Chapter Text
The first time Ritsu saw the stars, he remembers holding Shigeo’s hand as hard as his little tiny fingers allowed him to.
Facing this new, unknown element of the universe, Ritsu’s mind is filled with the memories of his father’s stories, that were passed down to him by his parents and grandparents. Legends that became part of their family traditions: tales of the scary things of the outside, the surface and all its monsters. About humans, avians and Ritsu’s favorite: dragons. Fierce, ancient flying creatures, that soared the skies like giant sea snakes that breathed fire--a poison that would eat your skin away in seconds--and that no merfolk ever encountered and lived to tell the tale; they’d fly above the surface, waiting for the naive and unruly children that dared to venture outside the water, to hunt them down for dinner.
Ritsu looks around, eyes darting everywhere. But the moon is the only one present and the sky is way quieter than he imagined.
“Look at that one, Ritsu.” His brother’s tiny hand points up and rises above the water. “That’s probably the North Star. Grandma told me about it the other day,” he says with a smile. “It helps humans drive their boats home.”
That's kinda strange, Ritsu thinks, but very smart. When merfolk are lost in the sea, your only choice is to find your way back to the reef, or sing and hope to the gods your voice is good enough to reach someone’s ears.
So, the stars . Impressive that humans found a way to guide themselves through the scary expanse of the sea with it. To Ritsu, the night sky just looked like a garbled mess of white dots. He wonders how they do it.
“Do all stars have names?” asks Ritsu, his voice barely a whisper against the waves. Shigeo shrugs and says that’s the only star their grandmother has told him the name of.
Ritsu nods and his eyes go back to the sky. He doesn't find anything fascinating in it, except that his brother doesn't stop smiling while his gaze is trained upwards. Shigeo has always been attracted by the world outside of the ocean, he doesn’t think his brother ever meant to be dragged up but, somehow, he always ended up there. Their parents have forbidden them to swim to the surface, as all concerned parents do, but Shigeo was a lost cause.
His brother cut his thoughts short when he speaks: “Thank you for coming with me, Ritsu–and for keeping the secret from Mom and Dad.” He hasn't stopped smiling, and when they both go back under the water, Shigeo smiles wider as he leads him back home by their joined hands.
Ritsu smiles too—albeit a little concerned—and grips his brother's hand harder than he meant to. It's the first time the fear settles in his stomach.
The fear that the sky will steal his brother away.
Singing used to be one of the most intimate acts between merfolk, that was only ever shared between close family or lovers—a long time ago, performing a good song was a vital part of courting—but now it wasn’t a skill to envy. In these modern times, having a unique voice wasn’t a necessity for survival, since finding a partner was a much simpler act with much more complex outcomes depending on how it was carried out.
So, at first glance, it wasn’t impressive when Shigeo came out as the gifted singer of the family. However, Ritsu always grew up admiring his brother’s prodigious singing voice and wanted that talent for himself. When they were younger, Shigeo was always the one who’d lull him to sleep with soft tunes he learned from their grandmother.
As they grew up, they started getting out of their home to play hide and seek around the reef, and search for cool-looking rocks on the seafloor. Shigeo’s cheerful and uplifting songs would attract the fish—an odd ability that he only ever saw performed by his brother—and made them swim among them.
When they went hunting with his parents, Ritsu would watch with wonder how his brother’s voice would bring the fish to his hand, as if he was casting a spell. The fish would dance around him completely at his mercy, while Shigeo would capture one by one, just by reaching out with his hands. That was extraordinary, at least in Ritsu’s eyes, who didn’t think back then how oddly disturbing that looked.
This way his brother could hunt or fight without losing a scale for it. Whenever he sang, his fins and scales would shine a bright neon blue, with soft lilacs and purples, an enchanting contrast against the usual pitch black of his tail. He looked like a merman from a fairytale, with mind-controlling powers that’ll bend the will of any creature.
Ritsu, on the other hand, had to learn to be a quick swimmer, stealthy, precise and know when and how to strike the prey, besides learning all the predators’ weak points and which one to aim for in a fight. It didn’t matter if he had to lay still on the sand, or was attacking head-on using his spear or blade, Ritsu mastered all the techniques he could because he had no choice. He became an expert on recognizing the perfect moment and making his next move with quick thinking. He knew that if he missed or failed, he’d have to repeat the entire process of strategizing and waiting the moment to act, which translated into more time starving, or more time fighting for his life.
His mother would praise him whenever he came back from the academy, proud that Ritsu was excelling in all the skills that mattered, that’d help him survive and thrive in society. Shigeo, on the other hand, would be scolded for using his voice to do everything for him, to what he’d nod and promise he’d try to get as better as Ritsu some day. And that was frustrating .
And it didn’t matter how many times he tried, Ritsu was never even able to lull his brother to sleep with a song.
The sky tried to steal his brother away for the first time, in the shape of Tsubomi Takane, the next heir to the crown. The princess’ eyes were dark blue, the same color of the night sky they watched on the surface as kids so long ago. And Shigeo was undeniably—and in a rather embarrassing way—crushing on her.
Tsubomi was a beautiful mermaid and her looks were fitting for a princess, her tail was a dashing mixture of colors: red, whites and blacks that resembled the tail of the king, whose family was a long-faraway descendant of a type of koi fish. Despite this, though, Tsubomi’s aloof personality was always the talk of the reef. ‘She doesn’t talk like a lady, ‘She knows no manners!’, ‘That’s not the appropriate attitude of a royal princess’ and the sort. Ritsu wasn’t a big fan of gossip, but, these types of conversations would always find a way into his life because of two very annoying reasons. On one hand, he was surrounded with other merfolk who aimed to apply for royal duties like knights or meisters, or even more bold—and stupid—ones who pretended to court the princess, because of their status as top students of the academy, so naturally, there were some of them who thought they were entitled to give opinions on how to live her life.
On the other hand, Ritsu and Shigeo became her friends when they were just children. How a commoner can become the princess’ friend is a simple task: just be a child ignorant and uninterested in royal affairs and have a princess who doesn’t value hierarchy at all. Tsubomi’s intentions were always sincere and their friendship was honest, he’ll give her that.
The only reason Ritsu ever remembered her, was because of a sentence she dropped in the middle of a conversation—probably by accident—that stayed on Ritsu’s mind, forever.
“My professor’s been going to the surface a lot, lately. So I have all this free time to play now!”
That’s how Ritsu knew what he wanted to become in the future: if he was going to protect his brother from the outside world, he had to keep up with what was happening out there in the first place. So even though they lost contact with her through the years, while Ritsu was thinking of her words and pursuing a meister application at the Royal Castle; Shigeo was twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week talking about her. Not bad things, but some days Ritsu wished he did just to feel his brother wasn’t trying to brainwashing him into liking her, too.
Ritsu always thought Tsubomi was rather boring and found her personality strange and unreadable—half of the time, he had no idea what she was thinking—and he never found out what Shigeo saw in her besides her good looks. Or maybe it was her deep, night sky eyes, that’d remind Ritsu of the excitement of the unknown, of the stars and their names and the mystery of her thoughts, just like the world outside the water.
Maybe that’s what enchanted his brother in the first place.
He didn’t dislike her, though, Tsubomi would spend long amounts of time hanging around with him and his brother since they met her. Shigeo was always shy, quiet and reserved. And most kids disliked hearing Shigeo singing, so they always kept their distance. Something that offended Ritsu to his soul.
How dare they, right?
Tsubomi didn’t care about this, though, and along Ritsu, they’d play around the underwater sea caves, bother the old octopus that lived behind the academy until it sprayed its ink all over them, swim to the ruins of human ships that sank ages ago and hunt down the tasty fish that made home in there.
“Tsubomi!” says Shigeo, in a small whisper as he swims next to her while she watches a school of bluefin tuna linger around a mossy rock on the seafloor. “Want to see me bring the fish again with my voice?”
Ritsu rolls his eyes with a smile. Shigeo might as well be trying to serenade her at this point.
Tsubomi’s eyes look at him for a second. “Oh,” she says, uninterested. “You’ve shown me that too many times.” Her eyes return to the fish, and she sinks her frame to the floor and started approaching them quietly. “I’m tired of that.”
Her honesty was always blunt. It was a virtue as it was much a flaw.
He remembers Shigeo’s eyes, the leftover emptiness from a rejection new to him. It wasn’t the first time someone hadn’t shown interest in his talent, but he could understand how heartbreaking it could be when that comes from the girl he likes. He remembers his shoulders dropping and his gaze looking at her as she snatched the tuna in a flash. He also remembers the shivers of exhaustion in his tail, as he tried to hunt the way Tsubomi and Ritsu did, failing to catch any fish that before were so easy to control when he sang.
Ritsu and Tsubomi filled their bags with fish. Shigeo took none home.
Shigeo stopped honing his singing, rather trying—and failing—to attract Tsubomi by other means.
He wasn’t very good at it.
The day Ritsu felt his skin get colder and colder while being inside the water, is one he doesn’t forget. First, because it’s the evening of the last day of the Summer Hunt Festival, and second, because is when he goes swimming back to the surface for the second time, all by himself.
Don’t get him wrong, he liked being in the ocean, there was nothing in the surface that drew his attention out. But his tongue tasted like medicine and he was tired of laying around at home.
He was also, more afraid than he’s ever been in his life.
Shigeo’s worried eyes across his room—he doesn’t remember—obviously, but Ritsu does, and he can’t stand it. It makes his chest constrict and explode at the same time. He wants to ask him to leave him alone, but he doesn’t want to take his eyes off him.
Because what if he does it again?
It is the first time that his brother has lost control. Ritsu tries to hide in a sunk ship or in a deep cave, but when that doesn’t work, he keeps going: far away from the reef, so far, that he crosses the entrance, gets past the Royal Guard who protect the limits of the kingdom from the outsiders. And he tries to make it stop, but the remnants of his brother’s screams echo in his head until he swims all the way to reach the surface and take one big breath.
Ritsu arrives at the entrance of a sea cave, he’s never been so far from the reef, but at this point, he doesn’t really care. When he goes inside, sheltered by the rocky ceiling, he lets the waves push him to the shore, lays there with limbs sprawled across the dry sand and the half of his tail that remains in the water, massaged by the waves in a gentle rhythm.
As much as he dislikes the humid air and the foam, he feels safe here, away from the deafening emptiness of the ocean that he loved being in so much. Right now, if he ducks his head under the water, he’s sure he’d still hear Shigeo’s violent, all-consuming wail.
A sound in the cave echoes—something falling down—through the walls and Ritsu looks around in panic. He scans the area with sharp and quick eyes, holding his breathing for a few seconds while he listens closely.
No shadows moving in the walls, not a single noise and certainly no one there but him.
Maybe he’s just paranoid after everything that happened, even if it was almost a week ago.
Shigeo had looked so scary, and he didn’t blame him at all—he wasn’t good dealing with people in general, least of all thugs—so when he tried to stand up for Ritsu, he just lost it. His eyes white, the water encapsulating them in a vortex, fins flared and claws long, longer than they’ve ever been, and his death-grip on the two teens as Shigeo screamed, and screamed, and screamed.
Ritsu closes his eyes and tries to forget. To focus on whatever else was around him right now. The sea cove and the air.
“Shige, please, stop!”
No screeching, no pain in his ears; no headache or nausea. Just the sound of the waves, the birds—seagulls, if he remembered correctly—that flew in circles around a spot on the sky. The sun was shining mercilessly on the top of it. Midday , he thought to himself, and even if he was sheltered by the cave’s shadow, he started feeling the suffocating heat that poked at his gills as if he was getting sicker than he already was.
Ritsu trying to swim away as he covered his ears, competition already forgotten and his brother there as the two teens begged for him to just stop–
He opens his eyes a little too quick, the light blinding him for brief moments while he moves around and settles in a more comfortable position: putting his tail deeper into the water and further away into the shadows, keeping half of his body still outside and successfully avoiding the burning sun. He rests onto his stomach, and crossing his arms under his head, he closes his eyes and tries to calm down.
He still couldn’t erase the uneasiness that there was something else with him on that cave, so he opens his eyes and checks for a second time, but just like he previously found out, there was not a single soul besides him.
He fell asleep to the sound of the waves, instead of the terrifying face of his brother, the pleadings of the young mermen, and his own head hurting like someone was beating his skull with a rock.
And that was, truly, the last time Ritsu ever heard his brother sing.
To his surprise, he returned to the sea cave.
In the middle of a winter night, when everyone at home was in deep slumber, Ritsu sneaked out from home and made his way to the surface, finding himself on the same path to the island, crossing the cave’s entrance and then finding the same spot he fell asleep in months ago. But he wasn’t here to take a nap. Instead, he’d try to sing .
After the incident, he’d figured he wanted to have that ability. To replicate his brother’s voice, the one he hadn’t heard in such a long time. He was aware that he could never compare to his brother’s talent, but now, he had to try until he could do it perfectly. Shigeo was his brother, after all. It’s very possible he had that same dormant gift within him.
And most of all: he wanted to protect his brother.
Here in the solitude of the cave, he didn’t need to lie to himself anymore. He wanted to help Shigeo, truly, from the bottom of his heart. And maybe singing like him—having his powers—is going to let him do something next time despite hoping there’s is actually no ‘ next time’.
But his voice was average, his fins or scales didn’t glow. And certainly, none of the fish—tunas or salmon that roamed the cave’s water—were anywhere near interested in him.
He sighs, while slowly reaching out to grab one and all of the fish scatter around in a blink. “This isn’t going to work, is it?” he wonders aloud.
Ritsu sucks in a breath and starts singing again. A melody he’s heard and learned from Shigeo before.
His voice cracks at the beginning, and he clears his throat. Bad start. He resumes the song, curious of why it sounds so different than it does when he’s submerged. Not that it matters, because there’s not a chance he’d risk his neck by singing underwater. If he tried he’s sure his parents would hear him—or worse, his brother— and then they’d ask what he’s doing awake at this hour and what he’s doing here and why—
His voice cracks again. This time, his skin shivers as he feels something else with him in the cave—just like the all the times he’s been here—and immediately opens his eyes to scan everything, from the floor to the ceiling and making sure no one has followed him out here, but both the ocean and the cave are completely empty.
His hands grip the sand. Ritsu knows he’s nervous because being out here is strictly forbidden, and he knows– so his head must be playing tricks on him. He goes back to singing, the high notes are starting to hurt his throat, but he keeps going just for the sake of it.
He stares at the salmon, who’d returned once again to their spot, but they’re still wandering about without any care.
Maybe it’s because he’s far away, so if he gets just a little bit closer...
He sings a soft tune. But the fish seem to have a busy schedule, not paying him any mind, they probably already forgot he was right there. He ends up losing his patience and catches one with his bare hands, eating it away out of frustration. He sings to the ocean with all the strength of his lungs, not a lullaby anymore, a melody filled with rage and fear and want . He might as well be driving every living creature away from him at this point.
However, the overwhelming invisible eyes that keep digging to the back of his neck, never disappear.
The next day, his throat is sore.
When Ritsu reaches adolescence, he’s passed all the requirements to apply to anything. With his results, he’s getting offers of all types of jobs, but he refuses them all to the exception of royal meister. He’s qualified enough to become an assistant at the royal library while he’s being trained, plus with the recommendations from his teachers and Tsubomi’s good side on his favor, he’s welcomed with open arms. He’s also skilled with the spear and the blade, sometimes making Tsubomi spar with him when he has free time.
She always beats him.
Not that he’d doubt Tsubomi’s fierceness. She was always really good at it when they were kids and she always said she wanted to be a knight when she grew up. She probably found out sooner or later that it was impossible for her, as the crown would be sitting on her head once the king deemed her worthy. That didn’t stop her dreams, though, as she proved over and over again she could take on anybody in combat.
Ritsu decides he was best off studying. He was better at that: math, languages, history, you name it. He starts getting disappointed when he realizes that the smarter he gets, the less the outside world seems to scare him. He found out that dragons—as his father told him—where creatures of myth, any record on them was merely fictional, they apparently existed years ago but no one had actually seen one. The descriptions were comical, and most references came from novels. An unreliable source that Ritsu wasn’t going to take seriously.
It was a shame, as he grew up to his father’s bedtime stories of them crossing the skies and painting a giant shadow on the ocean. But that was the magic of growing up, he thinks bitterly. He embraces new knowledge, though, as it keeps him updated on what dangers his brother might get into if the sky tried stealing his brother away one more time.
“Ritsu! How was your day?” Shigeo’s eyes glitter with excitement.
He looks at his brother, dead in the eye, sarcasm on full boost: “Wonderful! Tsubomi kicked my ass yet again!”
Shigeo sighs, his eyes dreamily looking at nothing. “She’s so amazing…”
Ritsu nods and smiles. “Yeah, I think I have a fracture!” he lies, watching how his brother nods. He joins his hands on his lap, tail dancing from one side to the other. Gods, he’s so far gone.
“Uhum, yeah, that’s good.” A murmur, while he keeps staring at the void, and Ritsu tries really hard not to laugh.
He fails.
Merfolk and humans had been harboring animosity towards one another for a while now. There wasn’t a law that prohibited their interaction, but Ritsu knew about the tales of the merfolk who trusted humans and never returned to the water ever again.
This is why Ritsu never wanted to trust Reigen Arataka.
Another reason to wish dragons existed, as they would snatch Reigen away in their mouth and devour him in an instant. Or perhaps set him on fire, who knows.
However, Ritsu always knew that as long as Reigen was in the ocean, he would always have an advantage over him. So, after Shigeo confessed to him that he was meeting up with a human in the surface, Ritsu made sure to trail him there and judge the human himself. His brother might be right—maybe he wasn’t dangerous—but Ritsu wasn’t going to let his guard down. He would study Reigen’s appearance, his behaviors and the way he spoke. He made sure that it didn’t align with any of the red flags he’d recognize from the textbooks or anecdotes from his family.
He owned a big ship—a metallic one, too. Ritsu hid his surprise when he saw it since all human ships he’d seen were wooden made—but he also had a smaller boat that he’d use to sail from his bigger ship to a cove on the island, and vice versa. He was a little irritated when he realized this island shared the sea cave he always went to sing to, but Reigen’s station was far away enough to keep that place secret.
So far, there wasn’t anything wrong with him, except that Reigen had the habit to talk out of his ass , he would talk of the human world and its trivial matters. The things they did, what they ate, what they said of merfolk—‘ they say mermaids sing to drown humans and devour them’ —and the more he spoke, the more annoyed Ritsu became. But he realized Reigen was just that.
All talk, no bite.
He might’ve charmed his brother with lame stories of the outside, but he never tried to convince him to leave with him. In fact, Reigen seemed to encourage Shigeo to be a better merman. The only thing that really ticked Ritsu off was that Reigen used Shigeo’s voice for his work. Sometimes, Reigen would take Shigeo on little trips around the island to do mundane human things: help him fish, listen to songs in the common tongue that Shigeo learns and sings at home, what clothes to wear depending on the weather, what are the name of some stars—
Ritsu is just happy to hear his brother talk about the things he learns and that he’s enjoying them. Even if the human is just using him. It’s a fair trade, he guesses.
But all the respect that might’ve been growing for Reigen is lost, the day he saw him fall in the water, flailing his arms around like a mad man, gasping for air, barely keeping his head above the water and begging Shigeo for help. His brother kindly helped him climb onto his boat again, despite Ritsu’s entertained chuckles as he watched him squirm against the water. Reigen Arataka wasn’t anything to be afraid of.
He stopped worrying about his brother’s trips to the surface after that.
“I’ve joined a swimming school,” Shigeo says, as he rests his body against the seafloor.
“A school?” Ritsu repeats as if to taste the concept on his mouth. “You? With who? For what?”
“Some mermen from the academy opened up applications to it.” Shigeo brought his hands to his tail and started to clean up his scales with one of his hands, gathering the ones that fell off in a closed fist—probably to give them to Reigen once he got to the surface the next day.
“Ritsu, did you know humans think our scales give good luck?”
His brother remained quiet for a while and judging from the way his tail started flickering, Ritsu already knew what the reason was. Shigeo pursed his lips and murmured: “Tsubomi likes sword fighting. I—”
Ritsu’s shoulders drop and he smiles. So predictable.
“I want to become a fighter too.” He raises his head, hair following the motion slowly. “A good one, like you. And I need to build up some good stamina first.”
Ritsu smiles. He congratulates him on it and promises to give him some tips when they both have time.
During one of his escapades to the sea caves, he decides to go before the sun sets. The sky was a red blotch, it reminds Ritsu of hunting fish: catching them with his claws deep on their flesh and how the blood spreads through the water in a red cloud. He looks at the sky for hours and basks in the solitude that this place provides.
And not for the first time, he feels the unknown eyes observing him. He plays dumb and does everything as he always does: sits on the shore and starts singing. The intrusion hasn’t bothered him this much since he felt it the first time. There was something odd about that.
There’s also something odd about him wanting to know, once and for all, what’s lurking on the cave that’s so interested in watching him. He looks back, around the cave, to the different tunnels until the darkness doesn’t let him see anything beyond.
Nothing.
But the eyes are still there.
He thinks carefully. He could find out what it was if he really wanted to know. It was as easy as using himself as bait. It must have an interest in getting closer to him, right? It’s been coming here since the beginning. If it was human that wanted to hurt him, they would’ve planted traps for him long ago. But here they are.
He was risking a lot, but today his stomach was burning with curiosity. The biggest possibility is an animal, perhaps one that inhabited this sea cave and was clearly bothered with his presence. In the worst case scenario, Ritsu could fight his way back to the ocean. His claws and teeth were strong enough.
He lays on his back and stares at the ceiling, he closes his eyes and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
He doesn’t really know how much time passes by, but he feels like he’s drifted off to sleep multiple times without noticing. He knows that if he really succumbs to sleep right now, any chance to know might go to waste, or worse, he could risk leaving himself completely vulnerable.
Thump.
Ritsu flinches unintentionally and his heartbeat races against his chest so fast he starts feeling suffocated.
Whatever hit the ground, was far away. He’s heard that before, the first time he came here. Something falling down, right? He was so affected by his brother’s outburst that day he didn’t even have time to think what it had been . He’s petrified, even if he wanted to move, he’s sure he couldn’t even open his eyes. His curiosity is been swallowed by his fear, his muscles all tense and shaky. Danger, danger, danger! His instincts were a mess of commands on his body but his head tried keeping them at bay. There’s nothing to worry about, yet .
Something makes contact with a wall and the sound echoes, followed by a short high-pitched whisper.
A human.
His heartbeat speeds up impossibly higher and he almost chokes as he takes a breath, but he’s able to stay composed. Though, as his body begins calming down, his head starts reconsidering this plan.
Not all humans are like Reigen.
Dumb, stupid and weak, that is. No offense, just truths. Before he even got close to that man, he was able to watch him from afar, analyze his persona and act accordingly, but this stranger is nothing he can predict because he’s never even seen them!
He starts hearing the collision of something against the sand the same thumping noise, but softer this time. One, two, one, two.
Similar to when Reigen walks on his ship. But these steps are slow and don’t feel as heavy. And when they’re sounding closer and closer. Ritsu tries keeping his face passive, as he wonders if the human has gotten close enough. Maybe they’re just curious.
No sound. The steps stop too far from him, not close enough to be next to him, and Ritsu has to resist the urge to frown. Are they scared?
Or maybe it’s just Reigen.
That thought is so disappointing his entire body deflates, whatever fear that clouded his mind, gone.
THUMP.
Ritsu’s ears sting at the noise—as if happened inside his head—and opens his eyes immediately. His heartbeat loses control and his breathing comes back in a sicking wave. The human is literally in his face, crouching down to look at him. Their faces are so close he can feel his breathing on his forehead—and for the first time he’s upset he’s not seeing Reigen’s dumb face.
The human screams when Ritsu finally finds the strength to move away from him, stumbling back on his legs trying to find a balance. Ritsu looks back as he clumsily re-enters the ocean, keeping an eye on the human and making sure he isn’t going to attack him.
It’s a boy. And he’s so strange-looking.
“Wait!” His hands reach out as if to stop him. He’s an idiot if he thinks Ritsu is going back.
When he looks again, though, he sees two dark red shapes on the top of his head, close to his forehead but hidden away on his hair. They curve upwards and to the back of his head—horns! Those were horns, do all humans have horns? Like narwhals? Reigen doesn’t have horns, though. What are those for and why are they facing the wrong way! His hair looks like a petrified anemone, do other animals live in there? Questions, there are so many questions!
The boy starts walking to him, but Ritsu’s instinctive fear responds much faster than his head and he dives into the shallow water to get further away from the shore. For some reason, today he’s too incompetent to swim.
Everything’s fine now, he’s finally leaving—and then Ritsu’s seeing the world upside down as two pair of hands grip his tail just below the fins and lifts him up all the way out of the water.
The boy floats and he’s floating with him.
And then they fall back down.
Ritsu is so offended he forgets what he’s afraid of in the first place, squirms his tail out his hands and once the boy lifts his face to look at him, he slaps him in the face with his tailfin. “Hey!” he yells, and Ritsu can only think: grab my tail again and I’ll rip your tongue off. With his brain finally functioning at one hundred percent, he leaves the shore in a dash and dives back underwater. He hears a distant noise. But he ignores it and swims until he’s back home.
That night he dreams Reigen floats and he doesn’t stop grabbing Ritsu by his tail.
Ritsu stays in the royal library searching for books about floating humans.
Humans can’t fly. At least not without wings—avians, whose homes are usually in the mountains or cold weathered-places, though most of them had migrated to live among humans—however, none of them had horns.
Then Ritsu looks for humans that have red horns on their heads and looks especially for exotic looking-humans. He doesn’t find anything on that topic, until he finally looks on fictional texts, novels, and the sort, to find tales of demons. This finally matches his description: Tales of monsters from a place called Hell. They were human like—correct, he looked like a boy—with brute strength—if he could lift Ritsu out of the water with one hand, that has to be correct—they could fly and they had horns—undeniably correct—so, according to the text, the kid he saw must be a demon , a spawn of Satan.
Who Satan was, that is, a new incognita that had to be solved.
Satan must be their king, Hell must be a place out somewhere in the surface. Stars, did this mean there was yet a new danger to his brother he’s never heard of? No other scholars had mentioned this, so was there a possibility they just started appearing? He found them on a fictional text, so if he muttered a word about this, everyone’s gonna call him crazy.
As he closes the last archive, he knows he must find a way to neutralize this threat by himself.
None of the demons depicted, though, have red hair.
Reigen’s ship was always next to the cove, today though, his boat isn’t on the cove’s shore but instead lingering deeper into the ocean and he’s sitting on it while he whistles. Shigeo wasn’t here today, and Ritsu made sure he would stay busy at home while he came here to talk.
“Ah, Mob’s little brother!” he says, waving with his left hand while the right one holds onto a long stick. A fishing rod if he remembers correctly.
Ritsu swims all the way to the edge of the boat, keeping only his eyes above water.
Reigen looks around, and when he doesn’t see Shigeo he raises his eyebrows at him. Ritsu gets closer to the edge of the boat and looks at him without blinking, saying nothing as he approaches. Reigen purses his lips and tries looking to the front, where the string of his fishing rod disappears on the water, a noisy swallow as Ritsu perches his elbows on the edge.
“Okay, kid, you’re freaking me out. Something happened?” He asks, eyes jumping back and forth between Ritsu and his fishing rod.
As much as he’d like to give Reigen a scare, he decides to be nice today. “I wanted to ask you something.”
Reigen was still tense, but he finally rested his gaze on him once he realizes Ritsu meant no harm. He quirks his eyebrow at him again and waits patiently to listen to whatever he was about to say.
Ritsu takes a while to say anything. He has rehearsed this question over and over for the last week, and asking around on the royal castle had its limits, there was just so much he could ask the scholars and professors before they started suspecting something. So, he knew Reigen might be the only one who could tell him anything besides what he’s already read—and re-read.
“Have you ever met a demon?”
Reigen’s eyebrow raises on his forehead in a dramatic manner. And he scoffs, “Yeah, if I believed in them, maybe ,” he says. “And if I ever did I don’t think I’d be standing here today!”
“What a shame ,” Ritsu replies, smirking. Reigen looks at him with a deadpan expression, both knowing exactly what he meant with that. He returns his focus to his fishing rod.
He watches as Reigen purses his lips and looks around in thought. “I don’t think anyone has ever met one, if I give you my opinion on it, I think demons are just fairytale monsters. You know, to scare children and make them behave. Some people do believe in them, though.”
Ritsu frowns. “And… what do these people believe demons do?”
The fishing rod makes a noise and Reigen is pulling it while rolling back the rope. “What? I don’t know! I mean, it depends on the culture, some people believe demons are some kind of evil entities, they haunt people and sometimes possess their bodies to do mischief… Why are you asking this, anyway?” He finally pulls back the entire rod, and a big mackerel is flapping in the air. Ritsu grimaces at how much Reigen had to sit here to catch one fish when by now Ritsu would’ve caught at least four. What a waste of time.
Reigen looks at him again, and Ritsu shrugs. “Nothing in particular just read about them a while ago,” he says. “You know, to make sure you’re not anything strange.”
The laugh that comes out of Reigen is sincere, and somehow he doesn’t mind.
A moment of silence passes while Reigen prepares the bait for his next fish. Ritsu sighs and rests his head on his forearms laying on a side of the boat. “Do you know if they have red hair?”
Reigen laughs again, this time louder and that does annoy Ritsu a bit. “What kind of—I mean, yeah, I guess they could. Some humans have red hair, so, why not?”
Ritsu smiles. He doesn’t like Reigen very much, but maybe he’s not that bad of a guy.
“Hey, you wanna help me out? I gotta bring back this huge delivery to the port by tomorrow and since Mob is coming later—”
“Pass.” And Ritsu dives back into the water without letting him finish.
The mokin were a type of carnivore avians. Like birds of prey, they’d circle the ocean looking for food, but unlike average birds, instead of hunting fish, they’d hunt merfolk. Unlike dragons, mokins were real and that was the one thing Ritsu was always afraid of. In fact, he didn’t know anyone who wasn’t afraid of them.
They hadn’t been any sightings for a long while, so their reef was safe as far as they knew. But it was still terrifying to think about reaching the surface and being attacked by them. Normal birds or regular avians would probably just leave a few scratches if they got into a fight, but mokins were barbaric, they had bigger and stronger claws. He heard from his father once that they had clawed feet that were so massive and so sharp, that if you ever got captured and got lucky enough to release from their grasp, you’ll probably bleed out to death.
So, you can imagine that when he heard from Shigeo that he’d fought a Mokin on the surface while practicing with his swimming school, you bet he almost fainted on the spot.
His brother had almost no injuries, except for a purple mark around his neck. And he explained that the Mokin had dived inside the water briefly, getting out of it in a flash and after a few seconds diving back in. He did this multiple times, and even though all his friends left the place unscathed, Shigeo took the fight to the surface.
“He almost got president Musashi, there was no other way,” he says, while his lips start quivering.
Ritsu’s tail finds his brother’s and latches onto it, as comfort, while he realizes what he was about to tell him.
“I tried, Ritsu. To keep my promise” To not use my voice. To never sing like that ever again . “But I panicked, I tried talking to him and he wasn’t listening, I—I’m so sorry it happened again—I hurt him so bad —”
Ritsu’s hand rest on his brother’s shoulder, trying to soothe the shivers as he weeps. Shigeo doesn’t say anything more and neither does he, still in shock that his brother had survived such a deadly encounter, because he could’ve been killed—the sky, it was trying to steal him away, Ritsu knew—and now that this happened, it wasn’t safe to be out, how’d he even tell Shigeo to not go back to see Reigen again. Because the mokin can come back for revenge, he can come back with others and more prepared to kill him off and how is Shigeo ever going to fight that?
After a while, his brother calms down.
Ritsu doesn’t say or ask anything else, instead, he hums a song he’s memorized from Shigeo before. He knows Shigeo can sing it better, but that doesn’t matter to him now.
“You’ve gotten better, Ritsu,” he says, his voice merely a mumble, a garbled sentence of someone that’s falling asleep.
Ritsu just nods, and he hates himself when the thought of the mokin doesn’t let him enjoy that small victory.
It’s been weeks, he thinks. Since he’s come back to the sea caves. He’s been filing away every single thing he can about demons and how to deal with them. Not only he has to worry about a Mokin of all things—even though, according to his brother, was left badly injured after what happened—so that wasn’t a priority for now. But he couldn’t let the problems pile up. The demon boy might encounter his brother sooner or later, and he wasn’t interested in letting him possess Shigeo.
He doesn’t doubt his brother can hold his ground against him but he’d rather save him the stress.
He gracefully moves the spear on his hand and hides it away in a small hole on the wall close to the entrance of the cave. The sun’s barely setting, not yet touching the edge of the sea. So Ritsu has some time to prepare and go over his plan.
He decides the best way to bring the demon out is to pretend everything’s the same.
He sits at the shore and sings.
For the first time in weeks, Ritsu’s voice fills the cavern once again. And he isn’t gonna lie, he forgot how much this upsets him.
He’s nowhere being as good as his brother, the fish in the cave pay no attention to him. He doesn’t even know if practicing will actually make him better at doing it—Shigeo had said it did, but to him, it was the same voice he’s always heard—and since his brother was born with it there’s was no other way to know. He picked an easy, soft song that he knows by heart, so he can focus on any other thing happening in here.
He notices there’s no feeling of being observed, no unnerving eyes on him or the presence of someone in the cave.
Surprising even himself, he’s disappointed and he decides to sing louder as if trying to call out whoever might be out there.
It’s pathetic really, a merman singing to an empty cave, expecting a human—a demon—to reply back as if it was a loved one who’d recognize his voice in the void of the ocean. He sings until his throat is so sore that he can’t even talk—he forgets of the fish and his fears put aside as he looks around for the red anemone hair.
The sun has long set down.
The next time he arrives at Reigen’s boat to accompany his brother he sees a new human. Ritsu immediately gets tense and starts watching her every move.
“ Ohmystars!” She wheezes, as she grips the edge of the ship with both hands. Today, Shigeo and he have to swim all the way to the big metallic ship to meet up with Reigen, its tall enough that Ritsu can’t reach it unless he jumps from the water. The place Reigen probably stays in while he works here and since he’s spending more and more time around them, he assumes his business is going well.
Reigen pushes the young girl away from the rails. “Stop being a weirdo,” he whispers, while he waves to both of them. “Hey, Mob! Took you a while!”
Shigeo nods, and waits patiently while Reigen lets down the boat they usually go on to do ‘Merfolk Work Stuff’.
When Reigen gets in and Shigeo’s ready to leave, the girl is already climbing down to join them. “No! Tome, you’re staying on the ship!”
The girl—Tome, like his grandma, wow —frowns. “Hah?! I didn’t come all the way from home to stay in your ship all day! I came here to work, see the wonders of the ocean—”
Reigen groans as she goes on and on about everything and nothing, and Ritsu has long lost track of what she’s saying. All talk and no bite it seems. A second Reigen that poses no danger to his brother. Good.
Ritsu stays around the ship with Tome, who lost interest in him when he told her, in fact, that no, merfolk weren’t able to communicate with fish, let alone any animals. She seemed disappointed and didn’t bother in hiding her annoyance. He decided to leave out the part that Shigeo was able to mildly control their actions when he sang. Just to make sure she wasn’t going to do something to him.
He didn’t take this to heart, humans were all like this. He wonders if the demon boy had also lost interest once he found out Ritsu wasn’t that amazing. He wasn't trying to impress him in the first place, but it was still irritating to consider that possibility.
Tome is quieter than Reigen. And he finds himself hating the silence because it leaves too much room for his self-deprecating thoughts.
Ritsu comes back to the sea cave right after getting out of his duties in the royal library, for four days straight now. He has never come here so punctually, so dutifully every day, he has been singing, each time angrier than before, because the boy isn’t here, and the eyes aren’t coming back. He realizes how lonely he truly is now, compared to all the other times he came here before they encountered each other.
He had been watching him this whole time.
Ritsu stops and drops his gaze to the floor. Not interested in singing anymore, instead he grabs a rock and sends it flying to a wall of the cave, the sound rattles everywhere and it reminds him of the emptiness of it. He flaps his tail annoyed and lays back again against the sand, looking at the sky, the sun already setting behind the sea.
He gives up.
The boy isn’t coming back.