Offshore
Episode 17: Mirror Image
Without a word, Jinai left Anqien staring out at the night sea in the dimmed lounge. As she returned to their empty cabin, a cold lump of guilt settled into her throat, and she crawled into the top bunk, trying not to be sick from the nerves. When her teammate finally arrived, she could not bring herself to meet their eye, or to answer when they called her name. They quickly started to play along, completing the silence between them.
She curled up around her pillow. None of it had been fair. She had already made up her mind, yet she had gone and strung them out with more maybes. But didn't she always? Drag out the non-answers as long as she could, make her home there?
But the more terrifying truth she couldn’t shake off was that she had wanted it. She had teetered over the edge right then, almost ready to fall—to give herself to that wanting and risk being burned again.
After the race, was the last thing she told herself, staring at the steel wall. She listened to her teammate unzip their luggage bag, the shuffle of cloth and canvas. After the race we can worry about this mess.
They emerged from the ferry in the blue brilliance of the dawn, none of the rest of their crew seeming the wiser of last night’s events. As they filed down the gangplank ahead of the crowd, their colleagues chattered about the new setting and the willow trees, all lively and eager, while Jinai and Anqien mutely carried their luggage after.
Midway down the scenic trek through leaning seaside groves to the hotel, Janda finally dragged Jinai to the edge of the path, wearing a formidable scowl as she said, “You two had a fight or something?”
“Not really,” Jinai sighed, “but we may as well have.”
They were quiet for a minute, Janda huffing and puffing as they ascended a slope. “Not gonna tell me what actually happened then?”
Truth be told, Jinai didn’t feel much like telling anyone. She shook her head, then noticed Anqien was casting a look in her direction. She returned it sadly, and then they retracted their attention again.
“Well, that’s not great,” Janda muttered. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Let’s not, please?”
Jinai’s reply made the intel officer stumble for a second. She nodded. “As long as you’re still good to race tomorrow. You’re about to spend, uh…three days together on a yacht.”
“I know, I know. We’ll race, we didn’t come all this way just to cop out because of interpersonal shit.”
The truth was, two-handed sailing hinged on the rapport of the sailors, moreso than any with any other crew size, and now that the only emotion she could muster up towards Anqien was a bottomless, engulfing guilt, she wasn’t sure what the way forward was.
It was simple enough going through the motions of unpacking in the hotel. This time the organisers had had the sense to book a separate room for each of them, so Jinai had a small studio to herself, with a bed big enough for three, a dresser with a half-height mirror, and a balcony looking over an immaculate rock garden.
She spent the better part of the hour meditating with her face to the greenery. Morning jog, lunch, tea—all of this she managed alone, wandering the halls in a silent daze. She ran into stray members of the other teams across the corridors and in the restaurant, including the Mirages out getting sun on the bench in the courtyard, sharing cake with cream and icing on their fingers. Xye grinned up at her as she passed, but when Jinai frowned back, he quickly pretended he hadn’t looked at all.
Travellers from as far as Bel had come all this way just to be a part of this race: a score of sailors, the cream of the crop, who wanted this trophy more than life itself. At times the weight of it all began to dizzy her, and she had to redirect her attention to the sights and scents of these unfamiliar, gleaming halls.
But all the passageways through the wings were filled with the rush of waves and leaves, and the silence did bring just a touch of reprieve. The longer she wandered, the quieter her mind grew, like a pool settling after being disturbed by rocks.
Returning to her room with dinner, she noticed her filograph screen glowing with a new message on her desk.
It was in Anqien’s barely readable cursive: Let’s do our best tomorrow.
She blew out a sigh, glancing at the wall, on the other side of which her teammate’s room lay. Then she wrote her reply. Will do. Sleep well.
Jinai woke to the piercing cold of pre-dawn pricking through the blankets. It was as if some change had come over her in her sleep: her mind was all steel now, her body intent on moving, and moving alone.
No dawdling. Only fast, sharp thoughts.
She called her breakfast to her room—bacon on buttered toast, greens and lentils, washed down with tea—and she showered, and pulled on her wetsuit. At the mirror, she gave her hair a brush and put it up in a bun, like she always did for the finals. Same old her, as small as always. She only dignified her despair with five seconds of attention—the seeping cold in her curled fingers, reaching for something that could only slip away.
One year later and it still pulled her in.
The filogram from Telaki said, in her jagged scrawl, to meet her at the marina five minutes north up the coast, where the Cloudlander had just arrived. Like wound-up clockwork, she jogged down the corridor to the lobby, eyes on the sky through the windows as she felt her pulse rise. Lights blurred by. She planned her approach, narrowed her eyes, took aim.
Anqien was there, by the reception counter, talking to the receptionist. Jinai felt her feet falter on the marble tiles—her reflection stumbled with her. Everything fell out of rhythm, unwinding.
At the first sound of her approach, both had fallen silent and now turned to glance at her. Taking a second's pause, Anqien nodded and waved at her. Jinai squared her shoulders and changed course towards them, though they left the counter and began walking in tandem with her as soon as she was in conversational distance.
“So...” they began. “How are you liking the hotel?”
She gathered her thoughts, still looking resolutely ahead. “It’s decent. Great food and service.”
The conversation hovered in this stilted register as they exited the lobby, and the cloud of awkwardness followed them until they came within sight of the marina and its jumble of boats. Here the crowds on the other side of a flimsy barricade rose to audibility: thousands chattering, crying, scolding, screaming all at once.
Their crew awaited them with their yacht, its skeleton of masts and rigging swaying in the mauve sky. Telaki waved them towards herself, and they jogged to her with respective good morning’s.
“Hey, you two! Had a good sleep?” she said, and Jinai nodded. Lujang took straight to fitting them with headsets. “What’s going on? Janda tells me you’re not talking.”
They looked at each other. “Technically, we are talking?” Anqien said.
She clicked her tongue. “‘Technically we are talking’ doesn’t reassure me,” she answered.
Jinai sighed. “Let’s not start. Just give us the details of the race. We’ll figure it out, we’ll have the time.”
Telaki held up her hands appeasingly. “Alright, alright, you sort your shit out sooner rather than later, yeah? Iki?”
“Yes!” Iki stepped in, pushing up his glasses. “As far as the first leg, we’re looking at more or less a straight course to Nara-sa, with some tactical decisions as to how to take the headwinds, and which way to sail around Ima-tou.”
“Oh, Ima-tou,” Jinai answered. “Every year, I swear. Love a bit of chaos to mix it up.”
“But that’s at least seven hours out, and other than that, it’s straightforward. Port A to Port B. Keep your common sense about you and there’s not a lot of mistakes you can make.” He paused, glancing from one face to another before continuing. Behind them, Lujang and Telaki were bringing their lifejackets. “The first thing you’ll want to think about, though, is the wind. It’s been oscillating between northeast and north.”
Jinai wriggled one arm through the bright orange lifejacket’s armhole. “And the route is mostly heading northeast?”
“Exactly, so a big chunk of leg one will be beating to windward. That should change by mid-afternoon, when we’re expecting the warm front from western Niro to roll into this part of the country. You can ride that front to the destination.”
“So…longer race than usual?” Anqien answered, clicking a buckle in place.
Iki nodded. “Seems likely,” he replied. “But it’ll be an easy conclusion to a gruelling day. So you’ll sail into Nara-sa an hour past midnight, all willing.”
“Great,” they said. “What’s the news on the other teams?”
Iki gestured to Janda, who flipped the top page of her clipboard and cleared her throat. “Well! Interesting happenings, really. Two teams dropped out at the last minute, so we have thirteen starting. We’re seeing that some of them are not quite in top form. There was a brawl at the bar last night, so things could be so, so much worse for us. But of course, our main threats—you know who—are about as prepped as they have ever been. I figured I was right—they have been running the Niro leg about weekly for the past month.”
“And Zera says they come into these races with ‘no expectations’,” Jinai muttered, arms folded as she paced around amongst the team. “I swear it’s all some elaborate taunt.”
“Oh, they are full of barbs, aren’t they,” Janda tutted. “Well, your goal this leg is simply to keep up in the second position. If you can force them out of the lead, that’s a bonus, but if not, don’t lose any sleep over it. Alright?” She gestured expectantly until Jinai and Anqien both chorused their alrights in response. “Perfect. Now give them hell.”
“Yeah! Go team!” Telaki shouted, clapping them on the shoulders. Both tried to lean into the spirit of it, but it was painfully obvious that the air wasn’t clear.
They turned to their white-and-maroon vessel, bobbing in these unfamiliar deep blue waters in the first glinting rays of morning. Before leaping into the boat, Jinai looked back and nodded once at a slightly trailing Anqien. “Come on, we can do this,” she said.
They wordlessly climbed in after her. “Positions!” said Telaki in their earpieces. “Chop chop, first call is in a minute!”
The sail fluttered, unfurling in the gusts that rolled across the bay. A thin blanket of clouds was laid over the sky, some catching the light of the city of Maka-do beneath. This bay was narrower than Muli Bay, almost a pencil-tip of water jutting into the land behind a spit.
As the rising sun set aglow all the warmer hues in the bay, and the three blasts of the foghorn called the sailors across the water, they were already underway in the broadwater, making a beeline towards the two official boats bearing the regulation-orange flags that marked the start line. Already they saw the competitors’ sails ahead, colourful canvases surmounted by logos and icons. There was the Catcher with their white wheel on black, the blue star of the Aorin boat, the yellow candle on dark purple from the Bel team, and the double-wave of the Mirage, black on sea-green.
Jinai and Anqien did not speak till they were within twenty yards of the line. On a long course such as this, the start line generally did not demand nearly as much tactical manoeuvring as might a shorter race: it showed in how loosely the racers congregated around the starboard end of the line.
But the Mirage was another matter. Once the Cloudlander team had spotted their archrivals on the course, their eyes stayed glued to them—as did their opponents’ on themselves, gazes locking. Enough of their races against the AmaShiru Mirage had ended in a time difference of less than ten minutes that the starter truly did make a difference.
Two horn blasts thundered across the crowd, and immediately, all the decks lit up with activity, sails tightening. The Mirage had set its trajectory right through a gap between two competitors, a touch away from the crush at the starboard end of the start line.
The Cloudlander, too, closed in on the start. Anqien finally spoke, saying, “Let’s not get caught in the crowd,” and then steered left, and Jinai tacked through the wind, moving the sail to the other side. The yacht turned, a little sluggishly for their liking, so it pointed into the slot between the Catcher and the North Star.
Jinai cast an eye up at the telltale and trimmed the sail tight to catch the strong winds high above the surface.
“Ten seconds!” Janda announced.
With the trimming, the boat began to pick up pace, into the lane they had singled out.
“Three, two, one—”
The singular, strident foghorn blast thrust them through between the Sail Fed boats, and there was a collective roar all along the start line, the rush of wind about their ears as this elite selection of finalists shot forth into the blue on the very first leg of the finals.