Aurora's Child - ATEEZ Pirate AU

Chapter XI: Heartstrings

          The air was tense in the beach. Mingi stood menacingly, shielding Seonghwa from San. He just stood there waiting for San to answer his question. San simply grabbed his dagger from the sand, sheathed it away and stood tall challenging Mingi's glare while rubbing his bruising jaw.

          "Did you seriously pull out a weapon against Juno's student?! What the fuck were you thinking?!"

          San scoffs dryly at that. "You clearly aren't aware of the situation we're all in. You wouldn't be shielding him right now if you knew."

          Mingi looked back at Seonghwa to see him cradling himself into a ball and crying into his knees. Mingi clenched his jaw as he watched Seonghwa's actions. He was about to go off on San when a weak voice stopped him.

          "Please stop. He's right."

          That shocked Mingi. Was he defending San's actions?

          Earlier, Mingi was looking for Seonghwa to take a look at his and Hongjoong's injuries when Wooyoung, who was polishing his weapons in the living room, told him he saw San and Seonghwa walking out of the cabin to the beach for some reason. Not thinking too much about it, he made his way to the beach and caught the scene unfolding in the distance. San had Seonghwa pinned to a palm tree with a blade in his hand.

          Picking up the pace as best as he could, taking into consideration his wounded leg, he quickly shuffled towards the scene. In a second, the seemingly scrawny man had overpowered San. He tried to get there as fast as he could before things got ugly. Just as quick as Seonghwa had overpowered San, he was quick to jump back while San grabbed him by the shoulders to yell at him. Mingi didn't have time to think of his next move as his fist already went flying towards San's jaw.

          Here they were in present time.

          Mingi was angry and confused. "Does anybody care to explain what the actual fuck is going on?!"

          Seonghwa simply stayed silent but San was quick to answer finally. "I accidentally eavesdropped on a conversation Juno and Seonghwa were having and made quite a particular discovery."

          Mingi furrowed his eyebrows as he crossed his arms over his chest. "This better be good."

          San looked right at Seonghwa who still laid on the ground staring down in shame and fear.

          "Juno's student is not who we thought he was. He's a shadow vessel."

          A shiver went down Mingi's spine as soon as those words left San's lips. His glare on San intensified. Was he joking at a time like this?!

          During his time in the Navy, some soldiers were deployed to investigate some circumstances regarding these so called "shadow vessels". It was considered a myth for decades until reports started spreading across the world of people losing their sanity and killing communities. The shadow vessel would leave behind a black stain where their body used to be, resembling a shadow, hence the name. Nobody knows the reason for this. Some speculate that it might be some sort drug that causes the strange behavior, but it doesn't explain why they vanish into nothing. Others say it could be from supernatural causes.

          At the beginning of his job in the Navy, one of his first missions was investigating one of these reports in Puerto Rico. A man had killed a few and then left behind that black residue, like in all of the previous cases. 

          Shadow vessels never last long after being possessed by whatever makes them act erratically. To this day, it's still considered just a unexplainable phenomenon. This sort of information is not yet accessible to the public, although it is impossible to keep it completely secret with the amount of witnesses in some cases. Papers aren't allowed to speak on these cases which makes the situation even more shady. The Navy still has no clue what they were or why it happened.