Chapter 001
At last, the end of the rebellion was in sight.
The victor was the Chetty family, who had expanded their influence through smuggling in Bluegate Bay.
The head of the defeated Scala family, the former master of Bluegate Bay, was found hanged on the signboard warning that the area was a high-crime zone.
While her husband was dragged away to be killed, his wife barely managed to reach the docks with their two children. Had the rain not poured down at that moment, even that would have been impossible.
The mother of the two children slowly exhaled as she saw the ship that had promised them passage, now anchored in the harbor.
It was not the passenger ship she had been promised when she paid the money. It was an excessively small, dilapidated fishing boat.
“You mean all this money can only afford us a boat like that?”
When the mother, Ingrid Lupo Scala, asked, the sailor who had taken the money looked her and her five-year-old daughter over with sticky eyes.
The seven-year-old boy, clinging to his mother’s skirt, had fallen and rolled several times on the way here, leaving him covered in mud and wounds.
Benedict Lupo Scala, the son the Scala couple had painstakingly raised and cherished, hid behind his mother, frightened by the menacing-looking sailor.
His mother shifted her gaze to the fishing boat. The smell of the poorly maintained boat was foul, but it paled in comparison to the revulsion she felt the moment the fish hold opened.
She took a deep breath, then pushed her terrified son toward the sailor.
“Just take the boy.”
“Pardon?”
The sailor looked disappointed, then asked threateningly.
“What do you plan to do, just the two women?”
“I’ll manage. Just make sure that child is kept alive somewhere.”
“M-Mother.”
Benedict sensed something from his mother’s expression and tried not to let go of her skirt, but she coldly tore his hand away.
She was certain that the sailors would not kill Benedict, who would make for good labor.
As he was led onto the boat by the sailor, who clicked his tongue in regret, Benedict tried to pull back with all his might and cried, too.
Unlike the past seven years, no matter what the boy tried, he did not get what he wanted lately.
Just then, the sailors exchanged glances. One of them pulled a knife from his waist and approached the mother and daughter.
“We can’t just leave one son behind. We’ll all go together.”
The approaching sailor stopped instantly. He heard the cries of surprise from the other sailors who were watching them.
Benedict, who turned to look at his mother again, also stopped.
His mother was strangling his sister.
When the lightning flashed and the thunder roared, the struggling little body stopped breathing, as if that sound was its last defiance.
She turned to her son.
“Someone must remain to exact revenge.”
Ingrid Lupo Scala spoke with a face full of bitter resentment, looking directly into her son’s eyes, and then cut her own arm with the knife she held.
The screaming boy was suddenly lifted into the sailor’s arms.
“How can a fugitive make so much noise!”
His mouth was muffled by a rough hand.
His mother, cradling her daughter’s limp, young body, walked toward the sea. Her final image did not disappear from the boy’s sight even after he was thrown onto the floor of the fish hold and the door between him and the sky was closed.
On the floor of the fish hold.
The boy spent two years.
He lived with no sunlight, no people, and all sorts of fish, nameless things dragged up from the sea, insects, and filth.
By the time the ship returned after two years of deep-sea fishing, the boy had forgotten how to speak. Yet, even after two years, the boy had only left the fish hold but was unable to leave the ship.
For some reason, they fed the now tall boy well before leaving the ship, and then sold him to another vessel.
Benedict drifted at sea for five more years after that.
Most of the slaves who were sold alongside him died of fever.
He fought tooth and nail just to survive, and by the age of fourteen, he had even forgotten who he was.
Just as he was on the verge of convincing himself that he was born on a boat and that being a slave was his entire life—
Under the scorching sun, Benedict, who was hauling in nets, overheard a conversation between the sailors one day. It was like acid, dissolving his self-deception layer by layer.
“That’s why he hasn’t been on the boat lately. He won big at the casino.”
The sailors who frequented Bluegate Bay nowadays were all sinking their earnings into the newly established casino there.
It was the Mon Deplano Casino, the place where the boy grew up and which was now taken over by the Chetty family.
Unlike other casinos, which were the exclusive domain of the nobility, the Mon Deplano Casino, run by the Chetty family, allowed people to enjoy themselves all day for little money.
Loans were easy. Stories of a sailor who had earned a fortune and quit his sea job were circulating like a legend.
“A few years ago, I heard Mon Deplano staff were looking for someone.”
“Who were they looking for?”
“The Scala family’s son. Seems they were uneasy because they couldn’t find the body after the Citizen’s Revolution. They probably think he’s dead now, but…”
Benedict almost stopped pulling the net when he heard the phrase ‘the Scala family’s son.’ Another moment of crisis came when the rebellion was referred to as the Citizen’s Revolution.
However, losing his rhythm here meant certain death by being dragged into the sea, so he quickly regained his focus.
Then, a sailor pointed at Benedict.
“A boy around that age, with black hair. They said he has a scar carved into his shoulder blade. His nanny said she almost dropped him when he was an infant, but caught him, and he scratched her.”
“What about his eye color? His name?”
“Well, because they killed the nanny right after hearing that… They said his eyes are dark. And his name… you know how those noble kids have names they avoid using because it’s believed to cause sickness? They call them by their childhood names. So, they don’t even know his real name… But listen, if they find that boy…”
The sailor lowered his voice.
“They said they’d give a token. Five, of the purple ones.”
His voice wasn’t that low, and the eyes of every sailor on the boat lit up. It seemed to be a large sum.
Then, their gaze turned toward Benedict.
Black hair and purple eyes.
A boy of the same age as the dead boy.
A sailor approached and gripped the back of Benedict’s neck.
To check his shoulder blade, they forcibly stripped the rags he was wearing, pushed him face down, and held him to the floor. Beneath the dark blue bruises was a hardened scar.
“It’s here! It’s really here, isn’t it?”
A voice of such joy had never burst forth even when the boat was full of catch.
Benedict was dragged toward the fish hold.
The boy liked labor. At least it meant he wouldn’t have to enter the fish hold.
He begged and pleaded to do anything as long as it wasn’t cleaning the hold.
As the fish hold drew near, the boy became terrified and violently shook off the sailor’s hand with all his strength.
He had never known he was so strong. It was a strength he only ever used for pulling nets, never on a person. He had never even imagined he could.
He grabbed the knife used for mending nets, lunged, and stabbed the approaching sailor to death.
The boat instantly became chaos.
The boy not only had a knack for business, but also for fighting.
Above all, he was not afraid to stab with a knife.
Covered in blood, the boy put a hole in the boat, which was now littered with corpses, took a lifeboat that was onboard, and came ashore.
It took him quite some time to adjust to the land after seven years. He even developed a bad habit of deliberately shaking his body because not rocking felt strange. But eventually, he adapted to the land.
Benedict remembered that he was born on land. Once he did, he had to decide on a new direction for his life.
In the end, he had to return to Bluegate Bay.
“Someone must remain to exact revenge.”
Because that was the reason he survived.
And perhaps, after doing so, the haunting image that had tormented him for the past seven years would finally disappear.
Benedict eventually returned to his hometown. There, he celebrated his twenty-first birthday.
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Notes:
1. Bluegate Bay (블루게이트만): A fictional location, likely a coastal area central to trade and smuggling, which became the base of power for both the Scala and Chetty families.
2. Mon Deplano Casino (몬 데플라노): The name of the casino in Bluegate Bay, originally owned by the Scala family and taken over by the Chetty family after the revolution.
