Episode 09. To the Last Harbor
# Episode 09. To the Last Harbor
Yona's cargo ship was not fast.
Instead, it was a ship accustomed to disappearing.
It did not run straight along formal routes but slipped between outer maintenance bridge shadows and dead hulls. From afar it looked like a drifter that had lost its heading, and up close it looked no different. That was likely why it had survived so long. In this port, ships that looked vaguely discarded went farther than ships that caught the eye.
The cabin lights never fully brightened.
Yona kept only a few instrument panels at minimum, moving briefly between the cockpit and the cargo hold. He did not ask more than necessary, nor was he entirely indifferent. That degree of line was the most expensive courtesy on this floor.
Sion was accustomed to Yona's way.
He knew that few words was not indifference — it was the politeness of not asking what did not need asking.
Ater, by contrast, still wore a face unaccustomed to that distinction.
He sat with his back against the cabin wall, but looked like a person who had not fully surrendered any part of his body to this ship. A narrow, worn space; minimal light; movement that ran on faces and instinct rather than documents. Not the seat where the heir of House Valkar and a man of the Empire Approval Bureau would normally sit.
Seorin saw it but did not bother saying so.
Instead she turned her gaze toward Sion.
"He's not going to die on us."
"Who."
"That one."
No need to name him — they both knew.
Sion glanced toward Ater.
The black coat was already dusted with grime and metal powder, less composed than at first, but strangely looked more foreign. People who stayed unshaken in a place like this were usually one of two kinds. Truly foolish, or truly long-enduring.
"Guess he's always like that."
"No."
Seorin laughed low.
"People who are always like that usually show it once more before boarding a ship like this."
Sion did not reply.
Because the remark was strangely accurate.
On the other side, Sern was quietly continuing to read the cabin door gap, the instrument panel reflections, and the outside approach signals.
A person who never fully released tension, even while moving. Yet strangely, the sight looked not uncomfortable but familiar. As if he, too, had long ago lost the seat where he could sit at ease.
Yona asked from the cockpit side.
"No tail yet. But if you want to change destination, say it now."
Sion shook his head.
"No change."
"Figured."
"Nowhere else to go."
Yona did not answer that.
He knew from experience: when people with nowhere to go gathered, the ship usually sank — or, conversely, stayed afloat for a strangely long time.
After a short silence, Ater asked first for the first time.
"This Elia Vern — is she someone you have known long."
The question was aimed at Sion, but everyone in the cabin heard.
Sion pressed the inner pocket holding the fragment briefly before answering.
"Known her a long time."
"Do you trust her."
"No."
Ater narrowed his brow, barely.
"You gave the same answer before."
"It's the same question."
Seorin cut between them as if biting.
"How many times do I have to say — we're not going because we trust her, we're going because we need her."
Sern asked quietly.
"What does 'need' mean, specifically."
This time Sion did not answer immediately — he looked once at Seorin.
Seorin moved her chin very briefly, as if to say *go on*, and only then did he speak.
"What we have in hand are fragments.
Half-burned, half-severed, name and sequence both cut — fragments."
He was not talking about the record plate picked up at the body. He was talking about the entire incident.
"To read those, we need someone who can read not what remains, but what is missing."
Sion paused briefly, then added.
"You can carry fragments in your hand, but fragments alone don't give you answers. You have to go to the place they were cut from — only then do they connect."
Ater's gaze shifted, just slightly.
It was not quite interest — closer to the expression of someone seriously receiving, for the first time, a way of thinking outside their own language.
Sion continued.
"She has to be able to hide things too.
And know how far the danger goes.
And most important — better if she's someone who won't pretend she's never seen this before."
Yona snorted softly at that.
"Nice. What you're all looking for isn't really a person — it's a last harbor."
Ater turned his head at the phrase.
"Last harbor."
Yona shrugged briefly.
"You know — things too precious to throw away completely, but holding them makes your life feel more precious first. People, records — same thing."
Seorin added low.
"Where Elia is — that's exactly it."
After that single line, the cabin air changed slightly.
Until now, Elia had existed only as a name. For the first time, a sense of place attached. A place where discarded and erased things catch, one last time, before vanishing entirely.
Ater lowered his gaze for the briefest moment.
Order existed outside the Empire Approval Bureau too. Order that did not stop existing just because the Empire did not permit it. He knew that fact intellectually. But a moment like this — where he had to lean on that order directly — was an entirely different matter.
"Is it safe there."
This time Yona laughed first.
"If it were safe, why would you be going."
Sion smirked too.
"He's right about that."
Sern listened to that short exchange without a word.
Sion's side of people clearly ran on different standards. Not choosing doors on the premise of safety, the way the Empire did — but choosing which of the dangerous places was least likely to betray. Unfamiliar, but in a situation like this, it looked paradoxically more realistic.
Yona eased the speed slightly and spoke.
"Almost in. Everyone fix your face. Elia's alley reads expressions before faces."
Seorin immediately looked at Sion and grinned.
"Hear that? Fix your face first."
"What's wrong with my face."
"You look like a bitten dog."
"Great. Beautiful wording, as always."
After a brief laugh passed, the cabin went quiet again.
Through the outer window, a different face of the neutral port city slowly emerged.
Not the bright docks and noisy transfer levels — the older storage district deeper in. Worn warehouses layered upon each other, alleys where new signs were pasted over discarded ones. Even where light existed behind windows, almost none leaked outside; all doors were closed, yet everyone knew who was inside. That kind of district.
Yona said low.
"We're here."
The cargo ship attached to a dark access gap on one side, almost soundlessly.
Not a formal berth — a rear loading area known only to those who knew. Before the gangway even descended, Sion was already reading the outside air. Old paper smell, dust, damp wood, spices, metal locks, and the scent particular to places where things not yet fully discarded had stayed a long time.
Seorin must have felt it too — she muttered small.
"Nice. Really is the last harbor."
Ater stood before the ramp, looking out.
It looked flimsy. At least at first. Like a place sustained not by order but by cracks.
Yet strangely, within that flimsiness there were lines of their own. What to let in and how far, what to keep standing outside. Entirely different from the Empire's methods — but calling it disorder would be wrong. The standards were far too precise for that.
Sern asked, very quietly.
"Shall we enter."
Ater did not answer for a moment.
Until just now, he had been a person alive in the language of the Empire Approval Bureau. But now, he was about to knock on a door that existed outside the Empire's records — of his own volition.
He said, finally, very low.
"We have already come this far."
Sion heard that and glanced only at the side of his face.
There was no agreement or trust in those words yet — but at least it was not a declaration of turning back.
Yona lowered the ramp fully first.
"Fine. Go. But don't say I was here today."
"When have we ever."
"You always act like you don't, then my name pops up later."
Seorin laughed.
"That's true."
The four descended the ramp in turn.
The alley was narrower than expected, and quiet.
Port noise lay in the distance like something dead, but around here even a single footstep sounded unreasonably loud. Between the closed doors it felt like no eyes watched — but in truth, everything was seen. That kind of street.
Sion led.
One turn, two turns, past bent alleys until he stopped before an old storage building. The sign above the door had faded — half the letters dead long ago — and over it, a more recent marker hung at a crooked angle. Neither an official depot nor a fully private warehouse. An ambiguous face.
Ater looked at that door and thought, very briefly.
Could the next answer to this affair really exist in a place like this.
But Sion did not hesitate.
Neither did Seorin.
Yona had already fallen back, and Sern was reading the surrounding sightlines before the door itself.
Sion stood before the door and knocked — twice, short, a breath's pause, then once more.
Silence inside.
Then, after a moment, from within — the sound of one metal lock releasing, very slowly.
No one said another word.
Sion pressed his inner pocket once more without thinking, and Ater felt it clearly for the first time — that if this door opened, he would truly have to listen to a language from outside his world.
The handle turned.
And the four stood at the threshold of the place where erased things flowed in one last time, before vanishing entirely.