i.
It goes like this:
You are passengers on a ship.
A boy and a girl, each seeking a new life in a new land.
You don't remember how you arrived onboard.
You don't know yet that you will never leave.
There is only an endless expanse before you, and behind, memories too painful to keep.
...
There are other memories, too.
But they belong to the sea.
...
Lifted by the tide, the Kerberos sails calmly on, unaware, like its passengers, of what lies ahead.
In another time, the Prometheus charts the same path, and before that, the Icarus and the Orpheus, all the way back to the beginning with the Pandora's maiden voyage.
The ships, and there have been many, are all named after myths and legends, stories of cunning and bravery.
They always start out well.
They always end in tragedy.
...
This story is no different from the others.
It follows the same journey, slowly but surely.
...
The tragedy is this: you were never meant to meet.
You are a first class girl and a poor working boy, two pieces in a vast machine, each with a different purpose.
There is no overlap in your scripts, no scenario in which your paths would ever cross.
And yet somehow, impossibly, they do.
You find each other, and you keep finding each other across many journeys on many ships.
Sometimes, you share only a passing glance.
Sometimes, you share so much more.
Stories, after all, can always be rewritten.
...
If the first time you meet is an accident, then the second is a curiosity.
The third time marks an anomaly, and after that, it is simply inevitable.
But other things are inevitable, too, like the storm and the unforgiving sea.
...
The real tragedy is in the ending.
But what is the end if not simply a return?
A return to the beginning.
...
It goes like this:
You are passengers on a ship.