Chapter 2:

The Survivors of Seaton

The Waters Reflection


Enkai woke up to the sound of children shouting and playing around in the grass outside, spending their time lavishing in the sun as they kicked around a ball and smiled when they managed to do better than the others.

Sun filtered through the cracks of a boarded up window and rasped against Enkai's skin, bringing a lovely feeling of tangent warmth to his body. The window seemed as if it was made to keep people out, but in actuality it was just because they couldn't afford to keep windows when other people snuck around at night and stole them.

A grin spread across Enkai's face as he quickly got his clothes together and rushed over to his fathers room. He wore a stained blue shirt with a faded logo of some old company on it, it was a little big on him but he liked it nonetheless, he also had a pair of worn jeans that had one too many holes and was slightly baggy on him. Enkai burst open the door energetically and jumped onto his fathers bed to wake him up. But when he landed on the covers, there was nothing there.

"Huh?" As soon as Enkai realised his father wasn't there, someone slowly creeped up from behind him and spoke with a raised voice, "Morning sunshine!" Frightening the life out of Enkai as he jerked around the bed for a moment and fell onto the floor, staring up at his father who had just scared him.

"You stupid old man! What if I had a heart attack?!" Enkai's brows furrowed and he shouted at the broadened sailor in front of him.

"Then I suppose the breakfast I cooked up is going to go to waste, isn't it?" The old man laughed and began walking out of the bedroom, stepping out over to the kitchen that also doubled as a living room.

Enkai grumbled and followed along, but his discontent with his father was soon replaced with hunger as he entered the living room, he always forgave his father in the end no matter what happened, which he himself would never actually admit.

The Shimizu family consisted of only the father and son, the fathers name was Shimizu Mamoru and he was a survivor of The Flood. In fact a lot of the people in the coastal town they lived in were Flood survivors; they all used to live in a town called Seaton, but with the coming of the Flood Seaton succumbed to the waves, leaving behind only half of its former residents.

Perhaps due to this, all the surviving residents of Seaton banded together and created a new village once the Flood had settled, they decided to name it "New Seaton" and focused on the restoration of their livelihoods.

Seaton used to be a popular tourist hotspot, and with the Flood hitting right in the middle of summer when the tourist gathering was highest, many residents of New Seaton actually came from diverse places. Creating a varied cultural climate for the children born to grow up in, cultures were wide and vast in New Seaton, so there was always something new to pick up or learn.

New Seaton was mostly a village that thrived on collecting scrap metal from the ocean, scavenging down into places that were taken away by the Flood, and fishing. Though there were obviously many other jobs that some people had picked up along the way, the most important and well paying ones involved going into the ocean and looking for high priority items that people wanted.

The village itself didn't have a currency, they had little to no connection with other villages or the Federation despite knowing of its existence, New Seaton mostly worked off of a bartering system and kept to themselves. Their village never truly ran into any big troubles so they never sought out other villages or larger powers such as the Federation, instead they focused themselves inwards on making sure the village grew at a stable rate for the future.

Despite the need for manual labour in the village, all of the Flood survivors that helped create New Seaton agreed that education was one of the most important matters for the children that grow up in the village, and luckily enough there were two teachers in Seaton during The Flood. So a school was built to help teach the children in the end, even with a lack of teaching materials any education for the children is better than no education.

Enkai sat down at the makeshift table and looked at the meal below him, the table itself was welded together from scrap and smoothed down so as to not cut anyone, but it still looked rather rustic and ugly. Before Enkai began digging into his breakfast, he noticed a weird bar with a wrapper around it that was lodged underneath his fathers large hand.

"Hey old man, what's that in your hand?" He pointed towards the bar with a small confused look on his face.

"Oh it's chocolate, I thought I'd treat myself," He flipped the bar around his fingers a little, "Stop staring Enkai, it's just plain embarrassing." Mamoru looked at his son and put a palm to his face.

Enkai pouted and looked dejected, eyeing the chocolate bar the entire time. 'Chocolate is hard to find almost anywhere nowadays! The last time I had it was on my 7th birthday! And he just goes and gets some because he felt like it? This cheapskate!'

Mamoru looked at Enkai while maintaining a solid poker face, he was always really good at hiding what he was thinking, no matter the situation, which unfortunately his son had probably picked up too.

"I'm only kidding haha!" Mamoru let his face develop into a smile and got rid of the poker face, putting the bar between his fingers and placing it in front of his son. "Happy 14th Birthday Enkai! Don't even begin asking me how I got my hands on a bar of chocolate with the current rates."

Enkai's eyes lit up on the word "Birthday", he quickly sat up and ran to the Federation Calendar they had set up on the wall, reading the contents as fast as possible. "Federation Calendar Year 2032, April 3rd"

It really was his birthday!