There's only six minutes until the lights go on.
The boy has been practically counting the seconds for another four, eyes darting between his childish, color-block wristwatch and the near empty pier. Water sloshes gently against the dock's supports in a metronomic rhythm, the only hint that the ocean remains tumultuous in spite of how calm the night is.
He peers out from his hiding spot - several crates, conveniently stacked to a perfect height for a child to hide behind. The boxes rattle and make clicking sounds, but he ignores them. There's more important things to worry about.
Five minutes.
Normally, the pier bustles with activity - sailors loading boats, new arrivals from regions abroad chattering excitedly about their destination plans, the occasional fisherman. At this ungodly hour, though, there's only a small group of three standing at the far end. It doesn't take the smell of alcohol wafting from their direction for the boy to determine that they're hopelessly drunk. He clenches his teeth nervously, eyeing the Hoothoot that obliviously hops around by their feet. If only they would leave-
Four minutes.
It's at this point that the boy realizes that sailors or not, he has to act. Trying to resist the urge to glance backwards at the lights of Vermillion City, he slides out from behind the crates with his small bag in tow. The men appear to still be distracted, and they all start laughing at a joke one of them probably told. The streetlamps are still dark. Good thing, too, since doing what he's trying to do in broad daylight would be a death sentence on wheels.
His eyes sweep the array of boats parked around the pier - the S.S. Anne is nowhere to be found, probably on another one of its voyages to Johto. There's fishing boats, schooners, someone's yacht-
The boy's line of sight hits the next-biggest boat. It'll do, he thinks. Anything will do.
Three minutes.
Trying to step as quietly as possible, the boy makes his way across the dock - his gaze doesn't leave the sailors at the other end the whole time. Only a few more feet without them noticing and he'll be able to get out of here, maybe for good. The dock groans under his feet at one point, making his heart stop, but the sailors remain oblivious.
In what seems like hours but is only a few minutes, he's crossed to the part of the pier where the big boat is. Rungs of a ladder jut out of its side, and he begins to climb. Pulling his scrawny body up one rung at a time, he almost allows himself a sigh of relief.
Two minutes.
"Hey!!"
From behind him, he can hear the Hoothoot squawking, and the sound of pounding footsteps. The boy sucks in a breath so shallow that he may as well he exhaling, and only climbs faster. He's so close to the deck-
"What the hell are you- oh my god. Get off of there!"
One minute.
With every last ounce of his strength, the boy practically throws himself over the side of the ship onto its deck. With a start, he realizes that he didn't plan anything past the point of getting onto the ship, and curses himself for being so short-sighted.
But there's a door on the main body, he notices. Opening it as quietly as he can, he surveys the hallway - doors to his left, doors to his right, weak lamps struggling to illuminate the hallway. He didn't even buy a ticket, where is he supposed to go?
Thirty seconds.
Moving quickly and quietly down the hall, one door catches his attention - an angular one, in sharp contrast to the round doors of the ship's suites. One with no porthole. A closet. Throwing the door open (or at least attempting to, quietly), he gently closes it from the inside and collapses onto the floor. His bag lands in a heap on a pile of supplies behind him, and he hugs his legs to his chest. Instinctively, he closes his eyes.
Zero.
The closet is dark, and none of the light penetrates. Still, he can hear movement in other corners of the ship. Where is it going? He doesn't know. It doesn't matter.
He lays back, leaning his head against a coil of rope, and attempts to make out the ceiling in the darkness. The ocean lulls him to sleep before he can think twice.

--

If getting there was hard, staying there is even harder.
He makes his best efforts to measure the space of the storage closet, despite the supplies and extraneous materials littering the floor. Arms out to either side, he places one foot meticulously in front of the other, walking the length and width of the closet with as little sound as possible. It's midday, and if the light filtering through the crack in the door is any indication, there are people moving about the ship. It's better to stay vigilant.
The closet is eight steps long and six steps wide - however many inches that accounts for, he doesn't know. The boy plops down on the floor, staring at his shoes.
The motion makes a sound, and for a moment he swears that he can hear the bustle outside the closet halt for a moment. Straightening his spine so forcefully it threatens to pop, he stares at the door with wide eyes. But after an endless moment, the noise outside resumes, and his shoulders sink in relief.
The floor suddenly lurches beneath his feet, and he becomes painfully aware of the churning of engines from somewhere else in the ship. The ship is moving! Where it's going, he has absolutely no idea, but does it matter?
Of course it does, but not to him. Not now.
The boy grabs his bag from where it sits tucked between several life vests. He flips open the top, removing a leather-bound notebook, several colored pencils, and a few comic books. But then he gazes into the bag and lets out a sigh.
Food probably would've been useful - at least, more than the minimal supply of candy and granola bars that he has. It's enough to last maybe two days.
How long are voyages, again...?

--

Hunger permeates.
Impulsive as he is, he manages to consume the majority of the food he has on the first day - looking back on it, it was childish, but what else could be expected from a child?
He also realizes that the closet is too dark to do anything that he planned to have done when he concocted this escapade, and ends up staring into the darkness the majority of the time.
Boring. So boring. But it's better than what came before, right?
Is it...?
The hole in his stomach opens soon enough. Hunger was familiar, but this is another beast entirely. More often than not, he found himself curled up on the floor, trying to fight off the tremors that came with this insatiable feeling.
On a whim, once, he prods the wall with one of his pencils in a kind of pattern. It's something to do, and that's more than what he has.