Volume 1

Chapter 1

It was a clean cutback.

On the white, breaking wave’s foam, Morae quickly stood up and immediately turned the board, zigzagging across the curve of the oncoming wave.

Her dazzling movements, never missing the wave’s flow, drew cheers from several people watching the beach.

The wind, blowing evenly from the distant east sea, made for good wave quality. Even to me, who had never been on a board but had been watching and listening for years, it seemed like perfect conditions for leisurely surfing.

The sky and sea were like a decalcomania in a folded and unfolded drawing paper. Like accidental marbling created by mixing blue and white paint under light pressure.

White clouds in the blue sky. White waves in the blue sea.

About ten people were waiting in the lineup to catch a wave, but Morae was the only surfer who actually caught a wave and continued boarding leisurely to the beach.

Her balance on the board was so perfect that it was hard to believe she was floating on a wave, relying on a single 6-foot 7-inch plank.

There was no precariousness, no close calls. She looked more comfortable and free than someone riding a bicycle on land, and the wave was like a carpet carrying her. A magic carpet from an old tale from a faraway land.

“Wow… I wonder what it feels like to ride like that?”

“Amazing. I’d have no regrets if I could ride like that just once.”

People taking a lesson just 10 meters from where I was sitting stopped paddling their arms and admired Morae’s surfing. And their admiration soon turned into urging their instructor.

“Instructor, when can we ride like that?”

Yeehan, facing away from the sea towards the students, glanced back to confirm that the subject of their ‘like that’ was Morae, and sighed. His frown was clearly visible even through his sunglasses.

“The surfer you’re admiring has been surfing for 7 years, and swimming in the sea… Well, you can say she’s been floating in the sea since she started walking. But what about you guys?”

“……”

They were complete beginners who were touching a board for the first time today, laying styrofoam boards on the sand and practicing paddling by waving their arms.

Their shoulders slumped at Yeehan’s blunt words. They looked like people looking up at the summit from the foot of a mountain before climbing a high peak.

April.

It was still chilly to enjoy swimming, but as soon as the minimum temperature to enter the sea in a suit was restored, beginners who wanted to learn surfing and experienced surfers flocked to the beach. The surfing boom of the last few years has changed the landscape and the types of tourism here a lot.

Morae, having finished surfing, walked out of the sea with her board under her arm. She skillfully lowered the zipper of her wetsuit and took out her arms, then plopped down next to me.

“Aigo! It’s no joke after riding for the first time in a while. Everything hurts.”

I took out a water bottle from the bag I brought and handed it to her.

It was her first time surfing in the East Sea this year. She had gone on a surfing trip to some southern island with Yeehan, who enlisted with me, during our final winter in the military, but that was already about 3 months ago.

Even though she said it was hard, her wet face was full of excitement. It was the unique energy that emanated from a person doing something they loved. I could feel the cool, salty touch of the sea from her next to me.

When I first met Morae at this beach on Yeehan’s bike, she was surfing, and I felt this temperature and scent from her that day when she walked out of the sea, shook my hand, and smiled.

Maybe that’s why. Her name is Morae, but to me, she always evoked the moisture and vitality of the sea.

Not the dry, gritty sand that is laid on school playgrounds or piled up on one side of construction sites, but sand as part of the sea, constantly changing shape as it is soaked by the incoming waves.

Whether she is an alpha or not… it doesn’t matter. It was the impression conveyed by the presence of the human being Lim Morae, not the action of the reproductive element pheromone. In the first place, it was almost impossible for me, a beta, to detect an alpha’s pheromones.

“How was it?”

“You were clean, like someone who rode yesterday?”

“Do you think I ride better than Yeehan?”

I turned my head and looked at Yeehan, who was demonstrating to the students by waving his arms on a styrofoam board. And I answered in a low voice.

“You were always better than Yeehan.”

Morae also glanced at Yeehan and smiled at me so as not to be caught.

“I did some special training while you guys were in the military. It’s nice to ride after a long time… but the waves are too calm. Ah, I want to ride a big wave!”

It was Morae’s recent habit.

She had described several times how thrilling it is to slide through the inside of the round tunnel created when a big wave curls and collapses, and the mysterious sensation of being sucked into a natural world of another dimension for a moment, not Earth.

It was not easy to encounter such waves in the East Sea. Yeehan, who had never been surfing abroad, had only heard about it and seen it in videos, but had never actually ridden one.

As top-notch surfers, they could not be satisfied with the waves of this sea alone. No matter how long they stayed on the board, they felt thirsty.

About 7 years ago? In this beach, where more than a dozen surfing equipment rental and lesson companies have now sprung up, when there were only sashimi restaurants and cafes for tourists, Morae was almost the first to launch a board on this sea.

She had been introduced to surfing on a family trip to Hawaii by a guide, and she immediately bought a board and returned home. Traveling to the Pacific island and bringing the large object she bought there back to Korea by plane was not difficult for her.

Morae’s father was one of the best-off people in the area, owning half a dozen large fishing boats and several restaurants, and he would spare nothing for Morae, the youngest only daughter with only older brothers, and like a painful finger born as a female alpha.

Under Morae’s influence, Yeehan naturally came into contact with surfing and immediately fell in love with it. As soon as the sea warmed up enough for the suit to withstand, the two would ride their bikes to this beach, 40 minutes away, and I would sit on the beach as I do now, watching them go out to the lineup and be washed back to the beach over and over again without getting tired. It was no exaggeration to say that my three years of high school passed like that.

“Want me to teach you? Want to try?”

It was a question I had heard at least a thousand times in 5 years. My answer was always the same. I fiddled with the water bottle I received back from her and shook my head.

“Aren’t you bored?”

My reaction was the same this time too.

Yeehan and Morae periodically asked that, but they never actively tried to persuade me or forcibly drag me into the sea. This time too, Morae just laughed, tapping my shoulder with her wet fist. But it was a laugh mixed with disappointment and worry that I was still the same even after going to the military.

She got up to go back into the sea. I also shook off my butt and got up to zip up her suit. It was my role when one of Yeehan and Morae was not there.

“Okay, lift your waist! Look far ahead! Give strength to your triceps!”

“Instructor, I want to stop and go out to the sea!”

“With that arm strength, you won’t be able to go more than 10 meters forward even if you go out to the sea now. Lift your waist more. If you don’t have a clear view, you’re not only endangering yourself but also other surfers!”

Morae chuckled at Yeehan’s drill sergeant-like stiff tone and loud voice, emphasizing the importance of safety while correcting the students’ posture.

“I guess he still hasn’t lost his military habits.”

I smiled back at her in agreement. Morae lightly patted my cheek with her cool, wet hand.

“Our Hyun is so fluffy like this. Who would see you as a just-discharged soldier.”

Soldier.

That’s right. Until a few months before enlisting, soldiers felt like complete adults who belonged to a completely different realm than high school students, who had completed the transition to the next stage. But now… I wasn’t even sure what that nearly 2 years had left me with.

“Don’t follow strangers even if they talk to you, and sit here well. Got it?”

When I nodded, she smiled brightly with her face beaded with seawater, and went back to the sea with her board under her arm.

She fearlessly crosses the boundary between the sea and the sandy beach, raises her head high without fear even on the unpredictable sea, as Yeehan is now emphasizing to the students, and paddles against the direction of the waves towards the lineup.

And she miraculously stands up on the fragile white foam that seems to disappear at any moment.

No matter how many times I see it, no matter how many years I see it, it was an amazing scene.

○

The fish market was bustling with preparations to welcome the evening boats that would arrive soon. Auctions were already taking place around some of the fishing boats that had arrived a little early. Perhaps because the weather was getting warmer, quite a few tourists were noticeable. The stores selling ice boxes and ice were also lively.

Towards the end of the pier leading to the breakwater. I was sitting on a low concrete pillar raised to tie up boats, and I turned my gaze towards the sea.

The boats returning to the harbor after finishing their day’s work were appearing one by one from the distant sea. They were the boats that had gone out to fish at dawn.

A gust of sea breeze brought the smell of the sea. As the weather cooled rapidly as the sun set, I put my hands in the pockets of my seasonal jacket and shrugged my shoulders.

Yeehan went out on a boat with grandfather and uncle today. If Yeehan didn’t ride the boat, I almost never came out to the harbor to wait for the return.

Yeehan’s father, my uncle, and our grandfather had been forcing Yeehan to ride the boat. It seemed to have started almost when Yeehan was in middle school, before I came here.

I was given an exemption, but Yeehan was not. Yeehan, who had occasionally boarded the boat to do errands since he was in the upper grades of elementary school, was already fully qualified as a fisherman who could do a proper job by the time I came here.

But Yeehan regarded it only as a temporary aid for his hardworking grandfather and father, and had no intention of becoming a fisherman and boarding the boat himself.

However, as if they had been waiting for him to be discharged, his grandfather and uncle were pushing harder than before. The adults said that now that he had been to the military, it was time to settle down stably.

Yeehan was only twenty-three years old.

He had been resisting not getting on the boat at all after being discharged, fearing that it would be taken as a sign that he would continue to ride the boat in the future, or that they would expect him to do so, but Yeehan had gone out to sea today. Morae’s cell phone had been turned off all day.

His grandfather’s boat came into view. It was a small, used fishing boat purchased by borrowing money from various sources. Small enough for three men, his grandfather, uncle, and Yeehan, to be enough to fish.

The place where I was sitting was our boat’s designated mooring. I made eye contact with Yeehan, who was standing at the bow preparing to moor.

I received the rope Yeehan threw and wrapped it around the pillar. Yeehan chuckled at my clumsy appearance of receiving and tying the rope. At least there was no big problem to the extent that he could laugh at me, and the tightness in my chest, which had been uneasy all day, loosened to some extent.

In an instant, the catch was moved to the fish market right next to the harbor, and a fisheries cooperative employee wearing a red hat gathered the auctioneers with a whistle. It felt like it didn’t take even 10 minutes from the time the boat docked until the product was auctioned off to the person who offered the highest bid. Everyone involved was an expert.

Even if his grandfather or uncle didn’t give separate instructions, as soon as the auction was over, Yeehan loaded the product onto a cart with an oxygen tank and started delivering it to the sashimi center that had won the bid.

As I followed Yeehan’s broad back with my eyes, I suddenly turned my gaze at the sensation that the flow of the surrounding air was changing.

“Old man, let’s talk for a moment.”

It was Morae’s father.

‘Mr. Lim’, who skipped greetings to his grandfather, who was old enough to be his father, and abruptly asked to talk for a moment with a frown, turned around and took the lead before his grandfather could say anything.

Excluding foreigners, there is no one among the people who buy, sell, and carry fish in this fish market who has not borrowed money from the uncle. The adults always said that. Whether it was exaggerated or not, it was not entirely unfounded, and our family also owed money to the uncle.

His grandfather and uncle cut through the fish market between the glances of people who were pretending not to look, and turned around the fisheries cooperative building. As soon as the two disappeared completely from view, the surrounding murmur returned to its original tone.

Only the uncle could not take his eyes off the meaningful afterimage left by their already disappeared tracks.

From inside the brim of the deeply pressed hat, which never loses its fishy smell no matter how much it is washed, the uncle’s eyes, which were deeply wrinkled compared to his age, stared at the place where the two had disappeared, and soon began to move his stopped hands again.

The uncle’s hands, which prepared for the next auction with mechanical movements and unhesitatingly stabbed into the pile of fish, were tough and thick as if they could not feel any emotion or pain.

My soft hands, which had never cut open the belly of a fish, suddenly felt like hands that had stabbed a person and stained blood, and I stealthily hid them in my jacket pocket with guilt.

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