"So, you're saying you heard the voice of the sea monster."
"Yes..." You say hesitantly, Seonghwa nodding encouragingly at you as you spill the beans to San. The healer's face is unreadable, inscrutable as he eyes you silently, fingers drumming over the side of his mug of tea.
"I can vouch for him." Seonghwa speaks up but San shakes his head, setting down his drink with a thunk.
"It's not that I don't believe you, apprentice." San's eyes are unnaturally sharp for such a soft person. He straightens his back, before giving you a pensive glance. "But for you to be able to hear the voice of a sea monster... what could it possibly mean?"
"Perhaps he is blessed similarly to Hongjoong?" Seonghwa suggests. The healer nods thoughtfully.
"That could be the case. We don't know who you were before you lost your memories, so that could well be the answer." San explains, and you frown. You, blessed by a sea god?
"But I can't do that thing captain can... like making the ship move faster." You try to get your point across. Apart from having heard the monstrous beast once, you're not much special anyway else. You have no voodoo magic thing about you, or any control over the wind. Hell, you can barely use a kitchen knife the right side up.
The cook ponders this thoughtfully. "Different people may be blessed different ways. It's always a possibility you can consider-"
"Stowaway?" You jerk to your feet as a new voice comes from the door. There are two men standing in the doorway, much to your surprise. One you recognize, the lookout, Yunho, and the other seems vaguely familiar.
He's at least half a head taller than you, with a rounded face and serious, deep brown eyes. He can't be very old, but the way he carries himself is endearing, like a young boy trying to match up to his older peers.
"Are we interrupting anything, hyungs?" He asks, so seriously that you're almost impressed for a moment. His face is stoic, waiting for a reply so earnestly you immediately feel an almost irrepressible urge to wrap him up in a massive hug and squish his cheeks. He's dressed simply in a sky blue shirt with white strips over a white tee, tucked into black trousers. This seems to be standard clothing for most of the crew.
Ah, you remember where you've seen him before.
When you had been tied up on deck, you'd seen seen him working out on deck, doing an insane number of push ups, lifts, running back and forth the bow and stern until you had gotten tired just from watching him. He didn't seem to exist within normal human limitations, doing sit ups with entire tree trunks or squats with other members of the crew twice his size on his back.
But it was his voice that left an impact on you the most. You had been battling a raging fever, agonizing pain and a terrible loneliness. One night, you had been in despair once again, wondering if you were going to be thrown to the sharks the next day or whether the captain would simply shoot you dead, when you had heard a voice singing.
"Born on the wrong side of the ocean
With all the tides against you
You never thought you'd be much good for anyone
But that's so far from the truth
I know there's pain in your heart
And you're covered in scars
Wish you could see what I do..."
Until now, you still don't know what song it was, but it had lulled you out of your self pity and that night you had slept with a calm mind. Of course, the apple breaking had also helped to amuse you greatly, but the way he had sung, so soulful and with so much emotion, was something you couldn't forget.
You wanted to thank him, but how?
"No, we were just chatting about how our stowaway's cooking is getting better." San smiles, and you whip around to stare at your master in shock so fast it almost gives you whiplash.
"You said my cooking tastes like raw fish innards!" You cry in protest, but the healer simply shrugs. Seonghwa tries to encourage you.
"You have gotten better at using a knife..." He says, smiling so genuinely it almost lifts your spirits for a moment. Then you remember Seonghwa is inherently good and literally not one bad thing can come out of his mouth.
"Your cooking used to taste like rotten fish innards, apprentice." San says with a completely straight face, dodging the roll of bandage that comes sailing at his head with ease. But Yunho chuckles, and you see the teasing smile pulling at the side of your master's mouth.
He's playing with you again. You puff out your cheeks in annoyance, but San merely laughs at you.
"What do you need him for, Yunho?" Seonghwa asks, getting to his feet. The lookout gestures in your direction.
"Hongjoongie-hyung wanted us to teach the stowaway a little combat skill. Hate to break it to you, but no one can live a pirate without at least knowing how to defend yourself." Yunho tosses you a short knife. You barely catch it, fumbling with the leather before gripping it tightly in your hands. You're lucky the blade is wrapped in a sheath, or you'd have chopped off your own fingers.
You turn to San and the healer simply makes a shooing motion with his hands. You give him a dry look.
No touching words of wisdom or encouragement?
He shakes his head.
Nope.
You sulk and turn back to your new teachers. "I'll be in your hands then."
"Do your best!" Seonghwa calls from behind you as the pair lead you to the main deck. Some of the crew give you strange looks, undoubtedly wondering why their stowaway turned healer is with the lookout and their resident opera singer(?), but you ignore them.
"So, stowaway." Yunho begins in some sort of introduction. "I'm Yunho, the lookout and a battlemaster. This kid here," he jerks a thumb at the young man next to him, who immediately eyes his older crewmate with a scowl, "is Jongho, our resident maknae and the other battlemaster of the ship."
"Nice to meet you." Jongho says rather indifferently, looking at everywhere but you. You frown a little at his cold reception.
"Don't worry about Jongho, he's just a little shy around new people." Yunho explains while dodging his junior's fist, as if this is a common occurrence. "He's also the youngest, so he's never really been around anyone younger than him."
You don't really know what your age is, with your lost memories and all, but you are shorter than him, so you suppose that's a fair assumption to make.
"Any questions before we begin?" The lookout asks, pulling a short knife from his belt and twirling it so effortlessly you're already impressed. But you do have a question. Two, actually.
"What's a battlemaster? And why are there two of you?"
"A battlemaster is a person who leads a fighting party during raids. We also train the crew in combat." Yunho tells you. "Jongho is in charge of more... blunt weaponry, while I handle swords and pistols."
"We'll be starting off with determining which combat style you're more suited to." Jongho adds on quietly, reaching for the hem of his shirt, Yunho following suit. You're confused for a moment, until you see the two of them starting to strip their clothes off.
Wait.
Wait.
"Wait!" You screech, shielding your eyes from the sight with your hands. "What are the two of you doing?"
"We're going to be sparring with you, so we don't want our clothes to get dirty from sweat." Yunho sounds a little bewildered, and you hear him moving forward to remove your hand from your eyes. Before he can, you scoot backwards away from his voice...
...only to end up pressing against someone's bare chest.
Help me.
"If it bothers you so much, we'll put our shirts back on." Jongho says gruffly from behind you, and gods help you because his voice is right at your ear and you can feel his chest thrumming against your back with every word he says. He steadies you with his hands before mercifully moving back from you, giving you some much need space and time to remove the flush from your cheeks. You hear the rustle of fabric and sighs from the two men, before Jongho finally gives you the cue to remove your hands.
"We're decent."
Hesitantly, you peek out from between the cracks of your fingers. Both men are dressed in their tees and trousers, overshirts slung over their shoulders.
"Honestly, stowaway, you scream like a woman." Yunho chuckles. All you manage is a weak, little laugh, but you can't help but think how true that statement is.
"Try to lift this." Jongho passes you a wooden club with one hand, and fooled by the ease with which he carries the weapon, you accept it gratefully.
It's heavy.
It also almost smashes your recently healed foot into smithereens.
"Watch out for the club!" The younger battlemaster yelps, snatching the blunt weapon back from you in alarm. You're wheezing, half in fear from your near foot crushing experience and the other half because your arms are screaming in pain.
How on earth did Jongho carry that? It's so heavy that your arms simply could not keep it off the ground. You're still staring at Jongho in wide eyed open awe when he notices you.
"What?" He scowls fiercely, turning away. But you catch the red tinge on his cheeks.
"I would say you are not at all suited to Jongho's usual style of fighting." Yunho smiles amicably, throwing Jongho a sword. To your awe once more, Jongho easily catches it by the handle, flipping it over in his hand as if it is second nature to him. "Jongho will demonstrate a few moves with the cutlass."
Jongho pauses to give his senior a dark look.
"I will?"
"Yes, you will." Yunho eyes his junior with an excited smile and some kind of unspoken argument seems to happen between the two of them. In the end, Jongho sighs in exasperation, a long, heavy exhale and raises the sword.
"I hate the apple trick, so I'm only doing this once, alright?"
You barely have time to ask what the apple trick is before he launches into movement.
The tip of the blade pierces air, a whistling sound as the weapon scythes across mere inches from your nose. He's barely completed a swing before he effortlessly reverses the action, twirling the blade and stabbing forward. Stepping forward, he spins the weapon in hand, executing a perfect downstroke, wielding the cutlass as if it is a natural extension of his own arm. You continue to watch, completely awestruck, as he finishes his demonstration with a final move, leaping high and twirling in midair, before bringing the blade right down on Yunho's head.
You almost scream in shock, but then you see the razor sharp edge slice through an apple that Yunho must have placed on his head during the demonstration. The red fruit splits all the way in half, but the blade stops merely a hair's breadth from Yunho's head.
There's silence for a moment, then a smattering round of applause from the crew that have been watching in respect of Jongho's unparalleled skill.
"So that's all you have to do." Yunho is completely unruffled, tossing you a half of the apple while taking a munch of the other. You stare at him like he's just slapped you in the face.
"That's all?" You repeat incredulously. "That's all?" Your voice starts rising in pitch uncontrollably. "I can't do that! That's crazy! Jongho is too talented!"
The maknae coughs lightly behind his hand, but he sounds pleased.
"I believe in you!" Yunho chirrups, taking another bite of his apple. "I don't think anyone could quite reach Jongho's level, but you should at least try to reach some level of proficiency to defend yourself and your crew mates during battles."
"I know..." You gulp, and Jongho passes you a wooden sword. It's longer than you expected, and slightly heavy. Its handle is modeled after the distinctive hand piece of the cutlass that seem to be standard issue on the pirate ship. You try lifting it. "So... Like this?"
"No, you're holding it the wrong way round, dumbass." Jongho groans, moving to correct your grip while Yunho looks up at the sky for some kind of divine help.
"This might take a while." He mutters to himself with a serene smile.
The rest of your day is spent mastering your grip on the sword, learning a few basic swings and as Yunho loves to say, "Practice, practice, practice." You drill the same movements over and over into your muscles with that single wooden stick so diligently that when night falls and Yunho spares you any more torture, you stumble to the galley with some strange urge in your arms to continue.
"Are you alright?" Seonghwa peers at you as you slump over at the table that he uses to prepare the rations, completely exhausted.
"No." Your words are muffled against the counter top.
The cook gives you a sympathetic smile as he reaches for a bowl, scooping noodles into it. "Yunho and Jongho are hard taskmasters, but they do want the best for you. I'm sure you'll improve by leaps and bounds with their guidance."
"Like I am with cooking?" You offer weakly as Seonghwa sets the noodles and a cup of steaming green tea next to you. The cook pauses to consider that.
"Perhaps not as much." He smiles at you gently and you snort, grabbing the fork.
"Do you fight, Seonghwa-hyung?"
The older man thinks about this for a moment. "Enough to defend myself." He replies thoughtfully, tapping his spoon against his mouth. "I usually use a cutlass if I'm in close combat, but I prefer these."
He points to the cooking knives hanging from his belt and your mouth falls open.
"Hello, hello." Yeosang slides into the kitchen with a spring in his step, a book tucked under his arm and a smile on his face. He must be in a good mood. "Hyung, captain's dinner, please."
"Coming right up."
"Wait... hyung, you mean you use the kitchen knives to prepare food with... to kill people? Isn't that kind of unhygienic?" You babble on, a little grossed out by the fact you may have been eating dried human blood. Seonghwa laughs at your shock as he ladles more noodles into a bowl.
"Don't be silly." He shakes his head, reaching for the seasoning. "I clean my knives very well after every battle."
You turn to the navigator, who's sitting at the table opposite you, reading a thick book with several dog eared pages intently. You peer curiously at the cover.
"A Complete Sum of Names Commonly used in the East and Their Meaning." You read aloud curiously. Yeosang turns to stare at you in surprise.
"You read?"
You don't know whether to be insulted or flattered, so you decided to go with flattered and twist a little smile on your face. "Yes?"
Yeosang must have seen the sour look, because he rushes to explain his words in a more polite manner. "I didn't mean it that way, so I apologise if you feel insulted. It's simply uncommon for most folk to know their letters, so I rather impressed that you could read."
Oh, now you feel a little flattered.
"Well, thanks." You're sure your cheeks are a faint shade of red, but you clap your hands to them to hide it. Yeosang catches sight of it and merely laughs gently.
Seonghwa comes over to the two of you, holding the bowl of noodles in one hand and two slender pieces of wood in the other, passing them to Yeosang. The navigator beams at the two of you and turns to leave, but just as he does, there's a sound of a massive thunderclap and the ship momentarily heels to the right.
Agile and surefooted, Yeosang manages to keep his balance and Seonghwa even saves your bowl of noodles from toppling to the ground.
The three of you stare at each other in wide eyed shock. There's a moment of silence... and then the frantic ringing of a bell breaks the calm of the night.
Seonghwa and Yeosang react immediately, the navigator slamming the bowl of noodles down on the table as the two rise to their feet with an urgency so different from their usual calm selves. They remind you of hawks in the moment, eyes narrowed and every muscle tensed for action. The tension is palpable.
You don't know what the alarm is about, but it can't be good if they reacted this way. You glance at the two men worriedly.
"What's happening?"
Yeosang flinches and opens his mouth to speak, but your question is answered by Mingi's bellow from the main deck, echoing all the way into the kitchen.
"Royal Navy! Royal Navy to the south!"