BB demanded silence as she held up her glass of watered-down beer while standing on the poop deck. It didn’t take long for her tipsy crew to respond. “If you were to tell me that this skinny one here,” she pulled a shaky Navy closer to her as she spoke, “would help us take down one of the legendary beasts of the sea; I would have said: Fat fucking chance of that happening!” The crew snickered as they stood beside chucks of the leviathan gathered from earlier that day. “And if you had told me, we’d be finishing our trade while cashing in the bounties for the leviathan from various countries; I would have said: Who? Us? We found a way to legally extort more money out from under the noses of some delusional pricks? Fuck yeah!” BB’s speech was hyped up by her crew. They were all in on their plan for the carcass. “Now it’s up to you lot,” she turned to the chosen crew mates behind her. “Get your brothers, your lovers, or whoever you know to turn in the evidence for us and come back with the bounty, or we’re going to make sure you’ll regret ever hearing about the crew of The Pillow Princess!”

Standing at the front of the ship, Max listened absentmindedly as he looked out into the sea. BB went on about how she was going to give each member of her loyal crew a bonus and a two percent raise. She had thought it through. There was no point in the beast going to waste. And if BB were to hand in directly the parts of the leviathan for the bounties set by various countries, then corruption would certainly take place. Either the evidence would’ve been declared faked since she was too unknown, or the credit went to someone else because she was a woman. There was even a chance she would be executed just for being caught as part of a pirate crew. BB’s plan was to use relatives of respected navy merchants to turn in the evidence on their behalf with fifteen to twenty percent of the reward going to whoever cooperated with them. Of course, there was always a chance of betrayal. BB had assured Max that her men were loyal, and he had no reason or evidence to question her judgement. It was her decision. She would reap the rewards or consequences.

Next to him, Cy was looking down at his beer. He was completely disinterested in the contents, but didn’t seem willing to look up and interact with the people around him. Judging from his body language, Max assumed he was acting this way because of him. It was a little admirable that Cy didn’t seem willing to walk away yet. After a couple of toasts and cheers, it was dispiriting letting him drown in his feelings. “What is it?” Max finally broke the ice between them.

Cy struggled with words as he kept his eyes down. Finally, he settled on, “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Max felt a bit grumpy with Cy hesitating to speak. “So, there’s going to be no issues between us as we finish travelling to Tsujuma?” He didn’t look up. “Or would you rather we part ways once we docked?” Up until now, Max had only been going along with Cy since it was more convenient than going off by himself to find potential answers about that riddle. But he could solve it himself, if given enough time.

“Why are we here?”

Max was taken aback. It wasn’t the questionable morality of making a martyr. It wasn’t a close encounter with a mythical creature. It wasn’t even when they witnessed the pirate crew hacking up the floating corpse of the leviathan and scavenging from the sea full of floating fish, all so they could later fatten their pockets with gold. It was existentialism kicking in!?

“What do you mean, why are we here?” How could he respond to a question like that? “I guess we are here… to do something?” As someone chosen by the system, Max was here to complete a story. As someone from this world, Cy was here… as filler? “We’re… programmed to try and survive.”

Cy seemed perplexed as his face contorted from pure confusion. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Max couldn’t answer as he tried to understand their conversation. Unfortunately, because of the presence of BB and Navy, there were no helpful system prompts to guide him. “You’re asking… why are we alive?”

Cy snorted as the tension between them loosened. “No, I’m asking why we’re on a pirate ship. Why did BB let us on board in the first place? We’re nobodies. Back at the port, she refused to take any of our savings. Why? She’s a pirate. It just doesn’t make sense. Just look at what they’ve done to profit from today’s event. Gold should be the love of her life-”

“Good thing for you two, gold is nothing compared to the real love of my life.” BB made both of them jump as they realised today’s pirate pep-talk had finished. The rest of the crew were consumed with taking full advantage of their captain’s deviated attention as they turned to liquor. A few of them even gestured for them to talk, presumably as a way to keep her distracted for as long as possible.

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“The real love of your life?” Cy questioned, nervousness clear on his face.

“The one, the only, Mrs. BB.” She gave an exaggerated performance, which was met with a further confused face and an accustomed one. Max was right. Cy had been too drunk to remember the night before.

“Then why let us on board? We’re not women?”

Max waited for BB to come up with a clever answer. He had a few ideas of his own before her response hit like a punch to the gut. “Because I thought we played for the same team, you know?”

“Same team?”

“Well, it’s not often you see two out of place guys travelling around together. Especially when one looks like… well, you.”

Cy’s face went slightly pale as he pieced together what she was implying.

“To be fair, I wasn’t completely convinced. It wasn’t until Max set the record straight did I realise you were just… a bit… out of place?” She was looking for a non-offensive term, but she couldn’t have picked a worse phrase. She gave a slight chuckle. “I guess my gaydar must be broken in this body.”

Even though he didn’t know the meaning of ‘gaydar,’ it didn’t matter. Cy turned to Max to act in his defence. “Do you think I’m weird?”

“What are you talking about? I’ve been calling you a freak since we first met,” Max teased.

Disappointment was clear on his face as Cy began grumbling to himself about how Aldwin, farmer Cill, and now even BB and Max thought he was a freak. Was what he was doing really that different compared to everyone else? Max thought he heard him mutter something about ‘the elders,’ but he couldn’t be sure as BB’s crew was suddenly electrified over something. Cy took the opportunity to join the crew without speaking to BB or Max.

“Did I say something wrong?”

“He’ll get over it. If it were that easy to get rid of him, I would have accidentally pissed him off a long time ago.” Max said confidently, as he began to make out it was Navy causing the stir. They were making him chug. After a moment, he was enthralled as well. The little mouse can really drink. “I never did ask. How did you recognise me? Or did you just realise later after inviting us on board.” There was no point in asking Navy how he knew of his identity. He must’ve cheated by having the system tell him. However, that still left the mystery of BB.

“Hmm… How did I recognise you?” BB pondered aloud as she leaned against the railing of her ship. “Let’s see. Your posture showed a lot of confidence for a visitor in a local pub. You were good at acting like you belonged with the other patrons when you talked to them. Or was it simply because I faintly smelled some juniper berries when I walked past you at the dock.” BB gave a knowing grin to a perplexed Max. His scent was what tipped her off? “Most soaps here are made from fat and lye. So, what did you do? Did you melt down a couple of bars and infuse it with some berries?”

BB really did have a talent. He was right about his assumption about her. She could make it far if she went for harder stories. “I made an oil from some dried berries and mixed it into a melted bar of soap.”

“I don’t blame you for making your own. In this world, regular soap doesn’t smell great.” Max shared a smile with her. “Hygiene is usually important for people like us. And believe me, a woman knows when people are using scented soaps and perfumes. Especially in a world like this where it doesn’t seem to be as valued.”

The pair listened to the rambunctious crew and waves for a moment. “I haven’t forgotten about what we talked about last night.” BB said in a low voice as she kept her gaze on the water. “I’m still in.”

“Good.” Max had his gaze fixed in the opposite direction towards the others.

“I imagine you already know, but Navy’s one of us.” BB gestured to her spotless inner arm. “You saw the barcode here, right? The series of thick and thin lines of different sizes? I’ve only seen that on people like us. I never noticed it before because his sleeves were always down, but I got to take a good, long look while waiting to be rescued.” Max gave a small nod to confirm he saw it too, earlier on the poop deck before the leviathan attack. “Do you know what it means?”

So she knew one of the two signifiers, but didn’t know the meaning? “I wouldn’t worry about it.”

BB’s voice showed her suspicions. “You know what it is?”

Max let out a slight sigh as he rolled up his own sleeve to show his arms didn’t have tattoos at the moment. “It’s… just think of it as proof of membership to a cult.”

“A cult?” She was perplexed. “What kind of cult? Is it worth joining?”

“There’s a cult worth joining?” Max scoffed as he lowered his sleeve again. “There’s no point. It’s pretty much been disbanded. I guess, there must be a few stubborn believers remaining. I imagine he’s searching for something, whether it’s system related or for personal reasons. If you’re interested, maybe you should take him with you. Just don’t tell me anything in case it counts as a way to start a story.”

Before they docked, Max needed to give Navy strict orders to stay with BB and abandon the instructions from the system. Max had little doubt he would do it, even at the cost of his life to the requirements and sub-goals. Navy had already shown evidence of his dedication earlier that day.

“Maybe I will.”