#walking in the darkness.iii

[atinytokki]

Walking in the Darkness

iii. Navigating the World 

When the dewdrops were fresh and rosy strands bent the sky, there was a certain smell that flooded the senses with spring.

Spring meant summer break was on its way.

Yeosang would much rather be poking around in the rain-soaked dirt and trying to predict the weather from the clouds than driving to school, but he clutched his bag close and rested in the thought that he’d be able to resume his father’s memoirs during his free time.

The carriage driver pulled up and opened the door in silence as he always did, and Yeosang watched him go before steeling himself for the day ahead. His weekend was over, and it was back to ducked heads and ignoring sharp words.

He had slept deeply enough to disperse the fear of the stranger on the gravel last night, but the curiosity lingered. Who was out there that would dare threaten him?

Yeosang could think of only one person with enough guts, and he was currently walking into the classroom.

Rim Yongsoo.

The ringleader of all the other name-callers. He was too cowardly to lay a finger on the Kang family heir, but his words were spears from afar.

Yeosang had learned to deflect the sharp attacks by ignoring them when one day Housekeeper Sohyun had entered his room to find him crying over something a classmate had said.

The whispers couldn’t hurt him if he blocked them out, she had reminded him gently, so every day he sat in his seat as if he was the only one in the room.

If any of the bullies had gotten bold in his father’s absence, it would be Yongsoo.

For the first time in the past month, Yeosang opened his mouth before class to make his accusation.

“Yongsoo, you wouldn’t happen to recognise this, would you?”

Confidently, Yeosang pulled the rock which had been thrown into the observatory out of his bag and waved it in Yongsoo’s face.

The other boy took a moment before his face cleared of shock and turned accusatory. “When did you become interested in rocks, pansy? Aren’t you usually staring at the sky?”

Yeosang’s jaw clenched as snickers followed and he couldn’t help but defend himself. “Don’t call me pansy.”

“My mistake,” Yongsoo returned, saccharine voice accompanied by a fake frown. “I though you preferred it over damsel in distress!”

“Were you or were you not on my property last night?” Yeosang’s voice raised almost imperceptibly to break through the laughter sweeping the classroom.

“Your property? No, I don’t think it’s yours as long as your father’s around. Although I suppose if he actually drowns at sea this time...”

Yeosang’s face was burning and the rock clenched in his fist threatened to scratch him from how tightly he was holding it, so he slammed it onto the boy’s desk, interrupting yet another round of giggles.

“This is the last time I’m asking, Yongsoo,” he grit out, relishing secretly the way the bully’s eyebrows raised in surprise. “Don’t make me take it up with your father.”

He had hit a nerve.

“No I wasn’t near your estate,” Yongsoo defended quickly. “I spent the night at Hyunjoon’s.”

Yeosang released the rock and turned to the other boy’s desk, asking with his eyes if he could confirm Yongsoo’s alibi.

Hyunjoon wasn’t a bully like Yongsoo and his lackeys, but he wasn’t exactly friendly toward Yeosang either. At the very least, he knew he wouldn’t lie about something like this, so Yeosang waited for him to adjust his glasses and clear his throat before answering.

“Yes, we were camping. Sorry, Yeosang, I would have invited you, but...”

But it was Yeosang.

No one wanted him at their gatherings, not when it took a carriage driver to bring him there and a stern talking to from their parents that they had better not injure him and risk legal action from the Navigator. He wasn’t much fun to play with anyway.

Yeosang lived inside a glass box that was too cumbersome to share with anyone else.

But he trusted Hyunjoon. Everything added up. Yongsoo hadn’t been at his house last night.

The teacher chose that moment to enter the room and interrupt the investigation Yeosang was conducting, and he immediately blushed and retrieved his rock before returning to his desk and blocking out the whispers that inevitably followed when he plucked up the courage to speak in class.

Yeosang worked diligently and tried not to spend too much time daydreaming about maritime adventures and mysterious rock-throwing strangers, but the moment he was let out for lunch, he couldn’t help but pull out his father’s journal.

Underneath a tree far from the other boys as they roughhoused, he opened to the page where he had left off.

If such things as miracles exist, I have just been the beneficiary of one. After much persuasion, Admiral Kim agreed to take the long way around the doldrums. He trusts my judgment and I insisted upon it after taking the morning measurements.

The easterly winds spelled doom and the pressure on my instruments, the smell and the stillness of the sea... all pointed to a massive storm on the horizon, waiting for us in the doldrums that lay ahead.

This. This was the often forgotten but extremely important facet of navigation that Yeosang’s father had pioneered. 

Any sailor worth his salt could sense a storm before it hit, but with his weather instruments, Navigator Kang knew well in advance what was coming and just how big it would be.

Yeosang smiled to himself as he read the measurement report. His father was indeed a hero.

It will be twice as long of a trip to the pirate havens ahead, but the Admiral would rather have a ship and a crew to destroy them with than sail headlong into a disaster.

Yeosang turned pages and pages of entries as his father appeared to have grown bored with the day to day duties he fulfilled.

Soon he was called back inside and finished the rest of his lessons as quickly as he could get away with. 

He was so absorbed in his father’s memoirs that he didn’t notice the carriage which had pulled up in front of the estate as he went inside and plopped down in the sitting room where Sohyun was setting up a snack for him, immediately delving back into his book.

The men complain increasingly of hunger and it has become difficult to even leave my room. Always another soldier begging at my door, always the stench of death when another has dropped of starvation.

Yeosang grimaced but read on.

Some are under the impression that we officers hoard the supplies for ourselves and have been caught stealing from our stores. I don’t know the amount of their rations, but we aren’t feasting like kings in the Captain’s cabin, I am sure of that.

“Yeosang, always with his nose in a book. What’s this?” 

It was his sister Yeseul, peering over his shoulder and guessing aloud, “Adventure on the high seas?”

Immediately, Sohyun snapped to attention and pulled the book out of Yeosang’s hands, replacing it with his arithmetic homework before the boy had a chance to open his mouth.

A surprise visit from his older sister couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“You ruin everything, Yeseul,” Yeosang sulked, poised aristocrat’s son disintegrating into petulant young boy for a moment. “I thought Father was writing to make sure you were nearby, not in the house bossing me around.”

“Well, you seem to have lost your manners. I thought you might be happy to see me,” Yeseul huffed, sitting herself down daintily in the chair across from him. “And what are you doing reading adventure books? Father said you were supposed to be searching for an apprenticeship.”

She levelled a challenging glare at him and he couldn’t help but roll his eyes in return. No one brought out his sarcasm like Yeseul. “What’s it to you if I’d rather play pirate?”

Yeseul sobered at this, a cloud breaking over her face. “Don’t joke about those people,” she warned sternly. “They’re very real and they do horrible things.”

“I know, I’ve read about them!” Yeosang smirked, nodding toward the journal still in the housekeeper’s clutches. 

Immediately, he realised his mistake.

Sohyun obediently handed the book over at Yeseul’s request, and all Yeosang could do was watch as the thing was scrutinised cover to cover.

“Father’s memoirs,” Yeseul finally said.

“You’ve read them before?” Yeosang temporarily abandoned his misgivings for a sense of awe that Yeseul had once had a sense of adventure in her own youth.

“Yes, I’ve read them. You and Father love to forget, but I did grow up here too, you know.”

Yeseul was much older, so she had grown, married, and moved before he could make any real memories with her.

“But the content of this is not suitable for an eleven-year-old.” She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow curiously. “He doesn’t know you’re reading this, does he?”

Yeosang sighed and hid his face in his arithmetic. That was answer enough for his older sister.

“Yeosang—”

“He gave me the key!” Yeosang protested, ignoring her admonition at raising his voice. “The key to the observatory, he gave it to me.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re allowed to go rifling through his desk,” she scolded primly. “And seeing as I’m in charge now, I’m confiscating it.”

Yeosang didn’t hold back his whining at this, but was promptly ignored as Yeseul changed the subject.

“I’ve decided to hold a ball this weekend. It’ll be your first, aren’t you excited?”

Yeosang blinked twice before realising she was looking at him with anticipation and stuttering, “Well, y-yes I suppose so, but... can’t you hold it at your own house?”

Yeseul tilted her head and tutted at him. “Yeosang, there hasn’t been a ball thrown here since, what? My wedding?”

“If you just want to use our ballroom, go ahead,” he sighed after a moment to work out what exactly she was getting at. “But I don’t have to be there, do I?

He was already tired of the constant bickering that was inevitable every time he and his sister met, and the confiscation of the memoirs meant he had to plan a way to get them back.

“Yeosang!” She was completely exasperated now, a hand brushing her hair back from her face and back into the intricate updo she had crafted. “I’m throwing this ball for you! To make some connections with potential masters— for your apprenticeship!”

Yeosang’s mouth clicked shut. He couldn’t very well argue with that. It would most certainly be a long boring night of adults ruffling his hair and breaking into his father’s best wines but he couldn’t think of any excuse to get out of it.

So he acquiesced for the rest of the day and waited until his moment.

He needed to get the journal back.

It was just after midnight when he crept down the carpeted hallway, lantern in hand, and halted outside the main guest suite.

Yeseul was a light sleeper, but Yeosang had an advantage. He prowled these halls in the dark much more frequently than she did, and though a misstep would land him in trouble, it was unlikely that he would make one.

Once he reached the door, he placed the lantern on the rug faced away from the door in case a sliver of light bled through the crack, and set his hand on the doorknob. 

Painstakingly slow, he turned the knob silently and pushed the door open, creeping inside and closing it.

He would have to navigate in the dark.

As soon as his eyes adjusted, he spotted the book on the bedside table, at the bottom of a stack of invitations to neighbouring wealthy families for the ball that Yeseul had been working all day on.

Yeosang moved stealthily to her bedside, barely daring to breathe as he quietly slid the book out and slipped back out into the hall.

He’d have to read the rest of this section by lantern light and return the book so that she never knew it had been taken.

Yeosang knew he would be struggling to stay awake in class tomorrow, but the conclusion of this survival scene was too enticing to postpone.

Suppressing a shiver of excitement, he opened up to where he had left off.

The Admiral had hoped by now there would be an island, even if all it has for us is freshwater. But the sailors don’t call it the doldrums for nothing. 

The Black Crow reached the other side after a long struggle, nearly half its crew killed without a fight. More and more, Yeosang was realising how massive the expanse of sea to the east truly was.

We have reached an island. I went with the exploration party to discover whether it was inhabited and while it was not, an empty fortification stood facing the west. I wonder if a civilisation once lived here and warred against our own people.

Admiral Kim wants to take the fortress for the Navy’s, but that left us in the uncomfortable position of not having enough soldiers to press on and sack the elusive pirate haven that still waits in the east.

I’ve shared my suspicions with the other officers that I think the pirate Jinyoung may have sent a faulty location to us on purpose. The Admiral is furious at the prospect, but I have to admit I’m still grateful for the opportunities I’ve had on this voyage to chart portions of the east. We begin our return journey at dawn, and will return with more men and supplies in pursuit of the pirate scum once more.

Yeosang sighed contentedly and closed the book on what seemed to be part one of his father’s adventure memoirs. It wasn’t as storybook perfect as the adventure novels he adored, but that was life.

Once more he snuck into Yeseul’s bedchamber, this time with the added challenge of moving all the invitations to put the book back in the exact same spot.

He worked a little more carelessly than he had the first time, sleep pulling at his eyelids and making him impatient to be done with it, but the slight rustle of the invitation stack falling over and halting as Yeosang caught it was incentive enough to slow down.

As soon as everything was positioned to his satisfaction, Yeosang inched his way back out and only exhaled when the door was shut and he was on his way back.

He settled into bed to catch a few hours of sleep before his school schedule forced him awake, blissfully unaware of the stranger that lurked outside.

...

A/N: Thanks for your patience guys <3 I’ll be finishing the semester with some exams and papers this week, and as soon as that’s finished you can expect me to be more active. Until then, enjoy and don’t forget to comment/reblog!

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