The Shore

4. The Obelisk

Seonghwa hesitated to go 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.

Groaning, he pushed his body up. A bed of shells and white rocks created an uncomfortable bed underneath his body. He couldn't identify some of them, they didn't look like any sea creature or material he had seen before. What was this island?

Black sand lined the shoreline of the ocean up ahead. He seemed to have been pushed right onto the beach by the sea. No signs of civilisation were anywhere near him. Only a few pieces of driftwood and greens defied the rough terrain.

The bottom of Seonghwa's pants was soaked where the ocean kept licking on his feet. Shivering, he pulled his ankles out of the reach of the cold water. As he emptied his shoes of any leftovers, he spotted the scars on his arms. The parallel lines looked purposefully made. Yet, his brain couldn't supply him with the painful memory where they had come from. They reminded Seonghwa of a kid he had known in his neighbourhood, a sad girl with a lot of internal pain she suffered from. Her arms had looked the same for years before she had hanged herself. The memory still shrouded their village in sadness. Every day on his way to the docks, Seonghwa would pass her memorial. People said they didn't know, and that they had never expected it, even when her call for help had been so clear.

Yet, Seonghwa's scars looked old. Older than the time he could have spent lying here and surviving. When had this happened? They must have accumulated over years from how many there were, partly crossing over each other. But he never cut himself. He had lived a happy life at home, with smooth and unmarred arms.

One scar looked fairly fresh. But this one had probably scraped along a sharp edge on his way here. The blood had clotted recently and the angry reddened skin around had yet to even out.

Worried, he refrained from poking at it and put his shoes back onto his feet. He should dress those wounds as soon as possible.

As he pushed his hair back behind its ears, he searched the horizon for a clue. Surely, a fishing place was nearby, and he could ask the people there how to get bandages and a way back home. Wherever he was. He believed to remember this island from the lore of the sailors. They spoke about the black island only ever with hushed voices in the dark, as if they couldn't let anybody hear them. Seonghwa had always found it curious. The stories about monsters and people who disappeared here were countless. Would the same fate befall Seonghwa? Or would he become one of the few to tell the tale?

Seonghwa jumped up to his feet when the ocean slammed against the rocks nearby and covered him in the icy spray. As if it were pushing him off, the wild waves rolled and rushed aggressively. It wasn't wise to stick around. Even the ocean threatened him to leave as soon as possible.

He picked up a shell from the ground to add to a considerate pile of them on a rock, as if he had to hand in a ticket before he wandered off. On his way, he held a respectful distance from the water that left more shells and sticky algae in its wake. If it ripped things in with it, no trace of them remained. Seonghwa would gladly stay dry and keep the precious air in his lungs. Even if it was cold and wet and tasted of the rotting ocean.

In the distance, a lighthouse grew from the ground to reach for the grey skies. He would arrive there soon, maybe in a few hours. The white walls seemed close enough for him to grab them with his fingers, but he knew his eyes betrayed him. The terrain was difficult to master, and he wasn't too sure about the time it would take him to scale it.