Offshore

Episode 1: Lantern Light

I am SO happy to finally share this story. After 2 editing passes, I think it's safe to say the story has passed my quality checks so I'm going to start publishing it! You can also read Offshore at my website.

There's also a masterpost with meta info about the project, world and characters here.

OPENING THEME: SEASTORM

You make me feel like I'm flying. 

The words bobbed to the top of Anqien’s thoughts as they watched Jinai stretch her arms atop a sandy bollard. Her face was silhouetted against the wildflower blue sky—afternoon light gleamed off her skin and her curls hung dense with water.

Flying and falling. Always with you.

But their coach was marching up the pier towards them, and Anqien hastily swept their ponytail over their shoulder and busied themself with rolling up their own damp wetsuit.

Here in Muli Bay, only a few trawler masts and smokestacks interrupted the expanse of blue. Nothing separated them from the infinite horizon in the white noise of waves rolling against stone. On a day like this, that emptiness seemed the grandest thing in the world—making them feel like a glint of light in the pool of the universe.

“You feeling like Konoma’s later?” Jinai called over.

Anqien glanced back. “Oh, you know I am.”

As they watched, she popped the lid off her fluorescent lime green bottle and drank, shadows of gulls scudding over her while their shrieks rode the tumult of the ocean waves. She moved too carefully for the moment, her guard up against a threat that wasn't there.

Things had gone south two hours into today’s run of the bay. When a rogue gust had forced a poorly-timed jibe, it had only taken seconds for the Cloudlander to heel wildly and fling them into the blustery waves below.

Rookie mistake. And they should be embarrassed.

But feeling their water shoes skid on steel and their shoulders smash against the waves, a strange, breathless thought had pierced through their shame like the glare of the sun. In that split second of zero-gravity, terminal velocity before they collided with reality and the sea, Anqien’s heart had raced at the thought that they were doing this with her. Dazzling, impossible, shooting star Jinai—

Jinai was looking this way. Anqien's gaze darted away, and they slung the bag onto their shoulder too hard, letting out a little “ow” as it thumped against their back. She chuckled.

Seconds after their fall, their air-riding boat had splashed in after them, hull hitting water with a roar of seafoam. Yelling and kicking, they had lunged out of the waves to land back on deck—a manoeuvre that had been drilled into them a thousand times.

Close enough. It had been the right move. But possibly not enough, if they had been racing.

“Out of ten, today, that was, I want to say, a solid seven,” said Telaki, inserting herself between them with one hand on a bollard. “It's all about the recovery! Remember, no race goes flawlessly. If we wanted flawless we’d be running tour boats. Champs take the trophy after huge mistakes all the time." She slapped them both on the backs. “It’s what you do in the moments after you realise things are going to shit that define you as a sailor.”

“Yeah, and we’re not even qualifying if that happens tomorrow,” muttered Jinai.

Telaki chuckled. “Oh, there’s no way you’re making that mistake tomorrow. Besides, quals are a dime a dozen. You could qualify with your eyes closed.”

Jinai snorted. “Thanks for the confidence.”

“Oh, and thank you for today,” Anqien put in, while they fished around in their bag pocket for a pair of socks. “I'll be taking notes on my way home, that’s for sure.”

“Well, don’t miss the view for your filograph,” the coach answered with arms akimbo, pink braids tossed by a gale.

A hand clapped down on Anqien’s shoulder. They turned to find Jinai right beside them, looking expectantly. "I could use that dinner right about now," she said, pointing a thumb in the general direction of the shops. “Ready to go?”

Konoma’s was set up in the niche of an old warehouse, a faux-fancy waterside joint that did a cafe menu in the day, and swapped it out for a dinner menu at sunset.

They specialised in a particular kind of outing—candlelit dates and boozy nights out with friends, the kind with indie bands no one knew playing in the background. Konoma’s shared the space with two other similarly quasi-fancy eateries, with fairy-lights floating amongst the rafters, strung up on invisible Thread, and beach furniture draped in white-and-blue tablecloth.

The walk from Muli Bay was just shy of twenty minutes, which always brought them to the doorstep during the half-hour from 5:30 to 6 o’clock when the shop closed its doors to prepare for the evening crowd.

Jinai quickly took up residence in the lee of the warehouse stairs, back against the white plank wall. “How’d you feel about today?” she asked, eyes fixed on her companion.

“Could’ve gone better, could’ve gone worse,” Anqien replied, turning to face the boardwalk promenade, where the roads and waters were slowing being bathed in pink. “I’m sorry. About losing the ropes back there. I don’t know how it happened.”

She shook her head. “What she said was true, you know, about recovery,” she said. “When you’re sailing for that many hours, it’s basically impossible not to mess up, so it’s all in how you come back and make up lost ground.”

Anqien would never make up the lost ground to Jinai, either, no matter how they studied the sport. She always knew what she was doing, always knew what she had to do to turn things around.

She drew a breath, held it, and released it in a drawn-out sigh. “There’s days when it feels so far out of reach, you know?” she said without warning. She folded her arms, trying to look nonchalant. “Today’s one of them.”

“I wouldn’t count us out,” they replied. “Surely it’ll happen this time.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, having the win snatched away so many times…feels worse than losing. Doesn’t it?”

They knew she was referring to something else, the reason this race would be her last. She hadn’t ever mentioned defeat till then. For Anqien, every single podium finish was a win, but they knew she wanted more than that—she always had.

Anqien opened their mouth, hoping a reply would emerge, but only closed it again.

Jinai sighed hollowly. “Maybe it’s better to…”

The door creaked open and Masiu, their favourite waiter, stuck his head out. “Konoma’s is open for business!” The four would-be customers looked up.

Jinai nodded once. “I’ll continue that thought later.”

Jinai did not, in fact, continue that thought. Their conversation meandered on to less consequential things while Masiu flew to their table, greeting them with a chirpy, “How’s my favourite team? All ready for tomorrow?”

“Wish I felt readier,” Jinai replied while he flipped his notepad open. “We hit a rough patch today. Though I try to think of it as us spending all our bad luck before the race.”

“Oh, come on, you two? Bad luck? No way.”

“You’d be surprised.” Jinai smirked.

They both got their usuals, though Masiu went through the formalities of having them spell the orders out: spicy beef loaded corn chips, chicken curry noodles. Jinai, detailing her preferred condiments, did not seem to notice as Anqien stole more glances at her, trying to commit her profile to memory—golden-brown skin dusted with freckles, blue-grey eyes, stubborn brow.

Once the waiter had swooped away to the kitchen, her eyes met theirs again. At once they started to pay more attention to arranging and rearranging the salt and spice shakers, while music wafted over from the band on the makeshift stage, and cheers erupted over the martial arts match on the filographic screen.

It was plain as a shining signboard that Jinai was thinking about tomorrow. It was in the tap of her heel on the floorboards, the dart of her eye at every sound—each time the indie band’s pipa player strummed, each time the bartender started shaking a tumbler.

Fifteen minutes of shallow conversation, punctuated by too much silence, saw their steaming dinners arriving from the kitchen. Both dove into their meals—Anqien’s chicken curry noodles were always a bit of a battle against the sauce, so they devoted their full attention to slurping it up until it was no longer brimming to the edge of their bowl.

“How’s the garden at home going?” Jinai asked.

“Doing its best,” Anqien said. “I’ve got all their water schedules written down. And some of them have been putting out buds. Like the red ivy?”

 “Yeah, true, the weather’s been warming up,” she replied, propping her chin up on her elbows. “So. Will I ever get to see it?”

They glanced sheepishly aside. “That means meeting my family,” they said. “Which…they’re still a little…”

“Insufferable?”

“Yeah. It won’t be a relaxing visit, that’s for sure.”

“Yeah, can only imagine.”

That dreaded silence very soon overflowed their faltering attempts at conversation. Both sat there staring at their food, then at each other, in turns.

Anqien breathed a sigh. “We’ll be fine tomorrow,” they said. “It’s just the quals. It’ll be a breeze. You’ll be amazing as always.”

Jinai blinked slowly back, then attempted to smile. “Oh, Anqien.” She stopped there, not seeming to know where to take the words next. Her right hand crept to where their left lay beside their bowl. She pried it off the table, fingers curling around theirs. “You’re right, I’m a fool. We’re both gonna be doing our best, what do I have to worry about?”

Anqien, suddenly self-conscious at her touch, did their best not to overstay their welcome—eventually they extracted their hand from her grip, not one second longer than felt reasonable, and looked up to find that Jinai’s shoulders had loosened.

“How’s the spicy beef?” they asked, gingerly scooping their next spoonful of curry.

Jinai shook her head, shovelling some of said beef into her mouth with a corn chip. “Even milder than last time. I swear they keep dialling it down.”

“Yeah? Maybe too many tourists wrote in about it.”

Though it was still a touch too quiet for the rest of the evening, the coldness seemed dispelled for the moment. After the meal—Jinai picked up the bill—the pair parted under the floating lanterns at the slouching door, patting each other's shoulders. The music was still going, and becoming less acoustic over time. The bass vibrated in the boardwalk as Anqien nodded to their teammate and said, “Guess I’ll see you at the bay at dawn.”

Gods above, here came the nerves, roaring in their ears again.

Jinai laughed back, flicking a lock of hair out of their face. “Let’s show ‘em what we’ve got.”

ENDING THEME: OUR SKY

(Just imagine these playing at the start and end of every chapter)

---

Episode 2: Morning Shivers

When it came to the Niro-Helfi qualifiers, Jinai knew the drill. In the hour before dawn, when the sky was still velvet blue, she’d shower and shiver in the calcite-caked spray jets. She'd towel off, comb oil into her damp hair. She'd pull on the wetsuit and fight with the zip, then slip a loose t-shirt and pants over it.

Then she would swoop to the kitchen—like she did now—to fix herself breakfast in a blender. Protein powder, milk, fruit for good measure. Today it was a banana. Sometimes she struggled to keep the milkshake down; other times she didn’t. This morning, she didn’t.

No dawdling. Only fast, sharp thoughts.

She would swipe up her jacket and sports bag from the dining chair, pull on her shoes, lock her apartment door behind her. She’d scurry down the stairs beneath the faint glow of the sky, reaching for the filograph in her pocket. Then she would write a good-morning message to Josa, and tense her shoulders as she sent it…

Jinai’s feet halted halfway down the dark stairs. Her fingers were wrapped around the device in her pocket, but she stopped short of taking it out. There was no bulwark to hold back the whirlpool of yearning that tore through her, right there.

One year later and it still pulled her in.

She stumbled down the last steps, briefly thrown out of the rhythm of the routine, but she willed her feet forward, clenching her jaw. One day, and then the next.

On the pavement at the bottom of the stairs, the cold pre-dawn raised goosebumps on Jinai's skin. It never got too cold in Wulien, but this could take the cake. Leaping into her bicycle seat and flicking the headlight on, she kicked off into the deep blue morning.

The masts of the racing yachts were silhouetted in the purple sky over the marina. In the dawning light, Muli Bay—the grandest in all of Helfi—looked alien. The network of concrete jetties that projected out into the sea was a hive of activity: racing pairs in matching suits and their crews bustled all along the piers, rigging boats and testing their crackling Thread relays. Locals and visitors from farther afield mingled and laughed, none of their faces quite visible without the light of the sun.

All were here for the one thing, one way another: the in-port qualifiers that would decide which teams went to Niro.

The snatches of conversation she caught were methodical, conspiring—clipped humour masking anxiety. She heard a few cries of her name from strangers as she strode past, each of which she answered with a wave and a good morning, heart rate elevating.

It had been nine years and scores of races now, but the chill and the buzz on the first morning always sent an electric thrill through her. A concerted waving of arms drew Jinai's attention to the head of Pier 3E, and she flew through the ocean wind in a daze, finding the shapes of the control crew gathered by the white-and-maroon mast of the Cloudlander, the vessel for which the team was named.

Telaki was pacing about and gesticulating to Lujang, their networker, who pressed a Thread relay headset to her ear. Tapping intently at his massive clipboard-sized filograph was their navigator Iki—a head taller than the others when he wasn’t bowed over in intense work.

“Hey, hey! The stars are here!” he yelled out, waving his filograph in the air.

Jinai sped to a jog—then she felt a hand collide with her right shoulder blade as Anqien skidded to a stop beside her. “Morning!” They grinned like they had just caught the world’s largest barracuda, laughing as her startlement morphed into a smile. She clasped the hand they held out, bumping shoulders.

“One minute later and we were gonna start sending filos! You’re down for qual one of three,” Telaki said, sliding herself between them to throw her arms around their shoulders.

"Morning!" Iki welcomed them with bows. “The course is just about the same as last year—dead northeast across the strait, round the buoy at the tip of Canlan Island, and back to Muli Bay. A two-hour round trip in ideal conditions.”

Anqien nodded. “We did it in two hours ten last year?”

“Yeah, thereabouts.” Telaki nudged them towards Lujang. “We're looking at thirty-five yachts per race, so—”

“Thirty-five per race?” Jinai answered. “What in the heavens?” Lujang clicked her tongue and flicked Telaki's arm off Jinai's shoulders, before rotating her slightly, tucking the headsets into the strap of her goggles over her right ear.

“Yeah, crowded stage today,” the coach went on. “Thirty-five per race, and they’re letting the top five of each one through.”

Anqien nodded through the briefing. “Feels like everyone turned out for this one,” they said.

“They won’t be so threatening once you’re out on the water,” Telaki cut in, arms falling back to her sides. “The Mirage though. They’re a problem. Janda has just been over by their prep station, says they’re looking vicious today. Taking no questions. Wasting no time.”

“Huh, guess Xye isn’t high out of his mind this time.” Everyone remembered how Xye U.L. had showed up at last year’s quals unable to tell sky from sea, yet he and Zera, the deadly pair making up the crew of the AmaShiru Mirage, had pulled through in the top three of their race. Then, of course, they had gone on to snub Jinai and Anqien of the win for the second year in a row.

Iki tutted. “Not the Juice Kids,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t let them spook you, now or ever.” Then his eyes shifted to his screen again, the starting tables reflected in his glasses. “They’re in the second qual race today.”

“Kinda hard to be scared of them the third year around,” said Jinai.

“Well, I’m a little scared, to be fair,” Anqien answered, twisting their teal-dyed hair around their index finger.

Jinai was, too. It was a fear she held deep in her chest, where it couldn’t tell her how to act. Anqien didn’t need to see their senior and teammate's doubt.

“How’s the wind looking?” she asked instead.

Iki scratched his neck. “We’re expecting rough wind on the water and mostly easterlies today, so it’s looking like a snappy broad reach back,” he answered. “There’s a chance of winds turning northeast as the day warms up, so keep your eye out, you might have the wind in your back for some of the return leg.”

Adjusting her suit around her elbows, Jinai nodded. Her fingers were freezing, but then again, they always were, morning of the first race. “That’s what I like to hear.”

It was all business from here. Telaki called warm-ups, waving them back into line. She had taken them both through the same sequence of sixteen stretches enough times, but each movement felt infinitely consequential, now they were minutes from starting.

As they wound down for their departure, the coach pulled them both into a group huddle. “Take my word for it when I say you've got absolutely nothing to worry about,” she said. “Now! Go show those other sailors how it's done.” She clasped each of her protégés' hands in turn, and boosted them towards the ladder.

Jinai paused at the top, staring down at the moored Cloudlander in the biting breeze. Fingers wrapped around the sun-flaked paint on the railings, she drew in a long breath and let it out, before finally clambering down.

Setting foot on the deck felt like coming home. It bounced at the impact of Jinai's feet, before it was tugged by the outward-flowing current, straining at the mooring rope.

The ten-minute warning sounded over the waters as the pair were hoisting the sails—three foghorn blasts that stirred up a ruckus at every berth in the marina. Just off the peninsular Muli Fish Market, two fluorescent orange flags stood aloft, marking the start line—the starboard mark atop an official boat, the port mark on the head of a buoy.

“Hey hey, J and A! Thanks for waiting.” Janda's voice finally entered the relay as Jinai and Anqien were wrapping up their safety checks.

"Janda!" Jinai shouted into the tympanum, glaring up at the jetty. “Where in Ihir’s name were you? Anything we need to know before we set out?”

“Hey, chill out, it’s all good—if there were anything urgent I’d have run back,” came Janda’s answer from the earpiece. “Not much besides the fact that the Mirage crew is looking ready to destroy everything in their path. Lucky for you, you’re both top-seeded so you won’t be seeing them anytime soon. What you do have today is the fifth seed, the Catcher from Kani-do, same crew as last time. The Catcher was in the finals last year, remember them?”

“Not really.”

“Perfect, because they’re the only ones worth worrying about in your qual.” A pause full of stuttering interference punctuated her words here. “But seriously. I’ll be all eyes when the Mirage goes out. You guys just focus on your run. Good luck, by the way.”

“Thanks and thanks,” Anqien said.

“Do me a favour and crush the competition,” Janda replied. “I’ve got a bet going with my ma. About how much you’ll beat second place by.”

“The pressure’s on,” Jinai chuckled. Then the line was silent again.

She cast a glance at the departing fleet of boats and then back at the jetty, before waving up at the crew and signalling to the mooring rope. With a nod, Telaki tossed the rope coil off the bollard and waved as it unravelled with a hiss, bouncing on the pier.

“Fly that flag high!” their coach called, now the only sound that carried over the rush of waves. “Go Cloudlanders!”

---

Episode 3: Sunrise Flight

OK, bear with me while I Show My Research in this chapter, I use a lot of jargon but I hope that the descriptions make it clear what each term means.

It was like clockwork from here. Anqien spooled up the mooring rope as it fell, shoving it under a thwart by the helm. As Jinai winched the mainsail up, canvas unrolled in white and maroon overhead—this was the largest on the yacht, and would soon be put to good use steering it through the wind. She stooped to snatch the mainsheet rope in her gloved hands, setting the sail out broad in the rising gale.

Anqien on the helm, Jinai on the mainsail: this was how they were positioned every race.

As the Cloudlander glided into the bay, the first rays of sun glared over the thirty-five sails. Bows zipped through white-tips, splitting the surf in a tumult of foam. The length of the start line would have been adjusted for the fleet, yet with all the yachts coming together behind it, it looked like only just enough room.

Anqien tweaked the six-spoked helm clockwise, and the yacht followed suit, arcing to starboard. They threaded themselves into the tangle of boats converging towards the start line, shadows of ropes and sails overlapping in the first blush of the rising sun.

From far down the bay, two blasts of the foghorn sounded, shaking the deck beneath their feet. One minute to go. The shouts and battle cries crescendoed.

The sun was to their left now, casting long shadows across the splashing sea. The foam had begun to glow pink.

“Get on the port mark,” Iki’s voice interjected through the earpiece.

“Already on it,” answered Jinai, then turned to Anqien. “Let’s circle the fleet?”

“I was thinking the same—tacking to starboard!”

“Ready to tack!”

On the signal, she hauled the mainsail in. They accelerated around the left edge of the fleet, out far enough to be just outside the left end of the start line.

Up ahead, hulls were already starting to close in on each other as the yachts—all having a similar idea—vied for a lane through this end of the line. That hapless buoy bobbed and swung in their crosscurrents, the flag fluttering in the wind. Jinai scanned the crowd of rainbow hulls, all aligning themselves in the face of the wind. She nodded and pointed at the buoy. “Let’s leebow them just inside the mark?”

“Haven’t done that one in a bit,” Anqien replied. “You think anyone will beat us to the count?”

Jinai opened her mouth to reply, then her gaze darted over her shoulder and she shouted, “Incoming from starboard! Cut them off!” The words spurred Anqien—they yanked the helm hard right while their companion hauled the mainsheet. There was a cry behind them as the Cloudlander bolted to starboard, cutting the would-be usurper off.

“Ten seconds!” Iki’s voice came through their headsets. The two nodded at each other, yacht curving back into the crush of the main fleet.

Ahead, a boat with a white wheel on its black sail began to trend to port, on a trajectory that would pass the start line barely fifteen feet from the buoy. That was fifteen feet they had to work with. They'd been taught that twenty was barely anything, on water.

That black sail would be where they wanted to be in a second.

“Can we make it?” Jinai said as they hurtled towards the line. With this much momentum, there would be no aborting the manoeuvre.

“I think we can do this,” Anqien called back.

“I’m with you,” Jinai breathed, taking the mainsheet, readying herself to haul the sails in—

“Five seconds!” Iki’s cry peaked in their earpieces as they soared towards the gap—

A red boat closed in from their left, and around them, thirty-five sails twisted to catch the rising wind, all their telltales fluttering—

The foghorn sounded, rending and clear, over wave crests and through whistling sails. Saltwater doused their faces as the Cloudlander shot through the gap, threading the needle between the black sailboat and the start mark. But Jinai was already hard at work, hauling the sail in. They exchanged a nod, and in a concerted effort—mainsheet and rudder—they tacked sharp left.

It was a perfect right-angle turn. The heeling of the boat almost sent their shoes skidding over the deck, but they crouched and held their balance, yelling and cursing, until they completed the turn.

Jinai sprinted to starboard to rebalance the vessel. Anqien wrenched the helm against the boat’s leftward bias.

They lifted their gazes past the ropes, then, to a vision of the sun setting the clouds on fire over the distant fading peaks of Canlan Island. Ahead, around, and behind them was the fluttering gleam of sails, surging through that thousand-foot gap at the break of day.

“We’re underway!” Anqien announced, and through their headsets came a tumult of cheers.

---

The burble of a bow chopping waves behind them signalled that another yacht had followed their lead, but whoever that was, they had missed the ticket into the lead pack. It was a club of six, of which the Cloudlander was a touch behind three others, including the black-sailed yacht they had crossed the start line with.

Anqien spent four seconds admiring the sunrise before Jinai beckoned with, “it’s not over yet.” Placing an easy hand on the helm, they held the rudder steady against the yacht’s bias to the wind. Jinai took the mainsail in close, and both steeled up for the windward beating to come.

As magical as sails could be—capable of moving a vessel in most any direction with the right tack—there was one way they could not go: straight into the wind. A zig-zag path was how one sailed upwind: this was called beating to windward. But when and where to beat was always a puzzle with a solution that shifted with the currents.

A simple rule of thumb governed this. It was always best to tack, or turn, as little as possible, chasing each diagonal until the destination mark was no longer in front.

With just the exchange of a nod, they both knew what was to come. Up ahead was the familiar silhouette of Canlan, overshadowing them in blue. Its shore outlined their route—southeast against the wind, down the strait between island and mainland to its southern tip, then round the mark and back up again.

About seven seconds behind them, the bulk of the fleet had fanned out into lanes, none wanting to be caught in the bad air behind another. Ahead, the leaders tore through the water, chasing the shortest line to the first mark like a pack of sharks.

Anqien and Jinai glanced at each other. “Aggressive field today,” she said, louder in their headset than through the pounding of waves.

“Psst, you two, look over to starboard,” Iki interrupted. “It’s irregular, but there look to be some transient gusts going on there.”

Their gazes simultaneously flew to the right, towards the open waters. Jinai rose to her feet. “See anything good?” she said, eyes narrowed.

“Uh, nothing right now,” Anqien answered.

Now that Iki had brought their attention there, they spent the next five minutes with their attentions split between steering and squinting out at the water to their right. Nothing showed in the shimmer of the waves to indicate wind of any worth to them, and they kept their steady fourth place, neither gaining nor falling away.

Then— “There!” Jinai’s shout came at the same time as Anqien’s gaze flew right. Where there had been flat silver sea before, there was now the erratic, tell-tale darkening of water, dusted in sparkles of sunlight, on the edge of their vision. “Looks like a steady header, it's perfect.” She unjammed the mainsheet as she spoke.

Meanwhile Anqien’s eyes darted to the lead pack—first place was seven-or-so seconds ahead, but the route there was wide and clear, nothing but the crisp horizon beyond.

“When do we tack?”

“Give it fifty more feet.” Jinai’s face was stern and focused, eyes narrowed on the puff as they hurtled up alongside. “Now! Ready to tack!”

They ducked as the mainsail boom swung overhead. With a roaring splash, they turned their bow right, and the Cloudlander split off from the route that the leaders were charting. Their course fanned away at right angles, and the gap grew to six seconds.

“Bold move,” Iki said, “but no risk, no reward, right?”

“We didn’t get here by playing it safe,” answered Jinai. At the steely confidence of those words, Anqien felt a surprising flutter in their chest, louder and sharper than even the thrill of the chase.

Now, the leaders were now reaching the end of their respective diagonals. Almost to an orchestrated rhythm, they began to bounce from their original course at right angles, one after another. As they sifted out onto their lanes, it became piercingly clear that the black sail with the white wheel had surged to the front of the pack.

In the same span of time, Anqien and Jinai had made it almost to the edge of the puff. The wind began to whistle in their ears, raising goosebumps on their skin.

Puffs—these transient wind currents came and went at the whimsy of fortune. If taken well and consistently, they could decide the winner on a course like this. All it took was an ability to read the sea—to spot a good puff, to see where it was moving, to know what to do with it.

“Looks like twenty degrees off from our heading, here it comes,” Jinai said, not a drop of doubt in her voice. “In three, two, one!”

As they hit the current, it stirred their hair upward, that same electrifying wind that now filled their sails and briefly rippled their telltales. Together they flurried across the deck hauling the helm and mainsheet, and the yacht turned through the wind, propelled by the current.

It almost felt like flying, being picked up by the puff and pushed forward. Jinai trimmed the tops of the sails, making the most of the stiff wind. And it rambled on and on, and they soared upon it, watching the speedometer needle swing—sixteen, eighteen, twenty knots—and the gap between themselves and the leaders shrinking.

“Damn, you found a good one!“ shouted Telaki in their ear. “That's my little stars!“

Jinai chuckled. “Save the praise for when we know where it’s gonna put us down.”

Telaki laughed, then paused. “Wait a minute, wait a minute?" There was frantic scrabbling in the tympanum on her end. “Nope, the data does say you’re in the lead, just barely! Keep it up!”

Anqien and Jinai grinned at each other. Out on the waters, it was hard to tell who was farthest upwind, but those watching from shore had a bird's eye view of the racers and the precise wind direction.

“As if they don't do this every qual,” muttered Janda, but Anqien knew from her lilt that she was beaming.

On the other side of the course, gaps were opening between the once-leaders, fourth place caught in the bad air of third. Sixth place—they saw now—was chasing them with their red sail blazing, a safe fifteen seconds behind.

They weren't in the clear yet. But the wind was still lifting them as they soared in the sunlight, and the sky had brightened to pale blue above. Only now, in this lull, did Anqien notice the ambient background cheer behind them, a shrill that blended into the beating of wind. Overhead and hidden in the sky by means of mirrors, a hovercraft's blades chopped the air, beaming footage back to land. The shores of the market peninsula behind them were teeming with swarms of spectators, specks identifiable only by the shimmer of their movement.

Now a third of the way into the race, the destination mark was no longer in front of them: it was time to tack. “What d'you think?” called Anqien with a gesture at the bright orange speck on their right. “We need to put more space between us and them.”

Jinai's eyes went to the other leaders. “Yeah, you're right.” Then she sucked in a breath, snatching for the mainsheet jammer— “Looks like another puff, dead ahead...that’s our ticket!"

“A...ah?” It was a split second of discombobulation, then they were all business again. “Right, let's tack to starboard!”

“Ready! On the puff—three, two, one!”

They hit the gust. Their mainsail swung out to catch the draft. The Cloudlander swerved sharply to port with almost enough force to throw a person overboard. Then the mark was in front of them once more, the puff behind.

Like a slippery eel, this gust was narrow and gone too soon, carrying them for just six seconds. But it didn't feel like six seconds to them—it was days, weeks, pushing them so hard it almost seemed to toss them forward. Nothing but ocean lay between them and the mark now, growing in their vision as they watched.

“Huh, things are looking good,” Jinai said.

“Always one for understatement, aren’t you,” Janda replied in their headsets.

The strait waters were rippling inward as the tide came in, though it made scant difference to their speed. Sea-spray roared in their faces. Steadily, they widened their lead, closing in on the orange buoy that marked the turning point of the race.

Twenty feet from the flag, their reflexes kicked in. In a hissing of rope, Jinai hauled the mainsail back in and out on the other side. Anqien grasped the helm in both hands and manoeuvred them into the sharpest turn of the race so far.

They snaked a perfect arc into the gravitational orbit of the brilliant orange buoy, slinging the yacht around it in a move that would make any sailor envious. As they passed, they heard its ropes slapping against its barnacled sides. The chasing pack swung back into view on their bow, seven seconds adrift, their yells and hauling and winching entering earshot.

"That was amazing," Anqien breathed. "I love you, you know that?"

"Yeah, yeah," Jinai answered with a sidelong smile. "Tell me again when we're back in town."

The wind and the tide were in their backs: it was as steep of a downwind as it could be. As soon as their bow was lined up with the start marks, Anqien sprinted across the deck, snatching the spinnaker sail from where it was stowed by the bow. The white fabric billowed in their hands even as they began clipping it to the hoist.

Up and out the spinnaker bloomed. Finally in its element, the Cloudlander began to accelerate, whistling through the water as it began its charge back towards Muli Bay, past rival boats clumsily beating the other way.

You make me feel like I'm flying. The sail was an aerofoil, operating on the same principle as the rotor blades that lifted hovercraft into the air. Nothing could stop their run back to shore, and they laughed, wind roaring over the breakers around them.

---

Episode 4: Sparkling Reef

As the Cloudlander flew back into port between the two marks, ten seconds of clear sea lay wide open behind them. Though no visible line was drawn in the water, they could feel as they hit it, a whistle shrilling and a cheer surging across the bay, spectators pressing against the rails to watch.

They depowered as they crossed the line, luffing the sails until the wind began to drop around them. Anqien brought down the spinnaker as Jinai hauled in the mainsail.

In their ears, the relays were alive with activity. "How's that for a decisive qualifier?" said Telaki. “There’s my stars! I’m the proudest coach in the world!”

Jinai looked over at Anqien as they steered the boat in a victory arc around the bay, staring starry-eyed into the crowd. They always did, even at the smallest of wins. She roamed over, laying a hand on their shoulder. “Don’t know why I ever doubted,” she said.

“I love you so much,” they answered, turning from the helm and lunging for a hug that she was almost too stunned to return. Around her, she thought she heard cheers and aw’s. She wrapped her arms around the small of their back and leaned into the embrace.

A twinge shot through her heart with a memory of Josa holding her like this. His short brown hair, his soft eyes behind glasses—she saw him in her doorway, saying goodbye as he squeezed her close.

She jolted backward, half expecting to see him, but it was just Liu Anqien—long teal-tipped hair matted over their brow and cheek by seawater and sweat. Seemingly oblivious to the sudden lapse in her mental presence, they nodded once with a grin, taking the helm again to steer the boat into the marina.

The boat with the wheel on its sail, which they now knew from their crew’s relays to be the Kani-do Catcher, drew into the port twenty seconds behind them, a spinnaker with a crab high and proud in front of the boat. But Jinai’s mind was afloat on the afterglow of the win, and she only watched it over her shoulder long enough to register the sailors helming it: both beaming, holding their joined hands up over their heads with a Niro-hei cheer.

---

All along the blue-carpet runway to the Sparkling Reef hotel, Anqien and Jinai were called and beckoned from the other side of the barricade by every kind of person who had any interest in their race. Reporters. Fans. Naysayers. Other sailors, even. They heard as many shouts of congratulations as they received tympanum bells in their faces, to which all Jinai ever had to say was thank you.

Fellow competitors on the runway were the only ones she paid any heed to, and Anqien did their best to take her lead. It was somewhere halfway down to the changing rooms that one young Astran team flew in from behind and halted them with a nervous request—in their best Helfi-yu—for filogram autographs. Without missing a beat, Jinai took the taller’s illuminated filograph and scrawled her signature on the screen.

Anqien hovered behind her, waving with a little “hi” but little else—attention from the crowd they could take, but the admiration of other competitors?

“Will we see you in the finals?” Jinai asked in Belan.

Their eyes met, widening. The one in front answered in Belan, “Yeah, we were fourth! You were both amazing, by the way.”

“In the chasing pack! Congratulations—you did a great job too,” Jinai replied, handing the filograph back. Anqien stared as the exchange unfolded. Then the young sailor cast a glance in their direction and inched towards them, holding the filograph out. “Would you also sign—”

At the very words they blushed to the roots of their hair, at which the two Astran sailors stared and Jinai chuckled. Inching towards the sailor eagerly proffering her filograph, they did their best to smile without looking completely dumbstruck and took it gingerly.

With their fingertip, they scribbled the least intelligible version of their name that they had ever written. The second sailor, taking the first’s lead, handed hers over as well—Jinai signed and passed it to Anqien.

This signature came out looking a bit better than the last.

As these two bowed in thanks and scurried off giggling, Jinai turned to Anqien with an inquiring sort of look. “It’s cute that you’re nervous, but you’re gonna have to get used to it,” she said, grabbing their shoulder and steering them down the path.

That took the cake. Their face was hot all the way to the changing rooms, and they spent half of that walk staring down at their feet.

---

“How are my stars? Come, come, I’ve gotta parade you!”

Finding them amidst cool-down stretches on the green by the changing rooms, Telaki snatched them both by the arms and dragged them right across the blue carpet to the nearest stairs.

All the control crews were headquartered in the Sparkling Reef, as they always were for the NHR qualifiers: a beautiful, velvety hotel adjoining a function space, with corridors paved with black carpets embroidered in gold filigree—the kind of place where the upper crust might convene to talk business over wine.

When Jinai and Anqien hurried after Telaki into the red terrazzo lobby, the receptionists’ heads darted up in concert. Their coach waved them towards the left side of the counter, styled out of polished red granite in the shape of a ship’s bow.

“Say hello to my little stars,” she announced, a little prouder than Jinai would have liked—but the receptionists ate it up, the one seated farther away flying across the booth to gawp.

“Oh my goodness, what an honour!” “Legendary work on the racecourse!”

“All in a day’s work,” Jinai answered with a wave. “Been a busy one for you?”

Through the conversation, Anqien was acutely aware of how often they hesitated on every sentence, trying to come up with something worth saying and then chickening out of it. By the time Telaki finally waved them off to the Cloudlanders’ HQ— “take the first right, and it’s the first door on your port side, I mean left”—they were just about ready to shove themself in a closet.

“What’s up?” she said as they went, their feet making barely a sound on the carpet. “We won our qual today, people are gonna want to hear from you.”

They clutched their face. “Yeah, I know, it’s just, all the praise from people we’re meant to be professional with, I don’t know how to deal!”

Jinai chortled. “Oh, Anqien, say you’ll share your greatness with the world someday.”

“I’m, uh, I’m gonna do my best.”

Telaki’s directions proved extraneous, on account of the Cloudlander control crew placard on the door. As they pushed that door open, Iki shot out of his chair, sweeping them a bow. “Welcome to our home for the day!” he declared, waving once around at the room. “We had a nice view of you destroying the competition.”

“What was our time?” asked Jinai

“An hour and fifty-six minutes, almost on the dot. Which is kind of wild.”

“It was a good wind.”

Indeed, the balcony looked out over the ocean, and the promenade roads that girt the coastline, presently utterly impassable for all those lined up to watch the races.

“Well, lucky you, having a view like this,” Jinai answered. “Those people down there aren’t seeing any more than the backs of people’s heads.” Four ray screens were mounted on the right wall of the room—three in a row that each bore ranking charts, graphs, weather visualisations, and the like, and one above them streaming live coverage of the event from Sports Three.

The three had their work terminals whirring away on trolleys, ready to be carted out and around on the briefest notice. Iki and Lujang tapped and scribbled away on their gesture pads, the latter’s station cluttered with Thread relay headsets and transmitters in hanging sleeves.

In one corner, Janda reclined in the sole armchair, reading a book.

While Jinai briefly pulled Iki and Lujang from their work for a chit-chat, Anqien wandered to the wall-height sliding doors and pushed one ajar, sticking their head outside. The roar of the crowded docks hit the ears of everyone in the room.

“Wait a second, that’s a lot of sailboats, is—”

The foghorn for the second race sounded out across the bay. Anqien scurried back into the room and all eyes flew to the broadcast screen overhead.

The hovercraft camera swept across the advancing field, focusing on one boat to another. There, among the masts, was the blue-green mainsail of the reigning champions, the AmaShiru Mirage, which shot into a comfortable second place out of the gate. Even at such a distance, the bearing of Xye and Zera was palpable—the former swift and flourishing, the latter efficiently forceful in her manner.

This race was more open in front, although that meant the rankings from third onwards were shuffling constantly. Even so, the Mirage held its chasing position steady for the next ten minutes, and the yacht in first place, wearing a horse on its red sail, held them off admirably.

That all changed at the first tack. Easy as one, two, three, the chasing vessel honed close as the leader hesitated on the tack, and just like that, the green hull slotted itself in front of the red.

“Whoa!” “No way!” “Boom, there it is,” Janda said, peeking at the screen over the edge of her novel. “What, did you think they wouldn’t?”

“I mean, yeah, but we were all hoping.” Iki looked around. “No?”

Janda shook her head. “They’re reliable, you’ve gotta give them that.”

Jinai knew better than to hope the crew of the Mirage would make some sort of freak mistake—though in truth, she had no desire for that to befall their biggest rivals. It wouldn’t feel fair.

Over the better part of the next hour, the Mirage continued to widen that gap between themselves and their closest chasers. They rounded the mark ten seconds ahead and pulled ahead to fifteen on their way south to Canlan.

Lujang whistled. “That’s a hell of a run right there. They might even make it in under your time.”

“You’re getting this on tape, right?” Anqien asked, one palm on the glass door.

“You know us,” answered Iki. “We’ll go through it with you when the dust settles around the press conferences and all that.”

Press. Jinai sighed. It was part of the grind—particularly here in Helfi, where sailing held the hearts of millions. “Yeah, cool.”

“Oh yes!” At her terminal, Lujang opened her document explorer and swiped an image open. It was a digital poster bearing the Akido Sailing Federation icon at the top and a neon pink headline on black: Big Bad Beachfront Afterparty. 9 November 621. “The bigwigs are throwing the usual bash tomorrow evening—this was in the team mailbox. This year it’s down in some Niro restaurant north of the market.”

Anqien perked up. “Oh, Nakano? I’m down to check it out.”

The Sail Fed afterparties—a mainstay of the Niro-Helfi Race’s suite of side events—had never been Jinai’s thing, always too crowded and wild. But Anqien, whom she had initially thought too mild to enjoy them, had turned out to be a bit of a party fiend. They already looked completely sold on the event and intent on ignoring glaring problems of last year’s. She cast them a wry smile. “Guess we’ll be going.”

“As your local weather expert,” said Iki, “There’s about a ninety percent chance that those two—” he pointed at the screen, where the hovering camera was following the Mirage with their sail on the home stretch— “will be there as well.”

Jinai smirked. “Good.”

A cheer went up just a second later, cleaving the conversation in two. It came through the screen speakers, but it was also loud enough to resound through the gap in the glass where Anqien had pushed open the door.

Iki shook his head. “Oof, missed out on your time by like a minute.”

“Like you always say, could be the wind conditions,” Jinai replied, stretching her arms up. “There’s no point in counting the raw seconds until we’re on the same course at the same time.”

“I know, I know,” Iki answered. “But you know the fans care about the numbers. And so does the news.”

The screen door thudded as Anqien shut it, then wove back between the terminals and gesture pads. “When’s the press conference?”

“Five, or after the last race ends, whichever’s later,” Janda said.

Jinai looked at Anqien, who returned the look a second later. They nodded simultaneously. There it was, like she had felt a thousand times—that tug of what felt like an invisible thread connecting them together.

“It was great catching up,” they piped up, already halfway to the door. “But I feel like touring the hotel for a bit.”

“Oooh, if you go, definitely check out the cafe,” Janda added. “The coffees are to die for.”

---

It was much clearer how tall the corridors were now that they had been inside the office. The ceiling vaulted like a temple’s, far too ornate next to the plain room they had just exited. Anqien and Jinai walked level with each other down the corridor, looking out for any signage that might point them to the café of interest.

But eventually, it was the scent of baking and the portended coffee that pointed their way there, out into what must have been the other end of the building from the lobby. The café porch overlooked a courtyard where hibiscus bushes were starting to put out buds, none of them quite in bloom just yet.

The current clientele numbered one—a man in a business suit tucked into a corner of the indoor section, behind a wooden screen wall. Anqien led the charge to the barista’s counter, where someone perked up to peer over the cherry red machine and drip filters.

“Oh! Hi!” their voice lilted. They swooped over behind the counter and beamed. They were about Jinai's height, with all their dark wavy hair in a tidy bun on their head. “Didn’t expect to see you here so soon after your run. Great race earlier, by the way—congrats!” They gestured diagonally across the café at the old, circular filographic screen mounted on the wall, crackly grey footage of the third qual race glowing through.

Anqien’s eyes had followed the gesture. “It went quite decently for a qual,” they replied.

“Yeah, I’d say so!” The barista beamed brightly. “Love your hair, by the way, I like that shade of blue-green.”

“Oh—thanks!” Their gaze whipped back to they counter and they brushed a lock of said hair behind their ear, laughing haltingly. Jinai found her attention reeled in by that interaction and was taken, momentarily, by an impulse to drag her teammate’s gaze away from them. She ignored it soundly. Noticing nothing, the barista nodded. “What can I get you?”

A selection of pies was on display under the counter. She ordered her usual coffee—white with skimmed milk—and Anqien went for a hazelnut syrup ochre coffee with cinnamon powder. The wait wasn’t five minutes, the drinks coming in turquoise teacups.

“You seem to be in a good mood,” Jinai said, pulling herself a chair at a two-seater table on the veranda. It didn’t fully register how she had come to that conclusion until Anqien put down their coffee opposite her. Hazelnut-and-cinnamon-powder was always a reward.

“It was a good race, don’t you think?” they replied, rolling their aching shoulders. “I’m almost looking forward to press later.”

“I’ve never heard of looking forward to press,” she answered. Lifting her cup to her lips, she sipped gently, feeling out its temperature—looking straight at her companion.

They propped their chin up on their elbow. Birds chittered from the budding hibiscus bushes. “Just like how you didn’t believe I could enjoy parties?”

Jinai snorted, lowering her coffee. “I didn’t buy it till last year’s Sail Fed party,” she answered. She forced down a grin as the image of Anqien singing over the ship’s bulwark, halfway to blackout drunk, floated into her thoughts. “Too bad it’s not on a cruise this time.”

“Yeah, but a restaurant. Imagine the fancy food.”

Chances were that the actual restaurant would be repurposed as a glorified function space that they’d fill with spinning lights (it wasn’t a Sail Fed party without them) and floor-thumping music. “I guess the catering has gotta be reasonable,” she replied.

Their little coffee date became prolonged by virtue of the place being beautiful and cosy enough to make leaving difficult. It wasn’t till their filographs simultaneously let out a ring that they finally pushed their cups away and rose, jogging back to the headquarters.

---

Episode 5: Camera Blitz

Happy Year of the Rabbit!

It was usually the Akido Sailing Federation that called these post-qualifier press conferences, and the sponsor companies would decide if they wanted their teams to attend. Year after year, Mister Sienyang—their roving manager and main conduit with Cloud Connectors—had been cloyingly insistent about signing them on to attend. This year, they had not bothered to protest it.

So here they sat in a waiting room of sea-blue curtains, lit by a baring white Thread glow. Because of the sheer number of sailors involved, the teams would take turns walking into the next room to face the press. All the attendees—representing six of the fifteen finalist teams—had been lined up in velvet chairs by their facilitator, in order of presentation.

The coffee a distant memory by now, Anqien was starting to wonder about dinner, but sensing Jinai’s high-strung silence they could not fully settle their nerves. For they had found themselves seated to the left of the Mirages, who had been lined up to go in first.

Anqien and Jinai’s encounters with Zera and Xye had long been coloured by the heat of rivalry. The latter member, especially, was something of a press darling—not that she was beloved, but that she seemed to have a penchant for sending tabloids flying off shelves.

The facilitator, Mx. Mo, had warned them to keep their silence, but the Mirages did not need to speak to make their presence felt. Xye wore her signature shades, perched in her bleached blonde hair, reclining with one leg crossed over the other and her chin raised. Beside her Zera looked professional in a white blouse and black suspenders, hands smartly clasped together.

Anqien hardly felt dressed in comparison, favouring, as they always did, a collared t-shirt and an unbuttoned jacket. They glanced over at the Mirages every now and then, trying to suss out their mood. Their impenetrable smugness always seemed to shroud them in a glaring aura, and paying them attention felt just a little wrong, as if they were feuding families in a drama, forbidden to lay eyes upon each other.

But in this strange, neutral light—outside of the action and the tumult of the race—Xye and Zera were briefly comprehensible: ordinary people who had thrown themselves into extraordinary lives. Ordinary people who had an incredible penchant for being noticed.

The Mirages weren’t the only ones Anqien recognised here: to their left sat the crew of the Catcher—Kainara something and Shimizu something. Anqien had properly begun to take notice of them now that they knew who they were: the Niro-in pair who seemed to prefer sleeveless tunics and cloth belts, never far from each other—holding hands with their heads bowed.

The door squeaked open to their right just then, and the bald, goateed head of Mx. Mo poked in. “Mirage, you’re on in five minutes,” they said. A small spike of nerves jolted Anqien out of their people-watching and they shuffled on their cushiony seat.

The room fell back into a hush for the rest of the wait, save for Zera and Xye whispering between themselves. Five minutes later, the same head came through the door. Exchanging grins, the Mirages rose with a stretch and followed them out.

From their seat, Anqien craned their neck to listen through the cracks in the door. There were the formalities and introductions, polite applause, and then began the grilling. But it was never a grilling for the Mirages.

The journalists’ probing, fashioned to squeeze sellable reactions out of them, included an assortment of poorly-scoped delights such as the second question thrown out by the first reporter: “It’s an aggressive field this year, what do you have to say about your competitors?”

Here, Xye seemed unable to resist stating into his tympanum, “Well, you wanna know what we think? None of them are credible threats. Except the Cloudlanders, and even then, eeeh, I think we can thrash them three for three, easy.”

Camera clicks, mutters. “Oh, that bastard,” Jinai growled. A little chatter rippled across the waiting room.

“Not a threat?” On their left, Kainara began to curse fluently in Niro-hei, arms folded, until Shimizu reached around their shoulders and squeezed them.

“You're confident of the win, then?” the reporter pressed on.

“Absolutely.”

“I think we have a better chance than anyone else,” Zera added.

A scattering of standard questions followed—how do you feel and what is your strategy for the finals—all of which the pair answered easily.

“So what do you have to say to your opponents?” the third reporter of the day asked.

Zera chuckled. She chuckled at the question. “Well, I’d like to say…watch out,” she replied, a grin in her voice. “It’s about time you stopped underestimating us.”

Then, of course, the inevitable kicker to end things off: “Will you be at the afterparty tomorrow?”

“Obviously,” Xye said. “We love Sail Fed parties.”

“That’s a solid maybe for me,” Zera added.

That was the note the interview concluded on—to another smattering of applause and camera clicks—and then, not long after the clapping had died down, Mx. Mo slipped into the side room again, calling Jinai and Anqien outside.

Almost as soon as they stepped out through the door, Anqien started to tremble with nerves. As they always did, they smothered it with a grin and turned to Jinai. Her face was a stone wall. That’s no good.

Following the facilitator, the pair took their seats at the table behind each tympanum. Now they got a good look at the press—almost in their faces, craning over the velvet barricade that held them at bay. Tympanum bells and camera lenses glinted and flashed between heads and clipboards, waiting to catch every word and gesture.

Off to the side, the Sail Fed deputy chair looked on with cordial mirth—an agreeable, stocky man with a brushstroke moustache and hair combed back over his head—and Mx. Mo watched expectantly from the barricade, handing their tympanum to the first journo. “Cloudlanders,” she said, all eyes flying to the two at the table. Cameras clicked, leaving bright rectangles in their vision. “You had a very strong showing today, as I think we can all agree.” Click, click. “How are you feeling about it?”

Jinai and Anqien glanced at each other. They nodded first, she nodded back, and turned to the eyes and bells. “Fantastic, actually,” she said. “We had some good fortune reading the wind and that got us out in a good position early.” More clicks and flashes, a bit of polite chatter.

“Have you been up to much since your qual ended?” A different voice this time.

When Jinai didn’t speak immediately, Anqien piped up— “We had a quick gander around the Sparkling Reef.” Their head spun—they felt like they were treading water in a riptide—but they knew they had to do this. “It’s a beautiful place, we’re really fond of the coffee, and the garden. We don’t get to visit all too often, so—” The flash of another camera in their eyes pulled them back to the present—this was a press conference, not a chit-chat—and they ended limply, “so, yeah.”

“Ah! Glad to hear you’ve enjoyed the amenities here. Did you watch any of the other races?”

Anqien could feel, despite their best efforts, that their composure had started to unravel. They shot a glance at Jinai, who cast a sidelong glance back, then said, “Yes, we saw the second in-port race. They were quite dominant as always, the Mirage.”

“Indeed, indeed. They tell us, as you may have heard, that they could thrash you easily. What do you have to say about that? Are you concerned about a repeat of last year’s finals?”

As the question came, Anqien saw the gears grind to a halt in Jinai’s eyes. Her gaze darted from their face to the journos, to the flashing, clicking lights—but no words.

Answer—or at least look like you’re about to answer, gods! they screamed internally. “I mean, with—” they forced their gaze back towards the journalists— “with our opponents being as strong as they are this year, you know, especially the Mirages? We’re definitely not slacking off.” Under the table, they tapped Jinai’s hand. Just make sense. String some words together. “We’re gonna do our best not to let any details slip by us—their strengths, their weaknesses…” Their pitch lifted on that last syllable and they felt their throat clam up.

But by now, then Jinai’s hand had slipped over theirs, and was gripping it tight. In stern and clipped syllables she said, “And we’ll run the course a hundred times. Till we know it like the lines on our hands. We'll be in top form, and you can count on that.”

The crowd answered with nods, mutters, and some camera flashes. Then that reporter was shooed away, and the next to step up—to their gratitude—took a more jovial tone, asking about the coming afterparty, their training routines and suchlike: easy questions that, for a time, took their minds off what had felt like seconds from a trainwreck.

All the while, Anqien felt Jinai’s hand tightening on their own.

“And before we go, how are you feeling going into the finals?” The question came after the one-minute signal.

Jinai gave Anqien a listless nod that signalled, you field this one. They resolutely met the journalist’s eye. “Good, as good as we ever have,” they said, lungs threatening to run out of breath. “With Jinai, I feel like nothing’s impossible.”

By the time the facilitator thanked them and guided them to the exit on the far side, Jinai was still gripping Anqien’s hand like a vice. The cameras continued to click, click, click as they brisk-walked to the exit, taking shelter from the burning flashes.

---

“Alright. We did it. We made sense. That’s good.”

The words tumbled out of Anqien’s mouth as they burst out into the concrete back corridor, but Jinai’s grip had yet to loosen from their hand. On the wall, a sheet of paper with hand-drawn arrows pointed them right.

The lights seemed too bright, every flicker exaggerated by their footsteps. Anqien kept their eyes on Jinai, but she was never looking their way. As their steps quickened down the hallway, it seemed she stumbled increasingly often, her breathing growing agonised in the dead air.

“Jinai,” they said, “is everything alright?”

Her feet stopped dead. They were alone, in the middle of a windowless, carpeted hall—no fore and aft, only sheets of paper pointing them to the next turning.

“I…” Jinai looked pointedly away from them. “I panicked, I’m sorry. I feel like shit. I don’t know why I let it happen.”

“I mean, I was freaking out too,” they said. “You didn’t let it happen, they were pushing for a scandal. I know these pressers aren’t really our thing.” They swallowed back a harder thought. They were always your thing. I couldn’t pick up the slack.

She laughed bitterly. “It was never this hard for me, so why—” She buried her face I her hands. “I can’t let it eat up my whole life, it’s—”

“Jinai, you’re dealing with so much...it's normal that those questions are hitting hard.”

“Yeah, but shit used to happen all the time and I’d take it just fine!” she snapped, blue-grey eyes touched by fire. “I’m meant to be a world class sportsperson. I can’t be like this!”

She jolted back as her last shout echoed down the hallway. Then silence.

Jinai looked away again, gripping her elbows. “I’m sorry.”

Anqien looked back at her, unwavering but speechless, until she haltingly met their eye again. They lifted their arm towards her. She seemed to read their intent, taking a half-step towards them.

They pulled her into a quiet one-arm embrace. She didn’t say any more, but released her vice-grip on their fingers and wrapped both arms around them. An unexpected thrill shot through their heart at the uncertain pressure of her fingers.

“You are a world class sportsperson,” they said. “You’re brilliant. And I would have lost it without you.”

Jinai sank into their embrace and stayed there for a minute, before gently extracting herself so they could resume their walk. “And you’re getting better at the public speaking thing,” she answered. “Saved my ass.”

“I’m learning from the best,” Anqien answered, bumping her arm with their elbow. They turned at the next hastily scrawled directional sign, down the corridor to their left, and at last they burst through an exit door, into the air-conditioned lobby.

While they picked up their bags at the counter, the afternoon sky cooled from red to dim purple through the glass screen wall that looked out onto the promenade. Hurrying out into the evening, they found that a gently biting breeze had picked up.

“I might head off now,” Jinai said with a nod at Anqien.

“Yeah, I should too, or I’ll miss the last train,” they answered with a simple grin. “See you tomorrow at the party, then?”

She nodded. “Nakano Bistro at six.”

“Mhm, and if you need a chat for any reason…” They fished their filograph from their pocket and turned it so its screen faced Jinai. “Send me a filo.”

---

Episode 6: Blue Dreamers

Content warning: This chapter depicts alcohol consumption and people acting under the influence of alcohol.

Jinai’s neighbours weren’t immersed in the world of sailing, but the sport was big enough in Wulien that even they were aware that they were living in the same block as some sort of niche celebrity.

Or at least, that was how it felt on some days. As she pedalled her bicycle out from under the stairs and into the morning, a crocheted shopping bag slung over a shoulder, she passed Zilu from the unit downstairs watering her garlic and rosemary trough. At the sound of the bicycle clattering past she lifted her head with a holler of, “Saw you in the news—you’re doing a smashing job out there!”

“Thank you, Madam Zilu!” she shouted back, pedalling faster. Getting congratulated on the way to groceries, totally normal people things! She flew down the streets with the wind in her hair—it wasn’t the same as sailing, but it brought a similar joy.

She swerved off the side street where the corner store was nestled. As she zipped past, she noticed Sumare—the Niro-in youth who had only just left their parents’ fold—hastily handing change to a customer. They glanced up as she screeched to a halt, hailing her with a huge grin.

“Sumare!” Jinai called back, using some of her braking momentum to leap off the seat, then kicking the stand into place behind her.

It was over small talk with Sumare—as small as the talk could be when shouted across the shelves while picking out ingredients—that Jinai learned that the interviews had gone into the papers this morning. Wulien Morning Herald, Wulien Sun, Helfi Daily, all of them had either placed reporters in the room or bought the reports from other outlets.

She looked over her shoulder at the racks of papers by the entrance, among the bouquets, sprigs of bluebells and roses draped over them. She shuddered.

“It sounds like you’re all fired up and ready for those finals,” the cashier said.

Jinai fished around in the crate of carrots. “They must have made me sound surer than I actually am,” she answered. “But two weeks isn’t a whole lot, considering the length of the race. The finals are on a whole different scale from the quals, and there’s no way to practice the entire course.”

“Ooh, how long’s the thing again?” Sumare had started sorting the keyrings that hung from a grid frame on the counter. The softglass animals and metal chains jangled.

Jinai had gathered some carrots and potatoes in her shopping bag. Now to pick out a pack of raw chicken from the cooler shelves. “Nine hundred and seventy miles in ideal conditions,” she replied. “The first two legs are three hundred and eighty, the third is half that.”

“What!” they slapped a hand on the countertop. “That’s wild…and you do that in what, five days? I don’t think I even bike that far in a month!”

“Three days, ideally,” she answered. “You’d be surprised at how fast the wind carries you out at sea. And when we get to that last leg, with Threads…” She sighed as, for moments, all she saw was the rush of clouds over the sail, the hydrofoil skimming the blue water below. Then she reached the counter and laid her groceries down. “Just these, please.”

Sumare sifted through the items in the bag and punched figures into their calculator. “Thirty-two kwai,” they replied, and Jinai palmed out the exact change, slapping it onto the counter. “Thanks, and best of luck to you!”

“You too,” she replied. She had a feeling she would need that luck sooner rather than later.

---

Now Jinai sat in the velvet backseat of a taxi carriage, the diesel engine chugging tirelessly while wheels clattered underfoot. The first thing she’d done after boarding had been to wind the windows down so the breeze swirled in. Outside in the night, streetlights and dim storefronts flashed by, occasionally marred by a pedestrian’s silhouette or a strain of nightlife music.

Just before she had left, her filograph had lit up with Anqien’s scrawl, telling her they’d wait for her at the doors. With those words she had felt her heart leap into her throat at the thought of being seen in this dress.

She had dived into the depths of her bedroom closet in search of a rare outfit she still liked—one still unstained by the memory of her disastrous relationship. Snatching the silk corner of a hem, she had dragged a dress from deep inside, like a sheaf out of a book, and held it in front of herself in the mirror: royal purple satin, with gems studding the bodice and sleeves, and a hem falling halfway to her ankles, split to the knee. Now she was halfway to the bistro, running nervous fingers over the fabric.

The last time she’d worn this had been six years ago. Before Josa, before the Niro-Helfi Race, before she’d fully known that this would someday come to be her life. How the days fleeted by.

In a blink, the streets had gone from dim to glowing, and it was almost impossible to miss that they were approaching the venue: the number of taxi carriages decreased and the fancy new rigs increased in number—gleaming, streamlined chrome hoods and invisible exhaust chimneys waiting their turn on every side street, like ants congregating around honey. Besides the sailors and officials, the exorbitant entry prices kept the less-than-wealthy outside the door.

On the edge of Muli Fish Market, facing the shopping district, there stood a tapering building with a jutting steeple that had, in a previous life, been a temple to Ihir. It had since been converted—against the vehement wishes of the devout minority—into an upscale bistro, known across Wulien for serving the best fish on the island.

Jinai gazed up at the Nakano Bistro’s glitzy eaves as they pulled into its driveway: it had been made over, yet again, with floating Thread lights, stained glass crocuses and lilies glowing from within.

As the sound of ocean waves and drunken laughter tided in through the windows, she thought she saw the familiar shape of her teammate by its barricaded double doors, out of the reach of the queue. She hastily thanked her driver and placed the fare in his hand, eyes already trained on the figure and trying to make out more details. She flung the door open and flew out, shutting it with a click behind her.

Now the full glory of the night was around her, and it lit the gems in her dress, so she spun briefly—so rarely did she get to be even a little daft and unseen—then lifted the skirt and sprinted up the steps.

It was almost certainly Anqien by the door, she noted as they began towards her in a brisk walk. Their coat—a modern take on a traditional Li’un outer robe that she had seen them wear once or twice before—billowed behind them in lavender. They collided into a hug, two-thirds of the way up the stairs.

“Love the dress!” they exclaimed, stepping back. “I’ve never seen it before, is it new?”

She chortled. “No, but I don’t think I’ve worn it since we met, so fair guess,” she replied, touching the small of their back. From here they could see the white patterning on their coat, forming flowers and spirals like wind currents. “I always loved this coat, it looks great on you.”

“Oh, hah, thank you!” they said with a grin and a tweak of their sleeve, drawing in a deep breath—during which the boom of the music became suddenly noticeable, rumbling through her feet. Their smile looked more nervous than before. “Let’s, head inside?”

With a nod to each other, they started towards the door. They never had to produce invitations, and it was the same this time—the bouncers took one look at them and nodded, one waving them into the inner sanctum while the other tapped the headsets in their ear.

It was just about as all-over-the-place as a Sail Fed party should be. Amid the Ihirin sloping rafters and the Niro-style decorations—painted screen walls, carved wood and swinging lanterns that glowed red and gold—the music shook the chairs and the carpets, as did the thumping feet of partygoers. At every standing bar table, they saw people playing games, unstopping bottles of foaming beer at unsuspecting faces, drinking out of unlikely receptacles.

Seconds after they stepped through the door, a bright white light flared from the altar and hit them in the eye, so Jinai flinched. The music was clipped briefly by the voice of the master of ceremonies— “Welcome, welcome! Look who it is, the Cloudlanders!” A roar and a round of applause answered from the crowd and many downed a swig. “Come out to the front, we’ve been waiting for you, Wulien’s favourite local duo!”

Anqien glanced at Jinai. “We’re their favourite local duo?” they asked, voice approaching a yell.

“Who’s even MCing, I need to have a word,” she answered at equal volume, then laughed as she caught the contagious spirit of the space—and they strode out into the scintillating purple party lights and spraying beer foam, waving like royals.

They passed the banquet table of catered food—rice paper wraps and raw fish, of which Jinai and Anqien snatched a few pieces in paper plates before arriving at the altar. Booming music, unabashed excess, and flowing beer: this was a Sail Fed party alright.

The master of ceremonies, it turned out, was Folien I-San—legendary singer with a legendary reputation for tomfoolery—gesticulating and announcing on the mini-stage with an overcoat of golden embroidery complemented by gem-studded chains swaying, a peacock-tail headpiece in his long, free-flowing hair.

Here at the altar with him were just about all the sailors from the press conference and then some, though none right now were recognisable as the sports stars they were, dancing with abandon—buoyed on the beat of whatever was playing, as the spotlights swept the lamplit room.

Shimizu was cradled in Kainara’s lap, the two conversing eagerly with someone from the North Star team. Over by the leftmost wall, Xye danced borderline indecently with a woman who may have been among the unsuccessful competitors, though you could barely tell from the wild joy in her eyes. Xye’s ruffled blouse, unbuttoned midway down her chest, revealed a diamond pendant on her neck, and her blond hair was twirled into a bun around a glittering hairstick. Intermittently, she took a swig of the wine bottle in her hand.

As the two passed, their looks seemed to draw her attention, and she chose that moment to beckon her dancing partner with a finger, and pull her in to kiss her on the mouth. It was unclear where Zera was—if she was here at all.

It wasn’t hard to be reeled into the atmosphere within Nakano’s walls. Both partook freely of the beer taps and the endless catered canapes that were trolleyed out every fifteen minutes. They drank out of waxed paper cups with gold foil and chowed down on Nakano’s ludicrously delectable offerings until Jinai couldn’t see quite straight and had lost Anqien in the crowd.

“Hey, hey, Miss Vailu!” It was perhaps an hour into the party and many drinks in, that Jinai heard Xye call out through the surging crowd, strutting to the beat of whatever dance hit was playing to where her rival stood. She clapped a hand on Jinai’s shoulder. “How do you do?”

“Oh, what a surprise!” she drawled back. “Am I finally worth talking to?

“What do you mean? You’re always worth talking to. I mean, you’re the most impressive of our opponents, if not one of the most impressive ever.”

She laughed, a little too euphoric on the drinks to muster up the indignation she thought she should feel. “What d’you want?”

“I heard you were retiring,” she answered, walking a circle around her. “End of an era, huh?”

“Yeah, and?”

“I know we’re meant to hate each other’s guts and all, but…” She flicked a hand at the air. “Whatever, you’re incredibly cool, for real. Don’t tell Zera I said that.”

Jinai grinned toothily back. “Is she the one who decided that the two of you should treat us like worm fodder?”

“Ptch, no, that’s all me,” she answered, laughing into her fist. “But still, it’s kinda all for show, you know? It’s what the fans like to see, rivals who look like they’d really go for each other’s throats. But, I mean, what in the world—it’s not fair. We could’ve been friends in a different life. Or ex-lovers with deep dark history.”

Her words jolted Jinai briefly, but play along, let’s see where this goes. “Sorry, I’m full up on ex-lovers,” she answered.

Xye raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Is this a story we don’t know?”

“As much as it may surprise you, you can just choose not to put your entire life on display,” she said, and lifted her cup to down the rest of her plum wine cocktail.

“Alright, not ex-lovers—how about future lovers?” she pressed on, smirking.

In her head, Jinai studied her mannerisms, struggling for even a modicum of insight as to what her intent was here. But she wasn’t acting any different—just same old drama magnet Xye.

“No offence” she replied, “you’re hot, but not my thing.” Bravado blazed in her chest—or perhaps it was just the flush of alcohol.

“Huh, I see,” answered Xye, and if she was disappointed, her smile did not show it. “That’s wild, the only people who reject me outright are the ones who already have someone else.” She paused for a beat. “And Zera. She’s amazing but I’ve never seen her be interested in anyone? So. Are you taken?”

“No way,” she laughed, swatting ineffectually at their face, “I’m just done with the whole romance thing.”

“Aw,” Xye shook her head, chuckling. “You’re gonna disappoint Anqien if you tell them that.”

“Alright, now you’re just being annoying on purpose,” she answered, shoving her by the shoulder.

In the background, one song segued into the next, and she started tapping her heel to the new beat. “I’m just saying what I see—so if you know better, then great! Guess you’ll just have to ask them, huh? Oh dear, here they come right now. Tiiiming!”

As Xye’s last singsong note trailed off, Jinai felt a hand clamp on her shoulders. “Jinai! Xye!” She whipped her head around. Anqien smiled back, looking like they might be on more drinks than she, but only by a little—swaying and flushed and smiling more widely than they usually did. “Saw you two having a chat, thought I’d come join in.”

“Oh, nah, she was just being a pest as usual,” she said, grinning. “It’s about time we ended that. Silly.”

“That’s how you thank me for my wisdom? Well, then, cheers,” she answered with a two finger salute, and then whirled away and back into the languid chaos on the altar.

Deep in Jinai’s heart, Xye’s last words had sunk their burrs in. She buried the thought for now, though she hadn’t quite shaken it off. Meeting Anqien’s eye again, she said, “How are you going?”

They laughed. “Good!” they said. “The lights are so pretty in here. I just lay down on the steps with the Niro sailors and stared up at them. Also, three people have tried flirting and one just skipped the flirting and went straight for the kiss.”

She shook her head. This seemed to happen at every party. “Did any of them catch your fancy?”

They shook their head. “Wasn’t really feeling it, even after all the drinks,” they said.

Jinai let out a breath she hadn’t realised she had been holding. A synth hit cut through the silence. Her head lifted. “No way, this is my favourite song!”

As if working magic, the first notes of the song roused a torrent of motion across the room as all the stragglers who had begun to hunker down for the evening raced to the floor, holding hands or raising them.

This wasn’t one of the throbbing, hypnotic numbers that had come before. The hit was a driving ballad whose bleeding-heart sentimentality had propelled its wildfire spread across the country. Anqien launched into the first bars of the lyrics and twirled, their ponytail swishing after.

Jinai couldn’t resist the song's charm and her companion’s joy for long. The whole room was bouncing and surging like the surf on a stormy night, and carried by the current, she and Anqien took each other’s hands and spiralled and belted the words by heart. The lights shifted to blue and teal, setting the crowd aglitter like a pearl-speckled seabed—the ultra-wealthy who had paid their way into this hall, the people from the streets who had snuck in through the fire escape, the sailors they would battle tooth and nail very soon—all alike in blue.

Just for blinding seconds, she felt like nothing mattered beyond this very moment. This was how she wanted to remember tonight, if she could remember it always. None of them were the people they had been before; all were only dancers and dreamers in this pulsating cerulean light.

---

Episode 7: Secret Dawn

“Hey, quick request,” Anqien said, jumbling the syllables as the pair stumbled out the open double doors with their arms around each other’s shoulders. “I went too hard, last train’s probably gone by now.”

“So you wanna crash at mine?” Jinai replied. They nodded vigorously. “Sure, as long as you check out by noon tomorrow.” She laughed and ruffled their hair, some of their locks hanging loose from the ribbon they had tied it in. They wandered out onto the driveway, the earlier crush of cars now thinned out. As their feet met the tar, her head spun lightly and her heart throbbed like the dance floor.

Taxis would be all out and about on an evening like this, and they had no trouble hailing one from the side streets. This one was rickety and old but the driver was stoic and did not bother them for more than Jinai’s address.

She leaned against Anqien on their drive home, having a mumbled, delirious conversation that she could no longer remember by the time they were set down at the foot of her apartment steps. “Watch your step,” she said, as Anqien tripped on the half-step to the pavement, where weeds had sprung up.

“Ow! Too late.”

Jinai had a two-seater couch opposite her bed that her teammate had crashed in enough times, despite being too tall to lie in it without their feet hanging off the armrest. Unlocking the door, she let them inside first, and then shut it behind her.

At her bed, she yanked the coverlet from below her quilt and tossed it at their face. Anqien stumbled backwards as they caught it and collapsed onto the couch. “You sure you won’t need this?” they asked.

“Yeah—it’s been a warm few nights. About time I got rid of it.” She ducked into her bathroom with a change of clothes on her arm and shut the door behind her.

“Spring sure hits fast, huh?” they answered through the locked door. “Soon we’ll be out there, racing the big course again. Feels like a month ago we were just doing that.”

“I heard they were changing the course a little—they moved the third port to Antao.”

“Oh, huh, Antao? I always wanted to visit.”

Stripping down, Jinai turned on the squeaky faucet and splashed her face. She wiped it on her towel, hanging on the rack, and began to pull her pyjamas on. “Did you want to change?”

“Not really, could I have water?”

Jinai poked her head out of the bathroom to find that Anqien had discarded their coat and boots on the floor and was lying on the too-small couch in their buttoned blouse and black pants. She let herself stare at her teammate for a few seconds too long, before shaking herself out of it.

The kitchenette was just outside the bathroom door so she picked a mug off the rack and filled it from the kettle on the stove, cooled after a few hours’ sitting. “Are you comfy?” she asked, turning yet again to find they had shuffled into a vaguely seated position.

“I feel like I’m gonna be sick,” they murmured. When she offered the mug, they fumbled it out of her hand—she caught it before any spilled, and wrapped their fingers around it.

“Yeah, you went pretty hard on the drinks.”

As they sipped the water, she sat down by their bent knees, leaning just enough to feel her back press against their legs. Dim moonlight was streaming in through the window by the bathroom door, and she could make out their features, pensive and disquieted.

“Go throw up in the toilet, alright? I don’t have a bucket.”

“Yeah…yeah.” Their eyes closed, then opened again, lazily, with their gaze still focused on her. “I’m so glad I get to hang out with you. You’re so cool.”

Jinai chuckled. “Is it weird that that’s not the first time I’ve heard that this evening? Xye said I was cool? I don’t feel cool. But coming from her, of all people.”

“I mean, it’s true. You’re a badass. But you’re also, so nice, and so pretty…” They yawned and handed the half-finished mug of water back to her, lowering themself back into a slumbering position.

The talk had brought that conversation back to the front of Jinai’s thoughts. She frowned as she went to her bed. Was that how it looked? Did others see them and think… She was just teasing me, damn it.

Jinai drifted to sleep in a light, floating haze, equal parts delirium and confusion.

---

Anqien woke from a dream of glowing flowers to find themself staring up at a plain yellow ceiling with an aching neck.

The first thing they noticed was that their feet were hanging off the edge of this strange, minuscule bed. The second thing they noticed was that they were not, in fact, in a bed, but on a couch.

Then they noticed, in the dim, dawning light, that Jinai was still asleep in her double bed, sprawled out and snoring softly with her blanket over her legs.

This was her apartment, and all of it screamed her—the metal shelf hammered into the wall with framed photographs of her faraway parents, the kitchenette with two mugs and two bowls—she ate everything out of bowls—and the woman herself, dozing with a thin ray of light across her legs. She wore a tiny pair of shorts, a faded blue t-shirt and not much else. Her hair was in a net. Her skin seemed gently aglow in the rays.

Anqien dragged their gaze away as a blush surged up their neck. They ducked to fish up their jacket from the floor. No looking when she’s asleep, that’s rude. They shoved their feet into their boots.

As they stood up, the world spun around them as if they were inside a swirled wineglass, but suddenly they felt ashamed standing here, and wanted nothing more than to leave. They strode resolutely towards the front door, and only made it about two-thirds of the way there.

“Anqien?” came a groan from the bed. “Hey, don’t go yet…” Their head whipped around. Jinai had flopped over onto her side at the edge of the bed, rubbing her eyes. She boosted herself upright with her hands and wandered up to them with arms outstretched for a hug.

Their breath caught. “Thanks,” they answered, returning it gingerly with one hand, afraid to commit to it. “I’ll see you at the marina on…Monday?”

Jinai pulled back. “Yeah, that’s happening,” she replied. “Did Telaki say we’d be doing a full-day nav exercise?”

“That’s what the message said, yeah.”

“Alright, gotcha. Have a safe trip back.”

“Thanks—bye!”

They walked out a little too fast, propelled by these nerves that had come from nowhere. Regret brought their feet to a halt halfway down the stairs—but then they shook their head and continued downward.

---

The streets of Joutien were muted by the secretive light of dawn. The front door of the Liu family home was locked tight from within when Anqien arrived, but they could hear the first sounds of the day’s business faintly echoing from the other side. Sighing, they began down the street in the grey morning chill, on the detour to the other entrance.

The surly house stood two stories tall, gazing on two small streets: the front door with its overgrown porch looked out on the main avenue, and the back—converted into a shopfront, laden with lights and banners—faced a side-alley where the customers entered.

It was on this side that Anqien now approached, dodging gutters and loose slabs, and realising with each step that they would have to contend with their parents' questions, about the fact that they were ten hours later than they’d said they would be.

“…yeah, the world’s gone mad! Next they’re going to smash all our shrines, just you watch!” Each word was underscored by a snip of scissors. A familiar mutter answered.

Anqien stepped under the banners on the backyard gazebo, through the door propped open with a stone rabbit, and into the sunroom that the family had converted into a stylist’s studio. They drew their arms close as they hurried past their mother, poised on a swivel stool with scissors in hand, and her customer whom they now saw was old Madam Chia, here for her monthly trim.

Both women went silent, watching them in the mirror. “Oi, where in the world were you?” their mother muttered, voice cleaving the silence.

They didn’t turn. “I just missed the last train. I was at Jinai’s for the night.”

“Ihir’s sake, An-An! I told you to stop going to those crazy parties. You know my heart can’t take this sort of stress.”

Their throat clenched. Retorts like “I’m twenty-five” and “I know how to look after myself” had long passed their usefulness, so they responded the only way they still knew how to—by saying nothing and walking on, hunching their shoulders against the urge to snap back.

As they left, they caught a mutter of, “An-An used to be so sweet, I don’t know what happened.”

Madam Chia chuckled. “Kids grow up, you know.”

Anqien willed their feet out of the room and out of earshot, away from her words and away from whatever might follow. Step by dragging step, they climbed the stairs, while the two women’s voices faded into echoes behind them.

Their room was to the right of the stairs, but they barely saw the doorway as they passed through. They flung their bag into the pile beside their desk and tumbled onto their bed like a ragdoll, head still spinning from last night’s decisions. It still didn't make sense, how effortlessly their mother could cut them down.

---

Episode 8: Seagull Gale

The Monday dawn sky was half-cast, thin layers of clouds shrouding vast swathes of the sky. In the sea breeze chill, Jinai and Anqien paced around on the boardwalks in the shelter of the marina offices. Here, half of the facilities were tourist agents and commercial tour boats, and the tang of brine accompanied the endless white noise of waves on piers.

Both sailors wore t-shirts and shorts over their wetsuits, just to be presentable as pedestrians—it wasn’t till they were on the jetties that those came off. They also carried backpacks of supplies—cereal bars, soup in flasks, and a gallon of water between them.

Telaki had long forewarned them that today, they would be thrown back in the deep end with an offshore navigation exercise. Which was reasonable enough: the Niro-Helfi Race wasn’t a short course like the quals had been. It crossed between countries, from one archipelago to another, at one point stretching across ten hours of open sea. Those would be hours where they were utterly out of the sight of land, and then all they had were their instruments, an active line with the team, and their raw intuition for the whims of the sea.

“Get a load of these cruise fares,” Jinai muttered, peering down at a patchwork of ads in the window of a cruise office. “Who pays two hundred shell for this? There isn’t even a stopover!”

Anqien leaned over her right shoulder to inspect the offending poster. “We could make the same trip for free, basically.”

A shout of “my little stars!” echoed from the parking. They abandoned that inane pursuit to find Telaki racing towards them with Meman, Iki and Lujang in tow. Good old Meman, their favourite tugboat pilot of the coast guard, strode up after Telaki with his arms folded, while she waved the two sailors towards him.

“Telaki tells me you’ll sail out to Caiyun and back,” he said as they arrived, moustache bristling.

“Caiyun? That’s news to us,” Anqien said. Iki shrugged.

“That’s the point,” Telaki answered, then turned to Meman. “We’re giving them till, maybe, eight in the evening—” she paused to count on her fingers— “Yeah, thirteen hours. If they aren’t back by then, you’ll go give ‘em a lift. Unless something else comes up, like a storm or something, then you’ll be tugging them back sooner.” She slapped his shoulder. “Nice being paid to stand around, huh?”

“That’s my whole job, isn’t it?” he chuckled. “Caught me at a good time. If these races came a single week later, we’d be right on top of herring season. Then you’d be out of luck with the coast guard.” He turned to the two. “All set?”

They glanced at each other—Jinai looked just about as relaxed as she ever did. Anqien nodded eagerly at Meman.

Telaki was by now leading the entire troupe towards where they had parked the yacht in the marina, eyes peeled for the maroon-painted hull as they strolled up the jetty. A continuous clatter of wheels accompanied them as Lujang lugged her receiver and transmitter trolley along, her sleeve of headsets swinging from the handle. Behind her followed Iki.

They halted in their steps when Telaki called warm-ups, Lujang bringing her entire setup to a stop beside the yacht. During the next lull in their routine, Lujang plucked two headsets out of their sleeves and fitted them over their ears. Pressing her own transmitter to her mouth she said, “Relaying, do you hear me?” The slightly delayed echo in their headsets was louder than her actual voice.

“Loud and clear,” Jinai answered.

“Yes, perfectly clear,” Anqien said.

“Fantastic! Make sure you’re keeping up the back-and-forth, alright?” she said. “Can’t trust the air conditions to stay clean. Never been a problem before, but you never know. If you stop replying, we’re assuming the line’s cut, and we’ll come get you.”

Lujang didn’t normally worry them about issues with the network; it had never gone dead for more than five minutes. But there had been freak storms lately, more than was the norm in spring, and those did a lot more than briefly disturb communications. “What happens if the line dies on the race day?”

“Then you keep going, because we reckon that’s what the other teams will do too. But let’s not worry right now, we get to take our time.”

---

Once they had passed the safety checks, they unmoored and pushed out onto the waters. The wind rose; the sky swirled. Anqien and Jinai looked over the bay maps for a minute, waxed paper gleaming. Canlan Island ran parallel to the Wulien shore, a large natural barrier sheltering the bay. They were more than halfway to the north end of the island, on the facing shore. Their destination, Caiyun, sat on the west coast of Yenyun Island, about five hours east from here in ideal conditions.

“Current’s moving north through the strait at about three knots,” Iki said in their headsets. “And we have a strong gust of about seven knots coming from northwest. But we’re expecting it to shift to north-northeast by nine o’clock.”

“Hm.” Jinai seemed to ponder the situation. “So we’ll head northeast on a close haul to the tip of Canlan Island, and then tack east.”

“That’s about what I pictured as well,” Anqien answered as they began hoisting the mainsail, wind smoothing and swelling the fabric as it hit the top. “As fun as running downwind would be, I think sailing against the water would defeat the point.”

“If you can round the north end of Canlan Island before the wind turns, that would be perfection,” Telaki replied. “Otherwise you may find yourselves beating your way out.”

Another pause on Jinai’s part; Anqien had a feeling they knew what she was about to suggest. “How about we start dead north, wind on our port side—”

“Then tacked east-northeast once the wind changes?”

She nodded. “Anqien’s got it too. I’d rather we weren’t fighting that northeasterly.”

“Sounds reasonable to me,” Telaki replied. “Always sail towards the mark! I’m expecting you back in ten hours. And we’ll call twelve acceptable.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jinai smiled. While she rummaged in their bags and pulled out four three-litre flasks, seagulls alighted on their bow in a white flutter, cawing.

Anqien, who had taken their place by the helm, felt their heart lift as they pulled past the last row of boats in the marina, and crossed the line of buoys that marked safe water. Canlan Island rose like a sleeping figure in the distance, blue against the paler blue of the sky. Glancing at the compass, they called, “Port tack!”

Jinai, organising their supplies till now, flew to the mainsheet. “Ready to tack!” she answered. She set the sail into a broad reach, and Anqien laughed, taking the rudder to starboard.

They were underway, coursing out onto the junction of open water where the gyre current from the south met the water rushing out of the bay in a turbulence. The water here was littered with the jagged rocks of sunken roofs, in what was known as the Sunken City, once known in antiquity as Gumeiyen. At their pace, it was not hard steering amongst them. They pressed forth on the power of the northwesterly wind, until the waters began to turn.

As the turbulence gave way to a steady northward stream—discernible by how the water changed colour, from pale and foamy to a steady darkness like strong wine—Anqien called a starboard tack, and on their countdown, they turned towards the wind, reeling the sail in close without so much as a moment’s delay. They pulled into a straight north course, joining the current of the grand strait with Anqien holding the helm steady against the wind’s bias. The chopping of waves was joined by the whistle and cry of seagulls.

“Whoa, that was flawless,” Anqien said. “Good work, team.”

“I know!” Jinai answered, grinning like she had found a diamond. “Finally, a team that just works. Wild, huh.”

“Mostly because of you,” Anqien said, half thinking.

Glancing up, she trimmed the sail to match the wind, and the vessel picked up its pace. “Hah, if teams worked because of me,” she replied, “then the whole fiasco with Oojima wouldn’t have happened.”

“He was bit of a dickhead.”

“That’s my point. You’re the best teammate I’ve ever had, that’s why we’ve been at it for three years. I’m honestly sad we won’t be racing together again after this.”

Anqien wasn’t sure which part of it to respond to—the sorrow of remembering this was the tail end of their career together? Or the more present flush of joy from the compliment? “Just doing my best for the coolest teammate in the world,” they replied.

“Your best is amazing, dear.”

“Hey, enough sappiness, you two,” Telaki cut in through the receivers. “You’re meant to be running this like a proper race leg.”

“Not even a minute of chitchat, huh?” Jinai answered, while Anqien took the moment to steady their breathing and refocus their thoughts.

A glance at the dashboard showed they were facing four degrees from north, travelling at eight knots and rising. The seagulls had long fluttered away, so it was just them, racing northward into the grey-tempered blue.

---

The wind began to shift when they had made it all but two kilometres to the tip of Canlan Island. It did not shift to a northeasterly immediately, first rotating so it came straight down from the north. When that header hit, they tacked as they had planned, and were carried swiftly towards the white cliffs at the tapering point of the island.

The timing was serendipitous: the wind came to rest pointing northeast right as they pulled northward past the island, following the steep arc of the shore. “And we’re on the open sea,” Jinai announced.

“Masterfully done!” came Telaki’s voice as they made a last tack into their eastward charge. The two sailors grinned, leaning towards each other—Anqien down from the helm and Jinai stretching up from the mainsheet—to bump fists.

Now the far side of Canlan Island revealed itself: miles of cliffs that gazed over churning waters, their grooves and terraces heavy with nesting gulls. Some hundred yards out from the shores, a row of four sea stacks—massive granite columns as tall as the cliffs—formed what one could imagine to be the colonnade of a giant’s hallway. Ahead, the horizon was crisp and uninterrupted, as if drawn with a stencil. Above, the clouds migrated southward, layers condensing and thinning at the whim of the wind.

Out here in the sea, the conditions changed: fewer clear geographic signposts indicated how currents might flow, nothing like the strait which formed a bottleneck. If there were such channels, they were far less apparent from the surface.

But the greatest challenge was always knowing where they were. As advanced and precise as their speedometers and compasses were, some part of the calculation of motion and direction—due to the drift of the currents and the minuscule wobble of their bearing—was always left to chance.

Leaving the sails for several precious second, Jinai unfolded their map and pored over the markings they had at their disposal, glancing now and then at the passing island cliffs and stone stacks as reference points.

“We’ll want to head five degrees south of dead east,” she called out.

Anqien nodded, taking the helm a touch to starboard. “And closer to beam now?”

“Just about to get that.” Jinai stowed the map and sprung to the mainsheet, where she set the sail into a beam reach.

“You making a beeline for Caiyun?” asked Iki through the relay.

“Unless the wind changes, yes,” she replied. “Speaking of which, what’s the wind looking like?”

“It’s set to oscillate between a northwesterly and a northerly, but that shouldn’t change your trajectory, beyond microadjustments.” He clicked his tongue. “Easy day for a trial run, huh?”

“Hey! I can’t tell the future,” Telaki muttered.

“Suits me,” Anqien said. “We’ll just hope for good wind on the race day itself.”

I don't have any special art for this one, but I think the cover of my Offshore album (which comes out very soon) has the precise vibes of this chapter!

---

Episode 9: Sunset Gaze

They coursed past jagged islands and passenger ferries on a similar route to theirs—though with engines and roaring smokestacks, those ships defied the rule of the wind. The Cloudlander, powered by its sails, rode the whims of the air, speeding with the swells and slowing with the lulls.

From here, there began four hours of easy sailing eastward and a little south—punctuated by food, water, and copious conversation—about home, life, and the race to come. As they crossed noon, the first sliver of deep green, rimmed by the white of sand, rose out of the horizon.

As the sight met their eyes, the gale began to howl. Like a shroud pulled over the sea, the sky greyed, accompanied by Iki’s notification of what they both suspected— “Looks like a short shower incoming from the ocean, with strong northeast-by-east winds, maybe fifteen degrees to port from your current course.”

“Good thing we've just entered sight of Yenyun Island,” muttered Jinai while Anqien cast an eye towards the dashboard compass. Already the wind was beating against every rope, pushing back against their bow. “How long do you reckon it’ll stay?”

“An hour or so. And it looks like the wind might oscillate.”

“We’re about dead east from Yenyun,” Anqien replied, glancing now and then at the horizon. “We could start beating and then tack on the wind shift.”

“You wanna gamble on that shift?” asked Jinai.

“We didn’t get here by playing safe, isn’t that what you always say?” they answered. “And besides, it’s only a dry run.”

“Hey! You’re meant to be treating it like—”

“I know,” Jinai cut Telaki off. “Alright, let’s do this.”

“Tacking to port,” Anqien called, gripping the helm.

“Ready!”

They heaved the rudder and mainsail, and the yacht turned keenly to starboard, so that the wind now lifted the sail forward. This was the closest angle to their preferred route without being caught in irons against the wind. Yenyun was now to their left, a little way off their bow.

As the dashboard clock ticked to one, the clouds that rolled over the sun began to spit rain upon them, drenching their hair and running off their goggles. By now, too, they had a full view of the village of Caiyun nestled in the coastline, its many jetties hosting vessels as small as rowboats and as grand as cruise ships.

“Almost in the bay of Caiyun now,” Jinai said, and on the other end of the relay, Telaki let out a whoop.

“You show that sea who’s boss!” she shouted, voice crackling from volume. “It’s been five and a half hours. You’re right on schedule.”

Anqien swiped rainwater off their forehead, adjusting the heading of the boat. “Well, that’s a relief,” they said.

When that wind shift hit, fifteen minutes later, it they tacked once again into a head-on charge to Caiyun, the rain spattering their faces. That wind was enough to carry them into the churning bay waters, where they glimpsed a multitude—hobby fishers on the jetties taking advantage of the shower, and boats with their gangplanks down for boarders. Some stared as they veered into the coastal waters; others yelled out what may have been their names and other salutations that were lost to the rush of water.

Caiyun had never grown larger than a village. In eras past, it had been frequented by trade ships, but since Muli Bay had been closed to cargo and fishing, the commercial traffic to this harbour had thinned. Still its citizens did well for themselves, living off the land and the sea.

“I'm gonna say we've hit Caiyun,” Anqien said. “Let's turn back.”

“Ready to gybe,” Jinai replied through the melange of noise. Anqien nodded back, and she began to reel the sail in to centre. “Three—two—one!”

As they arced around to face the way they had come, the mainsail caught the wind from the other side, and the boom swung with a guttural creak. Jinai hauled the sail in seamlessly, easing it into its new position on the port side of the boat.

“Are we running, do you reckon?” Anqien asked.

Jinai nodded once. “Wind’s good.” She sprinted to the bow, snatching the spinnaker from beneath the thwart, and hoisted it up in front of the jib sail, watching it fill with rain-speckled wind. Its westward pull on the vessel was instantaneous, lifting them back in the direction of Wulien.

“Let’s get as far downwind as we can!”

---

Their downwind run was uninterrupted, except for a second meal break and a change of tack about two miles from Wulien, to duck north of Canlan Island. The clouds began to thin and scatter, and through them the sun began to pierce, cool grey light gradually strengthening to a vintage gold.

As they rounded the northern tip once again, the whole of Muli Bay glided into view, gold in the descending sun. They paused their idle chatter in the fresh after-shower air to take in the full breadth of the coastline, running north to south and punctuated by outcroppings, inlets like the one where the marina sat, a weave of jutting masts and cables, and peninsulas such as the fish market’s. North of that, there rose the pale steeple of Nakano, and then the Tienshi Tower behind it—the only airborne building in Helfi—topped in a ring-shaped observation deck.

Rising from the coastline like uneven stairs were the terraces of buildings, all painted in warm hues, or left as bare brick. Here and there, lights were lit in the coastal windows, but the afternoon sun dwarfed them at this time of day, glinting in gold ribbons across the water.

They soared, grinning, into the embrace of the bay. “How was it?” yelled Jinai as they sped back into the marina, starting to lower the sails as they decelerated.

Telaki, with her head of pink braided hair, was impossible to miss, jumping and waving as they pulled in towards the berth. Anqien steered their trajectory towards her. Jinai had only just finished rolling the spinnaker when Anqien slung a grinning Meman the mooring rope.

“Ten hours, twenty seven minutes,” Lujang said, squinting at her watch for good measure while the wind fell away.

“Talk about a fantastic re-entry into the NHR zone!” Telaki hollered, hands cupped around her mouth.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jinai said, calmly gathered their supplies into their packs, but Anqien saw in the lightness of her step that she was brimming with delight.

It was almost as if she were ashamed of her joy. Or afraid?

Answering her passing whisper of “good work” with a clap on the back, Anqien slung their own pack over their shoulder, now heavy with wrappers and empty bottles, and began to climb the ladder to the pier. Every muscle in their body complained—it was only after the adrenaline high that the aches ever set in.

Halfway up the ladder, gripping the chipped green paint of the rung, they looked down at Jinai on the deck. “You wanna head down the promenade after this?”

She blinked back up. “Just to hang out?”

Their pulse doubled inexplicably. “Yep! Just, kinda, to wind down after all that sailing.”

Jinai spent a second deliberating, before beaming back with, “Sure, I could use that.”

---

Bags slung over their shoulders, the pair strolled five minutes up the promenade and picked out a part of the shore not obscured by breakwaters and peninsulas, in front of a row of shops they had never visited. Tucking their shoes in their bags, they clambered down to the tide and settled atop a slanting block of stone rubble, smoothed by the sea.

Side by side, they swung their legs in the surf, hands down on the weather-worn stone. Jinai had changed back into her old pink scoop-necked tee, denim pants rolled up above her ankles. She rolled her right shoulder a few times, massaging a sore spot between her shoulder blades.

“You looked happy back there,” Anqien said amid the calls of gulls. “When we came back from the run.”

“You could tell?” she asked without looking.

“Only because you were trying so hard not to look pleased,” they replied. The tide pulled back in anticipation.

She blinked twice. “I was? I guess, maybe—”

An errant wave surged up the stone, spraying their feet and faces. Yelping, Jinai dove against Anqien for cover, arm looping around their waist as they both tumbled, half-drenched, against the rock behind them. As the ocean subsided, her shout turned into a laugh in their ear.

“Whoa, sorry, that caught me off guard!” she exclaimed. She picked her head up in a trail of showering drops and grinned at them. Their faces were too close together. They could see the flecks in her blue eyes.

Was this the same person that Anqien had admired all this while—hero and virtuoso, star and comet? Like vapour evaporating in the sun, heat rose through their chest and filled their head, swallowing them in a daze. Jinai was trying to unhook her arm from about their waist as she propped herself up—but they felt an impulse to stop her, to beg her to stay right where she was and keep holding them like that.

But their breath caught and they said nothing, and Jinai swung herself upright in a smooth motion, gaze still trained on theirs. Anqien watched her wordlessly from where they lay against the slant of the rock. The wind whipped her dark, curly hair about. She pushed it ineffectually behind her ear. “Everything alright?” she murmured.

“Oh, no, yes, I’m fine!” Anqien shook themself, burying their cheek in their shoulder to hide an unexpected blush. “I think I’ll stay here for a bit.”

She chuckled. “You’re so silly, it’s adorable.”

They sucked in a breath, and their eyes darted away, pushing themself upright on trembling arms. “Anyway, yeah! I…I’m always happy to see you happy.”

Jinai sighed. “You know, I haven’t thought about whether I’m happy in a long time. Never checked in with myself or anything. So hearing you say that…I guess, I wonder if I’ve been less happy than I realised.”

“You did seem downright miserable for half a year. I really felt it when things changed.”

She chuckled. “That bad?” She shook her head. “You’re right though. Back then, when we were sailing, I really was happy, I think. I suddenly remembered why I love it. You feel so free out on the open water, you know?”

They nodded. “Like no one and nothing can catch you. Or tell you what to do.”

“We could just run away in our yacht one day. Couldn’t we? Just pack our things and go—sail to the other side of the world and never have anything to do with all the bad shit in this life again.”

“You don’t think there’ll be bad shit wherever we go?”

“I mean, there will be. But at least I won’t be in Wulien anymore. No more traces of Josa everywhere I turn. Nothing to remind me of the past.”

“Except me?” Anqien murmured.

“No, I don’t want you in the past. Getting to do my career over with you has been the best thing Wulien has given me. And if I ever left, I’d want you to come with me.” She cocked her head to a side. “If you wanted to. But you also have the rest of your career ahead, so…”

“No, no, I would love to go wherever you go.” Their head was spinning. “We could start our careers over, right?”

“Not if they know you’re a fugitive from Cloud Connectors.” But Jinai was beaming again, that enthrallment glowing on her face as she sidled towards them—and instantly they felt the flush creep back into their face. “It’s all just wishful thinking anyway. Chances are, even after I retire, I’ll stay to help the team. Keep mentoring you till you’re the best you could be. ‘Cause you deserve that.”

They were close enough to touch, and Anqien fought their sudden hunger to close that gap. It would be too much at once. They would give themself away.

Give what away?

Their pulse spiked. Their gaze jolted away from her.

No, no, no. No. Not now. I don't, I can't— Feverish thoughts rattled in their mind. She’s my…

“—Anqien? Hello? You still with me?”

Their head whipped back. Jinai’s face was aglow in the orange light, her eyelashes glimmering.

There went any hope of pretending it wasn't happening.

Anqien wiggled away. “I…think we should probably head off soon.” I'm in love. I can't be in love.

“Oh, come on, so soon?” she answered, tugging on their arm. Only then did she seem to notice the change in their mood, and her face softened, fingers dropping away. “Alright, no more talk about running away together, I didn’t realise it was bothering you.”

It's doing the opposite. That’s the problem. Their eyes darted to the horizon, where the purple was sweeping over the pink, bringing stars with it, and the layers of clouds were lit aflame by the sinking sun.

“I’m alright,” Anqien said simply.

“You sure?” Jinai nudged them.

“Yeah! I’m just. Assuring you. You know.” They resolved to shut their blabbering mouth after that, although their thoughts continued to ramble in blazing disarray.

Yep, this is the chapter where that scene happens.

Oh yeah, I made an Offshore album! You can listen to it on Bandcamp, Spotify, or YouTube Music.

---

Episode 10: Threaded Lines

Jinai and Anqien parted ways on the sandy marina parking lot. “Safe trip!” she called out as they walked away backwards, waving. “Hope you get some good reading in on the train.”

“You too! I-mean-have-a-good-trip—bye!” they shouted back, then spun and dashed away.

Once Anqien was out of sight, Jinai strolled to the roadside and waited for the next taxi. The junction lights changed, bringing a new wave of carriages. She flagged one down.

They took the quiet roads through the evening, northwest out of Muli Bay and a little less than a mile inland. Noise fell away, and lights changed from fluorescent white electrics to the gentler gold of burnable gas. The vehicle set her down at the foot of her steps.

As she unlocked her misaligned green door and felt the paint flake in her hand, Jinai was swept over by a gnawing feeling that she was missing something. Like she'd lost a belonging months ago, and only noticed now. Clenching her jaw, she shook her head and locked the door behind her.

By her sink, two glasses and two mugs glinted in the moonlight. One for her. One for Josa.

Her shoulders dropping, she slipped her feet out of her shoes. Her yellow couch held only a cushion, and her bed was littered with pillows that hadn’t been arranged in months. This place, she had bought for them—for that future that never was.

She hated that he was still here, hanging over her. He didn’t deserve any part of her present—and she hated herself even more for letting his memory linger here. Yet think of him she did, as she opened her cooler box and picked out a pack of dinner that she had cooked and portioned out the night before.

For years she had been invincible. Star of the show. Heralded from the start of her career as the future of sailing. And every loss in the finals of the Niro-Helfi Race, or any number of other races, had felt surmountable. Just another year delaying the victory to come.

But when Josa had told her, that evening, that he had found someone else in his new city, she had for the first time felt…insufficient.

How could he choose to give her up? That tirelessly stubborn part of her, the one that weathered her through the doldrums of every race, was still convinced he had been a fool. How did he look at a woman so admirable—champion of her sport, decorated and lauded—and decide she wasn’t good enough to keep trying for?

But he left because of that. He found a life in the mountains, doing what he did best. And I had mine, here, at sea.

Yeah, and he had another partner ready to go. Jinai rolled her eyes as she unwrapped her meal on her dining table. She began to work through the curry rice, one spoonful after another, but she barely tasted the meal.

She was long past the months of senseless weeping—the only thing that kept her holding her head high was knowing she deserved better than to let a thought like that drag her down. But staring across the table in the silence, at where he had once sat—one arm folded on the table, eyes closed in the slanting evening sun, and the other hand reaching over to interlock his fingers with hers—it was almost enough to crack her resolve open. He’ll be back when his placement is done. We can last out a year.

“Alright, enough,” she muttered, then resumed shovelling food into her mouth.

She was interrupted five mouthfuls later by the ring of her filograph. Bolting upright, she leaned over to pick up the device sitting on the other chair. With a push of a spring-loaded button, the most recent filogram lit the screen.

Just checking in. Looking forward to next Saturday! Did you want to hang out before | after?

She smiled thoughtlessly at her teammate's cursive scrawl. At least one of them had remembered their resolution to get in more frequent contact over filograms. Because that bone-chilling loneliness had yet to desert her, she let herself accede to Anqien's offer of socialising.

Yeah, come drop by at mine before training.

She only had to wait five minutes for a reply, during which she finished her meal and crammed the wrapping into her waste bin. She licked curry from the corners of her lips while she glanced at the screen again.

Will do! Could we visit the garden near yours? Always wanted to see it.

Be my guest anytime. Jinai sketched a small smiling face at the end, for good measure.

Thank you! You’re the best.

She smiled and shook her head, propping her chin up on her elbows, filograph on the placemat where her plate had been. Without her notice, the hollowness had lost its bite, and when her eyes darted to those cups on the drying rack again, that twinge no longer came.

---

Anqien left their dinner plate in the sink and retired to the living room couch. Among the clinks of spoons on plates, the rest of the family ranted over dinner about their customers of the day. Reclining with their head propped up on one armrest, they spun the filograph about in their hand, contemplating a message to Jinai.

Would a request to meet outside training be amiss? It was impossible not to overthink it now. They began drafting a message, erased it, and then started again.

Just checking in. Looking forward to Saturday! Did you want to hang out before | after?

It wasn't two minutes before their filograph gave a ring, making them briefly leap out of the seat. Yeah, come drop by at mine before training.

“Who are you sending filos to?” their mother called out. “Is it your friend Jinai?”

“Yeah, it’s Jinai. We’ve got training on this Saturday.”

Their parents muttered amongst themselves. “Must it be twice a week?” their father groaned. “Don’t you think you’re spending too much time there?”

The words smarted like vinegar in a cut. But it was nothing new. They gritted their teeth, rising out of the couch. “Training hard is the reason we won our qualifier.”

“Yeah, but you're doing that instead of preparing for your career.”

“It is my career!” They were only just aware of their voice rising.

“What happens when you get too old to continue, huh?”

Oh, that took the cake. “Will you stop saying that?” they yelled. Some people said they were impossible to piss off. Those people had never met their parents. Rising out of the couch, they stormed around the corner, gusting past the dining room to the stairs without meeting anyone’s eye.

It was this same song and dance every time. Anqien was making enough from their contract and winnings to get by comfortably without their help. But it wasn’t just about that—it was about how they’d veered sharply off the path their parents had charted. And somehow, they still hadn't figured it out. That this was how it would be for good.

As they raced up the stairs to their room, Anqien glanced at the filograph and scribbled out a reply. Will do! Could we visit the garden near yours? Always wanted to see it.

They slammed their door shut and sucked in a breath, gaze sweeping the tired sight of their room. Their bed was pushed into one corner, pointed towards the door, and their desk was tucked into the next, between two windowsills, all overwhelmed by their burgeoning collection of potted plants. Between here and there lay an obstacle course of their belongings, treacherous as the Sunken City.

As Anqien tiptoed over the coat they’d worn to the party, their filograph rang out a notification. They dropped onto their single bed and laid the device on their lap.

Be my guest anytime. A little drawing of a face glowed below the text.

Just like that, their frustration was overrun by fondness, like a tide washing driftwood away. They stared down at the message, imagining Jinai at the other end, sketching it with her finger. “Don't let this get out of hand, don't let this get out of hand,” they muttered. Still, their heart disobediently raced as they wrote their reply.

Thank you! You are the best.

Anqien flopped backwards, expecting their head to meet a pillow. But it met the headboard instead. They loosed a wordless yell as it banged on the wood, sparks shooting through their vision.

Somehow, they had a feeling it was too late to stop things getting out of hand.

---

Episode 11: Garden Street

Posting this one early because I have something on this evening. Enjoy!

Jinai’s next days were divided between the gym, the doctor’s, and catching up on cooking. Then on Saturday, eight in the morning almost on the dot, a measured knock sounded on her door—unmistakeably Anqien from its cadence.

She picked up her sling bag and opened the door, one forearm against the door frame. There stood her teammate with their jacket tied around their waist and one finger twirling a lock of hair.

“Morning, Anqien,” Jinai said, waving her free hand, before marching past them onto the top of the stairs. When they didn’t follow, she stopped and turned back. “You coming? We’re headed to the park, aren’t we?”

Their head whipped around. “Oh, uh, could we have breakfast first?”

Jinai grinned. “Were you so excited to get here that you forgot?”

A sheepishness swept over their face that she couldn’t help chuckling at. “Yeah, oops.” They wove their fingers together, gaze dipping until Jinai slapped them on the shoulder and steered them out to the top of the stairs.

She shook her head. “We can drop by the grocery store first, come on.”

“That works! That works.”

---

They strolled down the pavements of the Ni’an ward, in the shadows under the blossoming trees and the flutter of birds on their branches. The sunlight was tinted rose gold, every street aglow with anticipation.

Anqien seemed to find a thing worth pointing out on every block: a wall whose bricks were heavy with creeping vines, a noisy bird’s nest on an overhanging pear tree, a damp ditch in the tar where moss had begun to grow. Jinai wondered, as they went, at all she did not see when she was flying through these streets on her bicycle, and even moreso at her companion’s endless joy for these oddities. But none of these things could very well be here by next week.

“It’s weird, isn’t it,” she said then, “how things are always moving and changing. And how this is the combination of things we’re seeing right now. Because it’ll never be exactly like this again.”

Anqien cocked their head to a side. “I haven’t thought of that. But yeah, every moment is different, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, though it doesn’t always feel that way.” Jinai glanced out at the far side of the road.

At the corner where her usual grocery store overlooked the road, she could see that it was Sumare at the counter once again, perking up and waving as they watched the pair emerge from the lee of the building.

“What, both Cloudlanders?” they exclaimed, hands flurrying over the counter. “Welcome, welcome!”

Anqien had made straight for the cabinets of baked goods on arrival, so Jinai fielded the conversation. “Yeah, we were gonna go out to the gardens, but this little goofball here forgot their breakfast,” she replied.

Sumare laughed, casting a glance across the shop at said goofball. “Well, you’ve come to the right place for breakfast,” they replied. “The gardens are nice at this time of day. What’s the occasion?”

“Not much, just a little hangout before the usual Saturday training session.”

Hovering around the bakery corner till now, Anqien finally came up beside Jinai, presenting a custard bun and a fruit pastry in a paper bag to Sumare. Meeting their eye, the cashier seemed more than a little startled, then flustered, fumbling as they popped the register open.

“Two!” they blurted. “Two kwai.”

“Only two?” Anqien seemed about as surprised as Jinai felt. “I would’ve gone and gotten more.”

Jinai fixed Sumare with a glare. “Hey. Hey, why does Anqien get them cheaper?”

“Huh?” Now Anqien turned to her. “Do I?”

Sumare cleared their throat and flicked their braid back over their shoulder, smiling earnestly. “Two kwai, just for you,” they doubled down, and Jinai caught them shooting Anqien a wink. Again some fierce compulsion—to swat their gaze away, to keep their hands off of her teammate—reared up like a sea beast baring its teeth.

She folded her arms and stepped away.

The price paid with profuse thanks on Anqien’s part, they departed the shop all too hastily, and were quickly underway in the direction of the garden. Jinai’s companion had dived headfirst into their heavily discounted confection and munched merrily away, until they took their last turning off the winding side alley and onto Garden Street.

The garden was the main attraction of the sleepy Ni’an ward, spanning almost the entire length of the street named after it. The closest of its entryways peered at them from the next block southwest—an arch decorated with lattices of woodwork and vines. The two came to a stop across the road from that arch. Jinai, with a moment’s glance, sprinted through a gap in the traffic before the rolling wheels of carriages. Anqien yelled as she took off, and she heard the frantic patter of their footsteps behind her.

The sunlight scattered through the leaves as they passed under the archway and into the garden. As if they had stepped through a portal, it no longer looked like the city of Wulien, but some nameless faraway paradise. The trees and hedges grew together—hibiscus, bluebells, and roses, sprinkled with buds and flowers. Prolific bamboo stands outlined every walkway. Vines were draped in curtains on intermittent trellises, concealing the garden from the view of buildings.

At once their voices fell to a hush, so the birdsong and rustles could take their place. There was a sacred quality to the air as it wafted by, heavy with the scents of blossoms.

“You live right beside this?” Anqien whispered.

Jinai nodded. “I jog past it every other day.”

As they forayed in, they passed a scattering of other visitors on the paths, all turning out for the first warmth of the year. At each turn, they returned waves and bows, while others’ eyes lit up with recognition.

It was the first time Jinai had paid this much attention to the place since she had begun to visit. Trees that had been next to bare as winter had petered away were now verdant with buds and blossoms. Everything glowed in this new light, slanting yet bright, reminiscent of less bitter times. And at every turn Anqien pressed forward, wide-eyed and transfixed, as if seeing flowers for the first time.

The rush of water pulled their senses in. Glancing at each other, they wandered in the direction of the sound till they reached a lush brook that ran through the landscape alongside a pebble-littered pathway. Branches swayed over the water, and the dappled reflections played on the ripples. Stonework lanterns sat perched atop smooth boulders, the current flowing around them and their gentle firelight.

They stood transfixed, both pairs of feet still on the cobblestone. When Jinai turned, Anqien was gazing about at the scene, a small smile playing on their lips as the dappled light danced over their face.

Maybe because she didn’t let herself, she hadn’t thought often enough about how pretty they were—long eyelashes over dark eyes, and straight, flowing locks tipped with teal, framing their sun-kissed face.

They turned to her. “I can’t believe this has been here the whole time,” they murmured. “It’s gotta be the most beautiful thing I’ve seen in Wulien.”

Jinai laughed under her breath. “Pretty sure I’m looking right at the most beautiful thing in Wulien,” she replied.

Their eyes widened and they started glancing frantically over their shoulders, while she smirked. Their mouth opened, emitting no reply, and then closed again, though the fierce flush of their face said everything.

“Come on, you know I'm talking about you.”

Their eyes darted to their feet. “Uh, ah, th—” they sputtered.

“What, it’s like you’re not used to it.”

“It?”

“Flirting,” she replied.

“Oh! No, I’m not!” They laughed shakily, though there was no way they were displeased. “Give me a moment.” Then they turned away and sucked in a huge breath, hands clutching their cheeks.

“It’s fine, I’ll stop teasing,” she chuckled, rubbing their shoulder while she became conscious that she was also enjoying it—flustering them with compliments.

This isn’t fair to them, the thought hit her.

Huffing out a breath, Anqien wordlessly resumed walking, and Jinai followed them across the nearest bridge over the creek, the conversation going briefly silent between them.

---

Episode 12: Sunken City

The walk back to Jinai’s turned into a sprint when they noticed it was coming up on ten o’clock. Slinging bags and jackets on, they leapt onto Jinai's bicycle, and Anqien clung on to her waist from the backseat as she pedalled for her life towards the marina of Muli Bay. The sea breeze whipped through their hair as they flew off the pavement and merged into the promenade, hurtling past other cyclists like an errant meteor. She barely batted an eyelash as she wove around yelping pedestrians.

As they charged through the streets, Anqien continued to quietly buzz with Jinai’s compliments. How could she say such things, knowing the words weren’t meant to go anywhere?

As the fifteen-minute ride went on, their arms slipped tighter around her waist. It was impossible to tell if she felt any way about it, but the lack of a reaction only emboldened them to keep going, until they were practically pressed up against her, feeling every shift of her shoulders.

“Hey, bit of breathing room?” she called out. “I know I’m huggable, we can hug when we get to the marina.”

“Oh, sorry!” They slackened their grip at once, blood roaring in their ears.

Only Telaki awaited them in the marina today, and she waved eagerly as they hurtled into view. “Oi! You two! Off gallivanting?” she shouted as they jogged from the changing rooms to meet her.

“Sorry, we got carried away sightseeing at the Ni’an garden,” Jinai hastily answered.

“Well, don’t be leaving me high and dry!” Telaki replied. “There are good views out on the bay too. No relay crew today, you’ll be taking me to the City.”

At the mention of the City, the sailors looked at each other with a mutual wince.

“Was Lujang too busy?” asked Anqien as they slipped on their life jackets and clambered down into the Cloudlander and began hoisting sails.

“Yeah, got caught up in one of her projects. Y’know how she is. Told Iki not to even bother getting out of bed.” Unmooring the vessel, Telaki scurried down the ladder and landed in the boat with a leap, spooling the rope in her hands as they sped into the bay.

Today, Telaki guided them up the strait. Half an hour took them back into the danger zone, though they wove carefully around the scattered rock islands and debris—there would be time to race recklessly through them later. At the north end of Wulien, the last suburban terraces scattered into rural land. From here in the widening strait, they saw cliffs, bluffs and rolling hills, tiny specks of animals grazing unthinkingly in view of the boundless ocean.

“So, today!” their coach called out, arms folded. “We’re focusing on your least favourite part of the course. I trust your navigation and everything, but you need to focus when you’re Weaving through the Sunken City. Last time, you got so stressed out on the twists and turns that you forgot to coordinate your tacking.”

“Fair read,” Jinai answered.

The final leg of the Niro-Helfi Race, which looped around the northern tip of Helfi and took them back home to Wulien, was the only one where racers were allowed to Weave the hull out of the water.

In some sections, being airborne was crucial: a large portion of this 190-mile sprint passed through the Sunken City, an ancient settlement once known as Gumeiyen, which had once been perched on the cliffs and stacks of the bay, strung up by Thread, before crumbling into the sea.

All that was left of it were shallows and barely-visible rocky reefs, where ocean life had made their homes on the slanting roofs and steeples—obstacles that would make regular sailing at race speeds next to impossible.

Even being airborne wasn't enough for them most years, it seemed.

“You want to win this time, don’t you?” Telaki shouted over the waves, as they tacked into a U-turn. They nodded. “Then you need to get this right! If we can get you breezing through the City before the finals, then by Ihir and all the gods, you’ve got this locked in.”

They lined themselves up between the tip of Canlan Island and the first peninsula north of Wulien City. They had made this passage a hundred times, yet facing southward with their bow pointed between those twin landmasses and the water shimmering choppy silver ahead, Anqien felt their heartbeat crescendo. Here, the cliffs narrowed into a wind tunnel, forcing the air currents through in a whistling gale.

They took a read of it— “Wind’s on the beam,” Jinai said, and hauled the mainsheet, so the sail was out forty-five degrees from the longitude of the yacht.

“Very good!” Telaki said. Jinai met Anqien’s gaze and nodded. With a lifting of their hands, they found a grip on the Threads, aided by the attractor glove on their right. Eyes briefly closing as they felt their electric tug, they spun the strings of energy through the stanchions on the bulwarks and down around their hull, then sprinted to starboard to repeat the move.

With each completed knot the boat lifted another foot out of the water, till they were aloft in the howling wind, hydrofoil slicing through the water beneath. As they did, Anqien saw Jinai tightening the trim of the sail, till they were hurtling almost fast as a carriage, the cliffs blurring by on their right.

“Pay attention!” Telaki shouted. About half a mile ahead—visible from their vantage—the waters were disturbed by something beneath, trails of foam giving an inkling of a reef, and telltale seabirds grazing in the waters.

“Starboard!” Anqien shouted, and Jinai tacked while they reached out to tug and tension the Threads.

Fish and birds flurried beneath their hull, and they turned just shy of the first dark reef, hurtling around it. They breathed a collective sigh, and then Jinai signalled out to four hundred feet ahead, where another jagged roof was approaching, only a telltale spire betraying the vast dome beneath.

“Port!” they cried, and Jinai counted off the gybe.

This was a sharp swerve, and Anqien raced from rail to rail, using their free hand to snap the Threads on starboard side of the boat. It swung, tipping, with enough torque to clear the dome of the forgotten city hall.

They wove in and out among the submerged buildings as they became more numerous, treacherous shapes half hidden by the shimmer of the waves. One steeple, topped by an old weathered figurehead just recognisable as a bird, almost crashed into their bow, and they heard the muffled pounding of an old, rusted bell beneath the surface.

Then they drew into the city centre, where the shapes became a dense crush of stone and coral, a new structure demanding their attention every ten seconds. With their next tack, Anqien was only just keeping the Threads in check while Jinai trimmed like it was the only thing she remembered how to do. But it almost seemed they were finding a sort of rhythm, bellowing instructions across the deck at each other, until—

“Focus!” It was only with Telaki's shout that both realised neither was looking ahead of the bow, but they were hurtling into a corner now, coral-crusted roofs on every side. Jinai yelled and luffed the sail madly as they careened helplessly towards a tall barnacled rampart.

Stone grazed their port side with a screeching judder that sounded like a thousand shell of paint work.

The yacht was carried by its momentum, heeling dangerously to starboard as it cleared the fateful roof, but finally shaken out of her cool, Telaki joined them as they dashed to port side, righting the vessel again. It had splashed back into the water.

Jinai wasted no time in trimming the twist out of the sail, with a glare and a shout of “get on it!”at Anqien. Nodding, shaking, they wove the hull out of the water again, much faster than the first time yet feeling more sluggish somehow.

“This was better than the last,” said their coach, waving them back to their positions. “You didn’t tip over.”

The next turn came and went, and they cleared it much slower than the last dozen. “Yeah, and we got a gash instead.”

“Scratches are nothing. Last time, you straight up fell off.”

More than the damage, the shock of the impact continued to hang on Anqien’s thoughts, dulling their reactions. Those same thoughts seemed to plague Jinai, so collectively they took the remaining stretch of the Sunken City with eased sails, heads hung in defeat.

---

“Debrief,” Telaki shouted, clapping her hands to gather them from the head of the jetty, both sulking at the gash scored through the white paint of the hull.

They held each other upright as they walked to their coach. “Alright, you two,” she said. “Come the day of the race, if you’re not feeling up to it, you’ll take the long way around Canlan Island, got it?” They glanced at each other, then nodded at her. “Chances are, the Mirages won’t risk it either. They never have.”

“At least we have that over them, yeah?” Anqien answered, but the barely convinced themself with those words.

“They’re probably drilling themselves on the Niro leg as we speak,” she replied. “Last year, you know what went wrong. They won Niro, like they do. And you were the favourites to win Helfi. But you chose the Sunken City route, and you fumbled it. And whoosh, there went your chance to win.”

Jinai groaned. “I know. I know. I’ve spent a year replaying it.”

“Well, stop replaying it!” Telaki shouted, with more edge to her voice than normal, enough to jolt them both. “And start studying the course. Properly. You can keep the City route in your back pocket.”

The route circumnavigating Canlan Island was almost a third longer by distance, but it was clear water all the way. Some years, when the wind had heavily favoured it, they had taken that longer route. But by and large, clear skies or cloudy, they had taken the harder route, straight through the strait and back home.

Every time, the risk had not paid off. “But when does it start paying off?” Jinai shouted as they followed Telaki towards the paint and decal shop in the marina. She kicked a pebble off the path, into the straggly grass.

Anqien sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Her head whipped around. “You’re sorry? I’m sorry. I started panicking. Again. And I snapped at you.”

“No, you were right. I lost focus too.” They glanced out at the sea, and the sparks that the sun illuminated on the tips of the waves. “Maybe we need to get our hands on a map. A model. Something.” Anqien did their best not to glower, though their mind was a storm of disappointment and desperation to try again.

Jinai paused as they passed the first bollard, fixing them with a serious look. “Hey, do you have next Monday free?” she asked.

They perked up, blinking. “Not really,” they answered. “But Tuesday, I’m good for the day.”

“Tuesday works for me.”

“What’s up?”

She came up beside them. “Remember how we talked about running away on our yacht?”

“Yeah? You’re not suggesting we sail off to Astra tomorrow, are you.”

She shook her head. “Just for a day. It won’t take us to Astra, but it’ll get us to one of the outer islands. I’d just…like to get away. Would you wanna join me?”

They paused to think. Vanishing for a day had not been on their agenda. But then it had been weeks since they had been utterly without obligations. And a day with Jinai, and no one else? “Count me in,” they said.

When they found Jinai’s bicycle in the red light of the setting sun, she dawdled for a second, kicking the brake up and shifting the handlebars from one hand to another. “I’d ask about going to Konoma’s,” she said then, “but we kinda already hung out in the morning.”

“I mean…I wouldn’t be against more hanging out.” Anqien’s fingers wandered through their hair as they spoke.

The light caught Jinai’s eyes and lit the edges of her curls like a glowing halo, illuminated the folds of her sheer t-shirt as it billowed in the wind. She smiled. “I’ll see you on Tuesday, beautiful,” she replied, patting their shoulder twice.

Their heart leapt to their throat. But they kept a handle on their cool, just barely, as she wheeled her bicycle away. “Fancy you calling me that,” they replied, “when you’re the pretty one.”

She halted mid-step, and then spun back to face them, eyebrows raised in what may have been surprise. “Oh! No need to butter me up, you know you’re my favourite already.” She smirked. “But thanks. Boldness looks good on you.”

Jinai barely gave Anqien a chance to react before she gave the bicycle a running start, leaping into the seat and zipping away into the city of waking lights.

They drew a deep breath through their teeth and clutched their cheeks. “Gods! Stop! Why does it feel so nice?” they shouted, charging towards the Muli Bay station.

When it comes to days of the week, I like to imagine that I'm just translating their concept of standard, operable divisions of time. Training happens every 3/4 days but I don't know that they subdivide time into weeks & call them Sunday through Saturday like we do.

---

Episode 13: Future Past

This chapter is the midpoint of the story in many ways, including word count.

Jinai had, for at least half a year, been aware of speculative whispers among the fans about the nature of her relationship with her teammate. No doubt that their generosity with affectionate gestures, even in front of cameras, had fuelled those whispers.

“Are they dating?” “Are they in love?” “Are they hinting that they could be?” She had never been able to stomach these questions—not when that ache still screamed, still coloured every corner, every time she thought of her old future. Traces of old plans lingered like silhouettes in the streetlights after dark, on the staircase landing, on the gift magnets she hadn’t had the heart to discard.

Salmon salad, he always liked the way I made it. What if—

“Stop living in my head!” she growled, stabbing at her salad dinner. But there wasn’t much she could do against the relentless habit of her mind, reaching for what she had spent four years building, and had crumbled in a single day.

---

Josa Takajo had gentle eyes and short, wavy brown hair. Many a sleepless night poring over a textbook had given him the golden horn-rimmed glasses he always wore, always slipping off his nose. He seemed to attract excellent grades and publications, and had recently passed the bar under the Helfi Judiciary when a firm in the mountain capital of Hecheng had offered him a contract of one year.

They had argued about that, many nights in a row.

“It’s just four hours by train,” he had said, the closest to shouting he had ever come. “You could take it back here twice a week, couldn’t you?”

“You want me spending sixteen hours a week on the train?” Jinai had snapped back. “Would you do that?”

It had been far from Josa’s only option, but the prospect of work in the capital city had held a magical sway over him that even Jinai’s pleadings had done little to erode. Like a bullet with a predetermined trajectory, he had already decided to leave. “Just one year,” he had said. “Then we’ll talk again and decide how to move forward.” He had tried to smile, perhaps for her sake. “Maybe it’ll turn out the city life isn’t for me.”

Just months prior, Jinai had found herself in the position of outing her beloved teammate, Oojima Kaori, to Cloud Connectors. She’d caught him, on multiple occasions, trying to watch her in the changing rooms—and that had been enough; the corporation had summarily dropped him. Just like that, those days of seaside banter, those years of shared ordeals, had disappeared. But forever she would hear the occasional whispers about how she had destroyed a decorated sportsman’s career—tarnished him just to spite his golden lustre.

That same month, the manager Mr. Sienyang had introduced her to his replacement in a company office boardroom. She remembered the nervous greeting of that new sailor, whom the manager had introduced as Liu Anqien, under those neutral thread lights. None of their one year’s experience had shown on their face as they had rambled out a self-introduction.

“…and I take care of plants in my free time. Nice to meet you!”

She had chirped out a reflexive welcome, still catching up to everything they had said.

“Mx Liu terminated their studies to take this position,” Telaki had whispered in the office lobby. “They could probably use your patience.” She had nodded. No doubt that Cloud Connectors had forced their hand. But she hadn’t asked back then.

Going through the motions of building their rapport on deck, their first weeks of sailing had been awkward, to say the least. Just three years younger than Jinai, but five years less experienced, Anqien had been more than a little starstruck. The better Weaver of the two, Telaki had put them at the helm, but at every turn and every call they had looked to their teammate to sign off on their decisions.

Everywhere they had wandered, between those cliffs, Jinai had seen them against the shadow of that terrible man who had come before. She had spent much of that first month as their mentor, patiently explaining simple wisdoms their university coaches had never thought to share. Always take the long tack first. Watch a puff for a while to tell which way it’s going.

But in the fold of the Cloudlanders, Anqien had learned fast, the initial awe thawing away as the air had warmed through the last of winter. And more than that, they had won Jinai over—caring so much about all they did, and asking about her life outside sailing. Not long after, in a rant over dinner and drinks at Konoma’s, she had disclosed the cause of their recruitment. She had never seen them so mortified.

When the matter of Josa's new job had appeared, Anqien had been her second confidante, after a frustratingly blasé Telaki.

“He’ll come around if he still cares enough,” they had said. “If he won’t make that sacrifice to make it work…he’s probably not worth the time.”

Anqien had been right, of course, but Jinai had been deep enough in the mire of denial that she had only politely nodded, and insisted, in her heart, that she had the drive and ambition to turn things around for both of them.

---

For the next months, Jinai and Josa had seen each other once a weekend, if that much. Sometimes she had commuted to his city; sometimes, but less, he had come back to hers. Inevitably, those meetings had become separated by two weeks, then three.

Josa had continued to be as mild and joyful as he always had, with those eyes that effortlessly lit her heart, even while she had worked to the bone to make up for Anqien’s inexperience. Six months in, the gaps had widened to a month. We’re both just so busy, you know? The excuses had made sense at the time.

As spring had peaked all rainy and warm, the Cloudlanders had clawed into second place in the Niro-Helfi Race, and second again in the Cross-Helfi Race. For what had been Anqien’s first international season, those results had been as admirable as any.

Meanwhile Jinai and Josa had passed the one-year mark, with a filogram message from the latter announcing he had netted a full partnership with the national judiciary, “and congratulations on second place!”

Perhaps she would have caught it if she had been paying attention: the tick of the clock as they had entered this new period of never meeting. There had been filograms, of “how are you”s and “I’m fine”s and “moving up in the firm”s—and so much numbing silence between. By then, cynicism had begun to pare Jinai’s hope away. It’s probably for the best, she had thought. May as well focus on the next trophy instead of a boyfriend who’s never around.

There’ll be time to chat when he decides he wants to.

The efforts to explain the gaps away, to shelve the impending heartbreak, could never have prepared her for how it had happened.

Come the next year, she and Anqien had both sunk hundreds of days of toil into the next international season. That agonising work had brought them a hair’s breadth from the win—starting the final leg in pole position. But there in the sun, taking their favoured route through the Sunken City, they had hit a reef and tipped on their side to hit the water, in one of the most widely-televised accidents of the decade. Then it had been game over for their title run: though they had recovered within two minutes, those minutes had made all the difference.

Second place again. Minutes had become years. Jinai had stood on the podium with the past half-decade on her shoulders—applauding the Mirages, steeling her face against any show of emotion less pleasant than sportsmanlike respect. But Anqien’s every gesture had telegraphed joy—from the way they had bowed to the audience with the silver medal looped around their neck, to the lift of their chin as the lights and confetti had rained upon the podium.

A month later, Josa had written in via filogram, asking to meet somewhere that wasn’t their homes.

Some little part of Jinai had known there could only be one reason, so she had chosen a place far from Wulien—an hour’s train journey northwest of the city, in a provincial town called Siajing.

Seeing him at the door of the nameless, decrepit restaurant, half a year after their last face-to-face meeting, had filled her with an incomprehensible bittersweetness. He had grown out a moustache and goatee, and his hair had been cropped and combed back, a proper professional’s coif, fit for the high court. There had been dark rings around his smiling, bespectacled eyes, and that gentle look had in that moment—as always—made her weak with longing and joy.

They had met four years ago, in the courtyards of shophouses in Ni’an, drinking together, then kissing under the trees, and they had bought the apartment together—always with his eye on the future, this one.

---

She was there again, in the doorway of that nameless restaurant that served only pies and dumplings, under the golden lamplight.

“Jinai, you know I love you, so much,” Josa said, and though his arms briefly moved to embrace her, he quickly snatched them away, tucking them behind his back with a clearing of his throat. “But I think it’s only fair, to both of us, to move on from each other.”

Jinai froze. She had rehearsed this scene so many times in her mind, but never had it looked like this. “I love you too,” the reply slipped through her lips, listless and choked and far too late.

She sat down opposite him, tear-blinded, and over a plate of dumplings—pork with sweet sauce—her favourite, of course he still remembered—he took the pains to admit that he had been seeing someone else for the past two months, and that it had killed him to persist with that double life without telling her. And so this was what today was about. He picked up a dumpling, moving as if to feed her, then ate it himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said, eyes red. “I’m very proud of you, doing so well at the NHR. You’ve always been so talented.”

Through the glass windows that looked over the nondescript plains, the sky was turning purplish grey, the silhouettes of trees swaying in the late spring cool.

She swallowed, trying to remember how to speak. “So…are you coming back to get your stuff from mine?”

He scratched his neck, brow furrowing. “I…forgot I had stuff there. You can sell it. Or donate it.”

Josa stood from the table after ten minutes of pristine, snowy silence between them. “I must catch the train or I’ll be late for work tomorrow,” he said, pushing the plate with its two remaining pork dumplings to her. He patted her shoulder twice. “Take care, alright?”

She finished them up alone and curled up in the chair, and cried till the place closed and the poor sod locking up offered her the storeroom for the night.

---

Nothing had felt real for almost a week. It had been enough to dread their parting. But they had parted—she had now realised—because he had found someone he wanted more, someone easier to reach, and had been living a life without Jinai in the picture long before she had even started to think of letting go.

She had taken all his valuables—a typewriter, a case of jewellery—to the pawn shop, and the rest of it to the homeless shelter on Garden Street or the curios store in the next ward—clothes, stationery, bicycle, a music box with a ballerina that still twinkled and danced.

The first person she had told had been Anqien, mainly because her absence at training that week had prompted a few worried filograms asking if she was alright. That had been the first time she’d invited them to her apartment, frantically apologising for the mess and taking them to the noodle stand for dinner instead of mustering up the will to cook. That had been the first time she had sobbed into their shoulder, fingers digging into their arms.

Anqien had started bringing her meals, despite her protests—they weren’t one to insist but in this case they had made an exception, putting them in her cooler the next time they had visited. “You really don’t have to,” she had said.

“No, I do,” they had replied, face set with an earnestness she only ever saw when they were at the helm. “Forgive me for being selfish, but if you stop eating properly then we can’t sail together, and sailing together is one of my favourite things in the world.”

Before Jinai had finished up her chicken curry rice, tears had begun to spill down her face—the stinging kind, which had forced her to push her dinner aside in favour of wiping her eyes. “Look at your teammate now!” she had laughed, shoveling the rest of her rice down.

“My teammate is a badass,” they had replied. “I’ve never gone through what you’re going through, and I don’t think I ever could.”

She had decided, after that turn of events and four missed training sessions in a row, that she would call her retirement after the next Niro-Helfi Race. Among the fans and the company, she had awakened a furor—and amid that, private outpourings of gratitude.

“I understand completely, but also, I’m devastated,” had been Anqien’s honest admission at Konoma’s that evening.

“I’m not gonna leave you high and dry,” she had told them, but even then there had been a bitterness to knowing their relationship would change irrevocably, too.

“Well, then, we’re gonna have to give that next NHR everything we’ve got, yeah?”

“More than we ever have,” she had agreed.

“Gonna work me to the death,” they had said, sticking out their tongue, and she had laughed back, ruffling their hair.

---

Jinai smiled down at her dinner, the sight distorted by tears. Long gone we’re the days when Anqien would ask after her advice with every turn of the helm, as if her opinion counted more than their own. After all, they had held her while she had cried. They had watched her starve herself, and brought her dinner for weeks. They had met her eyes a thousand times and instantly known what she’d been thinking.

And when Anqien had flirted back today, Jinai had felt something.

“Oh, who am I kidding?” she shouted, swiping the back of her wrist over her wet eyes. “I’m still crying over my ex, for fuck's sake.”

---

Episode 14: Island Hide

When Anqien dashed into the marina, the sky was still velvet blue, pricked at the edges by the beginnings of sunlight. Today they had worn their training wetsuit—it seemed best not to carry the company logo while gallivanting on the ocean—and a wide-brimmed straw hat, blue ribbon fluttering as they jogged out onto the boardwalk in the briny breeze.

“There you are!” Jinai’s shout drew their eye to where she waved on the boardwalk, the first seeping glow of dawn just enough to reveal the matching reddish shades of her off-season wetsuit and shoes. “How’re you?”

“Still waking up, but good!” they piped up as the pair fell into step.

As they strolled up the pier and lazily conversed, Anqien pondered on how effortlessly Jinai coordinated outfits, and then let themself follow the thought of whether she ever wore cool colours. Maybe purple and maroon sometimes. Like that dress she wore at the party—

“Hey, over here!” They stumbled to a halt, and only then saw that they were a few steps past the Cloudlander, which bobbed gently in the phosphorescent morning, upon the moon-shallowed water. They backtracked sheepishly. The seaweed waved in the sand below.

Without missing a beat, Jinai slid down the ladder and leapt backwards onto the deck, the mast and canvas swinging with her landing. While Anqien followed in a mild daze, she stuck her head out over the hull on port side, peering down at last week's scratch.

“Should be fine for a day trip,” she murmured, then scrambled to the halyard winch.

Anqien dropped their pack and tucked their hat under the dashboard. “Where to today?” they asked, starting to winch the jib sail up.

Jinai hoisted the mainsail. “I don’t know. As far north as we can go. North until we hit the border. Farther than that. Doesn’t matter.”

Anqien knew they were the last people to have to fear sailing without a plan, at least not to anywhere within half a day’s reach of Wulien. “Alright then, let’s get underway,” they said, as the first breeze picked up their loose sail and began to push them outward. “Northward it is.”

They set out as the sun peeked halfway across the horizon, lighting all of Wulien in gold so its waters shone like topaz. The moon had yet to set, and it hung over the sea as a thin half-circle. Container ships lingered, hazy shadows in the distance, and thick flocks of birds swirled over the boats.

Between the two celestial bodies, they charted their northward course on a broad tack. The wind swung gently, but it was not hard adjusting with its turns, zigzagging gently up the strait—past Canlan, past the waters of the Sunken City, deceptively placid in the low tide with the tops of barnacle-coated stones rippling the surface.

They circumnavigated the obstacle course, moving gently enough that they did not have to devote their entire minds to their manoeuvres.

“So...is everything alright?” Anqien asked. Settling into a stable point of sail, they jammed the mainsheet and took up residence on the starboard bulwark, back pressed against the stanchions.

“Yeah,” Jinai said, joining them on the bulwark so the Cloudlander leaned out of its bias. “Why do you ask?”

“Because we’re going on a day trip with no destination.”

“Oh, true.” Chuckling, Jinai shook her head. “I’m just tired of everything. The disappointment, the stress, expecting the worst. It seems like as good a day as any to take that vacation we keep talking about.”

They nodded thoughtlessly. “I’ll do what I can to make it a good one.”

“I’m already having a blast.” She bumped their shoulder with her own, and they smiled like a fool.

The boat rolled on the waves, carried by the wind. Seagulls and cormorants cried, and Wulien, then Canlan Island, disappeared behind them, while ever newer islands rose out of the glowing horizon. The gold turned to blue overhead, and clouds scudded across their periphery, bringing out in relief the endless depth of the sky.

“Isn’t it weird that the sky can be all these different colours?” Anqien said, head tilted upward. “I bet it would look so cool if we could see the sunlight cross the earth from space.”

“That could happen in our lifetimes. I read that commercial air travel is becoming mainstream in Astra and Sonora. How long before they figure out how to take us up beyond the atmosphere itself?”

“Shorter than we'd think, I bet. I always wondered if people could walk on the moon like they do in the shows.”

“If anyone could figure it out, it would be them Astrans.”

At lunch they loosened the sails, and leaned on the stern facing the sea, Anqien trading one of their seaweed rolls for one of Jinai’s dumplings. They pulled their hat back on as the wind fell and the late morning sun glared. Seagulls began to alight on their stern in ever heavier droves, and they spent a minute shooing the birds away, to little avail.

Anqien stopped mid-mouthful to say, “Did you make this?”

“Hah, I wish. I got that from the corner store.”

“Figures. I was gonna throw a fit if it turned out you’d grown new cooking skills overnight. I did make the rolls, though.”

“I can tell,” Jinai said. “They’re delicious. And too heavy on the cucumbers.”

“Hey, come on,” they said, laughing despite themself. “If you want fishier rolls, go make them yourself.”

The pair leaned against each other on the bulwark as they picked at the crumbs of their lunch and the gulls lost interest. Lazily they watched the sky while the shadows of wings crossed their faces. Jinai turned to her companion, and when Anqien returned her look, she reached out to snatch the hat off their head, placing it on her own. “How do I look?”

About to protest, they studied her with as neutral an eye as they could muster. Her curly locks were untameable beneath the brim, some swept across her cheeks and forehead by the breeze.

“Stunning,” they said. “You should keep it. It looks better on you.” She laughed with a lift of her shoulders, a bit more of a giggle than her usual harsh, pointed laughs. They tore their eyes away, if only just to avoid making it too obvious they were staring.

“So, Niro next Sunday,” Jinai went on. “The big week’s coming. How are you feeling?”

“The race?” Anqien asked. She nodded. “Not ready at all.” They propped their chin up on one arm. “But we’ll have the time for one more run of the Sunken City, right?”

 “I reckon we could figure out that course with one more day,” she said, brow furrowing. “Just need a proper day to go over the whole thing.”

“Yeah, and I need to learn how to focus on two things at a time. But if I don’t…”

“If you don’t feel up to it, then we’ll go the long way around Canlan, no big deal,” she answered, taking the hat off her head, and returning it to Anqien’s. She smiled as they adjusted it back in place. “You know…” She paused, a frown fleeting across her face. She shook her head. “Let's get here early next Tuesday, I'll let Telaki know.”

“Can do.”

They nodded to each other, and putting their food boxes and hat away, they trimmed the sails to catch the next rising gale. The Cloudlander resumed its northward flight, on beyond the reach of any familiar bay.

---

Five hours fleeted by like nothing, borne on the wind like a migrating swallow. They sailed till they weren’t sure if they were still in Helfi’s maritime territory.

It was as they were drifting into an open lagoon whose name they did not know that they finally slowed, noticing the flock of dark shapes gathered against the sandy bottom of the inlet.

“Are those…” Jinai asked, then trailed off, taking the helm to steer them towards the congregation. Four long, robust bodies drifted in the waves, the tell-tale bump of a glistening back just clearing the surface of the water.

The trees on this atoll were sparse, but the water was clear, and here and there, they saw shoals of fish swirling by.

When one of the shapes blew a spout of fine mist into the air, they knew it was a family of four whales, perhaps the great-winged kind that frequented the bays of this ocean, the Las Enmir. One rolled on its side, a flash of a long flipper breaking through the ripples.

Anqien gasped. “Whoa! No way, I’ve never seen those before!”

They had both had the regulations surrounding whale approaches drilled into their heads—slow to five knots approaching from any direction but headlong—so Jinai began to lower the mainsail, and they glided to a gentle halt about a hundred feet from the vast grey bodies.

One by one, the creatures seemed to notice the approach of the vessel. One of the young ones spouted, and their parent bumped it with a flipper. Then the other calf gave a great flick of its tail, and began at once to hurtle obliquely in their direction, before launching itself out of the air with a thrust of its flukes. They watched it arc through the air—dark mottled grey, pale barnacles crusting its rostrum—and crash back into the water, the yacht bobbing in the shockwave of its ungraceful entry.

The parents were following in the calf's direction, no more than twenty feet away, their pointed heads piercing the waves. From here, Anqien could finally see that they were far larger than they had ever guessed, from peering through binoculars on the boardwalk. Each adult was almost twice as long as their yacht, bow to stern, with a mouth large enough to carry them in its mouth.

Jinai gripped the rails and leaned out as far as she could, craning her neck. The deck bobbed as the great-winged whales lifted their gargantuan heads out of the waves to meet gazes with these frantic strangers, tiny eyes set close to where their mouths ended, dark hide wrinkled with age and the sea. For seconds, they hung in silence, watching each other with equal intrigue.

One of the adults spouted a column taller than their sail with a bellow like a steam chimney, a fine mist reaching them and cooling their skin.

Then, together, they descended back into the water, so that they were silent shadows once more. Quickly as they had approached, they began on their ways into the open sea.

Anqien watched motionless till the tiny herd had disappeared from sight. “I’ve never seen whales this close before,” they whispered.

Jinai did not respond. They glanced at her. Her eyes were brimming with tears, drops gathering on her chin.

“Ah, what's wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she replied, wiping her eyes. “For a minute there, I just felt…like nothing else mattered.”

---

They turned back just past one o’clock, after making a round of the lagoon and finding nothing of interest beyond some fruiting coconut trees. A close reach took them homeward in the stiff southwesterly wind, with both keeping their eyes on the horizon as they searched for familiar signposts to point them back to Muli Bay.

There was a lull in the chatter, as Jinai found a pensive mood had come over her, and she could not—however she tried—reconjure the momentary blitheness of watching the whales gather the calves and take them on beyond Helfi’s waters.

What did disrupt the mood somewhat was the dawning awareness that their next training run would be the last, before they were shipped off to Maka-do for the most important race of her life. Islands floated by sparsely in the blue at first, then began to cluster more densely, till they were following an island chain through the blue, back to where Canlan Island ascended into view.

They moored quietly in the marina and helped each other back onto the jetty. At the top of the ladder, Jinai heard Anqien whisper her name, their fingers tap her shoulder lightly.

She turned. “Yeah?”

Her companion seemed to briefly lose track of what they had meant to say, then laughed, head tilting to their shoulder. “I had fun,” they said. “You’re really just…so…”

“I’m tired, is what I am,” Jinai answered, stretching her arms. “But never of you. We’ll do this again, yeah?”

“Just say the word.” They beamed. “I’ll go with you.”

---

At the corner store the next morning, Jinai stopped by the news rack, eyes reeled in by the photograph staring up from the cover. There they were, the AmaShiru Mirages, smirking in their sea green wetsuits like they owned all of Niro. The title page declared a full two-page feature about their team.

Like thousands of sods before her, she could not help it as she picked up a copy and took it to the counter.

Reading the sponsored interview over breakfast was perhaps not the complement to her sandwich that she needed, but it certainly did add…some sort of flavour.

Q: You’re a young team—you were formed just three years ago. Do you think that’s an advantage or a point against you?

X: Why, thank you, my young looks are natural.

Z: Xye, will you use your brain just once? Yes, our newness is absolutely an advantage. We come into this shouldering no expectations, and ironically, I think it makes us far more effective than a team under heavier pressure.

X: But obviously we’re gonna win, expectations or no. We’ve never lost the NHR!

Q: You seem quite confident in yourselves.

Z: I think we’re just chill about it. I’m here to sail an impressive race, and part of that is outracing everyone else.

X: Honestly? We have the work to back it up. We’ve been practising the course almost every day since the quals.

Q: Would it bother you if you came second?

Z: Nah, but it’s hard to imagine getting beaten at this juncture. I’m really not worried about that at all.

X: If we come in second, I’ll probably do twice the number of shots at the afterparty. But what are the chances? I mean, even the betting odds are on our side. So how about that.

Jinai wasn’t sure what she had expected to get out of reading this. But she was coming away with a roiling in her stomach, and very little insight into their strategies and intentions. Fluff, all of it—very unsportsmanlike fluff.

She flicked the papers onto her coffee table and kicked back in her couch, closing her eyes. The air was still, floating lightly over her through the window.

The primary meaning of "hide" in the title is apparently specific to British English - it refers to a little hidden shelter where you can watch wild animals.

Also, "great winged" whales aren't literally winged, but they do have very large flippers. I'm naming them after the humpback whale's genus, Megaptera.

---

Episode 15: Jagged Depths

Content warning: This chapter depicts alcohol use.

If you're here for the April Fool's version of this chapter, that is here!

By Tuesday morning, the scratch on the Cloudlander had been buffed out and painted over. The mended yacht greeted the sailors with its mast swaying over the marina water, a mild welcome on a chilly day.

It was time for their last rehearsal. This time, the whole crew was here—Lujang carting her instruments after them, Janda reporting on the other teams’ news, Iki frantically juggling two filographs. When Jinai told Telaki they would be rerunning the Sunken City, she barely seemed surprised.

“Not a big fan of that one,” Iki replied, tapping and scribbling away on their larger device. “Alright, I’ve got a depth map, and…it’s just as much of a mess as always.”

“I know,” Jinai and Telaki said at the same time.

The coach turned to her two protégés. “If you’re so determined, there’s nothing I can do to change that, I imagine.”

“You're correct,” said Jinai, while Anqien adjusted the strap of their attractor glove.

“Do you hear me now? Now?!” Anqien straightened as Lujang's voice shrilled in their earpiece.

“Loud and clear!” they exclaimed.

“Loud and clear.” Jinai nodded.

Sitting atop a bollard, Iki waved the two sailors over and pointed at his screen. He marked out routes with his stylus, then revised them with their counter-suggestions till they were in agreement. At the end of the consultation, Jinai clapped a hand on Anqien's shoulder and softly said, “Ready?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” they replied with more confidence than they felt.

They took their positions on the deck and set the sail, lofted into the bay as the canvas filled with wind. The ropes creaked in the stiff gale, and the winch clattered as Jinai trimmed the sails to catch that current.

Like they had every week for years on end, the pair steered out into the strait and up the channel, weaving among the obstacles where they could.

Again, they pulled into position with the cliffs on either side, looming large though they lay hundreds of yards away. Tacking into a U-turn, they pointed their nose into the strait, into the many-toothed waterway that had torn countless vessels to shreds. The wind at their backs, they began to pick up speed.

Anqien glanced at Jinai. “We ready to run this?”

Her eyes were fixed on the horizon. “Let’s go.”

Even as they watched, the wind was tugging them closer and closer to the fray, and they tuned their tack so that they approached diagonally into the strait.

“Beat to leeward,” Iki's voice now interrupted them. “You don't wanna be running downwind right now.”

Jinai turned to her teammate. “You watch your head,” she said. Nodding, Anqien raised one hand into the air with their attractor glove, and began Weaving the racing yacht out of the water.

Then they were off down the Canlan Strait, on their final run that didn’t count. Beating instead of taking a straight course today, it felt different—they barrelled through eddies, tacked with precision into puffs on the water, and hurtled almost too quickly into the danger zone, where the fragmented remains of a once-thriving town now threatened all who passed.

Following the preplanned route, they took the first diagonal through the troubled waters, spotting obstacles over each other’s shoulders and coordinating the gybes so the yacht dodged, like a tern, around spires and eaves in great swooping swerves.

“Ready to gybe!” Jinai shouted, voice picking up spirit as the wind whistled past. Anqien snapped some Threads so the boat heeled to their right. “Duck!” Jinai shouted, hauling the sail in, only just clearing Anqien’s head. Their risky gybe took them around the steeple with its slowly tolling underwater bell.

Anqien could feel their thrill and terror surging. A rare feeling was dawning over them with each manoeuvre—that they were reading each other seamlessly, acting as a shared conscious—and the boat was the body they inhabited.

Here came the crush of barnacled, coral-coated roofs again, the routes laid out in criss-crossing chaos before them. This time they both took a proper read of the next hundred yards, and Jinai pointed with a shout to the starboard, which Anqien acknowledged with a thumbs-up.

They swung through the wind, left and right, like a leaf carried on the breeze, tacking and Weaving in tandem with such precision that midway, Anqien felt the fear gently give way to the joy of the run. Their hydrofoil zipped around the outcrops, dancing with the rhythmic snap and rejoining of Threads, a kite billowing on ocean breeze, yet somehow never bumping anything, and then within sight of the end…

“Duck! Duck!” Anqien only became aware their focus had slipped when the creak of the mainsail jolted their attention to the hurtling boom.

With the bang of the metal against the side of their head, they stumbled to their knees with a cry and a hand over the impact point. It was three seconds of blinding pain, during which the yacht sped on, but Jinai jammed the mainsheet in the current tack and flew to their side with shouts of “I’m so sorry!”

Anqien lifted themself as she looped her arm around their back and lifted them. “Whoa, that, should not have happened,” they said, watching as Jinai's face crystallised from the flashing of pain, her brow scrunched up in worry.

“Are you good to keep going?” she asked.

“Oh, gods and demons, this route is cursed,” Telaki muttered in their ear.

Anqien nodded slowly. “Yeah, yeah…” they murmured. “If you wanna wake me up, kiss me.”

“Oh come on,” Jinai chuckled, but exasperatedly bowed down to kiss their forehead.

They swung away with a squeak, scrambling back to the helm. Their bruise was throbbing again with the pounding of their heart. “I was just joking,” they laughed.

“You two had better not be doing cute shit on my watch,” Telaki’s voice cut through. “You’ve almost got it—cleared the course in good time. Shame about the boom.”

Both looked up to a clear sea. All the rocks and submerged roofs were behind them, and just the narrowing strait lay ahead, channeling them through to Muli Bay. They re-entered the bay, heaving a breath of relief. Jinai said not a word.

As they sailed in through the last yards, the sky was cracked by lightning and a boom of thunder, and the rain followed not long after. They saw Lujang yelp and cart her equipment out to the closest shade, while they pulled up in their berth and moored, drenched with rain.

---

In the changing rooms later, the conversation did not start till they had been there for five minutes.

In her stall, Jinai said, “I could have knocked you into the water there. Or knocked you unconscious.”

“What? No, we were gybing on a broad reach, we knew it was risky. And it’s on me, I…kinda…lost track towards the end there. It was just a glancing blow, anyway.”

“Hm…”

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“I’m pissed at myself. I let you get in harm’s way. I could have said something.”

They met outside for the stroll to Konoma’s, an agreement they came to without asking—their steps took them right onto the promenade. By now, Anqien was accustomed to the sea legs that sailing gave them, but the sway of their vision was a little stronger today.

“Did you see how well we handled it this time, though?” they said. “I honestly felt like we were reading each other’s minds at one point.”

“No, you're right, that was…decent.”

“I think we’ve basically got it figured out.” The storefront lights had begun to come on along the street.

Jinai folded her arms. “Still not quite at the point I’d like for our last training day, but my days of feeling ready are over,” she sighed. “We’ll take what we can get.”

At Konoma’s, they picked one of the bar tables near the entrance of the warehouse, sitting side by side on the backless stools. Anqien teased at the corner of the menu, but was too busy reading to turn it. "You going for the usual?" they asked.

Jinai nodded. Masiu had been weaving through the jumble of tables towards them ever since he had spied them at the door. “If it isn't my favourite pair of sailors!” he exclaimed as he arrived, then his voice dropped as he motioned to their right. “Psst, don’t know if you noticed but there’s another pair of NHR finalists here this evening.”

Their eyes flew to the table he had motioned out. It was the North Star team, who had been at the presser with them—one with wild curly hair, the other wearing it in a tight bun, both dressed for jogging.

“Damn, talk about a coincidence.” Jinai glanced at Masiu. “Could I get the spicy beef loaded corn chips? And make it extra spicy. And I’ll get two shots of spiced rum on ice with that.”

“Mhm, mhm, no problem!” Masiu answered in singsong, then turned to Anqien. “And chicken curry noodles?”

“Chicken curry noodles,” they answered with a nod, then cast a look at the drinks menu on the metal stand. “And a glass of the, uh, pink peach punch? Always wanted to try that.”

“Excellent choice! It's one of our signatures.”

Masiu breezed back into the kitchen. They made small talk while the band set up in the background. There was no martial arts on the screen this evening; it was all news, combining with the clink of glasses and the rattle of trays. Expect a few showers. Trawling season is almost upon us.

Their dishes emerged from the kitchen post-haste, with a chirpy “enjoy!” from their waiter. As they worked through their dinner and drinks, Anqien found that the presence of supposed rivals was hard to ignore: the two seemed to have a quiet rapport between them, exchanging bits of their meals and enjoying the shared morsels in tandem.

One of the pair turned at some point during the meal and, catching sight of the Cloudlanders, their jaw dropped, before they whispered something to their companion and pointed in Jinai and Anqien’s direction. The Aorin pair started chattering between themselves, voices radiating excitement. When Jinai started to wave, they gasped and waved eagerly back.

“Aw, they seem nice,” Anqien said, lifting their bowl to slurp the last curry from the bottom.

Jinai smiled. “They’re the ones my parents would support, if I weren’t in the race,” she said. “They see an Aorin person on the screen, and they’re all over them.”

Anqien nodded. “That’s sweet of them, though. I think it’d be cool if my parents followed sailing.”

She snorted. “Typical of them to be that unsupportive. Let me at them, I’ll show them sailing is cool. And a real job.”

They laughed. “They think you’re a bad influence as it is, they’re gonna be sure of it after that.”

Jinai raised an eyebrow. “Am I a bad influence? Showing you the way of the halyard and helm?”

“I was offered a place on your team and instantly dropped out of university,” Anqien said with a shrug. “I think that makes you a criminal in their eyes.”

“Certified criminal by Anqien’s stuffy parents.” She leaned over their shoulder. “Well, the day you bring home that trophy, you’re going to make them eat their words.”

“They’d sooner eat cardboard.”

The two drank and shot the breeze, while the band’s surreal strums and synthesiser wobbles rolled over them. At some point in the evening, Anqien stopped seeing the lights straight. Not long after, they felt Jinai loop an arm about the small of their back.

Her touch set their skin alight with sensation, the way a hot stove scalded. They had touched a thousand time before—all those times they had pulled each other out of the way of a swinging boom or crashed against each other as they had sprinted to heel the yacht. But only now did Anqien notice how it made their heart do flips.

Haven't I always felt this way, though? From the day I joined the team?

Heedless to their shifted attention, Jinai brushed her hair out of her eyes, the floating fairy lights sparkling in them. “It’s nice. Doing this. Hanging out. Almost doesn’t feel like the week of fate is coming up.”

“Why can't every day be like this?” Anqien sighed back. “No responsibilities, just us having a nice dinner together.”

"I don't know, you tell me," Jinai replied, swaying against them with an elbow to their ribs. "Why can't we hang out every evening? Beats sitting alone in my apartment. Staring at the filo screen when I could be staring at you."

Anqien wasn't sure if the heat surging through their face was from the alcohol or her words. But they were too tipsy to think harder. We’re making too much of a habit of this, for people who don’t mean it.

“Hey, you know I'd like nothing more than to see you every day,” they said, propping their chin up on one elbow. “What would you wanna do? Give me some ideas.”

“I don't know, ice-cream coffee on the beach? Camping on Canlan Island?”

"That sounds nice," Anqien replied. “And the Wulien aquariums at some point, maybe? I’ve never seen them.”

She gaped. “You've never been?”

“Nah, my parents always said the tickets cost too much and the aquarium was boring.”

She grabbed their forearm, eyes bright like a shoal of herring flashing in the ocean. "I am so taking you there. This time of year's perfect for that, late spring when the fish are returning from down south."

“Is looking at fish all day really your speed?”

“What does that mean?” Jinai laughed. “I’d watch trees grow, if I were doing it with you.” Then she paused. “Besides, I really liked going to aquariums as a teen. You’re missing out.”

Anqien wanted to do a hundred things right now, but exactly none of them were advisable. All they did was say, “Yeah—let’s do that. After we’re back from the race?”

She nodded. “Anytime.”

They left Konoma’s later that evening, long after the Aorin racers had taken their leave and the musicians had started packing. They prolonged these quiet hours in the only way they could, though eventually the shop had to close at nine and shooed them out among the guttering tealights, locking the doors behind them.

---

Episode 16: Candle Dance

Three days of regimental diets and workout schedules ended on Sunday morning. Anqien barrelled into the ferry terminal an hour before the sunrise, luggage swinging at their side. The Ukiba, the weathered steamship that ferried them to the race every year, towered over the wharf, its lamp-speckled smokestack silhouetted against the starry morning.

Straightening their jacket, they scanned the wharf and saw, radiant in fuchsia in a circle of lamplight, the unmistakeable shape of their teammate. Waving from across the concrete, they flew to meet her.

Anqien had long learned that these rides on the Ukiba, in which they shared the lounge with crew and sponsors, entailed generous amounts of polite socialising. Jinai was dressed for just that, wearing a shimmering, tailored gown of fuchsia silk, accented with lavender brocade flowers. It was split to the thigh, swishing and glimmering with every sway.

“Good to see you,” Jinai called as they stumbled to a stop before her.

“Uh—hello,” they answered, looking resolutely at her face, “how, how are you?”

She turned her head so she was smiling sidelong at them. “I’m fantastic, thank you, how about you?”

“I’m, good.” They nodded at the Ukiba. “Feels like leaving on a cruise every time. We should...probably head up.”

Together they went to meet the suits from Cloud Connectors, who mingled with the ferry crew by the gangplank. “Ah, there you are, Mx Liu, Ms Vailu, welcome!” A representative stepped up to meet them with their tickets. Once they had taken them, the two sailors were handed over to a ferry officer in smart black, sweeping them a bow and leading them up the gangplank into the towering steamship.

Emerging into the glinting lounge, they discovered Telaki already set up near the bar, looking sharp in a beige suit as she conversed with Janda. When the team arrived, their coach abandoned the intel officer, swooping forth to swallow them in a hug. “How are my little stars?” she exclaimed. “Ready for the big race?”

“About as ready as I could hope to be,” Jinai replied.

Anqien drew their mouth into a line. “I’m not.”

The conversation rambled through a scattering of light topics, Telaki buying them their drinks of choice while she launched into a tirade about her rocky taxi trip to the port. Many a time Anqien and Jinai turned to each other, exchanging a look that telegraphed I’ve heard enough about taxis for today, but they listened and nodded and voiced sympathetic dismay.

“Last time I said I’d never give them my business again, and yet—”

They were saved by the ferry’s foghorn cleaving the conversation in two, and then the crescendo of the ship’s engine as the vessel pulled out into the blue morning. Staring out the windows, they noticed the dark shapes of passengers congregating on the deck beneath their full-height windows.

“Ah, isn’t it nice to not be with the riffraff,” Janda sighed from just beyond their huddle, gazing through the glass as the golden lights of Muli Bay glided away towards the horizon.

“I feel kinda bad for it, to be honest,” Anqien said, chuckling. “We aren’t even paying for our own tickets.”

The public address tympana crackled then, emitting the buzz of the captain’s voice. “Welcome aboard the Ukiba!” they declared. “This is your captain Narao speaking, all set to take you southwest, to the city of Maka-do, Niro. The time now is six twenty in the morning. We are currently headed out of the beautiful harbour of Muli Bay, have a look at the lights if you can. The trip will be about twenty-five hours long, so make yourselves comfortable! Food and beverage services will begin shortly. We wish you a pleasant journey!”

---

Life in the top deck of the ferry felt almost no different from a leisure cruise, with drinks at their fingertips, a carpeted lounge room, and a hole-in-the-wall Niro restaurant one floor under. As the sun rose over the waters and stained the world pink, they chugged into the open sea, passing other marine traffic like a royal amongst commoners: fishing boats, sailboats, and coast guards, all well clear of their trajectory.

After offloading their luggage in their two-bed cabin, Anqien and Jinai took up residence in the lounge sofas and peered out on the passing sea. Peeking through the waves like the heads of breaching whales, they saw from above the islands they had verged before, landmarks on their westward flights. Each time Jinai stretched her legs on the chaise longue to adjust the gown over her knees, Anqien looked away.

It was hard to ignore Iki who spent much of the morning bumbling around the lounge while muttering, eyes affixed to his oversized filograph. “Hey, two of you,” he finally called out.

When they both turned, he dropped to a knee and flipped the device to face them. Onscreen, in whites and blues, glowed a map they knew well: of the three major landmasses and the speckling of smaller islands along the race route. Four cities on the map, each labelled among a web of topographical lines, were connected by hastily-scrawled lines.

“So, just a little preview,” said their navigator. “The route’s similar to last year’s, except for the change on the third port. Leg one runs from Maka-do to Nara-sa, then leg two from there to Antao, not Lijong.”

“Isn’t that just a few kilometres off?” Anqien put in.

“That’s right, no problems there as long as you’re paying attention.” Iki nodded. “Leg three runs from Antao back to Wulien, you know how it goes. We’re expecting weather to be a major factor, there are squalls on the forecast over the week. We’ve got Lujang with the anemo setup at the stern, gathering data as we speak.”

“Thanks for the great work, you two,” they said.

“Hey, I spent half my life studying for this role,” he answered, pushing up his glasses with barely concealed delight. “I’d be thrilled if my work could give you that final push to victory. You know?”

“I do know you’re amazing,” Jinai replied.

Iki’s sheepish thanks became an equally sheepish goodbye, and he disappeared down the ladder not a minute later, muttering about Lujang.

Telaki joined them briefly on the back of Iki’s interruption. “Sorry about all the ranting earlier,” she sighed, shaking her head. “That was too much, strike me down. Nothing a drink couldn’t soothe.”

“Glad you’re feeling better about it,” Jinai replied. “So who’ve you put in charge of the Cloudlander?”

“We got the Nitina Company in again,” she said. “They’re the ones you liked, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, it arrived in one piece,” Anqien answered. “That’s about as good as you could hope.”

“Oh, tell me about it. I’ve seen entire helms ripped from their axles. You’d have to go out of the way to achieve that, let me tell you.”

Outside of peering at the occasional islands and lagoons that floated by on the blue, the passing sea quickly became an exquisite wallpaper for their goings-on inside. They were proper socialites for the afternoon, making friends among the Cloud Connectors employees, cracking jokes and partaking of the canapes.

Afternoon passed into evening, and momentarily the sky on every side was awash in gold and red. Telaki, Jinai and Anqien were glued to the windows till the last sliver of pink had seeped out of the sky. Their coach sipped on a raspberry seltzer, and seeing their wanting looks she clicked her tongue and said, “No alcohol until after the race. We’ll toast to you, promise.”

So instead, before the hour of dinner brought the crowds, the pair clambered down the ladder in search of the Niro restaurant they’d made a habit of visiting every time they rode. The hole-in-the-wall counter peered into a traditional kitchen, furnished like an authentic establishment which almost seemed to give lie to the industrial metal passage they had just left. Here the velvet-draped tables were lit in red, purple and gold, and the dark carpet reflected no light. On three sides, tall windows looked onto the surface of the nighttime sea, and the plucking of a zither floated over the room from invisible tympana.

They sat down at a table in the centre and watched the dancing light of the spherical lantern in the middle, ornate metalwork throwing curlicued shadows across the tabletop. The waiter, straight-backed in a Niro-style coat, was nothing like Masiu or any of the waiters serving the tables on the Muli Bay promenade. They presented the leather-backed menus and asked for their orders in a rehearsed patter coated in a thick layer of formalities.

“I’ll never get over how stupidly fancy this place is,” Jinai whispered.

“I’m always keen for the braised lamb stew though,” Anqien answered. “Don’t think I’ve eaten anything this good since last year.”

Jinai, who had ordered the same—except with extra chili—nodded with a grin that flashed her teeth. “Telaki would throw a fit if she knew we were dining like this.”

“Oh, I know,” they replied. “We could stop eating when we feel like we’ve had enough. But let’s maybe…not worry too hard.”

Their companion nodded, and the conversation landed gently in silence, but still Anqien let their eyes wander over Jinai. The lights’ rainbow hues highlighted her every soft and sharp edge, the colours mingling on her skin and silken dress.

“What are you staring at?” Jinai murmured, a smile tweaking the corners of her lips.

Anqien’s gaze flew to the ceiling. “The lighting, it’s nice in here,” they replied.

No more words were spoken until the arrival of their dinners gave them both something to focus on. It was effortful eating for almost twenty minutes—rich stews of meat, vegetables and roots that they worked through until they grew sluggish. The sky dimmed, till it seemed the world beyond the windows had gone pitch black, catching only the lanterns’ reflections.

“This is a damn good meal,” Jinai said, pausing to slurp up a noodle strand, “but I think I’m about done.”

Anqien glanced at her bowl—the soup and gravy remained, along with some noodles. They felt they were approaching the same point, right next to full but hard-pressed to abandon the dish before they had found every morsel of lamb.

Wiping their mouths with the serviettes, they pushed their chairs back and stood. Not one step away from the table, Anqien felt Jinai’s hand tug on their wrist. “Wait up.”

“Yeah?” they said as her fingers dropped away. "What's up?"

She had fixed Anqien with a strange, intent stare that instantly sharpened their attention to a point. “A lot, to be honest,” she replied. “But if I could, right now—I wanted to ask…” Her voice dwindled to silence.

“Sure, ask about? The race?”

“There’s that, but this…” She wrung her hands, shifting her weight on her feet. “I got reminded of something Xye said, the other day. At the Sail Fed party.”

No words came for a few seconds. “Yeah, I remember that. You stopped talking when I showed up…was I not meant to hear?”

Jinai nodded slowly. “We were talking about you.”

Something about those words made a cold, leaden dread solidify in their chest. “Right. Makes sense.”

“She was trying to flirt with me, just your typical Xye, so I told her I wasn’t interested. Actually, I told her I wasn’t…interested in romance at all. Because I’m, um, still going through it after what happened with Josa, and, I’m just not ready. It wouldn’t be fair to…anyone else.”

Anqien felt their fingers going colder. “Yeah, you've had it really rough,” they murmured, “I figured as much. That you weren’t looking. But, you wanted to ask…”

By now, neither of them was facing the exit. “It’s just,” Jinai began, “Xye said you’d be disappointed if I told you. That I’m not looking for someone. I tried to convince myself she was just teasing, but I just haven’t been able to stop wondering…”

“Uh…well.” Each word hit like a thunderclap. They stood rooted to the ground, cornered by the storm with nowhere to run. Was this where they finally dropped the charade? “I appreciate you confirming that. Because…”

She sucked in a breath. “I’m not confirming anything—”

“Because she’s right, I am kind of disappointed? Because…” Their voice shrank. “A part of me was hoping? I promise, I understand everything that’s going on...I just...wish I could help any of this.”

“This? You mean…”

“I mean…” They clutched their face with both hands. “I'm just, kinda, extremely in love with you right now. That’s all. Sorry.”

Jinai’s eyes widened. “Oh, wow.”

That was it, then. There was no changing tack now. “I know you’re still dealing with all that stuff with your ex, and I mean, you’re my teammate, and I can’t imagine you'd ever be interested in someone like me anyway—”

“Hey, hey, don’t you start.”

“—and you’re just so amazing, and I’m just me, so—”

Anqien felt Jinai’s hand clamped down on their wrist, and they stopped short, hands falling away from their eyes. “Anqien.” She glared. “First off, thank you for being honest, it means a lot to me. Second, me saying ‘I’m not looking’ isn’t an invitation to put yourself down. I’ve been saying, and I’ll say it again—you’re one of the best people I’ve ever known. And this doesn’t change that! If I reject you, it’s not because I don’t like you. It’s because I’m not ready. And that’s on me.”

Everything fell out of focus as she spoke. None of these emotions made sense in combination—agony and elation, terror and relief, swirling in a fearsome cocktail in their chest. “You really think I’m…”

“Yes! You’re amazing, and you’re stunning by the way, and I don’t know where I’d be without you.”

They laughed unsteadily. “Gods, are you trying to make me fall harder?”

Jinai paused, eyes shining with all the hues of the room. “I’m, not sure,” she murmured.

“Oh.”

Even with that syllable, Anqien was aware of her hand slipping along their shoulder to spider over their nape. There was a demand in her eyes and in the pressure of her fingers, and they leaned into her pull, eyes closing as if before the crash of a wave.

Her hands were hard with use, but her lips were soft, pressed against theirs, filling their mind and washing out all thoughts like ocean currents rushing into tidepools.

No, wait, what happened to—

As each sensation registered, they felt like they were being lifted off the ground by an updraft. Dizzy, they let themself lean farther, cautiously deepening the kiss. Jinai responded in kind, eyes fluttering shut as her other hand crept to clasp their face.

In that moment, they felt like they might just pass out.

But Jinai wrenched herself away violently as she had dived in, and her warmth vanished. Her gaze snapped to the floor, and she gripped her forearms. "Uh, that, I shouldn’t have,” she said, “I wasn’t supposed to…” Then she groaned, hitting her forehead repeatedly with the ball of her palm. “I just said I wasn’t ready! I’m an idiot!”

"Hey! No, no, it’s fine!" Anqien stepped forward as Jinai shrank back. “I don’t expect anything, I promise!” That was all the words they could muster up.

She lowered her hand, dodging their gaze. “You're…so good, you know, you've always had an irresistibly energy from the day we met. And you deserve someone who can give you all of themself. Not—me.”

But there’s no one else like you. They felt the retort bubble up, but they did not speak it. “I get it,” they breathed. “I understand.”

"Besides," their teammate added with a bitter edge, "we can't get distracted. We have a race tomorrow. This never happened, alright?”

“Yeah…yeah, I’m with you.” They turned to the counter, the aftershock of everything still holding them captive, and waved listlessly for the bill.

SURPRISE it happened before the ending. If you thought I wouldn't draw that moment, you were wrong.

In a spoiler just in case someone accidentally scrolls all the way down before reading the chapter:

---

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.

---

Episode 18: Troubled Waters

After the frenzy of the first five minutes, Jinai and Anqien settled into third place behind the North Star and the Mirage, just ahead of the Catcher and their intermittent battle cheers. They soared through the waves beneath the placid grey sky, zipping out into the last sheltered waters of the bay.

Till now, tacking had been easy: the wind was howling from the north and they were still headed east-by-northeast, and so they would be on a beam reach till they had cleared the white headlands to their left. As scripted, the Mirage had immediately charged ahead beyond reproach upon the whitetips, and the Cloudlander kept pace with the North Star to their right, but they were too far apart to accurately tell who was in front.

“Yeah, they’re way off in open sea, and you’re trending close to the headland,” Telaki confirmed.

“Puff over to starboard, twenty degrees from our heading.” Jinai was—as she did—always peering out on the waters for transients, and she was quick on the draw, motioning out the sparkling water. “In three, two, one—” They tacked, and ocean spray hit their faces and goggles, bringing the tang of salt. Anqien was as efficient about steering as they had ever been. But they sensed, even now, how pointedly methodical her calls were, not one syllable more than necessary.

Their shout of, “feels like the wind is shifting!” was met with a “you’re right,” and a nod, and when she tacked the mainsail, they scrambled to follow with a change in rudder against the wind bias.

“Good read,” Iki said in their ears. Neither replied. Waves splashed on their soundless bow.

“Alright, I’ve had it,” Janda shouted. “Why are you two not talking during the final? The other teams have noticed. This is a matter of tactical importance!”

As she said that, Jinai turned to fix Anqien with a look. It was impossible to read, hard enough as it was to watch her and the sea at the same time.

They weren’t quick to anger—many had said they were one of the least confrontational people they knew. But when they glimpsed that cowering look from their teammate, they boiled over.

“Don’t ask me,” they snapped, then adjusted the helm.

Jinai pulled against the bulwark. “I’m sorry.” It was almost under her breath but they heard her in their earpiece. “I messed up, I’m sorry—”

“You didn’t mess up! You just decided that you did, and then you acted like you did!”

“Whoa, whoa,” Telaki’s voice knocked the words from their mouth. “Keep your current course, wind won’t shift for a while. Alright? Now, what the fuck is going on?”

Jinai sighed heavily. “We...” She massaged the bridge of her nose. “We kissed on the ferry. I mean, I started it. I’m so sorry. I have no idea why I did.”

Anqien was clutching the headset against their ear. “I said it was fine! I was fine taking that as it was. But you decided you’d done a bad thing and now I can’t convince you of anything else!”

“Are you being serious right now?” Telaki groaned. “You’re only bringing this up during the race?”

“I was kinda embarrassed about the whole thing!” Jinai shouted. She lifted her eyes helplessly to Anqien. As their gazes connected, they felt their fury peter out almost as fast as it had ignited. “Seriously…I’m sorry. It was immature of me to just clam up and stop talking. I was…panicking again. You know. As usual.”

Anqien went through five different emotions in the same number of seconds. “Jinai,” they replied. “You’re my favourite person in the world. No matter what you do. Even after all this. You’re not gonna scare me off so easy.”

Jinai nodded slowly, letting out a ragged sigh. “Maybe I worry too much about ruining it all.”

“It takes more than a tiny slip-up like this to ruin our friendship. I want you to know that.”

“Messing up is all part of this sport, huh?” she murmured, toying absently with the mainsheet.

Anqien finally felt their shoulders loosen. “It’s all about the recovery. Isn’t it?”

“Congrats on clearing that up, the wind’s about to shift north again!” Iki burst out.

The two sailors looked at each other and nodded, Jinai’s expression steeled up. “We’re coming up on the end of the headland. Then we’re heading twenty-five degrees from north next?”

“Twenty-five degrees from north,” Iki confirmed.

Ahead of them, the Mirage was still within view, though they had long cleared the headlands and into the open sea, turning into a blue-green sliver. To their right flew the North Star; to their back, the Catcher and the Bel yacht gave chase.

Jinai grasped the mainsheet. Anqien glanced at their dashboard compass. “Let’s tack to port!” they shouted.

“Ready!” she answered.

They swung the helm anticlockwise, metal gleaming in the sun. In the same lurch of the vessel, Jinai hauled the mainsail in, and they tacked towards the wind, on a clear diagonal past the tip of the forbidding cliff face.

The wind, previously a heavy downward draft, now batted them head-on, sails and all, as they passed the edge of the headland. Anticipating the shift, Jinai had already trimmed the sail to catch the steady air. “Alright, onward!” she said.

And they were out in the open sea, the clouds roaring by high above, upon winds much stronger than the ones below. Yet they, too, felt weightless. The heavens blew past, and the sky ahead cleared to pale blue.

---

The wind swung like a slow metronome—north to northeast and back again—just as Iki had said it would. The methodical rhythm was easy to keep time to, and they tacked each time it began to shift headlong onto their bow, beating to windward in right-angled zigzags so that they retained their rough northeast-bound trajectory.

Always the Mirage hovered two or three minutes ahead, and always the North Star and Catcher chased from less than a minute behind, dodging the Cloudlander’s slipstream and only just keeping pace. They knew the control crews were following aboard a Sail Fed ferry, hanging adrift just a mile behind the tail end of the pack. This way, the relays never broke even when the quality was occasionally marred by crackling.

As always, Jinai’s eye for the sea took them from fortune to fortune. They leveraged every current and puff to carry them into the prevailing wind, though by-and-large, they sailed beat after beat for an hour or two, shoring up strength before each tack as they approached lunchtime.

There was time between beats for them to take turns snatching protein bars from their packs, tearing them open with their teeth and wolfing them down. As the wind swept back into a northerly, they tacked once again to be lifted northeast: at their current speed, they were flying faster than the wind, and a close haul was faster than more beating.

“How’s it looking up front?” asked Telaki.

“Clear and easy, but the Mirage is pulling ahead a touch,” Jinai said. “They’ve run into trouble with some turbulence once or twice.”

“And behind you?”

“Still the Catcher and the North Star,” Anqien replied, casting a glance over their shoulder. “Pretty hot on our heels.”

“Alright, no risky moves. Wait it out…”

Eventually the wind came to rest in a gentle but steady northerly, so that Jinai and Anqien, by then about five hours into the race, could take turns on the mainsheet while the other organised a meal of canned lentils, carrots, peas and tuna, and a litre of water. As they glided into the late afternoon, the sky thickened with clouds that never broke with rain. By now, the Mirage had advanced to the edge of their sight, but the Cloudlander had pulled clear of the chasing teams behind them, dark specks on the pale sea.

Only the rising blue silhouette of a mountain ahead, with its ever-billowing column of thin white smoke, alerted them to the fact that they were approaching the split at Ima-tou Island. A conical volcano that towered half a mile over the sea, it was a forbidding vision to sailors in every direction. For miles westward, these waters were interrupted by shallows peppered with submerged islands.

As they sailed closer, they saw the thickets of dense greenery that hung in windswept curtains from the cliffs and slopes. Both squinted out on the water at the waves, where the sea diverged on either side of the tapering island. The Mirage, a green-grey speck on the waters about two minutes ahead, had tacked and was veering onto the port side, committing to the west split around the island.

“Alright, I know they went west, but I think we’re better off not dodging islands right now,” Anqien said.

“East would get less wind at best,” Jinai replied. “Or it’ll be full of turbulence.”

“I’d say that too, if we didn’t have to tack straight into the wind to get on the west side. Besides, turbulence means transient winds. I trust your eye.”

Jinai seemed to ponder for three seconds, then nodded. “I think you’re right, starboard it is,” she said. She waited till they were just about on the right point to start their trajectory to starboard, then she declared, “ready to tack!”—and they swung east, from a close reach to a beam reach. They swooped into the late-afternoon shadow of the glowering volcano.

It quickly became apparent—as Jinai stood up on the deck and pointed out an incoming puff almost instantly—that reading the sea had become far easier without the sun’s glare in their eyes. In that light, all became visible—crests and shadows, coarseness where the wind whipped up small ripples on the surface.

“That puff’s going to head us up from starboard,” she said, eyes fixed ahead of their bow. “It’s a big one and looks like it’s stuck—let’s tack to starboard.” Anqien counted them off, and they trimmed the sails as they took the puff, tacking through the wind. The boat heeled over to port and they sprinted to rebalance it.

Their handling was keen as a knife’s edge, and they bounced from rotor to rotor in the turbulent air in the lee of the island. The Cloudlander inched upwind around Ima-tou, the lone landmark on the first leg of the race. In the setting sun, they shot out the other end to see their path on course to converge with the Mirages, although— “Yeah, they’ve still got a little bit on us,” Anqien said, and tacked early to avoid their slipstream.

Now barely a minute ahead of them, they could hear yelling and commotion from their rivals’ boat, which seemed to stir into a quarrel. “Hm hm, from here it sounds like you’ve freaked them out,” Janda said with a grin to her voice. “They’re losing it in the control room. Good work.”

Now that they had suddenly regained the chase, their eyes were alight once again. Before the evening swept over them and they lit their lamps, Jinai and Anqien traded spots at the mainsheet so the other could bolt down dinner.

“You reckon we have a chance at first place this leg?” Jinai called out to her teammate.

They washed down a mouthful of their hasty dinner with water. “Would be a gigantic effort, but it’s never over till it’s over!”

---

They put up an admirable fight, clawing back a little ground on Zera and Xye in the last remaining sliver of daylight. It was enough to spook them, but once the night hit, it became next to impossible to read the wind in the dark. Then their positions were locked, and they toiled onward, far apart on the waters but close enough to gauge—from the tiny glow ahead—that the Cloudlander was still lagging. Even Iki could only help so much, and without the boost of unseen currents, the cause was good as lost.

“Now, now,” Telaki chimed in when neither of them had spoken for almost half an hour. “Second place is as good as we hoped for.”

“It’s midnight just about now,” Iki said. “Keep on your course and you’ll make a comfortable second place.”

The port of Nara-sa sparkled into view—glimmering on the edge of the water, beckoning them towards the light. A lighthouse blinked its welcome. The glow of this city’s streets was warmer and redder than that back at home.

Five minutes before they arrived into the port, they heard the cacophony of the shore, and began to see that every inch of the city’s port was decked out in banners and lanterns. The dancing lights stirred their hearts, even as they coursed past the incandescent lamps of the finishing marks.

Ahead, the Mirages’ blue-green sail had already settled behind the finish line in the wind-sheltered bay.

With that, Anqien is now my most drawn OC ever 😂

Quick question: since the race has actually started, would anyone prefer >1 chapter a week?

---

Episode 19: Seastorm Split

They sailed the Cloudlander into the canal by the guidance of golden bulb arrows, and the waving lanterns and glowsticks of the crowd. Over the largest wharf, a two-storey scorecard of diode lights broadcast their standings in red, new lines flickering on as the boats arrived.

One point for the Mirage, two for the Cloudlander, three for the Catcher and four for the North Star.

They steered the Cloudlander into the berth marked with its name in the estuary marina. There they were met by ushers who took their lifejackets and handed them towels, shepherding them to their waterside accommodations. Although it was past midnight, the streets were alive with undulating spectator crowds flashing their banners and lanterns, and the market district that never slept seemed to shimmer surreally in the afterburn of their exertion.

As they walked and towelled off their hair, Anqien could not stop staring at the crowds, held at bay from the competitors’ path by a velvet rope barricade.

“Still gets me every time,” Jinai said, silhouetted against glowing street lanterns. “Prettiest city this side of the world.”

At their destination inn, they were herded through the narrow lobby, all calligraphed screens and lantern lights, to a chorus of greetings from the staff.

On a bench inside, Zera dozed against Xye’s shoulder, towels crumpled around both pairs of shoulders. Xye’s head perked up at the rattle of the sliding door. She waved with a grin, also seemingly halfway to sleep. “Ten points for effort,” she said, tossing her loose ponytail over her shoulder. “For a whole minute I thought you’d catch us before sunset. But we prevail again.” She stuck out her tongue.

Jinai folded her arms. “And this is meant to be your best leg, yeah?”

She shrugged. “Any leg can be our best leg, you never know till you’re on the water.”

“True, we’ll see you at the start line tomorrow,” Anqien said, tugging on Jinai’s arm as the black-vested ushers returned with trays of hot towels and water jugs.

They began to take the sailors to their rooms in pairs, first Xye and Zera—the latter waking with a sputtering cry when her teammate slid her shoulder out from under her head. Seeing the Cloudlanders for the first time, she offered a polite smile over her shoulder. “Impressive work out there,” she called out behind her.

“Same to you—leading from start to finish,” answered Jinai.

Another pair of ushers soon came to collect Jinai and Anqien, even as more competitors trickled in. They were escorted down the straw-mat corridors to two adjacent rooms, on which wooden placards carved with their names awaited. “You’re set to start at ten in the morning tomorrow,” said one usher. “It’s not confirmed. But be ready by then.”

---

Nine o’clock was announced by a brash knocking on Jinai’s door, then Telaki’s voice hollering Jinai’s name. “Day two! Day two of the race!” the coach shouted, until she got the door.

“Yeah, yeah, is Anqien there?”

Anqien was in fact there, peering over the coach’s shoulder. “I got us both breakfast,” they said, lifting a pair of paper bags over Telaki’s head.

Once Jinai had dressed and laced on her water shoes, there was only the time to take the paper bags with them and sprint up a confetti-strewn pavement to the marina while chomping on pork floss buns. The start line spanned the mouth of the waterway: rather than two Sail Fed boats, the markers stood on the bank and the delta of the estuary, flashing orange in the muted sunlight.

After the flurry of greetings and paperwork—one team had been disqualified yesterday—they boarded, checked, and unmoored. In the gently outflowing current, the Cloudlander drifted downstream till it became wide as a lake and revealed the unbroken horizon.

The city of Nara-sa was changed in this cloudy daylight: the crescent-arc of buildings along the banks stood watch, dressed down in the dark muted browns of Niro acacia wood. Here and there, bright colour was splashed on roofs and banners, with lettering in Niro-hei that neither of them read particularly well, watched by carved owl totems.

They hadn’t had the time for the full briefing by the team and so it was now, during the fifteen minutes of warming up in laps around the estuary, that the crew filled the relays.

“Well, this will be a big one,” said Iki. “It’s a new port of call, Antao, and there’s a storm system forming four to five hours southeast of Nara-sa.”

“Oh, delightful.” Jinai sprinted to the jib sheet. “How bad is it?”

“Let’s just say, if this were any other race, they would’ve postponed. But we’re talking about the Sail Fed here. Big storm, high ratings. You know what that means—best for you to steer well clear, either east or south after you pass, uh, the Crane Rock.”

“Is that what that one island is called?” Anqien said. “With the jutting bit in the middle? It…doesn’t look like a crane.”

“Yeah…’Crane Rock’ is what the locals call it,” Iki continued. “Frankly didn’t know its name till this morning. Janda always has her ear on the ground, what a star.”

“Now, stop using your old nickname for that damned island,” Janda chuckled. “Well, the other teams are planning on making a decision there themselves, so you’ll probably want to make a judgment call there based on the wind situation.”

Iki mmed in agreement. “The storm is moving east, so if you’re able to just outrun it, the downdrafts would carry you right across the border and straight to Antao.”

“Don’t suggest outrunning the storm,” Telaki now cut in on the Thread line. “I mean, if you’re absolutely ahead or the conditions become predictable, then sure, it may be worth it. But for now, I say go around the back of the storm and catch the lift from the updrafts instead. Won’t be as big of a lift, but…”

“Besides,” Lujang cut in, “you know how staticky storms like this can affect the relays. And I’m obliged to warn you that there’s a non-zero risk of comms going down. Particularly if you’re on the far side of the storm from us.”

“Got it,” Jinai said. A stiff wind now rolled into the estuary, and she adjusted their tack so that the yacht was heading back into position behind the line. An opponent yacht ducked behind them, its blue sail tilting. “If comms go down, then we’re sticking with the plan and riding the back of the storm to the end.”

Iki cleared their throat. “Lujang, is the anemo station up—”

“Yes! It was up ten minutes ago, I’m literally right next to it!”

“What are the bearings of Antao from here?” asked Anqien, peering at the map. “About a hundred and forty degrees from north?”

“A hundred and forty-one, so, correct,” Iki replied. “It’s going to be an interesting one—”

The first call cut his sentence in two, the triplet of foghorn blasts shaking pedestrians from storefronts. Along the banks, they saw heads look up and pedestrians flock to the banks. All along the estuary was a wall of onlookers, jostling and pointing and shouting across the waves.

“Going to be an interesting one,” they went on, “correcting your heading behind the storm, but there are a couple of landmarks you can use as reference points for your position. Make sure you have your maps handy.”

“I’m personally a little rusty with juggling this thing around, but we’ll figure it out,” Anqien said.

“Good work yesterday, by the way, I ought to have mentioned,” Telaki said. “Thanks to the storm, how today’s leg turns out is anyone’s guess. But quick reality check: if you can’t win this leg, then you’re in a bad way, ‘cause you’d be depending on the Mirage to come in third tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah, been there, done that,” Jinai replied. Anqien, who felt distinctly less settled than she sounded, drew in a head-spinning breath as the wind blew cool on their face. The Cloudlander had a good track record with the NHR’s second leg. But with the weather holding a hundred surprises in store, they weren’t particularly sure if anything beyond a prayer would assure their victory now.

As if sensing their hesitation, Jinai turned and leaned over, quickly grasping their hand with a nod. “We’ll play it by ear,” she said, “and we’re quite the skilled improvisors, if I do say so myself.”

They smiled back, shaky but sincere. “I couldn’t ask for anyone better to take on a storm with.”

---

Almost as soon as the start horn blasted across the field, the wind swelled fearsomely behind them from the west, a stray gale drawn into the weather system that was gathering to the southeast. For miles out, the sky was greying, and they let the wind lift them in the direction of their destination—as did every boat in the race.

The fleet, tighter than usual, forged uneasily forward—an uneven rank of vessels travelling across the waves. The positioning shuffled around endlessly as the vying boats found puffs and currents that propelled them briefly ahead in turns. The Cloudlander spent most of it moving between first and fourth, sometimes on the tail of the Astran Rider in the lead, and sometimes falling back behind the Mirage.

This was the status quo for the first hour of this leg of legs. Then, as the unmistakeable jutting structure of the Crane Rock materialised in blue on the horizon, almost blending into the dense, roiling grey beyond, the fleet began to sift out into two. They saw, as they gybed to port—towards the back of the moving storm—that the Mirage had split off in the other direction with a handful of others.

“They’re going to try to outrun the storm,” Anqien said.

“Or they’re gonna die trying,” Telaki replied.

“They’re not the only ones going that way,” Jinai answered as the sky began to boil over far ahead, curtains of grey swallowing the horizon. “If that group makes it to Antao first, we’re done. We’re out of the running for first. Are we completely sure—”

Anqien could hear that she was breathing faster and faster, and they knew her mind was on things outside the race, trying to take too much into the equation at once. “Jinai,” they said, abandoning the helm to fly to her side, a hand lofting down on her shoulder. “We’ll be fine.”

“Don’t let them freak you out. You still have a minute to change course,” Telaki said. “Now. Imagine you’re the only ones in this race. Can you do that?”

“Yes—yes I can,” she said breathlessly. Anqien’s grip tightened on hers.

“You want to get to the destination as quickly as possible. There’s a storm in your way. Huge rotating winds, hundreds of miles on every side. All environmental factors considered—the storm, the wind direction, the location of your destination…what would you do?”

They closed their eyes, hands on the jib sail winch.

“If we get caught in the storm,” Anqien murmured, “we’re done for, too. We either get there on a reliable route, or we risk getting thrown completely off course.”

Jinai nodded slowly. “And if the storm is moving east, then…trying to outrun it means it would be much harder to escape the downdraft when we need to. But from the back, we could curve our route to follow the trailing edge. And leave when we decide.”

“Great! That’s my team,” Telaki said. “Now commit to it. The back of the storm will eventually be closer to the destination than the front. And there’s no telling, in this weather, if the Mirage will pass it before that becomes the case.”

“They’re probably cocky enough to try,” said Jinai. With a smile, she jammed the mainsheet in place and ducked for a flask of water. “Into the back of the storm, let’s go.”

---

The racers thinned out and split around Crane Rock, and the Cloudlander quickly rallied to the head of the group ducking under the storm. From this far out, the rotating mass of the storm was visible, disks of clouds and lightning spinning across the open sea. The sailors fanned out into various tangents beneath the outermost clouds of the system, some honing closer than others. They took a slightly inner lane, just about lining up with the edge of the turbulence where the sea and clouds began to roughen, and then Anqien raced to hoist up the spinnaker while Jinai trimmed the sails, water rushing against their hull from the port side.

They gybed with the micro-shifts in the wind, but stayed on their almost-downwind course into the orbit of the cell. At this speed, they were right next to flying. The first showering rains pattered down across the deck and on their faces, joining the dance of the sea-spray.

“Reached the storm yet?” asked Iki, his voice crackling more than comfortable. “You all good over there?”

“Just about,” Anqien replied, wiping rain from their forehead. “We’re starting to get the rain, the relay’s getting a bit choppy.”

“It’s stuttering alright,” he answered.

“May be a good time to pull out a little, it’s getting rough,” Jinai replied, to which Anqien gestured their agreement. “Ready to tack!” They steered to starboard while she hauled the sail out, taking their new trajectory for eight minutes, until the rain thinned to a drizzle. Then they gybed again to point in a tangent through the edge of the storm, letting the downwind lift them to a sprint again. In the blurring of raindrops, the closest competitors were nowhere to be seen.

“Any news from the front of the storm?” asked Anqien.

Their headset crackled with what may have been Iki’s voice, but it was hard to tell. Then Janda’s words punched through—“couldn’t—”

The line was all rumbling and rustling for several ominous minutes, and then it was silent. Wind buffeted their faces, flicking raindrops from the tips of their hair. Anqien turned to Jinai as lightning pierced the gloom, lighting her features in sharp relief. “Well, that’s not great,” she said. The Thread line between them had survived intact, and Anqien still heard her voice clearly in their ear.

They looked up at the horizon, divided in two, storm and sky, nothing around them but the rumble of the thunder and the whipping of wind and rain.

With the wind rising all about them, their heart pounding with the fear of not knowing if they would live, it almost felt like their first weeks of sailing again—back when they had been a student fumbling with keelboat ropes on Muli Bay for the first time, when the allure of sailing into the blue and losing their way in this rigidly-orchestrated world had cast its spell on them.

“It really feels like flying,” they said, out of nowhere, perhaps spurred on by the knowledge that the crew couldn’t hear them from the red ferry. “Sailing with you, not knowing where we are.”

“I don’t know that I like the prospect of getting lost in a storm,” Jinai muttered, gazing through the streaking drops as another flash of lightning tore the sky. “But I know what you mean. The world looks so unfamiliar here…I wish it always did.” She tweaked the mainsail’s trim to the buffeting winds, and they trimmed the jib sheet, and together they forged into this strange, unknowable sea.

---

Episode 20: Still Return

The Cloudlander rode the outer winds of the boiling storm, adjusting their heading yard by yard with its rotation. Even this far out from the eye of the storm, the waves churned and frothed. Heeling the boat became a strenuous collaborative effort with both Anqien and Jinai dashing to throw their weight against whichever direction the boat was straining. Monster breakers slammed against their hull and splashed over the deck, so that their shoes were doused, rivulets running between the metal bumps.

“I think we should move out at least half a mile!” Jinai shouted. “We can’t keep going like this!”

Heart thrumming and hands tightening on the helm, Anqien nodded back. “Yeah, let’s move it,” they called back.

“Ready to tack!”

They hauled the mainsail against the wind and tacked to port, snapping to an outward trajectory through the embattled waves. This was a gamble that would cost them precious time, but their limbs were blazing and their shoulders heaving—and to save them strength for tomorrow, it seemed a necessary wager.

On a broadening radius through the outer clouds of the storm, they ploughed through the waves which gradually petered out to lower surges, no more than two feet high. Here, without the rain blurring the sky, they could see the swirling grandeur of the lightning-pricked cumulonimbus—larger than a city, deluging the waters below.

“Guess we’re alone out here,” Anqien said. “Who knows where the others are?”

Without a word from their crew on their whereabouts, they let the storm slingshot them out into the grey-blue beyond as it turned eastward, the veiled sun slowly sinking through the sky to their right.

The storm had been cold company, but company it had been. Without it stirring the sky and sea, there was nothing here but mist and grey water. At two o’clock, they broke for lunch and consulted the map together, but the horizon around them was mirror-flat and empty for miles around. Their speed and arced route put them somewhere one hundred and twenty miles southeast of Nara-sa, approaching the border of Niro, but that still left them a huge margin of error.

While the waters were quiet around them and they had no landmarks to find themselves on the map, they proceeded on the same trajectory southeast, a shot in the dark, using their compass to keep the route steady.

The clock ticked to five o’clock. Nothing showed. The silence in their earpieces persisted.

“Wouldn’t it be funny if we actually got lost during the NHR?” muttered Jinai as the pair sat down for a water break. “Nothing quite like a storm to shake it up.”

“Don’t say that!” Anqien sulked. “It might just happen.” She slapped their arm and laughed.

Then, as the golden hour threw a few precious rays through cracks in the clouds, they saw something—solidifying faintly from the sun-drenched horizon—a pair of islands just off to the right of their bow.

Jinai raced to the stern. “They’re about three miles out,” she said, shading her eyes. Anqien shuffled the map out of the watertight safe and glanced between the compass and the two islands, sitting misty and strange in the distance.

“Alright, we’re some way west of the ideal path,” they said, eyeballing the bearings of the city of Antao from where they were. “A hundred and twenty degrees from north should get us to Antao.”

Jinai had already returned to the mainsheet, and at Anqien’s declaration, she took hold of the car. “Ready to gybe!” she shouted, and began to haul the sail in through the wind. “Might wanna duck!”

As the prevailing gale caught the sail on the other side, the boom swung sharply to starboard, and Anqien dove by the helm while it whooshed overhead. Springing back upright, they spun the helm to correct the angle as the yacht turned through the wind, one eye on the compass until they were pointing a hundred and twenty degrees from north.

Then, carried on a broad reach, the Cloudlanders’ sailboat sped into the grey, clear of the storm, with only their compass and calculations to point their way.

---

“—back? Should be back, do you hear me—”

“Hey!” Anqien pounced on the very first inkling of voices from the other end of their line. “We hear you!”

“Oh, thank Laveda,” Jinai exclaimed.

“They’re back!” Lujang yelled, relief bearing the edge of frustration.

“There you are!” Telaki sounded like a parent reunited with her children. “How have you been going these past five hours?”

“Whoa, five?” Jinai gasped.

Anqien glanced at the clock on their dashboard. “Yeah, that’s right,” they said. “We struggled with the breakers for a fair bit there, but we pulled out soon enough. Other than that we’ve been alright! Rode the updraft until the storm turned east, and now we’re uh, a couple of miles past that pair of islands at the top of the Nami Archipelago, and headed southeast to Antao.”

“Oh!” Iki chimed in. There was a little frantic chatter as they started to pour over their copy of the map. “Yes, perfect, if you’re where I believe, then you would want to be headed due a hundred and seventeen degrees right now.”

“Great, we’re just about doing that, yeah,” Anqien said, turning the helm to adjust their heading.

“Perfect! Perfect, this is what we like to hear. Intel says that no one’s close to the finish yet, but it looks like you have just three hours to go.”

“Phew, my arms are starting to kill me,” they muttered. “But ten hours on leg two? That’s almost as good as last year, even with the storm.”

“Oh yeah, it’s a hell of a storm, this one,” said Iki. “Wouldn’t be surprised if your absolute speed was well above twenty knots.”

“We were doing twenty-five sometimes,” Jinai said.

“Well, there you go.”

“It’s all chaos back here,” said Janda. “No one else can reach their sailors. So it’s pretty dang promising that we can hear you right now. Talk about a great ad opportunity for Cloud Connectors!”

“Oh, we won’t hear the end of it,” Lujang muttered.

“The Mirage crew is having a proper shouting match in the corridors,” Telaki said. “They’re doing their best considering their team has basically flown out of reach of the relays.”

Warmed by the sudden return of their crew’s voices in their ears, Jinai and Anqien renewed their navigational efforts, spotting the wind and taking currents opportunistically. They made up mile after mile, riding the gales and puffs out to the end while the sky turned red.

Two hours after the sun sank into the sea and the night turned inky blue, there began a thin nimbostratus shower. It did not change the prevailing wind, so they stayed on their course, slicing the waves, into the last miles of the leg.

The first white-blue lights of Antao glittered into being, spanning miles of the horizon. The shape of the plateau behind it was perceptible from the lights much farther and higher above the dense constellation of streetlamps below.

The Cloudlanders soared into the glow of the port lights blurred by the drizzle—terminals and pulleys, floodlights on the docks bombastically welcoming them into the largest port city of the republic of Helfi. Among them, the blazing orange of the two official boats that marked the finish point resolved from the hazy backdrop, pulling them in like fish to a lure.

“We’re in sight of the finish,” announced Jinai, and there was a chorus of shouting amongst the crew. Then it was easy as one, two, three—they came into earshot, then into view, of the spectators, packed like teeth in a jaw—first the whistles, then the bellows and revving of motors, swallowed by the tumult as they shot towards the marks.

Almost as soon as they crossed the finish line of leg two, a cheer surged on the shore to drown all other noise, with the sort of electric spark that told them that they had been the first across the line.

“Anqien!” Jinai shouted. “I think…”

“We did it? Whoa!”

As they luffed the sails and the boat slowed towards the incandescent wharves, they saw that theirs was the lone sailboat mast within sight. At the mainsheet, Jinai threw her head up and gave a cry of delight. Anqien steered the yacht to port, just clear of the wharfs, and their teammate scrambled to the helm to throw her arms around them.

They waved to the screaming, flailing spectators while, over their heads, a board mounted on the wall of Hailang Mall lit up with their team name and updated score at the top—three points.

“Assuming the Mirages come second, we’re neck and neck,” said Anqien.

Jinai snorted. “Pretty damn sure they’ll be second.” Up on the wharf, a man in Sail Fed uniform was waving them towards the right with two fluorescent flags, and they obliged, following the directions towards the local marina.

“We won’t see you tonight, so rest up well,” said Telaki over the relay, after the initial unintelligible festivities of the crew, in earpieces not built to handle that volume of noise. “We’ll brief you for tomorrow. It’s looking like a ten o’clock start, like today. You make me so, so proud…”

It wasn’t till five whole minutes later—as they were alighting onto the jetty of their berth and received by a guide—that the cheers of the audience began to rouse again, and they both cast glances at the board as they walked. Over the fans heads, it lit up with the name of the AmaShiru Mirage, with their total points: three.

Jinai stopped in her tracks as they did, seeming transfixed by the moment, and the lights above. “Just like last year,” she breathed.

The boarding facilities at Antao were at a dedicated hostel for sailors in transit. Bags over their shoulders, they climbed the unfamiliar marble steps and took their keys from the counter, shifting effortlessly back into Helfi-yu to thank the receptionist. They walked together to find their rooms—two adjacent, nondescript black doors in a second-floor corridor.

Before they parted, Anqien felt Jinai tap them on their shoulder. When they turned, her shoulder tap turned seamlessly into a hug. As their arms came to circle her, she ruffled their hair, which had slipped halfway out of its band. They felt her pull it the rest of the way off.

“I’m so scared, like you wouldn’t believe,” she said as she stepped back, eyes so wide they reflected all the corridor lights.

“I'd believe it,” they replied, the nervous flutter of their heart turning all at once into a steady ache of wanting. They averted their gaze. Since they had seen the scoreboard, everything had begun to feel like an echo of last year. “I’m absolutely freaking out right now. But everything we’ve done has prepared us for this. Even last year’s run.”

She nodded quietly, prying herself out of the hug, although her hand lingered on their shoulder. “Well…whatever happens tomorrow, we’re going it together. And if it starts to get too much, let me know, alright?”

“Of course,” they answered. “You too, tell me if there’s anything you need.”

They clasped hands and parted at the doors. In the rush of the intensifying rain, Anqien locked the door behind them, battling their nerves all the way to the bed.

Well, we're here. The last leg of the last race. The next 2 chapters I feel need to be posted in the same week SO...

---

Episode 21: Strait Chase

I lost track of the weekdays and didn't realise it was Saturday, so have the chapter first. The art will come later!

The last day of the Niro-Helfi Race glowed to life, cold and fresh on the Antao Port. There was no trace of rainstorm left in the ice blue sky. After a breakfast taken at a quieter pace than the last, Jinai and Anqien met with their crew on this last walk to the marina. All around, the waterside buildings were straight, narrow and grimy, leaves gathering on rusted drains. This city that had boomed two decades ago was showing its maturity.

“All fed and ready to go?” Telaki was answered by two quiet nods. Across the jetties, competitors were stretching, jogging and refuelling their engines, all with a remoteness born of nerves. They straightened their backs as they came past Xye and Zera, having a chat in front of their yacht along the same jetty as theirs.

The Cloudlander crew picked up their stride, but the Mirages had already broken out of their conversation to look. Zera called out, “Nice one evening the score last night! May the best team win.”

“Namely, us!” Xye cut in, shades glinting at them.

Jinai rolled her eyes, but when she next looked, Zera had yanked Xye back by the collar and was tearing him a new one in Niro-hei. He nodded enthusiastically and then turned back to them with a two-finger salute. “Good luck—you’ll need it!”

“Close enough,” they heard Zera mutter.

“Yeah, good luck to you too,” Jinai obliged without turning.

When they had moved out of earshot, Telaki said, “The Mirages made a miscalculation yesterday, unlucky for them. Going in front of the storm took slightly longer.”

“Kind of a miracle they still came second then,” Jinai replied. They were beasts, she had always known that much, but it took more than just competence to come second without radios.

“They did right amazing,” Iki said, nodding. “Sends a chill up my spine to imagine what they might do today.”

“Hopefully not enough,” Jinai answered in clipped syllables. Her hands were icy. She clasped them together.

As they came up to their moored yacht, Lujang stopped the sailors with hands on their shoulders. “Headsets,” she said. They stood wordlessly while she installed and started the devices. She pushed her own receiver to her mouth. “Do you hear me?”

“Loud and clear,” Jinai said while Anqien gave a gesture of affirmation. She turned to Telaki with a motion at the Cloudlander. “How’s she doing?”

“The sails took a bit of a beating yesterday,” she said, “so we swapped them out.”

“New sails? Fantastic. Thanks,” Jinai said with a nod. Then turning to Iki, “What’s the weather situation today?”

“We’re looking at stiff, persistent northwesterlies at least to mid-afternoon,” he replied. “So it’ll be a close reach north, and as you round the Cape of Joutien, you’ll have the wind in your backs. A comfortable broad reach home.”

“So, you’re saying both the Sunken City and the long way around Canlan are viable,” Jinai said.

“Yeah, it’s your choice, both will get you there in reasonable time.”

She nodded slowly. “I honestly thought we would take the City today. But on a broad reach…I don’t know.”

Telaki glanced from one sailor to another. “Well, that’s up to you,” she said. “I say make that decision as you round the cape, once you know what the Mirage is doing.”

With just fifteen minutes remaining before the starting horn sounded, the Cloudlander crew buckled down to work. Besides the formalities, the chit-chat was thin and sporadic, nothing to pad the conversation while they kitted up and ran their checks. Life jackets. Attractor glove. Shoelaces, again.

One by one the yachts around them peeled away, till only half remained in the marina. At last, Telaki clapped her protégés on the shoulder and nodded. “Well, looks like we’re all good to go. It’s the moment of truth, little stars! Shine bright!”

“We’ll do our best,” Jinai replied. Anqien nodded mutely back.

Now, as the pair took to the ladder’s cold rungs and began to descend to the yacht, they finally broke their silence. “I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

“Aw…just the nerves?” asked Jinai, waiting for them to vacate the rung below her before she stepped down. “Or was there something funky in your breakfast?”

They shook their head as they leapt off, clinging just a second longer to the bottom rung than usual. “I wish it were food poisoning.”

At the bottom, Jinai missed a rung on the ladder and landed on the deck with an ungraceful thump. By then, her teammate had sat down on the back thwart, by the helm, bouncing their heels on the bumpy metal flooring.

She sat down beside them. They were gripping the edges of the seat, white-knuckled, the colour drained from their face.

“Hey, hey,” she whispered, reaching up to rub their back.

“I don’t know if I’m ready for this,” Anqien said. “It’s such a big deal. It’s too much.”

“That’s my fault,” Jinai replied, voice low and earnest. Something about seeing her teammate like this made her heart hurt. “I’ve made such a huge deal about this being my last NHR. But really…it’s just another race. Isn’t it?”

“Is it?” they replied. “But you’ve been saying…”

“The stakes aren’t much different from last year, or any other year. And honestly…if we did come in second?” She pried their hand off the seat and clasped it between hers, to be answered by widening eyes, catching reflections of the sky and all its clouds. “I think I’ll take it better this year. Just a little. Because I see you better now…and how much you enjoy just being on the podium. It’s made me appreciate it better, too. Second in the world is pretty damn good. And the thought of standing there with you, showing off our medals...it’s a nice one.”

They laughed with their gaze cast to a side, fingers fidgeting in her grip. “Gods,” they whispered. “It makes my head feel light just imagining.”

She grinned. “Great, keep that smile on. You look so pretty when you do.” Anqien gave a little squeak.

On the jetty, Lujang clutched her head in her hands and screamed, “Will the two of you just—”

The first call horn interrupted her, and the two, briefly lost in staring at each other, jolted apart with a cry and darted to their positions. Heart pounding, Jinai began to hoist their new sail with its maroon streaks. On an impulse of the breeze, they coursed out of the marina with their tell-tales aloft. Into the starting convergence they wove themselves, threading a lane parallel to the shore.

The coastline of Antao was flat and wide, not a bay so much as a straight open coastline that ran north to south. The start line looked almost naked out on the water, marked by orange flags that fluttered atop the superstructures of two anchored tugs. Up north, the silhouettes of pulley cranes projected up and out of the shoreline. Down south, the forested coast curved out of sight.

It was a fitting start for the third and final leg of the Niro-Helfi Race. Half the distance of the other two, and with Thread engines permitted, the sail from Antao to Wulien followed the outline of the Helfi coast and would be over in four hours.

As Jinai and Anqien darted and wove into the tangle, the last call sounded. The waters were whitened by  the jockeying behind the start line, more than there had been at the past two starts. The Cloudlander veered around the pack, homing in on the starboard mark. “Thirty seconds!”

Fifteen. It was like counting off heartbeats. They positioned, adjusted, readied their trajectory.

Ten, nine, eight, seven…

They nodded at each other and tacked. Effortlessly—they had it down to an art—they leebowed the Rider and the North Star, cutting them off with only two seconds to spare. A chorus of protests erupted behind them, only to be sliced in two by the rending blast of the start horn, drowning out all noise.

Never had such a thunderous sound been so chilling. As they burst past the line and forward on the undulating surf, Jinai nodded to Anqien with a spiralling gesture—weave. They lifted their hand into the air with their gloved hand, plucking Threads from the Helfi sky. Like they had a thousand times—under duress and in tranquil silence both—they wove the Thread across the deck, lifting the hull out of the water with each knot they tied.

Then the boats were all in the air, save for their hydrofoils, and the wind was blinding in the eyes of the racing fleet. The crowds of spectators blitzed by, terraces upon terraces of tourists with cameras, all of whom had flocked to the largest port of Helfi to watch them leave at the horn blast.

“Good going, hotshots!” came the unmistakeable voice of Xye from the turquoise sailboat to their right. They were as close to neck-and-neck as they could be.

“Piss off!” Jinai yelled back.

“We definitely cleared that leebow, right?” Anqien whispered into their headset, casting glances over their shoulder at the Rider and North Star.

“No doubt about it,” Jinai replied, teeth gritted and eyes narrowed on the path ahead.

They surged past the end of the port, the striped cliffs of Helfi taking over. They pulled into the lead pack—almost side by side, in nautical terms, with the other three: the Mirage, the Catcher, and the North Star they had only just cut off from the right. All were aloft on their hydrofoils, ploughing saltwater in a churning wake.

The shoreline sloped away so that they were now encompassed by a grand bay of cliffs and stacks, undulating in great striated sweeps, farther than the horizon. Now the race was truly getting underway: the leaders began to fan out, Mirage and Cloudlander trending off about half a mile out into the open sea, while their two competitors hung slightly closer to the coastline. The wind, uninhibited by geographic barriers, blew much faster in open sea than close to shore—and in an air-sailing race, where a surprise gust could topple the boat in a flash, sometimes playing it safer paid dividends.

But not for the two vying for the trophy. Today they brought their fiercest to the game, ploughing into the waters where the greatest gusts blew. At every instant, Jinai had her eyes in two places: she clocked when their opponents in green found and caught a short puff, pulling ahead, and she glanced about for other transients, keener than a shark scouring the surface for its next meal.

At the forty-five minute mark, the fleet had separated into clear packs, and the four leaders had not changed.

Then, in that minute, the prevailing wind swung, becoming a northerly—almost straight in their faces. All four boats began to beat out of phase, Jinai and Anqien taking shorter beats than the Mirage, which was farther from the shore. Little by little, zig by zag, their rivals clawed forward to five seconds ahead.

“That’s nothing,” Jinai growled through gritted teeth, eyes out on the water below while Anqien cast theirs to the telltales above. Here the wind was chaos, and they cranked the jib car to trim the sail; the matching clatter of the mainsheet car told them Jinai had taken the cue.

They had only just brought their gaze level when she gasped and shouted, “Over to starboard!”

“Let’s tack,” Anqien replied, knowing without asking that she’d found a good puff.

“Ready to tack!” she answered. A singular mind, they swung to starboard and dipped, eyes on the brief disturbance of the water that indicated a gust of wind till—with a clean countdown from Jinai—they caught the lifting wind and gybed into it.

By now, the Mirage had snuck forward to a seven-second lead. Their boat, with its black and blue-green sail, charged through the waters of Helfi, hungry for no less than their third trophy in a row. Yet again, Jinai witnessed firsthand the skill and aplomb that graced their every move—deft, clean tacks and well-controlled heeling, which both Zera and Xye’s respective years as short course champions would have given them. They were experts under pressure, and it had shown all three times.

“They’re good, I’ll give them that,” Jinai said under her breath. But the puff they were on had proven an investment, lifting them forward till they were almost nose-to-nose with the Mirage again—close enough for a photo finish, if the race ended there.

But the race did not end there. They were minutes off from the famous first turn of the last leg that marked its halfway point: rounding the Cape of Joutien, and down southeast onto the home stretch.

Just before they swerved into the turn, they veered close to the Mirage. Anqien straightened at the sound of taunts issuing from the rival boat—Xye was staring right at them, no doubt with a shit-eating grin, and most of the words were lost in the whistle of the wind, but they caught— “see ya later!”

The words trailed after them as they swerved across—behind—the Cloudlanders’ path, and straight diagonal towards the tip of the Cape.

“Tack to port! Tack to port!” Anqien shouted.

“Shit! Ready to tack!” Jinai called back.

They snapped the Threads on the port side. She hauled the mainsheet, and they swung in an arc, taking an outer lane to the Mirage, as both boats they cleared the tip of the cape and the three seastacks of rainbow rock layers hurtled into view.

Like a comb it parted them—Mirage between the first stack and the shore, Cloudlander between the first and second stacks. Now, as they pulled out of the great hairpin turn and honed in parallel with the shore once more, it became clear that their foes had regained their lead, and had widened it to ten seconds.

 Xye and Zera whooped on their deck, and Jinai spat out a wordless, frustrated cry, as both teams steeled up for the final push.

IT HAS BEGUN. I didn't want too big of a gap between Episodes 21 and 22, so you can expect 22 sometime during the week.

---

Episode 22: Home Run

Aaaand the teams on their way back to Wulien! This is it!

The wind was howling by their ears. This was a strong broad reach for the northeastern coast of Helfi, and out of the water, the wind propelled them through the air at twenty-two knots, unhindered by the choppiness below.

Here and there, through the storm of Jinai’s thoughts, places of familiarity were lighting sparks of memory. The zigzag of the coastline. The two headlands jutting at the end of a straight stretch of coast. The beach of broken rocks.

The chase went on without concession, both sailors shouting across the deck and heaving every wheel and rope of the sailboat with their hearts booming in their ears when their control crew weren't relaying information.

Ever since the cape, Zera and Xye had handled the twists and turns flawlessly. Despite the slow crescendo of familiarity with the coastline, the Cloudlander was forced—in the absence of valuable puffs—to keep up, to play catch, taking every turn half a minute behind.

“Should I get the spinnaker?” Jinai shouted as they ducked around a rock in the sea. Everything was moving too fast, yet too slow. The air held them back.

“No spinnakers on a broad reach!” Telaki answered firmly in her ear. “Downwind will take you straight into a cliff!”

She shook herself, every gasp whistling, but her hands continued to play listlessly over the mainsheet. A sound like a sob escaped her. “I’m panicking,” she said, and then said no more.

Anqien felt her laboured voice hit them like an arrow through the ribcage. “Jinai,” they said, tapping on her forearm with eyes aflame with terror and voice somehow, impossibly calm. She continued to grip the mainsheet steady, but only just. “Jinai, it’s fine. Second place would be amazing. Wouldn’t it?”

“I can’t be second again. How will I face anyone if I end my career like that?”

“You don’t have to face anyone. Everyone already thinks you’re one of the best in the world. I think you’re the best in the world! But, more importantly, I want to finish this race with you, and be able to say we both did our absolute best. Could we do that?”

Jinai drew a breath through her teeth, held it, and let it out. She repeated this twice more. When she next met her teammate’s gaze, an odd new vigour—fatalistic, yet forgiving—had awakened in her eyes. “You’re right,” she said. “Let’s do it—both of us.”

Without a word, she rose, at ready by the mainsheet, and it seemed that the rest of the world beyond the strait fell away from her.

Far off, the distant blue shape of Canlan Island rose from behind the horizon. It was coming. The split where they would have to make that decision—one that would make or break this run.

The Mirage was not going to lose any ground in a straight chase. Jinai watched as they began to gybe to port, and the boat veered leftward on a sure path around the outer coast of Canlan Island. The easy split.

At this point, it seemed a foregone conclusion which way they would go: there was no way they would win if they followed the Mirage now. The only way past them was through.

It took only a singular firm look, exchanged between Jinai and Anqien, and a call of ready to gybe! They turned to starboard, and onto the course through the Sunken City.

---

This was a stretch of sea that Jinai and Anqien had sailed an uncountable number of times in the last three years. A hundred miles of coast down the Canlan Strait, it was speckled with towns whose names they knew—Meiyen, Helun, Tong’an—all pointing the way back to Wulien.

But the city they did not know—the ancient clifftop seaport of Gumeiyen, hubris incarnate, which had once tumbled from the clifftops and shattered on the seafloor in the centuries before written history—eluded them, and perhaps forever would.

As they hurtled towards the millennium-old debris, towards the ghosts of hidden towers, Jinai and Anqien locked eyes once. “It’s the last time,” she said. “May as well fly or die trying.”

“No dying on my watch,” Anqien answered, one hand ready on the helm. “Let’s focus.”

Jinai began to ease the sails. The boat slowed till the wind was just below whistling. She grasped the mainsheet and adjusted her grip. “Gybing to starboard!” Anqien shouted, as the first zigzag of this treacherous course began.

Jinai heaved the sail and Anqien tweaked the helm to port to ease the curve. They arced around the first row of hidden roofs and shot into clear water—then again gybed to port, right on the back of the last, wind driving them relentlessly forth. They strung both gybes together in an S-curve through the two underwater streets, and righted themselves again for the next sequence on their slalom course.

They were re-entering the City again, as in so many nightmares before—a meteoric barrage of calculations, consternations, near-misses and gybes. They bounced back and forth between the cliff faces of Wulien and Canlan Island, at times dangerously close to grazing a rock—they barely felt their legs as they swerved around steeples and sideways eaves.

This time, something seemed to click.

All those months and years of practice—the failed runs in the rain, in the sunset—lined up in their heads, like a jigsaw, and suddenly Jinai found she wasn't trying to solve. As the onslaught of dark, tangled shapes hit her eyes, her hands moved to answer, spurred by instinct.

She called out, “Twenty degrees to starboard!” As if a signal had been fired between them, Anqien tensioned the Threads with their left hand as she gybed, and corrected with the rudder with their right. Always, their eye was on her—keeping up, holding fast—and every gybe and shift of weight over the hull was answered with an instantaneous reaction: one mind strung together by a peerless trust.

They cleared the steeple, its old bell that had seen no rest chiming their passage. They were inching towards the place where they had toppled into the sea last year.

A memory replaying, they closed in on the crush of ruins that had gathered tidepools within themselves, floorplans exposed to the open air and the ocean’s scavenging beasts. They saw their own shadow, twisted awry in the crossfire of wind and water. She saw Josa in the doorway of that nameless shop, disappearing for good into the night.

“How far do we have to go?” Anqien asked.

“Where are we, Iki? We just passed the bell.” Jinai could see where they would enter the maze of roofs.

“Wait up, I got you,” Iki replied. “You’re through two-thirds of the strait. Coming up on the real chaos, hang in there!”

“You're doing amazing!” Telaki shouted.

They gybed into a diagonal, hull briefly bumping something, and both cried out as they dragged the yacht around again. Jinai pointed the clearest path through the buildings littered along next hundred yards—another diagonal almost to the far cliff.

The wind had shifted, coming ever so slightly over their right shoulders. “Duck!” Jinai shouted, cursing as her stomach roiling and they hurtled into another gybe. But seeming to know her intent even before hearing the creak of the sail, Anqien had already ducked, and the boom swung sharply over their head.

“Oh shit!” Jinai spat, eyes snapping to three rock islands that were suddenly half as far as they had been before. In three seconds, they would...

“Port! To port!” Anqien yelled as they snapped a bundle of Threads to starboard, gesticulating wildly to heel the Cloudlander in the other direction.

As the yacht swung clumsily into the port gybe away from the rocks, they flung their bodies to port, a desperate bid to sharpen the turn.

But as she did, something gave between her foot and the deck.

Before she even felt her centre of gravity swing beyond her control, she started to scream.

The slanting rails were no longer in front of her. Panic wrenched her heart from her chest as her body hurtled over the white edge of the hull, towards the rocks beneath—

“Jinai!” In the blur of the sea-spray and flashing lights she felt her right foot hook the stanchion wires with a twang and a crack of steel. Fingers clamped around her other ankle as her shin hit the edge of the bulwark.

Torso hanging over the sharp rocks, she shrieked in the wind, using all her core strength to hold herself above the hull. She watched the waters glimmer below, an inch from tears. Glancing shakily backward, she saw Anqien's hand wound tight around her ankle. Her teammate’s shouting and pleading turned to a tearful cry of, “Gods! I got you!”

“Get me back in!” she cried.

In a concerted backswing, Anqien dragged Jinai leg-first onto the deck. Once the deck was again within reach, she shoved herself the last distance back, to land on shaky feet. “Fucking damn it!” she shouted, flinging her trembling arms around her teammate. “That could have been so much worse!”

“What? What just happened?” was Lujang’s flustered shout in their earpieces.

“I broke a stanchion,” Jinai replied. “Let’s get back to work.” Then they flew back to their positions, hands firm upon the rope and the helm.

They were lucky that the sea had been clear since the near accident. Now a handful of jutting rocks, each larger than a house, formed a channel ahead. There was a quick back and forth between them—we can take this one!

With the gentlest of gybes, even with the wind in their backs, the lofting Cloudlander threaded itself through the eye of the needle between the last monoliths.

The last straggling structure of the Sunken City—a fallen watchtower leaning against a submerged cliff—hurtled past on their port side. Then, silence. Up ahead, the strait continued unbroken.

“We…we’re through,” Jinai murmured. “That was it.”

The sailors looked at each other, catching their breaths. In their ears, the crew was shouting every blessing and curse on written record. They grinned at each other, then laughed, as Jinai dove to the bow to unstow the spinnaker.

“I’m so proud of you,” Telaki said, the jubilation in her voice smoothed over by a layer of caution. “It’s not over yet. Lock it in.”

“Where is the Mirage?” Jinai said.

“We don’t know yet,” Telaki replied. “But you’re on a run till you reach the harbour. I’ve got a good feeling about this.”

The spinnaker billowed as she hoisted it, filled with the northwesterly wind that roared down the strait. It lifted them through the waves like a kite on an updraft. Their hydrofoil sliced the water.

Jinai had never felt wind like this, on the racecourse or off it. The last wind of her last race, blue skies streaked by red-white limestone cliffs. It was sweet with saltwater, and she knew its whistle by heart.

“Do you think…we could…” Anqien breathed.

Before they knew it, they had come back into view of Wulien—home and hell, the place of so many dreams and delusions. It was dressed in milk-white sand and barnacled rocks, glass storefronts and concrete piers.

She remembered setting foot here on a jetty eight years ago, ready to make the world hers.

The finish marks, fluttering surely and steadily in orange, were bright against the wharves and piers, gleaming off the water. Even from here, two miles out, the roar of the crowd was audible over the sea, and the glitter and flash of the coastline betrayed the teeming of onlookers.

From the other side of the bay, too, they saw a blue-green sail clear the southern tip of Canlan. The Mirage looked almost the same distance away from the marks—no doubt they had made full use of that downwind run.

But the wind was in the rivals’ faces now, and the Cloudlander was sailing home on a stiff tailwind.

---

Jinai did not allow herself any celebration, even at this juncture. She’d been burned too many times to be lured into a sense of safety, even now, as they crossed the edge of the port and soared close enough to the promenades to see the heads of the spectators. Each one watched, waved, or snapped photographs—a ripple of faces and arms lifted in their wake.

The two sailboats closed in on the finish line in a V, the Mirage from the east and the Cloudlander from the northwest. The sunlight beamed from over their shoulders, illuminating the marks like twin flames that left bright streaks in their vision.

“Little bit to starboard?” Anqien called out.

“Ready to gybe!” Jinai hauled out the mainsail to starboard. As they began to arc towards the finish, Anqien wove Threads through the starboard rails, easing their turn till they were in a sure, unshakeable trajectory towards the finish.

They flew into the bay, the AmaShiru Mirage behind their left shoulder. The sun was in her teammate’s hair, the wind whipping it over their shoulder and against their cheek.

“You got this—you got this!” Telaki screamed.

She forgot who she was for moments, light and shadow, bollards and leaves, camera flashes and clouds, swinging past in turns, as they descended towards the finish line, their hull skimming the surface once more.

Screaming and crying

---

Episode 23: Dusk Cascade

Jinai barely noticed the moment they crossed between the marks, but the tide of screams and bellows rolling in from the shore, and the yells and shrieks of their crew over the relay, woke her to the reality on the other side of the finish line.

“You did it, you beautiful people!” “Eat shit, Mirages!” “I knew it! I knew it!” “Those are my little stars!” Janda’s, Lujang’s, Iki’s and Telaki’s voices were a jumble in their headsets.

Jinai had expected to be thinking a thousand things in this moment, yet in her head there was perfect silence, amid the shockwaves and noise of the moment, surging over her.

At the helm, Anqien was transfixed, gaze slowly sweeping the sky and the antennas of rooftops over the spectator crowd, down to the umpire with their flip sign raised, bearing the number 1.

Jinai was first to snap out of her daze. She ran to luff the sails, then she stumbled tipsily to her teammate, and seeing them from here—her light at the end of the night, her reprieve and refuge—she began to sob.

She spun them around into a hug, laughing and crying at once. They shouted her name and threw their arms around her. There they stood, swaying and weeping, as the crowds’ voices rose in the background, over the whirr of their rivals’ yacht across the finish line.

When they pulled apart, a whole minute later, Jinai beamed and whispered, “Let’s get us back to the marina.”

Before they did, Jinai glanced over her shoulder at where Xye and Zera had landed in the harbour behind them. They were on their feet, grinning ear to ear with an arm around each other’s shoulders while they waved like monarchs to the crowd.

Zera pointed at Jinai then, and both pairs of eyes on the other boat darted to her. She gave Jinai a thumbs up while Xye flailed her arms with a yell that was just intelligible over the waves as, “Yeah! Good fucking race!”

Anqien spent two seconds gaping before they hollered back, “You did amazing!”

Across the golden water, they laughed and drifted towards their home marina.

---

Jinai spent the rest of her dizzy walk back with her arm around Anqien’s back. Many a time they turned to ask little questions, like, “how are you feeling?” And her replies were giddy, “like I’m still asleep.” They waved at spectators as the cameras flashed down from the docks, and turned to smile when the reporters and photographers yelled for attention.

On the jetties, uniformed ushers handed them towels while they slung their bags over their shoulders. Shoving protein bars into their mouths (they had not caught any breathing room for a meal at today’s race), they followed the officials along velvet barricaded pathways, past empty storefronts that they had seen a thousand times, to the changing rooms in the Sparkling Reef. “Once you’re done, come meet us at the stage,” said one.

Once Jinai had freshened up, hands still shaking from the race, she found a spot by the wall outside to wait. Her bag hung heavy with her saltwater-soaked wetsuit and the aches were starting to hit, but she still felt one leap from floating away. Anqien took about five minutes longer. When they showed up, their hair was completely redone, ponytail combed into the band.

“There you are,” she exclaimed, hooking her arm around theirs. They gasped as she dragged them up the black carpet—through the late afternoon warmth, the whistles and cheers, the cavalcade of camera flashes.

“So how will you spend your first day as the new NHR champion?” Anqien asked.

Jinai tapped her chin. “Prepping for the press conference and the afterparty. You know the drill.”

They chuckled. “I mean, yeah, but what would you want to do?”

Shouts of reporters beckoned in the background, but Jinai heard only her companion’s voice. “Well, I’d have a proper meal, for starters,” she said. “And I’d want some one-on-one time with you. If you were fine with that.”

“More time than we’ve already had during the race?”

She lifted her chin to laugh. “Oh, you silly,” she said, flicking their ponytail. “Time together where we’re not thinking about the next tack or gybe all the time. I want to be focusing on you alone, is that so much to ask?”

They ummed and ahhed and looking at everything but her face. “I mean, count me in,” Anqien replied. “Gods, why do you keep teasing me.”

“Well, you make it so fun,” she answered, elbowing their ribs. “And you seem to like it.”

“Guilty as charged,” they breathed—and something about the way they said it snapped her resolve.

“Hey, hey,” she said, tugging on Anqien’s elbow. The pair had stopped fifty yards from where the path ended in portable stairs. But right now she couldn’t care less about getting to the stage. “May I kiss you? Right now?”

“Uh…I…” Anqien tried in vain to form words, eyes bright as the sun.

“I mean, if you’re not sure, that’s fine, let's—”

Their stare became a glare. She felt their fingers catch her chin and tip it upward—and they smothered the rest of the sentence out with a kiss fiercer than she’d ever thought them capable of.

Jinai loved to talk big, but when Anqien kissed her, she felt her knees go weak and a bolt shoot through her chest. Amid a clamour and a surge of camera flashes, she threw her arms about their neck and reeled them in.

A small part of her fretted still—too soon? Too public? Should they have sorted their problems out first? But mostly, her mind was hazy with the sensation of their mouth pressed so eagerly to hers.

They spent half a minute furiously kissing, weeks of tension evaporating like rain on a hot pavement, and all at once there was no crowd, no cameras, no past and future, only she and they and all the adoration she no longer had to hold at bay.

Anqien was first to tear themself away, breathless and feverishly flushed. “Well.” They nodded once. “Let’s go pick up that trophy. We are. Fifty yards away.”

---

“And it is my absolute pleasure to present your champions of the thirty-second Niro-Helfi Race. Representing the Cloud Connectors Corporation—the crew of the Cloudlander, Liu Anqien and Jinai Rao Vailu!”

The moment the Sailing Federation’s chairperson waved Anqien and Jinai onstage was when they knew for certain that there had been no last-minute calls—disqualifications or fouls or otherwise—that had upset the result of the race.

They shared the podium with the crew of the AmaShiru Mirage—Xye and Zera, who had accepted the silver medals with the same panache as if they had been first, and the crew of the Kani-do Catcher—tears welling in their eyes when they bowed for the medals. The pair clasped each other’s hands, till Sendou began to lose their composure and the pair fell into a tearful embrace.

A beaming Sail Fed chair lifted the trophies for them. Smiling at each other and nodding once, like they had a hundred times, Jinai and Anqien synchronously accepted the polished golden cups.

Up till then, Jinai had been floating in a cloud of senseless bliss. But now, as the cold metal was pressed into her hands, she felt her feet hit the ground, and everything crashed in, all at once. The thundering applause. The years of toil. The months she’d spent alone in the dark of her apartment. Telaki, weeping with joy in the front row, and their crew, rising from their seats.

And Anqien, her hope incarnate, who clutched their trophy close and grinned right back, her own joy mirrored in their eyes.

They had always been right there. In rain and sun, in the doldrums of her grief. Sailing a thousand miles together, year after year.

A boom and a flash of colours drew their eyes to the sky, a volley of fireworks blossoming overhead. Jinai flew to hug her teammate, and hid her falling tears in their shoulder. “Where would I be without you?” she croaked, wiping her eyes on their shirt. “It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“I should be the one saying that!” they answered in her ear, and their voice too was shaky with tears. “Have a good rest, you’ve more than earned it.”

“We both have, silly,” she replied.

“Damn,” Zera muttered from beside them, a camera flashing while they stared at each other. On their other side, the Catchers were kissing. “I can’t believe we’re fifth wheeling up here.”

---

Anqien and Jinai spent half an hour posing for photographs with the other winners, watching Xye kiss his medal a dozen times, answering journalists over barricades and straining at every juncture not to say too much. By then, dusk had fallen, and the floodlights over the stage had taken over illuminating their surrounds.

Festivities gave way to food. Midway through the catered dinner backstage, Telaki snatched them both into an embrace worthy of a bear. “How are you feeling, the most beautiful, amazing, unstoppable team in the world?” she exclaimed, releasing them.

“Slowly getting over the shock!” Jinai replied. She couldn’t help grinning back; their coach looked like she had won the trophy herself, rocking on her heels and toes, eyes bright under the spotlights. Anqien nodded enthusiastically, shoving the rest of their fried roll into their mouth.

“Great, great,” she said, beckoning them up the barricaded walkways and towards the parking zone. “The rest of the crew have had to head home, but they asked me to send you their biggest, hugest congratulations. You’ll get to talk to them tomorrow. At the party.” She winked. “You’re coming right?”

“Well, now we have to. Iki, Janda, and Lujang won this thing too,” Anqien said, dusting crumbs off their face. “And so did you! You’re the most brilliant, badass coach in the world.”

“Aw shucks,” Telaki chuckled.

“Seriously, you are the reason we managed this,” Jinai said, going in for another hug. It seemed like hugging was how she was reining in her tears today. “You always have the best words for us. Even when it feels like everything’s going to shit.” She laughed. “I’m sorry I ever complained you weren’t blunt enough.”

Telaki smiled. “I try to find the right words for the moment,” she replied. “If you’re not feeling great—and I know that’s where you often are—then why would I want to kick you down some more? I’m always here for you, dear. Even now that you’re…” She pulled out of the hug, but her hands continued to grasp her shoulders. “Now that you’re done with sailing for good? Are you totally set on that?”

Now there was nothing Jinai could do to hide the tears as they streamed down her cheeks. She drew her lips into a quivering line and nodded. “It seems—it seems like as good a time as any to wrap it all up,” she said, lifting the trophy and pointing at the etching of her name.

Telaki nodded thoughtfully. “Then I’m happy for you to do that,” she replied, patting Jinai on the shoulder. “You’ve been with me longer than anyone else, and I think I agree with you—even though it’s absolutely breaking my heart to say goodbye.”

“Well, it’s not goodbye,” she protested. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You aren’t?” Telaki’s mouth slackened, as if this were the most surprising piece of news today. “Weren’t you on about how you wanted to head back to Nitajo after your piece-of-shit ex left?”

Jinai shook her head. “I think…I like this place enough to stay,” she said. Then she looked meaningfully at Anqien. “And I want to be here to keep helping the team, and whoever comes along next—”

“Oh—”

“—but mostly Anqien. I’m a little biased, but we make a good team, don’t we?”

Telaki’s mouth widened in a grin. “Oh!” she exclaimed. “That’s great news, then! By the way…what’s this I hear about you two stealing kisses all over the place this evening? The Mirage coach said they heard the Wulien Sun journalists say…”

“It was one!” Jinai shouted as her face heated up, lifting a finger for emphasis. “One kiss! Are the journos making shit up again?”

Their coach chuckled, shaking her head. She clapped a hand on each of their shoulders. “Look, I’ve spent years trying to keep the tabloid journos off your cases,” she replied, “but if you two wanna go off and get all cute and smoochy in public anyway, you go figure out how to deal with the busybodies wanting to know all about it.”

“Yeah, yeah! Thanks for your tireless work on that front,” Jinai huffed.

“I mean, I’m not your coach anymore, so take it as advice from a friend,” she said, then turned to look witheringly at Anqien, who was now running their knuckles over their lips. “But you. I’ll teach you a thing or two about managing the press yet.”

“I—I’ll do my best.”

Telaki shook her head and smirked. “I’ve talked your ears off for long enough. Go enjoy the rest of your evening together. You deserve it. We’ll meet at the presser tomorrow.”

“Sounds good, we’ll see you!” “Thanks, Telaki!”

Their coach whirled away with a wave, and they turned to each other, almost in synchrony.

“So, do you, uh, wanna head back to mine?” asked Jinai, tripping on the syllables.

Anqien let out a surprised laugh. “I was gonna ask if I could.”

YELLING

it was so hard to pick a moment to draw lol. the entire chapter is a spoiler.

---

Episode 24: Summer Bloom

I have never edited a chapter as hard as I did this one. Really hope it lands the way I wanted it to!

As the dewy cool of the evening settled over the coast, the pair hailed a taxi in the marina’s parking. Small details slipped over them as they boarded the car and departed: how the driver recognised them and congratulated them on the win, how in the backseat the lights of storefronts cast strobing beams over their faces.

Something hung over them—nothing unpleasant, but so heavy with anticipation that Anqien felt like they might burst. There was small talk, but not enough. Jinai peered out the window to her left, but they shuffled left and right in their seat, fighting to push their attention away from the omnipresent atmosphere of things not being said.

Each time the taxi turned, their hands bumped against each other. After a while, Anqien began to wonder if Jinai was letting it happen on purpose, or if it was all them. They shivered at her touch, wondering if it was time yet to talk. But they glanced up at the driver and kept their silence.

Alighting from the ride on Jinai’s street corner, they watched till the vehicle had disappeared around the next bend. Then Jinai began up the stairs outside her apartment, craggy and weathered in the dark, and waved her companion after her. The air was sweet and heavy with the scent of pear blossoms, opening at the touch of rain and heat.

Locking the door behind them, Jinai flung her bag onto her dining chair and wandered to her bed beyond the wooden screen. She threw herself into the sheets and tugged once on the bedside lamp switch, while Anqien dropped their bag by the same chair, in the shadows cast by that cosy light. They waited, breath slowing. She flipped over and waved them towards herself.

Anqien meandered over, and set themself down at the corner of her bed.

“Hey, don’t be shy now,” Jinai laughed, “make yourself at home.”

Anqien shuffled closer, a hand on the sheets. “Thanks for having me over,” they said.

“Thank you for coming.” She rolled her right shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

“Nervous,” they said. “Not in a bad way, just, restless. Like...there's a lot that needs to be said.”

She twirled a lock of hair around one finger. “That makes both of us. We should probably talk about it, huh?”

Their pulse doubled its pace. “Y...eah.” I sure hope we're thinking of the same thing.

She looked away. “So, um, the night before the race.”

Alright, we are thinking of the same thing. “Yes,” they replied. “The ferry. Dinner. And, uh...”

Jinai pressed her fingers to her temple. “I still can't believe myself. I'm not sure what was going through my head at the time, but I feel real bad about it.”

Anqien paused. “No, don't—”

“Said one thing, then did another, then pulled a hundred and eighty immediately. Could have helped if I'd just made up my mind. About what I wanted.”

“We’ve had this race looming over us this whole time,” they replied, leaning in. “So I figured maybe stress was part of it.” They fidgeted, fingers wrinkling the sheet. “I mean, I was confused, but also…I was the one who decided the day before the final was a good time to, you know, confess my feelings.”

“Yeah, and I kinda forced your hand on that,” Jinai answered, tilting her head. “It was very cute, by the way.”

“Ah. I.” Their face burned. They had no idea where to look. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” she replied, “for being the one to cut to the chase.” She rose from her nest of pillows, watching them so intently that it brought a lump to their throat. “I’ve thought about it a lot, you know, both before and after that. Trying to figure out how I feel about you, and us. And mostly, what I feel is...fear.”

Their breath hitched. “Fear of?”

“That you could do better than me.”

All the sympathetic replies they had been preparing scattered from their mind. “Excuse me, that’s my line,” they muttered.

“Come on, have you even seen yourself?” she retorted. “You’re so much more than you think. More than anyone has ever told you, clearly.” With each word Jinai inched closer. “You remember what you said that evening, right? That you couldn’t imagine me being interested in you.”

They winced. “Yeah, I did.”

“Well, frankly, that's just unfair. I mean, it’s hard not to like you, you know? And it’s not just me who thinks that, either—sorry for noticing, but so many people flirt with you, it’s actually ridiculous.” As she said this, Anqien became vaguely aware that she was now within arm’s reach, every glimmer in her eye bright as a star. “I wish I could change your mind. I want you to like yourself. Because that would make me happy, too. Sorry if that’s self-centred.”

“What do you mean, ‘self-centred,’ that’s—”

She shook her head. “It’s just….ugh, how do I say this?" She clutched at her face, drawing a huge breath. "It's not just that I like you as a person, though I do. I just really thought I was done with this city, after last year. But you…you make me feel like I could discover it all again. You know?”

She was hunching her shoulders, readying to deflect a blow, but by now they had stopped breathing.

Anqien only stared back, trying to find a reply. How did this make sense? For years, they had learned to sail together, and grown from teammates to friends, yet she had always seemed a distant star on the horizon. For years they had watched from afar, always believing the pleasure of the friendship theirs—that she couldn’t possibly enjoy it as much as they did.

But she could, and she had—and perhaps even saw them, in a way they couldn't see themself, like a sailor gazing at a city from the sea. What were they meant to make of this?

This jumble of thoughts came out of their mouth as: “Me? Are you sure?”

“Anqien...” Jinai began to laugh. They could hear a tremble in her voice. “I’m so sorry about jerking you around these past weeks. You deserved better than that. I think...I knew what I wanted, but I was so scared to admit it, to get hurt again. Or to hurt you. Everything about it scared me, really, but…”

Her face was changing, like the dawn spilling over the night sky: the slackening of her brow, the rending terror in her smile.

“Oh, Jinai,” Anqien whispered, finally reaching across the gap to lay a hand on her arm. “Don’t be sorry. After everything that’s happened, you deserve everything good in the world.”

Their breath caught as she snatched their shoulders and steered them to face her. There was something new in her eyes: a hunger. “Everything good, you say?” she breathed. “Including you?”

They fought to meet her gaze, but it was like looking at the sun. “If, if you want me—”

“I do. I want you more than the damn world. But do you—”

“Yes!” They managed the one breathless syllable, before passing beyond the point of words. Jinai needed to hear nothing else—as if she'd been waiting all evening to do so, she pounced, twisting them onto the sheets with rope-hardened hands. They felt their head hit the blanket, her hands and knees press them down. Panting, she found their mouth with hers, and they parted their lips helplessly, clawing her towards themself.

Twining like ropes in the wind, they made up for all that time spent in limbo—fingers tangling in hair, lips locked in an onslaught of kisses. Anqien felt their thoughts carried away by updrafts of bliss till Jinai's blazing touch brought them crashing back down, a seastorm tearing the tide.

Everything glowed; everything moved slow around them. Like city lights burning through the rain.

It was a solid fifteen, twenty minutes—time was far out of their minds—before they finally came up for air. Anqien lay staring at the ceiling, heat seeping through every inch of their body. “Um, Jinai?” they mumbled.

Jinai sank onto her side next to them, watching with gentle eyes. “Yeah, what’s up?”

“This isn’t just for tonight, right?”

Grinning, she cupped their cheek with her palm and turned their head to face her. “No, no, no, I want you forever, if I could be that greedy. Not unless you want it to be over by the morning.”

“Nope! Please, take me forever.” At the pleading in their voice, she surged across the gap between them and began to steal more hungry kisses.

Anqien had never known the meaning of too much isn’t enough till now. Jinai—best friend, teammate, love of their life—was all they had to think about, and it all felt natural, though never before so unreal.

---

Jinai had not shared her bed in two years. To her surprise, it did not resurface any of the memories she had feared it would; her mind was too full of her teammate and now partner to care. While she reorganised the pillows at the headboard, Anqien gathered the crumpled quilt to their face and breathed in deeply.

Tucking one pillow under their head, she wrapped her half-dozing partner up in her blanket and pressed a little kiss to their cheek, then tucked herself under her coverlet beside them.

By now, the exhaustion had its steel grip on her, and it urged her sweetly into the dark of sleep. She curled up next to them, gazing at their serene visage until she drifted off herself.

---

Jinai awoke with a ray of light across the foot of the bed, slanting from the window by the bathroom door. Crawling from the last dregs of sleep, she stretched out her arms and immediately bumped someone else’s limb to her right.

“Oh, hey, morning,” said the voice of her teammate.

Jinai’s head whipped around. Anqien was there, reclining against her headboard with a couple of pillows tucked under their back. Their hair hung untied and uncombed over their shoulders.

Hastily smoothing down the mop of curls on her own head, she fought to reassemble yesterday in her head...

She flopped in their direction, landing face down with one arm over their lap. “Is this real?” she groaned.

They laid a hand between her shoulder blades, rubbing circles on her back. “If it isn’t, then we’re both dreaming,” they replied. “And I’d like to keep dreaming, thank you.”

“Mm…I love you. So much. My favourite person in the world.” She felt them squirm, and looked up to see them covering their cheeks with their hands.

She finally flipped back over and crawled up against the headboard with them, tucking her head in the crook of their shoulder. She felt their arms encircle her gently, adjusting a few times, till they had sunk into a comfortable cuddle. She closed her eyes with a sigh, soaking the moment in like sunlight.

“So, press and party this evening,” she murmured.

“Oops. I forgot.”

“Of course you did.” Jinai looked at Anqien. “You wanna head home to get ready?”

“All my best clothes are at home, so probably. Even if I wish I could just stay here forever.” They looked curiously at her, and she answered with a swift peck on the lips. They gasped, shaking themself sober. “Whoa! I’m gonna need to get used to this.”

“You say that like we’re not literally cuddling on my bed,” she answered, to which Anqien’s reply was to squeeze her closer. “How did it take so long.”

“You needed that time. Didn’t you?” They beamed back.

She nodded. “Speaking of time. We really need to get this day underway.” Crawling out of their current position, she gave Anqien a little prod on the forehead. “Save those smiles for later, you’ll need them.”

So, there's a slightly more NSFW version of the main scene of this chapter. No important additional content, it just goes into more detail, and reading it is fully optional. Click this link to see it (on Toyhouse, 18+ only)!

---

Episode 25: Curtain Call

This is the last full chapter ;-; put a bit more time into it (plus it's the longest chapter, too)!

Content warning: This chapter contains depictions of alcohol consumption.

The rule of thumb went as such: the post-race press conference was always the tamest. Everyone was still a little high on the adrenaline of the chase, and no one felt any inclination to make digs on this day.

This time, four teams were in attendance, and a hundred reporters strained at the barricades, crammed so tightly into the room that their tympana and cameras clattered against each other. Outside of Xye’s backhanded yeah, they did alright, it was all post-storm pleasantries—compliments traded in the velvet-curtained backroom, and questions that made heroes of everyone, instead of trying to foment scandal.

“How does it feel, taking the trophy after trying for so long?” The question, coming as a surprise towards the end of the Cloudlander's segment, was the only one they had never answered before.

Before they did, they glanced at each other, Anqien nodding firmly at Jinai before she said: “It's a relief. It’s perfect timing for the end of my career, too. I’m just glad we got to stand up there once—we’ve never won an international race till now.”

“And I think we all believe it was a long time coming, and completely deserved,” the reporter replied, head bobbing in agreement.

She smiled warmly, then turned to Anqien. “It’s the end of the road for me, but not for my teammate. You can expect many great things from them to come, I'm sure.”

They rubbed her shoulder and replied, “I’m just glad you’ll still be here to help me along.”

“‘Teammate?’ Is that still the most accurate designation?”

Jinai looked the asking reporter in the eye for all of two seconds, then said, “No, it isn't. Next question.”

---

As the story always went and always would, the Sailing Federation afterparty came next.

Just like they had at the post-qualifier party, Anqien and Jinai flew together on the steps of the Nakano Bistro, calling each other’s names with eyes full of stars. Yet this time, the air felt different, electric, as their eyes met.

They had discussed the coordination of their outfits—as close to the team colours as they could find—and clearly their plotting had delivered. Before a dozen dazzled pairs of eyes Jinai spun, setting the crystals and golden thread on her wine-red dress aglitter. Anqien swept out the hems of their new coat—black-trimmed violet decorated with clouds, stars and waves, which fell as far as their knees.

“And guess what, it came with this,” they added, reaching into a sleeve pocket to pull out a fan, which they flicked open. It was a matching violet, the diaphanous frills fluttering as they waved it about.

Jinai sighed. “Gods, you’re gorgeous.”

They hastily shaded their face with the fan and glanced away. “Apparently, I still don’t know how to take a compliment from a pretty woman.”

“Even when that woman is your girlfriend?”

“Even when that woman is someone I’ve been sailing with for three years.”

Before they had stepped into the function space, they could already hear the pounding of the music in the stones, the stomping and chatter that came with every Sail Fed party. The bouncers on either side of the double door whispered between themselves and then turned to the new arrivals, saying, “Ms Vailu, Mx Liu! It’s wonderful to have you here, and congratulations!”

“Why, thank you,” Jinai replied. “It’s our pleasure to have been invited.”

“We’re under instructions from the chair to give you a special entrance this evening,” they answered with a grin. “Champions’ treatment, you must understand.”

The pair exchanged a glance. “Oh yeah, how special’s special?”

“Spotlights, confetti, special announcement…”

Anqien shook their head vigorously. Jinai muttered, “that’s way too overblown. Just let whoever it is know we’re coming in, that should be more than enough.”

The bouncer tapped a finger to their sleek, drop-shaped headset. “Announce Ms Vailu and Mx Liu’s arrival,” they said.

“That’s not what I—”

Their eyes darted to her. “They don’t want it too overblown,” they added hastily.

The doors were swung open for them, then, and as they strode in, Jinai offered her hand, which Anqien took, after stowing the fan in their belt. There was an eruption of cheers, and the amplifier-boosted voice of the master of ceremonies declared, “Look who it is! Not one minute too late! Jinai Vailu and Liu Anqien, everyone. Your NHR champions!”

Well, that was that then. They waved and grinned sportingly, and were answered by a deluge of cheers. Just like that, the scene worked its magic, and their every apprehension evaporated. Into the glittering sea of camera, wineglasses and jewellery they descended, lifting their joined hands high. At her side, Jinai heard Anqien laugh giddily.

She beamed. “You having fun?”

“Took me all of ten seconds to change my mind,” they replied.

They floated into the gathering of diners taking buffet pickings, picked up glasses of wine, laughed at each other. Then they whipped around as a commotion rose from a gaggle of nearby partiers—out of which burst Telaki, wearing a black suit and a bright-eyed grin.

“My stars!” she exclaimed, flinging herself into a three-way hug. She had had her hair redone for the occasion, every strand braided with golden beads hanging like raindrops from their ends, some gathered in a large swirling knot atop her head. Over her shoulders, they noticed Iki and Lujang tailing her, both wearing the team logo on their vests.

“It’s so good to see you all here!” Anqien replied.

“This one’s a big deal, us being the champions’ crew and all,” Iki said while Telaki released the pair.

“They got you in as walking Cloud Connector ads?” Jinai said, pointing out the emblazoned logos.

Lujang smirked. “If it’s the price of free food and wine, I’m all for it.”

By now, their coach had pulled away from the hug. “Well, it’s thanks to the company that we’re here at all,” she said. “And we have a good number of things to thank them for besides. Like the paint job you needed five days before the race? You won’t have gotten that without their insurance.”

“The insurance we pay them monthly for?” Jinai said.

Telaki snorted. “Very mouthy for someone who’s about to quit racing for good.”

“Ow, that’s a low blow,” Anqien said, while Jinai looped an arm casually about their waist. “Where’s Janda, by the way?”

“No idea, pretty classic of her!” Lujang replied.

“But hey,” Iki cut in, “congrats you two! We finally watched the replays when we were back in Wulien. What a race, that was ridiculous that you made the Sunken City route.”

“Third time’s the charm, even if we almost didn’t,” Jinai said, adding a laugh as an afterthought. “And honestly—it’s thanks to all of you. We couldn’t have done any of that without you.”

“I wish you’d gotten medals too,” Anqien added. “You’re brilliant at everything you do, you deserve some sort of recognition.”

“Oh, no, no need!” Iki flicked his hand at them. “Like I said, it’s our job that we get paid to do, and we’re just proud to be the crew behind an incredible team.”

“I dunno, I wouldn’t say no to a medal,” Lujang replied.

The pride in both pairs of eyes woke in Jinai a softness like she hadn’t felt about the sport in years. They played praise ping pong for several minutes, until Telaki was looped into it as well, and then all efforts were turned to the increasingly flustered woman.

“Best coach ever!” Iki called out with hands cupped around his mouth.

“Yeah, we love Telaki!” Anqien exclaimed.

“Alright, alright, you lot know full well that all I do is wrangle you,” Telaki gasped.

“Give it up for Telaki, our favourite mentor!” Jinai shouted, and they yelled and whooped loud enough that strangers in the vicinity began to join it.

“Fine, fine, enough about me!” she said, turning to the two sailors. “What’s your news from yesterday?”

Jinai snorted a laugh. “I mean, we did win the trophy,” she replied.

She chuckled. “Yeah, and what happened after you headed off?” she said. “You two left together, no?”

Jinai jolted upright, face heating up by the second. “What makes you think there’s anything else?”

“Don’t know, you two haven’t let go of each other since we started talking.”

She became aware right then of her arm still draped around Anqien’s waist. “Oh, yes, hah,” she said, glancing at them—they were now tapping their fan on their lips. “Fine, fine, yeah, we hung out after the awards ceremony and, don’t hold your breath, the two of us are together now. Like, together together.”

She shrugged as if it would make it less of a big deal, but Iki and Lujang were already pumping their fists and yelling at each other, and Telaki was giggling like a high school student. “Oh, gods, you two,” she sputtered between laughs. “That’s cute as shit, my heart can only take so much.”

“This is amazing!” Iki shouted. Anqien wordlessly cried out, burying their face in her shoulder.

“I can’t believe it, you two dense fools finally figured yourselves out,” Lujang put in. “Yesterday, I swear, with that chitchat before the race. I couldn’t deal, I wanted to scream at you two.”

“Waiting till you left the team was a smart move, Jinai,” Telaki said. Then to Anqien, “I know your partner is gorgeous and perfect and all that, but don’t get distracted, you hear me?”

“What? No, I wouldn’t!” they whined.

“Gods, Telaki,” Jinai gasped.

“Oh, Telaki, save it for the training days,” Lujang muttered. “We’re at a party, we’re supposed to be going wild.”

Going wild wasn’t really their speed tonight. But that wasn’t to say Jinai and Anqien did not enjoy themselves, to the depth of three glasses of wine and a beer each, and several chaste kisses besides.

Within the hour, their vision had begun to sparkle and sway, till they found themselves with arms draped about each other more often than they were apart. It was around then that they halted at an unusual sight. It was Zera—the first they’d seen of her tonight—holding the tongs by the catering table. Like a swallow in winter, the sight was rare and she was easy to spot—dolled up in black fishnets and leather, tapping her heel along with the booming bass.

When they appeared on either side of her, she perked up and said, “You two, good seeing you. And congratulations!”

Jinai grinned back. “Thanks, you and Xye did a fantastic job, too.” She took the tongs from Zera and picked out some spring rolls. “What a race, huh?”

“It sure was. One of a kind.” Zera shook her head with a smile. “Wasn’t our best, but we’ll hit the books once the festivities are over. Or, I will, at least.”

A shout of “over here!” pulled their gazes to the edge of the room, where a man with a camera was waving for them with a hand on the lever. Five seconds was all they had to find a pose, before their faces were captured on film for posterity.

Zera whirled to face them as soon as the lens was no longer pointed their way. “Another year, another one of these, huh,” she said, voice raised over the thudding kick drum.

“At least the drinks are free,” Anqien replied.

Zera shrugged. “Eh, the beer is decent, but the wine feels cheap.”

Jinai dropped her head against Anqien’s shoulder as she crunched on a spring roll, gazing up at the spotlights shifting from magenta to blue. “Can’t go wrong with deep fried snacks, though,” they replied. She felt them plant a kiss in her hair, and closed her eyes with a smile.

“That’s true,” the Mirage sailor replied in her same matter-of-fact way, though she was now grinning behind her half-eaten rice paper wrap. “Cute.”

“I know, they’re very cute,” Jinai replied with a smirking glance at Anqien—they shaded their face with one of their sleeves and squeaked out a give me some warning!

She chuckled and rubbed their shoulder, gaze returning to Zera. “How’ve you been, race aside?” she asked.

“Oh, same old. I went right home after the awards. Crashed for the evening just so I’d be ready to be here,” she replied. “Don’t know about Xye, she’s probably off being a dumbass as usual. I’m just here to look like I give a shit about Sail Fed events. We’ve got another ad shoot this Friday, ugh.”

“Juice?”

“They’re launching chunky coconut juice, yeah,” she said. “They already have regular coconut juice? What’s the point? Easily the worst part of the whole sailing gig. But it’s worth it for the actual sailing. Y’know?”

Anqien nodded. “I’m glad Cloud Connectors doesn’t make us do ads for their…Thread networks?”

Jinai laughed. “Guess if they did start, it wouldn’t affect me, since I’m retiring.”

“Oh yeah, I heard,” Zera answered, swooping a piece of mixed berry cake off the tabletop. “I’m kinda shocked, honestly, can’t believe you’re leaving, even though I kinda get it. You inspired me to start sailing professionally. Y’know? It’s been wild getting to be in the same races, even.”

“Right? How cool is she,” Anqien said. “So worth quitting uni for.”

Jinai's mouth fell open. “Stop,” she laughed, holding up a hand to deflect.

“Guess I’m seeing you in the circuit again next year,” Zera said to Anqien. “You got a new understudy lined up yet?”

They shrugged. “Cloud Connectors would know. I think they’re looking at—”

“Hello babes!” Xye’s singsong call clove the sentence in two, sweeping the group up with varying degrees of agitation. “How are you this fine evening?”

“Good, thank you,” said Zera, “I was enjoying a bit of civil conversation with the Cloudlanders.”

“Wonderful,” Xye answered, swooping around the gathering and coming to rest next to Zera. Only now did they see that his pink beach shirt—covered in a print of palm leaves and hibiscuses—was held together by a knot above his navel, and one stray breeze away from revealing everything under it. A pair of pink heart-shaped sunglasses was perched on his nose, completing the exorbitant medley. “We’re out of the race circuit for the year, I can cool it for one evening. Anqien! Jinai! How goes it?”

“Quite decently,” Anqien said, about as earnestly as someone who had never been personally aggravated by Xye would. Zera rubbed her temple. “How are you?”

“I’ve had two kisses tonight, so, beautifully, thank you.” He flicked his bangs.

“Oh, impressive. Love the shirt, by the way—it really suits you.”

“Aw, thanks for looking, sweetie.” He winked. “Wanna be number three?”

“I—” they sputtered.

“Hey, hey,” Zera cut in, while Jinai drew in an ocean-sized breath and let it out through her lips. “No fighting doesn’t mean make out. Besides, they’re like…” She glanced between Jinai and Anqien and gestured in a circular motion.

“We’re not looking for a third,” Jinai answered.

Xye seemed, for moments, astounded, then he picked up his jaw and smiled. “Oooooh, what? The rumours were true? What happened to ‘done with the whole romance thing’, huh?”

“About that…thanks for setting my head straight,” Jinai chuckled. “Wouldn’t have happened without your input.”

“Well! I’ll gladly take the credit.” Xye steepled his fingers together. “Everyone and their mum were wondering if you two were gonna do it or not. You’re both dense as rocks…perfect for each other.”

They caught Zera rolling her eyes, but even her mood seemed eased today. There was a tipsy, rosy-faced back-and-forth, all teasing and barbs. But as if the bite of the chill had melted away, the two teams had no harsh words for each other, only the sort of fleeting camaraderie that flourished at parties.

That was until they were interrupted by a mob of journos with their waving hands and camera lenses. Things snowballed quickly; the more people noticed that the four of them were within ten feet of each other, the more cameras they found pointing at them.

“Give us a really out-there pose!” Arms were flung wide; Zera crouched and Xye tiptoed. It took a mutter of “come on, you two!” from Xye before Jinai dipped Anqien, both giggling like schoolchildren. Click, click, click, in the pulsing blue light. “Now another!” And they posed again, and again, till they were laughing themselves silly and the press vultures went away.

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They lost themselves in the beams, dancing around the hall where the crowds eddied and whirled to the throb of the music, like lights on the nighttime sea. They leapt and spiralled together in the flashing of strobes and cameras, sometimes losing each other in the crowd before they found each other again.

Among popping beer bottles and spinning lights, Jinai and Anqien flew towards the altar stairs, laughing secretively between themselves. Partygoers had been coming and going on those broad steps all through the night, following the tides of dance numbers to dive into the blue and purple glow.

Now, seeing a parting open in the crowd, the pair scurried up to fill it. The music was dizzying and they felt it pounding through their limbs. Jinai spun into an embrace, eyes sparkling.

“You seem happy,” Anqien said.

Jinai laughed back. “I mean, how could I not be?” she replied. “I couldn’t ask for anything else right now. Except maybe to get out of here and take you home again.”

They twirled and swayed about each other, hands meeting and parting with their matching step. In the haven of this curtain-call party, they were not sailors or celebrities, failures or fools: there was no one they needed to be but themselves. Just like it had done all evening, a turquoise spotlight swept over them, bathing them in light: in that glow their gazes met and stayed.

Anqien gasped as Jinai snatched their face between her hands and pulled them towards her, kissing them deeply while the strobe lights flashed in every colour. They melted into her touch, fingers grasping her waist to pull her against themself.

They thought they heard someone in their periphery cry out and cheer, excitement beyond their own that bobbed in the sea of chaotic bliss. They had a feeling that, somehow, the tabloids would get a hold of this and that and everything, and there would be a PR reckoning to follow. But neither of them seemed to think it such a bad thing, just to be unabashedly in love before the eyes of others.

It had taken them three years, three thousand nautical miles to get here. After all that time and all those tears, a minor public uproar didn’t seem too bad.

Thank you SO much for coming on this journey with me. The epilogue is about a quarter the length of a regular chapter, and should go up later this week. If time permits, there'll also be a big "meta thoughts ramble" to go with it!

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Epilogue: Even Tide

Anqien gazed out from the edge of the jetty into the breezy golden afternoon. Cloudy foam swirled on the gentle water, around the barnacle-crusted piers, like it had for all that time before. The wind rustled their hair.

A patter of familiar footsteps, and unfamiliar ones. They turned. Jinai stood on the shore, beaming at them across the gap. And beside her—the youth who had gotten lost on the way from the parking lots.

They had known him up till now as Shen Wuqi—the current Helfi junior champion from an academy up northwest.

Now, Anqien saw their new teammate for the first time: messy mop, shaved on the sides, rings on his ears, face adamantly focused, as if trying to stave off nerves.

“Hey!” they called out, dashing to meet them mid-jetty. “How was the trip here?”

“Good,” Wuqi said with a nod. “It’s a ten-minute taxi ride from work.” He shifted his weight from one foot to another.

“Thanks for coming,” Jinai replied, clapping his shoulder, as Anqien came up beside her. “We just wanted to say hi! You won’t start sailing with the team till next week.”

Anqien glanced between the two—their old teammate and their new, face to face in the sunlight. They could not be more different. Sailing with him would be different.

“So, you just got out of work for the day?” they said. “Where at?”

The trio sat down on the edge of the jetty and watched the waves roll, threading a conversation amongst themselves. They learned that Wuqi was working as a filograph network operator, that his family owned birds, that he was freaking out—in the best way—being here with them.

“I'm still…losing my mind a little bit,” he chuckled, hugging his knees to his chest. “I thought I was a good sailor for my age class…but getting signed by Cloud Connectors? I thought I was dreaming. Dropped everything to be here.” He laughed.

Jinai’s gaze shifted to Anqien. “So did your teammate, you know,” she said with a quirked eyebrow, a tender smile.

They nodded. “I’ve been there. This team is amazing.”

His eyes brightened, then sank a touch. “Can’t help but feel like I’m filling the biggest pair of shoes in the world.”

Jinai shook her head. “And that’s normal. I felt it too. When I arrived here, I thought I was making the stupidest decision of my life.”

“I still feel like I’m fumbling through everything,” Anqien laughed. “But you put in the work, and it’s all you really have to do.” Wuqi’s shoulders slackened as he nodded, the dusk light glowing in his brown eyes.

“Sometimes you don’t realise you’re making headway until you look back and see it,” Jinai said.

Anqien sighed, as slow as the tide drawing in. “But sometimes,” they said, “it feels like flying.”

Thank you thank you thank you for reading the story to the end! 🫶 it has been my pleasure bringing it to you and hope you enjoyed it.

What now?

• You can vote on this bulletin poll to be authorised to view Offshore spoiler art :p
• You can read my Postscript, which outlines all my pertinent but spoilery thoughts about the story as a whole that I couldn't share prior to this. It's just the next chapter, so you can click next to view it!

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Postscript

A big dump of my author notes for the end of the story, which includes all thoughts and details that I had to keep out of my author notes, character profiles, etc. because of spoilers. If you don't like being spoiled, please turn back, because this page spoils the entire story.

OK, first of all, seriously thank you for reading the novel that's been rotating in my brain for the past 7 months. The last time I released a complete novel was 2013, and I forgot how it felt to have people along riding the ups and downs of the story as I released each chapter. I wasn’t expecting anyone to be following along. I'm delighted to be wrong. I had a lot of fun; I hope you did too! And, please, if there's anything you'd like to say or ask, I am always more than happy to reply.

This postscript will hopefully not tread the same ground as what's on the other masterpost tabs. This is about the details I had to keep out of my author notes, profiles and public masterpost because of spoilers.

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I wrote the entirety of Offshore in November 2022, and it almost didn't happen.

I was meant to have a conference trip spanning half the month! I wouldn't have the time for NaNoWriMo.

As the record shows, I did manage to write the novel during the trip. Bits of the conference snuck into the story. Afterparties. Press. Ephemeral acquaintances giving me tips on how not to be nervous in front of the camera. Flying. Helsinki cafes. At one point I was passing the document between three different devices to maximise my opportunities to write.

I believe that in the final version of Offshore, only one scene was added that wasn't in the original draft. Everything else you've read? Is pretty similar to what I churned out during that run. I'm kinda proud of that.

It was only after I finished the first draft (and got home) that the art floodgates really opened. By then, I hadn't drawn regularly in almost half a year, and it was just perfectly serendipitous timing for a creative outlet to fall into my lap. So...I started animating them. Then I made an album for them. I started making a jokey VN. I animated them again. And again. I've drawn 140 art pieces for this project so far, and commissioned + received more (THANK YOU to everyone who's drawn my characters, I love you and your art forever).

There's probably more things I'm forgetting, but the point is that I have never been this excited for an OC story in my life. I don't know what's happening and I am kind of just gonna ride it out to the end.

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I feel like it was always self-evident, from the entire setup of the story, that the Cloudlanders would win.

I guess if I did it right, the buildup to the finals might've been a plausible setup for the team learning to be OK with second place. And that's part of it! They did their best and at the end of it, it's the journey that I hope felt like an achievement, not the actual winning, which could happen to any team in any year really. They won the second leg by a much bigger margin than they lost the first (and they usually do), so the format is fundamentally not a raw test of skill. They were just failing to perform under pressure in the third leg.

But! If somehow I managed to sustain the tension right to the end, then I'll be pleased! I feel like there's only so much 4D chess you want to play with your readers ("did I set this up well enough to throw the readers off the scent that they were meant to win all along?"), and it's much nicer to just revel in the journey. Them winning was just the most emotionally resonant thing to happen there, I felt. Because the real win isn't that they got a trophy, it's that they kept trying and pushed through after being knocked down multiple times.

And also that they got together. That's the reason I wrote the story lol. It's also part of the whole "kept trying after being knocked down" thing...

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I’ve always enjoyed naming chapters to a pattern. For this one, I tried to stick to a format of: 2 words, 1-2 syllables each, each title containing at least one noun (no matter how I strove, two nouns was too restrictive and I couldn’t stick to it every chapter, though I tried).

A lot of these titles are symbolic/double entendres, but I'll let you find those yourself, haha.

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"It's all about the recovery!" - I rarely foreshadow intentionally or clock it as such. But if anything in the story was intentional foreshadowing, it's this line from Chapter 1.

I have said many times that this story is a bit of a vent. Jinai's story is especially so. I call them both deuteragonists, but I'd be lying if I said Jinai wasn't the one driving the story for me 😅 I often say it's a story about recovery, and I think the theme of recovery centres mostly on her.

Oftentimes, I worried about how to convey the conflict in Jinai’s life in a way that made her attitude towards life seem plausible, and sympathetic even. She has long felt incapable of meeting the demands of others, as well as her own. In her view, she tore her team apart, couldn’t meet her potential as a sailor, and couldn’t keep the man she thought she’d live the rest of her life with—even though none of those things were really her fault. She perennially sees how she could have done things different, not how others wronged her. When she began to contemplate the possibility of romance with her teammate, she instantly expected she would also mess this up like everything else.

By all standards, nothing egregiously bad happened! No one died, no one was intentionally harmed, no one is threatening Jinai to win this race or else. The conflict is almost fully internal and self-originating. So if I was able to convey her struggles in a convincing, affecting way, then my work here is done. Asking Anqien to be her partner was actually very scary for her because she didn’t want to ruin everything for them.

It was so cathartic putting her entire life and struggle on the table, and then helping her find a way through it. Even though she's tired and sad, she still loves being at sea, and charting journeys into the unknown. That's something no amount of loss could take away from her. Her relationship with her teammate is one such journey and her recovery is mapped in her shifting attitude towards the feelings she's long denied. As she learns to get over her fear of falling short, she also comes to be willing to take that plunge, to "risk being burned again"...

Anqien always means well and will accept and tolerate most things to their absolute breaking point. On the other hand, they don't feel like they're allowed to make big decisions without someone else signing off. Their personal struggles are hidden from plain sight, by their own choice, and for a reason.

Anqien never left their family home. I imagine their family is like mine in that (they even have the same surname as mine): they were discouraged from moving out. But it's about more than just the family home, obviously: the family also intended for them to inherit the family business. They've always been at odds with this stifling life their parents were orchestrating for them.

My aim was to demonstrate the role that sailing and the race have played in their self-discovery and the growth away from that preplanned future. To them, the sport is their singular out from a life they don’t want to live. It was the first thing to ever make them feel like there was a different future for them, one that they were hitherto never allowed to even contemplate. It is also the only space where they're afforded the chance to literally chart their course and call the shots, which...they're really not used to.

Having the less experienced sailor be the skipper, I felt, introduced some interest to the team dynamic—what with Anqien being distinctly less confident and Jinai often having to correct them, or prompt them to call manoeuvres. Towards the end, they start to flip the dynamic more often: Anqien gets bolder and corrects Jinai increasingly often, both during the sailing and outside it. And then, of course, they have to call her out and tell her where she went wrong. Would Anqien at the start of the story have been able to do that? Probably not...

So I hope people heeded the "warning" of slow burn fluff because holy shit this is a fluffy wholesome relationship if I've ever written one. But I hope that it still felt like it had...some tension?

I'm fond of when positive progression of the romance requires the characters to grow as people. Obviously, at the start of the story, neither of them was even remotely ready for romance. As they figured themselves out, they also became increasingly ready to be proper, healthy partners in an equal relationship.

Bottom line is: I love them both very much. They have both suffered (in their own ordinary low-magic way) and they are each other's respite that they absolutely earned.

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It brings me a lot of joy to know that people enjoy other members of the cast, even though they aren't in the spotlight all that much. Some of my standout thoughts about the other characters:

• XYE. Oh, Xye. I like to describe writing Xye as such: Every time she appears in the scene, I think of the most outrageous thing she could do in that moment, and make her do it. And then continue to do so as long as she's on camera. I'm absolutely unsurprised (and also very happy and amused) that she's turned out to be probably the most popular character, she's just...so much. I need to make more Xye content.
• Speaking of which, while their profiles aren't up yet, take a look at Xye's family! They run the world's most corrupt casino and somehow no one's snitched...yet.

• Zera does tend to fade into the background by comparison. But also, she wants to! She's the shadow to Xye's obnoxiously blinding light. They have such a fun dynamic lol. Every time I draw her, she gains more piercings, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
• I wish I could cut away to the control room sometimes. The control crew tracks the team’s progress via charts and live updating maps, and the room is always CHAOS. Like you haven't seen the least of Lujang screaming at everyone else. Or Iki sighing "this is above my pay grade" every time something unprecedentedly bad happens during a race. Or the arguments that start when Janda asks him to get the sailors out of a pinch! Telaki is always in there trying to keep everyone calm and functioning as a team and rubbing her temple the whole time.
• I love Telaki. She's my favourite side character actually. She's very excitable outside her job (and even inside it sometimes), and goes on rambles about cool exciting things (and also about bad taxi rides).
• I would like to explore Folien I-San (the MC at the first afterparty) in more detail, because he’s A Character. Son of old money, dresses in gold, scandal follows him everywhere. He’s a mediocre singer at best but he’s conventionally attractive and has money, so he has forced his way into popularity. It's a shame I didn't remember to bring him back for another scene, lol.
• I also want to explore Mx. Mo, the Sailing Federation's public relations face (and the one who facilitated both press conferences). They're everywhere where the Sail Fed needs to look good, and they do so much heavy lifting for the organisation.
• ALSO, while the profiles aren't up, here are some other rival teams (the nice ones)!

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Jinai is someone I associate with sunsets and the hues of precious antiques—gold, brass, maroon, velvety shades. This is naturally pointing to her status as a veteran of the sport (seasoned, weathered, in the "sunset" of her career), but also at the sense of a lustre tarnished by that weathering. Has hasn't lost her shine, she's decided to let it get obscured!

She has a fondness for storms, and I associate her with orcas, both details of which (I feel) gesture to her tendency to tear through a place/another's life and leave it changed for good...and for things to do the same to her. She's always been "go big or go home." Even though she says she made a choice to leave home, she knew from the start that there was no way she'd choose not to go. Everyone around her can sense a bit of that potency, that penchant for greatness—it's why she caught the eye of the sailing world. She can also be a bit of a wild card, running off and doing whatever she likes without any warning. Having that sort of reactiveness makes her dynamic with Xye incredibly fun for fans to follow in the media.

Anqien’s whole palette and aesthetic are inspired by shallow seawater: cyans and blues and flowing lines. Really, their core motif relates to that interplay of shallows and depths—their name is a bit of a pun – 潜 (submerged/hidden) and æµ… (shallow) are both pronounced “qian”. They’re simultaneously easy to read—transparent, if you will—and also very well-trained to not talk about the things that they’ve been told they shouldn't. The complementary symbolism of the bottlenose dolphin also kind of points at how...they appear silly at times, but they are also a very discerning person who thinks hard about things.

This is a person who’s deceptively simple but actually hides a lot. It's a matter of survival that they don't express themself patently. I often associate the phrase “go with the flow” with them, and that is apt for their flexibility and “anything goes” attitude, but also (see their profile) as someone who will find an easier way around every predicament, if they can't immediately push through.

So, their outfits and fashion sense accent a lot of this symbolism, but the two party outfit sets have some extra stuff going on that gestures to the character development:

At the first party, Anqien's outfit is light, pale, subtle - they don't want to be conspicuous and they're really still learning to pull their weight. Jinai's dress is very plain and the lines hew close to her body. She doesn't have high hopes and doesn't want to take up space. Of course, I still think these outfits project their respective fashion sense.

At the second party, I think they both ramped it up since they were the actual champions, but there's also something kind of "aged like wine" about the outfits, or at least that was how I see them. Anqien has high contrasts in their outfit and the fabric feels heavier - black and white and a saturated purple. There's something regal about it. They're less scared to be seen and they're more able to make demands and act in their own interests. Jinai's outfit has way more volume and sparkle! Hints of gold for the gold medal, and the dress is a little more daring, with a sense of volume pointing at being willing to assert her presence, to stay put instead of running away, and draped fabric that feels looser, freer.

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• The song that plays at the first party that Jinai calls her “favourite song” is meant to be Seastorm. I thought it would be silly and pull the reader out of it if I mentioned this, but that was what was going through my head at the time.
• Speaking of Seastorm, I previously wrote a post detailing my process of creating the song.
• I totally pictured that Anqien never actually knew where the hero worship ended and the infatuation began. The feelings are all connected. This is mixed in with strong feelings of friendship and care and I guess when they started bringing Jinai meals was when they stopped seeing her as an unreachable idol, though they still admired her.
• I could not decide what scene to draw for Chapter 23. The entire chapter is one big spoiler, haha.
• Favourite chapters to write: Blue Dreamers (first afterparty), Future Past (flashback), Home Run (sailing back to Wulien).
• Favourite line: "This was how she wanted to remember tonight, if she could remember it always. None of them were the people they had been before; all were only dancers and dreamers in this pulsating cerulean light."

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