FELLOWSHIP || Ateez Fanfiction

Chapter Nineteen: Chased

Wooyoung POV
After making sure that everyone is on board I climb into the crow's nest.
Hongjoong is navigating the ship while the others go inside.
We slowly sail away from the island. A few moments later the ship of the soldiers from the Nekra Kingdom appears behind us.
"THEY ARE FOLLOWING US!", I scream. Hongjoong steers the ship towards the ruins of the castle.
"Their ship is bigger and slightly slower. I will try to outdistance them by fly through these small passages between the ruins.", Hongjoong explains.
He carefully navigates through the narrow spaces between the parts of the shattered islands but so do our persecutors even though their ship is always just inches away from crashing. They shooting arrows at us but always miss.
"THEY ARE STILL FOLLOWING US!"
"No way!"
We make it to the other side of the ruins but so do they.
"WHAT IS YOUR PLAN NOW, CAPTAIN?"
"I don't have one yet."
We keep going forward. Their ship very slowly falls behind due to them being slower.
"Maybe we should change our course, so they don't follow us so easily!", I shout.
"Jongho should be examined by a doctor or someone with more medical knowledge though, so I'd like to make a very quick stop at the next island."

San comes onto the deck.
He speaks with Hongjoong for a few minutes before he waves at me. I motion him to come up.
He climbs up the main mast.
"How is Jongho?", I ask.
"He is good. The wound is pretty deep and he has problems with walking but he is tough. He seems pretty calm about it."
"That's good to hear."
San pulls out a few arrows that got stuck in mast next to my head and in the crow's nest.
"It is just... Yeosang, he got really pale and started shivering when he saw the wound. When we asked what was up, he initially didn't answer. Only after we sat him down and asked multiple times, he did."
"Hmm, he saw a lot of blood and horrible wounds in the past. It might have brought back some bad memories."
"Did you see it too?"
I don't know what I should answer to this. It is still hard to talk about everything, so I keep it at vague statement.
"I was always with him."
My voice cracks slightly. I nervously look into the distance as I try to supress my tears and try not to think about it.
San notices my discomfort and quickly changes the topic.
"Well, it seems like we managed to get away from our persecutor. I see them get smaller and smaller over there."
"Yes. For now. But they will definitely try to follow and catch up to us. They might attack us again at our stop in the next village."
"I don't think they can attack us inside the village because that would probably start a war between the Nekra Kingdom and Waerglunt."
"Then they will attack us as soon as we leave."
"I hope not. I hope they sail in the wrong direction."
Yeah that would be nice but very unlikely. I let out a sigh and lay my head on San's shoulder. I feel tired after everything that has happened today.

3 days later
I help Jongho onto the main deck. His wound is still very painful and he still struggles with walking. The island in front of us is almost as tiny as the island where Hongjoong's parents live and its main residents are apparently sheep. I am not too surprised though cause San told me that the island's name, Schaepli, means little sheep.
The whole island is enclosed by a wooden fence so that the sheep don't walk over the edge. There is only one door. We park our ship near it and walk towards it. "Please keep the door shut.", the sign on it says.
We walk through the door and close it behind us. On the other side we are greeted by sheep who look at us bored. Yeosang carefully touches one of them.
"Woah, so soft."
I also touch one. It is super soft. I could carress it the whole day.
The others also get curious and start petting the sheep.

We move on to the village. An older man walks past us. Hongjoong stops him and asks him a few questions:
"Hello, we are treasure hunters and one of us got injured. Is there someone in this village who knows how to treat wounds?"
"Hello, usually Danya treats injuries. She lives in the house over there."
The man points to a house in the distance.
"Thank you. Also have you seen a part of a stone plate with engravings on it? It should have a sort of triangular shape."
"No, I am sorry."
"Okay, no problem. Thank you, have a nice day."
The captain turns towards us.
"I would say that we split up to save time. Someone will bring Jongho to Danya and the rest of us will ask for the key.", he explains.
"I will go with Jongho!", I exclaim.
Hongjoong nods.