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It had been a couple months since the crew had – as Captain Sage put it – “adopted” Goodang, and the boy was starting to put on some healthy weight. His previously gaunt face had filled in, his cheeks regained colour, exhaustion wiped from his features and his overworked arms. He almost felt like the children he saw playing in the gardens.
He should be thankful, in fact, he should be praying night and day. But a disgusting, ungrateful part of him just wouldn’t stop screaming. Whenever rope slipped past his fingers and the sails furled open, whenever a plate of food was wasted on his clumsy hands, some wretch in him demanded punishment. But the crew never delivered.
His cheeks filled with greedy flesh and his hands cupped the sin of his countless mistakes. They needed to be stripped of all they were given. He needed to feel a knife against his throat, a switch on his back. He needed to feel hands grasping at his chest and squeezing the blood out of his heart. A drop for every mistake.
He didn’t care if JJ or Nadya were placated by a simple “sorry”, Goodang wasn’t. He hadn’t properly atoned for his mistakes in so long and his filthy skin crawled with the need for absolution.
So, the next time he bumped into Sage’s teapot and spilled their favourite tea all over the deck, Goodang didn’t try to cover up his mistake, he went straight to Nine. The others might insist on being overly kind to him, but the first mate had been nothing but distant and cold since he stepped foot onto this ship.
Goodang entered Nine’s quarters without knocking, slamming open the door and startling Nine who sat at his desk with a map sprawled out in front of him.
“I spilled Sage’s expensive tea all over the deck.”
Nine furled around with a grimace on his face. “Alright, what do you want me to do about it? Clean it up.” He turned back to his work. “And knock next time.”
“JJ mopped the floors this morning.”
The boy sighed and turned around again. “Then ask him where he put the mop.”
Goodang’s frustration was starting to morph into anger, climbing up his throat like boiling molasses. “But what about the tea?”
“What about it?”
“Mr. Nine, I spilled the tea. All of it. It’s on the floor and there’s none of it left in the pot.” Goodang’s hands curled into fists by his side.
Nine, unnervingly confused, replied, “Goodang, I know you’re new here, but I assume you aren’t fucking new to earth. Do I really have to explain to you how gravity works?”
Goodang’s fists moved from his sides to his hair. “That’s not what I’m saying!”
“Then, what do you need from me, asshole? Want me to hold your hand as you mop the deck? I’m trying to be nice here!”
“I don’t want you to be!” The yell echoed through the cabin and Goodang was surprised at the volume of his own voice.
Nine’s expression dropped from confusion into a frown. He’d clearly wanted to say something, lips already parted, but he shut his mouth as the two locked eyes.
Goodang’s hands had turned cold even before the yell had left his throat. He dropped them back to his sides and licked his lips in anticipation. He was going to be able to sleep tonight.
It was Nine who broke the silence. “I see what you’re trying to do, Goodang. I’m not stupid.”
“I’m not doing anything,” Goodang grit his teeth. “I did something, and am waiting for the consequence of it.”
Nine paused before he spoke, sizing him up and down as Goodang tried to stifle his trembling. No matter how much a part of him craved familiar patterns and the feeling of relief after, most of him still felt sick at the mere idea of it. He’d need bandages. It took everything in him to not turn and run out the room.
“Why didn’t you go to Sage?”
That wasn’t a question Goodang expected to be asked. He didn’t expect to be asked about his thought pattern at all, for that matter. “Sorry, what?”
“If you spilled Sage’s oh-so-special tea, why aren’t you crying in front of them right now?”
“I’m not crying,” Goodang snapped back.
Nine let out a humourless chuckle, “It’s because Sage is too nice.”
Goodang looked away, left cheek tilted to the side.
“And so is JJ and Nadya. Am I wrong, Goodang?”
Goodang shook his head.
Nine picked his quill back up, twirling it between his fingers. “So you want the bastard of the ship to give you what you think you deserve.”
He tossed the quill back onto the table, hands clasped behind his back as he approached Goodang with steady steps. Nine stopped to stand in front of him. Goodang glanced up through his lashes at the boy’s clenched jaw.
“It’s like looking into a mirror,” Nine mumbled.
Goodang tilted his head to face him at eye level.
“It’ll take years, but you will learn,” Nine said, louder this time,
You never learn. Hunk of muscle and nothing more.
But instead of a fist curled in his hair or a slap to the face, Nine raised his hand and rested it on Goodang’s shoulder. The boy couldn’t help but flinch at first, slowly getting used to it as Nine waited for him to still himself and settle into the touch.
“First, I’m going to show you where the mop is, then I’m going to teach you how to brew Sage’s fancy ass tea, and then you’re going to leave me to my work. Understood?”
Goodang nodded, surprise undisguised on his face.
“Good,” Nine replied with the faintest smirk before schooling his expression back to neutrality. “And by the end of it, hopefully you won’t think I’m some asshole who hits kids.”
“We’re almost the same age,” Goodang forced out, face tilted back down.
“Yet only one of us is crying like a baby.”
Goodang couldn’t help but snicker at that, wiping at his nose with the back of his sleeve. Nine pushed him out of his quarters soon after, shoving a mop into his hands and securing the kettle with a fire protection talisman.
They boiled the water together and Nine taught him how to measure the tea in the way Sage liked it. A couple weeks later, he helped Goodang discover how he liked his own tea, and then proceeded to insult his sweet tooth.
Either way, Nine’s quarters, to the boy's annoyance, became the first place Goodang learned to take shelter in. And what a beautiful feeling it was, to have somewhere to run to instead of somewhere to run from.
The itch didn’t fade as quickly as Goodang would have wanted it to. There were still days he felt like clawing his own skin off at gentle replies to his “catastrophic” mistakes. In a sick and twisted way, he missed the kiss of a switch on his back. Or perhaps he missed the way his sins wafted out his pores in the form of bruise peppered skin. The way blood broke surface tension in a way where he knew the exchange was sufficient; he had given the victims of his mistakes all that he could give.
It took everything Goodang had to rewire his mind to prioritise giving solutions over retribution. Slowly, very slowly, the itch faded. More prominent some days, less on others. But it fizzled out in the end, and spilt tea became nothing more than spilt tea.
Spilt tea and a slipping hazard for JJ.
Nine had never asked him to fight for them, only to stay out of trouble’s way. Now, with the wind whistling in his ears and a soldier's grubby hands tangled in his hair, Goodang wished he knew how to.
“You son of a –” a soldier slammed into Nine before the boy could finish.
She pushed Nine against the mast of the ship, a knife against his neck as she foolishly forgot to restrain his arms. Nine stuck a talisman on her back, the words too far away for Goodang to read, but guessing from how the woman’s clothing erupted into flames, the spell worked. The woman grabbed at her pants, trying to undo her belt as she stumbled to the edge of the ship, throwing herself overboard.
The splash sprinkled droplets onto Goodang’s cheeks and the soldier tightened his hold.
A throwing dagger flew across the air, JJ barrelled into somebody, Sage blew soldiers up into the air, bones breaking as they fell back onto the deck. Meanwhile, all Goodang did was whimper under a man’s unyielding gaze. It didn’t take long for Nine to notice his suffering, shoulders tensing and feet stopping in their tracks as they locked eyes.
Maybe it was the fact that the rest of the soldiers had been taken care of, or maybe it was because Nine had stopped complaining for once, but it didn’t take long for all mouths to fall silent and for all eyes to train onto him. The soldier pressed a dagger deeper into Goodang’s throat. One nervous swallow against the blade, and his skin split open.
“What’s your plan here, dumbass?” Nine asked. He was trying to put on a confident façade, but Goodang could see sweat breaking out against his brow.
“The first step is to ask all you scumbags to put your hands in the air,” the soldier sneered behind him. “The second step depends on how good you are at following orders.”
Nine raised his hands with a groan, a talisman hanging pinched between his ring finger and pinky.
Nine opened his mouth again to speak, Sage cutting him off, stepping forward with flourish. “Mr. Soldier Man, I believe we can come to an agreement if we talk about this over a cup of tasty jasmine tea.”
The man barked laughter, “The sultan will give me more than just jasmine tea when I return this runt to where he came from.” Goodang couldn’t help the tears that welled in the corners of his eyes.
“I’ll add in some biscuits too then! I doubt the sultan has my special recipe.” Sage raised a brow.
Nadya dropped her head from where she stood behind the dragon.
“Sage, I’m going to beat the shit out of you if you don’t stop talking,” Nine growled.
Goodang heard the soldier clear his throat behind him. “We’ll leave you two to settle all this then.”
Panic took over him and a pitiful mix of whimpers and pleas forced their way past Goodang’s lips.
“No!” Nine called out, causing Goodang to flinch into the blade and the soldier to still in surprise.
Nine took a deep breath, the talisman in his hand seemed to have grown longer somehow, “Please, for the love of gods, let Nadya say her goodbyes first. She won’t shut up otherwise.”
Nadya looked up towards Nine with a furrowed brow, her face settling as she caught onto something.
JJ nodded, catching Nine’s eye, “She won’t stop crying, and then we’ll have to catch up to your ship and get Goodang back for her to stop sobbing all day, and –”
“Fine, fine! Say your goodbyes. But a step closer, and I slit the boy’s throat.”
Nadya cleared her throat, looking around Sage to catch Goodang’s eye. The boy couldn’t stop his lips from trembling. “Sage, can you step away so I can see Goodang, please?”
Sage looked back at Nadya with a frown, then to the soldier who nodded, before stepping away.
Nadya took a deep breath with her line of sight cleared, her arms following the rising motion of her chest. Nine twirled his wrist. Goodang swallowed the bile rising in his throat.
And then it all happened simultaneously.
Nadya thrusting forward. The whizzing of the dagger in the air. The hand around Goodang’s throat going slack. The yell he later realised was his own.
Goodang covered his ears as he dropped to the ground beside the now fallen soldier. A peek through the slits in his fingers showed blood pooling around the dead man's head, trickling slowly out of a wound caused by a fishbone knife and staining the talisman it skewered on its way to its target.
Goodang didn’t have to read the inscription to recognise it; one of Nine’s talismans that made every sword hit its mark and every arrow pierce its target.
He buried his face back into his hands as he inched away from the growing pool of crimson.
JJ was the one who tore him away from the ground and pressed Goodang’s face into his chest. He was the one to have mumbled “sorry”’s, promising he would have warned him if he could.
Sage made him tea. Nadya helped him patch up the thin split on his throat.
Nine didn’t talk to him for the rest of the day, but when Goodang had nightmares of blood and harsh words fired with spit, the boy sat with him through the entirety of the night.
All Nine said about the incident was: “I would have blinded your view if I could’ve.”
Goodang smiled in response. The muscles in his cheeks tugged at the wound on his neck. He had never been someone worth protecting before. “Thank you, Nine.”
Nine nodded, and the stars shone brighter when he started to point out the constellations.
It felt like his kneecaps were being peeled off with a pry bar. Like Goodang’s bone marrow had a chisel and was slowly carving its way out. Exploding inside out, fractals and shards implanting themselves into tendons so that every time he bent his legs, his nerves would squelch around the splinters.
It really should be bleeding, Goodang thought. Like, if he pressed down on the skin where it hurt, his finger should dig into flesh and bubble forth red.
“I think I threw up a little,” is what JJ had said when he’d told him that. But to Goodang, blood would mean the world. Proof that the pain was there. He would gladly take a scalpel to his leg if it meant others could hear his muscles scream.
“If we cut off his legs, perhaps better ones will grow in place!” Sage raised their finger.
“Captain, I don’t think humans work that way,” JJ corrected from behind him. He had claimed he gave the best shoulder rubs in the entire archipelago and that they could relieve any pains. Goodang was too afraid to tell him the pain was in his legs and not in his shoulders, especially since JJ had been toiling away for the past half an hour.
Goodang sucked in a breath as Nadya transferred her cool metal hand from one knee to the other. They didn’t have ice packs, so this was the next best thing. “Sorry Goodang,” she whispered, cupping his cheek with her free hand. Goodang couldn’t help but melt into it, closing his eyes with a sigh as he tried to ignore his body.
“What if we dip his legs into the sea and let barnacles suck away his pain?” Sage exclaimed.
Nine sighed from where he was crouched over with a mortar and pestle. Goodang winced at the suggestion.
“How would that help, Sage?” Nadya looked over her shoulder.
Sage opened their mouth to answer, thinking for a moment before shutting it again and shrugging. “Just an idea.”
Nine let out a loud sigh. “That’s enough, all of you, out.”
“But –” JJ started to complain as Goodang pushed himself up.
“Everyone, out,” Nine repeated, resolute. “All of you except Goodang.”
Goodang turned his head to see Nine’s furrowed brow and lowered himself back onto his pile of pillows.
“Me too?” Nadya switched her chilled hand onto Goodang’s other knee.
Nine grit his teeth, “All of you.”
JJ stopped rubbing his shoulders and the crew shared a look before they filed out, leaving behind Goodang, Nine, and a heavy silence in their wake. Goodang shifted uncomfortably as Nine turned back to crushing up a mix of herbs.
The sound would have been comforting had it not been for the tension that surrounded it. He would have pulled his knees up to his chest if they didn’t hurt so bad.
Nine cleared his throat and a little bit of the tension dissipated. “It would have been easier to source these herbs if you’d told us of your condition beforehand.”
Goodang looked away.
“Would have also made it easier to prepare this in bulk and shelve it for later, Goodang.”
“I could do it myself, if you taught me,” Goodang mumbled.
Nine looked up. “Unless you’re secretly a scholar, one demonstration isn’t going to do shit. This is medicine, Goodang, not arts and crafts.”
Goodang met his gaze to see pursed lips join his furrowed brow, painting a familiar picture of disappointment.
“I’m sorry,” Goodang said simply.
“That’s not what I need, dumbass.” Nine returned to his work.
“Then, what do you… need from me?” Goodang couldn’t tell if the sweat he smelled came from his own tensed body, or from a distant memory of unending toils and sunburnt skin.
Nine looked him up and down.
“I need you to tell your crew of any debilitating health conditions that will keep you bound to your hammock,” Nine huffed, looking away. “And I need you to calm the fuck down.”
“Flare ups don’t happen that often,” Goodang insisted. “I can still work.”
“You can’t stand,” Nine scoffed.
“I can crawl.”
“I just watched Nadya shift your knees back and forth like cut up Nomura’s jellyfish.”
“I can drag myself–” Goodang shut up when Nine slammed his mortar and pestle onto the wooden floorboards. The boy took a couple deep breaths before he calmed his voice enough to answer.
“That’s not what I need from you.”
Silence stretched long and thin, hanging in the air, unable to be cut through. All Goodang could hear was his own loud breathing, and the rapid beating of his heart.
“Why do you think I stand on Nadya’s right during a fight?” Nine continued. Goodang shook his head. “If her prosthetic malfunctions, I’ll be there to cover her.” He scooped out the crushed paste and smacked it into a bowl filled with water. Droplets hit the walls at his force, and more water bubbled over as he mixed furiously.
“Why do you think I keep JJ as far away from blood as I can? And why I keep Sage’s favourite food stocked even though everyone else fucking hates it?” The words were left unsaid, but they flitted across the air and Goodang grabbed them with sweaty palms and held them to his chest. I care.
Nine stood up, still mixing, and crouched down at Goodang’s side. He handed him the bowl of green slush and raised it to his lips.
Goodang turned his head away. “What is it?”
“Poison.”
“Nine…”
“It’s kraton, and a bunch of other shit to help relieve the pain,” Nine rolled his eyes.
“Kraton? Like the drug?”
“Why do you think I didn’t let your inexperienced ass do this?”
Goodang turned back to the green sludge, getting a whiff of peppermint and something worse it was clearly trying to mask. Before he could process any of it, Nine tipped back the bowl and hit the front of Goodang’s teeth, forcing his mouth open and his throat to swallow.
“Drink it all in one go,” Nine raised to his knees as he pushed the bowl further into Goodang’s face.
Bitter sludge slid easily down his throat, sticking to the roof of his mouth in a way that made Goodang momentarily forget his pain to focus on not throwing it all back up.
Nine pulled the bowl away as soon as he finished and held Goodang’s palm steady over his own mouth.
“I would have warned you about the taste if you weren’t being such a dumbass.”
The pain started to fade in ten minutes. An hour later, Goodang could bend his knees. Two hours passed and he couldn’t remember the last time he felt so free of pain.
Nine stayed beside him for the next couple days, his eyes never leaving Goodang’s frame. He checked Goodang’s pulse, his pupils, the colour of his skin. He checked them way more than he needed to.
Nine claimed that when Goodang went to sleep, so did he. But when Goodang’s flare up ended two days later, and he no longer needed regular doses of kraton, Nine collapsed into his hammock and slept for thirteen hours straight.
The words were left unsaid, but Goodang could hear them in every checkup Nine subjected him to. Goodang could hear them in the way Nine doted on him, in the jars he brought to keep his medicine stocked, at the base of the kraton-stained mortar that Nine toiled over as soon as he awoke from his nap.
The words swirled around the relieved sighs the boy let out at Goodang’s confirmations of health. They echoed in the closed gap between his pulse and Nine’s thumb. In the way he never felt pain that intense on the ship ever again.
Nine brought him soup that night. He woke Goodang up and propped his back against a pillow. There was a kettle he kept in a corner of his room, a frilled string hung off its handle with a talisman attached to the end of it. Nine’s “sick soup kettle” the crew called it. Warm broth with chunks of cooked fish. It helped. Nine retreated wordlessly afterwards, laying Goodang back down and collecting their empty bowls as he left. Goodang heard it then too, as Nine closed the door and the wind whistled words between the narrowing gap.
I care.
Goodang stood facing away from the mirror, his shirt in hand and a sweaty mass of bandages wrapped around his torso. He couldn’t hide it forever, he knew that. But just a little while longer. Maybe until the crew had fully warmed up to him.
He dropped his shirt to the floor with a heavy sigh and tugged at the bandages wrapped tightly around his chest. Hooking a finger under the fibre, Goodang pulled free the knot holding it all together. The bandages unravelled and fell to the floor with a smack and suddenly he could breathe again.
Lungs expanding and ribs creaking, the boy greedily swallowed air. The room smelled like petrichor and salt, the air was fresher than what he had been used to with the sultan. It all hit him with a smile and aching relief.
So simple yet so heavy the difference between freedom and being strangled by his own will.
The only problem was the bile that rose in his throat when he spun around to greet the mirror.
Logically, he knew that he wasn’t fully a boy and also that being a boy didn’t mean he had to have a flat chest, but he also knew that other people didn’t share the same thoughts. And Goodang would rather be viewed as a boy than as a girl.
Goodang let out a sigh and averted his eyes to the little cabinet below the mirror. He slid open the drawer and stuck his hand in to grab another roll of gauze. His fingers met nothing but wood. Goodang frowned and bent down. He pulled the cabinet further open and stuck his entire arm in. Nothing.
“Fuck,” Goodang muttered, dropping his head.
He tried to reach for his discarded bandages but the sweaty gauze had already stretched out and ripped in so many places that the simple act of unwinding it had rendered it useless. He would have to leave his and JJ’s shared cabin to look for more.
He let out another dramatic sigh before throwing on layers and layers of clothes to venture outside.
Creeping around corners and hiding until people passed by didn’t do him any good at finding more bandages. In fact, it only made him sweaty and red in the face with nothing to show for it. He was bound to get caught eventually, and Goodang would have bet money it was going to be either Nadya or Nine.
In the end, it was not checking his back what got him caught.
Goodang peeked around a corner and jumped at the voice coming from above.
“What are you hiding?” Nine clung to the corner and peeked around right above Goodang, creating a totem pole of dumbasses.
The boy yelped and fell to the floor, spinning around to see Nine looming above him. Goodang wrapped his arms around his chest; whether to protect or to hide, not even he was sure.
“What are you hiding?” Nine repeated.
“Nothing!”
“You have that expression on your face.”
“What expression?”
“That expression you get when you’re lying,” Nine crossed his arms.
Goodang blew out a breath, “I was just looking for something.”
“Something the rest of us aren’t supposed to know about.” It wasn’t even a question, Nine was simply stating a fact.
“No, no. Nothing like that. It’s just something a little private.”
Nine scoffed, “More like something secret.”
Goodang didn’t reply to that.
“What are you looking for, Goodang?”
Goodang tipped his head back and closed his eyes with a sigh. “Bandages.”
Nine’s smile fell and his raised brow faltered. “Why?”
“... For something a little private.”
It was Nine’s turn to sigh. “Goodang, I swear to all the gods, that is what you said before your knees gave out, and if this is something even remotely similar, I’m going to break your knees myself this time.”
Goodang’s eyes shot to look up at him and Nine shook his head. He reached out a hand and pulled the boy up off the floor.
Nine pulled too hard on Goodang’s hand and the boy shot up with a start, parts of his clothing falling off his shoulders. It wasn’t enough to reveal bare skin, but more than enough to reveal the bulge of his chest.
Nine squinted his eyes. Goodang pulled away. He frantically piled his clothes onto his shoulders, but the fabrics inched down his trembling frame. There was a knife in his chest he wanted to pull out and pin his clothes to his chest with, but the blade had dug in too far and Nine’s understanding gaze only twisted it further in.
Nine stood up straighter. “Goodang, you look like you’re overheating, you should take off a couple layers.”
“Overheating? No, no, not at all. In fact I’m freezing cold,” he chuckled, red and sweating.
“Then let me get you some bandages.”
“Nine, don’t –” Goodang started, but the boy had already walked halfway down the hall. A glare over his shoulder was enough to make Goodang trail along like a guilty puppy.
Nine closed the door when they reached his quarters. “I have something that will help.”
Goodang watched as he dug around his drawers, drawing his arms to his chest, “Nine, please, don’t tell the others.”
“I have more important things to do than to tell my crew you have tits,” Nine scoffed.
Goodang went red and Nine rolled his eyes, then he pulled out a beige undershirt, tossing it over to Goodang.
“Put this on.”
Goodang’s face scrunched in confusion before he moved to pull it over his head.
“Not like that, dumbass!” Nine stopped him. “It’s an undershirt, it goes under your clothes.”
Goodang turned to him, “You want me to put it on in front of you?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m just here to pull it off when your dumbass inevitably gets stuck in it.”
“Can you turn around, at least?”
Nine wordlessly turned around to face the wall, and Goodang waited to check if he’d stay that way before chucking off multiple tunics and trying to fit the undershirt over his head.
“What’s this even supposed to do?” Goodang squirmed.
“It does what you’ve been trying to do with those bandages.” Nine huffed. “But it does it in a way that doesn’t pulverise your fucking ribs.”
Goodang stopped writhing, “It… flattens?”
Nine hummed, crossing his arms.
“Why do you even have this?”
“Take a wild fucking guess, Goodang.”
“Oh! You?”
“Didn’t know we had a genius on this ship.” And even though he was turned around, Goodang could see the smirk on Nine’s face.
He tried to get the undergarment to fit over his chest, but the fabric was too small to wrap around the shape of his body. Goodang turned around with a defeated grunt. “It won’t fit.”
“I’m not surprised. Turn around.”
“I did.”
A moment passed before Nine’s footsteps padded first away from Goodang, then towards him. The boy pressed a hand on the small of his back then reached over with a piece of charcoal to mark points under Goodang’s armpits.
Goodang jumped. “What are you doing?”
“Marking.”
“I can see that,” Goodang frowned. “What for?”
A pause. “I don’t need this anymore. I’m giving it to you.”
“It doesn’t fit.”
“Do you always state the obvious, Goodang?”
The rough fabric pinched at his skin and Nine’s attitude was getting too much. “Do you always speak like you forgot the other half of your sentence?”
Nine chuckled as he put down the charcoal, “Finally some spine.”
“Yeah, and it’s starting to hurt, too. So, please help me out of this?”
Goodang raised his arms and Nine pulled off the undergarment in one fell swoop.
“Hold,” Nine reached around and handed him a roll of bandages. “Pass it on.” Nine reached over his other side.
The two worked together to wrap the bandages around Goodang’s chest, a battle of Goodang constantly trying to tighten them as Nine loosened them with every round. Finally they had a layer they compromised on, and Goodang spun around.
Nine held the undergarment up with one finger, “Expect this by tomorrow. It’ll be on your hammock. Don’t let JJ see.”
“Thank you,” Goodang smiled. “Thank you.”
“Don’t make it awkward.”
“Yes, of course not,” Goodang straightened. “Do you… have any left for yourself?” He pointed at the undergarment hanging off Nine’s finger.
Nine tugged at his collar, pulling his button up down to reveal the scarred skin of his chest. Two identical – albeit shoddily made – cuts ran under his nipples, nearly touching. “I don’t need them anymore.”
“You can cut them off?” Goodang gasped.
“Nadya got her hand cut off, and I’m starting to think Sage cut out their brains, so, yes, you can cut off your chest, Goodang.”
“Who did yours?”
“A body modifying medic not far from here. We’ll visit her if you stop using bandages and start using this,” he held up the undergarment again.
Goodang’s hands went to his now flatter chest, closing his eyes and running his fingers up and down his skin. “I will.”
“Good.” Goodang opened his eyes to see Nine nod. “Now leave, I have work to do.”
Goodang couldn’t even find it in him to anger at Nine’s tone. “Thank you.” He turned to leave, hand freezing over the doorknob. He turned back around. “Nine, I’m not a boy, I think you should know.”
“You can be whatever the fuck you want to be, I don’t care.” From anyone else, that would’ve sounded like an insult. From Nine, Goodang knew it was the full extent of his emotionally constipated empathy. “The rest of the crew doesn’t care either, Goodang. Tell us what to call you, and it’ll take less than a day for us to adjust.”
Something fluttered in his chest, and Goodang was sure it had nothing to do with the cries of his ribs or the knife in his heart. This flutter was warm, like tea after a storm, like getting used to JJ’s snores.
“You can still call me ‘he’, just don’t call me a boy, please.”
“Tell me if that changes,” Nine replied. “And get out of my room.”
Goodang turned the doorknob and left smiling. The undergarment appeared on his hammock that very night. It fit his chest perfectly and applied even pressure unlike the bandages he’d spent his whole life in.
Two more modified undergarments appeared a couple days later. Made with patchworks of yellow, black and purple, they stood out against his tanned skin like a fish on land, but he loved them either way.
It took him a little longer to admit to JJ where the discarded bandages on the floor really came from. But when he did, he got a similar reply of support and the ability to sleep without his undergarment.
Telling Nadya and Sage became easier after half the crew knew. Nine took him to the medic a couple months later.
He touched his chest after it had healed, and silently thanked Nine for catching him that day he’d looked for bandages. Goodang had settled into his skin now, and if it took a little bit of ripping it apart to crawl into flesh, then so be it. He was learning his body was his own.
Goodang shot up from his nightmare so fast, his hammock flipped upside down and dumped him onto the floor. His foot hooked onto JJ’s hammock below as he tumbled face forward into dust.
JJ groaned loudly at the disruption. If it was to the thump of Goodang’s body hitting the floor, or the fact that his toes had grazed JJ’s cheek as he pried them away from his roommate's hammock, Goodang didn’t know. With the shame of waking up his roommate with something as childish as a nightmare, and his heart still thumping from the memories, instinct kicked in and he scrambled out the room.
JJ groaned, smacked his lips, then went back to sleep.
Goodang didn’t even bother to shut the door before he made a dash for the deck. The cool night air hit his face as he ran up the steps, and the goosebumps that formed on his arms felt polar opposite from his sweat slicked skin. The stench of fish stuck to the back of his throat as he took a deep breath. What would’ve disgusted him mere months ago now reminded him of home.
“Nightmare?”
Goodang jumped, spinning around to find Nine dangling his legs through the railing of the ship. His breath hitched before he could answer properly, and he nodded instead.
Nine chewed at the inside of his cheek then turned back to gaze at the sea.
“Me too.”
Thick sleep ran away in an instant. The boy who Goodang had started to convince himself had been born with his lips stitched shut and his heart removed had just admitted to weakness. He steeled himself before creeping over and slotting himself beside Nine. Droplets of seawater from waves crashing against the hull sprayed the bottom of his bare feet.
“I didn’t know you had them too.”
“Everyone has nightmares, dumbass,” Nine scoffed.
Goodang shrugged, “I guess.” Silence stretched before he added, “It sometimes feels like I have more than normal people.”
Nine hesitated before asking, “What are yours about?”
Goodang kicked his legs back and forth, feet thumping to the rhythm of the rocking ship. Nine crossed his legs as much as he could with a wooden beam between them and pressed his feet close to the hull.
“Mostly, I’m back there,” Goodang admitted. “And my back hurts again. The sun is too bright and there’s sweat on my palms.” He inhaled salty air before he continued. “There’s always more to lift and carry, and he’s angry that my sweat gets into his rice, but he won’t let me clean myself, and he just keeps getting angrier and angrier until I wake up,” Goodang said in one breath.
Goodang sighed as he leaned forward to press his forehead against the wooden railing. Nine turned to him, breaking away from gnawing at the inside of his cheek to respond.
“Who does he think you are, that bastard?”
“I have superhuman strength, Nine.”
Nine unfurled his legs and kicked at Goodang’s foot. “I also watched you trip over your own foot yesterday.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” Goodang scowled.
“You also choke on rice, no matter how long we boil it for, and yesterday I watched you get stuck in your own shirt.”
Goodang spun around, “Are you just insulting me now?”
“I’m proving you aren’t superhuman,” Nine smirked.
“I am!” Goodang shot back. “I have more strength than any human in the archipelago.”
“Being strong doesn’t make you superhuman, dumbass. We don’t think so, anyway.”
Nine dropped his forehead against the railing and looked down at his lap to cast a shadow over his face. Goodang turned back to the sea.
“You don’t?”
Nine shook his head against the camphor wood.
Goodang gulped down the knot in his throat. He spoke very slowly, “So, if we’re ever a crew member short, would you divide the work they left behind, or would you accept that I can do more?”
“You’re not a servant, Goodang, and you’re not superhuman.” Nine’s voice came muffled. “Stop flattering yourself, idiot.”
There was a weight in Goodang’s chest he hadn’t even realised he was carrying until it dropped at Nine’s words. As much as the boy insulted everyone in his mile radius, he was also the most honest person Goodang knew. If anyone would tell him the truth, it was Nine.
Goodang smiled. Nine lifted his head to turn to him, and Goodang could see the faintest glint of tear tracks running down his cheeks. His jaw parted and he snapped it shut before turning again to stare at the sea. It had always been Nine consoling him, and Goodang didn’t know what to make of the boy’s newfound candour.
“So,” he cleared his throat. “What was yours about?”
Nine didn’t respond.
“Your nightmare, I mean,” Goodang clarified.
“I know what you mean.”
Goodang didn’t respond to that, letting the silence grow between them as the night air whistled through the ship’s lattice ropes. At some point a school of fish leaped out the water in rippling patterns and moonlight reflected off their backs. They fell back into the water without a splash, so Goodang was fairly certain that the droplets falling from the railings into the sea were Nine’s doing. He didn’t comment on them, and he held his breath when the boy wiped his face on his sleeve.
Not many things scared Nine away, but acknowledging his weakness was one of them. So, Goodang remained silent until Nine’s lips cleared of stifled sobs and the shine of his eyes didn’t fall down his face.
“If you betray me, I’ll kill you, Goodang.”
“Okay,” Goodang nodded.
“I’ll kill all of you.”
“Okay.”
Nine spun around, “What do you mean ‘okay’? What kind of response is that, asshole?”
Goodang swallowed his panic and forced himself to shrug. “I mean, if I ever betray you enough to make you thirst for my blood, you are allowed to kill me.”
“I don’t need your permission.”
“You don’t,” Goodang nodded. “But you have it.”
Nine scoffed and turned back around. Goodang let him brood for a while before speaking again.
“I’m serious, Nine.”
“You’re fucking stupid.”
Goodang didn’t respond to that. Seagulls cawed above.
“You plan to betray me then? You’re just like everyone else.”
“I’m not like everyone else,” Goodang smiled. “I’m superhuman.”
Nine scoffed. “Bullshit.”
“Maybe. But I will be whatever you need me to be to convince you I won’t turn my back on you.”
The boy sniffled at that, his body rattling the railing as he choked down his sobs. Goodang dismantled himself from his spot and inched closer to Nine, slotting one of his legs into the same gap as one of Nine’s.
“You’d be superhuman for me?” Nine sniffled.
Goodang thought for a moment. “No. But I wouldn’t make you be superhuman for me either.”
And that’s what made Nine break down. The dam shattered and Nine hunched over as sobs shook his frame. Goodang threw his arms around him, pulling Nine’s face close to his chest. Nine was miniscule surrounded by his body, and the boy took comfort in burying himself into him.
Goodang didn’t rub Nine’s back or play with his hair like he would’ve with the others. No, Nine did not need nor want such pathetic comforts. Instead, Goodang enveloped the boy and hid all his emotions from everyone beyond their shared cocoon. Goodang’s arms remained firm around him so Nine could lean against them.
Goodang offered strength instead of comfort, because Nine was never one to calm down with a squeeze of the shoulder. Nine was a whirlpool and the ship that defied it. Nine was made of rock and all the diamonds that cut through it. Nine was courage and strength embodied and Goodang refused to offer him empty solace that was against his nature.
This boy who’d climbed to the top with his bare hands did not need kind words to distract him from his pain. No, Nine needed alcohol to clean the cuts on his palms and gauze to soak up the blood, no matter how much it stung. And so Goodang offered him a rock to lean on instead of a pillow to curl into, just as Nine had once ripped open his chest to show Goodang there was more to him than his prickly shell.