The Shore

3. The Cave

Seonghwa considered going to the lighthouse.

Seonghwa awoke on a beach of black sand. As he lifted his head groggily, some grains stubbornly stuck to his cheek and hair. The rushing of shallow waves nearby reached his ears. It brushed his eardrums and the back of his mind to clear his befuddled thoughts. Lost, he looked around.

Where was he?

Directly beneath his head, a large palm leaf that must have served as his pillow and several bamboo stalks greeted him. Their vivid green colours stood out behind the dull background. Anything else was just black sand and a shell he collected as far as the eye could reach. Had Seonghwa come with that old and rusty hooker nearby? It looked too ancient to be part of his life. The metal had shrivelled and flared with the years it had spent in the water. Maritime vegetation had taken the object over to claim it as theirs.

As Seonghwa gazed upon his hands, he found dirt underneath his fingernails. Earth, less so than the dark sand. Maybe he came from that nearby forest. He must have dug around there for something.

Scars covered his arms, but most of them had healed well. One had clearly had a bad time making it through the recovery and left an ugly scar. Seonghwa tried not to pick on it. They seemed to have been made by a dull object, like a nail or screws. Had he scraped along of metal?

When Seonghwa sat up, his hair fell into his face to hang in front of his eyes. Algae and sand were stuck in it, and as he pushed it back, it tumbled into his neck. Ticklish, it bothered his skin. A faint beard covered his chin. With dirty nails, he rubbed over the wispy hairs. He usually never wore them long, so the change of sensations distracted him.

Was there something he was forgetting? He felt as if he had wanted to remember something before falling asleep. It escaped his grasp like a falling leaf in the air.

Seonghwa had always been bad at remembering.

The ocean was loud today. The waves crashed against the rocks agitated as if wanting to convey a message. Seonghwa didn't want to stick around until they pushed something else ashore. Who knew what the ocean offered. How it defended itself against curious onlookers.

Before he left, he left the shell in his hand with a few others nearby. The collecting spot appeared man-made to his eyes. Maybe he would find someone else on this island. He believed to have stranded together with his grandfather. Surely, he must be around either here or on another island nearby.

Not as if Seonghwa could spy anything else but the wall of thick fog that rolled over the ocean.

In the distance, a lighthouse grew from the ground to reach for the grey skies. He would reach it around noon, it didn't look too far. As a first attempt, it might be wise to go there.

"How did I know of that lighthouse?" Seonghwa murmured to himself. It was the first thought that had crossed him upon waking up on a foreign beach. Shouldn't his worries differ? Shouldn't his thoughts centre on his crash, the circumstances, and his grandfather who was possibly hurt out here?

He's there.

Seonghwa wasn't too startled at the voice that replied in his mind. Initially, he presumed it to be just a fact he had forgotten and recalled at that moment. Then, he hesitated.

"Who?"

The one you seek.

Befuddled, Seonghwa pushed his hands into his pockets to walk along the ocean line. No matter how eerily familiar his voyage felt for him, the lighthouse undoubtedly was his best shot at finding help. If another person was there, all the better. Even though he couldn't fathom who it was that he sought. His grandfather? How would the voice inside his head know that he was there?