with care.
«The mortal woman, the one the God of the Sea "chooses," doesn't stay blind for long,» he says, and his voice lowers, tighter, like a rope you do not want to make vibrate. «Because the Sea doesn't know how to lie well, not to someone who truly knows it; sooner or later she understands his plans, understands that he doesn't only want to love her or take her with him... he wants to take everything. Flood the land, erase ports and cities the way one erases a chalk line, and drag her under too, not as a companion, but as a possession.»
«And so she does the only thing a mortal can do against a god: she uses another God against him,» he murmurs, and when he says another God, he does so with a kind of stubborn respect, as if there truly was a fire capable of looking the ocean in the face without going out. «They say she seeks the fire of a different God, a fire that belongs neither to land nor sea, a fire that cannot be smothered, and with that... she forges a ring.»
You can almost see it while he speaks: the metal reddening, the flame that doesn’t tremble, skin burning rather than letting go.
Wooyoung swallows, and for an instant he seems more serious than you have ever seen him.
«She doesn't forge it to marry him or to be saved,» he continues. «She forges it to lock him away. To put a lock on something that shouldn't have locks.»
He settles better on the step, as if wanting to move closer without truly doing it, and his voice becomes almost a whisper, a confession the wind might steal.
«When she gives it to him,» he says, «the God of the Sea accepts it, because he is vain, because he thinks a ring is a symbol... and instead it’s a trap. And the moment the metal touches him, the moment he "wears" it — if you can call it that — something breaks. The sea doesn't lose him... but he loses it.»
Wooyoung slowly lifts his gaze to you.
«He remains trapped in a human form, a man,» he concludes, and the sentence falls on you like a closing door. «No longer God, no longer wave, no longer storm. Flesh. Breath. Blood. Limits. Hunger. Pain. And the worst thing... memory.»
The silence between you lasts just long enough for you to feel the ring beneath the glove, as if it has recognized its name without anyone pronouncing it.
Then Wooyoung continues, and now his voice is even flatter, as if telling this part hurts him too.
«After that betrayal, she kills herself,» he says simply, without romance, without poetry, the way one says a truth that cannot be sweetened. «Not because she is weak. Because she knows that a God, even trapped, doesn't forget. And because she understands that the only way to not be taken... is to disappear first.»
You stare at your hands, though you are not truly looking at them, and feel a pang in your stomach that you don't know whether to call anger or fear.
Wooyoung inhales, and when he speaks the final sentence, it almost seems he doesn’t want to tell you, as if saying it aloud will make it more real.
«And so the legend ends the way all the ones that matter end,» he murmurs. «With two obsessions chasing each other: the woman's spirit wandering and searching for the ring, because the ring is the only thing still tying her to what she did... and the God of the Sea, trapped in a human body, searching for the same ring, because without it he cannot return to what he was. Or because... without it, he cannot take revenge.»
He turns toward you, and in his eyes a flash of the Wooyoung you know returns — the one who provokes, who laughs — only now it is a bitter, restrained flash.
«And do you understand why they don't tell this story in palaces?» he adds quietly. «Because if there is even a scrap of truth in it... then a ring is never "just a ring." It is a cage. Or a key. And it always depends on who carries it.»
Your throat tightens, because the more he speaks, the more the glove feels like only an elegant way to pretend the ring doesn’t exist, and when you finally find your voice, it comes out straight, without irony, almost irritated that the story has no right to be so... plausible.
«Wait,» you say, leaning forward slightly as if you could grab him by the words. «But how did she create a... magical ring? If she was mortal. How do you convince a God to help you, and above all, why would a God lend his fire to some ordinary woman?»
Wooyoung looks at you sideways, his lips bending slightly, not in a real smile but in that expression he has when he is deciding how much to tell you and how much to keep close, and the wind moves a lock of hair over his forehead.
«That is the question everyone asks the first time they listen,» he murmurs. «And the answer, unfortunately, is not clean.»
He scratches his neck, then leans with his forearm against his knee, as if telling it that way is easier than looking you in the face.
«In the versions that circulate among sailors,» he continues, «it’s not that she "convinced" a God the way you convince a man. You don’t convince a God. At most, you... intercept him. You meet him at the exact point where the world is thin, where something can pass from the other side.»
You are about to tell him it sounds like superstition, but he lifts a hand before you can interrupt, as if he has read it in your eyes.
«And yes, I know: it sounds like a fairy tale. But listen,» he says, and this time he truly looks at you. «She knew how to speak to fire. Not in the poetic sense. In the practical sense. Some say there was "strange" blood in her family, others that she had stolen a name, or a prayer, or an ancient pact... and that the God of Fire — or whatever he was — didn’t do it out of kindness.»
He pauses one beat and lowers his voice.
«He did it because even gods have grudges.»
The sea beneath you seems to breathe, slowly, and you feel a shiver run down your spine, as if the ring beneath the glove has reacted to the word grudges.
«Alright,» you say, and your voice comes out lower than expected. «But then... why didn't the God of the Sea keep the ring? If it was the key to his prison of flesh, why didn't he study it, why didn't he... I don't know, force it?»
Wooyoung exhales through his nose, a brief, bitter sound.
«Because it’s not a key you can keep in your pocket,» he answers. «And it’s not a lock you can pick.»
He looks at you again, «They say the ring has its own... soul,» he says slowly, as if the word disgusts and frightens him at once. «Not only magic. Will.»
You stiffen instinctively, and feel the skin beneath the glove prickle.
Wooyoung continues, and while he speaks his tone drops even further, almost superstitious, almost as if he fears that naming it too loudly will summon it.
«It’s not that he did not want to keep it. He couldn’t. Because the ring... doesn’t stay where you put it. It doesn’t obey. It chooses.» He pauses, then adds more quietly: «And if it burns those who touch it when it doesn’t want to be touched... imagine what it would do to someone who tried to dominate it.»
Your stomach tightens, and you think of the way the flame had risen when you moved your hand, as if it had not been your decision, but an answer.
Wooyoung tilts his head, and for an instant that "cat" glint returns, only now it is restless.
«Do you know what those who swore they truly saw it up close say?» he asks, and doesn’t wait for your yes. «That sometimes... it seems like a person. Not an object. As if there were someone inside. As if it breathed.»
You stare at the glove, the edge covering your wrist, and you seem to feel the ring pulsing, slow, stubborn, like a heart pretending to be metal.
Wooyoung watches you while you feel it, and his voice becomes almost a breath.
«That’s what makes the story worse,» he concludes. «Because if it’s true, Aurora... then you are not only carrying a ring. You are carrying something that looks back.»
A cough, sharp and sudden, cuts your breath like a gunshot in the silence, and by pure instinct you cling to Wooyoung with both hands, your fingers gripping his sleeve as if it were a real anchor and not a pirate with too loose a tongue; he, obviously, doesn’t waste even a second enjoying it, and the smile that opens on his face is so irritatingly satisfied, almost childish, as if he has just won a bet no one had accepted.
When you lift your gaze again, your heart still in your throat and the glove suddenly feeling too tight, Mingi is standing in front of you, motionless, with that resigned air of someone who has seen enough madness not to be surprised by anything anymore, and the way he looks at you — you clinging to Wooyoung, Wooyoung feigning innocence — resembles less judgment than an "I don’t have the strength."
«Seriously?» you snap, still shaken, letting out a complaint that is half protest and half embarrassment. «You could have... I don't know... breathed quietly? Announced yourself? Done anything except appear like that!»
Mingi doesn’t change expression, not even by a millimeter, and his voice arrives flat, calm, like a hand on the lid of a barrel about to explode. «Legends are only legends.»
Wooyoung turns slowly toward him, and you already feel he is about to begin, because Mingi's tone does not provoke him. It challenges him.
«Oh, of course,» Wooyoung says, settling better against the rail as if about to deliver a lecture, «legends are legends... and yet we are on a ship that shouldn’t float and does, with a ring that burns whoever touches it, and with her» — he points at you with two fingers — «commanding the fog as if it were a curtain to pull.»
Mingi lifts his shoulders slightly, a slow, heavy movement that seems to say I understand where you're going and I don't care. «I didn't say strange things don't exist. I said legends... are not a compass.»
Wooyoung bursts out laughing, but it is a short, cut-off laugh, more nervous than usual. «Then explain this to me, gunner: how can you not believe it when we are cursed precisely because of that ring?»
Mingi tilts his head to the side, and for the first time something passes through his eyes, a bare flash — not fear, not faith, rather stubbornness. «I believe what I see. And what I see is an object doing things we don't understand. Not a story with lovesick gods and women killing themselves for dramatic effect.»
Wooyoung takes one step toward him, hands on hips, theatrically outraged. «Ah, so if it doesn't have a title written on it, it doesn't count? If we don't add "chapter one" and "moral of the story," then it can't be true?»
«Wooyoung,» Mingi murmurs, without raising his voice, «you believe in legends because you like the world being bigger than your head.»
Wooyoung stares at him, struck and offended at the same time, and you, without meaning to, bite the inside of your cheek not to laugh, because phrased like that, it sounds too precise to be just any insult.
«And you don't believe in them,» Wooyoung retorts, narrowing his eyes, «because it scares you that the world doesn’t fit inside your logic.»
Mingi looks at him, then his gaze slips to you, and resignation turns into something gentler, as if he’s speaking to a normal person in the middle of two madmen. «I'm not saying there’s no curse. I'm saying relying on a legend to understand what is happening to us is like shooting in the dark hoping to hit the truth.»
Wooyoung makes a broad gesture with one hand, as if about to indicate the entire ocean. «But the dark is all we have, Mingi. And she» — you again, as if you are the focal point of the discussion even when you do not open your mouth — «is proof that stories... sometimes walk.»
You watch them in silence, amused and a little enchanted, because despite the tension still vibrating under your skin, there is something incredibly human in the way they argue: one clinging to reality like an anchor, the other preferring to dive into the unknown rather than feel suffocated.
You see Yunho and San arriving from the opposite side of the deck while murmuring to each other, and when they reach you, San doesn’t speak immediately. He only looks at Wooyoung and Mingi the way one looks at a lit fuse near a powder magazine, then his gaze slips to you, quick, measured, and remains there one beat too long, just enough to make you understand he is "counting" you, as he does with everything that could become a problem... or a weapon.
Yunho's eyes change slightly when they meet yours, a shadow of a question lighting and going out before you can grasp it.
San stops beside Mingi and Wooyoung, listens for two seconds and no more: his voice comes low, cutting, without needing volume. «Stop it.»
Wooyoung opens his mouth, ready to answer back, but San's stare passes over him like a blade, and the reply dies in his throat with a half indignant huff, while Mingi only gives a vague nod, as if he is the only one able to accept the order without feeling his pride pricked.
Yunho doesn’t even bother to comment on the scene; he moves past it as if it were a routine maneuver, and turns toward you with an expression that is not hard, but firm, the same firmness you imagine when the sea tries to drag them off course.
«Come with me to the helm.»
You stand as he climbs the steps leading to the helm, and you follow him, leaving behind Wooyoung, who looks at you as if he wants to continue the story, and Mingi, who seems happy to return to his world made of concrete things, and even San, who remains below for a moment with his arms crossed, as if deciding whether to accompany you with his eyes or with his feet.
When you reach the top, the wind catches your dress and presses it against you in light gusts, the smell of the sea filling your lungs with that cold, salty note that forgives nothing, and Yunho rests one hand on the wood of the helm as if it were an extension of his body, as if the boundary between him and the ship does not truly exist.
«Did you sleep?» he asks without looking at you at once, keeping his eyes ahead, where the horizon still blurs into a veil of haze.
«In pieces,» you answer, and your tone tries to sound normal, as if you don't have a pulsing ring and the weight of bounties and hawks on the back of your neck.
Yunho nods faintly, then finally looks at you, and his eyes are not accusing, but they're tired in a way that makes you think he spends certain nights awake too, even when the others believe otherwise.
«Have you... recovered?» he asks, and you understand he's not only talking about your arm or your bandages, but about everything else, about that part of you that keeps being torn between the need to run and the instinct to stay because now, whether you want it or not, you are neck-deep in their story.
You tighten your hands on the edge of the step, your gaze on the sea so you don't give him too much of yourself. «I don't think that's something that happens quickly.»
A shadow crosses his face, something almost bitter, and then his voice goes back to neutral, practical, as if that fraction of humanity had slipped from him and he had put it back in its place.
He inclines his head slightly toward you, and with that controlled calm he wears like a second skin, he asks, «What were you talking about?»
You hesitate for a moment, then lift one shoulder and let the answer out as if it were nothing, even though it is not. «Wooyoung was telling me a legend. About the ring. About a sea god and a woman... and about how that ring... did things.»
You see the change at once, tiny but sharp. He becomes thoughtful, as if a word has touched a precise point in his mind and now he's trying to understand whether it's a scratch or a crack.
«Legends,» he murmurs, and tries to end it there, to move the conversation toward something more solid, more navigable.
But you don't let him, because you've just felt that thing inside you — not the ring, this time it's you — growing tired of always being the only one carrying the weight of the questions. You lean forward slightly, enough to force him to hear you even if he looks ahead. «And you? Do you believe in them?»
Yunho doesn't answer right away.
He stays with one hand on the helm, his fingers still, his gaze fixed ahead as if in that moment the only sensible thing is to measure the sea and not people. You, by instinct, follow his gaze, because when Yunho looks at something, it always feels as though there's a reason.
On the deck below, Keeho and Theo are climbing down with the caution of someone who knows they've just done a job that wasn't their. Wooyoung reaches them with that irritating lightness that comes naturally to him, teasing them with a gesture and a laugh you cannot hear properly from up there but recognize from the way his mouth moves, while they mutter something that looks like protest and affection together.
San and Mingi, instead, are already moving away toward the cannons, broad shoulders, gait allowing no room for distraction, as if every step were a "not my concern" carved into the wood.
It's a normal scene, almost reassuring, and perhaps that's why the question weighs more heavily, because it lodges in the middle of that normality like a splinter.
Yunho inhales quietly, and when he finally speaks, he does so without looking at you immediately, as if admitting uncertainty costs him more than a storm. «I don't know.»
The sentence remains suspended between you like a taut rope, and you hear it, in that "I don't know," all he's not saying: that he has seen things too strange to dismiss them as harbor tales, but that relying on legends is exactly the kind of madness that can kill a ship.
Then Yunho turns slightly toward you, just enough for you to meet his eyes, and there's an attentive, almost gentle exhaustion, as if he's choosing every word carefully.
«All I know is that since you have been here,» he says quietly, «things have happened that shouldn't happen... and I cannot allow myself to ignore them, or allow myself to believe in them blindly either.»
He pauses briefly, then adds, more softly, as if speaking to himself rather than to you, «And the problem is that... I no longer understand where the ring ends and where you begin.»
When he says it, your finger beneath the glove pulses, like a heartbeat that is not yours, and you hate yourself a little because part of you would like to answer with a joke, lighten it, run away again... but the other part, the barer one, remains there staring at him, because someone is admitting he doesn't know, instead of turning your mystery into a fault.
You look at him sideways, with that expression that usually saves you from questions too large, but this time you don't feel like joking, because his sentence has slipped beneath your skin and now it itches. «You... know this legend well?» you ask quietly, almost as if afraid the sea itself might hear you and decide to interfere. «And in your opinion, why didn't Hongjoong want to tell me anything? Is it Because he doesn't believe in it, like Mingi... or because he believes in it so much he's afraid of it?»
Yunho stays silent for a moment, and you see him weighing the options the way he weighs the wind.
«I know it... in pieces,» he admits at last, without giving himself importance, as if the fact bothers him. «Every port tells a different version. Every crew puts into it whatever suits them: the god becomes a monster, the woman becomes a saint, or the opposite. And the part about the ring... that always changes, because it's the only part everyone wants to possess, even if only in words.»
He makes a small motion with his chin toward the sea, as if the answer is out there, and when he continues, his voice becomes lower, more serious. «Hongjoong is not like Mingi. Mingi doesn't believe because he needs a world that stands without magic. Hongjoong...» He stops for a moment, «Hongjoong doesn't say certain things because he knows words are dangerous. If you give something a name, that thing stops being a possibility and becomes an objective.»
He turns slightly toward you, the shadow of his lashes over his dark eyes, and in that moment you understand he's not only talking about legends. He's talking about you.
«So yes,» he concludes, «in my opinion it's not that he doesn't believe. It's that... if he believes, then he has to admit the ring isn't only an object. It is a will. A call. A curse that decides on its own when to bite.»
There's a pause, and you can almost hear the ropes straining, the wood creaking, as if the ship is truly listening.
«And Hongjoong,» Yunho adds, almost in a breath, «is afraid of only one thing: not being in control. Not of you... but of what's inside you.»
«Then that's it,» you say, and it surprises you how steady your voice sounds while inside you still feel on the edge, «control. It's always that, isn't it? The Empire wants to control everything: ports, routes, people... and when it fails, it starts calling it "threat," "betrayal," "public danger."» You almost laugh, but only a bitter breath comes out. «And now... you too. Hongjoong too. Because if he doesn't control... he loses.»
You lean against the edge of the helm, close enough to smell the wood and salt on your fingers, and you throw him a sharp, curious look. «Tell me something, Yunho. Your crew... do they follow him only to break the curse? Or is there something else?»
Yunho only inhales, as if the question is legitimate but heavy, and when he answers, he does so with a calm that holds something solid inside it, almost... proud.
«At the beginning?» he says, and the word slips out truer than he would like. «At the beginning, yes. Everyone had their own reason. Someone wanted freedom, someone wanted revenge, someone just wanted to stop running from something he carried on himself like an invisible chain.»
He passes a hand behind his neck, his gaze fixed ahead, where Keeho and Theo climb down cautiously and Wooyoung torments them as if it were the most normal thing in the world; and yet Yunho doesn't smile, because he's speaking of something serious to him.
«Then something happens when you stay with Hongjoong,» he continues, and his voice warms by one degree, not with theatrical enthusiasm but with dry, concrete affection. «You realize he doesn't ask you to follow him because he's the Captain. He asks you to follow him because he sees you. He truly sees you. He knows what you can do, what you lack, what destroys you. And instead of using it against you... he puts it in the right place.»
He looks at you again, and for a moment it seems he is choosing to trust you. «He's not a saint, Aurora. He has never been one and he doesn't pretend to be. But when he makes a decision, he carries it first. If there's risk, he risks himself. If there's a lie to tell, he dirties himself. If there's harm to do, he does it... and then he doesn't sleep. Even if he pretends.»
A brief pause, and in his words there is esteem, but also a kind of protection toward the very idea of Hongjoong, as if he doesn't want to allow anyone to reduce him to a caricature.
«So no,» he concludes, «we don't follow him only to break the curse. That is the rope that keeps us bound to the route. But what keeps us together...» He inhales, and his voice lowers, almost intimate, «is that with him, you're not only a tool. You're a person. And on a ship like this... that's rarer than gold.»
Then he studies you with that attentive way of his, which is not intrusion but a reading of the wind. «And the Empire, to answer what you said earlier... wants to control because it is afraid. Hongjoong, instead, wants to choose. It's different.»
The sentence comes out softer than you would like, as if curiosity has seized you by the throat before courage could. «What is this curse really about? What does it do to you? How did it... take you?»
Yunho remains still, his gaze nailed to the horizon as if there, in water and sky, there's an easier answer than the one he can give you, and when he finally looks at you, he is different than before, because the respect and calm have retreated one step back, leaving room for something more serious, more closed.
«It's not my place,» he says quietly, and there is a clear line in his voice, one that doesn't invite you to insist but doesn't insult you either. «Not because I don't want to... but because it's not my story to tell.»
You are already opening your mouth to answer, ready to throw one of those replies at him that come easily when you feel pushed aside, when a voice behind you interrupts.
You turn and find Jongho reaching you from the deck, heavy steps and straight gaze, his arms still marked by work and battle, as if he has not had time to decide whether to be annoyed or simply... efficient. He studies you for an instant, then nods faintly toward the lower deck.
Yunho's shoulders tense slightly, then he turns toward you as if wanting to tell you something without saying it, as if choosing not to interfere and, at the same time, not to leave you alone.
«Go,» he murmurs at last, almost imperceptibly. It's not an order. It's advice.
You move away from the helm, feel the wind slide over you like a cold hand, and as you turn to follow Jongho, you throw Yunho one last glance, brief but dense, the kind of look that isn't a promise and not a surrender, only an "I'll come back to this."
He doesn't answer with words. He follows you with his eyes until you are halfway down the stairs, and only then does he look away, as if he must put something back in place inside himself before anyone notices.
When you and Jongho pass in front of the mainmast, Wooyoung is hanging from a line as if he were born there, with the balance of someone who fears neither emptiness nor judgment, and beneath him, Keeho and Theo struggle with ropes in their hands, breathless as if they are dragging the ocean instead of a knot.
«Look at them,» Wooyoung singsongs, with that light tone that would irritate you in any other circumstance, «two tragic heroes... all that's missing is rain and a violin.»
Keeho is truly pale, whiter than the sail, and Theo's jaw is clenched as if he's fighting nausea and pride together; you smile instinctively, a brief but real smile, because seeing them so human — so far from the "guards" air they tried to give themselves with you — almost makes them tender.
«Are you all right?» you ask, stopping half a step, your gaze rising from Theo to Keeho and then again to the hands trembling slightly on the ropes.
Keeho looks at you as if you have just offered him an anchor in the middle of a storm. «Help,» he blurts out, without even pretending dignity. «Please.»
Wooyoung rolls his eyes with theatrical exasperation, letting himself dangle backward just enough to be noticed more. «They're dramatic. If they're still breathing in five minutes, I swear I'll write a ballad.»
Jongho barely touches your shoulder, a silent reminder to keep moving, and you lean slightly toward Keeho and Theo, with an almost complicit air. «I'll save you later,» you promise, and you say it in a way that sounds like a friendly challenge, not pity. «Hold on.»
Theo tries to make a protesting gesture, but only a choked breath comes out; Keeho, instead, nods sharply as if it is already enough that you have noticed they are about to die of fear... or height.
Wooyoung rolls his eyes while you and Jongho start moving again and go down the stairs.
You and Jongho descend into the belly of the ship. «So Yeosang "wants me,"» you mutter under your breath, more to fill the corridor than to truly make conversation, «as if I were some rare spice to be measured... and not a person.»
Jongho doesn't laugh. But you catch the slight movement of his jaw, a tiny sign that for him is almost a comment. He keeps the keys hanging from his belt, and the metal jingles lightly with every step, like a constant reminder that down here, doors open only when he decides.
«That is his way,» he says at last, dryly, and the sentence could apply to Yeosang as much as to half the crew.
You continue another few yards, the corridor narrows and the lantern light grows lower, yellower, and just as the sickbay door is almost there — you recognize it by its smell before you even see it — Jongho suddenly slows, as if something has stung him, as if a thought has caught him by the throat.
Without warning, he takes your wrist, not violently but with a secure, warm grip, full of calluses and controlled strength, and stops you one step from the door, so close you feel his breath graze your cheek and the air between you suddenly become too small for two people who have been pretending for days not to truly notice each other.
You turn sharply, ready to tell him to let go, but he doesn't give you time, and when he speaks, he does so low, almost trapping the words between his teeth as if they cost him.
«About last night... on the deck.» His grip on your wrist tightens slightly, not to restrain you — or perhaps yes — but as if that is the only way he has found not to run away from the sentence himself. «I thought about it.»
You blink, surprised more by the "I thought about it" than by the contact, because from Jongho you expect orders, silences, heavy looks... not admissions.
«About what, exactly?» you ask, trying not to let your voice betray you, though it comes out smaller than you would like.
He swallows, his Adam's apple moving slowly, and for a moment he seems almost... uncomfortable, like a man who knows how to crack a skull with one hand and yet finds himself disarmed before two sentences spoken in the dark.
«The fact that you apologized.» He looks straight at you, serious, and in his eyes there is no longer that dry anger from before, but something more uncomfortable: wounded pride and respect, badly mixed together. «You didn't have to do it in front of everyone. And you did it anyway.»
Your stomach tightens, because you realize that to him that was not a detail, not "a conversation." It was a crack in a wall he keeps standing with discipline and a lowered head.
«I deceived you,» you answer simply, because it is true and there is no need to make it pretty.
Jongho inhales quietly, and his hand, still on your wrist, slips slightly higher as if about to release you... and instead remains, and that remaining says more than any promise would.
«You deceived me because you had to,» he admits, and the sentence seems to burn his mouth. «And it still bothered me.»
You look at him, and for a moment you do not find the joke, do not find the provocation. You find only the exhaustion of always being at war with someone, even when you do not want to be.
«Then why did you think about it?» you ask quietly.
He studies you as if deciding whether to allow himself another half step toward something he cannot control, then lowers his gaze to the place where his hand holds you, as if that contact is a mistake he does not yet know whether to correct.
«Because usually... when someone apologizes to me, they do it to get something.» He lifts his eyes again, and now they are darker, more honest. «You did it because... you truly had it in your head. And because it weighed on you.»
The silence between you swells, full of ship, of sea, of things that cannot be said without moving everything else out of place.
«I'm not saying everything is fine,» he adds immediately, harder, almost to recover ground, almost to remember who he is. «And I'm not saying I trust you. But...»
He breaks off, as if "but" is already too much.
Then, finally, he lets you go.
His hand detaches from your wrist with a strange slowness, as if he is not truly the one deciding, and you feel the cold of the air return where before there was the heat of his grip, and you almost hate him for how immediately you miss that contact.
Jongho clears his throat, straightens, becomes "boatswain" again in a second, and indicates the sickbay door with a sharp nod.
«Go in.» Then he looks at you once more, shorter, more personal. «And... don't make a habit of it, Aurora. That thing of risking your skin as if it were... nothing.»
Jongho pushes the door slightly, opening it just enough for you to pass, and remains half a step behind, as if wanting to make sure you truly go inside... or as if, for a reason he doesn't want to admit even to himself, he has no desire to let you cross that threshold alone.
Before you can truly slip inside, Jongho stops you again with a single word, said under his breath as if it fell out of his pocket rather than his mouth.
You turn, your hand already on the handle, and he looks at you with that stern air he uses for everything... only this time there's a different crease there, almost annoyed, as if he's angry with himself for remembering.
«You promised me something,» he says, and however much he tries to make it sound like an accusation, it comes out more like an anchor.
You lift an eyebrow, feigning ease even though your heart gives a foolish leap. «Oh, did I? Let's hear it. Did I promise not to blow up the ship?»
His gaze narrows slightly, but he is not truly irritated. He almost makes you tender, because he looks like someone who does not know where to put his hands when conversation is not an order.
«Writing,» he reminds you, dryly. «Yesterday. On the deck.»
You smile, this time without thinking, and you see him stiffen by a millimeter as if that smile is more dangerous than a blade.
«I'm at your service whenever you want,» you say quietly, and you say it simply, cleanly, without your usual provocation, as if you are placing a new brick somewhere that until now has only been a crack.
Jongho nods once, briefly, then clears his throat and lowers his gaze to the side, already fleeing.
«Good.» He takes a step back, reclaiming the distance comfortable to him. «When I have time.»
«Of course,» you answer, and you almost add "boatswain" just to prick him, but you stop yourself, because for once you do not want to ruin what has just happened.
He throws you one last glance — quick, controlled, and yet clear enough to make you understand that yes, he will truly think about it — then turns on his heel and leaves down the corridor, the keys jingling at his belt like a warning and a promise together.
You remain for a moment in front of the sickbay door, with your wrist still seeming to remember his grip, and only then do you inhale deeply and knock, as if you are not entering a room... but something far more complicated.
«Do you intend to come in or stay outside the door the whole time?»
You clear your throat, seize the handle, and push, trying to put on a neutral expression that does not betray the fact that, until a second ago, your wrist was still warm from Jongho's touch.
«I was making sure there were no traps,» you say, entering with a measured step, and you instinctively add, with your usual challenging air, «Since living on this ship, I've learned even doors can have a personality.»
Yeosang is there, behind the table, with a mortar in his hand and his fingers stained with herbs; he doesn't look up at once, finishes grinding with stubborn precision, as if even the air must learn to stay in its place, then finally looks at you... and his eyes stop for a moment too long on your wrist.
It's only an instant, but you see it: the control tightening, that thin thing passing over his face before indifference returns.
«No traps,» he says dryly. «But if you stay outside long enough, I might change my mind.»
You approach the cot without him asking, almost by instinct now, as if your body has already learned that there, in that room smelling of alcohol, salt, and bitter leaves, something always happens that leaves a shock on you.
«You were looking for me,» you point out, sitting down. «So I assume you haven't suddenly decided to invite me for tea.»
Yeosang sets down the mortar, washes his hands in a basin with slow movements, and while he does, he keeps looking at you as if reading a poorly written page.
«No,» he answers. «I reserve tea for patients who don't waste my time.»
The joke comes out almost automatically, but he doesn't smile; and yet, for an instant, his lips move as if a smile had come knocking and he had decided not to open.
He approaches with gauze and a jar, and before touching you, he throws another glance at that point on your wrist, as if confirming a detail he does not like.
«You took a walk on the deck,» he says, and it is not a question.
You tilt your head. «I'm free now. Or am I wrong?»
«You are... less imprisoned,» he corrects, as if the word freedom bothers his tongue. Then he delicately takes your forearm, lifting it just enough to see the bandages better, and his grip is firm but careful, too careful, as if he is trying not to hurt you and at the same time reminding you that he can.
«And anyway,» he adds, neutral, «that's not why I called you.»
«Oh.» Your stomach tightens for no reason. «Then why?»
Yeosang loosens a knot in the bandage with a quick gesture, and when the fabric slackens, you feel the skin pull; he remains focused, but his voice comes out lower, closer.
«To make sure you haven't caused any more trouble,» he says, without looking into your eyes as he says it, as if it is only a clinical observation... and not something gnawing at him inside.
For a moment, in the silence, you hear only the sea working against the hull and the rustle of gauze between his fingers.
«How's the wound?» you ask at last, trying to save yourself with practicality. «That one...» You gesture vaguely toward his chest, remembering the stain of blood that had marked his shirt when you came in here.
Yeosang doesn't answer immediately. He sets the bandage on the table, takes the ointment, and warms a little of it between his fingers, and you notice — too much — how precise his hands are, how easy it is to imagine those same fingers doing something else entirely, in another place, with another kind of calm.
«You don't need to worry about me,» he says at last.
You huff quietly. «Of course. Why should I? Are you immortal?»
He looks at you, and this time a shadow of irony crosses his gaze, brief as a spark.
«No,» he admits. «I'm only... good at not falling.»
«Strange,» you reply. «I saw you bleed.»
Yeosang begins spreading the ointment over your bandages with measured movements; the contact is cold at first, then warms, and you feel the skin relax almost against its will.
«Don't change the subject,» he says.
«I'm not changing the subject. I'm making conversation.»
«You're avoiding the subject.»
You inhale, and this time your sarcasm does not come.
«And what if I were doing it?» you murmur. «What do you want?»
Yeosang stops for a second, his fingers still on your bandaged skin, and that second lasts long enough to make you feel trapped, but not in the brutal way of a cell: in the silent way of someone who approaches without making noise.
Then he resumes working, and speaks as if reading a report.
«You are under my responsibility when you are here,» he says.
It could be a cold sentence, if not for the fact that his thumb lingers one moment longer near the edge of the bandage, as if he is not in a hurry to let you go.
You look at him sideways. «Only when I'm here?»
Yeosang lifts his eyes, and there is something there you have never seen so clearly before: a flicker of annoyance, yes... but not toward you. Toward the idea of having to share your space with the others, as if your being "outside" forces him to imagine you in a thousand places, with a thousand hands on you.
«When you are here,» he repeats, enunciating. «I know where you are.»
The way he says it dries your throat.
You smile faintly, so he doesn't understand how much it has struck you. «And does that reassure you?»
Yeosang sets the last strip, ties it in a clean knot, and only then straightens, as if he has just closed a door inside himself.
«No,» he says, utterly sincere. «It only makes it easier for me to work.»
The word comes out before you can stop it.
He looks at you, and the air between you tightens, not like before when you argued, but like a rope someone has begun to pull... and neither of you wants to be the first to let go.
«Aurora,» he says quietly, and for the first time he says your name like that, without sarcasm, without distance, as if he is trying it on his tongue.
You look at him, motionless.
«Don't do... stupid things,» he adds, and it sounds like medical advice, but in his eyes there is a request he doesn't dare call by its name.
You swallow. «I don't promise anything.»
Yeosang sighs, barely, and moves half a step away as if that half step is the only way to remember who he is.
Then he takes the notebook, opens it, as if wanting to take refuge in the sound of paper, but before lowering his gaze he tells you, with a calm too studied:
«And the next time you stop outside a door... come in at once.»
You lift an eyebrow. «Doctor's orders?»
He finally grants you a half smile, tiny, and it strikes you like a low blow.
And you hate yourself a little, because you realize that... you like it.
You remain seated on the cot with your hands still warm beneath the fresh bandages, and he returns to the notebook as if he could truly hide there, as if the sound of the quill and the profile of the lined-up bottles were enough to put order back into what is happening to you both.
You watch him in silence for a while, letting that suspended calm slide over you, the calm that in the sickbay always feels thicker, more intimate than the rest of the ship, until you realize you are not thinking about wounds, or the sea, or Hongjoong, but only about the curve of his lashes when he lowers his gaze, about the way he holds the air before writing a word, as if even graphite must deserve him.
He doesn't lift his head immediately, but he stops. The tip of the quill remains suspended.
«If I ask you something... will you answer me without doing the usual?» you say, trying to make it pass as lightness, though you feel your heart gather momentum as if it is about to stumble.
His gaze lifts slowly, and crosses you with that calm lucidity that always feels like a clean blade.
«It depends on the question.»
You swallow, because now that you have opened it, you can no longer close it.
«Do you believe in the legend of the ring?»
His reaction is immediate and almost comical, if not for the way it tightens your throat: Yeosang looks at you as if you have just blasphemed in church, with that eyebrow barely raised and his mouth tightening into a thin line, and for a second you think he will answer with one of his cold sentences, one of those that put you in your place without raising his voice.
«Why?» he asks instead, sharply.
You blink, and find yourself smiling despite everything, because the chance to tease him is too easy.
«You can't answer a question with another question.»
The silence that follows is brief, but full; he stares at you, and you feel that he is choosing whether to grant you something or shut you out, and that "something" is not only an answer. It is a step.
Then Yeosang sets the quill down, closes the notebook with a slow gesture, and stands.
One step, then another, until the distance between you becomes ridiculous, almost insolent, and you remain seated because standing would mean admitting that he is affecting you, while instead you want to stay there, still, as if your body hasn't suddenly remembered that it can desire contact without asking permission.
He stops a handspan from the cot and rests his hand on the edge of the mattress, near your bandaged thigh, without truly touching you... but close enough to make you perceive the warmth he leaves in the air.
«I don't believe... in legends,» he says quietly, and even that sounds different, because it is not a cutting answer: it is a restrained confession. «I believe in behavior. In details. In what repeats itself.»
«So no.» Your voice comes out smaller than you would like.
Yeosang inclines his head faintly, as if you are simplifying too much.
«So... I cannot dismiss it as a fairy tale,» he corrects, and his eyes remain on yours, steady, too close. «Especially after seeing you. After seeing what that object does when... it decides.»
The way he says "decides" gives you gooseflesh beneath the bandages.
You tighten your hands slightly, more to give yourself an anchor than to defend yourself, and you find yourself asking, almost voicelessly, «And do you know the legend?»
Yeosang stays silent for an instant, and in that silence something small but enormous happens: his hand lifts, as if he wants to stop, then moves anyway, and he tucks a strand of hair behind your ear with a slow, precise gesture, so natural it leaves you breathless, because it is not a caress meant to seduce... it is a caress made because he needs it, as if that thread of hair were an intrusion between you two.
And you realize that, if he did it again, you wouldn't stop him.
«Yes,» he says at last, his voice lower. «I know it.»
He looks at you as if assessing how much you can withstand.
«They never tell it as well as they should,» he adds. «They make it either a warning... or a joke. But it is neither.»
You hold your breath. «Then tell it to me.»
Yeosang inhales, and when he speaks, it does not sound like he is repeating a myth learned by heart, but as if he is remembering it, as if it belongs to him somehow.
«They say the God of the Sea fell in love with a mortal woman,» he begins, and his tone changes, softens, almost... wounded. «Not because she was beautiful — many were — but because she asked nothing of him. She didn't pray to him. She didn't fear him. She only looked at him, the way one looks at a storm knowing it can kill you and, despite that, recognizing a kind of truth in it.»
You feel something tighten in your chest, and you don't know whether it is the story or the way he is telling it.
«He gave her tides and shells full of song,» he continues, «and she gave him silence, the only thing a god cannot truly possess. In that silence, he convinced himself he could be... a man, for her.»
Yeosang leans slightly closer, and his voice grazes you as if it were closer than his lips.
«Then the woman discovered his plans.» His eyes narrow for an instant, as if he sees something he does not want to see. «He didn't just want to love her. He wanted to submerge the land, take everything, bend it to his desire. And she... understood that love, when it becomes possession, stops being love.»
You swallow, and you realize you are looking at his mouth while he speaks, and that it bothers you that there is still air between you.
«So she betrayed him,» Yeosang murmurs. «She forged a ring with a fire that was not hers, a fire lent by another god — a god who could not stand the idea of the sea devouring everything — and turned it into a promise.»
«A promise?» you repeat, almost without meaning to.
«She gave it to him.» His gaze grows intense. «And when the God of the Sea put it on, the promise closed like a vise: it imprisoned him in a human body, bound him to flesh, hunger, pain, time... to everything a god despises and desires at the same time.»
The room feels smaller, or perhaps you are simply no longer able to breathe properly.
«And her?» you ask, in a thread of voice.
Yeosang remains still, a breath away from you, and for a moment he seems almost... angry with the story itself.
«She didn't survive the betrayal,» he says quietly. «They say she killed herself. That she couldn't bear the weight of what she had done... or that she didn't want to live in a world where her love could turn into a chain.»
You feel the ring pulse beneath the glove, as if listening, as if remembering.
«And her spirit,» he continues, «is said to still wander. Not out of repentance. Out of search.» His gaze drops for an instant to your covered finger, then returns to you. «And they say the God... searches for it too. Because the ring isn't only an object. It's a judgment. And a bond.»
You remain motionless, spellbound, and you realize Yeosang is so close that it would take only the smallest gesture, a wrong breath, and you would touch him with your forehead or your lips, and the terrible thing is that part of you wants to, wants it so you can understand whether he too, like the legend, is a storm disguised as a man.
«Wooyoung told it to me,» you admit quietly, and it surprises you how sincere your voice is, «but... you make it sound different.»
Yeosang watches you, and something dark and warm together passes through his eyes, something that is no longer only distance.
«Because Wooyoung tells it as an adventure,» he says, without cruelty, but with a precise accent. «I remember it as a tragedy.»
«Remember it?» you tease, but without venom, more like a curious whisper.
For an instant he does not answer.
And then he does a tiny thing that breaks your breath: his hand, which was resting on the cot, rises and brushes your cheek with the backs of his fingers, as if checking that you are real, as if your skin can give him an answer the notebook never will.
«Don't play with certain words, Aurora,» he murmurs, and it doesn't sound like a rebuke... it sounds like a warning to himself.
You close your eyes for one second, only to feel that contact better, and when you open them again, you find him still there, too close, and your gaze inevitably falls into his.
«Then tell me the truth,» you whisper. «Does it scare you?»
Yeosang stares at you, and the silence he leaves between you is so full it almost sounds like yes.
«It commands my respect,» he answers at last, choosing the word carefully. «Because if even half of it is true... then it means someone before us has already tried to control the sea with a feeling.»
His hand remains on your face one heartbeat too long, and you don't move away.
In fact, you find yourself tilting your head slightly, as if granting him more without saying it.
«And you?» he asks quietly, and this time he is the one asking the question without running. «Why does it matter so much to you?»
You look at him, your lips dry, your heart beating in your throat.
«Because...» you begin, and you realize you are not only talking about the ring, «if there truly is a story behind it... then perhaps there is also a way not to be only a pawn. A way to understand who is guiding whom.»
Yeosang looks at you as if that answer strikes him more than he wants to admit.
«Then listen carefully, Aurora.»
His hand is still on your cheek, with a warmth that shifts slightly when you breathe, and you realize you're doing the most dangerous thing of all: you are waiting for him to decide how far he can go, as if you trust his self-control more than your own.
Yeosang lowers his voice as if the sickbay has ears, as if even the glass bottles could carry words back to someone who must not hear them.
«The legend is not important because it speaks of a god,» he murmurs, and his eyes turn darker, more serious. «It's important because it speaks of a choice. A mortal woman who understands she has been loved... and in the very same instant understands that love is erasing her.»
You swallow, and the ring pulses beneath the glove like a living thing, impatient.
«And what does that have to do with me?» you ask, more softly than you would like, because the question comes out of your throat with a tremor that is not only fear.
Yeosang stares at you for a long instant, and you feel him weighing how much to tell you, how much to leave you in ignorance to protect you, how much instead to throw the truth at you and see whether you survive the blow.
«It has to do with you because you're not the first to look at a power greater than yourself and think you can use it without paying the price,» he says, and his hand slips slightly, from your cheekbone toward the line of your ear, as if that gesture betrays him before the words do; then, with his fingertips, he fixes again a strand that was not even out of place, only to give himself an excuse to touch you once more. «And it has to do with you because...» He breaks off, inhales, and when he resumes, his voice is lower, almost rough, «...because that ring is not only a cursed piece of metal. It's not even only a key. It's a will.»
You feel your skin tighten where he touches you, and for a second you want to close your eyes and surrender to that contact as if it were an antidote, but you force yourself to remain lucid, because if you lose yourself now, you will understand nothing, and understanding is the only thing you have left.
«A will like... a person?» you whisper.
Yeosang does not answer immediately, and that silence weighs more than a yes.
Then he nods faintly, a minimal concession, and yet enormous.
«Sometimes it seems so.» His mouth contracts, as if the sentence disgusts him for how absurd it is. «Not because it has a heart. But because... it makes decisions. It pushes you. It uses you.»
A shiver runs down your spine.
«Then why does it help me?» you ask, and the question comes out more fragile than expected, because the truth is that part of you wants to believe it is not only manipulation, not only an elegant trap.
Yeosang looks at you as if you have just touched something that irritates and frightens him at once.
«It's not helping you,» he says, and his voice hardens by a fraction, just enough to make your pride rise. «It's taking you somewhere. And you...» He pauses, and his eyes drop for an instant to the glove, then rise back to your face, «... call it "help" because for now it coincides with what you want: survival.»
The words hurt because they make sense.
«So I should... what?» you retort, with a thread of challenge that comes as naturally as breathing. «Stay still, keep quiet, and let it drag me where it wants?»
For the first time, the shadow of a smile crosses his mouth, brief and restrained, as if he likes that you never surrender without biting.
«No,» he says softly, and the troubling thing is that he sounds almost... proud. «You should stop giving it all of yourself. Every time you panic, every time you rush, every time you throw yourself in front of a bullet as if your body were a coin to spend... it learns how to move you.»
You open your mouth to answer, but he doesn't leave you the space; he doesn't silence you with an authoritarian gesture, he silences you by coming even closer, that half step that takes your air and makes any sentence you had prepared useless.
«And I have no intention of watching you learn how to destroy yourself,» he adds, and his tone is so controlled that it hits your stomach, because beneath it you hear something more alive, something trying to remain polite.
His gaze snaps to yours, and you see it — you truly see it — the moment he realizes he spoke too fast.
«...I shouldn't,» he corrects, with a false calm that makes you want to laugh and shake him at the same time, and meanwhile his hand, as a final betrayal, moves from your cheek to the side of your neck, where his fingers can feel the pulse accelerating. He doesn't squeeze, doesn't take, doesn't impose... but he remains there long enough to make you understand that he's holding you.
You stay still, your back straight on the cot and your eyes on him, and you're surprised to think, in a clear and absurd way, that you want him to continue, that you want to understand how far his discipline reaches and where need begins instead.
«Then tell me what I should do,» you whisper, and your voice comes out softer, almost a surrender, though it is not.
Yeosang inhales slowly, as if that tone strikes an exposed place in him, and for an instant his hand tightens slightly — a minimal gesture, a controlled mistake — before letting you go.
He pulls away with a sharp, almost brusque movement, as if he has burned himself, and returns to being "the doctor," "the cold man," "the one who doesn't let himself be dragged," but you have already seen the opposite and can no longer pretend you haven't.
«The first thing,» he says, putting distance between you the way one straightens a shirt, «is to learn not to react immediately when you feel that... call.»
Yeosang turns toward the table, opens a drawer, and for a moment you fear he is avoiding the question; then you see him take a small vial, no bigger than a finger, and come back toward you.
«The second is harder,» he admits, and hands it to you. «Because it depends on you.»
You take it, your fingers brushing for an instant, and that tiny contact runs through you like a shock.
«Something that will let you sleep without slipping into... that beach,» he says, and stops for a moment, as if he has realized he has said too much, or as if testing your reaction. «It's not poison, if that is what you are thinking. It is only... a brake. For the mind.»
«You know,» you say quietly. It is not a question.
Yeosang doesn't look away, but from the way his shoulders stiffen, you understand you have struck a nerve.
«I know that when you sleep, you are never truly alone,» he answers at last, and his voice remains calm, but his eyes do not, his eyes betray a tension that tightens your stomach. «And I know that every time you wake with something new in your head, that something doesn't come from nowhere.»
A dense silence falls over you both.
You close your fist around the vial.
«And if I...» you begin, then stop, because saying aloud "there is a man" suddenly feels too real, too dangerous.
Yeosang takes half a step forward again, and you hold your breath without meaning to.
«If you what?» he asks softly.
You look at him, and you are surprised by how much you want to tell him everything, to place the truth into his hands as if it were another bandage to change, but you stop halfway, because you are afraid that if you give it to him, he will become part of the dream even while awake.
«Nothing,» you whisper at last, and you hate that "nothing" a little, because it is cowardly.
Yeosang watches you for another long instant, as if he knows you are lying and chooses anyway not to tear the truth from you by force.
Then, slowly, he lifts his hand and barely touches your hair, above your temple, a gesture so delicate that it hurts.
«Then say nothing,» he murmurs. «But at least... don't make me waste time chasing you when you break yourself alone.»
Your heart beats hard, and you find the only defense you have left: defiance.
«You're not chasing me,» you say, with a half smile. «You're... holding me back.»
Yeosang looks at you, and for one second the mask truly slips.
«Do not provoke me, Aurora.»
He says it quietly, without anger.
He says it like a man holding himself back with both hands on the edge of a precipice.
The silence that follows stretches like a wet rope pulled too tight, and you feel it vibrating between your breaths, between the vial clenched in your fist and Yeosang's gaze that gives you no escape, because even when he tells you not to provoke him, he is the one, in truth, taking one step after another toward the place where there are no more excuses, no roles, none of that polite distance you have imposed on yourselves as if it could save you from something.
Yeosang comes closer still, slowly, with a calm that is no longer calm but pure control, and his hand — the one that a moment earlier brushed your hair as if caressing something fragile — descends to the edge of your glove, stops there, lingers for an instant on the fabric as if he is deciding whether it is permissible to touch something hiding a power, or whether instead he is touching you, simply you, and at that thought your stomach closes and your chest opens all at once.
«Aurora,» he says softly, as if your name weighs on his tongue, as if calling you like that is already a confession.
«Yeosang,» you answer in the same way, and the sound comes out softer than you would like, truer, more dangerous.
For an instant it seems he forgets how to breathe.
And then it happens: Yeosang lifts his hand and takes your chin between his thumb and forefinger, not with force but with a precision that immobilizes you, forces you to look at him, and you feel his nearness like warm pressure on your neck, on your lips, on every nerve screaming at you to stay still and, at the same time, to give in.
His gaze drops for one instant to your mouth.
You swallow and, without realizing it, tilt your face slightly toward him, as if you are the one telling him go on, as if you are authorizing him to cross that thin line you have drawn and pretended to respect for days.
Yeosang stops a breath away, so close you feel his breathing graze you, and in that instant you are certain it is truly about to happen, that his discipline is yielding in a controlled way, that he is choosing to be selfish for once, even if only for a second—
The two sharp knocks on the sickbay door come so suddenly that they go through you like a gunshot.
His hand remains on your chin for one more heartbeat, as if he doesn't want to let you go, and then — with a brusque movement, almost annoyed with himself — he releases you and turns toward the door with an expression that is no longer detachment, but pure irritation, as if someone has dared to enter his room not to interrupt a moment, but to steal something from him.
The door opens without waiting for an answer.
Seonghwa appears on the threshold with his usual sharp elegance, black worn like a promise of trouble, and his gaze slips over you, over the cot, over the way you are still too close to Yeosang, as if he has already understood everything without needing words.
«The Captain wants you,» he says directly, and there is a thin note of satisfaction in the way he says it, as if he knows he has arrived at the worst possible moment and is perfectly pleased with that.
He remains motionless, shoulders straight and eyes cold, but he doesn't look at Seonghwa, doesn't look at you. He looks at a point in the air as if counting to ten so he won't say something he shouldn't, and in that absence of words you feel all his restrained anger, not against you, not against the Captain... against the interruption, against the world, against the fact that the instant has been torn away from you right when you were about to stop fighting.
«Move,» Seonghwa adds, as if you are delaying on purpose.
You climb down from the cot more slowly than necessary, because your body still feels trapped in that half step Yeosang never completed, and as you pass near him, you instinctively search for his eyes, even just to understand whether he hates you for almost letting him do it, or whether he hates himself for having tried.
But Yeosang doesn't look at you.
And that hurts more than any sentence.
You pull on the glove with an automatic gesture, clutch the vial in your hand as if it were a secret, and when you reach the door, the corridor air hits you like a cold shower, carrying away the smell of the sickbay and leaving only an electric emptiness on your skin.
Seonghwa walks half a step ahead of you, already impatient, and you follow him without speaking, because your throat is closed and your heart is too full.
Behind you, Yeosang remains inside.
He doesn't wish you luck.
He doesn't give you one last look.
Only, at the exact moment the door closes, you hear a sharp metallic sound — the drawer slamming, or perhaps a bottle set down too hard on the table — and you understand that his calm, the real one, is gone.
