The Shore

2. The Forest

The lighthouse. Seonghwa should go to the lighthouse.

Seonghwa awoke on a beach of black sand. As he lifted his head groggily, some grains stubbornly stuck to his cheek and hair. The rushing of shallow waves nearby him reached his ears. It brushed his eardrums and the back of his mind to clear his befuddled thoughts. Lost, he looked around.

Right beneath his body, he found a shell partly buried in the sand. He covered it in his hands like a precious good.

A bunch of ropes and nets that Seonghwa couldn't quite place laid nearby. However, when he rose his head to look around, his eyes only skipped over a non-descriptive beach. No trace of another person was in sight. The only thing he found was a stranded hooker he examined for a while before he gave it up. The leak in its hull wouldn't get him anywhere.

Had Seonghwa come here with this? He couldn't remember.

"Am I... stranded?" As if they held the answers to his puzzlement, Seonghwa patted down his dry clothes. He found a locket in his breast pocket, a memory of his grandfather. Then, he also spotted the scars on his arms that reminded him of parallel scratch marks, as if he had gotten stuck on a garden rake. Where did they come from?

One of his scratches was fresh, but he assumed it to be from the sharp shells that dotted the beach. He must have fallen quite hard. The wound ragged disgustedly and showed the first signs of an infection. He should be careful around the sharp edges. Thankfully, he wore shoes, so they wouldn't slice his feet apart.

Once more, Seonghwa looked out over the ocean. Its rummaging surface constantly shifted and changed right before his eyes. Every innocent movement of the waves reminded him of something. Something in that water. He should leave.

As he walked along the shore, he found a little pile of shells gathered on an elevated rock. He put his next to them to add to the little collection that the birds must have created before him.

He bet that his grandfather would have liked that image. Ever since he had still been a child, he had adored collecting things. Had they come together? Seonghwa should look around for him.

As a young boy he remembered his father talking about this island, he described it in a way that would scare the listener... he spoke of black butterflies, corpse candles and broken compasses.

In the distance, a lighthouse grew from the ground to reach for the grey skies. Instantly, Seonghwa's eyes fixed on it. The lights were off and indicated no life whatsoever. Still, it could mean shelter and possibly a signal spot for Seonghwa to get found. No doubt, if his grandfather saw it, he would go there, too. They should meet up.

Come. The lighthouse invited him. Come here. Come join me.

Huffing, Seonghwa pushed his long hair that hung over his eyes out of his face. Once he got back from this confusing place, he should cut it and get rid of the choppy ends. Lifeless like algae, they hung into his eyes. The sun and the salt of the water had left their traces in it.

At the sight of a bottle nearby, Seonghwa curiously approached it. The message inside was old but still easy to read. His fingers cradled the fragile paper as if it could turn to dust if he wasn't careful.

Day 5, There was a man aboard named Yunho who went missing after we shipwrecked. One night, we found him walking alone across the beach.
As we approached him, to our surprise we saw that he had this fixed expression on his face as if he had seen something horrifying.
His hands... his hands and arms were paralysed in a position like if he was protecting himself from something. We tried to ask him questions, but he didn't reply. Now he's sitting by the shore singing songs to the rocks about reflections in the sea.