The first time I felt the will of death was when I was seven years old.
It's not my own. It belongs to the old fisherman A Yuan next door. He squatted on the rocks to mend the fishing net. His fingers were scratched by the hemp rope, and blood seeped into the salt water, but he didn't notice it. I stood five meters away, and the world in my left eye was different from that in my right eye - what I saw in my right eye was a hunchbacked old man, and what I saw in my left eye was a dark red light, heavy, like a stone pressed on the seabed, motionless.
That is the will to accept fate. Heavier than sadness, heavier than despair.
I didn't tell him what I saw. People on the island say that my left eye is cursed. I was born with a different color and can see things I shouldn't. The year my mother died, the island leader drove my father away, saying he brought bad luck. Later, even my father was gone, and I was left alone in the shabby house he left behind, living on the fish that A Yuan occasionally sent me.
Chain Island is very small, and it only takes half an hour to walk around the entire island. There is sea on all sides, but no ship is allowed to leave the port more than three nautical miles. The World Government erected a stone tablet in the north of the island, which was engraved with: "Blockade Order No. 713. This island is a controlled area. No one is allowed to enter or leave without permission."
I have lived here for as many years as the stone monument has been erected.
Until the day the white ship comes.
I stood on the cliff and watched it slowly enter the harbor. The people on the deck were wearing white robes and bubble helmets on their heads. Their toes were slightly turned up when they walked, as if they didn't want to step on the ground. At that moment, my left eye saw a will that I had never seen before——
