Chapter 1 - The Lighthouse Keepers
Lightning streaked across the sky. Shen Dong opened his eyes. The wind outside screamed. Then came the boom of thunder.
Shen Dong’s bed was by the window and though he’d closed it, the rain still managed to worm its way in and splatter onto his face. He paid it no mind and instead reached beside his pillow, in search for his watch, or to be more precise, to find his watch face.
The original bracelet of the watch had long since disappeared who knows where, and the hands were temperamental at best. When they were in a good mood, they would be out only a little, but on their off days, they could be out by a few whole turns. Those times he forgot to bring it, Shen Dong just relied on the sun to guess the time.
So while the hands of the watch now said it was three fifteen, he only took it as an approximation.
The notice two days ago had said the typhoon would be arriving today. Looked like it had arrived half a night earlier. Shen Dong got out of his bed and pulled on his clothes while he fiddled with his walkie-talkie.
“Chen-shu?”
The other side merely crackled. No one responded.
“Chen-yeye?” Shen Dong yelled, but there was still no response. Nothing could be done. He clipped the walkie-talkie to his waist and pulled out the rain jacket from behind the door. “With all this, and he’s still not awake?”
This typhoon looked to be rather sprightly with waterfall levels of rain. When Shen Dong opened the door, he didn’t even had time to look around before getting a bucket of the stuff thrown in his face. The water immediately gushed into his rain jacket and turned his clothes semi-transparent.
He turned and struggled for a while to get his battered wooden door closed, even managing to get a gash on his leg from the metal frame for all his effort. Earlier that year there had been talk of someone being sent down to fix the damn thing, but here he was, half a year and two typhoons late, and the thing was still falling apart.
Shen Dong pulled his rain coat tighter around him, bowed his head, and rushed into the rain. He’d barely taken two steps when the wind had nearly flattened him against the craggy ground.
It was technically summer on the island but with all the wind and rain, by the time he’d gotten to the bit of rock that stuck out near the pier, he already felt that he was frozen through.
The island was a good ways away from the coast and uninhabited other than Shen Dong and Chen-shu. Each month there was only the single ferry that came to supply them fresh water and whatnot. Because of that, and the size of the place, no tourists came either since it only took about an hour to stomp the whole length of the island.
But because of all the underwater reefs and the sailing route nearby, a lighthouse had had to been built, even if it only guided a single boat every few weeks or so.
Shen Dong had lived on the island for nearly seven years as the repairman for the lighthouse, though he often also played the role of lighthouse keeper.
In those years, he’d long since lost track of the number of times he’d had to make this trek in the rain, how many times he’d been flattened to the ground in the wind, how many times he’d caught his coat on the sharp rocks near the boat.
“Shit!” Shen Dong yanked his raincoat from the clutches of the rocks and aimed the boat towards the lighthouse. It would only take him less than five minutes to make the crossing, he was just that familiar with this route.
On the island, only the lighthouse was in a state presentable enough to see guests. If you didn’t count his home’s front door, then this boat was the most heart-breaking sight on the island that let in water like nothing else. Even that short, five minute crossing had the water lapping around his ankles.
Shen Dong made a note to himself to message the ferry to bring over some materials that month so that he could mend the boat himself or else he’d be swimming to the lighthouse before long.
Shen Dong lashed the boat securely to a rock and jumped out onto the beach. With the rain still slapping around him, he struggled his way to the lighthouse. He pulled out his key, unlocked the door, and went in.
“Chen-shu! Where are you?!” Shen Dong stripped off his raincoat and dropped it by the window then took a towel to wipe himself down. He was a little worried.
There was no one in the Watch Room.
Chen-shu had worked at this lighthouse for twenty plus years. This lighthouse was like his son, no, like his family. There was no way he’d abandon the place during a typhoon.
Shen Dong hesitated then took the stairs down to the basement.
In the basement was the Service Room. There, in addition to the clockworks, fuel tanks and vents, was a room with a bed in it in case if whoever was on duty needed to have a lie down.
Shen Dong heard coughing and went to push open the door to this rest room. Inside, he found Chen-shu lying on the bed under a thick, military style coat, his face red.
“Ch-chen-shu,” Shen Dong said, with brow furrowed. He put a hand to the man’s head. “Y-you’ve got… a fever. Why, why didn’t you c-call me?”
“I’m fine,” Chen-shu said then coughed some more. He waved his hand. “I just checked up stairs. It’s all good. It’ll be fine if you just take a look.”
“You,you need to t-take some medicine.” Shen Dong took the medicine box from the half-broken wardrobe beside the table.
It wasn’t convenient living on the island. Whatever sickness you just had to deal with it yourself, take what medicine you can and hope for the best. If it was something more serious, you could contact the mainland and get a ship to come but no ship would be coming in this kind of weather, even if it meant death.
“Ey?” Chen-shu slowly sat up on the bed and sighed. “I heard you yelling upstairs earlier. You didn’t stutter.”
“Not, not u-used to it?” Shen Dong smiled as he gave Chen-shu the fever medication from the box then went to get a cup of hot water.
“I’m used to it, I just don’t understand it.” Chen-shu pulled the coat tighter around himself.
Shen Dong didn’t reply. He didn’t like talking about his stuttering but since this was Chen-shu who brought it up, he didn’t feel the need to get too angry about it. If it was someone else, it would have been a different matter.
Chen-shu didn’t get it and neither did Shen Dong. Over the phone, over radio, whatever, he could talk just fine, but put a real living person in front of him, even if they were fifty metres away, and he’d immediately start stuttering. Even how this started was a mystery to him.
And so he stayed on the island, because the island had no one.
Chen-shu fell asleep not too long after taking the medicine so Shen Dong went up to the Lantern Room.
The lighthouse was getting on in years and, according to Chen-shu, had over a hundred years of history.
Unlike modern lighthouses these days, this old lighthouse had character. Though Chen-shu often talked longingly of the day when the place would finally collapse and be rebuilt from the ground up, it wasn’t all that bad. It was sturdy and with all the battering it got from the waves, its chalky black exterior still stood proudly erect upon the reef.
Sometimes when he had nothing better to do, Shen Dong would just look out at the deep black-blue sea, and, given enough time, he’d feel like he was floating too. And if he didn’t want to look at the ocean, he could always look at the island. The lighthouse wasn’t all that tall but it could still see most of the island from its sparce vegetation to its resting sea birds.
But right now there was a typhoon and he could see nothing from the office. And it was cold. Shen Dong shivered. The wind buffeted gallery deck and his raincoat swung around him, hitting him in the face. Not far below crashed waves nearly as tall as the lighthouse itself.
He looked down from the deck. With these kinds of waves, he had to wonder how much of the coral down under the water would be getting damaged…
Teeth chattering, he went back to the Watch Room and reported the status of the lighthouse then went for a change of clothes. The radio was silent and at a time like this, silence was a good thing. It meant no one was in trouble.
Shen Dong sat in the Watch Room and listened to the waves as they crashed against the lighthouse. Inside, he felt incredibly calm, strange, since as far as he could recall, he wasn’t a calm kind of person.
Chen-shu was getting on in years but he was still fit and before the typhoon had finished its two day, two night holiday, he’d already recovered. When he came up to relieve Shen Dong, he was in high spirits.
“Go and have a rest,” he said. He had a cup of tea in one hand and with the other, he patted Shen Dong’s shoulder. “Tomorrow the boat’s coming. Do you want to go ashore to have a walk around?”
“No.” Shen Dong rarely went ashore. Theoretically, he and Chen-shu were to take turns to go ashore, but in reality he usually just told the crew what he wanted and let Chen-shu go ashore to visit his family there.
“Then do you have anything to bring?” Chen-shu sat next to him and also stared at the radio.
“No.”
“Go back and sleep. Don’t sit here just staring.”
By the time Shen Dong left the lighthouse, the sky was clear and the light of dawn was shining down over the island, all clean and fresh.
The typhoon had passed and already the place had returned to its usual tranquil self. He breathed deeply. That peculiar scent of the typhoon had already evaporated and the air was filled with the usual smell of seaweed, a smell a more learned person might describe as being the fresh aroma of the ocean.
He was a bit tired but he didn’t go back to his home to sleep and instead went to the cliffs to have a look at the coral there.
He didn’t consider himself to be a sentimental, plant growing, plant loving kind of person, but ever since he started living on the island, he’d started to grow coral.
Probably because it was just so boring here.
But then, after growing them for a bit, he realised that growing coral was even more boring.
Corals, you know, it takes them months to even grow just a bit and every time Shen Dong went to go have a look at them, he felt rather silly.
He took a deep breath and stripped out of off his clothes, including his underwear. He liked the feeling of swimming naked in the ocean.
But he didn’t immediately jump into the water and instead closed his eyes.
Breath in, breath out, in again, out again. He forced his mind to empty and go completely blank.
This was a technique an old fisherman had taught him that would allow him to hold his breath for longer and, given how bored he was, he’d practiced it over the course of many years.
He trained his breath, then, after a few minutes, dove into the ocean.
He slowly sank a few metres then came to the coral. He looked them over and saw that fortunately only the very largest had suffered any damage. He gathered up the snapped bits of coral. With enough luck, he could get them growing again.
Inspection over, and breath just about spent, he surfaced, took a deep breath, then swam back toward the shore.
As he was about to clamber up, an orange flash caught the corner of his eye. He stopped.
Among the rocks was a little hollow and in that little hollow lay… a clownfish.
Its orange and white stripes contrasted brilliantly, making it stand out even more.
A single clownfish?
Shen Dong looked around. All kinds of fish were common around here, and with no water pollution, they flourished greatly. This clownfish was a Ocellaris Clownfish and, again, was common here, but to see one lying up on the rocks, that was a first for Shen Dong.
Did it accidentally beach itself?
Had the tide gone down too quick and it couldn’t get back in time?
Shen Dong poked the fish. Was it dead?
The little clownfish waved its tail in response to the poking.
“Still alive, huh,” Shen Dong picked it up by the tail and flung it into the ocean.
He and Chen-shu’s main diet was fish, but a clownfish… well, let’s just say there wasn’t much point.
More importantly, Chen-shu was a seasoned fisherman and he often fished in his spare time. Not just that, but each time he went back home, his wife always loaded him up with a whole pile of fish to bring back to the island with him, sometimes to the point of making Shen Dong not want to look at another fish.
Actually, Chen-shu also kept some chickens on the island. They lived next to Shen Dong’s little house, but he’d never seen any of them get eaten. They were more like wild birds who had free roam of the island and there wasn’t much meat on them anyway.
After being dropped back in the ocean, the clownfish didn’t move. Then, after a few seconds, it seemed to suddenly come to and suddenly swam off.
“Next time be careful. If you’re not, you’ll sunbathe yourself into a fried fish,” Shen Dong shouted after it.
The little orange shadow disappeared and Shen Dong climbed back onto the rocks.
Why did he think the fish had jumped up here?
Could clownfish jump?
Like a carp?
Shen Dong pondered this as he walked, his thoughts somehow going from clownfish to pirate ships with one-eyed pirates with eyepatches doing blazing battle with merchant ships on the high seas.
He was tired by the time he got back to his home, so he set aside the bits of coral and stripped down again before grabbing a towel from inside and heading round the back.
Life on the island was simple, and getting fresh water to the place was hard, so there was only a simple water tower that they strove to use as little as possible.
Shen Dong checked the water gauge. The boat would be coming by tomorrow, but experience told him that it was best to not let any water go to waste. One time in the past the boat had been late coming for nearly ten days.
Shen Dong twisted the handle of the faucet and quickly washed himself free of ocean water.
This shower was built by him and Chen-shu the year he arrived on the island. Before that, he had to just face the wall of his own house to take a shower. As for going to the bathroom, Chen-shu’s simple response had been ‘this island’s so big, can’t you just find some place to crouch?’
Fine, but standing naked, even if there was no one around, just to shower made Shen Dong uncomfortable, like he was some hoodlum streaking in the middle of the city. Sure, the shower right now didn’t even have a roof, but it still gave one a sense of security.
Shower done, Shen Dong rubbed at his hair and let the ocean breeze do the rest. In a place like this, all it took was a few moments and the wind could get you all dry.
Back in his room, he slept solidly until the sun was high in the sky the next day.
He took out his watch face and guessed it was probably around ten in the morning. The boat would be coming at noon so he had time to fix up his corals.
He took the same route to the cliffs and was about to start taking off his clothes when he suddenly stopped. After a moment, he said, “The hell…?”
In that same rock hollow quietly lay a little clownfish.
Shen Dong thought maybe he’d slipped back to yesterday or something and rubbed his eyes. He opened them and saw that the fish was still there. After a while, he jumped up onto the rock.
He hesitated, then used a finger to prod the fish.
Just the same as yesterday, after getting poked, the fish flicked its tale.
Shen Dong forced himself not to say the same thing as yesterday: still alive, huh?
“Are you sunbathing?” He pinched the tail of the clownfish and held it up in front of his eyes. It remained still other than its gills that pulsed one after another.
Shen Dong thought maybe he’d been on this island for too long and that boredom had changed him as a person. He carefully looked at the clownfish’s orange and white stripes. On its back there was a line of white, perhaps a scar. He made a mental note of these things then threw it back into the ocean.
After hitting the water, the little clownfish swished its tail and made off just like yesterday. Shen Dong stared after it for a while, then slowly took his clothes off.
At noon the ship came and after they loaded off the fresh water, and after Chen-shu got aboard and the ship left, Shen Dong was left all alone on the island.
Really, there wasn’t much difference between just one or two people on the island. Apart from when they handed over the shift, Shen Dong didn’t see anyone anyway.
When nothing was wrong and when he had nothing better to do, he would just sit on the rocks and look out to sea, or just wander the island and count the chickens.
This kind of dead quiet could drive someone crazy. Switch Shen Dong for some other young person and they probably wouldn’t be able to stand it given the low pay. It was so low that even Chen-shu couldn’t find a replacement despite his age.
And if Shen Dong didn’t want to wander about, he could just sit in the Watch Room all day, only moving to go to the toilet and sleep.
These past few days had been tranquil, so that morning Shen Dong decided to get up early and get to fixing the little boat.
On his way to get his tools and materials he paused and looked toward the path leading down to the coral cove. He hesitated there for a few minutes then decided to take a look.
He knew he must be bored, but he really wanted to see if that clownfish was on the rocks again.
The sea breeze was comfortable and Shen Dong spread his arms to receive it.
Then as he passed that particular rock, he stopped, then slowly bent over. “The hell?!”