Chapter Text
The first summer break of your uni experience was supposed to be spent with friends on a tropical beach, drinking underage and making sloppy life decisions. Godaiin had never been much of a partier, but he’d somehow imagined himself renting out a vacation house with his university friends on Hawaii, or Bali, or Okinawa, somewhere not on Honshu. But making friends with other university students had been difficult. Arranging a joint vacation was impossible when he barely got along with even his roommates.
So here he was in some dingy, sleepy fishing village on the Japanese mainland. With his parents .
Minato. Even the name of the village was generic, simply meaning ‘harbor’. It was too small even to get rail service; his family had to drive through kilometers of devastatingly boring countryside before finally turning into the poorly-maintained road that functioned as the main street of the entire town. Finding the place his parents had rented took no time at all.
“ Wow ,” Sei said with barely concealed sarcasm, slamming the passenger door of their car shut. His mother and father glared daggers at him, but what could they say? It sure as hell didn’t look like the promised ‘seaside cottage’. The formerly dark wood had faded to a greying shade of medium brown, the finish worn off by decades of salt air. Several tiles were missing from the roof. “How much did you guys pay for this place, again?”
“It was a great value,” grumbled his father, stomping up stairs that creaked and groaned with every step.
Tailing his father, Sei’s mother turned to face him with a frown. “It’s not about luxury , Sei, it’s about spending quality time together.”
Sei didn’t respond, begrudgingly following his parents up the stairs. Quality time, right. His parents had hardly paid attention to him since he’d entered preschool, why would they start now that he was out of their house?
The inside of the rental, while clean, looked like it hadn’t been updated in the last half century. The tatami were bleached nearly white with age. It was spacious for an old house; Sei claimed a room on the first floor with sliding shoji that opened straight onto the beach.
He had to look on the bright side of all this– at least there was a beach.
Keeping the sliding doors open, Sei sat with his legs dangling over the back porch. Even with a mood as foul as his, he had to admit the sea was beautiful here. The sound of crashing waves eased some of the heaviness in his chest as he gazed up at the white clouds rolling through an idyllic, cerulean sky. He’d definitely be able to see the stars tonight, as far as they were from city lights. Below, aquamarine waves shimmered and sparkled.
He let his eyes drift over the scenery for a while, enjoying the sea in his nose and the wind ruffling his cropped, black hair. Suddenly, a movement on the horizon caught his attention.
It started with splashing, barely visible to his naked eye. But then something massive and silvery breached the waves, glinting brilliantly in the afternoon sunlight. The sight made Sei’s breath catch in his throat. He leapt off the porch, running towards the shore for a closer look.
There it was again, moments later! Sei could see now that it was some kind of creature’s tail, though he had no hope of identifying exactly what. He was majoring in Computer Sciences, not Biology.
“M-Mom! Dad! Come here, come here, you gotta see this!” Godaiin shouted, running as fast as he could back to the beach house. The sand slowed him down, redirecting his steps and flying everywhere in his rush. He stormed the porch and thundered into the house, yelling up the staircase, “Come on, fast! I just saw a– a dolphin or shark or something!”
“Really?” His mother peeked her head over the staircase, her brown bob flying every which way. She hurried down the stairs, followed close behind by Sei’s father clutching a pair of binoculars. “Where? Show us!”
“I saw it from right in front of my room,” he said, ushering his parents along. He pointed out at the horizon. “There!”
The family stood there for several long moments, squinting their eyes against the ocean glare. Sei’s father peered through his binoculars with the intense focus of a sniper. But the tail didn’t appear again.
“I-I swear it was there, I saw it–”
His father gave a tired sigh, lowering his binoculars. “No large sea life has been spotted here in decades, Sei,” he said with a shake of his head.
Sei’s mother grabbed onto the sleeve of her husband’s dress shirt. “Well, maybe our son just had the first shark or dolphin sighting in ages!”
“Or maybe he mistook some glare for a fish.”
“ Kenta , you are so harsh on him! Maybe he really–”
His parents’ argument faded into the background as they walked back inside, but Sei kept looking out to sea. No large sea life, huh? Then what had he seen?
Maybe this place wasn’t going to be so boring after all.
Anywhere near a fishing town was probably the most boring part of the Pacific Ocean. Rin only had a sample size of one, and he’d never been allowed away from land long enough to see if he was right… but that was his strong suspicion. Nearly all the coral was bleached, and all the sealife sickly-looking. Cans, old nets, and other trash littered the ocean floor. And overfishing had driven away all but the dumbest and meanest of fish.
Rin supposed that meant he was probably one of those dumb or mean fish, but it was a toss-up which one he was. To those remaining, he certainly looked mean; aside from him, the second largest predator was a blacktip reef shark he’d named Kuro. (He was quite friendly, as long as you gave him dorsal fin scritches.) But even though his sharp teeth and size marked him as a predator, he’d never actually gone hunting in the ocean. So that threw ‘mean’ right out.
Being smarter than the average seadweller didn’t preclude him from being a dumb fish. The octopi could outsmart him. An octopus could probably get into university, if you gave it a pencil and taught it Japanese. Meanwhile, Rin had hands and was (allegedly) literate… and he’d barely finished middle school.
Definitely a dumb fish.
This categorization was only confirmed by the fact that he was out swimming during the day– the most dangerous thing he could do, if his stepfather was to be believed. While the sun was up, there was always the chance of being caught off guard by a fisherman’s trawler, a wayward swimmer, or some random scuba divers. Don’t take that risk! He could hear Shirou’s voice say.
Whatever. He might be a dumb fish, but he wasn’t stupid . Who couldn’t spot the looming shadow of a boat overhead, or the bubbles and kicked up silt that hung around divers like a cloud? As if to spite the voice in his head, he breached the surface with a powerful whip of his silvery blue tail. If he’d gotten the directions right in his head, nobody but that abandoned old beach house was there to see it.
Grinning, he dove back under again. He swam down as fast as he could, turning upwards at the last second to rocket himself up above the water once again. Afterwards, he let himself sink so his eyes were just above the surface, laughing as he got kicked around by the waves. Even at its most boring, he loved the sea. Rin loved the feeling of weightlessness, of his tail slicing cleanly and painlessly through the water like it was the only thing he was born to do. How could anyone resist that feeling? This must be how normal people feel running, he thought.
A moving, black speck on the shore caught his eye. A person-shaped speck. And it was running into the damn beach house as fast as it could, arms flailing wildly. “Oh shit,” Rin mouthed, even though his lungs weren’t moving any air through his throat.
He made himself sink like a rock, then swam hard in the direction of where he’d left his clothes on land. Rin could feel his heart pounding in his chest, the gills on his ribs flaring wildly to catch all the oxygen they could. He couldn’t even bring himself to enjoy the feeling of speed and grace like he usually did, preoccupied with mouthing curse words and picturing worst-case scenarios. What if the witness had taken photos– or worse, video? He’d be on national news in less than 24 hours. His stepdad would kill him long before the scientists hauled him away to whatever research facility they’d take him to. Those poor scientists would be so disappointed, having to do an autopsy instead of the planned live dissection.
Rin hauled himself up onto the slick, black stone of the cave floor, pulling his tail completely out of the water. He reached for his dry bag and began feverishly patting himself down with a giant, plush towel, muttering “Oh fuck, oh fuck” the entire time. Once he had legs again– scaly legs, but that was normal –he dressed like he was late for his own funeral. He grabbed his cane and started the unfairly long walk back to his house, trying his hardest not to panic. It was harder to walk when he wasn’t giving the task his full attention.
Being in water usually helped with the soreness, but by the time he got back to his house, his legs were screaming again. He staggered through the door and nearly fell onto the bench next to the entryway.
“Nii-san?” And there was Yukio at the kitchen counter, staring at him through those coke-bottle lenses that gave him guppy eyes.
“Oh, hey , Yukio! You’re back from uni,” said Rin brightly, trying to pull off his shoes as casually as possible. Bare, webbed feet slapped uncooperatively onto the floor. “Missed me too much and had to drop out? I completely understand.”
Yukio gave him a tired glare. Being away from Rin for a few months didn’t make him miss his jokes, apparently. “It’s summer break, remember?”
“Totally!” He’d been counting down the days until all the universities went on break for the summer. Minato was even worse than usual without his brother and half his friends around. He’d been looking forward to everyone returning for a few months… but the day’s events had made it slip from his mind. “Come here, give your grandmama a hug,” he said in his best elderly lady voice, shaking his cane in Yukio’s direction.
Unable to help himself, Yukio snorted. He pulled Rin up onto his feet with one smooth gesture, immediately wrapping him into a hug. Rin returned the embrace, clinging on for a few moments longer with one arm as he grabbed his cane for balance again. “You went swimming. During the day ,” stated Yukio, folding his arms across his chest disapprovingly.
Rin nearly toppled to the ground. “No, what makes you say that? That’s crazy,” he said, leaning against the wall to make it seem like his legs were giving out in a cool, intentional way.
“You smell like seaweed and bits of your hair are still white.” Yukio pinched one of the offending locks of damp, silvery hair in between his fingers.
Rin hissed. “Dammit! Stupid color changing, Barbie Mermaidia -ass hair–” It was good for concealing his identity a bit more if anyone spotted him while in the water, but the dramatic change from platinum to raven black made getting dry that much more annoying. There were always a few strands that lingered on white. His mother had always said the Ningyo part of him matched his personality– stubborn and persistent. Even when he wasn’t in the water, it insisted on making its presence known. It was why the webbing on his fingers and toes nearly went up to the first knuckle, why his gills stayed as apparent as ever even when he wasn’t using them, and why he had scaly legs that worked about as well as ocean sunfish swam. Which is to say, kind of , but not going anywhere fast.
Yukio’s Ningyo, by comparison, was hardly there. He could barely swim better than a normal human, but he walked about as well as one, too. He’d never understood why Rin would do anything to be in the ocean. “Do Mother and Father know?”
“Of course they don’t,” he muttered, gripping the cushy handle of his cane with both hands hard enough to turn his knuckles white. “Please don’t tell them. Especially don’t tell Shirou.”
Yukio rolled his eyes. “Fine, I won’t. Why are you still calling him by his first name?”
“Cause he’s still not our dad,” Rin said, steadying himself at last and making his way to the first floor bath. “Talk to you later, I’m gonna take a bath.”
“Huh? You just went swimming!”
“Yeah, and my legs hurt from walking all the way back here!” Running, really, but Yukio didn’t need to know that. No press were banging down their front door, so whoever saw him probably hadn’t been filming. Rin was starting to convince himself things would be fine. Probably.