Chapter Text
The first thing Sullyoon registers is the salt.
Not the clean salt of sea air — the grit of it, crusted on her lips, her eyelids, the inside of her mouth. She coughs and water spills from her lungs.
She pushes herself up on trembling arms. Her palms scrape against sand that is wet and cold and familiar in ways that make her chest ache. The world comes into focus slowly; first the gray light of early morning, then the dark shape of the cliffs to her left, then the scattered wreckage of the ship spread across the shallows like bones.
The ship is gone, broken into pieces so small she barely recognizes it as something she once stood on, something that carried her and her crew across the sea toward a dream that keeps slipping through her fingers. The mast lies sideways, its sail tangled in kelp like a drowned animal's fur. The wheel has snapped clean off its axis and rolled several meters down the beach, coming to rest against a cluster of rocks. Smaller fragments — shattered crates, torn maps, a single boot that might belong to Lily or maybe Bae — are scattered everywhere, half-buried by the tide that brought them here.
Sullyoon stares at the wreckage, and for a long moment, she feels nothing at all.
Then the feeling comes.
It starts in her chest, a tightness, a pressure, something hot and restless pushing against her ribs like it wants to escape. It spreads to her throat, where it lodges itself like a stone she cannot swallow. Her hands curl into fists and her nails dig into her palms, she is angry.
Again, she thinks. Again, again, again.
She has done this countless times. She has hidden wreckage the same amount of times. She has gathered her crew from the gray emptiness of FIELD, watching their eyes light up with recognition they don't understand, watching them become a family over and over without ever remembering the first time they held hands or shared a meal or laughed until they cried.
And again, she is alone on another beach, and the ship is in pieces, and the sea is already pulling the wreckage out of her reach.
She forces herself to move.
Her legs are unsteady as she stands, but she finds her balance the way she always does: by listening to the water, letting the rhythm of the tide remind her that she is still here, still breathing, still something. She has always been connected to the sea in ways she cannot explain. It calls to her. It answers her. When she is drowning, it holds her up. When she is lost, it shows her the way home.
And now, as she walks toward the scattered remains of the ship, she feels the water brush against her ankles like a comfort. Like an apology. Like something that understands.
She begins with the small pieces first.
She works methodically, her movements slow and deliberate, as if she is performing a ritual rather than cleaning up a disaster. The sea helps her where it can. When she tries to bury the broken wheel — too large, too heavy for her arms — a wave sweeps in and pulls it from her grasp, dragging it into deeper water where it sinks slowly, gracefully, like it is being laid to rest. When she struggles with a section of the hull that refuses to fit beneath the sand, the tide rises just enough to cover it, swallowing it whole and leaving only smooth sand in its wake.
She hides the last of the small pieces, a shattered compass, a charred rope, a single gold button that might have come from Kyujin's coat, and then she stops.
Her hands are bleeding. She hadn't noticed. Small cuts from sharp edges, sand embedded in her palms, salt stinging the wounds. She stares at them for a moment, watching the blood mix with the water still dripping from her fingers, and she feels very tired.
Not the kind of tired that sleep can fix, but the kind that lives in her bones now, that has made a home in her chest, that whispers to her in the quiet moments between failures: You could stop. You could let go. You could let the sea take you too.
But she doesn't, she never does.
Because someone has to remember.
She hears someone crying.
Not the quiet, private kind, the kind you hide behind your hands and hope no one notices. This is something else. Something raw and ragged, the sobs of someone who has been holding themselves together for too long and has finally cracked open.
Sullyoon follows the sound without thinking. Her feet carry her down the beach, past the place where the mast used to be, past the cluster of rocks where the tide pools shimmer with trapped sunlight. The crying grows louder as she walks, more desperate, and she feels something cold settle in her chest.
She knows those sobs.
She has heard them before, though never like this. Never with this much weight behind them.
Kyujin is sitting on a rock at the water's edge, facing the sea.
Her back is to Sullyoon, but Sullyoon can see everything she needs to see from here: the way her shoulders shake with each breath, the way her left hand — the golden one, the one that has scarred itself with every failure she cannot remember — presses flat against her chest, fingers splayed wide as if she's trying to reach through bone and muscle and squeeze the pain out by force. Her whole body curls inward, shoulders hunching, spine bending, as if she is trying to become small enough to disappear into herself.
Sullyoon approaches slowly. The sand is soft beneath her feet, sucking at her heels with every step, and the water laps at her ankles as if trying to guide her forward. She comes to stand at Kyujin's side, close enough that their shoulders almost touch.
For a moment, neither of them speaks. The waves fill the silence.
Then Kyujin looks up.
Her face is swollen from crying, her cheeks wet, her lips trembling. But her eyes… her eyes are different. There is something in them that Sullyoon has never seen before, not in all the years and all the journeys and all the versions of this girl she has watched fail and forget and fail again. Recognition. The terrible weight of someone who has looked at their own hands and understood, for the first time, what they have done.
Kyujin shouldn't be here.
That is the thought that cuts through Sullyoon's anger, through her exhaustion, through the careful walls she has built around her heart.
Kyujin should be like the others, she should be waking up in that gray, suffocating place, her mind wiped clean of the journey, her gold covered hand bearing scars she cannot explain. She should be forgetting, not sitting on a rock at the edge of the sea, crying like her heart is breaking.
But she's here, and she's looking at Sullyoon like she remembers exactly how they got to the shore.
"You're not supposed to be here," Sullyoon says, and her voice comes out quieter than she intended, almost wondering.
Kyujin's breath hitches. "I know."
Sullyoon stares at her, searching her face. "What do you remember?"
Kyujin's throat works. She looks down at her hands — her left hand, the golden one, the record of every failure she has ever tried to fix. When she speaks, her voice is barely a whisper.
"Fragments," she says. "For a long time, just fragments. Images that disappear when I try to hold them. Feelings I can't explain. Ideas that come to me when I'm building– ways to shape the hull, ways to strengthen the engine, things I couldn't possibly know but somehow do. I thought they were just… inspiration. Intuition. I didn't know they were memories."
"But now?" Sullyoon presses.
Kyujin looks up, and her eyes are red and raw and terrible.
"The green flames. Your face when you screamed at me to stop. The way the ship burned like it was made of paper and someone had struck a match. The fire spread so fast, and I couldn't– I couldn't do anything–"
Her voice breaks, and she presses her hands to her face, her shoulders shaking.
Sullyoon stands very still. The sea brushes against her legs, patient and watchful. Kyujin finally understands what she's done. Kyujin finally remembers, she wants to feel happy about not being on her own anymore, but all Sullyoon feels is tired. And the tiredness makes her cruel.
"Why now?" she asks. "Why do you remember this time?"
Kyujin lowers her hands. Her face is wet, her expression lost.
Sullyoon lets out a breath — sharp, frustrated. She turns away, staring out at the water, her arms crossed tight over her chest.
"I've watched you fail so many times," she says, and her voice is lower now, less cutting but somehow heavier. "I've watched you reach too fast, push too hard, break things you were trying to save. And every time, you forgot. You woke up the next morning with no memory of what you'd done, and I had to–" She stops, her jaw tightening. "I had to pretend everything was fine. I had to smile and help you build the next ship and act like I wasn't drowning."
Kyujin is silent. She doesn't defend herself. She doesn't make excuses.
"And now you remember," Sullyoon continues. "One time. One failure out of countless. And you want me to– what? Be grateful? Be relieved?"
"No." Kyujin's voice is barely a whisper. "I don't want you to be anything. I just wanted you to know."
"Know what?"
"That I'm not forgetting anymore. That I'm here. That I'm–" Kyujin's voice cracks. "That I'm sorry. Even if it doesn't matter. Even if it's not enough."
Sullyoon turns back to face her. Kyujin is crying again — silently this time, tears streaming down her cheeks.
"Frankly, I don't trust your inventions anymore. You've built ship after ship after ship, and every single one has ended in fire and water and wreckage. You can tell me this time will be different. You can promise me you've learned. But why should I believe you? What possible reason have you given me to trust anything your hands make?"
Kyujin looks like she's been struck. Her gold hand trembles violently, and her right hand grips it — not to hold it back, but to keep it from reaching out.
"I don't know," she whispers. "I don't know what I can say to make you believe me."
"Then don't say anything." Sullyoon's voice is cold now, the heat of her anger draining away into something quieter and more dangerous. "Don't promise. Don't apologize. Just… build the ship. And do it right this time."
She turns and walks back down the beach.
Behind her, Kyujin doesn't call after her. The only sound is the waves and the quiet, hitching breaths of someone trying not to fall apart.
Sullyoon walks until the crying fades behind her, until all she can hear is the sea and her own heartbeat pounding in her ears. Her hands are still bleeding. Her throat is raw. She feels hollowed out, scraped clean, like a shell after the tide has pulled the life out of it.
The sea brushes against her ankles, and she stops.
A wave rolls in, higher than the others, and wraps itself around her calves. The cold shocks her, pulls her out of her thoughts, and the sea whispers something against her skin — not in words, but in feeling. A tug. A memory.
There's someone else.
She closes her eyes, and the tide shows her: a figure floating in the shallows, face-down, hair spread out like seaweed. Pale skin. Still chest.
Jiwoo.
Sullyoon's eyes snap open.
Jiwoo is still in the water.
The realization crashes over her like a second wave, cold and sharp. She had been so consumed by Kyujin — by the wreckage, by the anger, by the impossible fact that Kyujin remembered — that she had forgotten. Jiwoo always ends up in the shallows. Jiwoo always needs to be pulled out. And Sullyoon has left her there, floating face-down, while she stood on the shore and let her fury pour out onto the engineer who broke their ship.
She turns and runs toward the water's edge, scanning the shoreline for any sign of movement.
And there, a few hundred meters north, where the tide pools gather between the rocks, she sees her.
Not floating, exactly. Resting. As if the water itself has decided to hold her, to keep her safe until someone comes to take her back. The tide moves gently around her, lifting her hair in slow, silken waves, and her face — what Sullyoon can see of it — is peaceful. Almost smiling.
Sullyoon's chest constricts.
Jiwoo never remembers dying. She never remembers the wreck, the water filling her lungs, the moment her heart stopped. She only remembers the dream that repeats itself in different forms but always ends the same way.
The cold bites at her legs, but she barely reacts to it. She has felt colder. She has felt nothing.
She slips her arms beneath Jiwoo's body — carefully, gently, the way you might handle something fragile and precious — and lifts her from the water. Jiwoo is lighter than she should be, lighter than the last time, and Sullyoon wonders how many more times she can do this before there is nothing left to save.
She carries her to the shore and lays her on the sand, arranging her limbs so she looks comfortable, almost sleeping. Then she kneels beside her and cups her face in her hands.
"Jiwoo." Her voice is soft now, the sharpness from before drained away. "Can you hear me?"
No response.
Sullyoon looks around. The tide has left behind a scattering of broken shells — pink and white and gold, fractured but still beautiful. She gathers them carefully, arranging them in a circle around Jiwoo's head, a frame for her dreaming face. Then she turns back to the water.
She wades in again, deeper this time, until the sea is lapping at her waist. She cups her hands beneath the surface and watches as foam gathers between her fingers, bubbles catching the morning light, trembling and fragile and alive. She brings them back to Jiwoo and lets them drift down onto her lips, her eyelids, her temples, watching as the salt sinks into her skin and the foam leaves traces of light behind.
"The sea gives and takes," Sullyoon murmurs, and the words feel ancient, older than her, older than anything she knows. "But today, it gives you back. Breathe."
She presses a small piece of coral into Jiwoo's palm: pale pink, shaped like a heart, warm from the sun, and closes Jiwoo's fingers around it.
"Wake up. Please."
Jiwoo's eyelids flutter.
Her lips part.
"Forest…" she breathes, the word soft and slurred, barely there. "So dark… but light… through the trees…"
Sullyoon leans closer, her heart aching.
"Someone woke me," Jiwoo murmurs, her voice drifting like smoke. "Hand was warm… took me out… out of the trees…"
"The sea?" Sullyoon whispers.
Jiwoo's lips curve into a faint smile, still lost in the dream. "Cliff… so high… dancing… happy… so happy…"
Her voice trails off, and for a moment, Sullyoon thinks she has slipped back under. But then Jiwoo's eyes flutter open.
She blinks slowly, her gaze unfocused at first, still heavy with sleep. Then her eyes find Sullyoon's face, and something softens in her expression, not recognition exactly, but something warmer than confusion. Something that looks like trust, even though they have never met. Not in any way Jiwoo can remember.
A smile spreads across Jiwoo's face, slow and warm and unguarded, like sunlight breaking through clouds. She doesn't sit up right away. She just lies there, looking up at Sullyoon, her smile growing wider.
"Hi," she says, her voice still thick with sleep.
Sullyoon's throat tightens. "Hi."
Jiwoo pushes herself up slowly, glancing around at the shells scattered in a circle around her head, the foam still drying on her skin, the coral clutched in her hand. She doesn't seem alarmed by any of it. She doesn't seem confused about why she's lying on a beach with a stranger kneeling beside her.
Instead, she tilts her head, studying Sullyoon's face with an expression that is curious and gentle.
"Have we met before?" Jiwoo asks. "I feel like… I feel like I know you. Like I've known you for a long time."
Sullyoon's heart clenches so tightly she can barely breathe. She smiles, small and sad and full of things she cannot speak aloud.
"I don't think so," she says quietly, shaking her head. "I'm sorry. I think I would remember you."
Jiwoo nods, accepting this, though her expression flickers with something like disappointment. Then she seems to remember something, and her face brightens.
"Oh! I should tell you my name." She sits up straighter, brushing sand from her sleeves, and holds out her hand with a formality that is almost comical given the circumstances. "I'm Jiwoo. I don't actually remember my last name. But Jiwoo is enough, right?"
Sullyoon takes her hand.
"I'm Sullyoon," she says, and even now, even after all this time, introducing herself to someone who has known her for countless cycles feels like a small act of violence. "Just Sullyoon."
"Sullyoon," Jiwoo repeats, testing the name on her tongue. She smiles. "It's pretty. It sounds like the sea."
Sullyoon's breath catches. She doesn't know what to say to that.
Jiwoo doesn't seem to notice her hesitation. She looks down at the coral in her palm, then at the shells around her, then back at Sullyoon.
"Did you put these here?" she asks.
"Yes."
"They're beautiful." Jiwoo runs her thumb over the coral's ridges. "Thank you."
Sullyoon helps her stand, brushing sand from her clothes, tucking a strand of wet hair behind her ear. Jiwoo lets her, docile and trusting, as if this is the most natural thing in the world.
"I had a dream," Jiwoo says, her eyes lighting up. "A really beautiful one. Do you want to hear about it?"
Sullyoon nods. "I'd like that."
Jiwoo takes a breath, and her whole face lights up the way it always does when she talks about the dream, the way it has, many times before, though she never remembers telling it.
"It started in a forest," she says, her words tumbling out quickly, eagerly. "A dark one, really dark, like the trees were so thick they swallowed most of the sky. But there was sunlight coming through the branches, thin and golden, like threads of light weaving through the leaves. I was lying on the ground, on a bed of moss, and I couldn't remember how I got there. I couldn't remember anything at all. I just… woke up."
Sullyoon listens, her hands resting at her sides, her heart a quiet drum in her chest.
"Then someone was there," Jiwoo continues, her voice softening with wonder. "I didn't see them at first, they woke me up, I think, because I felt a hand on my shoulder, very gentle, and a voice saying something I couldn't quite understand. When I opened my eyes, they were kneeling beside me, but their face–" She frowns, frustrated. "Their face was blurred, like looking through water, and their figure kept changing, shifting, like I couldn't quite hold onto them no matter how hard I tried. I don't know if they were tall or short, if their hair was light or dark, if they were wearing anything I'd recognize. They were just… there. But their hand–" She looks down at her own palm, as if she can still feel it. "Their hand was warm. Real. Not like a dream at all."
"Then what happened?" Sullyoon asks, though she already knows.
"They took my hand," Jiwoo says, smiling. "And they pulled me to my feet. And then they led me through the forest, through the trees and the dappled light, and I wasn't scared even though I should have been. We walked for a while and then the trees began to thin, and I could see light ahead, bright and golden, and I heard it."
"Heard what?"
"The sea," Jiwoo breathes. "I heard the sea."
She hugs the coral to her chest, rocking slightly with excitement.
"We came out of the forest onto a cliff," she says. "Right at the edge, where the grass meets the rock, and the rock drops straight down into the water. And the sea was so blue– bluer than anything I've ever seen, like someone had painted it just for us. The sky was clear, and the sun was warm on my face, and the wind was soft, and then the person let go of my hand and started to dance."
"Dance?" Sullyoon asks, even though she has heard this before.
"Just swaying at first," Jiwoo says. "Like they were listening to music I couldn't hear. Their movements were so graceful, so free, like they'd done this a thousand times. And then they held out their hand to me again, and I took it, and we danced together on the cliff, right at the edge, with the sea below us and the sun above us, and I was so happy, Sullyoon." Her voice cracks, just a little. "I don't think I've ever been that happy."
She touches the coral in her palm, running her thumb over its ridges, and lets out a small, quiet breath. The dream is still there, tucked behind her ribs, warm and aching. But something else pulls at her attention, she looks down the beach toward the figure still sitting on the rock, still crying, still holding herself together with shaking hands.
"Who is that?" she asks. "Why is she crying?"
Sullyoon follows her gaze. The figure on the rock is smaller now, a silhouette against the gray sky, still curled in on itself. Kyujin's shoulders are still shaking.
For a moment, something stirs in Sullyoon's chest — not pity, exactly, but a dull, familiar ache. Guilt, she recognizes. Guilt that sits heavy and uncomfortable.
Frankly, I don't trust your inventions anymore.
The words echo back at her, sharper now than when she said them. She had meant them. She still means them. But the way Kyujin's face had crumpled, the way her golden hand had trembled — Sullyoon presses her lips together and looks away.
She needed to hear it, she tells herself. Someone had to say it.
But the guilt doesn't fade.
"She remembers something," Sullyoon says quietly. "Something she'd rather forget."
"Should we go to her?" Jiwoo asks, her brow furrowed with concern.
Sullyoon hesitates. For a moment, she considers it. Walking back down the beach. Sitting beside Kyujin. Saying something, anything, to take back the sharpest edges of her words.
But she doesn't know how. She has spent countless cycles swallowing her anger, hiding her frustration, smiling through the wreckage. Now that it has finally spilled out, she doesn't know how to gather it back.
"No," she says finally, and her voice is steadier than she feels. "Not yet. She needs to sit with it first. Some things can't be comforted away."
Some things shouldn't be comforted away, she thinks. Some things need to hurt.
She takes Jiwoo's hand and turns her away from the shore. Jiwoo doesn't let go. She doesn't seem to think twice about it. Her fingers just curl around Sullyoon's like they belong there, warm and trusting and utterly unaware of the storm raging in Sullyoon's chest.
They walk together toward the dunes. Behind them, the sea continues its patient work, swallowing what remains of the wreck, hiding the evidence of another failure beneath its dark and forgiving surface.
It takes Kyujin three days to find her again.
Not because Sullyoon is hiding — she isn't. She has been walking the shoreline, gathering supplies, checking on Jiwoo, watching the horizon for any sign of the others. But Kyujin has kept her distance. Respecting the space Sullyoon demanded, or perhaps too ashamed to show her face.
Sullyoon tells herself she doesn't care either way.
She is sitting on a driftwood log near the dunes, her hands wrapped around a cup of water she isn't drinking, when she hears footsteps in the sand. Slow. Hesitant. She knows who it is before she looks up.
Kyujin stops a few meters away, her gold hand pressed against her chest — a gesture Sullyoon is beginning to recognize as her way of holding herself together. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her face pale. She looks like she hasn't slept.
"Can I sit?" Kyujin asks. Her voice is raw, scraped thin.
Sullyoon considers saying no. The easy anger is still there, buried beneath exhaustion.
Still, she nods towards the sand beside the log. Not an invitation, exactly. But not a refusal either.
Kyujin lowers herself onto the ground, not too close, not too far. She doesn't speak at first. She just sits there, staring at the water, her left hand curled against her ribs.
The waves fill the silence between them.
"I need your help," Kyujin finally says. Her voice is barely a whisper. "Not with the ship. Not with the engine. I need you to tell me what to do. How to be better. How to not–" She stops, her throat working. "How to not be the reason everything falls apart."
Sullyoon doesn't respond immediately. She watches Kyujin's profile — the tension in her jaw, the way her gold hand keeps pressing against her chest like she's trying to hold something in.
"You want me to fix you," Sullyoon says. It's not a question.
Kyujin flinches. "I want to know what I'm doing wrong so I can stop doing it. You've seen me fail more times than anyone. You know what I need to change."
Sullyoon turns to face her fully. The frustration that has been living in her chest for countless journeys stirs, but it's different now. Less sharp.
"I can't fix you, Kyujin."
"I'm not asking you to–"
"Yes, you are." Sullyoon's voice is quiet but firm. "You're asking me to give you a list of instructions. Do this, don't do that, and then you'll be better. You'll be someone I can trust. That's not how this works."
Kyujin's hands clench in her lap. "Then how does it work? Because I don't know. I've never–" She stops, her breath hitching. "I've never had to do this before. I don't know how to be someone different."
Sullyoon studies her. The desperation is still there, but underneath it, she sees something else — a genuine confusion, a girl who has spent countless journeys reaching and breaking and forgetting, and now doesn't know what to do with her hands when they're not reaching for something.
"Start small," Sullyoon says. "Stop trying to solve everything yourself. You're the engineer, not the captain, not the medic, not the scout. You don't have to carry everything."
"But I–"
"You want to make amends?" Sullyoon cuts her off. "Then ask someone else for their opinion before you commit to a design."
Kyujin stares at her. "That's it?"
"That's the start." Sullyoon's voice softens, just slightly. "You're so used to being the one who fixes things that you've forgotten how to let other people help. You don't have to be perfect, Kyujin. You just have to be careful."
Kyujin is quiet for a moment.
"Okay," she says finally. "I'll try."
The tension between them eases, just a little. Not gone, but softer, manageable.
They sit together in silence, watching the tide roll in and out. The sun is lower now, the shadows longer. Somewhere behind them, Jiwoo is crouched among the rocks at the edge of the dunes, her fingers tracing patterns in the sand as she studies the way the tide pools connect to each other. She has been at it for hours, mapping the flow of water, muttering to herself about currents and channels and which shells are carried where.
"She never stops," Kyujin observes quietly.
Sullyoon nods. "That's who she is."
Kyujin watches Jiwoo for a moment — the way her face lights up at each new discovery, the way she talks to the shells like they can hear her. A small smile tugs at her lips.
"I hope she never loses that," Kyujin says softly. "The way she looks at the world. Like everything is still possible."
Sullyoon glances at her. There's something vulnerable in Kyujin's expression, a quiet protectiveness, a wish she doesn't know how to put into words.
Jiwoo looks up then, as if she felt them watching. She waves, grinning, and holds up a shell covered in strange markings.
"This one has lines that don't match the others!" she calls out. "I think it's from somewhere else. Somewhere far away."
Sullyoon nods at her, and Jiwoo turns back to her work, already chattering to herself about ocean currents and migration patterns.
Kyujin's smile softens. Sullyoon watches the tide.
Kyujin unrolls the blueprints across a flat rock.
The MMU is nothing like the ships that came before. No masts, no sails, no wooden hull carved by hand. This is a vessel of sharp lines and smooth curves, built to pierce through water and sky alike. The top view shows a sleek, almost organic shape — something between a deep-sea creature and a spacecraft dreamed up in a fever.
Lily whistles low. "That's… not what I expected."
Jiwoo's eyes are wide. "It looks like it's from the future."
"It is," Kyujin says. "Our future."
She points to the different sections as she explains — A-deck for navigation and command, B-deck for living quarters and medical, C-deck for storage and engineering. The main engine sits at the heart of the vessel, labeled in Kyujin's cramped handwriting:
IMPETUS DRIVE: Powered by collective emotional resonance. Stability = speed. Discord = failure.
Haewon reads the notes aloud, her brow furrowed. "It says here the engine runs on… our feelings?"
Kyujin nods, her voice carefully neutral. "Impetus. It's what drives us toward MIXXTOPIA—the desire to reach something new. If we're in sync, the ship flies. If we're not…"
"We sink," Bae finishes quietly. She's staring at the engine core with strange intensity. "I've seen something like this. In a vision, maybe. Or a dream."
Lily grins. "Then we just don't fight. Easy."
Jiwoo claps her hands. "We're already friends! Look at us! We've known each other for, like, a week and I already love everyone. And look at all this space– Kyujin, did you plan for more people to join us?"
Kyujin nods, a small smile tugging at her lips. "I thought we might meet others along the way. People who want to reach MIXXTOPIA too. There's room."
The crew falls into easy chatter, discussing the ship's features, the journey ahead, the dream of reaching MIXXTOPIA. They're excited. They're hopeful. They have no idea what's waiting for them.
Kyujin answers their questions automatically—yes, the hull can withstand pressure; yes, the observation deck is safe; no, the engine won't fail if everyone stays calm.
But her eyes keep drifting to Sullyoon, who hasn't said a word.
Sullyoon stands slightly apart from the others, her arms crossed, her gaze fixed on the blueprints with an intensity that makes Kyujin's chest tighten. She isn't smiling. She isn't nodding along like the others. She's studying. Tracing every line with her eyes, searching for the flaw she's sure must be there.
Kyujin spent countless sleepless nights on this design. Reworked the hull a dozen times. Recalculated the pressure tolerances until her vision blurred. She added space for strangers she hasn't met yet, because she wanted this ship to be more than just a vessel — she wanted it to be a home.
But none of that matters if Sullyoon doesn't trust it.
The others are still talking, still laughing, still pointing at different sections of the blueprint with excitement. Kyujin barely hears them. She watches Sullyoon's face, waiting, hoping for something, a nod, a softening of her expression, anything.
Finally, Sullyoon looks up.
Their eyes meet. Sullyoon's face is serious, unreadable. She holds Kyujin's gaze for a long moment, and Kyujin feels like she's being weighed on a scale she didn't know existed.
Then something shifts. Just slightly. The corner of Sullyoon's mouth twitches — not quite a smile, but not a frown either. Something softer. Something that looks almost like the beginning of relief.
She looks back down at the blueprints, traces her finger along the engine core, and says, "Start building."
Her voice is still quiet, still serious. But there's no sharpness in it. No edge. Just a simple statement, delivered with something that might be trust.
Kyujin's heart stumbles.
She wanted… she doesn't know what she wanted. A smile, maybe. A quiet good work. But this — this quiet absence of hostility — feels like more than she expected to get.
A breeze rolls in from the sea, warm and salt-tinged, brushing against her cheek. It feels almost like a hand on her shoulder. Like something saying well done when the words won't come.
Sullyoon has already turned away, walking toward the treeline without looking back. But her pace is slower than before. Less like she's escaping.
Kyujin watches her go, then looks down at the blueprints still spread across the rock. She runs her fingers along the edge of the paper, carefully..
The sea breeze comes again, soft and warm.
Kyujin smiles.
"Okay," she says quietly. "I'll start tomorrow."
She presses her gold hand against her sternum and breathes.
It's a start, she tells herself. That's enough. For now, that's enough.
The others have gone to gather supplies. Haewon is teaching Jiwoo how to tie knots. Lily and Bae are arguing about which direction has better fishing. For a few minutes, Sullyoon is alone with the blueprints still spread across the flat rock.
She traces the lines of the MMU with her fingertip. It's nothing like the ships that came before. Those were vessels of wood and sail, beautiful in their way, but fragile. This is something else entirely — a vessel built to survive. The hull is reinforced. The decks are layered. The engine is sealed behind walls of composite metal and reinforced glass.
She doesn't hear Kyujin approach until the engineer speaks.
"I wanted to check something."
Sullyoon looks up. Kyujin is standing a few feet away, her gold hand tucked behind her back, her posture careful.
"What?" Sullyoon asks.
"The seals between A-deck and B-deck." Kyujin's brow furrows. "If the hull breaches below, the pressure could force water up through the connecting shafts. On the last ship, we didn't have to worry about that–we couldn't dive. But here… if those seals fail, we lose both decks before anyone can react."
Sullyoon watches her. The old Kyujin would have already redesigned them without asking. Would have stayed up all night reworking the schematics and presented them in the morning expecting praise. This Kyujin is different, she's hesitating.
"What do you want to do?" Sullyoon asks.
Kyujin doesn't answer immediately. She looks at the blueprint, then at Sullyoon, then back at the blueprint.
"I want to install emergency bulkheads," she says finally. "Manual release, not automatic. That way, if the seals fail, someone can close them off by hand." She pauses. "But I wanted to ask first. Before I changed anything."
Something shifts in Sullyoon's chest. Not forgiveness — not yet.
She's asking. She's actually asking.
Sullyoon looks down at the blueprint, at the familiar lines of Kyujin's handwriting. She thinks of all the ships that came before. The wooden hulls that cracked. The decks that flooded. The moments when Kyujin had been too sure, too fast, too eager to prove herself.
Those ships are gone. This one is different, and so is the girl standing in front of her.
"Do it," Sullyoon says quietly. "Manual release gives us more control."
Kyujin nods. She pulls out a small pencil from her pocket and makes a note on the edge of the blueprint — carefully, neatly. Then she steps back, but doesn't leave.
"There's something else," Kyujin says, almost hesitantly.
Sullyoon looks up. "What is it?"
Kyujin's golden hand presses against her chest again — that familiar gesture, the one she does when she's trying to hold herself together. "The life support calibration. The ratios for the underwater recyclers are different from the space configuration. I think I have them right, but I'm not sure. Bae would know — she's got the sharpest instincts for balance. She notices things the rest of us miss."
Sullyoon blinks. The old Kyujin would never have admitted that someone else might know more than her about anything related to the MMU. She would have calibrated everything herself, consequences be damned.
"You want to ask Bae for her opinion," Sullyoon says slowly.
Kyujin nods. "She's our scout. Her whole thing is observation. If something feels off, she'll notice before any of us." She pauses, swallowing. "I should have asked her before, on the other vessels, but I never–" She stops. "I never thought to. I just did it myself, and now I'm wondering how many problems I could have avoided if I'd just… asked."
The words hang in the air between them, heavy with unspoken history.
Sullyoon studies Kyujin's face — the exhaustion, the guilt, the desperate sincerity. She looks like someone who has been replaying every mistake in her head, over and over, trying to understand where she went wrong.
She's learning, Sullyoon thinks.
"Then go ask her," Sullyoon says. "She's with Lily near the tide pools. She won't mind."
Kyujin's shoulders relax slightly. "You think so?"
"I know so." Sullyoon pauses. "Bae notices things others don't. She'll appreciate you trusting her insight."
Kyujin nods. She leans over the rock and carefully rolls the blueprints back up, tucking them under her arm. Then she turns to go. But after a few steps, she stops and looks back.
"Sullyoon?"
"What?"
"Thank you. For–" Kyujin gestures vaguely at the space between them, at everything. "For listening. For not just… walking away."
Sullyoon doesn't know what to say to that. So she just nods.
Kyujin leaves. Sullyoon watches her go, watches her approach Bae by the tide pools, watches her hesitate for just a moment before unrolling the blueprints again. Bae looks up, listens, nods. Her expression is focused, sharp — the face of someone considering a problem from every angle.
They start talking. Bae points at a section of the schematic, traces something in the air with her finger. Kyujin doesn't interrupt. She doesn't rush. She just listens.
Something warm flickers in her chest. Small. Fragile. Unfamiliar.
She looks out at the water, at the MMU waiting to be built, and lets herself breathe.
The moon hangs low over the campsite, casting pale light across the scattered bedrolls and the dying embers of the fire. The others sleep soundly — Haewon and Lily resting close together, their breathing slow and even, while Bae lies beside Jiwoo, one arm draped protectively over the younger girl's shoulder.
Sullyoon sits apart from them, her knees drawn to her chest, her heart still pounding from a nightmare.
Which one was it this time? She couldn't tell anymore: the mast splintering in the storm, the hull cracking against the rocks, the engine overheating because someone pushed it too far, the arguments that turned into screaming matches until the ship tore itself apart from the inside; they all blurred together after a while.
They all blend together after a while. One wreck bleeds into another. She doesn't dream about a failure. She dreams about all of them, stacked on top of each other, an endless graveyard of ships that never made it.
She presses her hand against her sternum and tries to slow her breathing. She doesn't realize she's trembling until she hears soft footsteps in the grass.
Kyujin.
She's standing a few feet away, her posture hesitant. She looks exhausted — darker circles under her eyes than yesterday, her shoulders curved inward like she's trying to take up less space.
"Are you okay?" Kyujin asks quietly. Her voice is soft, careful.
Sullyoon wants to say I'm fine. The words are right there, familiar, easy. She's said them a thousand times. A thousand more than that.
"Couldn't sleep," she says instead.
Kyujin nods. She doesn't move closer. She just stands there, waiting.
"Nightmares," Sullyoon says after a moment. Her voice is barely a whisper. "They're not always the same. Sometimes it's fire. Sometimes it's water. Sometimes it's just–" She stops, her throat tight. "Sometimes it's nothing at all. Just the feeling of falling. Of watching something break and not being able to stop it."
Kyujin's face flickers with emotion — recognition, understanding, something that looks like guilt but isn't quite. She doesn't say I know or I'm sorry. She just nods again, slower this time.
"Sullyoon," she says. "Can I–" She hesitates, her gold hand twitching at her side. "Can I come closer?"
Sullyoon looks at her. At the exhaustion carved into her face. At the way she's holding herself back, waiting for permission.
She's tired too, Sullyoon realizes. She's been having nightmares too. Maybe not the same ones. But close enough.
She doesn't know why she didn't see it before. Kyujin remembers now. Of course she dreams about it. Of course she can't sleep. Of course she's standing here in the middle of the night, asking permission to sit down.
Sullyoon nods.
Kyujin crosses the distance slowly, carefully, and lowers herself onto the ground beside Sullyoon, close enough that their shoulders almost brush.
They sit in silence. The embers crackle. Sullyoon thinks about all the journeys before this one. All the failures. All the moments she blamed Kyujin — blamed her recklessness, her eagerness, her desperate need to fix everything alone.
But it was never just Kyujin, was it? The storms weren't her fault. The currents that dragged them off course. The miscommunications that turned into fights. Kyujin made mistakes, plenty of them, but she wasn't the only one. She was just the one who reached first.
The anger is still there, somewhere deep. It doesn't disappear just because she understands. But it feels smaller tonight. Less like a wall and more like a stone she can carry without dropping.
She sighs — long and slow, letting the tension drain from her shoulders.
Then she leans to her side, her head comes to rest against Kyujin's shoulder — light at first, testing, ready to pull away if Kyujin flinches away.
Kyujin goes very still, like she's afraid of breaking the moment. Then, slowly, she relaxes beneath Sullyoon's weight.
Neither of them speak.
The moon drifts behind a cloud. The fire burns lower. Around them, the others sleep, unaware of the small, quiet thing happening in the dark.
Sullyoon closes her eyes.
I'm not alone anymore, she thinks.
And for the first time in countless journeys, the weight on her chest feels just a little bit lighter.
The engine hums softly beneath the decks, a steady rhythm that has become the heartbeat of the MMU. Most of the crew are asleep or scattered across the observation deck, watching the bioluminescent creatures drift past the glass. Sullyoon is alone in the medical bay, restocking supplies she hasn't needed yet, when the door slides open.
Kyujin stands in the doorway, her left arm tucked behind her back. Her face is pale, her jaw tight.
"I need–" Kyujin starts, then stops. "Can you look at something? It's not an emergency. I just… I don't know who else to ask."
Sullyoon sets down the bandages she's been organizing. "What is it?"
Kyujin steps closer and, after a moment's hesitation, holds out her left arm.
The gold gleams in the low light of the medical bay — a solid, liquid sheen that covers her hand completely, as if she had plunged it into a bucket of molten metal and let it cool. It climbs up past her wrist, coating her skin in a seamless, unbroken layer that catches the light with every small movement. Halfway up her forearm, it stops; a jagged, organic edge where gold meets flesh, like a tide frozen mid-rise.
Sullyoon has seen it before. Watched it spread over countless journeys, creeping higher with each failure. But she's never looked at it like this. Never been asked to examine it as a doctor.
"It's been hurting," Kyujin admits. "More than usual. The skin underneath feels tight, and sometimes I can't move my fingers the way I want to." She flexes her hand, and the gold ripples, a strange, beautiful, terrible thing. "I've been ignoring it. But I can't anymore."
Sullyoon doesn't answer immediately. She pulls over a stool and gestures for Kyujin to sit.
"Let me see."
Kyujin sits. Sullyoon takes her arm — gently, carefully, the way she would handle any patient. The gold is warm to the touch, warmer than skin should be. She turns Kyujin's hand over, examines the way the metal flows between her fingers, presses lightly along the edge where gold meets flesh.
Kyujin flinches when Sullyoon reaches the midpoint of her forearm, near the delicate skin of her inner wrist, but she doesn't pull away.
"When did it start hurting?" Sullyoon asks.
"A few days ago. After we dove below the thermocline. The cold made it worse. The gold doesn't… breathe. It traps everything underneath."
"You should have said something sooner."
"I know." Kyujin's voice is quiet. "I didn't want to be a burden. And I thought– I thought if I ignored it, maybe it would stop spreading. Maybe it would just… stay where it is."
Sullyoon looks up at her. The words hang between them, heavy, familiar. She's heard Kyujin say similar things before, in different cycles, different contexts.
"You're not a burden," Sullyoon says. Her voice is softer than she intended. "You're a patient. There's a difference."
She reaches for a small jar of salve, something she mixed herself, designed to soothe irritated skin and reduce inflammation. She warms it between her palms, then begins to work it into the edge where gold meets flesh, slow and methodical, careful not to press too hard.
Kyujin watches her hands. "You don't have to–"
"I know." Sullyoon doesn't look up. "I want to."
They are silent for a long moment. The engine hums beneath them. Somewhere above, Jiwoo laughs at something Lily said.
"Does it hurt?" Kyujin asks quietly. "Looking at it?"
Sullyoon's movements pause for just a fraction of a second. Then she continues.
"It hurts that you've been carrying this alone," she says. "The gold is just… a symptom. It's not the wound."
Kyujin's throat works. She doesn't cry. But her eyes are bright.
"I'm going to show you a stretching exercise," Sullyoon says, shifting the subject. "It'll help with the tightness. Do it every morning, and before bed if you can."
She guides Kyujin's fingers through the movements — slow, careful, patient. The gold flexes with each motion, gleaming in the low light. Kyujin follows her lead, her right hand hovering nearby as if ready to catch the left if it fails.
Kyujin stares at their hands: Sullyoon's steady and warm, her own gold-covered and trembling.
Sullyoon finishes the exercise and releases her arm. She doesn't step back immediately.
"Come back if it gets worse," she says.
Kyujin flexes her hand. The tightness that has been pulling at her fingers for days is gone, not completely, but enough. Enough to curl her hand into a loose fist and open it again without wincing.
"Thank you," she says.
Sullyoon nods.
Kyujin stands up and leaves, the door slides shut behind her.
The medical bay is quiet. Sullyoon turns back to her supplies.
The MMU surfaces near a small, uninhabited island — a crescent of white sand and pale green water. The crew spills onto the shore like children released from lessons, laughing, running, kicking off their shoes to feel the sand between their toes.
Jiwoo is the first to find the sea glass.
She's been combing the shoreline for hours, her pockets already heavy with shells and smooth stones and things she can't identify but refuses to leave behind. She holds the piece up to the sun — a small fragment, smooth and frosted, pale green like the shallows at midday.
"It looks like something you'd keep," she says, and presses it into Sullyoon's palm before running off to find more.
Sullyoon turns the glass over in her fingers. It's warm from Jiwoo's skin, worn smooth by years of tide — years of being tumbled and turned and dragged across the ocean floor until all its sharp edges were gone. She thinks about what it must have been before. A broken bottle, maybe. A shattered window. Something discarded. Something that could cut. Now it's soft. Now it's beautiful. Now someone wants to hold it.
She doesn't realize Kyujin is beside her until the engineer speaks.
"What is it?"
Sullyoon holds it out. "Sea glass. Jiwoo found it."
Kyujin takes it carefully, turning it over. The light catches the glass, makes it glow faintly against her palm.
"It's pretty," she says.
Kyujin is quiet for a moment. She turns the glass over again, runs her thumb across its surface.
"How long does it take to become like this?" she asks.
"I don't know." Sullyoon glances at her. "Years, maybe. Decades. The sea isn't in a hurry."Kyujin nods slowly, she looks down at the glass in her palm, then back at Sullyoon.
"That's what I keep hoping for," Sullyoon continues, quieter now. She's not sure why she's saying this. Maybe because the sea is calm. Maybe because the others are far enough away that they can't hear. Maybe because Kyujin is standing beside her. "That one day, all of this will feel like sea glass instead of shards."
Kyujin doesn't respond immediately. She just stands there, holding the glass, watching the tide roll in and out.
"You really think that's possible?" she asks finally. "For something that broken to become something worth keeping?"
Sullyoon considers the question. She thinks about all the journeys before this one. All the wreckage. All the times she wanted to let the sea take her. All the times she stayed anyway.
"I think it has to be," she says. "Otherwise, what's the point?"
Kyujin holds the glass for a moment longer, then hands it back.
"Keep it," Sullyoon says. "I have enough things to carry."
Kyujin looks down at the glass in her palm. Then she tucks it into her pocket, close to her chest.
They stand together on the shore, watching the others splash in the shallows. Jiwoo finds another piece — pale blue this time, shaped like a tiny crescent moon — and shrieks with delight, holding it up for everyone to see. Haewon pretends to be annoyed but is already smiling, already walking over to admire it. Lily and Bae are knee-deep in the water, arguing about whether the sand is softer here or at the last island.
"Jiwoo's going to fill her pockets until she can't walk," Kyujin observes.
"Let her," Sullyoon says. "Someone should collect beautiful things."
Kyujin glances at her.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "Someone should."
—
That night, the crew disperses to their bunks, tired and salt-stained and happy. Sullyoon is the last to leave the observation deck.
When she returns to her bunk, she finds a small piece of sea glass resting on her pillow.
Pink.
Not pale like the one Jiwoo found — this one is deeper, richer, the color of a sunset bleeding into the sea. Smooth as silk and warmed by the sun, or maybe by the hand that carried it there.
She picks it up, turns it over in her fingers. It's smaller than the green piece, more delicate. The edges are so soft they barely feel like edges at all. Someone chose this. Someone searched for it, or maybe found it and knew immediately that it was meant for her.
She thinks about the analogy she shared on the shore. Something broken, worn smooth by the sea, turned into something worth keeping.
She thinks about pink. The color of a flushed cheek. The color of a seashell's inner lip. The color of something soft. Something alive. Something that could be love, if love were a color.
There's no note. No explanation. But she knows.
—
The next morning, at breakfast, Sullyoon catches Kyujin's eye across the galley.
Kyujin looks away first — but she's smiling. Small. Private. Not asking for anything.
Sullyoon doesn't smile back. But she doesn't look away either.
She reaches into her pocket and touches the pink glass. Still there. Still warm.