Chapter Text
A boy, barely eight years old, lay on his back in the sand.
The sun was warm, and the sand was warmer, but not hot enough to burn his skin. His toes were buried in the sand, Haruka Nanase had just awakened from a nap.
I'm probably sunburned, he thought, forcing himself to open his eyes, shielding them from the brightness of the sun with one hand. He didn't fully recall falling asleep there in the first place, but he assumed it was just the sound of the waves again. The sound of the ocean calmed his nerves and could always lull him into a light sleep, no matter where he was. It was almost like a tuneless, wordless, lullaby to him.
He flicked a few stray black hairs out of his eyes and stood up, brushing off the layer of sand stuck to his arms and the backs of his legs. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore was duller than it had been earlier. The tide had gone out, but he could still hear loud, irregular splashing. No one seemed to be around, so he straightened his shirt and shorts, kicked off his sandals, and followed the sounds down the beach.
The splashing led him to a rocky outcrop a ways down the beach that jutted out into the ocean. Much of it was normally submerged, but since the tide had gone out, the rocks lay drying in the sun, creating a series of tidepools that dotted the landscape before leading out into the ocean.
There, caught in a tidepool, was the biggest fish Haruka had ever seen. That was, if it could even really be called a fish. It looked more like a shark than anything else. It had a powerful-looking tail, coated with silver, rubbery flesh, accented by dull red stripes and splotches of darker grey that faded to a lighter grey, almost white along the bottom. Further up, the skin seemed to dot into scales and freckles along skin that resembled human flesh. Actually, the torso seemed almost entirely human, save the dark red stripes and dorsal fin on the back. In fact, the top half, at the very least, resembled a young boy. He had jagged red hair, sharp features, and serrated teeth. His shoulders looked powerful, more muscular than Haruka's at the very least. His clawed hands were scraping helplessly against a rock, his knuckles white, but their lower portions connected by what looked like a dark pinkish webbing. It was hard for him to observe all of this, however, as the creature was throwing himself against a boulder on the oceanside of the tidepool, smacking his tail repeatedly against the water, as though the force of it would propel him over the obstacle, pulling himself out of what was now serving as his rocky prison.
The small boy said nothing at first, taking a few steps closer to get a better view of the fish? boy? What was he? Haru crouched low amongst the rocks, but his shifting knocked a few tiny pebbles into the water by accident, and the creature froze, tensing up instinctively.
He whipped his head around, his eyes (which were a vibrant red that matched his hair), boring directly into Haruka. Haruka froze as well, more startled than afraid. The creature pressed himself further up against the rock, the sea moss on it now torn and barren from the constant onslaught of scratching beneath his claws. His tail hung in the water, and now that he wasn't splashing and thrashing, churning the water white, the reason he was caught in this predicament was evident enough.
Around his fin, stretching from his dorsal to the left side of his tailfin, was a plastic wrapper. Haruka almost instantly recognized it as one of those massive, thick ones they used for shipping; the kind he knew from how it always wrapped up those cases of waterbottles that his mother bought for "hurricane emergencies." The plastic was being pulled taut by the minutely rough texture of his skin, and it had dug so deeply into his tailfin that the area around it looked greened and infected. Beneath it, the skin was red and raw, most likely because he had been scraping at it with his claws for some time, digging it in in further rather than freeing himself.
"You're hurt," Haru breathed, and the creature hissed at him in response, flailing the injured appendage again as the boy reached out a hand, taking a step down from the rock. It splashed him, hard, but he merely wiped his soaked hair from his eyes, holding both of his hands up to show he meant no harm. "Hey, I'm gonna get you free, okay? You're never gonna be able to get over those rocks and back into the ocean unless I help you." He kept his voice low and soft, flinching when the creature hissed at him again.
He climbed down into the water, and placed a hand on the injured tailfin gingerly. "If you can understand me," he whispered. "But try not to wiggle too much." It probaby couldn't. Why would a fish understand a person? Let alone Japanese? It probably had its own fishy language, or something. Too bad he didn't know how to speak fish.
When his fingers tightened around the plastic, the shark let out a shrill screech, an unearthly, high-pitched sound like nothing Haruka had ever heard before. It lurched away from him, twisting in one motion, pulling his tail back, and raked his claws across Haruka's arm. He didn't let go of the plastic, however, and fell facefirst into the water.
When he pulled himself back up to a sitting position, Haru was still submerged up to his shoulders, but held his grip firm. He shook his head to get his hair out of his eyes again, sending water droplets flying, and the shark seemed to relax slightly, watching him with distant curiously. It took some pulling and stretching at the plastic, but eventually the boy managed to free him from his translucent prison, throwing the litter out of the tidepool and onto the beach. He'd get it later and throw it in the trash properly, (but did that stuff go to a dump that emptied back into the ocean anyway? He wasn't sure, but if it did, that'd be pretty redundant, he thought.) but for now, he was more focused on helping this strange shark-person.
He knelt down and held a hand out to the creature, who swiped at him again. Haru pulled back in time this time, but still didn't show any evidence of being afraid. If anything, he was more excited, despite the fact that the shark was hissing at him. Who knew sharks hissed? Huh. If he had teeth like that, he'd probably hiss too, though. So, he decided not to judge. Still, he wasn't going to let him die here. Instead, he grabbed him by the shoulder, wrapping his arms around it, pulling him up out of the water onto the rock. It was...harder than he expected. The shark was heavy, heavier than he was, and he groaned with the effort. Once he managed to pull him over the rock, he couldn't keep his grip on him any longer, partially due to the fact that he was thrashing and squirming beneath his grip. As it thrashed, it kept hissing and spraying water everywhere, even hitting Haruka in the legs with its fins. The barrage threatened to knock him over, but luckily he was already about to let go, just when he thought he was losing his grip on the rock. He released him, his arms giving out, and he toppled into the deeper water on the other side of the rock alongside the shark. By deeper, it was just slightly deeper than his waist, but he lay there, floating on his back for a few seconds to catch his breath.
Beside him, the shark smacked the water a couple of times with his tail, before rolling over in the water so only the dorsal fin on his back broke the surface of the water. He shot another glance at Haru through the water, and briefly their eyes met, locked upon one another; and in another flick of a tailfin, he was gone.