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When Neji was young, his mother held his face in her hands and made him hold a pearl in his mouth for a minute before she would let him go swimming in the shallows.
“If you get dragged out to sea,” she would say, voice soft, “put the pearl in your mouth. You can give it to one of the sea kings for safe passage back to shore.”
She strung the single pearl on a fine gold chain, delicate and thin but oddly strong.
“You must always wear this when you are at sea, my love,” his mother said. “It may one day save your life.”
Neji’s father is banished from court on charges of treason when Neji is eleven. His mother brings news of Lord Hiashi’s decision to condemn his twin to death. There is not much time to pack their things. Neji’s mother throws clothes and money into a canvas bag and bundles Neji up in a thick coat. She holds his face in her hands, gently pushing his dark hair out of his eyes.
“Show me your pearl, my love,” she said.
Neji fumbled, tugging the thin chain from beneath the collar of his shirt. The pale white pearl glinted in the low light, and Suisen released a sigh of relief.
“Good,” she said. “Protect that pearl, my love. Keep it with you always. You may sell whatever else you own, but never the pearl. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, mother,” he said, frightened, but desperate not to show it.
“Swear it to me, Neji.”
“I swear, mother, I swear I’ll never sell the pearl.”
“And you will always wear it?”
“And I will always wear it.”
Suisen pulled her son close, and Neji held his mother as tightly as he could. She took him by the hand, and led him into the servants passageways within their estate. She put him in the care of a fisherman and his wife.
It was the last time he ever saw his mother. When Neji shuts his eyes at night, he can still see her face. Her eyes were bright as the sky over the sea, her dark hair in a loose braid over her shoulder. Even as he was taken from her, she did not weep.
The fisherman, Kouga and his wife, Yuri were kind to Neji through his youth. He kept his head down and learned Kouga’s trade, learned to sail, fiddled with carpentry to have something to do with his hands. His education at the estate made him better suited to be a doctor than a fisherman or a carpenter, but he was a very long way from the estate.
Still. He had been too clever. The sleepy sea town where the fisherman and his wife raised him took up a collection to send him to a medical school, once they learned that at eleven Neji knew and understood as much as their village doctor.
So at fifteen when the money had been raised, to the mainland Neji went. He had enough money left over from his mother’s mad dash to ensure his future to live comfortably, but he preferred frugality, and he lived near the docks. And he smelled often of fish when he went to classes, but his grades were impeccable, so no one had much to say about it. He hadn’t been taken seriously at first, because of his youth, but it was clear that he was at the same academic level as his peers.
He wrote often to Kouga and Yuri, filling his letters with observations of life on the mainland. How the people hated the smell and the inner workings of the sea but loved its fruits and its riches. He was often frustrated in those days, an adolescent far away from home.
He knew he was lucky, that he was far enough away from the Hyūga, from his uncle’s influence, that he did not have to worry about his distinctive eyes getting him thrown back to the estate where his parents were executed. But he still had the pearl. Some nights it was enough, some nights it wasn’t. He ran his fingers over it, worried it at night when he couldn’t get to sleep, or when he woke up panting, dreaming his mother’s face, and what she made him promise her.
At twenty, he graduates. He boards a passenger vessel back to Kouga and Yuri’s island. They are at sea for three days when Neji feels a soft shift in the air. He narrows his eyes at the horizon, and knows that a storm is coming.
It hits that same night, battering the ship as if it did something to personally offend the sea kings themselves. Neji leaves the lower quarters in search of the capitan, ready to lend his help where he can; he grew up cutting these waters, and he knows how to navigate. In smaller vessels yes, but getting out of a storm was getting out of a storm.
He gets tossed around the way all of the men on deck do, but Neji is not moored by rope to the others and to a beam on the ship. When he gets tossed around, he goes overboard.
When he hits the water, the air gets knocked out of him. The sea snatches him down, hungry for blood. He thinks to swim and he tries, but the current is hard, and the night is dark, and he isn’t sure of which way is up.
His lungs strain for air before long, and he curses himself. It’s been ages since he held the pearl in his mouth before he went swimming, and now he wishes he had been more diligent with the habit once he had been made to leave his home.
When the sea tugs at him, the world beneath the water is hazy and dark. Then in front of him, the delicate golden chain gleams brighter, much brighter than it should. Neji grabs it, and pulls the pale purple pearl to his lips. He opens his mouth and holds it inside.
The water around him stills. It is as if he is in a pocket outside of the storm. His lungs burn for air, and when he breathes on instinct, water does not flood his nose. Instead he gets air, air that smells of salt and kelp and the quiet darkness of the ocean floor.
Shadows ripple around him, and something larger than a ship looms in sight. Neji spares a prayer to Toyotama-hime to spare his life, to lend him her luck, to at least let his body be returned to Kouga and Yuri so that they do not have to wonder what became of him on his voyage home.
Then, there is a beast in front of him.
It rises, larger than anything Neji’s ever seen in his life, with miles of bright pink hair. It has a face made of scales, iridescent pinks and reds with a single purple diamond at the center of its forehead, its red scales almost forming a crown on its head. Its eyes are green and nearly serpentine.
There is a dull sound from the sides of the bubble, and Neji balks, turns to see what’s caused the strange sound. The creature’s hands hold the pocket of air beneath the sea, hold Neji, and pull him forward.
It opens its mouth and the bubble around him begins to shake. The creature tilts its head at him, then the purple diamond on its forehead glows a bright yellow.
The voice that Neji hears is like the sound of the ocean in a shell, like a tender whisper, far away and intimately close.
“Well look at you,” the creature says in that voice. “What are you doing with that pearl in your mouth?”
Neji opens his mouth, careful to keep the pearl inside. The chain falls over his lower lip.
“My mother gave it to me.”
He doesn’t know what possesses him to say it, but it’s the truth. It seems to be the right answer, because the creature laughs. The sound is like the sea scraping a cliff.
“Did your mother give you those pretty eyes, too?”
Neji blinks, and absently runs his tongue over the pearl in his mouth.
“My father gave them to me,” he says.
“And what,” the creature says, tapping its fingers against the bubble, “was your father’s name?”
“Hyūga Hizashi.”
The creature’s mouth splits into an incredibly satisfied smile.
“Ah,” it says. “I understand. You belong to the Princess of Luck. I thought I recognized your eyes.”
Neji isn’t precisely sure of what to do with that information.
“They have the moon in them,” the creature explains. It smiles, and reveals a row of terrifying teeth. “The moon throws off light. That light belongs to the princess, and we under the sea like her very much.”
Neji shuts his mouth around the pearl, completely unaware of what any of that actually means.
The creature takes pity on him, still smiling.
“Do you know where you are?”
Neji nods; that is a question he can answer.
“I’m in the Flowered Sea, three days from Fire Country.”
The creature brings the bubble closer to her face, bright yellow diamond flashing in the dark.
“And who do you suppose I am?”
The thing is massive, too large to see all of at once, and it speaks with a voice like the tide itself.
“Umi no ō,” he breathes. “A king of the sea.”
The creature nods, rubbing its hand slowly over the bubble. A dark shadow passes over Neji, and disappears as it does.
“I am Sakura,” the creature says. “King of the Flowered Sea.”
The creature draws the bubble closer, and brushes its lips against it.
“And I like you.”
Neji tries not to let the pearl pop out of his mouth. Sakura, the sea king laughs at him, and begins to swim.
The water splits around her; she hardly has to swim. It’s as if she only has to flick her tail, and the sea conforms to her will.
They rise upwards until they break the surface. It’s morning when they do, the early daylight too bright for Neji’s night adjusted eyes. How long had he been under before the sea king found him?
“Naruto!” Sakura shouts, holding the bubble containing Neji above water.
When he’s sure he’s breathing air, Neji pulls the pearl out of his mouth and tucks it beneath the sopping wet collar of his shirt.
There’s a pirate ship very close, Neji can tell by the standard it waves. Leaning over the railing is a blond haired man dressed nothing like a pirate, in bright oranges and reds, a long ponytail falling over his shoulder.
“Sakura-ō-sama!” he shouts, waving. “Did you bring us a new friend?”
A black haired man comes to stand beside him, regarding Neji with curious eyes.
“This is Neji,” the sea king says, despite the fact that he never gave her his name. “He’s going to join your crew. He has my favor.”
“Wow!” Naruto shouts. “That makes two of the sea-blessed on board! We’ll track down the Akatsuki in no time, Sasuke!”
He claps the black haired man on the back, and Sakura chuckles as she lifts Neji. Her massive hand leaves him to only jump a few feet until he’s on deck. Sasuke lifts an eyebrow at him, but Naruto is beaming.
“I’m Uzumaki Naruto,” he says, introducing himself. “I’m the captain of the Rasenshuriken. This is Uchiha Sasuke, my first mate.”
“It’s nice to meet you both,” Neji replies, nodding slowly.
He turns his head to where Sakura has returned to the sea, her arms and shoulders beneath the water, while only her massive head pokes above the surface.
“What do you mean by sea-blessed?” he asks, looking from the sea king to the captain of the ship.
Naruto grins at him, and puts his fists on his hips.
“Someone who has the favor of one of the seven sea kings,” he explains. He points his thumb at himself as he says, “My mother is Kushina, king of the Spiced Sea.”
Neji nods slowly, and tries not to think of how impossible it should be for the sea kings to have human children. But the way that the sunlight bounces off Naruto’s cheek gives the faintest glimmer of orange light, almost like scales.
Not so human after all.
“What can you do?”
He looks to Sasuke, whose deadpan face is waiting firmly for an answer. Neji scratches his chest, not because it itches, but because he wants the reassurance of the pearl beneath his shirt.
“I’m a doctor.”
It’s the truth, so he says it. Sasuke nods, satisfied. Naruto lets out a victorious ‘whoop’, punching his fist into the air.
“We’ve been needing one of those! You’ll fit in just well around here, Neji-san!”
“Naruto,” calls the king of the Flowered Sea.
All three men look to her, where her purple diamond turns yellow as she speaks.
“Take good care of him,” she says, winking one giant green eye. “He’s my new favorite.”
With that, she ducks beneath the water, diving down into the heavy deep where there is enough space for her to move freely.
Neji looks back to Naruto and Sasuke. He thinks of Kouga and Yuri, and everyone back on the island. He takes a deep breath, and wonders what he’s done to deserve the favor of a sea king, and tries to wrap his mind around the fact that the sea kings are real, and that one has chosen to bless him with her favor.
“How can I help?” Neji asks.
Naruto reaches out and drags him into a one armed hug. His cheek glimmers with faint orange scales as he does it.
“Let me show you around!”
As Naruto tugs him towards where the rest of the crew has assembled for the morning work, Neji spares one glance over his shoulder. The sea is still where Sakura disappeared, but his forehead feels faintly warm.
A pale purple diamond will form there, in time.