Long Journey || ATEEZ

Summertime Raid

And so, like that, a month or so passed, and the sun and temperature only got hotter as the days and weeks progressed.

And like that, finally, the time for the pirates to leave came around.

The ATINY was all patched up; Hongjoong and his crew had gathered enough supplies to take for a long journey at sea. Hyacinth had given them the map, and the pirates were all ready to leave on their quest to find treasure.

"Well then, I guess it's goodbye," Hyacinth said to Hongjoong, Seonghwa and San, with an air of finality as she placed her hands on her hips.

"It is," Hongjoong agreed, glancing at the horizon and the sun rising from beneath, making the sky glow with deep reds, oranges and yellows. "So...goodbye," he said. "And thanks. For everything."

The captain held his hand out to shake, but Hyacinth merely shrugged, smirked and spread her arms out wide.

"Farewell dear pirates, go make me rich!" she declared. Hongjoong chuckled, before raising up his hand in one final goodbye. Seonghwa smiled, nodded his head in farewell.

"Aw, we're gonna miss you," San said, pulling Hyacinth into a hug as the captain and the first mate started to make their way over to the gangplank, where the rest of the crew aboard the ATINY awaited.

"The only thing I'll miss is my money," she shrugged. San smirked as he saw her aura go an olive-green. "WHICH," she added, "I won't be getting if you don't leave. So hurry up – shoo!" she said, laughing as she gently shoved San over in the direction of the ship, her aura changing back to a sunny yellow, tinged with only a bloom of orange wistfulness. Seonghwa-hyung and Hongjoongie-hyung were already on the gangplank, heading onto the ship; it was just San left on land now. Grinning and laughing heartily as he made his way over to the gangplank, he turned one final time to wave goodbye, when he froze.

Hyacinth's aura had been yellow.

Now it was black.

San hurried over, worry flooding his eyes as he approached Cin, who had thrown herself forwards to catch a groaning body on the floor. He stopped in his tracks, realising it was Jo, but it was the expression he saw on her face that made his blood run cold.

It was terrified.

He should have been able to tell already from the black aura swirling and twisting inside her chest area, but for all these months they'd spent in Kansadia, he had come to believe that Hyacinth was not capable of feeling fear.

Yet here they were, her eyes wide, pupils dilated inside an island of sharp purple, her mouth poised slightly open as she frantically tried to shake Jo awake, her face paler than San had ever seen it. When Jo's eyes didn't open, she turned, a wild look in her eye.

"Medic!" she yelled, panic raising her tone. "Get a fucking medic!"

San jolted back into action, startled by her harsh, yet frantic tone of voice and sprinted back to the ship.

"Hyung, hyung!" he cried as he leapt onto the deck. "Hongjoongie-hyung, where's Juyeong-hyung gone?! We need a medic!"

"He's in the infirmary – what's going on?"

"It's Jo – he just—" San ran his fingers through his hair in anxious frustration. "I don't know!"

And with an anguished expression painting his face, he rushed over to the infirmary, practically jumping down the ladder leading below-deck, and disappeared.

Hongjoong watched him go, unnerved, and rushed off the ATINY back onto land.

"Cin?! What's the matter?" Hongjoong called as he rushed over, before gasping in surprise at the amount of blood pooling on the floor, surrounding the pair in a halo of scarlet. "Wh-what's going on...?"