Ship In A Bottle (A Monkie Kid Reader Insert)

Chapter 1: Jellyfish Blooms

"So that's what the milky way looks like."

Indeed it was. Back in the cozy little archipelago you came from, it was nothing but smog covering the stars every night you were alive.

It was usually only two or three stars back there, if you were so sure that one of them isn't actually Venus. Seven stars if you were lucky.

You didn't even knew how people could look at those dots in the sky and see bears or scales or...centaur archers. To you, they were just dots.

But now that you stood behind the rails...

It was beautiful.

Stars were speckled around in generous amounts. What the sky lacked with a moonless night, was made up for the first time you ever saw the milky way outside of stock images. No smog, no city lights, no nothing.

Just you, the wooden deck, the crashing tides, the hum of the cruise ship, and the remaining passengers and crew that were still awake during a time like this.

You thought about how hard you worked to get this far. The connections you had to form and maintain, the planning that went into this, the amount of training you and your fellow teammates had to go through.

And here you were. You and your team won the color guard competition. You won the cruise trip to the one place you worked so hard to take refuge in.

Everything was perfect.

And yet, something had to ruin it for you.

Next thing you knew, the entire ship was submerged.

People held onto any piece of the ship that floated. Passengers gripped tightly on the arms of their friends and family. You desperately removed your jacket, your backpack, your shoes, anything that pulled you deeper to the sea.

You tried swimming back up, even if you knew you were never taught. You only made yourself heavier as a result.

You didn't know how much longer you could hold your breath.

Instead, you kept sinking...

And sinking...

How did you get here?

You put so much effort into what could've been a brighter chapter of your life. Only for it to end like this?

Pitiful...

So that was it, then. That was how the story of a not-so-noteworthy kid's life was going to end. Months of pulling strings and calculating the likelihood of success, drowning with her in an anticlimactic end.

The last thing you would see are the air bubbles escaping your mouth, before your body went completely limp. You sunk further into the darkness, swallowed into the deep embrace of the deep blue abyss.

You drowsily blinked. The air bubbles floated further from you before you finally closed your eyes for what might be the last time. You wouldn't notice said air bubbles forming tentacles below them as you did.

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"The beach?! Mei, didn't you hear the news?" A teenage boy asked through his phone, keeping it near his ear with his shoulder while his hands were occupied with a plastic bag, labeled 'Pigsy's Noodles'. "Can't you just wait until jellyfish season is over?"

"Awww, since were you scared of some cute little jellies, MK?" A teenage girl voiced from the other side of the phone, with the sound of what was most likely a whirring motorcycle. "Besides, swimming isn't the only cool thing about the beach!"