The walk back to Jinai’s turned into a sprint when they noticed it was coming up on ten o’clock. Slinging bags and jackets on, they leapt onto Jinai's bicycle, and Anqien clung on to her waist from the backseat as she pedalled for her life towards the marina of Muli Bay. The sea breeze whipped through their hair as they flew off the pavement and merged into the promenade, hurtling past other cyclists like an errant meteor. She barely batted an eyelash as she wove around yelping pedestrians.

As they charged through the streets, Anqien continued to quietly buzz with Jinai’s compliments. How could she say such things, knowing the words weren’t meant to go anywhere? Yet despite themself, her brazenness had driven the stake of longing deeper into their heart.

As the fifteen-minute ride went on, their arms slipped tighter around her waist. It was impossible to tell if she felt any way about it, but the lack of a reaction only emboldened them to keep going, until they were practically pressed up against her, feeling every shift of her shoulders.

“Hey, bit of breathing room?” she called out. “I know I’m huggable, we can hug when we get to the marina.”

“Oh, sorry!” They slackened their grip at once, blood roaring in their ears.

Only Telaki awaited them in the marina today, and she waved eagerly as they hurtled into view. “Oi! You two! Off gallivanting?” she shouted as they jogged from the changing rooms to meet her.

“Sorry, we got carried away sightseeing at the Ni’an garden,” Jinai hastily answered.

“Well, don’t be leaving me high and dry!” Telaki replied. “There are good views out on the bay too. No relay crew today, you’ll be taking me to the City.”

At the mention of the City, the sailors looked at each other with a mutual wince.

“Was Lujang too busy?” asked Anqien as they slipped on their life jackets and clambered down into the Cloudlander and began hoisting sails.

“Yeah, got caught up in one of her projects. Y’know how she is. Told Iki not to even bother getting out of bed.” Unmooring the vessel, Telaki scurried down the ladder and landed in the boat with a leap, spooling the rope in her hands as they sped into the bay.

Today, Telaki guided them up the strait. Half an hour took them back into the danger zone, though they wove carefully around the scattered rock islands and debris—there would be time to race recklessly through them later. At the north end of Wulien, the last suburban terraces scattered into rural land. From here in the widening strait, they saw cliffs, bluffs and rolling hills, tiny specks of animals grazing unthinkingly in view of the boundless ocean.

“So, today!” their coach called out, arms folded. “We’re focusing on your least favourite part of the course. I trust your navigation and everything, but you need to focus when you’re Weaving through the Sunken City. Last time, you got so stressed out on the twists and turns that you forgot to coordinate your tacking.”

“Fair read,” Jinai answered.

The final leg of the Niro-Helfi Race, which looped around the northern tip of Helfi and took them back home to Wulien, was the only one where racers were allowed to Weave the hull out of the water.

In some sections, being airborne was crucial: a large portion of this 190-mile sprint passed through the Sunken City, an ancient settlement once known as Gumeiyen, which had once been perched on the cliffs and stacks of the bay, strung up by Thread, before crumbling into the sea.

All that was left of it were shallows and barely-visible rocky reefs, where ocean life had made their homes on the slanting roofs and steeples—obstacles that would make regular sailing at race speeds next to impossible.

Even being airborne wasn't enough for them most years, it seemed.

“You want to win this time, don’t you?” Telaki shouted over the waves, as they tacked into a U-turn. They nodded. “Then you need to get this right! If we can get you breezing through the City before the finals, then by Ihir and all the gods, you’ve got this locked in.”

They lined themselves up between the tip of Canlan Island and the first peninsula north of Wulien City. The had made this passage a hundred times, yet facing southward with their bow pointed between those twin landmasses and the water shimmering choppy silver ahead, Anqien felt their heartbeat crescendo. Here, the cliffs narrowed into a wind tunnel, forcing the air currents through in a whistling gale.

They took a read of it— “Wind’s on the beam,” Jinai said, and hauled the mainsheet, so the sail was out forty-five degrees from the longitude of the yacht.

“Very good!” Telaki said. Jinai met Anqien’s gaze and nodded. With a lifting of their hands, they found a grip on the Threads, aided by the attractor glove on their right. Eyes briefly closing as they felt their electric tug, they spun the strings of energy through the rails on the bulwarks and down around their hull, then sprinted to the other rail.

With each completed knot the boat lifted another foot out of the water, till they were aloft in the howling wind, hydrofoil slicing through the water beneath. As they did, Anqien saw Jinai tightening the trim of the sail, till they were hurtling almost fast as a carriage, the cliffs blurring by on their right.

“Pay attention!” Telaki shouted. About half a mile ahead—visible from their vantage—the waters were disturbed by something beneath, trails of foam giving an inkling of a reef, and telltale seabirds grazing in the waters.

“Starboard!” Anqien shouted, and Jinai tacked while they reached out to tug and tension the Threads.

Fish and birds flurried beneath their hull, and they turned just shy of the first dark reef, hurtling around it. They breathed a collective sigh, and then Jinai signalled out to four hundred feet ahead, where another jagged roof was approaching, only a telltale spire betraying the vast dome beneath.

“Port!” they cried, and Jinai counted off the gybe.

This was a sharp swerve, and Anqien raced from rail to rail, using their free hand to snap the Threads on starboard side of the boat. It swung, tipping, with enough torque to clear the dome of the forgotten city hall.

They wove in and out among the submerged buildings as they became more numerous, treacherous shapes half hidden by the shimmer of the waves. One steeple, topped by an old weathered figurehead just recognisable as a bird, almost crashed into their bow, and they heard the muffled pounding of an old, rusted bell beneath the surface.

Then they drew into the city centre, where the shapes became a dense crush of stone and coral, a new structure demanding their attention every ten seconds. With their next tack, Anqien was only just keeping the Threads in check while Jinai trimmed like it was the only thing she remembered how to do. But it almost seemed they were finding a sort of rhythm, bellowing instructions across the deck at each other, until—

“Focus!” It was only with Telaki's shout that both realised neither was looking ahead of the bow, but they were hurtling into a corner now, coral-crusted roofs on every side. Jinai yelled and luffed the sail madly as they careened helplessly towards a tall barnacled rampart.

Stone grazed their port side with a screeching judder that sounded like a thousand shell of paint work.

The yacht was carried by its momentum, heeling dangerously to starboard as it cleared the fateful roof, but finally shaken out of her cool, Telaki joined them as they dashed to port side, righting the vessel again. It had splashed back into the water.

Jinai wasted no time in trimming the twist out of the sail, with a glare and a shout of “get on it!”at Anqien. Nodding, shaking, they wove the hull out of the water again, much faster than the first time yet feeling more sluggish somehow.

“This was better than the last,” said their coach, waving them back to their positions. “You didn’t tip over.”

The next turn came and went, and they cleared it much slower than the last dozen. “Yeah, and we got a gash instead.”

“Scratches are nothing. Last time, you straight up fell off.”

More than the damage, the shock of the impact continued to hang on Anqien’s thoughts, dulling their reactions. Those same thoughts seemed to plagued Jinai, so collectively they took the remaining stretch of the Sunken City with eased sails, heads hung in defeat.

“Debrief,” Telaki shouted, clapping her hands to gather them from the head of the jetty, both sulking at the gash scored through the white paint of the hull.

They held each other upright as they walked to their coach. “Alright, you two,” she said. “Come the day of the race, if you’re not feeling up to it, you’ll take the long way around Canlan Island, got it?” They glanced at each other, then nodded at her. “Chances are, the Mirages won’t risk it either. They never have.”

“At least we have that over them, yeah?” Anqien answered, but the barely convinced themself with those words.

“They’re probably drilling themselves on the Niro leg as we speak,” she replied. “Last year, you know what went wrong. They won Niro, like they do. And you were the favourites to win Helfi. But you chose the Sunken City route, and you fumbled it. And whoosh, there went your chance to win.”

Jinai groaned. “I know. I know. I’ve spent a year replaying it.”

“Well, stop replaying it!” Telaki shouted, with more edge to her voice than normal, enough to jolt them both. “And start studying the course. Properly. You can keep the Sunken route in your back pocket.”

The route circumnavigating Canlan Island was almost a third longer by distance, but it was clear water all the way. Some years, when the wind had heavily favoured it, they had taken that longer route. But by and large, clear skies or cloudy, they had taken the harder route, straight through the strait and back home.

Every time, the risk had not paid off. “But when does it start paying off?” Jinai shouted as they followed Telaki towards the paint and decal shop in the marina. She kicked a pebble off the path, into the straggly grass.

Anqien sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Her head whipped around. “You’re sorry? I’m sorry. I started panicking. Again. And I snapped at you.”

“No, you were right. I lost focus too.” They glanced out at the sea, and the sparks that the sun illuminated on the tips of the waves. “Maybe we need to get our hands on a map. A model. Something.” Anqien did their best not to glower, though their mind was a storm of disappointment and desperation to try again.

Jinai paused as they passed the first bollard, fixing them with a serious look. “Hey, do you have next Monday free?” she asked.

They perked up, blinking. “Not really,” they answered. “But Tuesday, I’m good for the day.”

“Tuesday works for me.”

“What’s up?”

She came up beside them. “Remember how we talked about running away on our yacht?”

“Yeah? You’re not suggesting we sail off to Astra tomorrow, are you.”

She shook her head. “Just for a day. It won’t take us to Astra, but it’ll get us to one of the outer islands. I’d just…like to get away. Would you wanna join me?”

They paused to think. Vanishing for a day had not been on their agenda. But then it had been weeks since they had been utterly without obligations. And a day with Jinai, and no one else? “Count me in,” they said.

When they found Jinai’s bicycle in the red light of the setting sun, she dawdled for a second, kicking the brake up and shifting the handlebars from one hand to another. “I’d ask about going to Konoma’s,” she said then, “but we kinda already hung out in the morning.”

“I mean…I wouldn’t be against more hanging out.” Anqien’s fingers wandered through their hair as they spoke.

The light caught Jinai’s eyes and lit the edges of her curls like a glowing halo, illuminated the folds of her sheer t-shirt as it billowed in the wind. She smiled. “I’ll see you on Tuesday, beautiful,” she replied, patting their shoulder twice.

Their heart leapt to their throat. But they kept a handle on their cool, just barely, as she wheeled her bicycle away. “Fancy you calling me that,” they replied, “when you’re the pretty one.”

She halted mid-step, and then spun back to face them, eyebrows raised in what may have been surprise. “Oh! No need to butter me up, you know you’re my favourite already.” She smirked. “But thanks. Boldness looks good on you.”

Jinai barely gave Anqien a chance to react before she gave the bicycle a running start, leaping into the seat and zipping away into the city of waking lights.

They drew a deep breath through their teeth and clutched their cheeks. “Gods! Stop! Why does it feel so nice?” they shouted, charging towards the Muli Bay station.