Chapter Text
On a Faraway Sea 머나먼 바다 위에
by Choe Seung-ja
On a faraway sea 머나먼 바다 위에
the moon wafts effortlessly 두둥실 달이 떠 있습니다
In the empty sky one quiet eye 허공에는 세상을 바라보는
watches the world 고요한 눈동자 하나가 있습니다
The beloved eye that Rumi wooed 그것은 루미가 사랑했던 님의 눈동자입니다
(a mystic scene on the sea of time) (신비주의적 시간 바다 위의 풍경입니다)
On a faraway sea 머나먼 바다 위에
the moon wafts effortlessly 두둥실 달이 떠 있습니다
~
Yoongi isn’t sure why he does it.
He is not brave, not usually.
~
Bravery is for Jimin, training his whole life to protect the clan and about to become the youngest ever captain of the shiver. Bravery is for Hoseok, pledging himself to a Māmeido ambassador to secure an alliance with her kingdom, despite only knowing her for a single tidal seasons. Bravery has never been for Yoongi, who is quiet and cautious, and whose rebellious streak begins and ends with sitting out on rocks a bit too close to Koryŏ.
The sky is a murky blue, ready to sour into storm, but Yoongi isn’t ready to leave. This is the one place he feels almost like himself, almost free. He watches the waves grow bigger, the caps grow white, and wonders if Jimin and Hoseok are looking for him.
The three are so close they call themselves brothers, but increasingly Yoongi feels like he’s pulling them down, like he’s just a barnacle caught to their scales. Hoseok and Jimin assure him this is just in his head, but he knows it’s not. Yoongi hears the whispers, how he is too old to be still un-pledged, how he is too skinny and weak to be of much use to the clan in general.
When they can see that Yoongi’s heart is drifting to dark waters Hoseok tells him, You’ll find your place, and Jimin says, We all have a purpose.
But Hoseok and Jimin have everything Narandans pride—strong bodies, loud voices, bright coloring, and Yoongi does not. Hoseok is vibrant as coral, with red-orange hair and scales the color of the setting sun, and a bright, open face made for smiling. The only surprise that came from the Māmeido ambassador choosing to court Hoseok from the clan’s un-pledged is that she did not choose Jimin. According to the elders, the pink of Jimin’s hair has not been seen in Naranda for generations. His scales are the vibrant purple of a dying reef, and his face is sweeter than an angelfish. Yoongi remembers watching Jimin through their early years and thinking he was the most beautiful thing Yoongi had ever seen. That was, of course, before he understood that such feelings were frowned upon, that pledges between folk of the same sex were only acceptable in the most important of political alliances.
Besides, someone like Jimin was unlikely to pledge himself to someone like Yoongi, whose scales are a deep shadow that disappear into the background of night, whose hair is the pale blue-green of a trout’s belly, whose delicate features are more accustomed to scowling than smiling.
His physical flaws might have been overlooked if he’d been able to contribute to the clan in some other helpful way, but he is no good with young ones, and does not have the disposition for court, and though he loves hearing stories, he has no talent for telling them.
So he makes jewelry, fashions the traditional rings and chains of their people from pearl, bone, shell, and dead coral. It’s not a role without importance—as old Jungsoon tells him constantly, there is great esteem in creating pieces that their clan treasure and wear with pride. If, gods forbid, Jimin ever led the shiver into battle, he would wear armor made by Yoongi. But Jungsoon and the others have lived whole lives before learning the craft. It’s best suited to the elders, who value the slow intricacy of the work and the importance and history of the designs. Yoongi had understood what it meant when it was politely suggested by a member of the court that he might find his place there.
He doesn’t hate it. He just feels like a stone resting on the bottom of the ocean floor, being slowly sanded to nothing while brighter creatures pass by overhead. His days pass by like those creatures, unnoticed as he chips away at pearl and gently shapes bone.
He says nothing about his feelings, not even to Hoseok and Jimin, though he says little in general, something that has always worried them. His grievances against clan court and society are kept private, and he cannot imagine the kind of strength it would take to air them—to speak up against others but also to speak up against himself, against the dark voice in his mind that reminds him that others are happy, that his problems are his alone it would be a shameful level of selfishness to force them upon the clan.
It’s this trapped feeling that propels him up to the surface on cloudy days when there’s little danger of sun sickness or being seen by Koryŏn ships. The Narandans are not to venture to the surface, and Koryŏns are not to stray from their trade routes. These were the terms agreed upon at the end of the long, brutal war before Yoongi’s birth, to never again come in contact with one another, not when they were so different, when their misunderstandings had led to so much destruction.
If he was caught up here he would be chastised, but he is never caught. His one skill is to disappear into the background, make people forget he ever existed. Perhaps if he’d have been alive during the war he would have been useful in spying on the Koryŏns, getting close to their sea-side camps and fortresses without detection. Though he’s unsure if he would have had the guts to carry out such missions. The war stories are well known and repeated often—the tales of warriors skewered on pikes, and of clan folk skinned for their scales stay heavy in the enduring mind of Naranda.
He doesn’t like the sun exactly, and it always feels strange when the gills on each side of his throat close up to accommodate air, but there’s something invigorating about being above the surface, like looking into another world and wondering what it would be like to inhabit it. He loves the weather, how the sky moves, so different from the sea and yet, when he closes his eyes, he feels the same patterns in the air that he does in the water.
A storm rolls in as he sits on his favorite rock, a large pillar that juts out the water, almost a small island with nooks and platforms big enough to perch on. He always chooses one facing away from the distant shores of Koryŏ, looks out at the vast, open sea. The rock is just close enough to the trade route that he sometimes spots white billows in the distance that he knows must be Koryŏn ships. The clouds are approaching quickly, and nearly black with rain. He’s sat out in the rain before, but it was light and soothing, and he suspects this will not be. The waves are swelling around him, smacking against the rock, and he moves back toward the edge, not wanting to be anywhere near the open air when the clouds arrive.
But he stops just before he dives—as he takes one last look at the roiling seascape, it happens. A burst of lightning strikes the water, and illuminates the white of a ship. He stares. It’s far too close, blown off course by the storm and towards Narandan territory. He’s never seen a ship truly up close before, but even from this far away he can tell there is something wrong. Tiny figures rush all over the thing, and the billowing white is rapidly disappearing, being pulled down into the dark shell of the ship. It does not look big enough to handle waves now growing monstrous, big enough for the spray to drench him even so high up out of the water.
Fear swells in Yoongi—he needs to get back home. There are three competing dangers rising quickly—the storm, the Koryŏns, and his own clan if he is found up here or comes home with a suspicious injury. If he’s too close to the surface during a storm of this size he could easily be dashed against the very rock he’s so enjoyed lounging on—poetic justice, maybe, for all the lazy afternoons he’s spent breaking the rules. If the Koryŏns get ahold of him, though, he might see those old war tales come true.
His clan’s punishments are not unfair for a transgression such as this—it would be something like extra labor, or being put under a daily watch, but Yoongi is not exactly a beloved son of the clan. There are certain court members—the young, ambitious folk who want to take advantage of the times of peace to conquer other territories—who spend the time they’re not speaking of expansion, speaking of personal responsibility, and herding the clan into the future, and discouraging the passing on of weak blood. There are some on the court who call him and others like him a waste, who would be happy for an excuse to rid the clan of his presence entirely.
And yet there he sits, not jumping, the three dangers only growing, because he’s frozen in place as he watches the ship. He can almost feel the fear of the Koryŏns on board. He doesn’t know how they do it, how they traverse across this enormous swath of Earth that is toxic to them, that has a million ways to kill them. That might be killing them now. Another spray of lightning. The ship is even closer. He can see how difficult it is for the Koryŏns to keep hold of the ship as it is tossed between waves. If it gets much closer, they may see him.
He dives, the water angry and pushing at him until he gets down below the reach of the waves.
The ship will be fine, surely. Even if it turns over, they are near enough to shore that the pieces will find their way home. But his stomach clenches with the thought of it—the idea of being stranded in the midst of a substance he cannot breathe. It would be a nightmare.
He swims back up again, telling himself he just wants to see the ship arrive safely to the shore. When he surfaces, the rain has begun, pelts and stings at his face, but even through this he can see it—the ship is nearly on top of him. He goes to dive back under but a wail cuts through the noise of the storm and he hesitates. Two men grapple with each other on the edge of the ship, one screaming and trying to leap into the water, hands held out like he’s reaching for something over the side, the other trying to restrain him and pull him back. A length of rope flies free, twisted and broken at the end, and Yoongi flinches back in fear. Rope means nets, nooses, death, but to the sailors it seems rope means safety, means being bound to their vessel.
Yoongi dives before he drifts any closer, the rope a sudden cold reminder. He doesn’t know the stories the Koryŏns tell about them now, but during the war they believed Naranda had control over the sea, and were all too quick to call storms attacks against them. If they see him, they might believe he brought this upon them. If they have any reason to reignite their conflict, they will. He dives, no longer caring if the ship makes it to its shore. He can’t afford to care.
Except.
Yoongi is not brave.
But.
There’s a man sinking into the sea.
He is unconscious, body still, not even aware that he’s dying. That’s what happens to humans when they are under water for too long, they die. Black hair drifts above him, heavy casing over his feet and long cloth draping around him, weighing him down.
Yoongi doesn’t think, just propels himself forward and grabs hold of the man’s body. Humans are a bit bigger than his folk, on average, and the man is dead weight through the water, but the rock isn’t far. He pulls him through the undertow, drags him to the surface, and hoists him with all his might onto the rock.
He grits his teeth, thin arms straining as he pulls him up one ledge after another, tail smacking against the rock as he attempts to climb, until they are out of the reach of the waves, now only hit by the stinging spray. He stops to breathe, hating how the half water, half air of the heavy rain confuses his gills.
He sits still for a moment, body shaking. The ornamental shells and bones wrapped around his arms and neck clink together in the high wind and his hair stays stuck half over his eyes. He’s not quite sure that what is happening is real, he’s in shock by his own actions. He can almost hear the voice of the clan storyteller in his head, narrating his every move, because surely this is just a song or a fairytale. He’s no hero, though, so that makes no sense either. He puts it out of his mind and considers the Koryŏn man he’s holding on to.
The stranger’s mouth gapes open, night black hair plastered all over his face. Yoongi covers his gills and takes a few deep air breaths. He can’t stop, because if he stops he’ll have to think about what he’s done and what it might mean. He rolls the man into a shallow opening in the rock face, a few feet of protection from the rain.
He pulls off the cloth wrappings and the heavy coverings over his feet, not sure what to do, wracking his brains for everything he can remember from the stories about human bodies. Except all the stories he knows are about how to harm them, not how to save them. He presses a hand to the man’s chest, feeling a heartbeat but no rise and fall of lungs. Humans need to breathe, just like his folk, which means he needs to get the man air, and remove the water that is toxic to his kind. He pushes on his chest and a bit of water leaks out of his mouth, but nothing else happens.
His hands go cold, adapted to the chill of the water and not this dry frigid air, as he tries not to think about what happens if the man dies. If the man is found dead on this rock in Narandan territory. He squeezes his hands together and puts it out of his mind.
He thinks about turning him over, thumping him on the back like Hoseok does when Jimin laughs too hard, but then—he remembers. It’s an old story, much older than the war. A star-crossed lovers story, the kind that makes Jimin go all starry eyed and Hoseok tease him. A human princess falls into the sea and a Narandan rescues her, takes her to land and saves her. There’s a poem about it that Yoongi just barely remembers. The poem calls it a kiss of air, but this doesn’t make much sense.
He takes a few more air breaths and leans down to kiss the stranger, puffing air into his mouth instead of moving his lips, and feeling foolish an a little desperate. When he gets the hang of it he realizes the air is just coming back out the stranger’s nose, so he pinches his nostrils shut and breaths lungfuls of air into his mouth. He stop and pushes hard on his chest a few times, trying to dislodge the water, then does it again. He comes up to press on his chest again, starting to panic at the lack of response, when the stranger’s muscles jerk and he coughs.
Yoongi scrambles back, thinks about diving off the rock and into the sea, but the stranger isn’t opening his eyes, just spluttering up water over his chin. He’s still unconscious. Yoongi slides back to him and turns him on his side in case he coughs up more water. He’s breathing now, slow and deep. Yoongi shifts his body until his back is up agains the wall of the shallow inlet, then pushes his hair back so it stops dripping water into his nose and mouth.
He pauses when he sees the stranger’s face.
He’s no older than Yoongi, barely into his adult years by Narandan standards, though he doesn’t really know how age works in the human world. His skin is tanned and a bit scarred, jaw sharp. Rather large front teeth poke out between pale lips. Yoongi’s heart clenches in his chest. He’s not sure if they would call him beautiful in Naranda, which places so much importance on bright coloring, but in Yoongi’s eyes…
Without thinking he runs a finger along a thin white scar on the human's cheek, then pulls away quickly. Yoongi would not like it if a stranger touched his face while he slept, he doubts this human would either.
He looks over the length of his body. He’s never seen human feet before, and he tries not to stare at the odd, bony things that peak out from thick fabric encasing the legs the human has in place of a tail. His upper half is covered in white fabric that looks like it was once fine but is now filthy, wet, torn at the shoulder and halfway down the chest. Yoongi had never quite understood the purpose of human clothes beyond ornamentation, but now that he’s seen what their lives are like, sliding over the ocean like that, their bodies exposed to everything the sky throws at them, it makes sense.
He’s surprised to see piercings around his ears similar to a Narandan’s, though the stranger’s are filled with small golden hoops while Yoongi’s ears are lined with shell and bone. Yoongi wears a line of shells up his arms, held up by a thin circlet of bone around his neck, but the stranger has no other adornments.
He splutters again, and more water leaks from his mouth, but he doesn’t wake. Yoongi needs to leave. It’s getting late, and if he doesn’t go home his absence will be noticed, at the very least by Hoseok and Jimin. But the man isn’t waking up, and Yoongi can’t just leave him here, unconscious and far from his home. He doesn’t even know if humans can swim—what if he can’t get back to shore on his own? Those flat, bony feet might be good for traipsing across dry land, but they look useless for pushing a body through water.
He hesitates, spray from the waves stinging his back. He shuffles forward again and tries to arrange the man’s outer clothing as a kind of barrier between his face and the waves, to try to protect him from the worst of the rain and spray. The storm is in its full might now, and the ship is nowhere to be seen. The sky is nearly black.
Yoongi scrunches himself further into the inlet and lays his head down on his arms. He tries not to think of Jimin and Hoseok, in their nests back in the shoal worrying about him. Even if he could make himself leave the stranger it might now be too dangerous to make his way home through the roiling waves.
~
Yoongi is woken by a combination of factors. He has never slept above water before, and the air is brittle in his lungs. His skin feels strange and tight, and the sliver of sun that’s made it over the horizon is painful on his exposed back. More importantly, the stranger is squirming in the small space, waking up slowly.
“Hyung?” he says, voice quiet and hoarse.
Yoongi blinks, suddenly scared again.
The stranger coughs, and says more clearly, “Hyung?”
His breathing is rather shallow, and it crackles a bit on the intake, which does not sound like it is supposed to happen. Yoongi pulls himself over, unsure what to do. He shouldn’t interact, even now, but he’s not sure what choice he has. It doesn’t seem like the stranger is in any condition to get himself to shore.
He shifts the sopping pile of clothing out of the way and peers cautiously down at the stranger, who looks back at Yoongi, eyes half-lidded, mouth agape. He blinks slowly.
“Dreaming,” he mumbles, simply, then his head lolls back and his eyes close.
His breathing is suddenly rapid and even more shallow, and he seems to choke a bit, a watery rattle in his lungs. Yoongi pushes him onto his back and performs the poem cure again, pushing on his chest and breathing air into his mouth over and over until the man splutters and coughs up more water. When he’s done he gasps and lays back, breathing deeply, his eyes still half-open and groggy. He gazes up at Yoongi, who hovers over him, trying to listen for more rattling in his lungs.
“Pretty,” the stranger mumbles in a slurred, half-conscious voice.
His eyes are shimmering and stuck on Yoongi’s face. Yoongi cocks his head. He’d thought he understood the human language, but perhaps not, because in Narandan, pretty is something said about the brightest colors of the reef, or the delicate fins of a betta fish, or Jimin’s lovely hair—not something said about Yoongi.
Or maybe the man is sun-crazed, or whatever is the human equivalent. Yoongi has heard stories that swallowing sea water is as toxic to humans as breathing it, but this is difficult for him to imagine actually being true. It’s more likely that he had hit his head when he fell from the ship—which would also explain why he’d been unconscious as he sank into the depths.
His hair has dried in the night and it’s matted around his face, the ends curling messily around his ears. His eyes are beautiful, dark and wide, growing wider as he looks up at Yoongi. Yoongi reaches out and wipes a stream of water from the corner of his mouth, and the young man catches his hand before he can retreat. He tangles their fingers loosely together, his hand surprisingly warm.
“Who are you?” he says, quietly.
Yoongi doesn’t know if he should answer of not. They are required by clan law to learn the Koryŏn language, just in case a time comes when diplomacy is necessary for their survival. Before he can make up his mind, the stranger reaches up with his unoccupied hand and, for some reason, touches his fingers very gently to Yoongi’s mouth. A tingle numbs Yoongi’s whole body. He has the bizarre urge to press his lips into the stranger’s touch.
“You can’t be real,” the stranger says, almost to himself.
His eyes fall from Yoongi’s face to his shoulders and chest, and a bright flush spreads across his face. Good, this means his blood is flowing, that he’s getting a proper amount of air again. His hand falls back to his chest, and his eyes flutter.
Yoongi leans down, looking over his face.
“Sleep,” he says, softly, and like he was waiting for permission, the stranger falls asleep.
Yoongi leans away from him and looks out at the sea, not quite able to bring himself to remove his hand from the young man’s light grip. The storm has passed and the sun is rising slowly over the horizon, painting everything the brilliant warm color of Hoseok’s scales. Guilt drops heavily into Yoongi’s stomach. His friends are surely out of their minds with worry. He needs to figure out a plan. From the inlet he can see a sliver of the shore. Maybe when the stranger wakes again he’ll be strong enough for Yoongi to help him to the shallows.
As soon as he has the thought, he hears far away shouting. He lets go of the stranger’s hand and leans cautiously away from the rock. In the distance sits a new ship, much smaller than the other, with no billowing white at all, just a dark shell pushed across the water by humans holding what looks like long, hard fins. Two men stand at the front, their shouts echoing across the calm water.
Thinking quickly, he unhooks a shell from the band around his arm, his favorite because of its size and shimmering surface. He used to play a game with Jimin and Hoseok during particularly boring lessons as children—They would find the shiniest bits of shell they could, and on bright days, when the sun cast gold beams through the water, they’d reflect it into each other’s eyes. Whoever could be the sneakiest won. But he doesn’t need to be sneaky now, he just needs the humans in the small ship to see the rock and hope their friend had taken shelter there.
It takes what feels like hours, sitting half in the inlet, careful not to expose his tail, and shifting the shell around to temp the light. Finally, when the sun has crawled halfway up the sky, there’s a resurgence of shouting. One of the men standing at the front of the ship points toward the rock.
Afraid of being seen, Yoongi places the shell in the young man’s hand, arranging it to keep reflecting the sun, and slips around the far side of the rock. He slides silently into the water and waits there, out of sight, until the shouting resumes, relieved, excited this time as they spot the young man. Yoongi should leave. It’s unlikely they will spot him, and he can dive out of sight as quickly as needed, but it’s an unnecessary risk. An illegal, treaty-breaking risk. He should leave.
He can’t leave. He needs to see the stranger get into the small ship with his own eyes, needs to be sure. He sinks down lower.
“Faster,” calls a voice, getting rapidly closer. “This is their territory, we’re not supposed to be here under any circumstance.”
“Jeongguk!” another voice shouts. “Why isn’t he waking up?”
“Tae, you need to stop shouting, it’s dangerous here.”
“Hyung—”
“It’ll be fine, we found him, that’s all that matters right now.”
The small ship bumps against the rock, and the two men at the front leap out, leaving two others behind with their long fins. They lean down and talk to the young man gently, nervously, and Yoongi can hear their relief when he wakes with a gasp.
“Jeonggukkie—” one of them gathers the young man into his arms and hugs him tightly. The other rubs his back and glances around, nervously.
“We need to go, now. Jeonggukkie, do you think you can stand?”
The young man nods, and the two others get him on his feet and help him into the small ship.
“Wait,” the young man says, voice still groggy. “Where is he?”
Yoongi ducks farther behind the rock as the boat pushes off from the rock. The men start pushing the fins in and out of the water.
“Where is who?” says one of the others, but but doesn’t receive an answer.
Yoongi watches the boat slip farther and farther away, remembering too late that his favorite shell is still clutched in the young man’s hand. His own hand feels the lingering warmth from the stranger’s touch, and something heavy falls over him, like the sudden fall of night, at the thought that he will never see him again.
He makes himself turn away and slip under the water. It’s still and silent now, though still cloudy from the storm and the churned up sea bed that has yet to settle. He’s prepared to hurry back to the shoal, to attempt to explain away his overnight absence…
Only to see Hoseok, Jimin, and half the shiver staring up at him.
He knows immediately that they’ve seen the boat, and if they don’t know what he’s done, they soon will. Jimin opens his mouth but Byungho, the current head of the shiver, speaks first.
Restrain him, he says, and Jimin whirls around to stare at him.
What are you talking about? Yoongi has done nothing wrong!
I know what I just saw, Byungho says, and the two sangeo closest to him round on Yoongi. He was above the surface, in full view of the humans. You said yourself he’s been missing all night, who knows what else he’s done.
As Byungho’s soon to be successor, Jimin has some influence over him, but not enough.
Hoseok jumps in, putting himself between Byungho and Yoongi. Yoongi, tell them what happened, tell them it was nothing, he says nervously.
Yoongi looks around at the group, all staring at him. His body feels strange, dry and quivery. It does not occur to him to lie. He only thinks of the lies later, all the ways he could have saved himself. Instead he tells the truth. I…There was a man in the storm, he fell from their ship. He was dying. I just…
Byungho peers at him, coming closer. Behind him, Jimin takes a deep breath, briefly closing his eyes, and Yoongi curses silently. One of the few times he opens his mouth and he damns himself.
Do you mean to tell me you interfered with them? Touched one? Spoke to them?
I just wanted to help, I couldn’t just let him die.
You could have and you should have. If they are stupid enough to venture out where they are not welcome they deserve to drown!
Drown. The word sparks in his memory. His people were not blameless in their war. When the Koryŏns attacked, they would pull them off their ships and down into the deep, letting the water do their work for them. Drowning was what it was called when a human’s lungs filled with water until they couldn’t breathe, and drowning is what would have happened to the young man if Yoongi had not saved him. And even as the sangeo’s hands grab his arms and wrap him in eel skin restrains, even as Jimin argues with Byungho and Hoseok’s face tightens with fear, cannot bring himself to regret anything he’s done.
~
When they return home he is pushed roughly into the lockup, one of the cells carved into the cave system at the edge of the shoal. Byungho and the shiver sangeos leave, muttering about what to do with him, though it’ll be up to the court to decide his fate. Hoseok and Jimin stay behind. Hoseok reaches a hand between the thick stone bars carved in front of the cell and sets it on Yoongi’s shoulder. Jimin leans his forehead against the bars as well.
Why? he says, imploringly.
We’ll figure this out, Hoseok says, already thinking of the next steps. He squeezes Yoongi’s shoulder. I’ll speak with Makkiko. If banishment is even a slight possibility I’ll find a way for you to join the Māmeido clan. It’s not a far journey, you would be safe there, Yoongi.
What were you thinking? Jimin says.
He would have died. I couldn’t just leave him when I could do something. Have you ever seen one of them up close? They’re barely different from us. What would you do if one of our people were in trouble? He’s surprised to find his voice strong, almost angry. Jimin seems surprised too. Yoongi is most often soft spoken, even his complaints and anger kept to a low grumble. But the more he thinks about it, the angrier he is. He saved a life, and he is not going to accept the idea that he made a mistake.
You know it’s more complicated than that, Jimin snaps. Did they see you? What if they think you stole him? What if they thought it was your fault? You could have started another war! He backs away, takes a deep breath. I’m sorry, I know this isn’t your fault. It’s going to be alright, we’re going to fix this. I’ll talk to Byungho.
Why were you even up there? Hoseok asks.
I was just curious, Yoongi says, quietly. The anger is still there but he feels like he’s deflating.
Hoseok and Jimin glance at each other and the anger spikes again because he doesn’t know what that look means, feels like the door is suddenly slamming shut on their friendship.
We’ll be back soon, Jimin says gently. We’ll fix this, I promise.
They reach through the bars to touch Yoongi’s hands and he hates how much he needs the physical contact, how much he wants to follow as they swim away. He watches them go, feels like he’s sinking into the sea floor. They don’t understand. He’s not sure why he thought they might. These golden sons of the clan won’t understand the curiosity that drives him to search for something a little more familiar, a little more like himself, even if that searching begins and ends with sulking on his favorite rock. They will never understand what it feels like to think of the future, the rest of his life, and see an unmoving hole in the sand.
He floats at the back of the cell, wanting to disappear into the dark shadows. What are they going to do with him? The more he thinks about it, the more egregious his offense seems. There’s been no contact with the Koryŏns for over thirty years until now. He broke the treaty the moment he ventured close to their ship, everything after that had just piled on the charges against him.
There are three options here, three forms of punishment in the clan. There hasn’t been an execution since the wartimes but he’s not feeling calm enough to rule it out. Jimin and Hoseok wouldn’t stand for that, and he can’t ask them to put their futures or even their lives at risk for him. Hoseok might think banishment is an extreme response, but Yoongi has seen folk in the past banished for theft and assault, neither of which is considered as serious as interacting with the Koryŏns. Third is the best case scenario—servitude, perhaps paired with time spent right where he is now. If he’s lucky he can keep doing his job, just without compensation. If he’s lucky they’ll only lock him up at night. It’s not like he was spending his nights with anyone anyway.
He flushes with embarrassment at Jimin’s implicit accusation that he might have stolen the human, that his loneliness had driven him to something so terrible. Jimin knew how Yoongi had once felt about him, Yoongi could tell in the ways he’d looked at him back then, the guilt in his eyes for not reciprocating. He was too kind to have ever said anything explicitly, but every time Yoongi thought he might have forgotten, this secret knowledge Jimin had of him rose back to the surface in some small, pointed way. What if they think you stole him?
He floats up to the top of the cave cell, thinking over his options. Even if he doesn’t end up banished or executed, imprisonment will mean what little respect he’d once had in the clan will disappear. If before his life had been a stone at the bottom of the sea, it is now a pile of sand.
He floats at the back of the cell for hours, until the water is dark with night.
These cells were made two hundred years ago during the clan wars—meaning they were made for warriors, not skinny jewelry makers. It takes effort, but he’s just barely able to squeeze between the bars. He slip out into the night. There are no guards—the clan will have gone into a watch, everyone with a pair of eyes will be alert and near the surface, waiting for any sign of aggression from the Koryŏns. He is all alone. He’s not sure if it would be better to be watched and guarded. Maybe it would be better if they treated him as a threat rather than as something to be forgotten. The awful loneliness rises in him like a storm.
He doesn’t think. He just starts swimming.