I Am The Sea || Choi San

letter

Six nights after the Captain sent a letter to the Pirate King, the Inception is on straight course to the island of the Pearl.
If everything goes according to plan, they should reach its coast within the next two days.
The Pirate King's ship has not been spotted yet. The winds have been kind and strong, and the Inception flew faster than ever over the open sea, carrying the Inception far out of reach of the Pirate King's own vessel.

The sky is dark now, though. The clouds hang low, and even though there is nothing around the Inception for miles and miles on end, it makes everything seem denser. Smaller. Closer.
It's almost night.
When Captain Hongjoong and his crew were still sailing up and down the coast, they could drop the anchor each night, granting every member of the crew a full nights sleep.

But not anymore.
The steering wheel is never unattended. Even through the darkest hours of the night, Hongjoong, Jongho, and Seonghwa take turns to watch over the ship as it glides through the starlit darkness.
The sea never sleeps. Theo doesn't either.
She's awake most hours of the nights, lying in her bed, writing or reading.  Sometimes, San sits by her and they take turns reading from Yeosang's story books.
Sometimes he sings for her.

Tonight, Theo sits atop her bed again, holding Wooyoung's jacket in her hands, patching the holes in its sleeves with her string and needle.
Her door opens and San pokes his head through.
"Theo, I came to find you," he says with his hands clasped behind his back.
Theo looks up at him and the whole rooms seems to fill with a warm golden light.
She's felt like this for a while now. San is warm. San is good.
He's golden. He's the sun.

Theo gently pats the space next to her on the bed and he slips under the blanket, their legs brushing against each other.
"I wanted to talk to you," San says then and leans back against the wall, "Since we're almost at the Pearl..."
Theo watches as he fiddles with his hands beneath the blanket.
"I just-...  None of us know what's going to happen once we get to the island," he says, "I mean, who knows where we're going or what is going to happen, what the future will bring."

Theo had thought about that.
The Pearl grants immense power. The Sea Goddess herself had hid it to keep anyone from finding it, to keep her powers away from greedy and cruel men.
She hid her powers away to stop anyone from abusing them.
Power changes people.
Theo had seen it, had lived it. Her mother couldn't handle all the power she had gained once Theo's father had passed.
Had become a bitter woman, a cruel woman aspiring to be more than she was. 
Stand higher than she did, hungry for more than she possessed.

Would the same fate befall Captain Hongjoong?  Would he become bitter and cruel and hungry for power? Would he fall under the Pearl's imminent spell and become... a monster?

No.
Captain Hongjoong isn't like that man in the story. He wouldn't put his people at risk, he'd never do anything that would hurt them.

"I wanted to give you this," San says now and pulls his hands out from beneath the blanket, "I felt like you needed to have it."
In his hands, he's holding a bottle. The glass is milky and dried algae clings to the surface, but Theo can see very clearly what's inside.
A rolled up piece of parchment paper.
The whole thing is tied up with a red string around the bottle neck.

"I know this bottle," Theo says and takes it into her own fingers. "I saw it in the chest beneath your bed. But-..."
The memories are flooding Theo's mind when she realizes just exactly what she's holding in her hands.
She gasps. "How did you get this?"

San clears his throat.
"About six years after my sister died," he says, "I was in a dark place. My mother was in a hospital, my father became more bitter with every passing day. I took a walk along the harbor and saw a bottle swimming by the docks."
Theo places the bottle onto the blanket and leans in closer to San, taking his arm and placing it around her shoulders.
He presses his lips against her head for a moment, before he continues.
"I fished it out of the water and opened it right there on the docks of the harbor. It was signed T. C. For the longest time, I was trying to figure out where this letter had come from and who had written it. It was only when I met you, when you told us about your past, that I understood. It was you who wrote that letter and somehow it had found its way to me."