The Night I Found Home (The Forever Pirates) #1

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A/N: I'm bored, so I'm publishing another chapter, lol. I'm almost done writing it. I wasn't lying when I said it's one of the longest fics I've written (which might not seem long to y'all, idk), but here this is! I might do the same tomorrow if I feel like it. I have enough chapters ahead that it won't affect my writing process. I hope you guys like this chapter, too. ♡ I love you all.

Also, Seonghwa goes through it in this chapter, so...

Seonghwa 

I couldn't help myself. After I found out where I would be sleeping, and everyone had drifted off to sleep, the waves of the sea lulling them to sleep, I slipped out of my hammock and went onto the deck. The water carried through the air, spritzing my skin as I went to look at the sea of black. I wished the moon was brighter tonight, so I could really see what it looked like. 

This isn't where I belonged. I knew that. I belonged in a palace, on my way to the throne. I would've been engaged by now, but all I could feel was relief. 

I took a deep breath, one deeper than I had ever taken, because it felt like I was being surrounded with actual air and not whatever surrounded me at home. I practically sucked it in, as much as I could, with the chance that my father's boats would find me, I would get the experience of real air. 

It wasn't that I didn't want to go home, but in reality, I didn't feel much of anything. Survival mode had completely shut off everything I would be willing to feel. I was tired. On a spiritual sense. 

It had only been about a day at this point, but the longer I was away from home, the more I felt like it was never my home to begin with. A nagging voice scratched against my brain, screaming at me to stay gone and never go back under any circumstances, and I couldn't get past the feeling that it was my mother's voice that demanded those words. 

But this was not my home either. 

I was lost. 

***

I woke up in a panic, like I usually did from the nightmares that plagued me, but I was quick to realize that those weren't nightmares, and I was, in fact, on a pirate ship. I wasn't used to the "bed." I slept in so one wrong movement, and I was quickly flung from the hammock and onto the hardwood floors. I looked around in a panic, noticing a very important detail being that nobody was around. 

I scoffed, so much for San "protecting" me. But I couldn't complain much, I'm not entirely sure I wanted his protection. I sat up, feeling the ache in my bones as I pushed off the floor. 

I stumbled everywhere I went, a true embarrassment to the men around me who lived their lives on the sea. Nobody paid me much attention, though. Other than glances here and there, I was generally ignored. I wasn't sure what to expect when I got on a pirate ship, but it was something a lot more terrifying than this. 

It wasn't that they weren't. Mingi, I think his name was, made me want to piss myself every time he walked past. He was determined to get from point A to point B, never glancing in my direction unless I was directly in his way. He still towered over me, and he was usually adorned with some sort of weapon by his side, which I wasn't too keen on getting to know well. 

San loosened up a bit, but he never stopped staring at me while I was around, trying to rip away the walls and find out what made me tick. It made me avoid him at every possible moment.