Chapter 9: The Vanishing Crew
The morning light felt like a lie. It streamed through the porthole of her cabin, clean and bright, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. Tashigi stood before the small mirror, her hands moving with automatic precision. Buttoning the crisp white shirt. Tying the perfect, symmetrical knot of her tie. Shrugging on the blue waistcoat, then the full, proper jacket with its brass buttons. Each piece was a shield. She saved the trousers for last, sliding them on and fastening them with a sense of profound, desperate relief. The heavy fabric was a barrier against the world, against the memory of last night.
She looked like Lieutenant Tashigi. She almost felt like her.
The folded trousers still lay by the door, a silent, humiliating monument. She stepped over them without looking down, her hand pausing on the knob. She took a deep, steadying breath, squaring her shoulders. Then she opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.
The world outside was blessedly, terrifyingly normal. The clang of metal, the shouts of drills from the deck, the smell of salt and oil. A young ensign, his face fresh and earnest, snapped a sharp salute as she passed. "Lieutenant!"
She returned it, her own salute a fraction too quick. "Carry on." Her voice sounded steady. Good.
Her first duty was the morning inspection. She walked the lines of Marines, her eyes scanning their uniforms, their gear. Her sword, Shigure, felt heavy and familiar at her hip, a comfort and a reminder of everything she was failing to protect. She noticed a few absent faces. Private Helsen, always a bit slow to fall in, was missing. So was Corporal Davits, a reliable man with a loud laugh.
"Where's Helsen?" she asked the squad leader, her tone all business.
The man shifted, uncomfortable. "Not sure, ma'am. Didn't report for roll call. His bunk hasn't been slept in."
A cold knot tightened in her stomach. "And Davits?"
"Same, ma'am. No one's seen him since last night's watch."
She nodded, masking her unease with a curt, "See that the Master-at-Arms is informed. I want a full deck search." It was probably nothing. Men fell overboard. It happened. But the coincidence felt sharp, like a sliver of glass under her skin.
As she continued her rounds, the absence nagged at her. A third man was reported missing from the engine room crew. Three. All in one night. It was an epidemic of silence. She found herself looking at the sea, the calm, blue expanse offering no answers. Had they jumped? Been pushed? A strange illness? Her mind, trained for tactical analysis, scrambled for a logical foothold and found none.
From the shadowed alcove of the gun deck, D watched her. He leaned against the cool iron of a cannon, invisible to the busy crew. He saw the straight line of her back, the professional set of her jaw as she conducted her inspection. He saw the slight hesitation when the missing men were mentioned, the way her eyes flickered towards the ocean.
Perfect.
He turned his attention to a Marine scrubbing the deck a few yards away. The man was humming, focused on his work. D flexed a part of his mind he was still learning to use. It was like tensing a muscle he never knew he had. He felt a connection snap into place, an invisible leash.
Walk to the railing.
The man stopped humming. He set his brush down carefully, stood up, and walked with a calm, placid gait to the ship's edge. He didn't look left or right. He didn't pause.
Climb over.
The Marine placed his hands on the rail, swung a leg over, then the other. He stood on the outer ledge for a moment, his back to the ship, facing the endless blue. Then he stepped off. There was no shout, no struggle. Just a soft, vanishing splash that was swallowed by the sounds of the ship.
D released the mental pressure. A slow smile touched his lips. It was so easy. The compulsion was absolute, a direct override of the will that left no room for panic or resistance. They just… complied. He was pruning the unwanted, testing the limits of his power, and all the while, Tashigi was right there, her sense of duty and justice twisting in the wind, powerless to see the monster in plain sight. He was the source of the mystery she was trying to solve, and she had to report her failures to him each night. The elegance of it was beautiful.
The day stretched on, a marathon of normalcy. Tashigi filed her report on the missing men, her words feeling hollow on the page. ‘Cause unknown.’ She oversaw training exercises, the clashing of practice swords a dull echo of real combat. She ate lunch in the officer's mess, forcing down tasteless stew while conversation swirled around her about weather patterns and supply shortages. No one mentioned the missing men twice. They were already becoming ghosts.
Every step, every order she gave, was performed under the haunting awareness of the ritual awaiting her. The cabin door was a finish line she both dreaded and, shamefully, longed for. Behind it, the illusion of control would dissolve. But the promise of being allowed to wear the illusion again tomorrow… it was a powerful drug.
Finally, her duties were complete. The sun was dipping below the horizon, painting the sky in hues of orange and purple. She stood outside her cabin door, her hand resting on the cool metal. She could hear faint sounds of life from the rest of the ship—laughter, a shouted order, the clang of a bell. Out here, she was a Marine officer.
In there, she was his.
She turned the knob and stepped inside. The room was dark and quiet. He wasn't there yet. Her eyes went immediately to the spot by the door. The folded trousers were gone. Of course. He had taken them, another small piece of her erased.
The routine was now ingrained. She locked the door. With trembling fingers, she began to undress. Jacket, waistcoat, tie, shirt. She folded each piece with meticulous care, placing them on her desk chair. Then she stood in her underwear and socks, the air cool on her skin. She looked at the empty space by the door.
She walked to it and sat on the floor, her back against the cold metal. She drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. She wouldn't get on the bed until he told her to. This small act of waiting on the floor felt like the only rebellion left to her.
She didn't have to wait long. The lock clicked. The door opened and D stepped in, closing it behind him. He glanced at her, sitting on the floor, then at the neatly folded stack of her uniform on the chair. A look of mild approval crossed his face.
"Efficient," he commented. He walked to the bunk and sat, leaning back. "How was your day, Lieutenant? Any progress on your missing personnel?"
The question was a knife twist. She kept her head down, her voice a monotone. "No. The search found nothing."
"A mystery," he said, a smile in his voice. "Come here."
She uncurled herself and stood, the transition from the floor to standing before him feeling like a promotion in degradation. She walked to the bunk and sat, perched on the edge, just as before.
He reached out and his fingers brushed through her dark blue hair, then trailed down her neck, over her collarbone. She was rigid, a statue trying not to feel the weather wearing it away.
"Three more tonight, I think," he mused, his voice conversational as his thumb traced the strap of her bra. "The one who saluted you too eagerly this morning. The one who looked at you for a second too long in the mess hall. And… let's say the helmsman. I don't like his course corrections."
Her blood ran cold. He was naming them. He was watching everything, and he was killing them for trivialities, for glances she hadn't even noticed. He was curating the world around her, removing anything he deemed an irritant, and he was doing it with her own powerlessness as the backdrop.
"Look at me, Tashigi."
She forced her head up, meeting his eyes. His gaze was calm, analytical.
"Tomorrow, you'll wear the uniform again. You'll do your job. And men will continue to vanish." His hand slid from her shoulder down her arm, a possessive stroke.
His hand slid from her shoulder down her arm, a possessive stroke. "It’s a neat system, really. I get to clean house, and you get to practice being in charge of nothing." He said it like he was sharing a clever business insight. "You’ll file another report tomorrow. ‘Cause unknown.’ You’re getting good at writing those."
She wanted to vomit. The casual tone was a greater violence than any shout. "They’re people," she whispered, the words scraping her throat raw. "Not… inventory."
"On this ship, they’re whatever I say they are." His fingers reached her wrist, then circled it lightly, a mockery of a bracelet. "Just like you’re whatever I say you are. Right now, I say you’re a Lieutenant who had a long day and needs to relax." His other hand came up and plucked her glasses from her face. The world blurred into soft, indistinct shapes. "Lie back."
The command wasn’t powered by the fruit, but by the entire horrific framework he’d built. To resist was to invite the collar’s compulsion, to make the violation absolute. To obey was to participate. Her body moved as if detached, lowering itself onto the thin mattress until she was staring at the shadowed ceiling. The springs creaked beneath her.
He placed her glasses neatly on the bedside crate. "Better." He didn’t join her. He just sat on the edge, looking down at her as she lay stiffly beside him. "You know, for a swordswoman, you carry a lot of tension in your shoulders. It’s inefficient."
His hand returned, not with violence, but with a dreadful, clinical purpose. His fingertips pressed into the muscle of her shoulder, kneading. It was a parody of a massage. The touch was skilled enough to actually ease a knot, the physical relief a sickening betrayal of her mind’s revolt. A small, traitorous part of her body responded to the simple mechanics of pressure and release.
"See?" he murmured. His hand slid down her arm again, then came to rest on her stomach, his palm flat and warm over her navel through the cotton of her underwear. She sucked in a sharp breath, her abdomen tightening under his touch. "The good girl gets a reward. No commands. No disappearing crew. Just… quiet."
The promise was a hook in her heart. A night without him forcing another man to walk silently into the sea. The cost was her stillness, her tolerance of this intimate claiming. She stared up at the blurred ceiling, tears welling in her unfocused eyes. She held them back, refusing to let them fall.
His hand remained, a heavy, living weight. He began to talk, his voice a low, rhythmic sound about nothing. The poor quality of the ship’s coffee. The way the rigging sounded in the wind. It was the mundane chatter of two people sharing a room, and it was the most deranged thing she had ever experienced. He was weaving a blanket of normalcy over top of the atrocity, and she was lying underneath it, letting him.
Minutes bled past, measured by the slow, deliberate movement of his thumb stroking back and forth over her stomach. She concentrated on the sound of the sea against the hull, trying to become part of it. She almost flinched when he spoke again.
"New rule, starting tomorrow," he said, his voice still light. "The jacket and tie can stay on the chair. But the shirt comes off and gets folded with the trousers. By the door."
The air in the room grew colder. The small shield of her blouse, gone. It was a logical, terrible progression. He was dismantling her layer by layer, and each new rule felt inevitable. She gave a barely perceptible nod, her hair whispering against the pillow.
"Good." He finally lifted his hand from her stomach. The spot felt immediately, strangely cold. He stood up, and she heard the rustle of his own clothes as he prepared to sleep. The bunk dipped as he lay down beside her, not touching, but his presence was a furnace along her side.
"Go to sleep, Lieutenant," he said, his voice already thick with drowsiness. "Big day tomorrow."
She lay frozen, listening as his breathing evened out into sleep. The casual horror of it all crashed down—the missing men, the touch, the new rule, his easy slumber. A tremor started deep in her core, a seismic shiver of pure, distilled powerlessness. It radiated outwards, making her ribs quiver against her lungs.
It traveled down her limbs, a series of tiny, uncontrollable vibrations. She shuddered in her underwear, the thin cotton doing nothing to contain the convulsive waves of shame and dread that wracked her frame in the silent, dark room.