[MV KANEMARU – INFIRMARY – 11:58 AM]
Discomfort. That was the first thing Yuta became aware of as consciousness slowly dragged him back from the depths. His eyes opened to dim light filtering through a salt-stained porthole.
'I'm ...'
The thought crossed his mind as he reflexively shot up ... Or tried to at least. He could barely move upwards before plopping back on the bed he laid on, much to his disbelief. 'Huh?' He tried again. Then again, and again. Finally confirming that for whatever reason, his body muscles weren't listening to him. 'What the ..?'
He tried to feel his internal structure with his chakra. The result he got through internal chakra sensing was ... Chaotic to say the least.
Compared to before, he could hardly make any sense of anything as his chakra, just like his body, was unresponsive to his calls.
'Hell.' Yuta's brain spun rapidly. 'What in the quirk is going on with my quirk?' Ever since he gained chakra, this was the first day his control had been messed up. Through his sensing, all he could see was the equivalent of a blurry feed as his chakra ran amok through his pathways like naughty kids on a sugar craze.
He had never experienced something like this before.
His mouth was dry. His throat felt like sandpaper. His limbs were lead. 'I can't even move ... Hold on. Where the hell am I?'
His gaze scoured the surroundings.
Metal ceiling. Low and curved. Rivets and rust patches spreading like across industrial gray paint. A single bare bulb swaying gently from a hook. 'A ship.'
That would explain a lot of things. The last thing he remembered was being swept under by the storm.
From the looks of it, he had been found and rescued while he was unconscious. 'How long have I been out?'
Just then, the door opened with a creak. Yuta's head turned as a figure stepped through. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Probably in his fifties. Weathered skin that had probably seen too much sun, and dark hair going gray at the temples.
The man stopped when he saw Yuta's open eyes.
For a long moment, neither spoke as they studied each other across the small cabin. "So," he said in accented Japanese. "You're awake. Good."
He walked over. "You can talk, right?"
Yuta didn't reply. The man frowned. "I'm talking to you kid. Answer me."
"Who are you?" Yuta questioned. "And where am I."
"My ship." The man moved to a metal cabinet bolted to the wall, pulling out a dented canteen. "That's all you need to know for now."
He unscrewed the cap and walked back, holding it out. "Drink. You've been out for two days. Your body needs water." Yuta stared at the canteen with a raised brow.
Survival instincts warranted caution at this point. After all, unknown ship and unknown people.
However, he wasn't currently in the condition to consider that much. His throat was sandpaper-dry, and his body was overruling his brain. Plus, if these people wanted to harm him, they would have done so already. Plus, he could regenerate.
He tried to reach for it.
His arm barely lifted off the mattress before falling back down, muscles refusing to cooperate.
'What the hell is wrong with me?'
The man's eyes narrowed slightly, then he sighed. "Right. Should've figured." He moved closer, kneeling beside the cot. "Floating unconscious in the ocean, you're probably weaker than a newborn kitten right now. Gonna have to help you with this."
He slipped one hand behind Yuta's head, supporting it gently, and brought the canteen to his lips with the other. Yuta wanted to resist.
It was one thing to be given water but like this? ..
Unfortunately, the e moment water touched his cracked lips, he drank greedily.
Lukewarm. Tasted of metal and salt. Probably not filtered particularly well.
The man pulled the canteen back after a few swallows. "Not too much at once. You'll puke it right back up, and I'm not cleaning that mess."
Yuta's head fell back against the thin pillow, breathing harder than he should be from just drinking water. "How long?"
"Huh?"
"How long was I out?" He asked while devoting his attention to figuring his body out.
"Forty-eight hours. Give or take." The man set the canteen on a small metal shelf. "Found you floating face-down yesterday morning. Thought you were dead."
"Where are we?"
"The Pacific Ocean. About four days out from Manila if the weather holds." The man sat on the metal stool. "That's all the geography you're getting until I know what I'm dealing with though."
'Manila. Philippines.'
That was thousands of kilometers from Japan. Those bastards really thought hard about his death.
"What do you want?" Yuta asked carefully.
"Want?" The man's face twisted into something that might have been amusement. "Kid, if I wanted something from you, I wouldn't have wasted two days keeping you alive. I'd have tossed you back in the ocean and saved myself the trouble."
"Then why save me?"
"Because when I was around your age, an old geezer like me pulled me out when I went overboard off the coast of Osaka during a typhoon. Never even told me his name. Just said 'Pay it forward someday.'"
He shrugged. "Guess today's someday."
Yuta didn't know what to say to that.
"Now," the man continued, leaning back on the stool. "My turn for questions. I run a quiet ship here, so who are you, and how does a kid end up a thousand kilometers from land in the middle of a storm with no life jacket or boat?" Yuta's brows furrowed on the spot, portraying an image of being in deep thoughts.
His quirk still wasn't working though.
"I fell,"
"You fell? From where? The moon? Satellites didn't report any plane crashes."
"I was on a boat," he said slowly, each word carefully chosen. "With my family. There was a storm. I fell overboard. I don't... I don't remember much after that."
The man's eyes narrowed. "A boat. What kind of boat?"
"I don't remember. Everything's fuzzy."
"And your family?"
Yuta closed his eyes. "I don't know. I don't know if they..."
He let the sentence die unfinished. For situations like this, it was best to let the man draw his own conclusions.
The cabin was silent except for the creaking of metal and the distant sound of the ocean against the hull.
"You're lying," the reply came.
Yuta's eyes snapped open. "What .."
"Probably not about everything. But parts of it."
The man leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "I've been sailing these waters for thirty years, kid. I know what drowning victims look like. I know what hypothermia does to a body. And I know what storm survivors act like when they wake up."
He gestured at Yuta. "You're not acting like someone who lost their family. Your facial expressions aren't really sad or panicked. So try again next time with a better excuse."
Yuta's brows twitched.
"So here's what I think happened," the man continued. "I think you did fall in the ocean. I think there probably was a storm. But I don't think it was an accident, and your family certainly wasn't involved. That's assuming you have one."
He paused. "Luckily for you, I don't really care."
"Huh?"
"Like I said, I'm a man who keeps a quiet ship," the man continued. "You already know why I saved you. That's it. The uniform you had on implies that you're a student but that could honestly be far from the truth. I don't have the time nor energy to pry. Neither do I care if you're a runaway, a witness, or some experiment gone wrong. As far as the world is concerned, this vessel doesn't exist. My crew? They don't talk to anyone who doesn't have a pay grade higher than mine. You're just another piece of drift we happened to hook."
He lit up a cigarette. "But I need to know if having you on my ship is going to bring trouble down on my crew."
"It won't," Yuta said immediately.
"You sure about that?"
"Yes."
"Because if the authorities come looking, if someone with a badge and questions shows up, that's a problem for me. A big one."
Yuta went silent for a while. Then turned his head away. "No one's looking for me. Not this far out anyway." How many days had it been? All of Japan would probably have gone crazy by now looking for the YAMANOTE LINE. However, a thousand kilometres away? Nah .. There was no way they would search that far, and there's no way they would find anything if they didn't.
'By now, everyone on the train should be labelled dead.'
He thought. "No one knows I'm alive. And no one's going to come after this ship because of me. I swear it."
The man studied him for a long moment. "You're what, fifteen? Sixteen?"
"Fifteen."
"Fifteen years old, and you're making promises about authorities and investigations like you know how this works." The man's expression was unreadable. "That tells me more than your story about falling off a boat."
He moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the frame. "Here's how this is gonna work. You stay in this cabin until we dock in Manila. You don't go on deck. You don't talk to the crew. You eat what we bring you and drink what we give you. And when we reach port, you get off my ship and disappear into the city like you were never here. Clear?"
"Clear."
"Good." The man opened the door. "Oh, and kid? Whatever trouble you're running from, or toward, I don't want to know about it. I saved your life because I could. But that debt's paid the moment you step off this vessel. After that, you're on your own."
"I understand. Thank you."
"Hmph. Don't thank me yet. You haven't seen how bad Koji's cooking is."
"Koji? Probably a crew member.'
CLANG!
The door closed. Yuta lay back, staring at the rust-stained ceiling, trying to process everything.
'He knows I'm lying. Knows I'm not just some kid who fell off a boat. But he's letting it go. Why?'
The answer was obvious, really. Because whatever illegal cargo this ship was hauling, whatever laws they were breaking, they didn't want attention any more than he did.
'From his analysis and my ... Reaction. He probably thought I was a runaway or something. At minimum, I wasn't clamouring about looking for the authorities or going home like most kids my age would. That's probably all that mattered to him.'
It was mutually assured discretion. 'I don't ask about their business, they don't ask about mine.'
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