The sun was high, its golden rays kissing the endless stretch of the ocean, making the waves shimmer like a bed of sapphire jewels.
A salty breeze whispered across the rusty deck of a boat that looked like it had retired a century ago but was still forced to work overtime. The hull creaked with every gentle rock of the turbulent sea, yet it stubbornly refused to sink; either out of sheer spite or laziness, much like its current owner.
Whoosh....
Drifting in the middle of nowhere sat a lazy, listless young man in patience as he gazed at the beautiful transparent-like sea with coral observing the colorful organisms below.
"..Yawn...."
His sharp yet perfectly unsharp teeth glinted in the sunlight as he yawned like a lion that had just devoured an entire gazelle and now regretted every life decision that led up to that moment. He held a bamboo rod in his hands, posing as a sad excuse for a fishing pole, with a single frayed line dipping into the deep.
His fishing technique? Perhaps spin casting ? Or fly fishing?
Nah.
Do absolutely nothing and hope some fish was stupid enough to bite. It was the same strategy he applied to life in general when he was being lazy, and so far, it had yielded mixed results.
And then there was Vladimir.
Vladimir, a man who was built like a refrigerator for muscles but with the personality of an overworked pack mule, lay flat on his stomach, serving as the most comfortable and unwilling piece of furniture known to mankind.
He groaned occasionally as a testament to his shattered dignity, but his complaints went unheard, or rather, were treated with the same level of importance as an expired coupon at a luxury store.
A week ago, they had stumbled an old fisherman who had a rusty boat before Vladimir had scared off the old man, who willingly jumped into the ocean by himself, taking the boat.
Which brings us to this present situation....
"I used to be feared by people...."
Vladimir muttered, his voice muffled against the rusty deck as he barely wheezed out his most in-audible voice. 'Why does my life have to be so fucking hard?'
"You still are"
The young man replied lazily as he scratched his hair, shifting his weight to make his 'couch' even more uncomfortable.
"People fear getting degraded to your pitiful state. You should consider it an honor of being my personal couch, I suppose"
Yuuta's narcissistic tendencies started appearing as Vladimir's soul had already left his body.
"How much longer until we reach shore?" He asked with a voice that seemed like he was on the brink of losing his non-existing sanity.
The young man squinted at the horizon, as if considering the question seriously, before shrugging.
"Eh. Waves are doing their work. Eventually."
"Eventually?" Vladimir repeated, aghast as his eyes widened. 'When the fuck is eventually? A day or a hundred motherfucker? Sigh.... I should've listened to mom back in the day, I shouldn't have mixed with the bad crowd....Wuuuuuuuu...'
Vladimir began internally crying and regretting his life choices to what made it lead him to this accursed moment of his life.
"We've been drifting since Russia! I swear I even saw an old man with a beard made of icebergs wave at us back there!"
Vladimir started screaming as he squirmed under Yuuta, trying to get out of his uncomfortable position before Yuuta brought over his rod and slammed it into his head, silencing him.
Although what Yuuta did may seem funny to others and quite comedic, it actually held a deep meaning which many people in general miss.
Power is a dynamic force, not a fixed state. It shifts, fluctuates, and requires maintenance. Why does power need to be reinforced? Because people forget. They forget who is in control, they forget why they submitted in the first place, and, most importantly, they start questioning whether the existing order should remain.
Power shifts occur when one force weakens and another rises to fill the gap. What happens when a dominant figure stops asserting their strength? Others sense vulnerability.
Lets take King Louis XII as Niccolo Machiavelli has mentioned who conquered Milan, thinking victory was enough. But power isn't taken once, it has to be maintained.
He crushed weaker states, which left himself exposed and he lost support. He strengthened the Church, only for the Pope to betray him. Worst of all, he invited Spain into Italy, thinking it was an alliance and Spain took its share, then took everything.
One by one, his allies turned against him. His armies were driven out, his ambitions burned.
He won battles but lost his throne because he failed to remind the world that he was still in control.
Think about authority figures throughout history. Why do rulers hold grand ceremonies, why do leaders remind their followers of their accomplishments, why do even animals in a pack reinforce their hierarchy?
Because power fades if not displayed. If a leader stops asserting dominance, what conclusion does the group reach? That the leader is no longer fit to lead.
This is why periodic demonstrations of power are necessary. And that is exactly what Yuuta was doing.
He was reminding Vladimir of his place, lest, he committed something foolish. So even with his harmless behavior of sitting on him like a couch and hitting him with the rod, this created a subconscious image of authority in Vladimir's mind.
The young man yawned again as he replied unhastingly.
"You worry too much. Although we have missed the meeting we were supposed to have with our contractors, I don't think they would mind if we had a small appointment before, I suppose" He answered indifferently with his eyes closed while his body tiled a bit to the side, as if he had fallen asleep.
"Waiting a bit my ass! It's been around two weeks since we were in Russia, and the only thing we depend on for our survival is the fish we eat raw and the water we evaporate. I worry the exact amount for a man to get used as a human bean bag while floating aimlessly across the goddamn ocean! Aaaaaargh, I feel I'm gonna die!" Vladimir replied with a pathetic expression as a tear appeared in his right eye, giving his salutes to the world before venturing into the underworld.
Or so he imagined in his small, little mind filled to the fullest with an empty brain....
The boat tilted slightly as a wave nudged it forward. The young man reeled in his fishing line, finding nothing but a sad little hook that had long lost its bait to some lucky fish.
He stared at it for a moment before shrugging and throwing it back in without even bothering to check if the line was still intact.
'No fishies today' he thought lazily as he had used NLP to change his personality to his current playful personality without having DID.
There was a certain level of commitment required to be this effortlessly indifferent, and he had long since mastered it.
Silenced enveloped the small little boat other than the whistling of the wind and playful splashing of the waves before Yuuta took the initiative to break the silence.
"...Have you ever thought"
Yuuta mused, as he fixed his fishing hat atop of his head, leaning back as he pondered philosophically.
Vladimir winced in pain under the weight as he attempted to breathe under the pressure his boss caused on his poor back.
"that maybe life is just like this boat?"
Yuuta asked in genuine question, as he held his chin with his left hand as he silently pondered the idea deeply reflecting on relation of his life, the equilibrium of the world, and the similarities related to the waves.
"…Like falling apart, directionless, and somehow still afloat?"
Vladimir small mind, unable to fathom the depth of the young boys understanding, suggested his view as he stole a look at Yuuta's face before considering the idea himself. He chuckled to himself as he pondered around the idea like a child would with a ball he had just found.
'Hehe, since when was I this smart? I sound like a wise man..'
"Umu" Yuuta merely nodded his head in agreement with Vladimir's statement. What he didn't say, however, was that there was more to the comparison to what Vladimir or many others would have thought. However, to fool his enemies, fooling his friends first was a priority, or in this specific situation, fooling his furniture first.
Even Vladimir who had spent years with the young shrewd boy had yet to comprehend even a fraction of his mentality.
Black lines appeared on his forehead, a sign of stress as Vladimir pressed his forehead against the deck and groaned. "I should have stayed in the military." He immediately dropped the idea that seemed too complex on his small mind to fathom.
Another wave pushed them forward, and in the distance, a glistening stretch of beautifully glistening golden sand came into view along the divine like rocky shores.
The Italian beach was waiting for them, whether they reached it with dignity or with the boat breaking apart around them. Either way, the young man remained unbothered, idly fishing as the universe did all the hard work for him.
"See?" Yuuta smiled innocently with a hint of smugness in his smile.
"I told you we would reach. Eventually, I suppose."
Vladimir mumbled something in Russian that was probably a very creative curse, attempting to recall every single swear he had heard since his birth from his mothers womb. The boat creaked ominously in response, as if it, too, was offended by Vladimir's wrath.
The moment the boat's rusty underbelly scraped against the sand, it gave up on life entirely as fell into the craddling arms of Thanatos, or Azrael, or Pluto, or Osiris, or whoever it believed it.
THUD!
With a dramatic groan, it split in half, sending the young man and his human chair tumbling forward onto the beach. Vladimir landed with a heavy thud, face buried in the sand, while the young man rolled lazily onto his back, blinking up at the sky that had a bright orange ball shining in it with no qualms of others getting angry at it.
"Well" he muttered, unbothered. "We're here"
La Pelosa in Sardinia
Vladimir peeled his face out of the sand and spat out what was possibly half the beach as he cursed in his mind his boss's recklessness.
'I hate you.'
As if reading his mind, Yuuta nodded his head In response. "That's fair."
WHOOSH!
Yuuta sat up, stretching himself as he heard the strain of his bones not moving for a long while, as if he had just woken from a pleasant nap instead of crashing onto foreign land. He gently brushed off the sand off his clothing as he looked towards the nearby town in view.
The ocean lapped at the shore behind them, gently dragging away the sad remnants of their vessel. Nearby, a few tourists gawked, unsure whether they had just witnessed a shipwreck or an avant-garde performance piece. One elderly woman even clapped politely as if she had watched a show on T.V.
Vladimir groaned and collapsed onto his back. "I give up."
"I suppose" the young man said as he directed his eyes towards the crowd that was slowly gathering before calculating all the possibilities using Bayesian thinking. "We should probably figure out where we are."
A seagull landed next to Vladimir and stole a piece of bread from his pocket that he had saved for himself in the time of starvation.
"I think we're in Italy," the young man continued, watching a group of sunbathers apply enough sunscreen to become reflective surfaces. "Either that, or a very aggressive pasta-themed mirage."
"Great. So....do you speak Italian by chance?" Vladimir asked in tiredness as he had given up on life, not moving an inch from his spot.
The young man thought for a moment, then spoke as if he had the knowledge of the seven worlds.
"Pasta."
He nodded proudly at his achievement of knowing how to speak Italian.
Vladimir stared in dead eyes. "That's it?"
'Too shameless !!'
Vladimir screamed in his mind as struggled to come in terms of what Yuuta had conveyed.
"Pasta," he repeated, as if that alone would open the gates to fluency before walking to a nearby tourist who was a woman that was currently taking pictures of him and Vladimir using her cellphone and posting on social media.
Vladimir turned his face back to the sand with effort before muttering under his breath. "I hope the tide takes me back to the fish."
But the young man wasn't listening. He was already sauntering toward the woman before he spoke.
"Pasta, pasta pasta? " He asked the woman with a different tone in each word as he stressed each word carefully with his listless eyes, as if asking an important question, having no shame, sparkling eyes. He wanted to affirm something, and so he had asked her first, confirming his suspicion.
The woman removed her glued eyes from the screen of her phone before directing it towards him, gasping and bursting into laughter with a look of intrigue in her eyes. She spoke in a few words in her foreign language in response as Yuuta nodded his head, not udnerstanding a single word.
Vladimir sighed in his head.
'It's gonna be a looong day.....'