TREASURE: The Ring of the Sea.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Chances.
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, San and Seonghwa being a pain in the a$$, Jongho being a cutie.
wc: 20k
You go down behind Yeosang with your legs still stiff from adrenaline, and yet now — away from the screaming wind, the shots, the bodies on deck — every step returns to you a more intimate, cleaner pain, as if fear has given way to something worse: awareness.
Yeosang walks ahead of you without turning, his back straight, his pace measured, almost stubborn, but you are close enough behind him to see it, that dark stain eating through the white of his shirt beneath the breastplate, a black flower widening with every breath, and you realize it bothers you in a precise place in your stomach, where you should not feel anything for a pirate, but you feel everything.
«Yeosang...» you call softly, as if raising your voice might make something give way, and when he does not answer immediately, you continue, quicker, truer. «Stop. Let me see.»
He slows only slightly, not enough to obey you, just enough to let you understand he heard you, and you hate his calm now, hate it because it is not calm: it is control, that damned habit of treating himself as if he were a problem to manage and not a body that bleeds.
«It’s nothing,» he says at last, without turning, with that smooth, detached voice he uses when he wants to put distance between himself and the world.
«Nothing?» you repeat, and this time your irony has no strength; it comes out broken, almost offensive in how frightened it sounds. «It’s staining your shirt. Under the breastplate. It doesn’t look like “nothing” to me.»
You reach the narrow corridor that leads to the sickbay, the air smelling of wet wood and tar and that bitter powder that gets everywhere after a fight; behind you, the ship’s noise continues — orders, steps, the clang of buckets and iron — but down here it is as if the world has closed into a throat of shadow.
Yeosang finally stops in front of the door, places a hand on the wood, inhales — and you see it, you truly see it, because it is a barely restrained breath, a microscopic hesitation that betrays pain more than any groan — then opens it.
He goes in, and you follow without waiting to be invited.
«Sit down,» you say at once, before he can even think it, and you are surprised by how steady your voice is, as if the order helps you not tremble. «Yeosang, sit down. Now.»
He casts you a sidelong glance, quick and sharp, but doesn’t argue. He merely closes the door with his foot and moves toward the cot with almost irritating control, as if he’s not the one losing blood.
«Are you hurt?» he asks, and the question sounds wrong, misplaced, a perfect way to change targets.
You grit your teeth. «Don’t try to distract me.» You take a step closer, enough to see the edge of the breastplate, enough to feel the heat of his body and, beneath it, that clean, absurd scent you still cannot understand on a pirate ship. «Let me see where it is. Please.»
The word slips out before you mean it, please, and it stays on you like a confession.
Yeosang lowers his gaze for an instant, as if deciding whether to let you in or keep you out, then brings his fingers to the clasp of the breastplate and loosens it with precise movements, too slow, and you realize you are holding your breath while the shirt shifts just enough to show the vivid red that has already crossed the fabric.
«It’s a cut,» he says, as if reading a report and not speaking about himself. «Superficial.»
«Superficial, of course.» You move closer on instinct, then stop just before touching him, because all at once you remember that you should not, that you do not know if you can, that every touch on this ship always has a price. «Then why do you have that face?»
«What face?» he says flatly.
You look straight at him. «The one of someone pretending it doesn’t burn.»
A second of silence stretches between you like a rope. Yeosang does not lower his eyes, does not retreat, does not smile... but his calm cracks slightly, and you see it, feel it, the way one feels a shift in the air before a storm.
«I’m used to it,» he says at last, and it does not sound like boasting.
You swallow. «I’m not.»
And in that moment you realize you are not talking about the blood, or the hawks, or the wound beneath his shirt: you are talking about him hurting himself and calling it “nothing,” and about you not knowing where to put your hands when you see someone who has just looked at you as if you are a problem to be held back... and yet now he is sitting before you, bleeding.
«Let me do it,» you say quietly, and you hate yourself a little for how intimate it sounds.
Yeosang inhales, slow. «You are not the physician.»
«No.» You bend toward the table where you know he keeps the bandages, the forceps, the alcohol, and your hand is already moving, certain, as if it is the only thing you can control now. «But I’m the one watching you lose blood, and I have no intention of pretending it isn’t happening.»
When you turn back to him with clean cloth between your fingers, Yeosang is watching you in a way that makes your skin warm beneath the dress, a gaze too attentive to be mere detachment, too restrained to be kindness.
«Aurora...» he says, and he calls you by name as if it is a warning.
You do not stop. «Shut up and let me see properly,» you shoot back.
Your fingers reach the edge of his shirt as if there is an invisible line not to cross, and Yeosang lets you cross it without moving away, without granting you either real permission or prohibition, only that tense silence in which you understand he is choosing to remain still because it is easier than arguing, and because arguing now would mean admitting that he cares.
You shift the fabric aside, then the edge of the breastplate, and the cut beneath his ribs appears to you for what it truly is: not deep, but vicious, carved diagonally, the edges reddened and the skin already stuck to a film of dark blood, as if the hawk had scratched with precision exactly where breathing pulls most.
A cold wave rises to your throat. «It hurts when you breathe in.»
It’s not a question, and he understands that; he understands it also from the way you do not try to play brave, because here there’s no one to challenge, no deck to dominate, only a closed room and a man bleeding onto his own calm.
Yeosang reaches out and takes a small bottle from the table without even looking at it, as if he can recognize it by weight, then hands it to you instead of using it himself. «Pour. Slowly. Don’t waste it.»
You pour alcohol onto the gauze, feel the pungent smell bite your nose, then press the cloth to the cut; the skin tightens under your pressure and Yeosang’s jaw tenses in an almost imperceptible way, a tiny jerk that hits you harder than a groan.
«Don’t make that face,» he says, low and immediate, and only afterward seems to realize he has spoken.
You blink. «I’m not.»
«You are.» His voice remains flat, but something dark passes through his eyes, like a cloud covering the sun for a second and then pretending it never happened. «When you concentrate... you look as if you’re about to apologize to the world.»
You are caught off guard, because it is not a physician’s comment and not a pirate’s provocation; it is a sentence too precise to be accidental, too true to be said “by chance.”
«And you look as if you’re about to faint without giving anyone the satisfaction.» The answer comes out before you can stop it, dry, almost cruel, and yet there is no venom: only fear disguised as a sharp tongue.
Yeosang doesn’t smile. But he inhales once, slowly, and it seems — only for a moment — that he is allowing you to have seen him.
«Press here.» He takes your wrist to shift your hand by a finger into the right position, and the contact is brief, technical, but crosses through you like a taut thread. Then he stands, turns toward the cabinet, opens a drawer and pulls out a curved needle and waxed thread.
You stare at him, incredulous. «Don’t tell me you’re going to stitch yourself up.»
«I don’t want to.» He stops halfway through the gesture, that fraction of a second in which his calm almost looks like a mask worn too tightly. «I have to do it.»
And, without giving you time to add anything else, he sits again, but this time turns slightly sideways, so you can see the cut and he can see his hands; he places clean gauze and forceps in front of you, then looks up at you.
«If you faint, I’ll spit on you,» he says with the same voice he might use to note a fever in his ledger.
You find yourself releasing a short, nervous, scandalized laugh. «What a gentleman.»
«I’m a physician.» He takes the needle, threads it with one quick gesture. «It’s different.»
This is where your mind catches on the most important thing: he is keeping you with him not out of need, but by choice, and that choice is disguised as procedure.
«Hold the skin still,» he orders, and the word hold makes your fingers tighten more than necessary; you obey, easing the edges of the cut apart slightly, and he enters with the needle in a clean, decisive movement, without hesitation, as if pain is only a parameter to consider and not a reason to stop.
He works in silence for three stitches, the thread pulling and closing, the skin drawing back together, the blood slowing, and you realize you are counting his breaths to understand when it hurts most, because it seems the only way not to feel useless.
When he has finished, he cuts the thread and only then lets you release the pressure; the air in the room moves again, as if it had been hanging there until now.
Yeosang takes a salve, spreads it carefully, then wraps the bandage close.
The gauze does its work, the blood retreating into lighter stains, and you move on to the balm, dense and amber-colored, smelling of herbs and resin; when you spread it over the cut, his breathing changes, barely, and you lift your eyes at once, instinctively, as if he has called you.
Yeosang is watching you.
You swallow, but you do not lower your eyes.
And then something small happens, almost insignificant, and therefore devastating. A lock of your hair slips forward, from movement, from breath, from the cold sweat still clinging to you, and falls onto your cheek, getting in your way. You move to brush it aside with your salve-stained hand, but stop because you do not want to stain the dress, and because it feels foolish to worry about a dress while you are tending a man.
Yeosang does it for you.
He does it without thinking, or perhaps thinking too late, and his fingers — long, clean, gentler than they should be on a ship like this — brush your cheek with the same caution with which you touched his wound, then gather that lock and tuck it behind your ear in a slow, intimate, almost domestic gesture, as if you were in a room full of light and not in the belly of a ship still carrying fog on its skin.
The contact lasts a beat too long.
By the time you realize you are holding your breath, it is already too late, because you are still, the gauze suspended in midair, and he is so close you can see the line of his lashes, the birthmark marking his face like a signature, the way his calm seems like a blanket pulled over something that wants to move.
Yeosang doesn’t withdraw his hand immediately.
His thumb remains at the edge of your jaw, not quite a caress, more like a light pressure, as if he is checking that you are real, that you are not about to disappear, and your body reacts before your head does.
A sharp, hot shiver runs through you, and a sudden, ridiculous anger toward yourself rises to your skin, because this is not the moment, this should not be the place.
And yet it is.
Yeosang tilts his head slightly, not to move closer — or perhaps yes, but he stops at the limit, on the edge of a thought he doesn’t dare cross — and you realize you are looking at his mouth without meaning to, and hate that he notices.
His fingers shift, barely, grazing the curve of your ear as if to settle the rebellious lock more securely, and you feel a small emptiness in your stomach, as if someone has pulled a chair out from beneath you without making you fall.
The silence becomes a living, full thing.
You try to return to the work, to anchor yourself to reality with the simplest logic you have: the wound, the balm, the bandage.
«I have to...» you begin, but your voice comes out thin.
Yeosang interrupts you without words: his hand lowers, and instead of letting you go completely, he takes your wrist and guides you to place the gauze on the table, away from the cut, as if removing a weapon from your fingers.
Then, with that same ruthless calm, he shifts you half a step, until you feel your back against the edge of the cabinet, and the distance between you shrinks into something indecent.
There is no aggression, no threat.
There is only him looking at you as if he has finally decided not to flee into a diagnosis.
His hand rises again, brushes your cheek a second time, shorter, almost a test, and you find yourself closing your eyes for just an instant because you do not want to see how close he is... or perhaps because you want to feel him better.
When you open them, Yeosang is still there, his breath low, his eyes fixed.
And in that millimeter between you — in that suspended point where a word would be too much and a gesture would be everything — he does the only truly unpredictable thing.
He touches your forehead with his fingers, as if checking for fever, as if searching for a rational pretext for that need, and leaves that pressure in a place that hurts for how simple it is.
Then he retreats by one step, only one, enough to give you air but not distance.
And when he speaks, his voice is lower than before, without irony, without masks, and for that very reason it hits you like a cold wave.
«Finish the bandage,» he says. It is not an order; it is surrender in disguise.
You nod without trusting your voice, because if you speak now you might say something you do not even know you think, and you force yourself back to simple things, the ones that do not tremble and do not betray: gauze, cloth, knot, the right pressure, slow breathing.
You finish the bandage with steadier hands than you expected, tightening it just enough to close the cut without smothering it, and when you pass the final turn under the edge of the breastplate, you feel his warm skin beneath the fabric, feel also the way he controls himself not to stiffen, as if the slightest surrender might become a fault. You tie the knot and secure it with a clean movement, then lift your gaze, and for a brief — dangerous — instant, you find yourselves again at the point where silence is a choice.
«Like this?» you ask quietly, more to give him a way out than because you need confirmation.
Yeosang lowers his eyes to the bandage, checks the tension with two fingers and inclines his head slightly, a nod that is worth more than a compliment, because he is not the kind to give them away.
You wipe your hands on a rag, the smell of alcohol and resin staying on you like a mark, and suddenly you realize that outside that door, the ship is still a body at war: hurried steps, choked groans, orders bouncing through the wood like blows.
«What can I do?» you say, this time without sarcasm, and the seriousness with which it comes out almost annoys you. «Tell me where to put me, Yeosang. I have no intention of standing here watching.»
He studies you for a second too long, and in the way he does there is something new, subtle: as if he is weighing not only your words, but also your will, and deciding it is not a whim.
He turns to the cabinet, opens a drawer and pulls out a bundle of clean bandages, a metal bowl and a dark bottle; he places them in your arms with a precise gesture, as if handing you something fragile and dangerous all at once.
«This is gauze oil,» he says, indicating the bottle. «It doesn’t burn like alcohol and it keeps the cloth from sticking to wounds. It’s for those with superficial but bleeding cuts... and for those who must not complain too much, preferably.»
His tone is the usual one, controlled, dry, but his eyes brush yours as if to check whether you truly understand the weight of the thing.
Then he adds, lower, as if it is a detail when it is not: «If you do it wrong, you make them bleed again.»
You feel the ring pulse, almost offended that someone is entrusting you with a responsibility that doesn’t pass through it, and you hold the bowl to your chest as if to silence that presence.
«So?» you ask, ready to move, already irritated by the idea of standing still.
Yeosang nods toward the wall where hooks and cords hang, and you notice that there, arranged like instruments, are pieces of cloth already cut, needles, waxed thread, a pair of forceps, and a list written in elegant handwriting that cannot belong to anyone else.
«Outside the sickbay, in the corridor to the left, they’ve improvised a gathering point,» he says. «There are men with scratches and cuts from talons. They are not fatal wounds, but if they stay dirty, they’ll infect, and if they bleed too much, they become a problem while we still have to sail.»
He finally looks directly at you, and in his gaze there is something firm, almost protective, that he does not allow himself to call such.
«Your task is this: clean, oil, bandage. Only that.» There’s a brief pause, and the shadow of a warning crosses his voice. «And do not leave that corridor. If someone tries to put his hands on you, you scream. Loudly. Jongho will hear you.»
The fact that he names Jongho as a guarantee gives you a small blow to the stomach, a mixture of gratitude and annoyance, because you don’t want to feel “protected” like a thing that can move on its own only if someone watches it.
And yet, for the first time, it doesn’t feel like a cage.
It feels like a choice.
You nod, then stop at the threshold as if part of the sentence is missing. «And you?» you ask without thinking too much. «Where are you going?»
Yeosang lowers his gaze for an instant to his own chest, to the bandage just made, then raises it back to you, and a thin weariness passes through his eyes, immediately composed again.
«I take care of the real wounded,» he answers. «The ones who cannot wait.»
Then, as if realizing he has left you with an open crack, he adds more quietly, almost reluctantly: «And you... take good care of my men.»
The sentence stays on you like a knot.
Not “the wounded.”
His.
You lower your eyes to the bowl and the bandages, and when you lift them again, he is already half turned toward the table, as if he has just said too much; but before you truly leave, you feel his hand brush your forearm, a brief, controlled contact, and yet full as both warning and anchor.
«Aurora,» he says, and your name in his mouth sounds different than usual, closer.
You freeze.
«Don’t prove me wrong,» he adds only.
Yeosang takes his case, slips forceps and a spool of waxed thread into the pocket of his waistcoat, and passes you by half a step, already projected toward the corridor as if the list of damage has been carved into his mind before he has even seen it.
When you open the door, a sharper smell than the sickbay’s hits you, blood and smoke and damp wood, and outside there is no order. There are men sitting on the floor with their backs against beams, makeshift bandages made of rags, hands pressed to wounds that will not stop pulsing, eyes too bright to be only anger.
Yeosang moves, calm and inevitable, and is enough for two sailors to move aside and one to stop complaining loudly, as if his very presence makes the scene more serious.
Then he glances at you from the side, without slowing.
He kneels before a man with a deep cut in his side, shirt open and skin slick with blood, already assessing how much thread will be needed.
And right then, you see him coming.
San.
He announces nothing, asks nothing; he simply appears from a fold of shadow on the lower deck, as if born there, with that heavy presence of his that seems to occupy more space than his body. He looks you over for a second, neutral but watchful, and you understand at once that he's not here to make conversation.
Yeosang doesn’t raise his voice, doesn’t interrupt his work, and yet it reaches you clearly. «San,» he says only, without even truly looking at him. «She stays with me. You stay with her.»
San doesn’t answer; he only gives a minimal nod, almost imperceptible, and that absence of words irritates you more than an insult, because you do not know where to put his intention, whether it is simple discipline or whether underneath there is still that echo of the duel, that curiosity that burns and refuses to admit itself.
You swallow, force yourself not to look at him too much, and focus on the gestures.
You approach the first “bandage” patient Yeosang indicates with a movement of his chin, a cabin boy with three long scratches down his arm, like talons, and you remove the dirty rag gently, working slowly because you do not want to hear anyone scream because of you too.
You pour some of the oil Yeosang gave you into the bowl, warm it between your fingers and spread it over the skin in short, decisive movements, feeling the boy hold his breath, then wrap his arm in a clean bandage, tight enough to stop the blood and still leave him a hand.
Behind you, San is motionless, but he is not “far”: you feel him the way one feels a presence at their back in an empty room, a weight following you one step away, boots planted on the wood, arms always ready, gaze controlling who passes near you more than it controls you.
You try to ignore him, but when you move to the second man — a cut on his forehead, blood running between eyebrow and eyelid — San moves with you at the exact same instant, synchronized, and you almost turn sharply, as if he is chasing you.
«You don’t have to breathe down my neck,» you whisper without lifting your head, while you clean the wound with a damp cloth, «I’m not running away... for now.»
San doesn’t react, and his voice, when it comes, is low and rough, almost bored.
«Don’t talk. Work.»
A nasty answer rises in you, ready, but you bite your tongue, because a few steps away Yeosang is stitching the man’s side with almost cruel precision, the thread passing and returning as if he were sewing the sea itself into flesh, and for the first time you understand that if you want to remain useful — if you want to remain standing — you have to choose your battles.
And yet, while you knot the bandage and move on to the next, you notice something that prickles beneath your skin more than pride: every so often Yeosang raises his eyes for only a moment, checking you without making it visible, and when he sees San too close to you for one second... his jaw stiffens slightly, as if that detail bothers him more than he has any right to admit, and immediately afterward he returns to his work, colder, more focused, as if the only way not to be taken by something is to turn it into discipline.
You keep bandaging, cleaning, tying knots with fingers that tremble less than expected, and with San behind you not leaving you by one step and Yeosang ahead stitching wounds as if he was born to keep alive people who refuse to die, you realize that for the first time since you came aboard this ship, you are not merely surviving.
You are becoming part of their war.
After a while, your hands stop automatically searching for another wound, another cut to clean, another bandage to tighten, and you find yourself with the bowl empty and your fingers sticky with a smell you do not want to carry on you. You straighten slowly, your back protesting, and when you finally turn to search for Yeosang with your eyes — to understand whether you have done enough or whether there is still someone losing too much blood — you find yourself face to face with San.
He has remained there the whole time like a sentinel, same posture, dark and unmoving gaze, but now that you truly look at him, you notice a red streak on his forearm, a small, clean cut that should not matter to you and yet lights a thin, almost personal irritation inside you, as if the world has dared to stain something he always pretends is intact.
«Your arm is wounded.» You say it without thinking, with that sharp tone that comes out when concern bothers you more than fear.
San lowers his eyes to the wound as if it is a speck of dust, then raises them back to you with an expression that already looks like a sentence. «It’s nothing.»
«Of course,» you reply, tilting your head slightly, «and I am the Empress.»
He does not react, but something tightens in his gaze, that brief flash that tells you you have caught him in the right place: not because you disrespected him — he gets that from Wooyoung a hundred times a day — but because you dared to notice a crack.
«Don’t touch me,» he warns, and his voice is low but hard, as if speaking to someone who might bite.
You move closer anyway, barely half a step, holding the bowl and clean cloth like an alibi. «It’s not touching, it’s medicine. Don’t be dramatic.»
San shifts to the side, just enough that you cannot reach him easily, and looks you up and down as if you are attempting an affront worse than any escape. «Are you done playing?»
«I’m not playing,» you hiss, and it surprises you how naturally you raise your voice with him, of all people. «You planted yourself behind me like a wall and now you want to play martyr too?»
San clenches his jaw, a minimal gesture that looks more like a restrained growl than a human expression. «I was assigned to watch you, not to be treated by you.»
«And I was assigned to bandage wounds,» you shoot back at once, «and if you cut your arm and ignore it, you’re just... stupid.»
For a moment his gaze turns truly dangerous, because that word slides over him like a slap, and you feel the idiotic temptation to push further — to see how far he goes — but before he can move or answer, Yeosang’s voice cuts the air with the same precision with which he cuts thread.
«San.»
Yeosang rises from his patient and approaches calmly, but it is a different calm, the one that comes when patience is over and only authority remains. His golden eyes settle first on San’s arm wound and then on him, as if evaluating a stubborn patient who thinks he can win against his own body.
San tries to dismiss him with the same sentence. «It’s nothing.»
Yeosang looks at him for a second too long, «Sit.»
San laughs without sound, more a breath of contempt than a laugh. «No.»
Yeosang does not stiffen, does not change expression, and yet the deck seems to lower its voice around you. «San. Sit. Now.»
The difference between you and Yeosang is that you provoke him by instinct, because you like biting when you feel caged. Yeosang, instead, doesn’t provoke. He commands, and he does it with a coldness that makes every resistance useless.
San remains standing for only one beat, then his eyes slide toward you as if deciding whether to hate you more for noticing or for not being afraid of him even now... and in the end he huffs, sharp, and sits on a nearby crate with a brusque gesture, almost offended.
«Happy?» he growls.
«No,» you answer immediately, faster than good sense, «because you’re making a tragedy out of a scratch.»
San lifts his face toward you, and in his eyes there is that restrained fire you have already seen over a sword. «Stop talking to me like I’m one of your drawing-room nobles.»
The sentence hits you more than you would like, because inside it there is an accusation that no longer belongs to you, not after the deck, not after the blood, not after the chain and the fog you bent with the ring and with yourself.
You tighten your fingers around the bowl. «If I were really one of my drawing-room nobles,» you say quietly, approaching anyway, «I wouldn’t have my hands dirty with the same filth as yours.»
San remains still, his breath a little heavier, and for an instant it seems the conflict is no longer only stubbornness, but something deeper. He doesn’t want to grant you space or a gesture, because every gesture makes you real, and you instead want to force him to see you, even if only for the length of a bandage.
Yeosang hands you a clean cloth without taking his eyes off San. «Do it. And you,» he adds to him, «stay still for five seconds. You won’t die from it, even if it seems to offend you.»
San clenches his jaw, then reluctantly extends his arm, as if granting you a disgusting privilege, and you finally take it firmly.
You feel the heat of his skin, the tense nerve beneath the forearm, the old scar crossing the muscle like a line from another battle, and he stiffens instantly.
«If you move, I’ll tighten the bandage until you turn blue,» you threaten, while cleaning the cut carefully, and you do not know whether you say it as a joke or because you need a small victory.
San exhales through his nose, a sound that could be a restrained laugh or a growl. «Try.»
You look up at him, and your eyes lock like blades, very close. «Don’t tempt me.»
For one second the world around remains only distant noise, people groaning, wood creaking, the sea breathing, and then you lower your gaze and spread the salve with a firm gesture, bandaging him without useless gentleness but without truly hurting him either, because even if you enjoy irritating him, you are not cruel.
When you finish, you tie the knot with one sharp tug and release his arm the way one releases proof: complete, inevitable.
«There,» you say dryly. «You haven’t lost your dignity. Only a little bit of blood.»
San stands abruptly, as if the seated position has humiliated him, and looks at you for another instant, longer than necessary, with something that is not gratitude and not pure hatred... a kind of respect he does not know where to put.
Then he looks away, brusque. «Don’t get used to it.»
You tilt your head slightly, watching him without stopping him. «Don’t worry. You’re not the type who makes it easy to get used to.»
And Yeosang, behind you, says nothing — but when he passes San to return to the wounded, his shoulder brushes him slightly, a minimal contact and yet intentional, as if reminding him that here he is not the one who decides when it comes to keeping people alive.
Wooyoung appears on the sickbay threshold as if he has not just seen death climb aboard with a chain between its teeth, limping just enough to make the scene credible but not enough to fool Yeosang, one hand clasped around the other in a theatrical pose that screams tragedy more than his face does.
«Physician!» he calls, too loudly, too alive, and that alone would be enough to make you understand he is performing. Then his eyes find you and, as always, that absurd thing happens: they light up. A smile ignites, one that is not only meant to amuse the others, but because he has seen you — you, whole, still here — and for a moment he seems almost relieved to cling to something that is not blood and orders.
«Ah. There is my savior,» he says, approaching with his “burned” hand held forward like a sacrificial offering. «I almost... roasted alive. A murderous rope. I think I’ll lose use of the hand. Farewell, career as elegant cat among the sails.»
Yeosang doesn’t even raise his eyes from the wounded man he is finishing with; he merely sighs as if he has seen this scene a thousand times.
You, instead, look at him for a second, skeptical, and understand at once that the hand is not what brings him there: it is the need to talk to you without admitting it. «Let me see,» you say anyway, because the idea of being tender annoys you and it is easier to be practical.
Wooyoung offers you his hand with theatrical slowness, moving close enough to force you to lift your chin. «If I faint, promise you’ll catch me. It’s a delicate moment for me.»
«If you faint, I’ll throw you into the sea,» you answer without thinking, and he laughs — a short, sincere laugh that vibrates in his chest as if the world has not just been hell.
San, who until a moment ago was still there, stiffens at the sound, and when Wooyoung smiles at you too openly, San says nothing: he simply turns and leaves, with that same brusque elegance with which he removes himself from anything that resembles an emotion, or a moment in which he does not quite know where to put his hands.
Wooyoung follows him with his eyes only for an instant, then returns to you, satisfied at having won a few seconds of your attention. «See? He hates me. Love, in my opinion.»
«Finished patience,» you correct him, and finally take his hand between yours.
The burn is real, but superficial: reddened, slightly swollen, more annoying than serious. And yet he reacts as if you were amputating a finger, with an exaggerated flinch and an «Ow!» so melodramatic that you want to squeeze his skin just to make him stop.
«Stay still,» you order, while dipping the cloth into clean water and beginning to dab gently. «If you had really slid down the rope badly, you’d have half your palm scraped raw, not a “poetic burn.”»
Wooyoung narrows his eyes, but not from pain; it is as if he is enjoying the fact that you are touching him with no war in between. «You’re terrible. You never believe my suffering.»
«Because you stage it,» you answer, and only afterward realize that the sentence almost sounds like a confidence.
He tilts his head slightly, the smile lowering by half a tone, becoming less joke and more something trying to find the courage to stay. «Not all of it.»
The silence lasts one beat, the time of a wave against the hull.
From the other side of the room, Yeosang clears his throat slightly without looking at either of you, a subtle reminder that seems to say “remember where you are,” and Wooyoung immediately restores the mask, though not completely.
«So...» he murmurs, while you spread a veil of salve and wrap his hand in a clean bandage. «You’re alive. Not a given, with you.»
«I’m resilient,» you answer, tying the knot with a sharp tug. «And you are theatrical.»
«I’m a survivor,» he says softly, and then, as if that sentence has exposed him more than necessary, he hurries to add lightly, «And now I’m also a survivor with a bandaged hand. Could I ask you to sign it? An autograph from my favorite nurse.»
You roll your eyes, but your lips betray you with the hint of a smile that lasts only a little and is enough to make him breathe better.
«Are you... all right?» you ask without lifting your gaze, as if it is a question thrown out by chance, while you dab gently and he holds back an “ow” out of pride alone.
Wooyoung stares at you, perplexed, and his voice lowers, less like a stage. «Since when do you care whether I’m all right?»
You press your lips together, run the bandage through your fingers and set his hand properly, as if care is a way not to blush. «Since I saw you almost fall from the mainmast because a hawk passed too close to you.»
For an instant he truly stiffens, as if the word hawk has scratched the back of his neck, and his eyes flee sideways, toward the door, toward the corridor, toward any point that is not you.
«I don’t know what you’re talking about,» he tries to dismiss, with a half smile that does not hold.
You do not press him with irony, not this time; you only keep tending him, calm, and it is precisely that calm that strips him more than any teasing. «Wooyoung... I saw it. And it’s all right. I won’t laugh.»
He swallows, and his shoulder lowers by a millimeter, as if he has let go of a weight he didn’t know he was carrying. «It’s stupid,» he murmurs, still not looking at you, almost ashamed of having a weak point when he is the one who lives on wind and ropes. «It’s not... it’s not that I’m afraid of birds. I’m afraid of those... when you hear them before you see them, when they circle around you and you don’t understand where they’re coming from.»
You stop for a second with the bandage between your fingers, then continue softly, gentler, because suddenly it feels as if you are holding something else besides his wrist.
«Did something happen?» you ask, and you don’t even feel like joking.
Wooyoung lets out a brief breath through his nose, as if deciding whether to give you that truth or run away behind a joke. «When I was younger...» he begins, and his voice already sounds strange in his mouth, too serious for him. Then he grimaces and corrects himself, as if that sentence is already too much: «When I was less like this. They left me for hours in a place where there were many of them. Not to kill me. To make me understand they could do it whenever they wanted.»
He stops, throws you a quick glance and discovers you are not pitying him, not even judging him. You are only listening while bandaging his hand as if it is the most normal thing in the world, and that normality makes his smile tremble.
«I’ve never told anyone,» he adds softly, then tries to put the mask back on with a short laugh. «So if you tell anyone, I’ll rob you. Affectionately, though.»
«I won’t tell,» you say simply, and tighten the knot of the bandage. «And... thank you for telling me.»
Wooyoung looks at you, and for the first time he does not seem to be looking for a way to make you like him; he only seems surprised that it matters to him that you truly see him, not as “the cat of the ship,” but as someone who gets scared, who stiffens, who sometimes wants to run and stays instead.
«It’s unsettling,» he mutters, with a smaller smile. «You ask questions as if... as if it matters.»
The knot comes out perfect and you let go of his hand, but he doesn’t withdraw it immediately; he remains there for one instant, as if the contact has suddenly become something precious, and your stomach tightens in a way you do not want to analyze.
«It matters,» you answer only, and you hate him a little because he forces you to be sincere.
From far away, Yeosang watches you without letting it show, seated at the table with bottles and gauze arranged in an order only he understands, but his fingers stop for a moment in midair, and the quill he was using to note something remains suspended, motionless, as if he has lost the thread.
It is not anger, not even declared jealousy — Yeosang does not allow himself even that luxury — but in the way his gaze crosses you and then settles on Wooyoung, there is a restrained tension, a kind of silent irritation, as if he is wondering when you became a place others allow themselves to enter.
Wooyoung notices, because Wooyoung always notices everything when it suits him, and the shadow of a smile brushes his mouth, no longer to drive you mad but to mark a territory he does not even know he wants to defend.
Then he straightens, recovering his lightness like a coat that suits him well, and gives you a half bow with his bandaged hand raised. «Then, nurse... my career as a cat is saved.»
You lift one eyebrow. «And the hawks?»
He hesitates for one beat, just one, then gives you a smile that is not a complete joke. «If you’re there shouting at me, maybe I won’t fall.»
From far away, Yeosang starts moving his hands again as if nothing happened, but the way he closes a bottle is a little sharper than necessary.
«That’s enough,» he says, and it is not directed only at Wooyoung, nor only at you; it is a sentence that closes one parenthesis and opens another, colder, more orderly.
You stand immediately, almost too quickly, as if afraid of being found guilty of something that has no name, and Yeosang hands you a pile of gauze and two bottles without looking at your hands, as if it is obvious you know what to do with them and, at the same time, as if he is testing you.
«Put this away,» he indicates the tray with the used tools with his chin, «and change the water. Then fold the clean bandages: I want them ready, not piled up.»
«Yes, commander,» you mutter, but without venom, and bite your tongue right after because you do not want to give him the satisfaction of seeing you docile.
Yeosang merely moves toward the chest of drawers and opens one with the precise calm of someone deliberately avoiding looking at what he must not look at.
You start tidying: gather the stained gauze, separate it from the clean, wash the basin, change the water with hands that try to look steady even though you still carry the echo of Wooyoung’s fear, his voice cracking, and that instant when it felt natural to remain beside him.
And Wooyoung, meanwhile, doesn’t move from your side.
He sits on the edge of the cot, bandaged hand resting on his thigh, gaze fixed on you as if you are doing something far more dangerous than folding bandages, as if the way you bend over the basin and rinse away blood is an answer he did not know he wanted to ask for.
You feel him on you even when you do not look, the way one feels a flame at their back.
«Are you done staring?» you throw at him, without turning completely, trying to recover a shred of control.
Wooyoung tilts his head slightly, slow, and that half smile of his returns — but different, more cautious, almost polite. «I’m just... making sure you don’t disappear. It’s a new habit.»
«It’s not a habit you’re good at,» you shoot back, and this time you turn just enough to incinerate him with your gaze.
Yeosang closes the drawer with a sharp sound, not loud, but clean, and when he speaks, he does so without looking at Wooyoung, as if he is background noise refusing to leave. «Wooyoung, either stop taking up space or start being useful.»
Wooyoung raises his eyebrows, pretends to be offended, then composes himself with almost surprising speed. «Useful. Understood.»
He moves to stand, but before that lets his eyes return to you once more, and in that gaze — which usually is a net meant to catch attention — there is something simpler and more dangerous: intention.
«Seonghwa will drive you mad,» he says softly, as if it is a confidence he does not want the air to steal. «San will make you want to bite people. I could try to make your day less horrible, every now and then.»
You open your mouth to answer him sharply, to tell him you don't need anyone, that you are here against your will, that “less horrible” is not a sufficient prize...
But Yeosang passes beside you and, without truly touching you, barely brushes your shoulder in the movement — a contact almost nonexistent, and yet enough to stop the words in your throat.
«The bandages,» he reminds you calmly, as if he has heard nothing, as if that gesture never happened.
And you, as if obeying is the only way not to betray yourself, return to folding the white cloth with more care than necessary.
Wooyoung already has one hand on the handle, ready to slip out with that wind-thief lightness of his, when the door opens suddenly from outside and the sickbay fills, all at once, with broad shoulders and hard silence.
Jongho.
He doesn’t truly enter; he remains planted on the threshold like a block of wood set there precisely to remind you that this ship doesn't forget, and you understand it from the way he looks at you. Not shouted anger, something heavier, more personal, because he is the one you tricked... and he is the one who believed you.
«The Captain wants us in his cabin,» he says without preamble, his voice low and cut clean, as if every word costs him patience.
His gaze slides over Wooyoung, then Yeosang, then returns to you and stops one beat too long, just enough to sink in.
«All seven.»
A moment of silence, then he adds, without changing tone, as if it is the most obvious part.
«And you too.»
You feel your stomach close, nausea rising like bad sea, because the idea of entering there with all of them — with Hongjoong, Seonghwa, San, all those eyes on you, all those thoughts that don't give you room to breathe — makes you want to fold into yourself and vanish among the folds of your dress.
Your voice comes out thinner than expected, nervous, almost hated by yourself. «Do I have to?»
Jongho does not blink, does not soften, does not even grant you the illusion of a choice. He answers coldly, like a door closing.
«Yes.»
And he leaves.
He disappears into the corridor with the same controlled step he has always had, but the wake he leaves is worse than noise: it is the feeling of having been judged and found... complicated.
You remain motionless for a few seconds, gauze still between your fingers as if it has suddenly become too light to anchor you, while Yeosang remains near the table, his gaze fixed on a point that is neither you nor the door, and yet contains both.
Wooyoung is the first to break the silence, but he does it without truly laughing, with that irony of his that today seems like a badly placed bandage over a wound.
«In case it wasn’t clear,» he says, looking at you sideways while taking one step back to give you room, «Jongho... is really pissed at you.»
Then he tilts his head slightly, as if choosing the best way to say it, and in that half second he seems more serious than you have almost ever seen him.
«And when Jongho is pissed, he usually doesn’t forget quickly.»
You cross the corridor with Yeosang ahead and Wooyoung lingering half a step behind you, as if he doesn't want to leave you exposed even by mistake, and yet without touching you, without invading, merely staying where your side would otherwise find too large an emptiness. The wood beneath your soles creaks with that familiar sound that now enters your bones, and every creak reminds you that yesterday, in the fog, it took only an instant to understand how thin the line is between “ship” and “coffin.”
It's not the pain in your bandaged arm that keeps you silent, nor the salt pulling your skin when you breathe, but that idea repeating beneath your breastbone with a cruel insistence: a bounty.
A word that until yesterday belonged to stories from ports, to dirty boards in taverns, to names devoured by the rattle of dice. Now it is yours. And it was not even the Empire protecting you, not someone sent “to bring you home,” not a launch with your father’s colors, but a pirate with a hawk on his shoulder and the arrogance to write threats as if compiling a shopping list.
You bite the inside of your cheek while Yeosang opens the door to the Captain’s cabin, and for a second you have the fierce, childish thought of wanting to close it again immediately, go back, hide in a corner and pretend nothing exists, neither sea nor blood nor names whispered by hawks.
The door opens wide.
The smell inside is always the same, but today it feels different to you: old wood, wax, iron, rum, and that thread of wind entering through the portholes like a polite intruder. The light is clearer than other times, and sharpens every outline, as if the cabin no longer allows excuses, no more shadowed corners.
They are all there.
Hongjoong behind the desk, his face far too calm for what has happened, the posture of someone who has already decided half the things before they are even spoken. Seonghwa near the map table, rigid, with the air of someone who has spent the night grinding his teeth.
Yunho keeping his eyes low on the charts as if staying still is the only way not to explode; Mingi with broad shoulders and a grave expression, as if still counting shots and corpses. San occupying a corner without truly fitting in it, motionless and tense like a blade not yet sheathed. Jongho with that mute seriousness that today weighs on you more than a chain, because you know he is angry and you don't know where discipline ends and the personal begins.
And you enter with Yeosang and Wooyoung, and feel a blow of gazes upon you that is no longer only distrust: it is a different measure, a new attention, almost uncomfortable, as if they have just discovered that beneath your name there's not only a prisoner with their cursed ring, but a variable that can ruin or save everything.
Wooyoung stops whistling as soon as he crosses the threshold, and the fact that he does so without thinking tightens your stomach: he, who always fills silence, respects it today, as if afraid of saying the wrong word and truly breaking you. Yeosang lets you pass first with a minimal gesture, and you don't know whether it is courtesy or control, until you realize he remains close enough to catch you if you falter, but without making it visible.
You take two steps and stop.
Because there, on the table, is the parchment.
No one has to hand it to you. No one has to read it. You recognize it from the way the room revolves around it, from Seonghwa’s rigidity, from Hongjoong’s hand that has already touched it and already decided it, and above all from that sudden awareness: your name has become a coin.
Your throat goes dry, and when you inhale, the air tastes of sea and traps.
«Come closer,» Hongjoong says, and it's not a gentle invitation. It's the tone of someone trying to understand whether you are a wave or a crack in the hull.
You would like to answer with one of your remarks, because that is how you have kept yourself standing until now, with your tongue as sword and your gaze as shield, but you realize that nothing light enough to stand on a bounty, on a hawk, on your father not coming, on an Empire treating you like something to cash in, will come out.
You swallow, and say it anyway, but lower, truer than you like.
«So it’s official,» you murmur, staring at the parchment without touching it, «I’ve become a business deal.»
There's brief, tense silence.
Seonghwa looks at you with that almost automatic irritation, as if your words prove everything he thinks about you right, while it burns him that you are not trembling enough to satisfy him.
Jongho meets your eyes for only a moment, then looks away.
Hongjoong tilts his head slightly, his eyes narrowed in a calm that hurts. «Official, yes,» he answers, and his voice is too tranquil to be innocent. «And now sit down, Aurora. We are talking about how to not let ourselves be bought.»
You remain standing for one second too long, because the word “Aurora” said like that sounds strange to you, almost... granted. Then you move, slowly, and as you do you realize you are not shaken only by the bounty: you are shaken because, inside you, something has truly begun to crack.
Not the ring.
Faith.
Faith in an Empire that has let you become prey, and in a father who, instead of coming to get you, has let the sea — and the pirates — decide how much you are worth.
Hongjoong drops the parchment onto the table the way one throws down a knife, without theatrics but with the certainty that any hand touching it from now on will be cut.
«Let’s talk about the Hawk,» he says, and the air stiffens like wet rope pulled too tight.
Seonghwa is the first to speak, because Seonghwa always speaks when the universe gives him a reason to be furious, and today he has more than one. «He's not just any Hawk. He doesn’t send a letter to negotiate; he sends a letter to measure you. He wants to see how you react, how far you bend, how much it costs you to say no.» His gaze slides over you like a rough rag. «And we gave him a show.»
San remains silent, his knuckles are still marked, a dark streak of dried blood and salt, and his eyes follow you as if the scene on deck has stayed trapped beneath his skin.
Yunho clears his throat, his eyes on a point of the map he is not truly looking at. «They didn’t try to take us with cannons. They tried to take us with a hold.» His voice is tense, controlled. «Chain, fog, hawks... he wanted to board us and force us to hand someone over. It wasn't a battle. It was a retrieval.»
Wooyoung, leaning one shoulder against the wood, is not whistling; even his face looks different without that sound, more bare. «And he sent hawks at everyone as if we were meat at market.» He says “everyone,” but his eyes slip for an instant toward you, as if “everyone” has a precise face.
Mingi, who until now has been listening with the expression of someone chewing on a heavy thought, lets out a breath and speaks. «The Black Fever...» He stops for a moment, as if even he feels a kind of respect when naming her. «...didn't suffer what we thought she would suffer. If they had caught us from the side, if they had hooked us and held us still, they would have torn us apart without even wasting powder.» He lifts his gaze to you, and it is not flattery, only simple fact. «Instead... thanks to what you did, we avoided the worst blow.»
The words hit you like a hand on your chest, because you do not expect to hear “thanks” in that form, said like that, in front of everyone, and for an instant you feel naked not because of the dress or the ring, but because of the truth you are wearing: yes, you wanted to save them, and yes, admitting it burns.
You interrupt before you have even decided to do it, because if you wait, you might never speak.
«I’m sorry,» you say, and your voice comes out steadier than you feel. Then you look at Jongho, him specifically, in front of everyone, without letting your gaze run away. «I’m sorry for deceiving you.»
Jongho stiffens, and his face opens just enough to show you he did not expect it, that he had not prepared an answer for such a direct absolution; his fingers tighten around the edge of his belt, where keys and decisions usually hang, and yet he says nothing.
You inhale and continue before your courage escapes.
«I had no choice,» you add, lower, truer. «Because...» the absurd thing that has now become daily life catches in your throat for a moment, and you say it anyway, «...the ring had shown me a worse ending for the Black Fever.»
It is as if you have dropped a weight in the middle of the table.
Jongho remains frozen, his gaze on you as if trying to choose between two versions: the one that wants you insolent and unreliable, and the one that sees you, for the first time, frightened enough to apologize.
But Seonghwa is the one who speaks, because Seonghwa cannot stand empty spaces, and above all he cannot stand you filling them with something resembling sincerity.
«Ah, of course.» His voice comes out sharp, almost pleased to have found a grip. He studies you as if searching for the trick between your lashes. «You would do well to remember, Miss Swann, that “the ring showed me” is a convenient sentence. Very useful, I’d say. Perfect for justifying yourself when you do whatever you want.»
«I didn’t do what I wanted,» you reply without raising your voice too much, and that very control irritates him. «If I had done what I wanted, I wouldn’t be here.»
Seonghwa opens his mouth to strike at you again, but Hongjoong raises one hand slightly, a small gesture, yet enough to cut the air.
«Enough.» Then he looks at you, and in his eyes there is that lucid interest that makes you want to step back even though you do not. «Seonghwa is right about one thing: apologies are not proof. But Mingi is right about another: without you, today, the ship could have gone to pieces.»
Yunho shifts slightly, as if that acknowledgment loosens a knot he did not know he carried, while Yeosang watches you with a brief, almost irritated intensity, as if he is angry not with you but with the idea that you were forced to choose.
Hongjoong touches the parchment with two fingers and pushes it toward the center, as if forcing everyone to look at it.
«Now,» he says, «theories. Why does the Empire — or whoever acts in its place — want you badly enough to pay a pirate to bring you back?»
Wooyoung tilts his head, his voice lower than usual. «Money.» He sounds almost disgusted by the simplicity of the answer. «A kidnapped noblewoman is worth more than a hold full of gold, if the family pays quickly.»
«Not only that.» Yunho finally decides to speak, and when he does, it is because his mind has already traced invisible routes between the pieces. «If it were only a ransom, they would have sent an imperial ship or mercenaries by land. The Sacred Hawk can move where the Empire does not want to be seen. In fog, in dirty waters, without flags to stain.»
Mingi nods slowly, tapping the table once with his fingers as if counting. «And he searched for us in open sea. Not at port. Not on shore. As if he knew where we would be.»
Seonghwa points his gaze at you like a knife. «And someone talked. Someone gave a route. Or a sighting.»
You feel your heart turn bitterly, because “someone” in his mouth always sounds like “you.”
«It wasn’t me,» you say, and you say it with a thread of venom, because you are tired of defending yourself against accusations that are born before the facts.
«Then who?» Seonghwa insists, and this time it is not only anger: it is fear disguised as contempt. Fear of losing the ship, the crew, control.
Is he stupid?
Yeosang finally speaks, without raising his voice, and precisely for that reason they listen. «Her identity wasn't a secret.» He looks at Hongjoong, not at you. «A governor’s daughter on an imperial flagship... if someone saw the remains of the Natalius, if someone heard rumors in Rukhar... two tongues and a glass of rum are enough.»
Hongjoong smiles faintly, but it is not amusement, it is the kind of smile that appears when a puzzle finds its edge. «And lately the Empire hunts pirates in open sea because it is losing its hold on the routes.» He says “routes” as if they are veins. «Something is pushing them out of ports, out of laws, into our territory.»
«Panic,» Wooyoung murmurs, and his eyes shine with a seriousness he rarely grants you. «When the Empire is afraid, it buys monsters too.»
San shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his voice low, cutting. «Or it wants to eliminate witnesses.»
That “witnesses” freezes your spine, because suddenly you remember the Natalius, the chaos, the water, the screams... and you wonder, without wanting to, whether your bounty is meant to bring you “home” or to silence you forever.
Hongjoong looks at you, and for one instant there is no one in that cabin except his gaze and your breath.
«Aurora,» he says quietly, «what do you think they truly want from you? Not what they told you. What you feel now.»
You take one second that feels endless, because Hongjoong’s gaze holds you still like a hand on the back of your neck, and you realize that in that cabin you are not only answering a Captain, but also a truth you had refused to look in the face until moments ago.
«I think...» you begin, and you are surprised by how low your voice sounds, how true, «...I think they want an easy prize, a bounty to collect without staining the uniform, a way to say they “recovered” the governor’s daughter without having to admit they lost her.» You run your tongue over your lips, as if you could erase the bitter taste of those words. «And I also think they want to turn me into leverage. Over my father. Over someone higher than him. Because a noble is not worth only money. A noble is worth decisions. Doors that open.»
Wooyoung stops swinging his foot, Yunho looks at you sideways as if connecting points on an invisible map; San remains a statue, but his eyes don't leave you for a second, attentive to every inflection as if it could change the outcome of a fight.
And yet, as you say it, a question scratches inside you, insistent, growing the way nausea grows before a storm.
«But...» you add, lifting your chin slightly, «...if it were only that, why send a pirate? Why a Hawk? Why the fog, the hawks, that hold... it wasn't a “clean” kidnapping. It was a hunt.»
You stop, then think better, and the idea hits you straight in the chest.
«What if the Empire knows about the ring?» The question comes out sharper than you meant. «What if it knows about its power, about the fact that it can guide toward Wonderland...»
At the word Wonderland, even now, after everything, you notice the cabin’s pressure change, as if someone has closed a window and left the air outside.
Seonghwa answers without even taking the luxury of choosing a gentle tone.
«No.» His voice is dry, almost irritated by the very idea. «The nobles and the upper ranks know nothing about the ring. If they did, you would not have pirates racking their brains in front of you: you would have half the imperial navy.»
You tighten your fingers and force yourself not to look away, even though instinct tells you to.
«Rumors can spread anyway,» you reply, and instead of sounding uncertain, you sound... stubborn. «They can come from a pirate, from a merchant, from someone who listens to too many conversations in ports and sells them to the highest bidder. Maybe the Empire does not know “what it is,” but it knows something exists. And if it knows... then this bounty is not only for me. It is also for what I’m wearing.»
Mingi nods slightly, as if that sentence slides into a precise place in his mind where he keeps things he does not like but knows are true; Yunho stiffens by an imperceptible degree, because “to the highest bidder” is a sentence that on a pirate ship sounds too much like “to the best traitor.”
You continue, and your voice becomes faster, clearer, as if fear is lending you a brain instead of taking it away.
«Is there a legend about this ring?» you ask, looking at each face one by one as if searching for an anchor. «Because I had never heard of it. Never. And if it really is that important... how is it possible that not even a whisper circulates through the palaces?»
For an instant it looks as if someone truly wants to answer.
Wooyoung opens his mouth, and even San makes a half movement, as if remembering something he doesn’t want to admit. Yeosang tilts his head slightly, and a flash passes through his eyes that seems to say yes, there is, but his face remains controlled, distant, almost cruel in its discipline.
Hongjoong is the one who snaps that thread before it becomes rope.
«It's not important.» He says it softly, but it is a blade that closes the discussion without needing to raise his voice. Then he places two fingers on the map, as if reminding everyone that the world outside that cabin still exists and wants to kill them. «Legends are a luxury when you have an enemy ship marking you from a distance.»
Seonghwa doesn't miss the chance to seize something concrete, and he does it with almost angry relief, as if talking about myths disgusts him as much as talking about you.
«The Hawk,» he resumes, returning to the point with the precision of a nail. «used a predator’s technique: chain to block escape, hawks to disorient and strike weak points without exposing himself. He came to make us choose between handing you over and dying around you.»
«And he hopes the crew gets frightened enough to grow loose-tongued,» Wooyoung adds, but this time his voice holds no joy. It has a dark, almost personal undercurrent.
Seonghwa nods, hard. «He also hopes you are even more useful alive and with your mouth open.» He throws you a look like a slap. «So yes, let us hope he is still lost in the fog... but if he is what I think he is, he isn’t.»
Yunho leans slightly over the maps, his expression tight. «He has hawks. If the fog is our home, they are his eyes. Even if we lose him... he may not lose us.»
And in that moment you understand that no matter how much Hongjoong insists on sounding sure, and Seonghwa insists on sounding acidic, the truth is only one: the Sacred Hawk has not disappeared. He is only out of frame.
And the fact that you are there, standing in the middle of the Captain’s cabin, truly being listened to for the first time... does not comfort you at all, because it only means that now you too have become part of the problem that might sink them.
«And now?» Hongjoong asks, with that calm more unsettling than any threat. «What do you intend to do? Do you still want to run, Aurora, now that you are also a target for those above gilded decks?»
You take one heartbeat, only one, because you feel everyone’s eyes on you like nails driven into the wood:
And precisely because of that — because it burns that someone thinks they can silence you with a look — you lift your chin, let the air fill your lungs and decide not to choose the easy road.
«Run?» you repeat quietly, and something almost like a smile comes out, but without joy, a polished knife. «What would be the point now?»
You look at your hand as if you could see the ring even through the glove, and you feel it pulse anyway, stubborn, present, as if it has a heart more stubborn than yours.
«The problem is not the Black Fever. The problem is this.» You lift the gloved hand slightly. «If it doesn't come off... then there is no port where I can truly hide, no palace where I can pretend to be safe, because wherever I go, someone will follow me, and not for me. For what I'm wearing.»
A short, tense silence crosses the cabin; Wooyoung tilts his head as if seeing the precise shape of your fear.
You bring your eyes back to Hongjoong, and this time there is no gratuitous challenge, only a raw decision, taken with the same hand one uses to take up a weapon.
«So yes.» Your voice is steady, and for the first time it sounds like a proposal, not a provocation. «I'll help you.»
Seonghwa makes a half movement, as if about to spit out something poisonous, but you anticipate him without even looking at him.
«On one condition.» You shift by one step, just enough to feel his irritation like a cold current behind your back, and you use it as fuel. «If I have to put my neck into this story, if I have to use... whatever this damned ring is... then you do not treat me like a prisoner.»
You let the words fall one by one, heavy, inevitable.
«I don’t want chains, locks or guards counting my breaths. I want to be a guest for real, not an elegant word for “hostage.” And if you need my cooperation, then you had better make it possible for me to cooperate.»
Seonghwa’s gaze burns over you, and in that burn there is a promise of personal war, as if you have just dared to rise a level on his private scale of annoyances.
Hongjoong, instead, observes you in silence, and his face betrays nothing for a moment, until a half smile returns to the corner of his mouth, slow, deliberate, as if your request amuses him more than it should.
«Interesting,» he murmurs, and you do not understand whether he says it for you or for the idea of having just watched you choose to stay.
Then he inclines his head slightly.
«And tell me something, Aurora...» His voice lowers, becomes more precise. «If I grant you this, what guarantees me that tomorrow you will not decide to vanish anyway?»
Seonghwa almost growls, as if that question should have been his.
And you, without looking away, answer with a sincerity that almost hurts in your mouth.
«Nothing.» One beat, then you add, like a blade sinking into the table: «Except the fact that, if I vanish, they find me. And if they find me... they come back to you. So if I have to choose between being used as bait far from here or staying where at least I can see what happens... I choose to stay. But not on my knees.»
Seonghwa studies you the way one studies a knife left unattended on a table, with that coldness that always seems on the verge of becoming contempt, and when he finally opens his mouth, he does so carefully, as if wanting the words to hurt.
«How generous,» he spits quietly, without raising his voice, but enough to cut the air. «A prisoner who dictates terms and even demands to stroll on deck as if she were visiting. All that was missing was asking for tea and an orchestra.»
You do not lower your gaze; if anything, you lift it just enough to meet him fully, and the smile that comes to you is dry, sharp.
«If you want, I can ask for a hat too,» you reply calmly, «so maybe you’ll relax and stop acting as if I placed a stick in your ass.»
A pleased murmur crosses the group, the kind of reaction that is not quite laughter but comes close, and Seonghwa tightens his jaw as if he has bitten his tongue to avoid answering you worse, because he knows very well that losing his temper in front of everyone would only harm him more.
Wooyoung, instead, doesn't hold back even for a second.
He bursts out laughing. «I knew it,» pointing at you with a finger as if you were a brilliant idea he couldn't wait to meet. «You're going to be so much fun for me.»
San gives him a look that could extinguish his voice, Yunho remains serious but his eyes light up slightly, as if he is fighting the urge to smile, Mingi watches in silence with that slow, attentive air of a man recording everything without comment.
Jongho remains rigid, still carrying his irritation, yet the way he follows you with his gaze says he is at least truly listening, and Yeosang does not change expression, but the attention he gives you is denser, closer, as if your answer to Seonghwa has left something on him he does not want to admit he feels.
Hongjoong leans against the back of his chair and, without haste, joins his hands, letting the murmur burn itself out, then speaks with that dominant calm of his that puts everything back in its place.
«Good.» A brief pause, enough to silence even breaths. «The meeting is over.»
He rises, and there is something both imperious and light in the movement, as if no weight ever truly manages to stay on him, and his eyes find yours.
«Aurora,» he says, almost practically, «from today you can go wherever you like on the Black Fever... provided you do not stick your nose into things that do not concern you.»
Seonghwa makes a half sound, a kind of strangled protest, but Hongjoong does not even give him a glance, as if the objection has already been predicted and filed away.
You inhale slowly, because part of you always expects a trap inside every concession, and yet that freedom — even spoken like that, with a condition — settles on your chest like real air after days of wood and bars.
«Done,» you answer, and the word comes out clearer than you expected.
You step closer and offer him your hand, determined, because if you have to live on this ship, at least you want to do it standing, and not waiting for permission. Hongjoong takes it without hesitation, his grip firm, warm, lasting half a second longer than necessary, as if he is measuring something unseen — courage, perhaps, or the limit beyond which you will not bend.
Behind you, Seonghwa murmurs with restrained venom, «This is a terrible idea.»
No one pays him any mind.
Because as soon as Hongjoong releases your hand and gives a sharp nod that dissolves the scene, the others begin murmuring among themselves like a current resuming movement.
Wooyoung whispers something to Yunho with a smile he cannot hide, Mingi exchanges two words with Jongho without looking anyone in the eye. San simply moves toward the exit like a shadow that has already decided he will have to keep an eye on you, and Yeosang remains one beat behind, close enough to hear you and far enough not to be noticed, as if the freedom just granted to you has left a thought on him that he doesn't want to name.
You leave the cabin in small waves, as if each of you needs one second to remember where you were before everything changed, and behind you, you feel the rustle of steps, the presence of the others dispersing into the corridor, Meanwhile Wooyoung — of course — doesn't simply “follow,” but fixes on you the way one fixes on a star in the sky, with that curious predator’s air that has not yet decided whether it wants to understand or only to have fun.
Behind you, Hongjoong makes himself comfortable again with almost irritating ease, lets himself fall into his chair and crosses his legs on the desk as if it were his personal floating throne; his boots, polished and impeccable despite the sea, catch the cabin’s warm light and return it in short, sharp reflections, and his gaze remains on you until the door begins to close, interested in the way a man looks at something he knows he can no longer ignore.
Seonghwa is the last to remain on the threshold.
He stops, one hand already on the wood, and throws the Captain a hard, tired look, as if trying to force reality back into his head by sheer gaze alone.
«I hope you know what you’re doing,» he says quietly, and there is more anger than respect in that controlled voice. «Because she's a problem.»
Hongjoong doesn't falter. Instead, his smile returns slowly, distant, almost... elsewhere, and for an instant he truly seems dreamy, as if following a route only he can see.
«I know,» he answers with a soft calm that makes the sentence even more unsettling. Then he tilts his head slightly, his eyes shining with something that is not lightness, but hunger for possibility. «That's precisely why she's worth keeping close.»
Seonghwa tightens his jaw, as if that answer is exactly what he feared hearing, and closes the door with a measured thud, not strong enough to call it an outburst, but sharp enough to sound like a promise.
In the corridor, Wooyoung falls into step beside you with almost feline speed.
It's already dark, you realize, from the way the light changes in the corridors — lower, dirtier, as if the ship itself has stopped pretending to be hospitable — and without thinking you find yourself following the simplest instinct you have left.
You want to go up, breathe, see the horizon again to remember you're not merely a voice trapped between wood and iron.
Behind you, you hear steps, that light, quick sound you would now associate with Wooyoung even if he called you from another life. You ignore him before even turning, and indeed you hear him protest under his breath — something plaintive and theatrical — while San catches him and drags him away, pulling him toward the training deck or the weapons or anywhere the “cat” cannot make trouble right now.
The stairs lead you toward open air, and when you set foot on deck, the breeze takes you at once, cool and salty, slipping through your hair and beneath your collar like a hand shaking you awake, and you inhale more deeply than necessary, almost punishing yourself for how much you missed that feeling.
There are few men, scattered like shadows at work — one adjusting a rope, another checking a hook, someone moving a bucket and cursing under his breath — and when they see you, there is the usual suspended instant in which they stop, remember you exist, then pretend they have not seen you. You give them nothing, not a smile, not a comment, not a look that might resemble request or weakness, and walk straight to the rail with the same stubbornness that kept you standing in the middle of the fog.
You lean against the wood, feel the ship vibrating beneath your palms, alive and immense, and before you the sea is a dark expanse moving slowly like a giant animal, while above it the sky is black velvet pricked with stars — not too many, not too few — and it almost feels offensive how beautiful it is, how indifferent to everything.
You stay there, you let the wind dry you inside, let the sound of water against the hull straighten your thoughts, and while you look at the horizon, it seems that you belong to something that is neither prison nor war, but only night and sea, and the right to breathe without having to explain anything to anyone.
«Do you ever sleep?»
Jongho’s voice makes you turn slightly, more by reflex than real surprise, and yet it still catches you in an exposed place because it comes low, close, as if he had been there for a while deciding whether to disturb you or leave the sea all to you.
He is a few meters away, still with that posture of his that always seems half a step before action, broad, quiet shoulders, his gaze measuring you without haste, not aggressive but not soft either, as if checking that you are... whole, and nothing more.
You tighten your fingers on the rail, feel the cold wood beneath your palms and force yourself not to look the way you did last time, when fear had broken your voice in front of Yunho; here you do not want to give cracks to anyone, not even him.
«I sleep when they let me,» you answer, your throat a little dry. «And today they have... granted me the deck. What an honor.»
Jongho doesn't react immediately, and the silence between you is the typical one of people unaccustomed to speaking just to fill space. Then he takes one step, and another, until he is beside you, not too close, but enough for you to perceive the warmth of his body even with the wind on you.
«It isn’t an honor,» he says quietly. «It is the Captain’s choice.»
The correction stings because it is true, because it reminds you that even air here is granted and revocable, and you want to answer badly out of sport, defense, habit... but you hold back, and that small renunciation leaves a strange bitterness in your mouth.
You keep staring at the sea for another moment, then, almost without looking at him, release the sentence you have carried all day like a bandage too tight.
«Have you stopped hating me?»
Jongho turns his head slightly toward you, and in the dark, his profile draws itself clean and hard, like a coastline. «I don’t hate you.»
«Then you tolerate me,» you reply, saying it as if it is a tiny victory, one more step away from the cell.
He exhales, a brief breath, and you understand that this is his way of laughing without truly granting it to you. «I tolerate you because I have to. And because...» he stops, as if the next word is more annoying than a wound.
You finally look at him. «Because what?»
Jongho tightens his jaw, and for an instant his seriousness almost looks like embarrassment, as if he does not know where to put his hands in a conversation that cannot be solved with an order or a rope. «Because you didn't run.»
You remain still, and the wind passes through your hair as if pushing you forward, but you plant yourself there, because that sentence is heavier than it seems: you realize he saw, that he recorded the choice inside the chaos, not as a heroic gesture, but as a fact that changes the way he places you in the world.
«I also deceived you,» you say quietly, and this time it is not a joke. «And I’m truly sorry. Not... not out of politeness. Because I put you in a shitty position.»
Jongho throws you a quick look, then returns to the sea, as if looking at you while you apologize is something he does not know how to manage. «You made me look stupid.»
«That wasn’t the plan,» you murmur.
«I know.» His voice lowers further, rougher. «Your plan was to reach the deck. Mine was to keep you from reaching the deck. We both won, in the end, and look what happened.»
There is a thrust inside that sentence, but it isn't cruel, it's tired — and you find yourself feeling a thread of tenderness for that rigidity of his, for the way he takes things onto himself as if it were natural to do so even when no one asks.
«You...» you begin, then clear your throat. «You truly care about them.»
Jongho remains still, and if you were not watching him, you would think he has not heard; instead, after a moment, he nods slightly, like a man admitting something obvious and not understanding why he has been made to say it. «It's a ship. If someone pierces it from the inside, the sea makes no difference.»
«And I am... what? A crack?»
This time he looks at you for real, with those eyes that always seem one step away from judgment but now hold something more human inside, something resembling a question.
«You are a problem,» he says, and you move to answer, but he continues before you can bite. «And you're also a solution. And it's... annoying, all right?»
The word annoying said like that, with such brutal sincerity, almost pulls a laugh from you, and you are surprised because it comes out true, short, and doesn't hurt.
«Why annoying?» you ask, settling more comfortably against the rail, as if the fact that he's standing there speaking instead of sending you to sleep has shifted the world slightly.
Jongho brings a hand behind his neck, a minimal, rare gesture, as if the very idea of opening a door itches on his skin. «Because I don't know where to put you. You are not an enemy I can throw off the deck, and you're not...» he stops again, as if the next word is dangerous, «...one of us.»
You feel the ring pulse beneath the glove, discreet and present like a listening heartbeat, and for the first time you do not want to tear it off with your teeth, only to hide it better, as if it could ruin this moment.
«I don’t want to be “one of you,”» you say sincerely. «But I also don’t want to be... your ruin.»
Jongho studies you for an instant, and then, with an almost useless slowness, shifts half a step closer, enough for you to perceive his shoulder a few centimeters from yours, and that gesture, so small, is worth more than a thousand speeches because it is a physical concession of space and trust.
«Then stop doing everything alone,» he says.
You look sideways at him. «And you, stop pretending you don’t care if someone falls into the sea.»
He narrows his eyes, and in that microsecond you see him again the way you saw him the first time: the boatswain, the man who drags Wooyoung away like a sack of potatoes and doesn't blink; yet now, in the way he remains there beside you, you understand that his control is not coldness. It's a way to not collapse along with the others.
«Seonghwa assigned two cabin boys to you,» he says after a moment, practical again. «So don't try to...»
«Don't try to what?» you interrupt at once, sharp. «Breathe? Walk? Look at the sea?»
Jongho huffs, and this time, yes, it is truly half a smile, brief and contrary. «Be clever.»
You lean slightly toward him, provocative but without venom. «And if I need something?»
«Ask,» he answers, then adds almost unwillingly, «and don't... don't use tricks like that with me.»
That sentence warms a point behind your breastbone, because it is not an order. It is a request, and it is the first time he makes one of you.
«All right Jongho,» you say quietly. «I promise.»
Jongho nods, as if marking an invisible pact into the wood of the rail, then stays looking at the sea with you, and the silence that returns is no longer the tense one from before, but one more inhabitable, one in which the sound of waves finally seems only noise and not a threat.
After a while, without looking at you, he murmurs, «When you call me by name... it’s strange.»
You smile slightly, and this time you do not hide it. «In a bad way?»
«In a...» he stops, and seems to choose the word the way one chooses a blade, «...new way.»
«Then get used to it,» you answer, returning to look at the sky. «Because I have no intention of calling you “boatswain” as if you were a piece of furniture.»
The sea remains there beneath you like a massive animal breathing slowly, and yet one slightly colder gust is enough to make you lift your shoulders instinctively, pulling into the dress as if the wind has intrusive hands. Jongho notices without even turning his head, because he has that kind of attention that makes no noise, and with a simple gesture he removes his jacket.
It smells of salt and rope, of wet wood and distant smoke, not of sweet fragrance like Yunho or Yeosang, and perhaps that is precisely why it feels real — and places it over your shoulders with brusque care.
«You don’t need to,» you try to protest, more by reflex than conviction.
«I want to.» The answer is sharp, and when you look sideways at him, you see that half gaze that is neither threat nor sweetness, only decision. «And don't start arguing with wool too.»
A more sincere laugh than expected escapes you, and for a few seconds you even forget to think about the ring beneath the glove, because the simplicity of that exchange brings you back to something normal, to when people argued with you over trivial things and not over war or a bounty on your head.
«Anyway, thank you,» you say, and the word comes out softer, less biting.
Jongho gives a minimal nod, almost annoyed by the fact that you are thanking him seriously. «Don’t get used to it.»
«Too late,» you reply, watching the darkness as if an answer lies somewhere inside it. «You are all spoiling me. First the cell, then the deck, then the jacket... tomorrow will you give me a horse too?»
«Seonghwa would give you an anchor,» he murmurs, and for the first time you truly hear him joke, even if the joke is as dry as old wood.
You look at him, and this time you do not even try to hide the smile. «And you? What would you give me, if you could?»
The question comes out light, almost playful, but you notice at once that it has a more serious edge, a hidden hook, and Jongho hears it, because his mouth stops for a moment halfway through a breath, as if he has the answer ready but does not want to grant it.
«Advice,» he says at last, and his voice lowers, closer. «Don't let yourself be seen alone in the corridors at night. Not because we...» he stops, as if including himself in the danger annoys him, «...because there is always someone who thinks he is smarter than the others.»
You lower your gaze to the rail, to the grain of the wood. «Like the Hawks.»
Jongho tightens his jaw, and his profile hardens. «Like whoever placed that bounty. It's not... a small thing.»
That word — bounty — slides over you like cold water beneath your clothes, and for an instant you feel the same anger that had lit inside you in the cabin, when you realized no one from your family had dirtied their hands to come get you, that they had sent the sea and the monsters to do it for them.
You force yourself to swallow. «That is what drives me mad.» A bitter breath escapes you, almost a laugh with no joy. «Not the bounty, not the Hawks... but the fact that the Empire is treating me like a purse full of coins. As if I were worth only... that.»
Jongho doesn't say anything immediately, but you feel him move half a step closer, enough for his shoulder to brush yours; it's a small contact, almost accidental, and yet it gives you the physical sensation of not balancing alone anymore on the edge of a precipice.
«Sometimes,» he murmurs, «the ones highest up are the ones who get least dirty, and make others do the dirty work for them.»
You want to answer that your father is not like that, that your father... but the sentence jams, because you are no longer certain even of that, and that uncertainty burns more than everything.
«How do you say it with that calm?» you ask quietly, trying to mask your voice.
Jongho lifts one shoulder slightly. «Because if I get angry over every injustice I see, I’ll end up punching the ship apart. And I need it whole.»
«So you are a practical man,» you conclude, trying to steer the air back onto sarcasm before your face breaks.
«No.» He looks at you sideways, serious. «I'm a man who has no time to fall.»
The way he says it makes you fall silent, because it is not a pose, not an attempt to impress you; it is an ugly, simple truth, and it makes you want to ask how long he has lived like that, but you already know he would not tell you.
So you choose the side road, the one that does not hurt.
«Are you truly that terrible with people?» you tease with a half smile. «Because to me you seem...»
«I seem what?»
You pretend to think, studying him meanwhile, the way he keeps his hands still as if they are always ready, the way he wastes no gestures. «You seem like someone who would like to learn to write properly, but pretends he doesn't care.»
Jongho remains still for a second, then throws you a lightning glance, as if you have struck exactly the point he does not want to show. «Don't start that again.»
«I never start anything again,» you lie shamelessly, and you know it.
He huffs, but the hardness cracks slightly. «If I find you paper and ink... will you stop calling me furniture?»
Your gaze lights up, and for an instant you feel like yourself again, the one who negotiates not to survive but on principle. «Is that blackmail?»
«It's... a pact.» The word comes out almost unwillingly, but he doesn't take it back.
You tilt your head, amused. «All right. Pact accepted. But you have to promise me something.»
«What?»
You move a little closer, resting your elbows better on the rail, and the jacket slips a fraction lower over your shoulders; Jongho fixes it with two fingers, quick, without truly looking at you, and the fact that he adjusts something on you gives you a strange shiver, not from cold.
«That when Seonghwa gets really mad with you,» you say with an innocent air, «you come and tell me. So I can laugh with you and not at you.»
Jongho looks at you, and for an instant he seems as if he wants to tell you to go to hell, but then his eyes narrow in a way that resembles a held-back smile. «If you laugh at me, I throw you down.»
«Ah, there he is.» You place a hand on your chest theatrically. «The real Jongho. I missed him.»
He shakes his head slowly, and at that gesture you feel a kind of warmth rising.
A moment passes, and without thinking too much, you tell him the thing that has been stuck inside you for hours.
«When you looked at me this morning...» you begin, then stop, because it feels ridiculous. «When they locked me in and I screamed like a madwoman, I... thought no one would listen. And instead... you listen to me even when you pretend not to.»
Jongho lowers his gaze to the deck, and for an instant he seems almost... uncomfortable, as if that sentence has taken more air from him than a fight.
«I listen to everything,» he says at last. «It's my job.»
You smile, but there is no joke anymore. «That wasn't work.»
The silence between you tightens for an instant, not from threat but from something more delicate, something that does not yet have a name and therefore frightens, and Jongho breaks it the way one breaks a knot: with practicality.
«If...» he coughs softly, as if the word scratches his throat, «if you hear strange footsteps outside your door, or... if that panic from before takes you, knock.»
You look at him. «On your door?»
«On mine.» He nods. «Or Yeosang’s, if you prefer being looked at like an interesting corpse.»
A smile escapes you. «I prefer option one.»
Jongho studies you for a second, and there is something like relief in that look, even if he keeps it still, contained, like everything else. Then, from farther ahead on the deck, you hear a call — an order, a name — and Jongho stiffens, because the ship does not wait for sentimental moments.
«I have to go,» he says, already half turned.
You nod, but before he walks away, you lightly touch his forearm, a quick contact, almost an impulse, and feel him stiffen for one heartbeat, as if he is not used to being touched when there is no wounded man or fight involved.
«Jongho,» you call softly, and he stops, looking at you from the side. «...thank you. Really.»
He doesn't answer immediately. Then he gives a nod, one of those small, measured ones, and his voice comes out low, almost rough.
«Don't make me regret listening to you.»
And he leaves, leaving you with his jacket over your shoulders, salt on your lips, and a new sensation on you: not safety, not freedom... but the small and dangerous possibility of not being completely alone on that ship anymore.
....
The corridor welcomes you with that yellowish lantern light that never quite manages to be warm, and your steps make a brief, muffled sound, as if even the wood is tired with you.
You still have Jongho’s jacket on your shoulders, heavy in the right way, and while you approach the stretch that leads to the cabins, you feel sleep descending in slow waves, your mind finally stopping its race and simply breathing.
Then, ahead of you, the shadow detaches itself from the wall.
San.
He is there intentionally, his body still and ready like a closed door, and when you approach, he lifts his gaze slightly, first to you and then to the jacket, and in that tiny shift of focus, you understand he has recognized it the way one recognizes a weapon.
He says nothing. You move to pass him anyway, because you don't have the energy for his storms.
His hand takes your arm.
He doesn't yank you, doesn't hurt you — not immediately — but he stops you with the certainty of someone who knows just enough to keep you from going farther, and the corridor becomes narrower, quieter, as if the ship itself is waiting.
«Where do you think you’re going?» His voice is low, rough, and it is not a kind question.
You inhale slowly, feel your pulse beat against his fingers. «To bed. And if you’re asking, yes: in my cabin. Shocking, I know.»
San does not move by a millimeter. His eyes remain fixed, dark, sharply attentive, and then, without changing tone, his gaze slides again to the jacket.
«It isn’t yours.»
«Congratulations.» You tilt your head, tired but still capable of venom. «Do you want to check whether I brushed my teeth too?»
His fingers tighten slightly, just enough to remind you he is not here to joke, and you hate him a little for how good he is at making you feel small even when he is not openly threatening you.
«Jongho,» he says, pronouncing the name like a fact, not an accusation. «He gave you his jacket.»
You lift your shoulders, and the fabric brushes your neck. «It’s cold. It’s not an engagement.»
San stares at you for another moment, and there is something strange in his silence: not jealousy, not pure irritation, but... assessment, as if the scene is telling him something he did not ask to know.
«You get everywhere,» he murmurs, «and then you’re surprised when someone grabs you by the throat.»
A smile is born on your lips, short and without joy. «And you’re already grabbing the arm, see? We’re making progress.»
San tilts his head slightly, and in that gesture there is all his impatience with your way of turning things around. «Are you afraid?»
«I’m afraid of plenty of things.» You answer at once, and the sincerity surprises you even as you speak it. «I just don’t feel like giving them to you.»
For an instant his eyes narrow, as if that sentence hits him harder than expected, and you feel it, truly feel it: San is looking at you the way one looks at an opponent they do not yet understand whether they want to destroy or keep watching in order to learn.
«Today...» he begins, and the word almost sticks, because he is not used to explaining himself. «you did something stupid.»
You huff. «What a novelty.»
«No.» His voice becomes harder, more precise. «Stupid in the way good people die. And the other day threw yourself in front of a shot.»
The fatigue shifts into your stomach, a warm weight. «Don’t turn it into poetry, San. If I hadn't moved, Wooyoung would be dead.»
«And you?» His gaze runs over you, as if searching for the wound even though he knows where it is. «If it had hit better?»
You open your mouth to answer with a joke, but the words do not come at once, because the question has too real an edge. So you simply tighten your jaw and answer with the truth you like least.
«Then it would have hit better.»
San remains still, and the corridor seems even narrower. Then, unexpectedly, his grip loosens slightly, not enough to let you go, but enough to remove the threat from the gesture, and his voice drops half a tone.
«Don't do it again.»
You look at him, and for the first time you do not know whether to laugh or get angry, because the sentence sounds like an order, yes, but beneath it there is something else: an irritation too close to concern, and he hates it as much as you do.
«And you don’t tell me what to do,» you reply, but more quietly, less cutting. «You are not my father. Thank heavens.»
A flash crosses his eyes, quick, because you have struck a point you had not even meant to aim for: that word, father, on a ship full of men who command, control, decide.
San takes half a step back, enough to let you breathe, but not enough to truly free the space between you.
«I'm not controlling you,» he says, and sounds almost irritated to have to specify it. «I'm...» he stops, as if searching for a word he doesn't like. «...keeping an eye on you.»
«I know.» You lift an eyebrow. «It’s your favorite pastime.»
San lets his gaze pass over your face, then returns to the jacket one last time. «That jacket means someone has started trusting you.»
You feel a bitter laugh rise, but you smother it. «Don’t be melodramatic. He was only covering my shoulders.»
«No.» San looks at you fixedly, and there, in that intensity, is the thing that unsettles you: he almost seems to respect you. «It's not only that.»
The silence lasts one beat. Then he finally releases your arm, but he does it slowly, as if even that gesture must remain under control, and you feel your skin freeing itself from the pressure of his fingers with a kind of relief you do not want to admit.
San shifts to the side, enough to let you pass.
«Go,» he says, and inside the word there is still command, but also concession. «Sleep on what you do.»
You adjust the jacket on your shoulders, look at him for a moment, and a sentence leaves you almost without thought, truer than you would like.
«I’ve been sleeping on it for days.» Then you tilt your head slightly. «Good watch, San.»
He doesn't answer immediately. He follows you with his gaze as you walk away, and when you are already a few steps farther, you hear his voice behind you, low, almost a restrained growl.
«Aurora.»
You stop halfway down the corridor, without turning.
«If you throw yourself in front of something again...» He pauses briefly, as if hating himself. «...choose better who is worth that risk.»
The sentence crosses you like a clean blow, not because it wounds you, but because it forces you to recognize that San is not simply hating you, and he is not simply admiring you: he is studying you, and in the meantime — against his own will — he is becoming attached.
You do not give him the satisfaction of a long answer.
«Don’t worry,» you say quietly, starting to walk again. «I always choose badly.»
And you slip into the dark of the corridor toward your cabin, with your heart beating too hard for it to be only exhaustion.
....
There's no beach at first.
There is the sound of rigging rubbing, a deep creak like old bones, and for an instant you are convinced you are still on the Black Fever, because beneath your feet you feel living wood, the slow, stubborn roll of the sea that never stops reminding you who truly commands.
Then, while you try to feel your hands, you realize you are not cold.
And that the air... smells of salt and iron together, the way it does when a storm is preparing but has not yet decided to explode.
Fog is everywhere, but not the fog you called earlier: this one is denser, more still, as if it does not belong to wind but to a different will, and when you draw a breath, it seems to flow into your lungs, heavy, almost full of whispers you cannot recognize.
You walk anyway, because in dreams walking is the only thing that makes you feel you have a minimum of control, and the farther you go, the more the world changes without truly changing: the line of the sea appears and disappears, the sand becomes black in some places, gray in others, and at times — like an error in your mind — you see planks of a deck beneath the sand, as if the beach is swallowing a ship.
You feel him before you see him.
The presence.
It's not behind you, not ahead of you, it is as if he is already inside the air; and when at last you distinguish him through the fog, he doesn't come toward you the way he has before, doesn't smile immediately, doesn't touch you, and that absence tightens your stomach more than any word.
He is standing still, his gaze turned toward the sea, as if listening to something you cannot hear; he wears the same dark clothes that always seem out of place in your dreams, and his posture — that calm, certain, almost aristocratic way of carrying his shoulders — has a shadow on it today, a thought weighing down the line of his neck.
«You came back,» you say, because you don't know what to say when fear enters your voice and shame stays on your tongue.
He turns only slightly, not completely, and for an instant his eyes pass through you like an icy wind that makes no noise.
«You shouldn't have run from the truth,» he murmurs, and it is not a simple reproach: it sounds like advice given too late, like someone who wants to shake you but cannot.
You move closer, until the fog leaves only a few steps of space between you, and in that emptiness, it seems the world is holding its breath.
«The Hawks...» you begin, and it surprises you how full of anger the name comes out, not fear. «They saw me. They almost—»
He lifts one hand slightly, not to silence you, but as if stopping something in the air.
«The Hawks are nothing,» he says, and this time he looks straight at you, without playfulness and without sweetness, «compared to what awaits you farther ahead.»
Your heart strikes once, like a slammed door.
«What... what does “farther ahead” mean?»
He inhales, and he looks tired, and that tiredness on him is so wrong it frightens you more than the warning.
«It means you have only seen the edge of the blade,» he continues quietly, «and you are convincing yourselves that is enough to call it war.»
The wind changes — or perhaps it is only the fog deciding to move — and for an instant, above the line of the sea, you see something like a distant arch, enormous, made of air and emptiness, like an open wound in the sky: the Arch of Sable, and you recognize it without anyone needing to tell you, because it pulses in your head like a memory you have never lived.
You feel small.
And furious, because you do not want to.
«Then tell me,» you ask him, too quickly, too desperately to keep that pride you wear like armor, «what do we have to do?»
He closes his eyes for an instant, as if listening to something he does not want to hear.
When he opens them again, his voice comes out lower.
«If you don't pass the Arch of Sable, it will end against the wind.»
The word plants itself in you, because it is not a poetic sentence, not a figure of speech: it is a nautical, physical, inevitable sentence, the sensation of a ship trying to advance and instead being pushed back, dragged backward, humiliated by the sea itself.
«Against the wind...» you repeat, and the fog seems to tighten.
He nods faintly. «And the wind there is not wind as you understand it.»
You feel yourself tremble, and you do the stupidest and truest thing of all: you search for an anchor.
You search for it in the metal on your finger.
You search for it in that weight that has become familiar.
You raise your hand instinctively.
«Then the ring...» you whisper, as if saying the word could put things back in order. «There's a way. The ring—»
He looks at you, and something strange passes through his eyes, almost a flash of disbelief, as if for one second he does not understand the language you are speaking.
Then, with unsettling calm, he asks:
«What ring?»
The question breaks you.
Not because it makes no sense, but because it sounds... sincere.
Your breath stops.
«What do you mean...?» it slips out, and your hand remains half raised, as if you have forgotten how an arm moves. «It’s here. It’s always here. It burns, it speaks to me, it—»
He doesn't look at your hand.
He looks at you.
And his expression, for the first time, is not that of someone who knows more things than you: it is the expression of someone measuring a fracture in something that should not break.
«I already told you what to do,» he murmurs, and his tone softens slightly, not enough to be comfort, but enough to hurt you. «And by now they seem to be listening.»
You take a step forward, because anxiety pushes you toward him, and you would like to grab him, force him to explain, shake him until he answers with normal words and not riddles that leave your heart in your throat.
«I don’t understand,» you whisper, and your voice trembles more with anger than fear. «Why are you doing this to me? Why do you tell me there is something worse than the Hawks and then— then pretend not to see the one thing that... that is destroying my life?»
He spreads his fingers, as if wanting to touch your face, and instead stops a breath away from you, motionless at the exact point where the gesture would become real, and that interruption tightens your stomach like a knot.
«I'm not pretending,» he says quietly.
The fog moves suddenly, as if shaken by soundless laughter.
The sea, for an instant, seems close, too close.
And you hear — not with your ears, but deep in your bones — a beating of wings.
The world tilts.
The deck beneath the sand creaks.
He takes half a step back, and his face retreats like an image being torn away.
«Remember,» you barely hear, and you do not know whether he says it or the wind itself does, «that against the wind isn't won with force. It's won with the right choice... at the right moment.»
Then everything empties.
