Stay alive

"I have to stay alive... I have to stay alive..."

The cry seeped from the cracks in his soul, crashing again and again through the abyss of his consciousness.

At last, a shaft of sunset light chiseled through his tightly shut eyelids.

Sharp pain returned first, spreading through his entire body, the result of repeated impacts against the reefs;

close behind came the loss of body heat from prolonged immersion, the cold.

His fingers twitched faintly in the damp, cold sand, tracing a few shallow marks.

His will to survive, like a spring bamboo shoot buried deep underground, received the thunderclap of his body's response and began frantically battering at the death pressing down upon it.

He struggled, his spine peeling his upper body from the beach's embrace inch by inch.

Before his vision could clear, shattered blocks of color exploded before him.

On one side were neon lights flickering like snowy static, the angry roar of engines, the cold, indifferent profiles of passersby-a well-ordered steel jungle so distant it seemed to belong to a previous life;

on the other were the cold, rough bars of a wooden cage, and his own helpless self, curled up inside, shivering.

Outside the cage, sea wind swept through the portholes, making the torches flicker and stretching the pirates' shadows, blood-soaked whips in hand, into huge, twisted shapes.

Their wild laughter mingled with the thunder. Every lash was accompanied by the other slaves' irrepressible howls of agony.

He remembered clamping his hands over his mouth, his nails almost digging into the flesh of his cheeks, curling into an even smaller ball in the filthiest corner of the hold, praying he would go unnoticed.

Outside the portholes, lightning ripped the sky apart like silver snakes. Huge waves crashed thunderously against the hull. Tossed by the gale, the pirate ship was as helpless as he was, toyed with by a greater power. Before nature's might, all living beings were equal.

Bells rang, curses flew, and pirates hurried back and forth across the deck. Through the torrential rain, he could faintly hear, "Lower the sails! Hard to port! You pigs, I'll cut off your cocks and stuff them into your brains!"

"Hah-!"

He jerked fully upright, his lungs wheezing low like broken bellows as he gulped down the air of reality, greedily and painfully.

He bent forward, lying over the beach as violent coughing seized him. Seawater mixed with stomach acid gushed uncontrollably from his mouth and nose, leaving dark spots in the sand.

"I'm... Li?" he murmured, his voice hoarse, cracked, and so unfamiliar it hardly sounded like his own.

"No, I'm... Aaron Ball." He stared blankly at his young, pale hands.

Fragments of memory, two different yet equally fragile souls, began forcibly piecing themselves together.

Black smoke billowing into the sky, the village burning red, the look in his parents' eyes as they shoved him into a clay water jar-a despair so intense it almost scorched him-and their final, hushed instructions:

"No matter what you hear... don't come out..." ...Then came trembling, then the blinding light as the wooden lid was suddenly torn away.

When the pirates discovered him, they wore vicious grins mingling greed and cruelty, sizing him up like merchandise. A fat, sinister pirate took a swig of liquor and said, "Look at this white-haired brat, white as snow! Fucking rare! He'll fetch a fine price!"

A tall, skinny pirate with red blotches all over his face said, "Maybe I could help check whether he's white all over. Hahaha!"

The memories broke off there, leaving only the deck tilting wildly in the storm, the teeth-grating crash of the mast snapping, and the pirates' desperate curses before death.

The pirate ship had struck a reef and broken apart, and he, Aaron Ball, a captive tossed about at fate's whim, had actually survived amid the wreckage.

"The world of the Pirate King..." He unconsciously clenched a fistful of sand, his knuckles turning deathly white with the force.

This fucked-up world where mighty heroes and bandits did whatever they pleased through strength, where the World Government maintained a hypocritical order and morality, while ordinary people's lives were worth less than weeds-the weak simply deserved to be trampled and toyed with by the strong.

A mournful growl of hunger from his belly dragged him brutally out of his tangled memories.

His survival instincts began sounding a warning.

He had to move.

Dragging his exhausted body, which hardly seemed to belong to him, he struggled to his feet and began scanning the beach strewn with wreckage.

Not far away, a tattered wool curtain stained a suspicious dark red was tangled around a black rock.

He trudged over. His fingers, clumsy with cold and weakness, could only peel it from the rock's sharp edges bit by bit. Then he dragged it to a higher, drier dune and spread it out to dry.

About fifty yards to his right, a faint metallic glint caught his attention-an exquisite cast-brass candlestick, most of it buried in the sand.

He dug it out and weighed it in his hand. Its heft gave him a faint sense of security.

At least it would make a decent blunt weapon. Maybe I could use it to crack open some scallops and barnacles to eat.

Just as he was about to give up hope of finding much in this area, an overturned wooden barrel, worn by the waves, caught his attention.

His heart raced uncontrollably in his chest. Almost holding his breath, he used every ounce of strength to lift it just enough to open a gap-

There, at the bottom of the barrel, lay five or six slightly shriveled apples!

Immense joy shot through his body like an electric current. He greedily snatched one up and, without even taking the time to wipe it, bit down hard.

In an instant, sweet, tart juice burst through his parched mouth. Every taste bud cheered and trembled.

He had never imagined that such an ordinary fruit could bring the solace of life.

He carefully gnawed away every last scrap of flesh, sparing not even the edges of the core.

He carefully wrapped the remaining apples in the curtain, tied it into a small bundle, and secured it firmly to his back. He felt an unprecedented strength slowly growing inside him.

He continued along the jagged, winding coastline, and his haul gradually grew:

A broken length of mast, marked with black scorch marks, that he could swing;

an intact sailor's knapsack soaked in seawater; several sharp porcelain shards;

a chef's long iron spoon;

and even a roll of silk, sodden with seawater but still smooth.

First, he eagerly opened the knapsack. Inside was murky standing water mixed with seaweed and rotting matter.

He dumped everything onto the sand and carefully sifted through it: a dagger neatly wrapped in sharkskin, its handle wound with nonslip hemp cord;

half a bottle of rum with a tattered label, the liquor sloshing inside; a ship's log with seawater-blurred writing and a swollen hard cover;

several oranges already rotted black and oozing thick juice, along with some unrecognizable, sodden paper wads and the bodies of small fish and shrimp.

"Not bad," Boer muttered, trying to drive away loneliness and fear with his voice. He forced an ugly smile and choked out words of reassurance to himself:

"At least this is much better than Bear Grylls's starting equipment on Man vs. Wild. I'm a man who's watched Man vs. Wild and Alone."

He carefully tucked the dagger behind his waist, then stuffed the rum, apples, porcelain shards... into the knapsack.

But as he cautiously rounded a headland jutting out like a dagger, all his self-reassurance and fleeting relief froze in an instant.

A corpse tangled in gray-green seaweed knocked lifelessly against the black rocks with the rhythm of the waves, over and over, like a puppet worked by invisible strings.

Yet an even more terrifying sight lay several meters away-another burly figure dressed as a pirate lay facedown on the shallow shore, two or three meters from the water!

And that man's fingers seemed to... twitch!

Boer's heart clenched abruptly, as though gripped tight by an enormous, icy hand.

The instinct to flee crashed against his nerves like a tsunami, leaving his legs weak and almost making him turn and run on the spot.

But stronger than fear was the warning from his reason: he absolutely could not leave a survivor!

With his current starving, weak, battered adolescent body, he stood absolutely no chance in a head-on fight against an adult pirate who had recovered, even an injured one.

Once the man caught his breath, his only possible end would be recapture or death on the spot.

"Calm down! Boer, there's a chance. These reefs stretch far and wide. Being washed ashore couldn't have been easy on him. If his body were in decent shape, he wouldn't have crawled only this far, let alone be unable even to turn over!"

He swiftly lowered himself, almost blending his body into the beach. Reaching behind him, he drew the dagger from his waist and held its cold blade close against his forearm to conceal its reflection as much as possible.

He moved toward the prone figure, every step extraordinarily light and slow, as though beneath his feet lay not sand and stones but a lover's body.

All around him, only the endless clamor of the surf remained, along with his own drumlike heartbeat, so loud it nearly burst his eardrums. His temples throbbed.

The distance shrank little by little. Now he could see the pirate's condition more clearly:

Near the buttock on his left thigh gaped an open wound deep enough to expose bone. The flesh curled outward, swollen and deathly pale from prolonged soaking in seawater. Rotting shells and several strands of seaweed clung to his tangled black hair.

His face, a lifeless blue-gray from blood loss and cold, was turning slightly toward him, as though he had sensed someone approaching.

The instinct to live stirred within his sunken eye sockets. His eyelids trembled with effort, trying to open a crack.

His dry, peeling lips opened and closed unconsciously, releasing faint, unintelligible breaths.

Boer's gaze passed over the horrifying wound and settled on the pirate's waist-

A flintlock pistol was tucked there, along with a curved sword in a leather scabbard.

Those were weapons, power, tools for ruling the weak, the hope of surviving in this savage world! They were within arm's reach, seemingly his for the taking.

Yet more shocking than the weapons was that awakening face.

The floodgates of memory opened again, carrying the stench of blood and burning.

It was this very pirate! They called him first mate and fawned over his swordsmanship. It had also been him, against the backdrop of the burning village, among the people being herded along.

I watched him beneath the pirate ship, sprawled over a woman—Boer could not remember whose mother or older sister she was—while the other pirates around him raised their blades and cheered like beasts. Thick black smoke, like a monstrous creature, greedily devoured the sky over his home...

The sunset's last cruel ray sank completely beneath the dark sea's horizon.

The dagger's cold gleam reflected Boer's face in the deepening dusk. On that still-youthful face, something was shattering completely, peeling away, while something harder and darker was breaking out of its shell.

What do you call your daddy's daddy...

Sorry, you're a good person...

When I have money, I'll put it in the bank and live off the interest. I won't have to do anything!

A twisted trace of a smile climbed onto his lips like a venomous snake. His pupils began to dilate, receding into the distance, and his previous life receded with them.

"Heehee, I have to stay alive. Stay alive!"