Eui-jae lay stretched out on the shadowed floor. Beside him, Ga-eul sat cross-legged and placed her hand on his chest. Soon, her palm began to shimmer, stained with countless hues.
Eui-jae closed his eyes. Yet even with his eyes shut, the darkness behind his eyelids was instantly awash with a kaleidoscope of colors. His consciousness drifted, fading further and further until something heavy landed squarely on his solar plexus.
"Ugh?"
"H-hey, Kkokko, no!"
Summoning superhuman effort, Eui-jae cracked open his dimming eyes. Perched like a stubborn boulder, the round little Kkokko had settled itself right on his chest. 'Get off, you little brat…' he thought, but before he could speak,
Thud.
Darkness swallowed his vision.
***
He didn't know how much time had passed, but suddenly light surged back. Before him stretched a sea of pure white, ash drifting across its waves. And there, at the edge of the pallid tide, stood a man in a black coat, like a drop of ink spilled on snow.
Even without seeing his face, Eui-jae knew.
It was Lee Sa-young.
Joy welled in his chest. He opened his mouth to call out, but
"Kh—!"
The weight pressing down on his chest grew heavier. No voice emerged, only a strangled gasp. 'Damn that Kkokko!' Eui-jae flailed weakly at his own torso, but his vision only blurred further. The bird didn't budge, crushing the breath from him.
'Damn it…!'
His consciousness slipped away once more. Like ink bleeding into water, Lee Sa-young's form dissolved, receding from sight. Desperate, Eui-jae clung to the image, fixing Sa-yeong's silhouette deep into his fading gaze. That black figure lingered long after everything else had gone dark.
***
"…Hm?"
Lee Sa-young lifted his head. A breeze passed, tousling his hair. For an instant, he thought he'd heard a voice. A voice that had no reason to exist in this place.
"…"
A hallucination, surely. He dismissed it quickly; to dwell on it would only invite longing.
With a careless sweep, he pushed his hair back. Before him stretched the ashen sea, so dulled that even the waves failed to wet his boots. The ash smothered everything: the sound of waves, the hiss of foam retreating, even the whisper of sand being swept away. Nothing remained. Absolute silence .
He hated the sea.
He always had, since childhood.
Sa-young thrust his hands into his coat pockets and closed his eyes.
…His ears throbbed with pressure.
A memory surfaced. Small hands pressing against aching ears, his head turning toward the airplane window. Mountains and sea spread wide beneath the sky. At his side, his mother whispered
"We'll be arriving soon. Sa-young, won't you miss it? We'll have to stay in Korea for a while."
'Miss it? Never.'
His parents had been businesspeople. What business, he never really knew. Only later did he realize how comfortable his childhood must have been. He could have searched for answers, but he hadn't cared. Inheritance didn't interest him, nor the dead who left it behind. If not for J, perhaps he would have dug through the remnants of his family. But once he met J, the past lost all meaning. The moment J took his hand, the world rewrote itself.
His parents had traveled constantly, always dragging their only child along.
"Better he experiences much while still young"
They'd say. The trips varied. Sometimes a week, sometimes a month, sometimes longer. But Sa-young hated it. He only wanted to stay somewhere, anywhere, long enough to belong.
And the sea… He hated the sea, because whenever he saw it, it meant leaving home again.
So when he heard they wouldn't be traveling abroad for a while, he'd secretly rejoiced.
He remembered his father's blurred face as he stashed the suitcase into the balcony closet.
"…"
"For a while, Korea will be safer than abroad. Every nation protects its own first. Embassies won't matter. Monsters don't discriminate between consulates."
"Right, and Korea has S-class Awakeners, doesn't it?"
"Of course. Much safer."
"For Sa-young's sake too…"
They never dreamed that their treasured home, or themselves, would be swallowed by a rift.
The house sank into a swamp of venom; the floor melted in an instant. Screams rose all around. His parents clutched him tightly, scrambling onto the marble dining table. But even that thick pedestal yielded to the acid, corroding beneath them. His skin seared where droplets splashed, but sharper than the pain was one thought:
'I'll never see them again. My parents.'
Meeting J had been a miracle.
Sa-young had known of J long before. Turn on the TV, and there he was, slaying monsters, closing dungeons, sealing rifts. J wasn't human, not really. He was a god forged from humanity's collective hope. Limitless, untouchable.
Yet that "god" had grasped his hand and pulled him from hell. A human hand, warm and real.
…And J, strangely enough, was talkative. Even before a mute, near-mummified boy, he spoke freely, filling the silence with stories. Perhaps, in hindsight, it was loneliness. He was barely twenty, an age to laugh with friends and waste time. But he was a hero, forever masked. Maybe with someone who couldn't respond, he felt freer. Like talking to a doll.
It didn't matter. Sa-young had liked his voice. Through the endless agony, listening to J chatter, imagining his expressions, catching glimpses through blurred sight that had been his only solace.
One day, J had asked:
"Ever been to the sea?"
A ridiculous question. Did he take him for some country bumpkin? Sa-yeong had rolled his eyes, or tried to. Catching his irritation, J hurried to explain.
"Not teasing you. I was thinking… once you recover, we could go."
And then he rambled again, about battling a Kraken, or maybe just a giant squid, off Gangneung, about the size of its suction cups, about how beautiful the water had looked. Then, softly, he'd said:
"It was beautiful there. Let's go together, when you're better."
"…"
"If you like the idea, blink."
How grateful he was that he hadn't lost his hearing. He blinked instantly. J's laughter rang out, bright as sunlight.
"That's a promise. Even if you change your mind, I'll carry you there myself."
Their pinkies hooked, thumbs pressed. That warmth, he never forgot.
From that night on, Lee Sa-young had dreamed of the sea. Some might mock him, thinking he'd never even seen it as a child. But sometimes, he remembered, and smiled. Did Cha Eui-jae know? That he had traveled more than Eui-jae, seen more seas than him?
No. He hadn't told him.
And he wouldn't.
Because this… this would be his first time seeing the sea with Cha Eui-jae.
And that was enough.
For once, the sea was beautiful.
***
Crunch. Crunch. Footsteps pressed into the sand.
Sa-young opened his eyes. Hong Ye-seong shuffled toward him, clad in green training clothes.
"Meditating?"
"…"
"No, wait. That face isn't of meditation, it's of daydreaming. Must've been a nice thought."
With a small sigh, Sa-young lifted his gaze skyward. The sweetness of that memory evaporated, gone in an instant. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen blue above. In this dying world, color itself had been stolen.
Hong Ye-seong shrugged.
"Well? Worth the wait?"
"Sooner than I thought. Maybe thanks to the Mackerel…"
The very Mackerel Cha Eui-jae had dragged from the sea himself. Now the man bore scales spreading across his cheeks, webbing between his fingers, gill-like slits along his neck. Yet he clung to humanity still, shouldering the burden of human trials. The Mackerel cooperated, filling even the absent role of the marionette, sometimes carrying the limping Nam Woo-jin on his back.
It was good. The more it cooperated, the faster the vaccines and cures progressed.
"…"
Memories tangled in Sa-young's mind. Some his own, some not. One by one, they entwined, impossible to sort.
Ye-seong turned back, retracing his own footprints from the sand. Sa-young followed.
In a low murmur, he spoke
"This place won't last much longer."