Seokjin was woken up by a bucket of ice-cold seawater being shamelessly thrown on his face.

Confused, he opened his eyes suddenly but his vision remained blurry and at the same time he tried to grab the weapon that was on his pillow in his cabin in the Little Admiral. However, it didn't take him long to realize that he was neither in his bed nor in his cabin and that his hands were restrained behind his back.

This finally woke him up and his gaze fell on the man who had just sprayed him.

"I'm going to kill you," he spat, trying to free himself from his bonds while the man – the wako – who stood in front of him and whom he didn't recognize burst out laughing.

But he was securely tied to the mast of a ship, he realized. Seized with a strong apprehension that he did not have the presence of mind to mask, he turned his head feverishly. There was no trace of Dengzhou or of any coastline on the horizon.  He was on a pirate ship on the open sea. A ship with red sails. 

He had not found what he was looking for: it was what he was looking for that had found him. He swore, which only amplified the laughter of the pirate in front of him.

He was the only man who seemed to pay any attention to him. Around him, other pirates moved about without giving him the slightest glance, as if he were no longer an object of curiosity. His inanimate body must have been before their eyes for a long time, Seokjin understood with a mixture of shame and anger. Besides, the sun was beating down strongly above his head, signaling that it was almost halfway through his course. How long had he been unconscious?

That question was quickly swept aside by a darker realizations: he had lost his crew and his ship, probably all returned to the sea with violence, and had been kidnapped by pirates. He was now alone and at their mercy. 

Around him, the pirates  were lazily going about their tasks, without much enthusiasm. It was very different from the constant commotion of combat that reigned over the Little Admiral.

He focused again on the young man who was looking at him mockingly wiping away tears of laughter. Wasn't it a bit excessive? Seokjin said to himself, annoyed. The situation wasn't even that funny from his point of view and yet he laughed easily.

"Untie me," he ordered.

"Is this how you beg for your life?" the other snickered.

He spoke Korean, which suited Seokjin who preferred to insult his enemies in his language.

"I won't beg a fucking wako," Seokjin spat, giving him a venomous look. "Release me and fight me one on one if you are not a coward."

This made the pirate laugh again and Seokjin wanted to punch him in the mouth.

"You're talking to the wrong person," someone suddenly said catching his attention as he approached and Seokjin recognized as Namjoon. He still wore his annoying smug smile and said : "Hoseok is the worst coward among us and that's not even an insult to him. This is not how you will succeed in provoking him."

Annoyed, Seokjin turned away from Hoseok and gave Namjoon a murderous look.

"Wow, that look again? You have great confidence, I have to admit it. Don't you thank me for sparing you? I could have easily killed you, you know?"

"Just like I could," Seokjin retorted, remembering very well the last one he was about to wear before one of Namjoon's men got involved.

"That's not wrong," Namjoon conceded.

He crouched down in front of Seokjin and replied:

"And now, if I leave you tied up here in the sun without water, how long do you think you will last?"

Hoseok howled with laughter, which made Seokjin want to kill him even more but the pirate walked away from him, taking his annoying laugh with him. Seokjin turned his attention back to Namjoon and just glared at him in response because the other wasn't wrong. The sun could be as dangerous as the sea for a sailor.

"Too proud to answer?" Namjoon said. "I guess you're definitely not the type to beg for mercy."

"I do not ask for mercy from cowards!" Seokjin spat. "First you ask a Ming to poison my drink and now you let the sun kill me instead of confronting me one on one despite my condition? You are cowardly and weak."

"I'm not a coward, I'm just more intelligent than you and maybe also a little lazy. I fight according to the logic of least effort," Namjoon shrugged. "But for the rest you are not wrong: I am weak. That's why it's my intelligence and not my strength that is killing you right now."

Stunned by his audacity, Seokjin wondered where he had fallen. Since when did pirates use intelligence? They just attacked, robbed and killed people! They were just a bunch of stupid aissailant. And looking at it the other way around, no "intelligent" person would have ventured to join the path of piracy.

A drop of sweat began to bead on his temple but it wasn't related to nervousness or the water that Hoseok had poured on him earlier and which had already dried on his face even though it still soaked into his hair and clothes. The heat was already beginning to be overwhelming and it was not yet noon. He had to find a way to free himself. 

But then what would he do? How to take control of an entire pirate ship alone? Sailing alone was something he felt capable of doing, but killing so many pirates single-handedly? It was impossible. 

One thing in time, he forced himself to think. But his headaches were amplified by the sun beating down on him and he had great difficulty concentrating enough to find a way out of this situation.

The pirate who was observing him attentively seemed to notice him.

"I'll offer you a deal, Little Admiral: you answer a simple question and I'll give you a glass of water," he suddenly offered.

Seokjin gave him a suspicious look.

"Do I seem like an idiot to you?"

"Well now that you mention it, you've revealed to me your plans to destroy my ship and my crew," Namjoon laughed. "That was pretty stupid of you."

Seokjin couldn't stand being humiliated like this. He gathered his precious saliva and spat in Namjoon's face. The pirate sighed and wiped his face before wiping his soiled hand on his clothes, which did not fail to disgust Seokjin.

"You're lucky I'm not resentful or vengeful otherwise I probably would have had your teeth pulled out one by one and your tongue with it."

His threat didn't scare Seokjin, on the contrary. He told himself that for a supposedly scary and cruel captain, Namjoon was far too conciliatory.

"I will offer it to you one last time and then I will let you waste your precious saliva until death takes hold of your withered body. Do you want to answer my question?"

Seokjin was so thirsty that he hesitated. He had tried in vain to provoke the other and he knew that he would not be able to free himself from his rope ties.

"An answer for a glass of water?" he finally said.

"Or rum, but I think I understand that you don't like that. As for Ming's sake, I imagine you would find it inappropriate if I offered it to you," he winked.

Noticing Seokjin's disillusioned expression, he assured, raising his two hands full of golden rings:

"If I lie I cut off my finger."

"You won't, you're just a coward who refuses to fight head-on," Seokjin replied in an increasingly dull voice. His dry mouth and throat cried out for hydration. "You will never agree to make yourself suffer.

"I told you I'm not a coward, you're going to have to take my word for it. But it's up to you, I'm not going to force your hand if you really don't want to drink."

Seokjin had the unpleasant feeling that the pirate was manipulating him but what other choice did he have?

"What is your question?" he asked nonetheless, deciding that he would only answer based on the information he was seeking. After all, if he had been kidnapped rather than killed, it was because the wakos wanted something from him and he certainly wasn't going to make it easy for them.

"What is your name?"

Surprised, Sseokjin wondered if Namjoon was joking. Was that what he wanted to know? No, it was probably a ruse to get a first response for a favor and then get others for other favors later.

"You who like to play guessing games and pull information out of my head, can't you guess?" Seokjin said, annoyed to remember how easy it had been for the other the day before to extract information from him against his will. But now that he knew who Namjoon was, he would be on guard and not leave him any more clues that would allow him to obtain information against his will.

"I prefer to play the game where you answer my questions," Namjoon replied. "I'll count to three and then I'll get bored and stop playing. You won't have a glass of water or anything at all. One.... Two....

"My name is Jungkook."

Without thinking, Seokjin had chosen the only name that populated his mind and cursed himself internally. He didn't want to hear that name from the mouth of beings as disgusting as those pirates.

"Jungkook, huh?  So Kim Jungkook if I understood correctly. Nice name. Well it wasn't that difficult, you see? I'll get your glass of water," Namjoon said as he walked away.

Left alone, Seokjin tried to control his mind but it was difficult: he hated Namjoon for making him say Jungkook's name again. Talking about him brought out all his memories of him and that's why he didn't want to talk about him anymore with anyone. 

He had relegated him to the stage of a ghost from his past, a ghost that he was the only one to remember since in Eobu, everyone had ended up forgetting him, like many other victims who had lost their lives in Saengson, fifteen years earlier. He was a ghost among the other ghosts of Saengson. He was his personal ghost whose anonymous skeleton lay in a mass grave, among the others.

But Seokjin couldn't forget him. He would never be able to forget him. And it was for him that he had to stay alive and continue killing pirates.

Namjoon quickly returned with an old chipped mug of questionably clean water but for once, Seokjin didn't care. He was so thirsty that he forced himself to ignore the dirt his lips were about to touch.

"There you go," Namjoon said, crouching down again and lifting the mug to Seokjin's lips.

He seemed very satisfied with this humiliating posture for Seokjin but the latter was too focused on quenching his thirst to care. He greedily swallowed one large gulps of cool water before spitting the second back into Namjoon's face: it was sea water. Previously parched, his throat now burned and he felt like vomiting when a foul taste that he associated with the smell of wild seaweed came up.

"You bastard!"  he shouted, his face crimson. "Cut off your finger right now!"

Far from being offended, Namjoon seemed satisfied with this reaction and calmly wiped his face.

"I didn't lie, I brought you a glass of water like I promised, didn't I?" he said. "I never said it would be drinkable water. I was just getting tired of your condescension towards me and my mates. Now you seem to have lowered yourself to your place here."

Seokjin showered him with insults and soon his screams began to attract other pirates around them but he didn't care and ignored them. Not losing his temper, he shouted:

"Why am I still here?! Why didn't you just kill me?!"

"Because you intrigued me by mentioning Usagi and the fact that you want to kill him."

"Why? Were you scared that I would come and kill you, Namjoon? Or rather, fake Usagi?"

Namjoon looked at him in surprise and round them, the pirates burst out laughing, making him frown. Hoseok's distinctive laugh stood out among the guttural laughter of the others. 

A little further from him, Seokjin saw one who wasn't laughing and he recognized the samurai who had stopped him from killing Namjoon. He noticed that he was really tall, his head surpassing those of the others. With his closed expression on his face, his immobility in the midst of the agitation, and his weapons which he never left, this man was visibly strong and dangerous, unlike Namjoon who claimed himself he was weak. Seokjin put it to the back of his mind before turning his attention back to Namjoon.

"Who are you if you're not the fake Usagi since you're steering the ship with the red sails?" he asked him, his eyebrows stillfurrowed.

"I'm Namjoon, I already told you," the other laughed. "And I never said I led this crew, you assumed that."

Seokjin then realized his mistake. On the deck of this ship, the pirates not only seemed free but no hierarchy was distinguished unlike the deck of military ships. Namjoon had come to talk to him and extract information from him like anyone else among the pirates could have done.

"Where is he?" he finally growled. "Where is your captain, the one I want to kill?"

This time the pirates were silent and Seokjin didn't know if they were impressed or angry.

"You're not afraid of anything, little admiral," chuckled Hoseok, who had appeared in his field of vision again.

"He is reckless, he will not live long," the pirate in the kimono replied in Japanese.

"That's how you were when the captain found you, Taehyung, right?" another person mocked, in Chinese this time. "A reckless samurai ready to commit suicide for the beautiful eyes of his daimyo."

Turning his head, Seokjin saw a short man with a horrible scar across his face. He carried a large sword with an ornate hilt decorated with a Ming dragon and a worn-out soldier's uniform. In the same way that Namjoon and Hoseok had Joseon features and the samurai - Taehyung - had Japanese features, this one had Ming features. 

Observing the gathering of pirates, Seokjin realized that the motley group he had seen the day before at the tavern was from this crew. A crew which mixed men from the three surrounding territories.

How was that possible? How does anyone was capable of leading such a crew of people who despised and even hated each other? He was pulled from his thoughts by the sound of blades being drawn from their sheaths.

The Japanese samurai and the Ming soldier had just drawn their weapons and were facing each other while the other pirates around them moved away. To Seokjin's amazement, the pirates threw themselves at each other, obviously not fighting for fun but to kill each other. Perfect, he said to himself, if they killed each other, I would have less to fight.

"Taehyung, Yoongi, not in front of our guest," Namjoon lamented, sighing.

But the other two ignored him and Seokjin no longer had any doubt that Namjoon was not the captain capable of leading and controle this strange crew. It was inconceivable, this crew would not last a day in the sea without being firmly led by their captain. He turned to Namjoon.

"If I had seen this before, I would never have mistaken you for their captain," he said to Namjoon dismissively.

Namjoon smiled.

"It's obvious. I told you I was just a weak peddler. My intelligence alone does not allow me to deal with such a bunch of idiots which constitutes the crew of the Red Princess."

Seokjin mentally put aside that he had just discovered the name of the ship.

"You didn't think a weak peddler from Joseon was going to boss us around," a voice added in chinese, too close to his ear.

Seokjin jumped when he suddenly realized the presence of another pirate right next to him. A pirate with a particularly small physique who could have passed for aboy in late adolescence, what he was maybe. Seokjin hadn't felt him coming but now smelled the aroma of the juicy chicken leg that he was chewing with obvious pleasure. This one was a Ming.

"Do you want some?" the Ming proposed, waving his meat, "you look hungry."

Seokjin looked at the meat longingly. It had been hours since he had eaten anything. He had just placed his lips on a chipped mug which had probably not been washed for a long time, he could well bite into a piece of meat that had already been eaten. He nodded and the Ming brought the meat to his mouth. Yet, just as Seokjin was about to bite into it, he pulled it away.

"Well even you want it, you can't have it. It's my meat, I don't share with anyone."

Angered, Seokjin suddenly unfolded his legs and knocked him over with one quick movement. Then, grabbing him between his legs, he pulled him towards him by folding his legs which nature – he thanked it for – had made him long. As soon as the pirate was close enough to his neck, he immobilized him with the strength of his legs alone and held him against him, while the little pirate struggled.

"If I can't eat meat, maybe I should eat a wako. I don't usually eat gross things, but I'll make an exception to survive."

"You're really sick," whispered the pirate who was having trouble breathing and who, instead of using his chicken leg to hit Seokjin, held it carefully and continued to bite into it from time to time. This had the gift of annoying Seokjin. The boy said: "So it is indeed you, the Wako Slayer, Namjoon was right."

"Yeah, it's me," Seokjin said dryly.

"It's curious, I imagined you would be ugly like a tuna," the boy remarked with disconcerting sincerity.

"Does that make you jealous?" Seokjin retorted.

"No, it makes me want to make you ugly so I can continue to imagine you as such."

Irritated, Seokjin suddenly bent down until his mouth reached the side of the pirate's throat and bit him hard enough to draw blood and draw a little cry of pain from the young pirate. The cry turned into a growl and very quickly, the other gave an evil chuckle.

"I heard that you feed on wako to be stronger and more beastly, it must be true. You may have a handsome face, but you are closer to the beast than to the man. Eat me if you want, at least I will do a good deed by feeding a hungry person."

Seokjin ignored him, he hadn't pulled him in and pinned him down to play with him. He opened his mouth again, released le pirate's throat, his mouth filled with a sickening taste of blood, and yelled at the other pirates:

"Free me now, or I'll cut his throat open with my teeth!"

Taehyung and Yoongi stopped their fight to look at him, suddenly more interested in what was happening at the foot of the mainmast than in killing each other.

The other pirates chuckled, Hoseok howled with laughter and Namjoon smiled with amusement before informing him:

"You can eat Jimin, if you want. But in the end, you will always be attached to this mast."

Stunned, Seokjin glanced at the young pirate he was holding, whose name was Jimin.

"He is a member of your crew, would you let me kill him without doing anything?!"

"Exactly. What you don't understand is that we didn't gather on this ship because we like eachother.  This is not the case and we are neither friends nor family. You can kill Jimin, it won't hurt us. But after that, I believe you'll really piss off the captain and that won't help your situation."

Pissed, Seokjin said:

"Good, bring the captain then."

"It's not us who make him come, it's him who comes when he decide," Jimin replied before managing to administer such a blow to his lower abdomen that Seokjin was forced to release him with a grunt of pain, not without him administer a formidable kick in return.

This caused Jimin to trip and drop his chicken leg onto the filthy floor of the boat. Seeing this, Jimin let out a beastly howl and lunged at him. Hoseok screamed in pleasure and began to tap rhythmically on a wooden barrel, stoking the excitement of the other pirates while Namjoon rolled his eyes. Without consulting each other, Taehyung and Yoongi began to fight fiercely until death ensued.

"Here we go again," Namjoon sighed as he observed the chaos on the boat which seemed to be a usual sight. Someone even began to play the violin with unparalleled energy and clumsiness,  adding a festive atmosphere to this spectacle of fights.

Under the boos of the pirates, Seokjin struggles as best he can, using his legs to counter Jimin's fierce punches.  The young man may have been small, but his rage made him particularly formidable. And with his hands tied behind his back, Seokjin was beginning to doubt whether he would be able to beat him to death. 

Jimin's fists had already opened his face in several places that he felt bleeding and when he was unable to push away the fist that was coming back towards him with force, it was his nose that bled profusely. The power was such that Seokjin's head slammed hard against the wood of the mast behind him and his vision became blurry for a few seconds during which Jimin continued to pummel him without facing any resistance from him anymore.

At one point, too weak to defend himself, Seokjin understood that he would not be able to push Jimin away. One of his eyes couldn't opened anymore and he felt like he was disfigured. His mouth filled with blood made him spit on Jimin in the eye to push him to finally strike the killing blow, which he prepared to do. 

Seokjin stared at him defiantly as he raised his fist high and...

"Stop."