Time

The sea lapped against the bow, making a dull, rhythmic splashing sound.

The Voyager glided smoothly through the thick fog. The sails on the foremast and mainmast were full of wind, taut in three massive curves.

On the deck, everything was proceeding in an orderly fashion—fifteen or sixteen sailors wrapped in coarse burlap vests squatted on the wet wooden planks, vigorously scrubbing the foredeck with coir brushes. By the wooden capstan, two boatswains were speaking in low voices, checking a coil of freshly tarred rope.

The place was filled with the scents of life: the salty, damp smell of seawater, the pungent aroma of dry tobacco, and the fragrance of stewed onion and beef soup wafting from the galley chimney below.

Simon and Alvin followed behind Ryan, the heavy thud of their riding boots echoing as they stepped on the soft wooden deck.

“Good morning, Captain.”

The first mate, who was walking toward them, stopped and naturally tucked a stack of navigation logs under his arm.

He took off his faded, brimmed woolen hat and bowed slightly to Ryan. His face had turned a rough, dark red from years of exposure to the sun at sea, and the corners of his eyes were webbed with fine wrinkles. When he smiled, a loose canine tooth on his left side was visible.

He was a living, breathing human being—or so he seemed.

“Morning, Evans,” Ryan said, calling the first mate by his name, drawing from the memory that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere in his mind.

The first mate straightened, put his hat back on, and looked up at the gray sky, sighing with a bit of a complaint. “This damn fog hasn't cleared since last night. Fortunately, the wind direction hasn't changed. At this speed, we'll be able to drop anchor in the harbor by tomorrow morning. When the time comes, I'm going to the dock tavern and downing three gallons of malt beer.”

“Tomorrow?” Simon couldn't contain himself and took half a step forward. The sour smell of sweat from the first mate rushed into his nostrils, leaving him in a bit of a daze. No matter how he looked at it, this didn't seem like a dead man.

“Yeah, Simon. Why do you look so out of it today?” The first mate burst into laughter, heavily clapping Simon on the shoulder with his rough, large hand. “Once we hit land, your wages will be enough to cover your rent for the next half of the year and let you have some real fun. Don't look so miserable all day.”

Simon stumbled slightly from the impact. The force and pain from his shoulder were so real that even the “Heart” in his chest throbbed violently a few times.

Ryan stood to the side, his dark eyes behind his spectacles quietly watching the first mate.

Everything around them was too normal. So normal that, if they didn't clearly remember falling through the White Door in East Port, they would have almost believed they were truly the captain and crew of this ship.

Ryan's fingers lightly brushed against the brass hilt of the ceremonial sword at his waist as he asked casually, “Evans, what year is it today?”

However, the moment the words “what year” left his mouth, the deck—previously bustling with the sounds of daily life—was abruptly muted.

The scrubbing sound of the coir brushes on the deck vanished.

The clattering of wooden barrels vanished.

Even the flapping of the sails on the masts under the wind was frozen solid at that exact instant.

The first mate's smile was still frozen on his face, his loose canine tooth exposed to the air. The sweat in the wrinkles around his eyes rolled down his cheek, only to freeze mid-air the moment it lost contact.

He stared straight at Ryan. Those dark brown eyes, which had been full of life just a second ago, instantly lost all their luster, turning into what looked like two cheap, gray glass beads.

In that single second, the entire massive Voyager turned into a giant, lifeless, static oil painting.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three seconds.

Simon clenched his teeth. The only sound he could hear was in his own eardrums—his own heartbeat, sounding like a heavy war drum in this dead, silent world.

By the fifth second.

The first mate's eyeballs shifted slightly in a bizarre manner, and the dark brown color of a living person flooded back into the gray glass beads.

As if nothing had happened, he naturally continued from his previous words with a laugh, “...Yeah, Captain. This damn fog hasn't cleared since last night. When we hit land, I'm definitely going to down three gallons of malt beer.”

The surrounding sailors bent down again, and the scraping sound of brushes on the wooden planks filled the deck once more. The black smoke from the galley chimney continued to drift upward, and the sails swelled in the wind again.

The first mate patted Ryan's shoulder, turned around, and whistled as he walked toward the sterncastle.

“Did... did he not hear you just now?” Simon wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, keeping his voice extremely low. “Ryan, what on earth is going on? The way they looked just now, it was almost like...”

“Like a line was missing from the script,” Alvin chimed in.

Alvin was currently staring at his hands, which were covered in black oil. He had just come up from the lowest level of the engine room, and the smell of coal soot on him was stronger than ever.

“I was down below just now, taking inventory of the tool racks,” Alvin said, looking down at Ryan. “This long brass crowbar in my hand was just dug out from the lowest spare parts storeroom. The manufacturer's stamp on it is old.”

Ryan slowly drew out the dark blue leather-bound ledger he had taken from the captain's cabin from his coat pocket. He flipped to the latest page, where the ink handwriting shimmered dryly in the sea breeze:

【December 14, 1860. Foggy, southwest wind. All is well aboard The Voyager. Expected to enter port tomorrow.】

“1860,” Ryan said, reaching out a white-gloved finger to lightly trace the year on the paper. “We saw in the old newspapers at the Archive that East Port was established in 1865. In other words, at this very moment, this ship is preparing to head to a port that doesn't even exist yet in reality.”

Simon was stunned. “A port that doesn't exist? If it enters port tomorrow, where will it dock?”

“I don't know,” Ryan closed the logbook, his gaze behind his gold-rimmed spectacles sweeping across the busy sailors on the deck. “But this logbook says December 14, 1860. Which is today.”

The Voyager glided forward through the thick fog. Aside from the three of them, no one felt any confusion, and no one felt any fear.

Not far away, the first mate stopped, took off his hat with the exact same motion, and said the exact same words to another passing boatswain:

“This damn fog hasn't cleared since last night. When we hit land, I'm definitely going to down three gallons of malt beer.”

Even the angle of his loose canine tooth when he smiled was exactly the same.

Ryan slowly adjusted his gold-rimmed spectacles.

Deep in his mind, the fragmented memories belonging to Morris suddenly began to squirm like worms.

“Damn you, Morris.”