Chapter 238: To the other direction.
Northbreaker
Carrier of NAVAL SHIP (Heh... future sneaks)
Rain drummed against the steel deck in a continuous grey sheet, every drop swallowed by the sound of the ocean or swamp... I couldn’t tell anymore.
The sound of the ocean or swamp below was loud and the low steady rumble of the ship’s engines moving beneath my feet.
The carrier was enormous— the flight deck stretched out in both directions further than I could see clearly in the fog. A few fighter jets parked in rows along the edges like sleeping things, their silhouettes disappearing and reappearing as the cloud rolled across the deck in slow unhurried waves.
The whole world was grey and wet and smelled like salt and metal and whatever storms smelled like when they’d been going long enough to become weather rather than just rain.
Hundreds of people stood in a rough circle on the deck, boots scraping against rain-soaked steel, their shapes reduced to dark outlines in the fog.
They’d left a wide clearing in the middle— not empty, but cleared, the way a crowd cleared when it understood something was happening that it needed to give space to.
I stayed near the outer edge.... Yea somehow...
And in the center.... Is FUCKING JISOO!
She walked slowly to her left.
Rain ran down her face. Her arms were loose at her sides. Her eyes were doing the thing they did when she’d already run the calculation and was past the calculating stage and into the part where she was just waiting for the right moment.
Across from her, maybe fifteen feet away, a blue-haired woman kept pace.
There was a cut on her shoulder that was deep, healed now just a scar— I could see it even from here, the dark stain spreading through the wet fabric, her arms sway slowly.
Her eyes matched Jisoo’s step for step.
Neither lowered their weapon.
Neither looked away.
They circled each other with the slow, deliberate rhythm of people who were both too experienced to rush and both too committed to stop.
The crowd held its breath. The rain came down across all of it without caring.
I looked away from both of them.
Over the edge of the carrier. Down at the water.
The ocean or swamp... oh my god, below was dark and fog-touched, but not empty— not even close.
Just beneath the surface, maybe thirty meters down, something moved.
Not fast, neither surfacing.
Just— present, a displacement of dark water, a shadow so large that it stretched the full width of the ship’s hull before its edges disappeared into the depth on either side.
No splash. No sound. Just a shape, patient and enormous, gliding past the carrier the way things glided past when they had all the time they needed and were going somewhere specific.
I watched until it was gone.
Then I turned back to the circle, to Jisoo and the blue-haired woman still moving through their careful rotation, to the rain and the fog and the grey deck and all the people standing in it.
"Fuck," I said quietly, to myself, to the water below. "I wish we never chose this path." I thought about it for a second. "I miss Shiori. I miss the north."
Which was a strange thing to miss, given everything the north had done to us.
How did this even happen...
***
(Days Ago)
I sat up from the grass first.
The field was the same field of course— tall grass, morning sky, the two moons gone now with the daylight, the world reset and intact and indifferent to everything that had happened in it yesterday.
The howl came in the distance, familiar enough by now that neither of us moved when we heard it.
I stood, took a breath, walked over to Jisoo still on the ground, and patted her back.
"Ay. Which Jisoo is this."
She looked up. Tear-tracked face, red eyes, with an expression of someone who had been crying long enough to be tired of it but not long enough to be done.
Then she lunged— both arms, full commitment... and we both went down into the grass, her landing on top of me, face pressed into my chest.
I lay there and accepted this.
"The morning one," she said, into my jacket. "And I figured something out."
"Figured what out."
"When only one of us dies..." She sniffled. "The one who dies can spectate the other one. The one still alive." A pause. "Also."
Another pause, longer.
"While I was watching you in the black city— it wasn’t just me watching. Night Jisoo was there too. We were both there, separately, watching the same thing. Which means—"
She pushed up slightly to look at me. "Which means there are actually two of me. Two separate souls in the same body. And I’m the morning one, which means I might be the copy, or the clone, or th—"
I sat up. Took her by both shoulders. Looked directly at her face. "Ay. Stop."
She stopped.
"Stop that," I said. "We don’t know that yet. And you are not fake. You hear me?"
She stared at me with an expression of someone who wanted to be argued out of something and was waiting for me to do it properly.
I exhaled. "Are you telling me all those feelings you have are fake? The way you cried, got mad, angry, wow angry and mad are the same... sorry... I’m bad with words..." I let out a soft awkward laugh.
I stood up, offered her my hand and looked at her.
Something shifted in her face.
Then she laughed— small and genuine— and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
"No." She took my offered hand and stood up. "You’re right. I’m not fake." She looked at me with eyes that had gone from crying to something more like resolved. "I’m just the better Jisoo, right?"
I looked at her.
Please... what the hell... •́ ‿ ,•̀ please don’t make me answer that. Out of all the questions... why that, Jisoo Jisoo remembers everything you do...
She stared at me.
Harder.
Jisoo eyes sparkled, but something around the edges of her expression was beginning to sharpen in a way that made my survival instincts sit up.
Wow... nevermind, I rather have 1 jisoo abusing me than two. "No! You’re the best! Of course you are!" I said immediately.