The water churned—
He-El fell into the Indian Ocean. His body began paddling through it again, and he once more saw the familiar sky, sun, and positions of the constellations.
It was still that familiar location.
There was no helping it.
Time had looped.
He just did not know whether it had noticed him.
"Are you there?"
He-El asked the sky in a rather formulaic tone. Great, no answer. He turned and continued swimming toward the speedboat where the pirates from Somalia were.
An hour later.
Before Bao Mo could get into the water or even throw him a life buoy, He-El had reached the side of the speedboat. Bao Mo and two other pirates from Somalia pulled him aboard.
He-El familiarly picked up the rough blanket and wrapped it around his shivering body.
"Take out your compressed biscuit rations. I'm a little hungry." He-El shamelessly held out his hand for free food.
He-El spoke in Somali. The three Somali pirates understood him, exchanged glances, and question marks practically appeared in their minds.
In the end, the pirate from Somalia driving the speedboat pulled two compressed biscuit rations from his pocket and tossed them to He-El.
He-El caught them, bit open the packaging, and held the food in his mouth as he pondered with a grim expression.
He had already tried different endings. Though he did not know whether he had been noticed, perhaps he had been noticed long ago and it simply had not appeared, observing him instead.
Or perhaps he had not been noticed at all.
He-El felt that he needed to change a few more endings to test it.
So this time, he did not kill the three pirates from Somalia on the speedboat. After returning to the oil tanker, being pulled onto its deck, and meeting