beware: woman on board!
When the mighty pirate captain, Koo Junhoe, has no choice but to take an annoyingly talkative rich female on board, he immediately regrets his decision. Yet, money is more important to him than his own pride.
♦ Pairing: pirate captain!Junhoe x rich!Minji (OC)
♦ Genre: fluff, comedy, slight angst in one scene
♦ Words: 4.8k
♦ Dedicated to: @binkygee aka my beloved twin soul who deserves the world! Thank you so much for being in my life, I’m so happy to have met you! You are such a wonderful person and I wish you all the best! Have a beautiful Christmas, dear! ❤️
Koo Junhoe had never had any luck with women. Especially not with women who had a lot of money, and especially not with women who not only had a of money but who were also annoying blabbermouths.
But Koo Junhoe was a man who didn't give up easily, and one woman could not break his persistence. Not even Ryu Minji who was a pain in the ass, the nuisance he didn’t need in his life. Even though she had promised him a very generous amount of money to be shipped to the furthest island possible (for that, Junhoe was pretty sure she was either exaggerating to look more dramatic or she had lacked more braincells than he himself did), her crazy rich antics were slowly getting on everyone’s nerves.
“Cap’, do we really need to keep up with her behaviour?” Chanwoo, the youngest member of the crew, inquired rather indignantly, quirking a brow at the captain of the ship.
Junhoe merely let out a frustrated sigh in response.
“She has a lot of money,” he reasoned as if it would have made up for all the things Ryu Minji had done ever since she was on board with Junhoe’s crew, starting from demanding a cup of hot tea when she arrived, asking a dumbfounded man to wipe the dust off the wooden place she would have wanted to sit on and wanting to have lunch precisely at 1pm every single day. She was lucky that Yunhyeong, the chef, had the heart of an angel, and he was rather glad to be able to share his food with someone who would finally appreciate it. It’s not like anyone else on the ship didn’t like his food, but they were boys, they didn’t compliment each other so easily.
“How much did you lose on that last bet?” Chanwoo inquired a bit too curiously for Junhoe’s liking, even though he knew that all of his crew members knew about his deals; he bragged about them whenever he won, and he kept his mouth shut when he lost.
Small wonder the others got suspicious when they hadn’t heard about his bets for a while.
“A lot, matey. A lot,” Junhoe admitted honestly, patting the younger boy’s shoulder. He didn’t like having Minji on the ship either (especially because it was his ship, his territory), yet money was what he needed in that moment, and if she was willing to give him money, he would endure the way Minji acted up.
Of course, he should have known that something like this would happen from the moment the obviously rich female showed up in the port, quite short of breath and with a surprisingly little luggage. She looked like she had just run away from someone, her hair in a complete mess, her features alarmed. Even though she had flipped her hair back several times while she was talking down to Junhoe and his crew members to convince them to get her on board, Junhoe could sense that something was wrong. Why on Earth would someone as obviously rich as her who could have easily bought a ship for herself would ever deal with a pirate? He had made it very obvious that he was one, so either she was completely stupid (which wouldn't have come as a surprise) or she had an exceptionally good reason to run away. From whoever and for whatever reason she wanted.
However, he decided to shrug his unnecessary questions off since he had nothing to do with the petite female’s business. Not like he would have wanted anything to do with her, except her money. For a while, he could listen to his crew members complain about the girl, but when one day she started whining because they sailed too fast for her liking, Junhoe couldn’t keep his mouth shut.
“Look! This is my ship, and I’m the captain, so I do what I wanna do. Whether you like it or not,” he practically spat the words, scoffing at the absurd request of Minji.
She looked obviously hurt by his tone and the way he told her that her opinion didn’t matter in the least, yet instead of asking herself why would he treat her so poorly (like any other intelligent human being), she counter-attacked him instead.
“This is how you treat a lady’s request?” She raised an eyebrow at him, her voice rising. Donghyuk was merely passing by at that moment, but he couldn’t stop himself from glancing in Junhoe’s direction, seeing the way the girl stood in front of the captain, her hands firmly on her hips, looking amusingly bossy for such a short woman.
“Aye, wench, and I’m not even gonna change the way I act.”
Minji couldn’t believe her ears; her eyes became twice as wide as before, burning from fury and frustration. She was trying so hard to say something back to him, opening her mouth several times, anger boiling up inside of her. In the end, she only managed a sentence out, and even that seemed ridiculous.
“You uneducated buff!” She shouted at him, throwing her hands into the air. Donghyuk found this the perfect opportunity to leave the scene, knowing all too well that Junhoe’s reaction to the girl’s outburst wouldn’t mean any good anyway.
Junhoe merely laughed it off. He had been called a lot of things in his life (including some particularly nice and some not so nice ones) despite his surprisingly young age as a captain, and not so despite his job as a pirate. So hearing her (kind of) polite cursing, he laughed like there was no tomorrow.
“Blow me down!” He pretended to be shocked, the words rolling off his tongue ever so naturally. “I’ll take that as a compliment,” he added, theatrically saluting to her before he went back to steering the wheel as casually as he always did.
“Do you even know what the word ‘buff’ means?” Minji retorted, challengingly wiggling her eyebrows.
She acted like a total know-it-all, probably to cover up the fact that she wasn’t the most intelligent girl on Earth. She may have been educated, but to Junhoe, intelligence didn’t equal knowledge. She was stupid enough to trust pirates, so he wouldn’t actually call her intelligent. Even though Junhoe’s crew didn’t like to use force against woman until it was completely necessary, it didn’t mean that she couldn’t be called names or be looked down while she was on the ship with them. (Both of which had already happened, but she was the one to blame for that, not his mateys.)
“How would I know?” Junhoe shrugged his shoulders, focusing on the vast sea stretching out in front of him instead of the girl. “I’m the Scourge of the 7 Seas!”
“The what?” The woman gasped, and the sight of her knitted eyebrows were much more hilarious than they should have been under other circumstances.
“See, we don’t speak the same language, wench.”
“Don’t call me wench!” She protested right away, puffing her chest out as if she had wanted to prove a point. “It’s making me feel inferior,” she added with a disappointed pout.
“Well, you are inferior here,” Junhoe admitted without a blink of an eye. Though he may have expected her to get mad at him, seeing her flushed face and the way her body was trembling in anger made it all worthwhile. She was such an amusing sight, whether she was annoyed, frustrated or confused. He was sure she could have made a really good street comedian.
“You… you…” She pointed a finger at him although her hands were trembling, so the effect she wanted to leave on him was anything but intimidating.
“Yes?” He quirked an eyebrow, enjoying the situation way too much.
“Just ship me to the next island and you’ll get your money.”
“With pleasure.” He tilted his head a little to add to the effect, making the woman fume even more as she turned on her heel and left the captain alone, throwing some deadly glances in his direction that he couldn’t see because he was staring far ahead, grinning to himself like the smug idiot he was.
Minji was a real pain in the ass. Seriously. Junhoe had never had more headaches in his whole life than he did during the last week while Minji was turning the life on the ship upside down. She was acting like she owned Junhoe's most precious treasure, and he couldn't have hated her more for that. If there was something he couldn't stand, it was the people who made him feel like he wasn't the owner of his own his ship.
The other guys were obedient, that's true, and he was glad he managed to recruit such a crew. Yet, it didn't mean that they had to be obedient when it came to Minji too. But that's exactly what they did.
They did what she asked even if it was ridiculous, totally unnecessary or almost impossible. It was as if everyone had been under her spell except the captain of the ship himself. Junhoe tried to convince himself that he would get rid of her soon, yet he knew that considering the alarming weather conditions and the area they had sailed through, it would take a couple more days until they could reach any habited island. It didn’t help either that even his crew members tried to talk him into understanding the girl a bit more. He didn’t lead a charity organization, he didn’t need to show empathy towards a woman who acted like he owned his ship.
Though it was definitely interesting what Yunhyeong had told him one day.
“You know, she’s not that bad of a person. She just wanted to get away from her family, and I can totally understand why,” the chef remarked as if he was telling a story, looking up at Junhoe at the end of the sentence.
“What? Are you on her side?” he huffed, putting his hands on his chest. Wasn’t it enough that the other crew members were against him, now even the closest ones were trying to ask him to act nice? Hell no.
“No.” Yunhyeong shook his head immediately and raised his hands in front of him to indicate that he wasn’t there to cause any kind of misunderstanding or start a war of words. “I’m just saying that it couldn’t have been easy on her that she was forced into a marriage with a man who was treating her in an inappropriate way,” the chef babbled on and on, spilling the beans without noticing the slight raise of Junhoe’s eyebrows.
“What?”
“Maybe if you hadn’t been so obsessed with arguing with her, you could have got to know the same.”
With that being said, the chef went back to his own territory aka the little kitchen on the upper floor of the ship, and Junhoe was left dumbfounded in the middle of the open area, lips slightly parted hearing the other boy’s words. Sure, Yunhyeong could always get along well with others, he didn’t have that defensive mechanism in him that the captain of the ship had built during the years to avoid getting hurt and feeling guilty for every sinful thing he had ever done. He wouldn’t have become a respectful leader if he had left his emotions get in the way.
However, the fact that Minji was willing to share something so personal with Yunhyeong surprised him. But of course, it could have also happened that she had just spilled the beans without intending to tell him anything. She was a real blabbermouth after all.
After their conversation, Junhoe examined the woman a bit more in depth, looking for any sign that would indicate what she must have gone through before she got on the ship. On the other hand, he couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary, anything that would prove that she had a better reason to run away than to order the members of a pirate ship as she pleased.
Not until the day they had encountered some sirens did his opinion change.
Minji was downstairs, looking at her nails, calling for someone (anyone) for the fifth time already. She was getting bored without a book, without anyone to talk to and without anything to look at. The ship felt like a prison sometimes, and she was definitely missing her grandiose room. Though whenever she thought of her home, a chill ran down her spine, reminding her why she had run away. She didn’t need a man in her life, let alone a man with no feelings, a man who would only use her to give birth to their child and a man who was also 24 years older than her.
Minji knew that not anyone can get what they want but she couldn’t stand it anymore. Her father had literally sold her to that old man just for the sake of more money, that’s why it wasn’t a surprise that she wanted to escape before she could even be properly sold. She didn’t want to step a foot into the old man’s mansion.
As stubborn as she was, she was willing to do anything to achieve what she wanted, so even if it meant that she had to bear multiple noisy and uneducated man drinking whisky and sometimes speaking a totally different language, let it be. It was still better than her arranged marriage.
Though it didn’t mean that she didn’t have her own requirements and preferences. She didn’t like if she was left alone for a long time, that’s why speaking to the ship’s chef was a pleasant pastime for her.
However, she was now left alone in one of the cabins downstairs and the ship was quieter than ever. She had no idea what must have happened, so she tried to call out for someone – to no avail.
“Come on! Can’t anyone tell me why we are slowing down? And why we had just stopped right now?” She shrieked as the ship had seemed to come to a halt. She immediately started suspecting that something was definitely not going as planned, but she couldn’t suppress her sarcasm either. “I swear these men can’t do anything without a woman on board.”
With that being said, she got to her feet and walked up the stairs to reach the upper floor. What she saw there made her blood run cold in an instant. All the crew members who were there seemed to be hypnotized by some unseen force, their faces showing no emotions, their features numb. They either wandered by themselves or looked at the waves of the sea very, very close to the edge of the ship.
As Minji walked closer, she realized what exactly they looked at. It wasn’t the sea they looked at; it was what was in the sea. To be precise, who were in the sea.
The waves hid their bodies well, but Minji could tell that they were sirens; sirens with flawless skin and seducing gazes. To her, their voices sounded awful but to the men around her, it seemed like it was like a lullaby; they were under its effect, they were ready to throw themselves off the edge just to get closer to the beautiful creatures.
Minji didn’t think her plan through when she noticed Junhoe walking closer to the edge of the ship. She rushed to his side, trying to wake him up, gently (and then not so gently) punching him, his face, his chest, his side… Junhoe still acted like she was invisible, not taking notice of her presence, nor her attempts to stop him. She had no idea how to get him out of this state, she had never even seen sirens in the first place. She wasn’t used to such dangers situations, that’s why she was helpless when it came to good solutions.
In the end, she did what seemed like her only choice. She didn’t think it through, she merely kissed the pirate with all her might. It wasn’t pleasant, of course, it was more like desperate. But it had an effect because Junhoe’s eyes widened as soon as she sealed his lips, and he seemed to have come back to life judged by his dumbfounded expression.
Minji was the first to back away after she saw that she had succeed, taking a few tentative steps back.
“Wait, what? What’s going on? Why did you kiss me?” he asked confusedly, looking at her with countless questions in his eyes. He was just coming out of his whole hypnotized state, so Minji knew she should have been a bit more patient, but he wasn’t the only one who needed help.
“I’m trying to save your life if you can’t see!” she shrieked, gesturing wildly but the pirate’s eyes could only see her and her rosy-coloured lips.
“By trying to kiss me?” He raised an eyebrow in question, her statement obviously making him even more confused. Minji’s patience was already wearing thin, she didn’t need the pirate’s useless questions to add more to her building frustration.
“If you looked around you instead of arguing why a pretty woman like me ever laid her lips on your dirty ones, you could see that we are in the middle of a siren attack!”
“Hey, my lips aren’t even‒” Junhoe protested fervently, but stopped halfway when he realized what she had tried to imply. “You said what?”
“Oh, these bloody men!” Minji huffed, not believing that she was the only one who had more than two brain cells on this damn ship. Men really thought of themselves as the dominant sex, but she wasn’t sure they could ever be able to lead anything without asking for a woman’s help. Seeing Junhoe and the other males on the ship, she started questioning how they even got there without losing a member here and there.
“Just help me distract your crew members or tie them to something until we are out of the siren zone!” Minji practically ordered him because he didn’t look like he took the situation seriously even though his eyes were roaming around.
“Do you want to distract them too by kissing them?” He turned back to her, slight amusement plastered on his annoyingly handsome face.
“You ungrateful buff!”
“Okay, okay, I’ll handle it from now on! Get anyone you can from downstairs, and ask them to help us out!”
“With pleasure,” Minji spitted as she rolled her eyes, not believing that it took so long for the captain to come up with a reasonably good plan.
She hurried down the stairs, looking for anyone who might be able to help them. Luckily, she found a sleeping boy on one of the wooden beds, so even if he wasn’t particularly happy to be woken up, he immediately ran upstairs when he heard what was going on. Then, Minji even found Yunhyeong who was in the middle of cooking (probably coming up with a new recipe), small wonder he didn’t realize that there was something going on outside of his precious kitchen. When he alarmed the chef, he looked so guilty as if he had been the one who asked the sirens to come by. Together, they went back to assist Junhoe as he finally came back to his senses and did everything he could to save his crew members. After they took care of the hypnotized boys, Junhoe focused on navigating the ship instead, so that they would be out of the danger zone sooner.
When all males were back to their own selves, Minji couldn’t help but let out a relieved sigh. Maybe she did care about them after all. Maybe that kiss with Junhoe was worth it after all.
Minji didn’t want a proper thank you. She didn’t even want a nice sentence coming from Junhoe’s mouth, but at least she wanted a good damn word for saving the males’ asses. She may have been looked down because she was a woman and she was whining like a child (she was aware of that, bad family example, that’s it), but she felt like she deserved better after the siren attack, especially from the captain of the ship.
On the other hand, he seemed to be the only one who wasn’t thankful to her. Everyone on the ship thanked her or at least treated her better after they got to know what she had done for the crew (except the kiss part, neither Junhoe, nor Minji wanted to highlight this particular piece of information). Everyone but Junhoe himself.
It wasn’t until after a quite uneventful day that the captain did say something about what had happened before.
Minji was reading by herself in her “room” (a random corner that was said to be her room), elbows resting on the wooden table with the book in between. She didn’t fancy joining the pirates’ nightly conversations because they usually ended up in overexcited pirate songs and too much rum. Instead, she liked to have the time to herself, wondering about the what ifs just like this particular night.
“Hey. Can I sit down?”
The all-too-familiar voice asked from behind and she couldn’t help but let out a weary sigh. No matter how uncharacteristically gentle the captain’s words were, she really wasn’t in the mood for a conversation with him. Not after complete days of radio silence.
“It’s your ship, isn’t it? You do what you wanna do. Isn’t that right?” She raised an eyebrow challengingly, quoting the words the young man had spitted at her not long after she got on the ship. Well, he wasn’t the most hostile captain but at least he didn’t throw her out.
Junhoe also let out a sigh. Indeed, when two adamant people got together who could suffocate each other any minute, it was difficult to find a balance and let both of them have a say in the matter without trying to kill each other.
“Look, wench…” The captain started and not until he caught Minji’s dead glare, did he realize how he had called her. “I mean, look…” He hovered over the last part of the sentence but decided to drop his idea in the idea. It didn’t matter how he addressed her, what he was about to say was more interesting than mere nicknames. “I think we misunderstood each other,” he admitted bluntly, his sincerity not moving the girl’s heart.
“I would say we have quite different manners.”
“We can put it that way, too.” Junhoe was quick to react as he didn’t want to anger her even more, especially because he knew she deserved a proper thank you after the siren attack or at least she deserved to feel valued.
Yet, as an emotionally malfunctioning jerk he was, it was difficult for him to reach out for her after she had practically saved their asses. So what did he do? Instead of trying to talk to her somehow, he didn’t say anything. So typical of the almighty Koo Junhoe. He really didn’t know how to act around females.
“So uhm… thanks for what you’ve done for the crew.” For me, he wished to add but the confession was already weighing down on him, and his heart wasn’t sure it would be able to bear even more.
Minji’s features softened a bit upon hearing his words, but she was still more tense than usual, and he had no idea why. He really didn’t know how to approach women, so it was no surprise he couldn’t decipher Minji either.
“I may be annoying, and I may be just a woman, but I have a heart, and I couldn’t just let you all suffer like that. Let me be the only woman who causes you headache. You don’t need sirens for that,” she explained with a playful edge to her words, making the pirate laugh for the first time they met.
Even though he would have said it differently himself, he was sure that in her own annoying way, the gorgeous female was really taking care of them. They may have been upset at her for telling them to stop drinking too much rum or to stop shouting at the seagulls when they had already become tipsy, but maybe she did it in a loving way, they were just not used to such form of affection.
Though he was more interested in her future plans now that she seemed to have let go of the grudge against him.
"What are you gonna do?" Junhoe inquired, subtle curiosity easily detected from his voice.
"What do you mean?" She counter-attacked although she knew what he was trying to imply. She merely wanted to save herself some time until she could properly think over her answer.
"What are your plans after you leave the ship? Cause we'll arrive at a port city soon," the pirate explained, his intense stare piercing through her heart. She knew that it was a question she couldn't avoid, yet deep down, she didn't want to think about the future.
She was already accustomed to Yunhyeong's childish whining when the boys didn't compliment his new creations, she grew fond of Donghyuk's smile that outdid even the Sun itself, she was used to seeing Bobby sleep anywhere and everywhere he could, she didn’t even blink an eye when Chanwoo was telling childish jokes, and she was no longer unfamiliar with Junhoe's grumpiness in the morning. Or the way his eyes widened, and his jaw dropped comically when something didn't go as he had planned. Or the deadpan expression he fathomed when someone said something slightly insulting to him. Or the duality of his interior and exterior. Or the way he raffled his hair when the wind blew too strong. Or the smooth way (even smoother than usual) he talked after drinking too much rum.
Maybe she would miss all of these if she decided to leave the ship and with it the crew itself.
"I don't know, I didn't give it too much thought." Minji shrugged, her fingers playing with the hem of her dress. She knew it was her time to go, but the captain’s soon felt too soon all of a sudden.
"You can stay, you know," Junhoe offered rather seriously, but before she could comment on it, he added something more, taking back the serious edge of his words. "We won't throw you out of the ship."
"That's very kind of you." She let out a little giggle, letting the conversation soothe her nerves. She could see the sincerity in the pirate’s eyes (something that she had never expected to see in his orbs), and even if she wouldn’t admit it to herself, she was glad that he would like to see her on the ship in the future as well.
Maybe she wasn’t the only one who didn’t regret that kiss.
“I’m serious,” Junhoe stated matter-of-factly, earning yet another giggle from the girl.
“I know.”
“But of course, we won’t keep you back from leaving the ship if that’s what you want.”
“I know.” Minji nodded, her lips raised into a cheeky smile as she watched the always so confident and smug captain babble in front of her. It was a rather comical sight, and she enjoyed every moment of it, especially because she knew he was being embarrassed because of her.
“But if you want to stay, I can’t take it anymore and I have to tell you that‒”
“I know.”
“But I didn’t even finish my sentence,” Junhoe quirked an eyebrow in question, examining the girl’s features. She may or may not have known what he was about to say, but it didn’t really matter who would take the first step. She was willing to do it. After all, she saved his ass already, why wouldn’t she save him from another five minutes of embarrassment?
“I know.” She bobbed her head, then rose from her seat and closed the gap between her and the pirate. Junhoe was seemingly taken aback by her bold move but he couldn’t deny the way he tried to gulp down his nervousness.
Minji sealed his lips in the next moment, their kiss definitely more passionate and less desperate than the first one. Now, Junhoe was also having his fair share, enjoying it to the very end. The kiss was just perfect this time; it was exactly what they both needed after the recent events and what their hearts yearned for ever since they met.
After all, love and hate were only a tad bit apart.
