Year 1150 of Sha’ul

Marine rests, leaning against an open pirate chest, one boot planted in the damp sand, the other idly nudging a salt-stained coin. She smiles. Not a loud smile of victory, but a coquettish one—measured, almost intimate; the kind that invites you to lower your guard. Her eyes, warm like the setting sun, seem to look at whoever arrives… not at what she leaves behind.

Behind her, the destroyed pirate ship is little more than a blurred detail: a split hull, burned sails, fragments of wood still smoking. Nothing worth remembering. Nothing that needs to be recorded. Marine does not speak of certain battles; she simply decides they never happened.

The sea breeze stirs her coat, soaked in powder and salt. There are scratches along her sword’s blade, a tiny crack in the stock of her arquebus—signs only a trained eye would notice. To anyone else, she is just a captain resting after a long day.

The beach is beautiful. Pale sand, calm water, gulls circling the wreckage as if the world had not just fractured a little more. The contrast is almost obscene: untouched beauty, recent violence. Marine knows it. And she enjoys it.

She rests her head against the chest, closes her eyes for a moment, and lets out a soft laugh, as if savoring a delicious secret. Perhaps she is. Perhaps that coquettish air is not meant to seduce… but to hide the exhaustion, the blood, and the decision to keep sailing as if nothing had happened.

Because tomorrow, when someone asks about that ship, Marine Houshou will simply smile again.

And the sea, her faithful accomplice, will not say a word.

“Fair tides, sweetheart… if you made it this far, it’s because the sea has already chosen you.”