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In Every Life I've Lived: (6) The Sea For Green Fields / Part One.
Title: (6) The Sea For Green Fields PART ONE
Pairing: Yamapi/Jin, Koyama/Shige
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU. Sex, supernatural, disturbing content.
Summary: This fic was written over the course of 24 hours for the JE Valentine's Day challenge. It is meant to follow on from my AU fic 'In Every Life I've Lived', which is here. It can be read on its own, but it'll make a lot more sense if you're familiar with the original fic.
A year passes unevenly, enough time for them to enjoy each other but not enough to make them forget. Too much is happening around them for Yamapi and Jin to feel truly at ease, and in a way this peppers the sex and the eating and the joyous, joyous drinking with a kind of urgency, a kind of desperate need. In the middle of the night, in dark and dingy rooms, they feel a frantic desire to be so close to one another that nothing can come between them, ever again. Yamapi remembers saying that Jin could have his heart – in the middle of the night, it's like Jin tries to take it, but he can't, quite.
When he takes his shirt off, Yamapi sometimes looks at the circular scar on his chest. Sometimes. When he can. Most of the time, he doesn't, he pushes it to the back of his mind. So difficult to look at somebody you love and see the scars of your affection worn into their flesh. So difficult to look at Jin and see the path they could have chosen to take: the one that would have allowed Jin to remain whole. So difficult to see him and to know that everything could have been different. Yamapi feels guilty for feelings like these because Jin is alive, and that should be all that matters.
Their steps are uneasy as they saunter back, full of wine and music and hunger, nagging away in the background. The sterile fields are behind them and they don't think about the threat of famine, the few family and friends that they have left who may just be about to starve. Nobody thinks about that. They pray and they wring their hands and they beg for a solution. Yamapi and Jin do something different, something untouchable and strange, something only they truly understand.
They push over the chair as they break into the room, and they don't bother lighting the lamps. That'd take too long, and there's not enough time for anything, not enough time to breathe – Yamapi's hair in Jin's hands and the two of them, pressed so hard that the wall is almost a part of them. Jin's always horny when he's drunk, Yamapi's noticed. Jin's horny most of the time, which works for Yamapi. He pushes against Yamapi, a knee between his thighs, and before Yamapi knows it his trousers are undone and he has to kick his boots off because Jin's trampling all over them trying to get closer and closer and closer.
Yamapi presses his palms into Jin's cheeks and he whispers something, lost against Jin's mouth to the faint tang of plum wine. Not proper stuff, the cheap stuff, the hard, sharp stuff. Jin likes the hard stuff. Jin likes the hard side of life: he's got his hand around Yamapi's cock and he's stroking, even though there's no slide, just friction, and it hurts until it feels good. Yamapi waits for that, kissing and kissing until the ache goes away, and then he closes his eyes and mutters, 'yes'.
They end up on the bed in a tumble, somebody took a step without warning. The bed is strewn with paper and maps and the remainder of an apple, but neither of them care. Jin pushes at the piles of it as Yamapi yanks his trousers off, the boots too, the shirt Jin manages himself. Yamapi can barely see him in the dark, can't see the mark on his chest, and he's glad for it because one of these days he'll say what he always wants to say when he catches sight of it-
“I want-” Jin says, drawing Yamapi closer to him, between his legs so that Yamapi leans down over him. And without knowing or understanding why, it's just not right, just not quite right, not until Yamapi turns Jin over. The height of the bed is enough, the line of Jin's hips is enough, and Yamapi uses whatever he can find in the drawer by the bed and doesn't ask Jin if it's alright, first. He listens until Jin makes a submissive sound in his throat, and then he knows for sure.
When he fucks him, it happens slowly, a bit strange. Not the way it usually happens. Yamapi leans over Jin and holds his wrists flat to the bed, his chest against Jin's back, his mouth at the back of Jin's neck. Jin extends his chin and makes little sounds, his throat dented, the sounds jarred and alien. He's saying Yamapi's name but it comes out differently, like he's a different person, and Yamapi's not sure how he feels about that, but he doesn't stop. He can't see the scar, and that's all that seems to matter in his mind.
Somehow, it's as if the pleasure of it isn't connecting. As if he feels it, a dull ache in his groin, rather than something attached to him, rather than something he governs and controls. Jin makes noises that suggest he feels differently, but Yamapi just feels detached. Unsure, no longer drunk, no longer anything – his head full of clouds and empty spaces. He doesn't make a sound. In his head, he makes noises of pleasure, he asks for more, he takes and he needs and he fucks, hard and fast and desperate as always, but in the cold, dark room he says nothing. Jin dictates the pace, pushing back harder than Yamapi pushes forwards. After a while, Yamapi realises that he's doing it for the friction the bedsheets afford, tilting his hips downwards, chasing a solitary pleasure.
Jin says Yamapi's name when he comes, obviously. Yamapi doesn't remember coming: it's as if it happens to somebody else, somewhere else, in a different time or world. When he pulls out, he has no idea whether he's done, or not. He's limp, and that's all he knows.
Much later on, Jin eats the remainder of his apple (can't be too fussy these days, he says) and studies Yamapi, who lies on the bed and thinks. The lamps are on but they don't provide much insight.
“What's wrong,” Jin says, half munching. He's swinging back on the chair, his foot resting on the bed frame. Yamapi doesn't look at him, just narrows his eyes, as if he's heard something a long way away. Eventually:
“I feel unsettled,” he says. “Things aren't right.”
“Mmn,” Jin says. “We're all probably going to starve to death. How much treasure do you have left from the cave? You could send your sister some more, but-”
“There's not a lot of point,” Yamapi says. “No point sending her anything to trade when there's nothing to trade for. We're running out of food. The whole country is running out of food. The ships that are looting are being overrun a few miles out to sea. What are we going to do?”
Jin thinks about this. “I don't know,” he says. “Sail your family to Korea and stay there? We could hide out undercover. That'd be exciting.”
“It's not a game, Jin.”
“I know it isn't,” Jin says. “But we can't control everything. It'll be alright. I feel it.”
“I just feel uneasy,” Yamapi says. “Whose instincts do you want me to trust?”
“Mine, obviously,” Jin says. “Have I ever been wrong before?”
They look at each other in the dark, and Yamapi blows out the lamp next to him. Nobody says anything more, but there's a weight of silence over the both of them when they lie down to sleep. The noise of the town echoes in the room, the lights play on the ceiling. Jin can hear people drinking and laughing, long after Yamapi falls asleep. A lot of people chase the worries of the country away with a long drink or a long fuck, but neither of them seem to do Yamapi any good. He's chasing his own worries round and round. Sometimes, Jin worries that he won't ever stop.
Yamapi wakes up before Jin the next morning, and he writes a letter in the morning sunlight. The spring air is crisp and it makes him feel alive in a way he hasn't, for some time. Maybe Jin is right. Maybe things will all work out. He seals the letter with a ring, a little token, maybe his sister will find somebody to strike up a bargain with-
“Ngh,” Jin says. “What time is it.”
“Early,” Yamapi says. He doesn't turn around, but he can hear Jin fumbling around on the bedside table. He's looking for something to drink: probably not caring whether it's alcohol or something else. There's a sound of something clinking as it falls down, and Jin grabs it hopefully.
“Don't drink too much wine,” Yamapi says. “It's not even seven, I don't think. We've got things to do today. I don't want you drunk.”
“I won't get drunk,” Jin says, indignant. “I just want a bit of- oh, for fuck's sake, did you cork the wine up again? I hate it when you do that.”
Then, Yamapi turns around. Whether it's something in the way Jin says it, or something in the back of his mind, he doesn't know. There's just something. And when he does, he's glad that he did, because what Jin's tilting to his lips isn't alcohol. It's a bottle, like the one they carried back from the inn the night before, but it isn't plum wine. Scanning the room, Yamapi can't see the wine bottle anywhere. All there is is this new bottle, this strange and foreign object.
“Jin,” Yamapi says, and Jin's eyes meet his. His teeth are wrapped around the cork, trying to pull it out, and that makes Yamapi wince because Jin's teeth aren't in that sort of condition-
And then Jin's eyes move downwards and he lets go, startled.
“Where did it come from?” he says, turning it about in his hands. His eyes are wide, childish and intrigued. Yamapi finds himself looking at Jin's eyes, more than the bottle. He has to drag his gaze away.
“I don't know,” he says, turning slowly in the chair. It's wobbly, Jin must have broken it swinging on it. “You didn't steal it from the inn, did you? I've told you about that.”
“No,” Jin says, truthfully. “I've never seen it before.”
Yamapi stands, then, crosses the room and sits by Jin, on the bed. He almost doesn't want to take it from him. It's as if it has life in Jin's hand. A smallish bottle, thick glass wrapped around a large, bright green stone. There's no logic to it: the stone is too big to fit into the bottle, and yet it does, and it is. When Jin turns the bottle over, it doesn't move. It catches the light, but remains solid and unmoving. The cork will not come loose. Yamapi hasn't seen anything like it in his entire life.
“I'm going to take it with us,” Jin says. “I think it's important.”
“You always think that,” Yamapi says. “Still. It's worth checking out.”
“We don't have to visit-”
“Yes, we do. If you want to find out what that thing is, we have to go.”
“Fuck,” Jin says. “Better get dressed. Pity there's no food. I hate facing Jun on an empty stomach.”
They leave early, Jin dragging behind, complaining about combination of no breakfast and a steep hill. In truth, the fresh air does Yamapi good. They don't get enough of it: the weather has been cold and rainy for so long over the winter. The sunshine is just what he needs. He waits for Jin halfway up: watching him climb and grumble, full of life and irritating qualities. He looks different. He's grown up, a bit. He wears black trousers and shirt, a scrap of their old flag wrapped around his waist. It's worn to the shape of his hips, comfortable, faded. They have a new one: a new ship, too, mostly. Yamapi and Jin worked on it over the winter.
There's a black bandanna on his head and in the morning sun, it makes him hot. Yamapi doesn't and has never worn one: he has a thing for hats, particularly, but he doesn't have one of those either. He and Shige both liked their hats. He wonders where Shige is now: whether he returned to his father, or not. He'll make a note to ask Jin: Jin often knows the comings and goings of people in the town. He takes an interest, where Yamapi has none.
Most soothsayers have the consideration to work inside town, or just outside it. Some of them work in great and disturbing rooms, filled with treasures and animals and the smell of spirituality. Jun has always maintained that this is all show: that all that is really needed to tell the future or delve into the past is a set of stones and an open mind. Jin thinks that Jun doesn't want a pretty room because it'd detract from him, which Yamapi reckons is probably accurate.
Where his surroundings are open and sparse, Jun is not. Jun is decked out in so much finery that he clinks whenever he moves. He wears dark green silk trousers and expensive, beautiful black Chinese slippers. His overcoat is black and quilted, tied with a green silk sash. It is wider at the wrists, for effect. When he tosses the stones, you can see the lining of his coat, expensive, colourful. Around his neck are strands and strands of beads, feathers, stones and trinkets: a mad life on strings. His hair is full of wild black curls, and amongst them he wears a thick band of green stones. Other ornaments, too, but it's the band that stands out. Jin hates Jun with a fiery passion, but he has to admit that Jun is the best.
Jun works on the hill that overlooks the town. It's high up, it's difficult to get to, but it's clear. Up there, the sun is bright and the air is clean, and there's a view of everything. Jun is sitting at the edge of the drop, writing with an obscenely large black-feathered pen, when Yamapi and Jin approach him. There's a young boy, probably a prodigy, in front of him. He's sitting in a curled ball so that Jun can rest his paper against his back as he writes. Jin sends Yamapi a look, and Yamapi shrugs.
“Knock,” Jun says, simply. He doesn't look at them.
Jin rolls his eyes. “On what door?”
“You'll work it out if you want my help, whatever idiotic mess you've found yourselves in this time.”
The prodigy dares to look at the two of them, and Jun raps his shoulder with the hard side of his pen. Yamapi looks around, and Jin looks at the bottle hanging from his belt. He wears a gold one, with solid loops, and when he couldn't get the stone out of the bottle, he hung the bottle there instead. It's heavy, but he wants to keep it safe.
“Ah,” Yamapi says, suddenly, going some way off and retrieving a small rock.
“Excellent,” Jin says, under his breath. “I'll take the first shot.”
“Jin,” Yamapi warns, and lightly tosses the stone. It lands a little way away from Jun with a quiet thudding sound.
“Yes?” Jun says. “Come in. What do you want?”
“Dismiss the boy,” Jin says. The boy turns around, the Jun is forced to stop writing. He sighs, looking Jin full in the face. His eyes are smudged with powder: blue, parrot-blue, strange.
“What for?” he says. “You can't be-”
Jin reaches into the pocket of his trousers and retrieves a little piece of treasure. It's a small dagger, gilded and old, but with four blue stones on the hilt. One of Jun's favourite colours.
“Dismiss the boy, and we'll give you this.”
Jun studies it with narrowed eyes.
“Boy,” he says, eventually. “Go into town. Go to the shop where they sell the shipwrecked items. Find me a new compass: a good one. Come back in precisely one hour.”
Yamapi watches the boy scurry off and wonders whether he has that sort of power.
“You'll need a new one,” Jun says, by way of explanation. “Where you're going. You'll need a new compass. That's not all you'll need, of course, but the compass is the key.”
“What do you mean,” Yamapi asks. “Where we're going? We haven't even told you-”
“The bottle,” Jun says. “On your little dog's belt. That's why you've come, isn't it? Only you don't know what it is, or the power it holds. I heard you walking up the hill because you had that belt on you. It's a monstrously powerful object, and it's ironic that of all the pirates in the world it should end up with Akanishi Jin.”
“I swear, I'm going to-”
“Jin,” Yamapi says, nudging past him. He sits, someway off, so that he and Jun are on eye level. “Sit down,” he says, tugging on Jin's trouser-leg. Jin does so, reluctantly, removing the bottle from his belt.
“What is it?” he says, grudgingly. “I've never seen anything like it.”
“It's the first step,” Jun says. “Towards great power.”
“Alright,” Yamapi says. “So there's others just like it? On its own, it isn't important, but-”
“On its own, it isn't complete, no. Still, the power that it holds: you'd be wise not to spend too much time with it hanging from you like that. There are others just like it, according to legend. Four others, to be exact. Four bottles, four stones. Four other colours.”
“What do we do with them?” Jin says. “I'm assuming that we don't put them on the mantelpiece.”
Jun snorts. “According to stories, the aristocrat who they first belonged to did just that. He didn't understand their power, only their beauty. When he fell from political favour, he sold everything that he felt was valuable, except the five bottles. In the end, it's rumored that they were looted by pirates. Nobody knows, exactly. All that is known is that four of them ended up lost at sea, whilst one remained on land.”
“Why did one remain on land if they were stolen by pirates?” Yamapi asks. “That makes no sense. Surely any pirates taking them for their value wouldn't leave one behind.”
Jun shrugs. “It's said that the captain left one as a parting gift with his sweetheart of the day. I think it's a bad idea, leaving a present so fine with a woman, of all people, but pirates rarely mix well with love, do they, Jin?”
Jin looks at his boots, then, imagining scrubbing Jun's face off his head.
“He left the bottle with the green stone to her. I'm sure it matched her eyes, or her dress, or something trivial that he desired in her. After that, nothing else is known. The bottles ended up in the sea: either through shipwreck, or through misuse of their power, and nobody has seen any of them since then. Pirates have searched the seas for these,” he adds, reaching out a hand towards the bottle in Jin's grasp. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”
“What are they used for?” Jin asks, turning the bottle over in his hands. “What power do they have that would make a crew throw them overboard?”
“Hm,” Jun says. He looks at the grass before him and turns over his stones, tending to each one slowly. There's a very long silence before he continues.
“I have had many people here, asking about these treasures. Most of them beg, because of the current climate, because of the lack of food. Many of them are angry and unable to accept the extent of my wisdom. I can see the future and the past, I can see past the stars: but I am not a tracking device. I cannot find that which is lost. I cannot see the location of a mislaid object. I see visions, not directions. I am not a compass.”
“I understand that,” Yamapi says. “You have led me to many places I have wanted to go, in the past, but not directly. I understand that this is the way it works.”
“I find it difficult to work with him, not with you,” Jun says, scathingly.
Jin is looking at Yamapi, a wry and skeptical look on his face. Yamapi swats him, and he does his best to remove it.
“So,” Jun continues. “You will understand that once I tell you what these bottles do, I cannot lead you to them, no matter how much you plead. All I can do is inform you of their power. With most, I don't even do this.”
“I understand,” Yamapi says.
“The bottles are magical. I'm assuming that you see that: the stone too large to have been slipped inside, too light to weigh the bottle down. The cork will not be removed, no matter how you approach it. There is magic in the construction of it. All the bottles are the same. The stone must be removed, but it can only be done a certain way.”
“Which is?”
“All the bottles must be collected from the seas. You must form a crew of no more than five men-”
“Five?” Jin interrupts. “Do you have any idea-”
“I do not work with your grubby practical matters,” Jun says, coldly. “I only tell you what needs to be done. Kindly shut up and listen to me. All five men must be trustworthy to the core. All five must be loyal, wise – no man must have a traitorous soul. You must keep them well and content, because each stone can only be removed with a bargain made by each crew member. To retrieve the stone, each man must exchange a portion of his soul. It is a bonding made between he and the ship, he and the captain. Each man must feel that bond to his very depths. It must be true.”
Jin looks at the bottle, fascinated. “Will it kill them?”
“No,” Jun says. “It won't. But a portion of your soul should not be given away lightly. You must trust the men you take with you. Once all the bottles have been collected and all the souls exchanged, you will have five stones. Put together, they are of enormous importance. Your reward will be great.”
“What is the reward?” Yamapi asks.
Jun gathers his stones together, closing his eyes. “If you go where you are directed, you will find a place full of ice, where nothing grows but something grows. You will find locked deep below, the answer to what you have prayed for. You will find that which will fill the fields whether the other crops grow or wilt. You will find food for a lifetime, for five lifetimes, or ten. You will find the means to keep your family alive. Famines will not touch you. You will not find gold, or silver, a treasure chest of coins – you will find only a small shoot. But this shoot will feed you, until the day you die. It will feed your children, and their children. You will find what you seek beneath the ice and through the water.”
“In exchange for a piece of every man's soul,” Jin says. “We all get to live.”
“Yes,” Jun says. “I cannot tell you more than that. I cannot tell you how it will all come about. That is too hazy. I can only tell you that the bottles are in the ocean, and they will find you as this has done.”
“Can you tell us whether we will succeed?”
“No,” Jun replies. “I cannot tell you whether you will survive. If you recruit a traitorous man, if you exchange a traitorous soul, then I cannot speak of the wrath you will invite upon yourselves. Choose wisely, is all I can tell you. Greater men have come before me, asking of these secrets, and I have turned them away because of their weak crews.”
“You believe that our crew is stronger?” Yamapi asks, surprised. Jun doesn't tend to take notice of the trappings of the pirate world. He resides within it because it brings him prosperity (pirates are a suspicious and a spiritual bunch), but it's well-known that he hates the lot of them.
“Not in the least,” Jun says. “I just find myself indifferent to your survival. I've always loathed you, Jin. And Yamapi – you could have been a better man, if not for this. I feel wasted potential when I look at you. If you both were to fail and come to an untimely end, I wouldn't feel that the world had lost a great treasure.”
“Just give him the dagger,” Yamapi says, his face taut and blank. “We'll go.”
“You can't tell us anything else?” Jin asks, handing over the small object with a look of revulsion as his fingers brush Jun's.
Jun shakes his head, clearing the stones in front of him. “Ah – only that when you recruit, you will have a choice between two men. Two of your crew will come clearly to you. One will not. You will have a choice when picking your third crew member. One choice will be desperately wrong. The other, perfectly safe. I cannot tell you which is which.”
“Of course,” Jin says. “Thank you for your help.”
“My pleasure,” Jun says, stroking the little dagger with his hand. “The man you took this from resides in the spirit world,” he says. “A small cave. He's in the water that drips between rock pools, inside a small cave. Seething water. How interesting.”
“He will never come back,” Yamapi says. “We made sure of that.”
“No,” Jun says, turning the dagger over in his hand. “But be careful on the sea. Water can get everywhere, after all. The sea may no longer feel like being kind to you.”
They descend the hill, not speaking. The bottle moves against Jin's leg and when they pass by Jun's prodigy and the boy presses a compass into Yamapi's hand, Yamapi turns to Jin.
“Do you trust what he said?”
“Yes,” Jin says. “There's no point in not, really. I think that he hates me and that he'd be glad to see me wiped off the face of the earth, but his gift is...true. I believe what he says is true.”
“You think we should do this.”
“You're the captain. What do you think we should do?”
Yamapi sighs, looks out at the sea and the ships that wobble with all their might. “I want to do it. I need to do it, for my family. It may be the only chance we have. I just. You've been through so much, and-”
“And I'm still here,” Jin says. “I'm still here. It'll be alright. You have to learn to trust in me again. And yourself.”
“You're prepared to do this.”
“I'm prepared to do this. This thing came to me. I can't ignore that. You know that I can't ignore it.”
“Okay,” Yamapi says, nodding. “Put the word out that we're recruiting. I need to write to Shige. I think we need Shige.”
“He's in town,” Jin says. “Why write to him? He's right here.”
Jin puts the word out, and Yamapi packs up everything that he thinks they might possibly need, transferring it all from their room to the ship. He checks everything a thousand times: every little hole that used to be, every weak piece of deck that used to be. The ship is strong and clean and new, a new flag flies above his head. They're ready. Despite himself, he's nervous.
Jin arranges the men who are keen to sail: twice as many candidates as the last time they recruited. Yamapi and Jin are known, now. Jin is known as the pirate who lost his heart, but survived. It's one hell of a persuasive device. Yamapi walks down the line and smiles when he sees Shige there. Shige has grown up, taller and a little less naïve.
“Shige,” he says. “It goes without saying, doesn't it? You're one of us.”
“Thank you, captain,” Shige says. “It's been too long.”
“Do you think that you can help us go where we need to go?”
“As long as the map stays on the page this time, captain.”
Yamapi laughs, despite himself. “You understand the risks?”
“I do, as always,” Shige says. “Could I ask something in return? Keiichiro and I have been...well. We've been spending time together, and I'd appreciate it if you could take him. I understand that it's a limited crew, but – I trust him. He is trustworthy.”
Yamapi looks at Koyama, remembering his face distantly from the past. Koyama was a good man, a good pirate: solid as an ox and hard-working to boot. A good person to have around a ship.
“You would lay your life on that statement?” Yamapi asks, nonetheless.
“And yours,” Shige says.
“Then it's decided,” Yamapi says. “Both of you can stand aside.”
Jin looks at Yamapi, and nods. Together, they walk, analyzing the row of men.
“One more place,” Jin says. “Does anybody stand out to you?”
“Not yet,” Yamapi says. Many of the men are immediately discounted: too old or young, too frail, too drunk. One of them can barely stand up. Another looks disinterested, clinking coins in his pocket. They get to the end of the line and the two men there look promising, at last. One of them is short but stout, solid, he looks eager and as if he could haul a boat around with his bare hands. His eyes are bright and his back is straight. He reminds Yamapi of Shige, when Shige was much younger.
“What's your name?” Yamapi says.
“Tegoshi Yuya,” the man says. “I would be honoured to be considered, captain. I've heard great tales about your voyages. I have a little experience myself, I have worked for a brilliant captain, and I will do your will, whatever that may be.”
“I see,” Yamapi says, exchanging a look with Jin.
The next man is tall, rough. He has facial hair and eyes so dark and so focused that it's almost difficult to hold his gaze. When Yamapi stands before him, he looks hard into his face, and there's a silent desperation that passes between them. He has strong arms and a strong head, but his heart is aching. Yamapi understands that.
“Your name?” he says.
“Nishikido Ryo,” the man says. “I have never sailed before, I'll be honest. But I am strong, and loyal, and I do not value my life enough to withhold it from you, should it come to it.”
“If you don't value your life at all, perhaps you will end it prematurely,” Yamapi replies. “I need five men, alive, when we arrive at our destination. Huge fortitude is required. You are weak.”
“If what is required is that I remain alive and that I give myself over to this ship and this voyage, be assured that I can do it. I will do it. What I meant is that there is no place for individual concerns. I do not value myself above all others. I will lay my life down for all of you.”
“Have we met before?” Yamapi says, suddenly. “There's something-”
“No,” the man says. “I have heard of your legend, but we have never met.”
Yamapi turns to Jin and they move a little way off to deliberate.
“I don't like Nishikido,” he says, simply. “I think Tegoshi is the better choice.”
Jin is looking between the two men, chewing his lip. “It's your call. I don't agree, but it's your call.”
Yamapi frowns. “Surely you can see that Nishikido is a loose cannon, at best? I don't trust him an inch.”
“Jun said that we had a choice, didn't he? That one man would be wrong, the other right.”
“Honestly,” Yamapi says. “I don't see this as a choice. Nishikido is clearly not right for this crew. The choice is simple. Out of all these men, Tegoshi is the one that stands out. There's not a man to touch him in this line-up.”
“I just...I just feel-” Jin says, and sighs. “It's an instinct. I haven't any reason for feeling the way I do. I just feel that Tegoshi is wrong. I feel that Nishikido is the right one.”
“Enough to rest our lives on it?” Yamapi says, exasperated. “Jin, this is-”
“I know that it's serious,” Jin says, suddenly aflame. “Don't you think that I know that? I may not have family to rescue, I may not have interests the way you do, but if you think that I'm not taking this seriously—Yamapi, I just feel that this is the way it is. It's only my instinct. It's only my gut feeling. I am no match for reason, I am no match for logic. But if you value me, and if you value my heart, please pick Nishikido. I wouldn't beg if I wasn't certain.”
Yamapi looks at Jin. It would go against every bone in his body to pick Nishikido, and the last time Jin decided on a course of action, it took away his heart. He let Jin follow his instincts and it nearly killed him. Jin's instincts are a dangerous and a wavy thing, like the sea. It's hard to trust that. To lay any kind of faith in something so unstable. But it's Jin. It's Jin's eyes and Jin's heart, and Yamapi doesn't know that it's right, but he knows that Jin thinks it is. He closes his eyes and turns around, facing the group of men.
“We have come to our decision,” he says, slowly. “Nishikido, you will need to learn the ropes. Jin and Keiichiro will help you. You must be ready. I want to leave in 24 hours. Understand what you are taking on. What you are all taking on. And be ready.”
Nishikido nods as he walks to join Shige and Koyama. “I already am,” he says. “Captain.”
“Do not let me down. You are not here on my good faith – it must be earned.”
“I understand,” Nishikido says. “Thank you.”
Yamapi turns back to Jin, who looks at him with a look on his face that harks him back to more innocent days.
“Thank you,” Jin says, and it's just—everything.
“I hope that you're right,” Yamapi says. “I just hope that. Get them all ready. I need to sleep.”
They sail out the next day. Jin puts everybody to work in the best way that he can, having spent most of the night working out a way to spread five people across a ship. The moment they're on the water, Yamapi seems to visibly relax, a year's worth of worry leaving his shoulders like dust. Jin smiles, stands by him and the wheel.
“So what do we do,” he says. “Wait for them to come to us?”
“Yes,” Yamapi says. “And hope they do it quick. One advantage of a small crew is that there's more food for us all, but it won't last. I hope that Jun was right.”
“Jun's rarely wrong,” Jin says. “It's irritating.”
“How is Nishikido doing?”
“Fine,” Jin says. “He doesn't say much, but he'll work hard. He's very strong. He and Koyama are holding up. Shige's helping them, until it becomes more obvious what we're supposed to be doing. It won't be exactly as it should be, but I'll keep them in line.”
“The green bottle is yours, isn't it?” Yamapi says, suddenly. “It chose you.”
“I think so,” Jin says. “I tried to— last night, I tried. I couldn't do it. Perhaps it has to be done at sea, or maybe they all have to be done at once. I don't know. I'll keep trying.”
Yamapi looks at the bottle hanging on Jin's belt, and nods.
“Come to my cabin tonight.”
The sea is calm as they drink, the two of them. There's drinking, and kissing, and everything is starting to shift back into place. This is the world they know, the world that's them, and Yamapi feels more right than he has in a lifetime. He sits at his desk, Jin in his lap, they're drinking from the same bottle and kissing from the same mouth.
His hand is in Jin's pants, which is kind of unfortunate, because in the dead of night and entirely unannounced, Shige bursts into the cabin.
There's an awful moment where everybody freezes, and with little dignity, Jin climbs out of the chair and turns away from Shige to put himself back together.
“I'm sorry,” Shige is saying, over and over. “I'm sorry, I. Oh, God, I. Um.”
“Spit it out,” Yamapi says. In a way he's quietly amused, but he imagines that Jin is furious. “What's the interruption for?”
“We've stopped, you see, because, well. You need to see this. I've never seen anything like it.”
“I don't like the sound of that,” Yamapi says, rising. “Are you done?” he asks Jin, and Jin nods, red-faced and cross, and follows him out.
Yamapi catches Shige as he follows him, pulls him back and mutters in his ear:
“If you tell anybody about this, I'll-”
“I won't,” Shige squirms. “I swear on my mother's life.”
When they reach the deck, Yamapi can't see what they're looking for. Everything seems normal: the sky is black, the stars are out, no land in sight. The air is cold, there's a little frost on the mast. Normal conditions for February.
“What is it?” Yamapi says.
“Over the side,” Ryo says. “You'll see it.”
Yamapi strides over to Ryo and leans over the side of the ship. He inhales sharply, which makes Jin follow on without instruction. The two of them lean over and look down, and Shige is right, nobody has seen anything quite like this before. Where there was sea, now there is only a sheet of ice all around them. You could walk to the end of the world. The ship cannot move. Like the stones in the bottles, it is suspended in animation.
“Did you do this?” Yamapi says, to Ryo. His eyes are narrowed. “I don't know you, I don't know your kind of magic-”
“No,” Ryo says. “I didn't. I couldn't. Shige and Keiichiro have been here the whole time, and-”
Yamapi studies the other two, and nods. “It must be to do with the bottles,” he says.
Jin is still leaning over the side, peering down at the ice below. “I can see something,” he says. “Somebody throw me a rope.”
“Jin-” Yamapi begins. “I don't think. We don't know what's down there, or how thick the ice is-”
“We won't find out unless we try, and I'm freezing.” Jin reasons. “Let me go down. I'll go on a rope. It'll be safe.”
He waits for Yamapi to nod, and Yamapi waits for the rope before he does. After inspecting it, he reluctantly agrees.
“If I tell you to come back up, you come back up.”
Slowly, Ryo, Shige and Koyama lower the rope down the side of the ship. It takes time, and effort, and Yamapi leans over the side, watching to make sure nothing goes wrong. When Jin reaches the bottom, he tentatively touches a boot down, but nothing happens.
“It's thick ice,” he calls up. “Definitely magical. Ice this thick takes too long to form.”
“Okay,” Yamapi replies. “Have you found something?”
Jin bends down, the rope loose in his palm. Lying next to the ship is another bottle, exactly the same as the first one, only the stone is a dark colour.
“I've got a bottle,” he says, and there's a murmur of excitement from the crew.
“Haul him up,” Yamapi says, and he's smiling. Jin wraps his fingers around the bottle and lifts it, and the moment he does the ice vanishes. It happens so fast that Jin's boots get wet, he sinks a little before they pull him out, and his face is a picture of astonishment as he climbs over the side and lands on the deck. By the time he's hauled himself onto his feet, the ice is gone.
“Fuck,” he says, looking over. “So. Who wants it?”
“How do we decide?” Koyama says, studying the bottle in the moonlight. It's a deep purple shade, rich and somehow frightening. The bottle itself is ice cold in Jin's hand.
“I think it just...comes to you,” Jin says. “I found the green one in our room. Leave it on the deck. Wherever it ends up, I think...that's where it was meant to be.”
“Good plan,” Yamapi says. “Make sure you're all sleeping separately. I don't want any confusion. We have to do this right.”
If he'd been concentrating, Yamapi would have seen the look that passed between Shige and Koyama, but he isn't, and he doesn't. The only person who does see it is Ryo.
The next morning, Koyama wakes up alone. It's the first time in ages, and he feels restless. He turns over in the hammock and his head comes into contact with something hard. The bottle lies beside his ear. It's still cold, and he shivers as he takes it.
He comes out onto the deck and finds Shige, as soon as he can. When he tells him what he knows, Shige insists that he has to do what's been asked of them. He thinks it'll be the best way of leading them to wherever it is they're supposed to go. With Shige's confidence in mind, Koyama screws up his courage.
By nightfall, he recognises that just concentrating on the bottle isn't going to do it. There's a certain state that needs to be achieved inside, and Koyama doesn't seem to have the calmness to master it. He's considered asking help of the captain or the First Mate, but he doesn't want to appear weak. He has yet to make a solid impression of usefulness on either of them, he's not like Shige with his maps and charts. Koyama wants to be something more than he is, and he'll try and try until he gets it right.
After everybody has gone to sleep, Koyama sits on the deck with the bottle at his feet. Shige is the last to go, and in the moonlight, silent and beautiful, he kisses him. It's pure and trustworthy and good, like North on a compass, and when Shige leaves Koyama feels still. It takes a little while. He closes his eyes and tries to block the sounds out. The sea is so loud, the creaking of the ship, even the stars seem to be shrieking—but he blocks it out as best as he can. Slowly, he finds that he's feeling the sounds rather than hearing them. Blood races through his body like waves, his bones creak and shake. Something inside him is calling.
He takes the bottle in his hands, feeling for it in the dark. He grasps the bottle with both hands and he holds it above his head a little way. It's as though water is slopping down onto his head, bitter and cold and hard to the core, as if he's freezing solid from the inside out. It makes his mouth open, it makes him shake from head to foot, but he doesn't stop. Eventually, it will pass. The feeling with pass. The water comes down, down, down, until his head hurts with the pressure of it, and then it stops—
When he opens his eyes, he's not wet at all. Everything is as it was. The bottle is on the deck at his feet, but it is empty. The stone lies beside it, blinking in the dim moonlight.
The pattern repeats itself at a rate of once a day. The next day, the same cold frost breaks into the air and Yamapi turns expectantly at the wheel. Jin comes up to him to get a closer look, and the purple stone glimmers within a loop on his belt. Beside it, the green bottle hangs. He's had no luck with it yet, despite Koyama's instructions.
Shige wants to go down onto the ice, and Yamapi is relieved that it's no longer Jin's turn. He approves it, and Shige slides down, laughter on his lips. The ice holds his weight and he reaches down to grab the bottle. Only it doesn't move, as if it's frozen solid to the ice sheet. No matter how much he wriggles it, it won't shift. They have to haul him up and have a think.
Eventually, Jin goes down to take a look. They're not watching closely enough, deliberating still over what to do – and when Jin touches the bottle it comes away easily. The ice vanishes, same as before, and Jin goes into the water before anybody realises. They haul him out like a sodden cat, furious and freezing.
“Fuck,” he says, chucking the bottle down. “Some rope-holders you guys are.”
Yamapi chuckles, relief evident on his face, and chucks a blanket over Jin. “Next time, I'll go in,” he says.
“I don't think it'll let you,” Ryo interjects. “It released itself when Jin went down there. Maybe it's because he's wearing the other stones.”
“Maybe,” Jin says, collapsing onto the deck and grabbing the bottle in his hand. It's a very dark blue colour.
“I wonder who this one belongs to.”
Shige finds it even easier, to remove the stone from his bottle. He allows Koyama to watch, because Koyama can't understand how he could have been wet one minute and dry the next. They sit in the crow's nest, squashed in, the dead of night above them. Shige closes his eyes for a long time, and his breathing slows down. Koyama looks around him at the twinkle of stars in the sky, listening to Shige's breath, and he hopes that morning doesn't come. He'd sit here forever, he thinks.
Shige doesn't lift the bottle into the air like Koyama did. Instead, he grabs Koyama's hands, so suddenly it's as if he's possessed. His eyes don't open and his breathing doesn't increase. Only his hands hold on, and then he begins to tremble. Nothing happens outwardly, but he trembles and he trembles and the bottle shakes between them. It's frightening and Koyama wants to stop it, but he knows that he shouldn't, so he just sits, watching, shaking too.
Eventually, the bottle falls and Shige gasps and opens his eyes.
“Did you see water?” he says, all a rush. Koyama shakes his head. He realises then that there's water in his eyes, so maybe his answer isn't quite true.
Between them, the bottle is fallen and the blue stone lies unattended.
And so the pattern continues. Ryo is right: the bottles will not release themselves for anybody but Jin, who gets adept at dodging the water. The rest concentrate on pulling him out, and the red bottle comes onto the deck without so much as a splash. It's satisfying to Yamapi, and he gives them a slightly better meal that evening. They all feel that they're getting closer to their goal. Only one more remains.
They drink and eat with the crew that night. Jin and Yamapi next to each other, Koyama and Shige on the other side. Ryo sits alone at the head of the table.
“Where did you grow up?” Shige asks.
“In town,” Ryo says. “My father restores weaponry. A lot of old swords and daggers aren't what they used to be and, well, sometimes rich families want to bury their relatives with them. And they want them to be clean, new again. It's hard work.”
“You don't make new weapons?”
“No. I help my father restore old ones. I think it's more interesting. Blades carry spirits on them, if you ask me. You can feel their history when you hold them. The blood of thousands of enemies-”
Yamapi is looking at him strangely, so he stops in his tracks. His face is red. Jin looks up and at Shige, and for a while an awkward silence persists.
“My father is a navigator,” Shige says. “He's not interested in going back. Only going forwards.”
“How is the map coming along?” Yamapi asks.
“When the next bottle is done, it'll be almost complete,” Shige says. “We're moving in a spiral inwards. We're heading for a point, I'm just not sure exactly where that point will be. It won't be near land. With every bottle, we're heading further and further from land.”
“What does that mean?” Ryo asks. “Surely if we're going to find something, land is where we're going to find it.”
“Not necessarily,” Yamapi says. “Sometimes things aren't as you think they should be. I'm confident in the map and its reader.”
“The red stone,” Ryo says. “Who do you think will get the red stone?”
“It'd be crass to assume a connection with blood,” Jin says, slowly. “But I'm a crass sort of person. Tonight, we'll find something out about a member of this crew.”
The morning comes. Ryo prayed before he went to bed, not to wake up with the red stone. The captain and his mate are plenty bloodthirsty: he was almost confident that he'd be spared. Only when he opens his eyes, it's there, hanging from his hammock by its throat.
“Well, well,” Yamapi says, to Jin. “How I am surprised.”
“It might not mean blood,” Jin reasons, feeling guilty for his late night accusation. “It could mean anything. It could mean a fighting spirit. He could be the key to all of this. I made an unfair judgment.”
“It's got to mean blood,” Yamapi says. “It's got to. I never trusted him. I always thought-”
“Give him space,” Jin retorts irritably. “You don't know anything about him. None of us do. I asked you to have faith-”
“In you, not in him. I trusted your judgment, not his.”
“They're the same thing, Yamapi,” Jin says. “And to be honest, Ryo getting the red stone isn't as ill an omen as my inability to get mine out of the bottle. I just can't do it. What if we get all the way to...where we need to go, and I let us all down? Think about that, if you're going to think about anything.”
Ryo creeps out at dawn, not daring to do anything in the dark. The light is just touching the horizon, spreading across the line of the sea. It's beautiful. Cold, but beautiful. He takes the bottle with him in shaking hands and sits on the deck, staring at it. The stone is coldly beautiful, too.
He can't get into a quiet state. Everything around him is too noisy, and he's frightened that soon the crew will all be up, and he'll have to do this with an audience. So he takes the bottle in his hands, as tight as he can, squeezes his eyes shut as tight as he can, and he prays. He prays and he prays and he prays, the words becoming audible, his head throbbing.
In a great flash, he sees visions: a dagger penetrating a woman's chest, a dagger penetrating a man's chest, a heart, blood, a heart, a man, smoke, signs, words, dagger, cabin, lake, faster and faster the images fly by, so that eventually he can't see anything at all but a blur. He cries out and drops the bottle, cursing himself, because he's ruined it for everybody-
Opening his eyes, the stone isn't a stone any longer, red liquid all over his hands, dripping like blood onto the deck. He moans, softly, and shakes his palms, trying to get rid of it. It drips down faster and faster and then, silently, it reforms on the hard wood surface until the stone appears again.
From the wheel, Jin goes unseen. He watches it all and the blood drains out of his face.
He doesn't tell Yamapi what he's seen.
They wait for two days for the last stone, the one they know must be Yamapi's. Jin stands on the deck, his hips dotted with glinting stones and a bottle. They all know what lies ahead of them but the last stone refuses to come. Ryo becomes quiet and introverted, working hard but agonized. Shige tries to initiate conversation, but eventually has to give up.
Two days go by without progress, though Shige notes that they continue to spiral inwards. It can't be long now, he tells Yamapi. It can't be.
On the third night, everything is quiet and still, but nobody is asleep. Yamapi and Jin are in Yamapi's cabin, Jin is on his back and his head is tipped back and he's crying out around his own fingers. Yamapi is holding his shoulders hard enough to hurt, and his mouth is on Jin's collarbone. They're so close together it hurts both of them to move, but they need this, they both need this to feel settled, to feel whole. Jin strokes Yamapi's chest and that makes Yamapi's heart ache – mostly because Jin would do anything to have a heart that could.
And suddenly, Jin can't take it any more, he rises up and moves Yamapi beneath, and he's in Yamapi's lap with a grunt and a wince. Yamapi lets him, because it's beautiful and because he's so tired – he lies back and lets Jin move, lets Jin take his pleasure with the kind of greedy abandon that Jin defines as his own. And Jin rocks and Jin cries out, louder and louder, and Yamapi realises that in a strange way Jin is the sea. He wonders, as Jin steadies himself with a hand on Yamapi's hip, what Jun meant by his last comment.
Water can get everywhere, after all. The sea may no longer feel like being kind to you.
Ryo can't sleep. He tosses and turns and he feels he should be able to drop off, but he can't. He just lies and gets frustrated with himself. The images are still whirring around his brain, too fast to be seen. It's like having a hurricane in your head. Eventually, he has to move with it, because unless he can slow it down he'll never sleep again.
He climbs up to the main deck and lies there, looking at the stars. It stills his brain sometimes, the vastness of the universe. He's so small within it, it so large and beautiful. Tonight, it doesn't seem to calm him. He lies there and lies there and focuses so hard on the stars and the constellations that his eyes go blurry. It's then that he begins to see shapes, shapes that weren't ever there before.
893. 893. 893. 893.
Jin throws his head back as he gets a hand around his cock, when he hears the first moan that leaves Yamapi's mouth at the sight, he throws his head back. His hips slide forwards and he works them, faster and faster and faster, until it's something akin to a whirlpool. And Yamapi lies with his mouth slack, watching and wondering and unable to think or move or speak. A part of him is full of love and a part of him full of terror, and he can't reconcile the two.
“Jin,” he says, and it's a choke of a sound, incomplete and clumsy. Jin isn't there, he's not paying attention to anything that isn't the coil of pleasure within him. So Yamapi repeats it, and repeats it, until Jin's eyes open when the world flies in. Jin's eyes are very wet and his mouth is very wet and his words are very wet and he's so desperate and so needy and so right there, that Yamapi just looks at him and looks at him and rides him through it, steadies himself beneath it as Jin shakes it all out of his body, all of the pleasure, all of the endless, aching pleasure.
Jin keeps his eyes open even through the trembling, and when he finally comes to rest, his face is soaking wet.
He can't stop himself. He wants to, but he can't. He scurried beneath the decks and found paint, and once he had paint he didn't need a paintbrush. He puts his hand in there whole and paints with his hands and his feet and anything else, because he needs it all out, needs to see it written down to make sense of it. Ryo feels crazed. People have often called him a lunatic, but only now does he actually believe it.
He paints and paints and paints over every fresh surface he can find, the same three numbers, over and over again. They don't make any more sense the more times he does it, and so he breathes and tries again, trying to see past the shape of them, trying to delve into the monster he knows is there in the back of his head. The images flood him, inscrutable and impossible, and he can't clarify anything. Nothing makes any sense.
He falls back onto the deck and he looks around him, at every surface. 893. 893. 893. 893. 893.
“I want,” he says. “I want-”
Everybody is awake, but nobody hears him.
Yamapi comes out the next morning, and his jaw hits the deck. Shige and Koyama follow, and nobody can believe the sight. Ryo lies on the deck, his arms by his sides, empty-looking.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm sorry. I don't understand it. I don't- Maybe you should throw me over. Maybe it's the bottles. I don't know.”
Yamapi just stares, turning in circles. “What is the relevance? It's just numbers. What-- what kind of. I don't. We have to do something with you. I think you're it. I think you're the person we shouldn't have-”
“No,” Jin says, following from behind. “I think it's just one of those things. Those bottles drive crew members insane, that's what Jun said. Nobody is going overboard. Ryo gave up a part of his soul for the stone, and he's staying. He's staying.”
The pair of them stare at one another, defiantly cross. It's broken only when a faint chill in the air gives rise to familiarity, and Yamapi rushes to the side of the ship.
“It's happening again,” he says. “Jin, you need to-”
“I'm there,” Jin says, as Koyama and Shige grab the rope. Ryo sits up, eyes wide and unsure, as everybody works around him. Jin lowers himself down the side of the boat and Yamapi watches.
It comes out of nowhere. Jin's boots touch the ice and a shadow appears behind him, too quick for Jin to quite draw a weapon, so the shadow gets a hand on him. Yamapi doesn't have to think twice: he throws himself down the rope so hard that Shige nearly trips, and Ryo takes his place by the side of the ship. Jin turns, almost in slow-motion, and slashes into the shadow with his sword. It's a man, and he falls. Not a shadow, a pirate. He's thin and wet, probably scrounging.
“They must have been waiting for us,” Yamapi says. “If Jun heard the stones-”
Jin fingers his belt, looking around with unease. “Are there any more?”
They patrol around the ship, the ice thick and unrelenting beneath their feet. There's nothing there. When they come back around, everything is the same, except for a small opening in the ice. Suddenly, Jin realises that there isn't a bottle. Just a small circle, not more than the width of a body around.
“Shige,” Yamapi calls up. “The map! Where are we?”
Shige races away. Koyama looks around, awkward. Ryo is halfway up to the crow's nest, wanting more than anything to be useful.
“I can't see anything,” he says. “Just ice, all around us. It goes on forever.”
“There's no bottle,” Yamapi muses. “Just ice.”
When Shige returns, he's brandishing the map with excitement. “We're there, I think. We've arrived. The spiral is tight – I don't think we can go any further!”
“We've not got enough bottles,” Yamapi says to Jin. Jin looks back, and nods. Neither of them want to move. They've learnt that lesson well.
“Maybe we missed one,” Jin wonders. “We slept at night. What if we missed the chance to pick one up?”
“Jin, you need to get into that green bottle,” Yamapi says. “I don't know why it won't work for you, but we need-”
“I think,” Ryo says. “That the answer is in that opening. I can't see to the bottom of it, but there's something in it. I think I can see something in it.”
Yamapi looks at Jin, who paces over with trepidation. It's a deep hole, and neither of them can see anything.
“It's worth a try,” Jin says. “Yamapi, come on, we've come this far.”
“Throw down the rope,” Yamapi yells back, and Shige slides down it. The moment his feet touch the ice, Koyama follows him.
“I meant one of you-” Yamapi says, and then, looking between the two of them, he understands. “Ryo,” he calls up. “You're on lookout. Inform Shige and Koyama if you see anything awry. They'll inform us.”
“I thought you didn't trust me,” Ryo calls back.
“I don't,” Yamapi retorts. “But you're the only hope I've got. Are we clear?”
Ryo nods, and Shige grabs the end of the rope. Koyama grabs it, behind Shige. Yamapi looks at Jin and Jin looks back, and the four of them are shaking. The belt around Jin's hips trembles with the weight of the three stones and the bottle. None of this makes sense to Yamapi, but Jin is right. It's worth a shot. They can't go back.
They lower Jin in first, Yamapi looking down into the hole.
“If I say come back, you come back,” he says, and there isn't room for more than that, nor would it be appropriate. He clasps Jin's hand in his and then Jin squeezes into the hole and gradually disappears. When he's inched down enough to allow room, Yamapi follows.
They push slowly down together, a weird combination of wriggling and sliding. The walls of the hole aren't even quite wide enough for a body, and their shoulders ache after a few feet. The tunnel seems to go down and down forever, and Yamapi wonders what will await them when they finally touch solid ground. After a few more feet, he's wondering if they ever will.
And then Jin cries out in surprise, which gives Yamapi the fright of his life. He can't see anything but the top of Jin's head.
“What is it?” he says, and Shige echoes it, somewhere up above.
“It fans out,” Jin says. “It gets a lot wider. Too wide to keep sliding down, hang on.” He inches himself downwards, and before Yamapi can stop him, he drops out entirely. Yamapi looks downwards and sees the solid icy ground beneath him. Jin picks himself up and looks around, as Yamapi follows him out of the tunnel and into the smallish room below. When they look up, they can see light above them, but it's distant. They turn around and around, getting their bearings, and what they see is so surprising that Yamapi has to blink a few times before he can believe it.
All around them, through an icy window, is water. Their surroundings are entirely blue. The room is unsurprisingly cold, and Jin shivers as he looks around him. Yamapi is afraid for their safety: what if the ice isn't thick enough?, but his thoughts are interrupted by Jin, who suddenly exclaims:
“I've found the bottle!”
Yamapi whirls around, but he can't see anything. “Where?” he demands, crossing the floor to Jin.
“We're in it,” Jin says, excitedly. “Look at where we're standing. It's a wide space with a tunnel above us. We're inside a great, big bottle.”
“We're inside a big bottle shape,” Yamapi calls up, through the tunnel.
“Oh,” he hears Koyama say, distantly. “There's no wine down there, is there?”
The surface around them is unclear. Thin veins wind through the thick ice sheets, and Jin traces them with his fingers as he walks around. Yamapi looks up, and down, but he can't see a solution, or a way to progress forwards, even. All he can see is thin veins and the sea around them. It's frightening, being surrounded by the sea, but able to breathe. It's like thinking yourself suffocating when you aren't.
“What do we do now?” Jin says. “I expected something to happen. Nothing is happening.”
“I don't know,” Yamapi admits. He calls to Shige, to ask if the map is changing. There is no answer, and when he shouts louder, there's a faint negative, as if Shige is miles away rather than a matter of feet.
“Take out the bottle,” Yamapi says. “There must be something about the bottle.”
Continue to Part Two.
Pairing: Yamapi/Jin, Koyama/Shige
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: AU. Sex, supernatural, disturbing content.
Summary: This fic was written over the course of 24 hours for the JE Valentine's Day challenge. It is meant to follow on from my AU fic 'In Every Life I've Lived', which is here. It can be read on its own, but it'll make a lot more sense if you're familiar with the original fic.
A year passes unevenly, enough time for them to enjoy each other but not enough to make them forget. Too much is happening around them for Yamapi and Jin to feel truly at ease, and in a way this peppers the sex and the eating and the joyous, joyous drinking with a kind of urgency, a kind of desperate need. In the middle of the night, in dark and dingy rooms, they feel a frantic desire to be so close to one another that nothing can come between them, ever again. Yamapi remembers saying that Jin could have his heart – in the middle of the night, it's like Jin tries to take it, but he can't, quite.
When he takes his shirt off, Yamapi sometimes looks at the circular scar on his chest. Sometimes. When he can. Most of the time, he doesn't, he pushes it to the back of his mind. So difficult to look at somebody you love and see the scars of your affection worn into their flesh. So difficult to look at Jin and see the path they could have chosen to take: the one that would have allowed Jin to remain whole. So difficult to see him and to know that everything could have been different. Yamapi feels guilty for feelings like these because Jin is alive, and that should be all that matters.
Their steps are uneasy as they saunter back, full of wine and music and hunger, nagging away in the background. The sterile fields are behind them and they don't think about the threat of famine, the few family and friends that they have left who may just be about to starve. Nobody thinks about that. They pray and they wring their hands and they beg for a solution. Yamapi and Jin do something different, something untouchable and strange, something only they truly understand.
They push over the chair as they break into the room, and they don't bother lighting the lamps. That'd take too long, and there's not enough time for anything, not enough time to breathe – Yamapi's hair in Jin's hands and the two of them, pressed so hard that the wall is almost a part of them. Jin's always horny when he's drunk, Yamapi's noticed. Jin's horny most of the time, which works for Yamapi. He pushes against Yamapi, a knee between his thighs, and before Yamapi knows it his trousers are undone and he has to kick his boots off because Jin's trampling all over them trying to get closer and closer and closer.
Yamapi presses his palms into Jin's cheeks and he whispers something, lost against Jin's mouth to the faint tang of plum wine. Not proper stuff, the cheap stuff, the hard, sharp stuff. Jin likes the hard stuff. Jin likes the hard side of life: he's got his hand around Yamapi's cock and he's stroking, even though there's no slide, just friction, and it hurts until it feels good. Yamapi waits for that, kissing and kissing until the ache goes away, and then he closes his eyes and mutters, 'yes'.
They end up on the bed in a tumble, somebody took a step without warning. The bed is strewn with paper and maps and the remainder of an apple, but neither of them care. Jin pushes at the piles of it as Yamapi yanks his trousers off, the boots too, the shirt Jin manages himself. Yamapi can barely see him in the dark, can't see the mark on his chest, and he's glad for it because one of these days he'll say what he always wants to say when he catches sight of it-
“I want-” Jin says, drawing Yamapi closer to him, between his legs so that Yamapi leans down over him. And without knowing or understanding why, it's just not right, just not quite right, not until Yamapi turns Jin over. The height of the bed is enough, the line of Jin's hips is enough, and Yamapi uses whatever he can find in the drawer by the bed and doesn't ask Jin if it's alright, first. He listens until Jin makes a submissive sound in his throat, and then he knows for sure.
When he fucks him, it happens slowly, a bit strange. Not the way it usually happens. Yamapi leans over Jin and holds his wrists flat to the bed, his chest against Jin's back, his mouth at the back of Jin's neck. Jin extends his chin and makes little sounds, his throat dented, the sounds jarred and alien. He's saying Yamapi's name but it comes out differently, like he's a different person, and Yamapi's not sure how he feels about that, but he doesn't stop. He can't see the scar, and that's all that seems to matter in his mind.
Somehow, it's as if the pleasure of it isn't connecting. As if he feels it, a dull ache in his groin, rather than something attached to him, rather than something he governs and controls. Jin makes noises that suggest he feels differently, but Yamapi just feels detached. Unsure, no longer drunk, no longer anything – his head full of clouds and empty spaces. He doesn't make a sound. In his head, he makes noises of pleasure, he asks for more, he takes and he needs and he fucks, hard and fast and desperate as always, but in the cold, dark room he says nothing. Jin dictates the pace, pushing back harder than Yamapi pushes forwards. After a while, Yamapi realises that he's doing it for the friction the bedsheets afford, tilting his hips downwards, chasing a solitary pleasure.
Jin says Yamapi's name when he comes, obviously. Yamapi doesn't remember coming: it's as if it happens to somebody else, somewhere else, in a different time or world. When he pulls out, he has no idea whether he's done, or not. He's limp, and that's all he knows.
Much later on, Jin eats the remainder of his apple (can't be too fussy these days, he says) and studies Yamapi, who lies on the bed and thinks. The lamps are on but they don't provide much insight.
“What's wrong,” Jin says, half munching. He's swinging back on the chair, his foot resting on the bed frame. Yamapi doesn't look at him, just narrows his eyes, as if he's heard something a long way away. Eventually:
“I feel unsettled,” he says. “Things aren't right.”
“Mmn,” Jin says. “We're all probably going to starve to death. How much treasure do you have left from the cave? You could send your sister some more, but-”
“There's not a lot of point,” Yamapi says. “No point sending her anything to trade when there's nothing to trade for. We're running out of food. The whole country is running out of food. The ships that are looting are being overrun a few miles out to sea. What are we going to do?”
Jin thinks about this. “I don't know,” he says. “Sail your family to Korea and stay there? We could hide out undercover. That'd be exciting.”
“It's not a game, Jin.”
“I know it isn't,” Jin says. “But we can't control everything. It'll be alright. I feel it.”
“I just feel uneasy,” Yamapi says. “Whose instincts do you want me to trust?”
“Mine, obviously,” Jin says. “Have I ever been wrong before?”
They look at each other in the dark, and Yamapi blows out the lamp next to him. Nobody says anything more, but there's a weight of silence over the both of them when they lie down to sleep. The noise of the town echoes in the room, the lights play on the ceiling. Jin can hear people drinking and laughing, long after Yamapi falls asleep. A lot of people chase the worries of the country away with a long drink or a long fuck, but neither of them seem to do Yamapi any good. He's chasing his own worries round and round. Sometimes, Jin worries that he won't ever stop.
Yamapi wakes up before Jin the next morning, and he writes a letter in the morning sunlight. The spring air is crisp and it makes him feel alive in a way he hasn't, for some time. Maybe Jin is right. Maybe things will all work out. He seals the letter with a ring, a little token, maybe his sister will find somebody to strike up a bargain with-
“Ngh,” Jin says. “What time is it.”
“Early,” Yamapi says. He doesn't turn around, but he can hear Jin fumbling around on the bedside table. He's looking for something to drink: probably not caring whether it's alcohol or something else. There's a sound of something clinking as it falls down, and Jin grabs it hopefully.
“Don't drink too much wine,” Yamapi says. “It's not even seven, I don't think. We've got things to do today. I don't want you drunk.”
“I won't get drunk,” Jin says, indignant. “I just want a bit of- oh, for fuck's sake, did you cork the wine up again? I hate it when you do that.”
Then, Yamapi turns around. Whether it's something in the way Jin says it, or something in the back of his mind, he doesn't know. There's just something. And when he does, he's glad that he did, because what Jin's tilting to his lips isn't alcohol. It's a bottle, like the one they carried back from the inn the night before, but it isn't plum wine. Scanning the room, Yamapi can't see the wine bottle anywhere. All there is is this new bottle, this strange and foreign object.
“Jin,” Yamapi says, and Jin's eyes meet his. His teeth are wrapped around the cork, trying to pull it out, and that makes Yamapi wince because Jin's teeth aren't in that sort of condition-
And then Jin's eyes move downwards and he lets go, startled.
“Where did it come from?” he says, turning it about in his hands. His eyes are wide, childish and intrigued. Yamapi finds himself looking at Jin's eyes, more than the bottle. He has to drag his gaze away.
“I don't know,” he says, turning slowly in the chair. It's wobbly, Jin must have broken it swinging on it. “You didn't steal it from the inn, did you? I've told you about that.”
“No,” Jin says, truthfully. “I've never seen it before.”
Yamapi stands, then, crosses the room and sits by Jin, on the bed. He almost doesn't want to take it from him. It's as if it has life in Jin's hand. A smallish bottle, thick glass wrapped around a large, bright green stone. There's no logic to it: the stone is too big to fit into the bottle, and yet it does, and it is. When Jin turns the bottle over, it doesn't move. It catches the light, but remains solid and unmoving. The cork will not come loose. Yamapi hasn't seen anything like it in his entire life.
“I'm going to take it with us,” Jin says. “I think it's important.”
“You always think that,” Yamapi says. “Still. It's worth checking out.”
“We don't have to visit-”
“Yes, we do. If you want to find out what that thing is, we have to go.”
“Fuck,” Jin says. “Better get dressed. Pity there's no food. I hate facing Jun on an empty stomach.”
They leave early, Jin dragging behind, complaining about combination of no breakfast and a steep hill. In truth, the fresh air does Yamapi good. They don't get enough of it: the weather has been cold and rainy for so long over the winter. The sunshine is just what he needs. He waits for Jin halfway up: watching him climb and grumble, full of life and irritating qualities. He looks different. He's grown up, a bit. He wears black trousers and shirt, a scrap of their old flag wrapped around his waist. It's worn to the shape of his hips, comfortable, faded. They have a new one: a new ship, too, mostly. Yamapi and Jin worked on it over the winter.
There's a black bandanna on his head and in the morning sun, it makes him hot. Yamapi doesn't and has never worn one: he has a thing for hats, particularly, but he doesn't have one of those either. He and Shige both liked their hats. He wonders where Shige is now: whether he returned to his father, or not. He'll make a note to ask Jin: Jin often knows the comings and goings of people in the town. He takes an interest, where Yamapi has none.
Most soothsayers have the consideration to work inside town, or just outside it. Some of them work in great and disturbing rooms, filled with treasures and animals and the smell of spirituality. Jun has always maintained that this is all show: that all that is really needed to tell the future or delve into the past is a set of stones and an open mind. Jin thinks that Jun doesn't want a pretty room because it'd detract from him, which Yamapi reckons is probably accurate.
Where his surroundings are open and sparse, Jun is not. Jun is decked out in so much finery that he clinks whenever he moves. He wears dark green silk trousers and expensive, beautiful black Chinese slippers. His overcoat is black and quilted, tied with a green silk sash. It is wider at the wrists, for effect. When he tosses the stones, you can see the lining of his coat, expensive, colourful. Around his neck are strands and strands of beads, feathers, stones and trinkets: a mad life on strings. His hair is full of wild black curls, and amongst them he wears a thick band of green stones. Other ornaments, too, but it's the band that stands out. Jin hates Jun with a fiery passion, but he has to admit that Jun is the best.
Jun works on the hill that overlooks the town. It's high up, it's difficult to get to, but it's clear. Up there, the sun is bright and the air is clean, and there's a view of everything. Jun is sitting at the edge of the drop, writing with an obscenely large black-feathered pen, when Yamapi and Jin approach him. There's a young boy, probably a prodigy, in front of him. He's sitting in a curled ball so that Jun can rest his paper against his back as he writes. Jin sends Yamapi a look, and Yamapi shrugs.
“Knock,” Jun says, simply. He doesn't look at them.
Jin rolls his eyes. “On what door?”
“You'll work it out if you want my help, whatever idiotic mess you've found yourselves in this time.”
The prodigy dares to look at the two of them, and Jun raps his shoulder with the hard side of his pen. Yamapi looks around, and Jin looks at the bottle hanging from his belt. He wears a gold one, with solid loops, and when he couldn't get the stone out of the bottle, he hung the bottle there instead. It's heavy, but he wants to keep it safe.
“Ah,” Yamapi says, suddenly, going some way off and retrieving a small rock.
“Excellent,” Jin says, under his breath. “I'll take the first shot.”
“Jin,” Yamapi warns, and lightly tosses the stone. It lands a little way away from Jun with a quiet thudding sound.
“Yes?” Jun says. “Come in. What do you want?”
“Dismiss the boy,” Jin says. The boy turns around, the Jun is forced to stop writing. He sighs, looking Jin full in the face. His eyes are smudged with powder: blue, parrot-blue, strange.
“What for?” he says. “You can't be-”
Jin reaches into the pocket of his trousers and retrieves a little piece of treasure. It's a small dagger, gilded and old, but with four blue stones on the hilt. One of Jun's favourite colours.
“Dismiss the boy, and we'll give you this.”
Jun studies it with narrowed eyes.
“Boy,” he says, eventually. “Go into town. Go to the shop where they sell the shipwrecked items. Find me a new compass: a good one. Come back in precisely one hour.”
Yamapi watches the boy scurry off and wonders whether he has that sort of power.
“You'll need a new one,” Jun says, by way of explanation. “Where you're going. You'll need a new compass. That's not all you'll need, of course, but the compass is the key.”
“What do you mean,” Yamapi asks. “Where we're going? We haven't even told you-”
“The bottle,” Jun says. “On your little dog's belt. That's why you've come, isn't it? Only you don't know what it is, or the power it holds. I heard you walking up the hill because you had that belt on you. It's a monstrously powerful object, and it's ironic that of all the pirates in the world it should end up with Akanishi Jin.”
“I swear, I'm going to-”
“Jin,” Yamapi says, nudging past him. He sits, someway off, so that he and Jun are on eye level. “Sit down,” he says, tugging on Jin's trouser-leg. Jin does so, reluctantly, removing the bottle from his belt.
“What is it?” he says, grudgingly. “I've never seen anything like it.”
“It's the first step,” Jun says. “Towards great power.”
“Alright,” Yamapi says. “So there's others just like it? On its own, it isn't important, but-”
“On its own, it isn't complete, no. Still, the power that it holds: you'd be wise not to spend too much time with it hanging from you like that. There are others just like it, according to legend. Four others, to be exact. Four bottles, four stones. Four other colours.”
“What do we do with them?” Jin says. “I'm assuming that we don't put them on the mantelpiece.”
Jun snorts. “According to stories, the aristocrat who they first belonged to did just that. He didn't understand their power, only their beauty. When he fell from political favour, he sold everything that he felt was valuable, except the five bottles. In the end, it's rumored that they were looted by pirates. Nobody knows, exactly. All that is known is that four of them ended up lost at sea, whilst one remained on land.”
“Why did one remain on land if they were stolen by pirates?” Yamapi asks. “That makes no sense. Surely any pirates taking them for their value wouldn't leave one behind.”
Jun shrugs. “It's said that the captain left one as a parting gift with his sweetheart of the day. I think it's a bad idea, leaving a present so fine with a woman, of all people, but pirates rarely mix well with love, do they, Jin?”
Jin looks at his boots, then, imagining scrubbing Jun's face off his head.
“He left the bottle with the green stone to her. I'm sure it matched her eyes, or her dress, or something trivial that he desired in her. After that, nothing else is known. The bottles ended up in the sea: either through shipwreck, or through misuse of their power, and nobody has seen any of them since then. Pirates have searched the seas for these,” he adds, reaching out a hand towards the bottle in Jin's grasp. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”
“What are they used for?” Jin asks, turning the bottle over in his hands. “What power do they have that would make a crew throw them overboard?”
“Hm,” Jun says. He looks at the grass before him and turns over his stones, tending to each one slowly. There's a very long silence before he continues.
“I have had many people here, asking about these treasures. Most of them beg, because of the current climate, because of the lack of food. Many of them are angry and unable to accept the extent of my wisdom. I can see the future and the past, I can see past the stars: but I am not a tracking device. I cannot find that which is lost. I cannot see the location of a mislaid object. I see visions, not directions. I am not a compass.”
“I understand that,” Yamapi says. “You have led me to many places I have wanted to go, in the past, but not directly. I understand that this is the way it works.”
“I find it difficult to work with him, not with you,” Jun says, scathingly.
Jin is looking at Yamapi, a wry and skeptical look on his face. Yamapi swats him, and he does his best to remove it.
“So,” Jun continues. “You will understand that once I tell you what these bottles do, I cannot lead you to them, no matter how much you plead. All I can do is inform you of their power. With most, I don't even do this.”
“I understand,” Yamapi says.
“The bottles are magical. I'm assuming that you see that: the stone too large to have been slipped inside, too light to weigh the bottle down. The cork will not be removed, no matter how you approach it. There is magic in the construction of it. All the bottles are the same. The stone must be removed, but it can only be done a certain way.”
“Which is?”
“All the bottles must be collected from the seas. You must form a crew of no more than five men-”
“Five?” Jin interrupts. “Do you have any idea-”
“I do not work with your grubby practical matters,” Jun says, coldly. “I only tell you what needs to be done. Kindly shut up and listen to me. All five men must be trustworthy to the core. All five must be loyal, wise – no man must have a traitorous soul. You must keep them well and content, because each stone can only be removed with a bargain made by each crew member. To retrieve the stone, each man must exchange a portion of his soul. It is a bonding made between he and the ship, he and the captain. Each man must feel that bond to his very depths. It must be true.”
Jin looks at the bottle, fascinated. “Will it kill them?”
“No,” Jun says. “It won't. But a portion of your soul should not be given away lightly. You must trust the men you take with you. Once all the bottles have been collected and all the souls exchanged, you will have five stones. Put together, they are of enormous importance. Your reward will be great.”
“What is the reward?” Yamapi asks.
Jun gathers his stones together, closing his eyes. “If you go where you are directed, you will find a place full of ice, where nothing grows but something grows. You will find locked deep below, the answer to what you have prayed for. You will find that which will fill the fields whether the other crops grow or wilt. You will find food for a lifetime, for five lifetimes, or ten. You will find the means to keep your family alive. Famines will not touch you. You will not find gold, or silver, a treasure chest of coins – you will find only a small shoot. But this shoot will feed you, until the day you die. It will feed your children, and their children. You will find what you seek beneath the ice and through the water.”
“In exchange for a piece of every man's soul,” Jin says. “We all get to live.”
“Yes,” Jun says. “I cannot tell you more than that. I cannot tell you how it will all come about. That is too hazy. I can only tell you that the bottles are in the ocean, and they will find you as this has done.”
“Can you tell us whether we will succeed?”
“No,” Jun replies. “I cannot tell you whether you will survive. If you recruit a traitorous man, if you exchange a traitorous soul, then I cannot speak of the wrath you will invite upon yourselves. Choose wisely, is all I can tell you. Greater men have come before me, asking of these secrets, and I have turned them away because of their weak crews.”
“You believe that our crew is stronger?” Yamapi asks, surprised. Jun doesn't tend to take notice of the trappings of the pirate world. He resides within it because it brings him prosperity (pirates are a suspicious and a spiritual bunch), but it's well-known that he hates the lot of them.
“Not in the least,” Jun says. “I just find myself indifferent to your survival. I've always loathed you, Jin. And Yamapi – you could have been a better man, if not for this. I feel wasted potential when I look at you. If you both were to fail and come to an untimely end, I wouldn't feel that the world had lost a great treasure.”
“Just give him the dagger,” Yamapi says, his face taut and blank. “We'll go.”
“You can't tell us anything else?” Jin asks, handing over the small object with a look of revulsion as his fingers brush Jun's.
Jun shakes his head, clearing the stones in front of him. “Ah – only that when you recruit, you will have a choice between two men. Two of your crew will come clearly to you. One will not. You will have a choice when picking your third crew member. One choice will be desperately wrong. The other, perfectly safe. I cannot tell you which is which.”
“Of course,” Jin says. “Thank you for your help.”
“My pleasure,” Jun says, stroking the little dagger with his hand. “The man you took this from resides in the spirit world,” he says. “A small cave. He's in the water that drips between rock pools, inside a small cave. Seething water. How interesting.”
“He will never come back,” Yamapi says. “We made sure of that.”
“No,” Jun says, turning the dagger over in his hand. “But be careful on the sea. Water can get everywhere, after all. The sea may no longer feel like being kind to you.”
They descend the hill, not speaking. The bottle moves against Jin's leg and when they pass by Jun's prodigy and the boy presses a compass into Yamapi's hand, Yamapi turns to Jin.
“Do you trust what he said?”
“Yes,” Jin says. “There's no point in not, really. I think that he hates me and that he'd be glad to see me wiped off the face of the earth, but his gift is...true. I believe what he says is true.”
“You think we should do this.”
“You're the captain. What do you think we should do?”
Yamapi sighs, looks out at the sea and the ships that wobble with all their might. “I want to do it. I need to do it, for my family. It may be the only chance we have. I just. You've been through so much, and-”
“And I'm still here,” Jin says. “I'm still here. It'll be alright. You have to learn to trust in me again. And yourself.”
“You're prepared to do this.”
“I'm prepared to do this. This thing came to me. I can't ignore that. You know that I can't ignore it.”
“Okay,” Yamapi says, nodding. “Put the word out that we're recruiting. I need to write to Shige. I think we need Shige.”
“He's in town,” Jin says. “Why write to him? He's right here.”
Jin puts the word out, and Yamapi packs up everything that he thinks they might possibly need, transferring it all from their room to the ship. He checks everything a thousand times: every little hole that used to be, every weak piece of deck that used to be. The ship is strong and clean and new, a new flag flies above his head. They're ready. Despite himself, he's nervous.
Jin arranges the men who are keen to sail: twice as many candidates as the last time they recruited. Yamapi and Jin are known, now. Jin is known as the pirate who lost his heart, but survived. It's one hell of a persuasive device. Yamapi walks down the line and smiles when he sees Shige there. Shige has grown up, taller and a little less naïve.
“Shige,” he says. “It goes without saying, doesn't it? You're one of us.”
“Thank you, captain,” Shige says. “It's been too long.”
“Do you think that you can help us go where we need to go?”
“As long as the map stays on the page this time, captain.”
Yamapi laughs, despite himself. “You understand the risks?”
“I do, as always,” Shige says. “Could I ask something in return? Keiichiro and I have been...well. We've been spending time together, and I'd appreciate it if you could take him. I understand that it's a limited crew, but – I trust him. He is trustworthy.”
Yamapi looks at Koyama, remembering his face distantly from the past. Koyama was a good man, a good pirate: solid as an ox and hard-working to boot. A good person to have around a ship.
“You would lay your life on that statement?” Yamapi asks, nonetheless.
“And yours,” Shige says.
“Then it's decided,” Yamapi says. “Both of you can stand aside.”
Jin looks at Yamapi, and nods. Together, they walk, analyzing the row of men.
“One more place,” Jin says. “Does anybody stand out to you?”
“Not yet,” Yamapi says. Many of the men are immediately discounted: too old or young, too frail, too drunk. One of them can barely stand up. Another looks disinterested, clinking coins in his pocket. They get to the end of the line and the two men there look promising, at last. One of them is short but stout, solid, he looks eager and as if he could haul a boat around with his bare hands. His eyes are bright and his back is straight. He reminds Yamapi of Shige, when Shige was much younger.
“What's your name?” Yamapi says.
“Tegoshi Yuya,” the man says. “I would be honoured to be considered, captain. I've heard great tales about your voyages. I have a little experience myself, I have worked for a brilliant captain, and I will do your will, whatever that may be.”
“I see,” Yamapi says, exchanging a look with Jin.
The next man is tall, rough. He has facial hair and eyes so dark and so focused that it's almost difficult to hold his gaze. When Yamapi stands before him, he looks hard into his face, and there's a silent desperation that passes between them. He has strong arms and a strong head, but his heart is aching. Yamapi understands that.
“Your name?” he says.
“Nishikido Ryo,” the man says. “I have never sailed before, I'll be honest. But I am strong, and loyal, and I do not value my life enough to withhold it from you, should it come to it.”
“If you don't value your life at all, perhaps you will end it prematurely,” Yamapi replies. “I need five men, alive, when we arrive at our destination. Huge fortitude is required. You are weak.”
“If what is required is that I remain alive and that I give myself over to this ship and this voyage, be assured that I can do it. I will do it. What I meant is that there is no place for individual concerns. I do not value myself above all others. I will lay my life down for all of you.”
“Have we met before?” Yamapi says, suddenly. “There's something-”
“No,” the man says. “I have heard of your legend, but we have never met.”
Yamapi turns to Jin and they move a little way off to deliberate.
“I don't like Nishikido,” he says, simply. “I think Tegoshi is the better choice.”
Jin is looking between the two men, chewing his lip. “It's your call. I don't agree, but it's your call.”
Yamapi frowns. “Surely you can see that Nishikido is a loose cannon, at best? I don't trust him an inch.”
“Jun said that we had a choice, didn't he? That one man would be wrong, the other right.”
“Honestly,” Yamapi says. “I don't see this as a choice. Nishikido is clearly not right for this crew. The choice is simple. Out of all these men, Tegoshi is the one that stands out. There's not a man to touch him in this line-up.”
“I just...I just feel-” Jin says, and sighs. “It's an instinct. I haven't any reason for feeling the way I do. I just feel that Tegoshi is wrong. I feel that Nishikido is the right one.”
“Enough to rest our lives on it?” Yamapi says, exasperated. “Jin, this is-”
“I know that it's serious,” Jin says, suddenly aflame. “Don't you think that I know that? I may not have family to rescue, I may not have interests the way you do, but if you think that I'm not taking this seriously—Yamapi, I just feel that this is the way it is. It's only my instinct. It's only my gut feeling. I am no match for reason, I am no match for logic. But if you value me, and if you value my heart, please pick Nishikido. I wouldn't beg if I wasn't certain.”
Yamapi looks at Jin. It would go against every bone in his body to pick Nishikido, and the last time Jin decided on a course of action, it took away his heart. He let Jin follow his instincts and it nearly killed him. Jin's instincts are a dangerous and a wavy thing, like the sea. It's hard to trust that. To lay any kind of faith in something so unstable. But it's Jin. It's Jin's eyes and Jin's heart, and Yamapi doesn't know that it's right, but he knows that Jin thinks it is. He closes his eyes and turns around, facing the group of men.
“We have come to our decision,” he says, slowly. “Nishikido, you will need to learn the ropes. Jin and Keiichiro will help you. You must be ready. I want to leave in 24 hours. Understand what you are taking on. What you are all taking on. And be ready.”
Nishikido nods as he walks to join Shige and Koyama. “I already am,” he says. “Captain.”
“Do not let me down. You are not here on my good faith – it must be earned.”
“I understand,” Nishikido says. “Thank you.”
Yamapi turns back to Jin, who looks at him with a look on his face that harks him back to more innocent days.
“Thank you,” Jin says, and it's just—everything.
“I hope that you're right,” Yamapi says. “I just hope that. Get them all ready. I need to sleep.”
They sail out the next day. Jin puts everybody to work in the best way that he can, having spent most of the night working out a way to spread five people across a ship. The moment they're on the water, Yamapi seems to visibly relax, a year's worth of worry leaving his shoulders like dust. Jin smiles, stands by him and the wheel.
“So what do we do,” he says. “Wait for them to come to us?”
“Yes,” Yamapi says. “And hope they do it quick. One advantage of a small crew is that there's more food for us all, but it won't last. I hope that Jun was right.”
“Jun's rarely wrong,” Jin says. “It's irritating.”
“How is Nishikido doing?”
“Fine,” Jin says. “He doesn't say much, but he'll work hard. He's very strong. He and Koyama are holding up. Shige's helping them, until it becomes more obvious what we're supposed to be doing. It won't be exactly as it should be, but I'll keep them in line.”
“The green bottle is yours, isn't it?” Yamapi says, suddenly. “It chose you.”
“I think so,” Jin says. “I tried to— last night, I tried. I couldn't do it. Perhaps it has to be done at sea, or maybe they all have to be done at once. I don't know. I'll keep trying.”
Yamapi looks at the bottle hanging on Jin's belt, and nods.
“Come to my cabin tonight.”
The sea is calm as they drink, the two of them. There's drinking, and kissing, and everything is starting to shift back into place. This is the world they know, the world that's them, and Yamapi feels more right than he has in a lifetime. He sits at his desk, Jin in his lap, they're drinking from the same bottle and kissing from the same mouth.
His hand is in Jin's pants, which is kind of unfortunate, because in the dead of night and entirely unannounced, Shige bursts into the cabin.
There's an awful moment where everybody freezes, and with little dignity, Jin climbs out of the chair and turns away from Shige to put himself back together.
“I'm sorry,” Shige is saying, over and over. “I'm sorry, I. Oh, God, I. Um.”
“Spit it out,” Yamapi says. In a way he's quietly amused, but he imagines that Jin is furious. “What's the interruption for?”
“We've stopped, you see, because, well. You need to see this. I've never seen anything like it.”
“I don't like the sound of that,” Yamapi says, rising. “Are you done?” he asks Jin, and Jin nods, red-faced and cross, and follows him out.
Yamapi catches Shige as he follows him, pulls him back and mutters in his ear:
“If you tell anybody about this, I'll-”
“I won't,” Shige squirms. “I swear on my mother's life.”
When they reach the deck, Yamapi can't see what they're looking for. Everything seems normal: the sky is black, the stars are out, no land in sight. The air is cold, there's a little frost on the mast. Normal conditions for February.
“What is it?” Yamapi says.
“Over the side,” Ryo says. “You'll see it.”
Yamapi strides over to Ryo and leans over the side of the ship. He inhales sharply, which makes Jin follow on without instruction. The two of them lean over and look down, and Shige is right, nobody has seen anything quite like this before. Where there was sea, now there is only a sheet of ice all around them. You could walk to the end of the world. The ship cannot move. Like the stones in the bottles, it is suspended in animation.
“Did you do this?” Yamapi says, to Ryo. His eyes are narrowed. “I don't know you, I don't know your kind of magic-”
“No,” Ryo says. “I didn't. I couldn't. Shige and Keiichiro have been here the whole time, and-”
Yamapi studies the other two, and nods. “It must be to do with the bottles,” he says.
Jin is still leaning over the side, peering down at the ice below. “I can see something,” he says. “Somebody throw me a rope.”
“Jin-” Yamapi begins. “I don't think. We don't know what's down there, or how thick the ice is-”
“We won't find out unless we try, and I'm freezing.” Jin reasons. “Let me go down. I'll go on a rope. It'll be safe.”
He waits for Yamapi to nod, and Yamapi waits for the rope before he does. After inspecting it, he reluctantly agrees.
“If I tell you to come back up, you come back up.”
Slowly, Ryo, Shige and Koyama lower the rope down the side of the ship. It takes time, and effort, and Yamapi leans over the side, watching to make sure nothing goes wrong. When Jin reaches the bottom, he tentatively touches a boot down, but nothing happens.
“It's thick ice,” he calls up. “Definitely magical. Ice this thick takes too long to form.”
“Okay,” Yamapi replies. “Have you found something?”
Jin bends down, the rope loose in his palm. Lying next to the ship is another bottle, exactly the same as the first one, only the stone is a dark colour.
“I've got a bottle,” he says, and there's a murmur of excitement from the crew.
“Haul him up,” Yamapi says, and he's smiling. Jin wraps his fingers around the bottle and lifts it, and the moment he does the ice vanishes. It happens so fast that Jin's boots get wet, he sinks a little before they pull him out, and his face is a picture of astonishment as he climbs over the side and lands on the deck. By the time he's hauled himself onto his feet, the ice is gone.
“Fuck,” he says, looking over. “So. Who wants it?”
“How do we decide?” Koyama says, studying the bottle in the moonlight. It's a deep purple shade, rich and somehow frightening. The bottle itself is ice cold in Jin's hand.
“I think it just...comes to you,” Jin says. “I found the green one in our room. Leave it on the deck. Wherever it ends up, I think...that's where it was meant to be.”
“Good plan,” Yamapi says. “Make sure you're all sleeping separately. I don't want any confusion. We have to do this right.”
If he'd been concentrating, Yamapi would have seen the look that passed between Shige and Koyama, but he isn't, and he doesn't. The only person who does see it is Ryo.
The next morning, Koyama wakes up alone. It's the first time in ages, and he feels restless. He turns over in the hammock and his head comes into contact with something hard. The bottle lies beside his ear. It's still cold, and he shivers as he takes it.
He comes out onto the deck and finds Shige, as soon as he can. When he tells him what he knows, Shige insists that he has to do what's been asked of them. He thinks it'll be the best way of leading them to wherever it is they're supposed to go. With Shige's confidence in mind, Koyama screws up his courage.
By nightfall, he recognises that just concentrating on the bottle isn't going to do it. There's a certain state that needs to be achieved inside, and Koyama doesn't seem to have the calmness to master it. He's considered asking help of the captain or the First Mate, but he doesn't want to appear weak. He has yet to make a solid impression of usefulness on either of them, he's not like Shige with his maps and charts. Koyama wants to be something more than he is, and he'll try and try until he gets it right.
After everybody has gone to sleep, Koyama sits on the deck with the bottle at his feet. Shige is the last to go, and in the moonlight, silent and beautiful, he kisses him. It's pure and trustworthy and good, like North on a compass, and when Shige leaves Koyama feels still. It takes a little while. He closes his eyes and tries to block the sounds out. The sea is so loud, the creaking of the ship, even the stars seem to be shrieking—but he blocks it out as best as he can. Slowly, he finds that he's feeling the sounds rather than hearing them. Blood races through his body like waves, his bones creak and shake. Something inside him is calling.
He takes the bottle in his hands, feeling for it in the dark. He grasps the bottle with both hands and he holds it above his head a little way. It's as though water is slopping down onto his head, bitter and cold and hard to the core, as if he's freezing solid from the inside out. It makes his mouth open, it makes him shake from head to foot, but he doesn't stop. Eventually, it will pass. The feeling with pass. The water comes down, down, down, until his head hurts with the pressure of it, and then it stops—
When he opens his eyes, he's not wet at all. Everything is as it was. The bottle is on the deck at his feet, but it is empty. The stone lies beside it, blinking in the dim moonlight.
The pattern repeats itself at a rate of once a day. The next day, the same cold frost breaks into the air and Yamapi turns expectantly at the wheel. Jin comes up to him to get a closer look, and the purple stone glimmers within a loop on his belt. Beside it, the green bottle hangs. He's had no luck with it yet, despite Koyama's instructions.
Shige wants to go down onto the ice, and Yamapi is relieved that it's no longer Jin's turn. He approves it, and Shige slides down, laughter on his lips. The ice holds his weight and he reaches down to grab the bottle. Only it doesn't move, as if it's frozen solid to the ice sheet. No matter how much he wriggles it, it won't shift. They have to haul him up and have a think.
Eventually, Jin goes down to take a look. They're not watching closely enough, deliberating still over what to do – and when Jin touches the bottle it comes away easily. The ice vanishes, same as before, and Jin goes into the water before anybody realises. They haul him out like a sodden cat, furious and freezing.
“Fuck,” he says, chucking the bottle down. “Some rope-holders you guys are.”
Yamapi chuckles, relief evident on his face, and chucks a blanket over Jin. “Next time, I'll go in,” he says.
“I don't think it'll let you,” Ryo interjects. “It released itself when Jin went down there. Maybe it's because he's wearing the other stones.”
“Maybe,” Jin says, collapsing onto the deck and grabbing the bottle in his hand. It's a very dark blue colour.
“I wonder who this one belongs to.”
Shige finds it even easier, to remove the stone from his bottle. He allows Koyama to watch, because Koyama can't understand how he could have been wet one minute and dry the next. They sit in the crow's nest, squashed in, the dead of night above them. Shige closes his eyes for a long time, and his breathing slows down. Koyama looks around him at the twinkle of stars in the sky, listening to Shige's breath, and he hopes that morning doesn't come. He'd sit here forever, he thinks.
Shige doesn't lift the bottle into the air like Koyama did. Instead, he grabs Koyama's hands, so suddenly it's as if he's possessed. His eyes don't open and his breathing doesn't increase. Only his hands hold on, and then he begins to tremble. Nothing happens outwardly, but he trembles and he trembles and the bottle shakes between them. It's frightening and Koyama wants to stop it, but he knows that he shouldn't, so he just sits, watching, shaking too.
Eventually, the bottle falls and Shige gasps and opens his eyes.
“Did you see water?” he says, all a rush. Koyama shakes his head. He realises then that there's water in his eyes, so maybe his answer isn't quite true.
Between them, the bottle is fallen and the blue stone lies unattended.
And so the pattern continues. Ryo is right: the bottles will not release themselves for anybody but Jin, who gets adept at dodging the water. The rest concentrate on pulling him out, and the red bottle comes onto the deck without so much as a splash. It's satisfying to Yamapi, and he gives them a slightly better meal that evening. They all feel that they're getting closer to their goal. Only one more remains.
They drink and eat with the crew that night. Jin and Yamapi next to each other, Koyama and Shige on the other side. Ryo sits alone at the head of the table.
“Where did you grow up?” Shige asks.
“In town,” Ryo says. “My father restores weaponry. A lot of old swords and daggers aren't what they used to be and, well, sometimes rich families want to bury their relatives with them. And they want them to be clean, new again. It's hard work.”
“You don't make new weapons?”
“No. I help my father restore old ones. I think it's more interesting. Blades carry spirits on them, if you ask me. You can feel their history when you hold them. The blood of thousands of enemies-”
Yamapi is looking at him strangely, so he stops in his tracks. His face is red. Jin looks up and at Shige, and for a while an awkward silence persists.
“My father is a navigator,” Shige says. “He's not interested in going back. Only going forwards.”
“How is the map coming along?” Yamapi asks.
“When the next bottle is done, it'll be almost complete,” Shige says. “We're moving in a spiral inwards. We're heading for a point, I'm just not sure exactly where that point will be. It won't be near land. With every bottle, we're heading further and further from land.”
“What does that mean?” Ryo asks. “Surely if we're going to find something, land is where we're going to find it.”
“Not necessarily,” Yamapi says. “Sometimes things aren't as you think they should be. I'm confident in the map and its reader.”
“The red stone,” Ryo says. “Who do you think will get the red stone?”
“It'd be crass to assume a connection with blood,” Jin says, slowly. “But I'm a crass sort of person. Tonight, we'll find something out about a member of this crew.”
The morning comes. Ryo prayed before he went to bed, not to wake up with the red stone. The captain and his mate are plenty bloodthirsty: he was almost confident that he'd be spared. Only when he opens his eyes, it's there, hanging from his hammock by its throat.
“Well, well,” Yamapi says, to Jin. “How I am surprised.”
“It might not mean blood,” Jin reasons, feeling guilty for his late night accusation. “It could mean anything. It could mean a fighting spirit. He could be the key to all of this. I made an unfair judgment.”
“It's got to mean blood,” Yamapi says. “It's got to. I never trusted him. I always thought-”
“Give him space,” Jin retorts irritably. “You don't know anything about him. None of us do. I asked you to have faith-”
“In you, not in him. I trusted your judgment, not his.”
“They're the same thing, Yamapi,” Jin says. “And to be honest, Ryo getting the red stone isn't as ill an omen as my inability to get mine out of the bottle. I just can't do it. What if we get all the way to...where we need to go, and I let us all down? Think about that, if you're going to think about anything.”
Ryo creeps out at dawn, not daring to do anything in the dark. The light is just touching the horizon, spreading across the line of the sea. It's beautiful. Cold, but beautiful. He takes the bottle with him in shaking hands and sits on the deck, staring at it. The stone is coldly beautiful, too.
He can't get into a quiet state. Everything around him is too noisy, and he's frightened that soon the crew will all be up, and he'll have to do this with an audience. So he takes the bottle in his hands, as tight as he can, squeezes his eyes shut as tight as he can, and he prays. He prays and he prays and he prays, the words becoming audible, his head throbbing.
In a great flash, he sees visions: a dagger penetrating a woman's chest, a dagger penetrating a man's chest, a heart, blood, a heart, a man, smoke, signs, words, dagger, cabin, lake, faster and faster the images fly by, so that eventually he can't see anything at all but a blur. He cries out and drops the bottle, cursing himself, because he's ruined it for everybody-
Opening his eyes, the stone isn't a stone any longer, red liquid all over his hands, dripping like blood onto the deck. He moans, softly, and shakes his palms, trying to get rid of it. It drips down faster and faster and then, silently, it reforms on the hard wood surface until the stone appears again.
From the wheel, Jin goes unseen. He watches it all and the blood drains out of his face.
He doesn't tell Yamapi what he's seen.
They wait for two days for the last stone, the one they know must be Yamapi's. Jin stands on the deck, his hips dotted with glinting stones and a bottle. They all know what lies ahead of them but the last stone refuses to come. Ryo becomes quiet and introverted, working hard but agonized. Shige tries to initiate conversation, but eventually has to give up.
Two days go by without progress, though Shige notes that they continue to spiral inwards. It can't be long now, he tells Yamapi. It can't be.
On the third night, everything is quiet and still, but nobody is asleep. Yamapi and Jin are in Yamapi's cabin, Jin is on his back and his head is tipped back and he's crying out around his own fingers. Yamapi is holding his shoulders hard enough to hurt, and his mouth is on Jin's collarbone. They're so close together it hurts both of them to move, but they need this, they both need this to feel settled, to feel whole. Jin strokes Yamapi's chest and that makes Yamapi's heart ache – mostly because Jin would do anything to have a heart that could.
And suddenly, Jin can't take it any more, he rises up and moves Yamapi beneath, and he's in Yamapi's lap with a grunt and a wince. Yamapi lets him, because it's beautiful and because he's so tired – he lies back and lets Jin move, lets Jin take his pleasure with the kind of greedy abandon that Jin defines as his own. And Jin rocks and Jin cries out, louder and louder, and Yamapi realises that in a strange way Jin is the sea. He wonders, as Jin steadies himself with a hand on Yamapi's hip, what Jun meant by his last comment.
Water can get everywhere, after all. The sea may no longer feel like being kind to you.
Ryo can't sleep. He tosses and turns and he feels he should be able to drop off, but he can't. He just lies and gets frustrated with himself. The images are still whirring around his brain, too fast to be seen. It's like having a hurricane in your head. Eventually, he has to move with it, because unless he can slow it down he'll never sleep again.
He climbs up to the main deck and lies there, looking at the stars. It stills his brain sometimes, the vastness of the universe. He's so small within it, it so large and beautiful. Tonight, it doesn't seem to calm him. He lies there and lies there and focuses so hard on the stars and the constellations that his eyes go blurry. It's then that he begins to see shapes, shapes that weren't ever there before.
893. 893. 893. 893.
Jin throws his head back as he gets a hand around his cock, when he hears the first moan that leaves Yamapi's mouth at the sight, he throws his head back. His hips slide forwards and he works them, faster and faster and faster, until it's something akin to a whirlpool. And Yamapi lies with his mouth slack, watching and wondering and unable to think or move or speak. A part of him is full of love and a part of him full of terror, and he can't reconcile the two.
“Jin,” he says, and it's a choke of a sound, incomplete and clumsy. Jin isn't there, he's not paying attention to anything that isn't the coil of pleasure within him. So Yamapi repeats it, and repeats it, until Jin's eyes open when the world flies in. Jin's eyes are very wet and his mouth is very wet and his words are very wet and he's so desperate and so needy and so right there, that Yamapi just looks at him and looks at him and rides him through it, steadies himself beneath it as Jin shakes it all out of his body, all of the pleasure, all of the endless, aching pleasure.
Jin keeps his eyes open even through the trembling, and when he finally comes to rest, his face is soaking wet.
He can't stop himself. He wants to, but he can't. He scurried beneath the decks and found paint, and once he had paint he didn't need a paintbrush. He puts his hand in there whole and paints with his hands and his feet and anything else, because he needs it all out, needs to see it written down to make sense of it. Ryo feels crazed. People have often called him a lunatic, but only now does he actually believe it.
He paints and paints and paints over every fresh surface he can find, the same three numbers, over and over again. They don't make any more sense the more times he does it, and so he breathes and tries again, trying to see past the shape of them, trying to delve into the monster he knows is there in the back of his head. The images flood him, inscrutable and impossible, and he can't clarify anything. Nothing makes any sense.
He falls back onto the deck and he looks around him, at every surface. 893. 893. 893. 893. 893.
“I want,” he says. “I want-”
Everybody is awake, but nobody hears him.
Yamapi comes out the next morning, and his jaw hits the deck. Shige and Koyama follow, and nobody can believe the sight. Ryo lies on the deck, his arms by his sides, empty-looking.
“I'm sorry,” he says. “I'm sorry. I don't understand it. I don't- Maybe you should throw me over. Maybe it's the bottles. I don't know.”
Yamapi just stares, turning in circles. “What is the relevance? It's just numbers. What-- what kind of. I don't. We have to do something with you. I think you're it. I think you're the person we shouldn't have-”
“No,” Jin says, following from behind. “I think it's just one of those things. Those bottles drive crew members insane, that's what Jun said. Nobody is going overboard. Ryo gave up a part of his soul for the stone, and he's staying. He's staying.”
The pair of them stare at one another, defiantly cross. It's broken only when a faint chill in the air gives rise to familiarity, and Yamapi rushes to the side of the ship.
“It's happening again,” he says. “Jin, you need to-”
“I'm there,” Jin says, as Koyama and Shige grab the rope. Ryo sits up, eyes wide and unsure, as everybody works around him. Jin lowers himself down the side of the boat and Yamapi watches.
It comes out of nowhere. Jin's boots touch the ice and a shadow appears behind him, too quick for Jin to quite draw a weapon, so the shadow gets a hand on him. Yamapi doesn't have to think twice: he throws himself down the rope so hard that Shige nearly trips, and Ryo takes his place by the side of the ship. Jin turns, almost in slow-motion, and slashes into the shadow with his sword. It's a man, and he falls. Not a shadow, a pirate. He's thin and wet, probably scrounging.
“They must have been waiting for us,” Yamapi says. “If Jun heard the stones-”
Jin fingers his belt, looking around with unease. “Are there any more?”
They patrol around the ship, the ice thick and unrelenting beneath their feet. There's nothing there. When they come back around, everything is the same, except for a small opening in the ice. Suddenly, Jin realises that there isn't a bottle. Just a small circle, not more than the width of a body around.
“Shige,” Yamapi calls up. “The map! Where are we?”
Shige races away. Koyama looks around, awkward. Ryo is halfway up to the crow's nest, wanting more than anything to be useful.
“I can't see anything,” he says. “Just ice, all around us. It goes on forever.”
“There's no bottle,” Yamapi muses. “Just ice.”
When Shige returns, he's brandishing the map with excitement. “We're there, I think. We've arrived. The spiral is tight – I don't think we can go any further!”
“We've not got enough bottles,” Yamapi says to Jin. Jin looks back, and nods. Neither of them want to move. They've learnt that lesson well.
“Maybe we missed one,” Jin wonders. “We slept at night. What if we missed the chance to pick one up?”
“Jin, you need to get into that green bottle,” Yamapi says. “I don't know why it won't work for you, but we need-”
“I think,” Ryo says. “That the answer is in that opening. I can't see to the bottom of it, but there's something in it. I think I can see something in it.”
Yamapi looks at Jin, who paces over with trepidation. It's a deep hole, and neither of them can see anything.
“It's worth a try,” Jin says. “Yamapi, come on, we've come this far.”
“Throw down the rope,” Yamapi yells back, and Shige slides down it. The moment his feet touch the ice, Koyama follows him.
“I meant one of you-” Yamapi says, and then, looking between the two of them, he understands. “Ryo,” he calls up. “You're on lookout. Inform Shige and Koyama if you see anything awry. They'll inform us.”
“I thought you didn't trust me,” Ryo calls back.
“I don't,” Yamapi retorts. “But you're the only hope I've got. Are we clear?”
Ryo nods, and Shige grabs the end of the rope. Koyama grabs it, behind Shige. Yamapi looks at Jin and Jin looks back, and the four of them are shaking. The belt around Jin's hips trembles with the weight of the three stones and the bottle. None of this makes sense to Yamapi, but Jin is right. It's worth a shot. They can't go back.
They lower Jin in first, Yamapi looking down into the hole.
“If I say come back, you come back,” he says, and there isn't room for more than that, nor would it be appropriate. He clasps Jin's hand in his and then Jin squeezes into the hole and gradually disappears. When he's inched down enough to allow room, Yamapi follows.
They push slowly down together, a weird combination of wriggling and sliding. The walls of the hole aren't even quite wide enough for a body, and their shoulders ache after a few feet. The tunnel seems to go down and down forever, and Yamapi wonders what will await them when they finally touch solid ground. After a few more feet, he's wondering if they ever will.
And then Jin cries out in surprise, which gives Yamapi the fright of his life. He can't see anything but the top of Jin's head.
“What is it?” he says, and Shige echoes it, somewhere up above.
“It fans out,” Jin says. “It gets a lot wider. Too wide to keep sliding down, hang on.” He inches himself downwards, and before Yamapi can stop him, he drops out entirely. Yamapi looks downwards and sees the solid icy ground beneath him. Jin picks himself up and looks around, as Yamapi follows him out of the tunnel and into the smallish room below. When they look up, they can see light above them, but it's distant. They turn around and around, getting their bearings, and what they see is so surprising that Yamapi has to blink a few times before he can believe it.
All around them, through an icy window, is water. Their surroundings are entirely blue. The room is unsurprisingly cold, and Jin shivers as he looks around him. Yamapi is afraid for their safety: what if the ice isn't thick enough?, but his thoughts are interrupted by Jin, who suddenly exclaims:
“I've found the bottle!”
Yamapi whirls around, but he can't see anything. “Where?” he demands, crossing the floor to Jin.
“We're in it,” Jin says, excitedly. “Look at where we're standing. It's a wide space with a tunnel above us. We're inside a great, big bottle.”
“We're inside a big bottle shape,” Yamapi calls up, through the tunnel.
“Oh,” he hears Koyama say, distantly. “There's no wine down there, is there?”
The surface around them is unclear. Thin veins wind through the thick ice sheets, and Jin traces them with his fingers as he walks around. Yamapi looks up, and down, but he can't see a solution, or a way to progress forwards, even. All he can see is thin veins and the sea around them. It's frightening, being surrounded by the sea, but able to breathe. It's like thinking yourself suffocating when you aren't.
“What do we do now?” Jin says. “I expected something to happen. Nothing is happening.”
“I don't know,” Yamapi admits. He calls to Shige, to ask if the map is changing. There is no answer, and when he shouts louder, there's a faint negative, as if Shige is miles away rather than a matter of feet.
“Take out the bottle,” Yamapi says. “There must be something about the bottle.”
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Seriously. I just. aslkfhalskfhal. I know I'm kind of pathetic enough to be your fangirl or something or whatever, but god. I just. It's only part one. You scare me so bad, I haven't read part 2 yet and I don't want to know if somebody's untrustworthy or something. I don't know how much sadness I can handle (I swear when I saw the word 'smoke' I almost started crying). askfalsfhlkh um, okay. Going on to part two now. *breathes*
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Not done yet, I saved your fic for the last, but OH MY GOD I'M DYING.
can I say I love you?