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Chapter Text

Gon counted that afternoon how many times he’d caught the heavy mast making its routine moan. This was the hundred-and-fiftieth one. Some people found the creaks of an old boat haunting, but to Gon they were rather soothing, harmonious; something in the background like a memory, like leaving the telly on whilst you make breakfast in an empty house. He checked his wristwatch, the hands reading twelve forty-seven, almost time for lunch. But the crew still had their work cut out for them if they were to get in a decent haul to last the markets until Sunday. They hadn’t been lucky that day, save for a few buckets of tuna. As Gon looked around the boat, he could see his comrades growing weary and grouchy. Most of them were men in their thirties with the exception of a few women likened to the seas. Gon was one of only two - counting himself - young assistants.

     He was tidying the smaller nets from that morning when the commotion began at starboard. 

     It was Col who had called it out first, with a heaping cry, first of excitement, yelling: “We got one! A big one! Pull it up!” And a collection of men began to lift the purse seine. The hope was real in their tired eyes, like spotting an oasis in the middle of a desert. The number of sweaty bodies amassed as the net drew higher into the air, the weight of the water gushing back down as heavy on one’s ears as the drill of a waterfall. Curious, Gon placed down his handy work and pushed up onto the balls of his feet in hopes to see the success they had all prayed for.

     Then, suddenly, the muttering and cheering drifted into silence. 

     There was the groan of the mast and the curious gawks of the gulls ahead, then there was the sea below. And there was the gentle whooshing motion of the haul, suspended close to the railing. Unable to see, Gon topped a wooden barrel.

     There were fish, to be certain, in the bottom of the rig, flapping and gasping. But there was one big one, too, though no hussle of a school. One big fish; turquoise and cerulean, a mixture of greens and purples that reflected from the burning sun. Milky, porcelain skin. A man, but not quite a man. Half of him was… it looked like it’d been gobbled by the bottom half of a giant marine creature. But it was beautiful. And it was wide eyed, silent, still as a painting.

     “What is it?” someone spoke up. Surprisingly, there were no exchange of looks or muttering, just that continuous silence. 

     It was almost dreadful.

     “I ain’t sure…” another person said.

     “Looks like a giant fish to me,” someone else said.

     “But that isn’t a fish. Not fully a fish anyway,” said one of the women.

     It seemed nobody knew what to do. Or what to say, for that matter. Everybody, as well as Gon, was speechless.

     “Do we take it back?”

     “That thing?”

     “That’s a mermaid, you idiot.”

     “A mermaid? You mean mer man , look at it closer.”

     The creatures eyes stared fully at the crowd. Gon, despite how far he was from the railing initially, could catch the glint of fear and shock in its blue irises; they reflected the ocean itself, and seemed to be moving like the waves. It looked as though it was taken totally by surprise.

     “Wait!” Gon interjected. Heads turned. He jumped down from his leverage.

     The thing’s eyes were on him, thin and slitted like the light pouring into the crack in the door. “Put it back.”

     Everybody took turns to share a glance.

     “We need to release it.” There was no commentary, surprisingly. The spectacle still had its claws in them. 

     Gon rushed to the railing and stepped up carefully, catching the net in a hand to stable himself. The creature recoiled in a drastic panic. He pulled out his pocket knife that was tucked safely into his worn boot.

     “The net! Don’t put a hole in it!” a voice said.

     Never minding that, Gon snagged the rope at the gathers, working through the tough knots and diamonds. “It’s okay, there’s plenty more below deck. I checked this morning.” He heard one shuddering exhale tremble from the creature’s lips. He was close enough to see all the delicate, gentle scales on its face, darkening into its hairline of wet, drooping silver; sharp fins that sprouted out where its ears were; jagged gills that flared either side of its neck. Gon was probably too in awe of the thing to realise he’d slowed down his work. 

     He cut loose half of the netting from the other side. It should be enough for it to get away without catching on anything.

     “Goodbye,” Gon muttered, waving gingerly. 

     Slowly, surely, the creature toppled back into the waves; a heavy splash. One after the other, the crew waved down at the pearlescent suds left behind.

⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤

     The crew hadn’t been the same since then. The day had been filled with empty silence; the crew starstruck by what they had encountered. Gon, on his way around the boat helping around, doing his thing, heard a few passing conversations about the creature - what it was, if it was real, if there were others like it, if they were valuable. That troubled Gon the most, that afternoon. 

     Most valuable.  

     Being the natural animal and wild creature-loving enthusiast he was, he couldn’t bear to think that his crew could be thinking of catching such a beautiful creature, but it didn’t come as a surprise. It was still like that as they pulled into the harbor, mutters and whispers passing between them, not entirely worried if someone overheard them.

     He wandered home that evening, his bag over his shoulder and his coat hanging from the crook of his bent arm, hand comfortable in his front pant pocket. The cobbles looked harsher, he noticed, as he strolled with gentle, patient strides, back to his little semi-detached cottage that was settled in the village. The cobbles were roughened and scratched with time and age. Gon remembered them being a lot shinier when he was younger, a little sapling in such a great sea of opportunities.

     Gon pondered a lot about the creature. His memory was nearly photographic, only moving: the ripple in its wet, silver hair; the electric flicker of the sun’s reflection on its scales; the enchanting sea in its eyes; the nervousness of its breath; the fear that stared back with big, gaping sockets. It sent a chill down his spine. It was truly, intolerably encaptivating. It was troublesome for it to sink in. And he had no doubt that word would spread amidst the villagers on Whale Isle; maybe it’d reach his Aunt Mito by the end of the week; no, even less - a couple days at least. He would expect her arrival at his doorstep with a wicker basket of meadow flowers and groceries from the market.

     His fingers twitched by his side. He needed to paint, get something down from what he remembered of that brilliant afternoon. The beauty of that haunting spectacle. He wanted it etched into his head; his every thought; every flick of the wrist as he’d paint what he saw.

     The young man came up to his cottage. It was adjoined with his next door neighbour, a young woman who was possibly a little older than he was. She had moved to Whale Isle not too long ago, about a month. She was lovely. Her name was Naife and she worked as an assistant florist. He would occasionally bump into her on the street and was very insistent on befriending her, seeing she was his closest neighbour (sharing the cottage and all). She had a baby of four months. Gon didn’t know if there was another parent present, he guessed not; he hadn’t seen anybody visit poor Naife. Whenever he did see her, she was always dropping her shopping. He liked to hop over the picket fence and drop by, and help her with her baby.

     Gon assumed Naife hadn’t come home yet from her shift. The florist was popular in the village - in the summertime they would showcase their flowers in the square, something about marketing, he overheard, after all, it was only a small island and there wasn’t a lot of work to go around - not if one wanted to go into business and banking and that sort of stuff. Pushing wide the worn, seafoam-painted picket gate to his small front garden, Gon leaned against the fence that separated them both barely.

     “Mrs. Durral?”

     There was movement behind the kitchen window, fogged as it was. He smiled as the babysitter opened the window and pushed it ajar. Her big bosom perched in her overlapped arms on the sill.

     “Evening, young man!” She beamed her best grin.

     He adjusted his bag strap. “Naife hasn’t come home, has she?”

     Mrs. Durral shook her head of fantastic curls. “No, I’m afraid. The little n’ is here, come say hello once you’ve unpacked. I’d love some company.” Then she disappeared back into the kitchen, leaving the window on the latch. Gon resumed his advance into his home, the one key on his chain a pleasant little jangle in his hands.

     The resting smell of his home warmed Gon. He set his bag down and sighed. He hadn’t realised how tired and weary his legs and back were from working. Rolling his shoulders, Gon kicked off his boots, struggling with the laces as they scattered across the floorboards. He dressed into something comfortable before he went out again and leaped over the fence, trotting into the kitchen via the front door.

     “Something smells good,” he said.

     “Beef casserole. Poor young lass was hot and bothered so I offered to make the dinner for her. Why don’t you join us? Kala would love somebody to play with,” Mrs. Durral said and gestured to the child sitting in the living room. She was playing with some colourful wooden blocks.

     Gon gave his signature smile. “It’d be a pleasure! I can’t stay too long, though. I have some… things I wanna take care of, if you don’t mind.”

     “Oh, no - of course, don’t you worry. Stay as long as you like, love.”

     He sat across from Kala, humming. She continued to play, oblivious to his being there until she finally decided to stop what she was doing and stare at him. Her eyes were icy, which complimented her bleach-blonde hair; whatever was starting to come through, anyway. Gon chuckled and leaned forward onto his arms.

     “What you got there?” He tilted his head. She looked down to the blocks. For a moment, Gon caught the impression that she was wondering that as well. Kala wasn’t a vocal baby, but she would laugh now and again. Gon knew how to bring it out, by blowing on her stomach and pretending to munch on it. It’d make her laugh so much that she’d fart. He wondered, sometimes, if he’d like to have children. It was a promising idea, but he lacked a partner.

     “Shall we spell your name? Here…” Gon took one of the blocks, the letter K . He searched around for the others and aligned them. A … L … A. Kala smiled, clapping. “Can you do it, too? Which one comes first?”

     Kala winced and toppled over on the blocks. Gon laughed, bringing her into his lap, sitting her on one of his knees. She belched and giggled and patted his cheeks, and Gon made silly faces and bounced her to make her laugh some more. Mrs. Durral smiled from the kitchen.

⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤

     That night, Gon sat quietly in his room, working away at the latest loose painting in his lap, his hands clustered with blue and purple and green smudges. Papers laid scattered all around his feet. Twirling his brush in his fingers, he rubbed his eyes. He’d been fixated on recreating the creature from that afternoon on paper. He sat and stared at his sketches, dazed and exhausted, surprised he hadn’t fallen asleep on his desk. He started to brood as he gazed out to the ocean.

     All the way through his childhood, Gon had often come across the old tales of mermen and mermaids; the folklore of the half-human half-fish people. They were both beautiful and cynical. It was only when he was pushing through his teenage years that, occasionally, he’d be told about sirens - the deadlier part of the myth, fish folk that were so beautiful and so angelic under the waves, fish folk that would lure sailors down into the water and eat them alive. It was terrifying and yet so very intriguing to Gon. He wondered if they really did exist. People would joke sometimes that he’d become siren food because he was a “young and strapping young man”, and that slight fear and curiosity stayed with him.

     But when he remembered the creature - the merman - from that afternoon, he couldn’t recall feeling scared , or terrified, or any of those things. In fact, he was taken back to see that it was the creature that was indeed scared; the look in its eye… as though it had broken a sacred boundary, some promise.

     He scratched at his stubble. I need a shave , he thought. It was certainly time for one.

Gon picked up and stacked his observations on the desk, done for the night. The chime of the wooden wind charm hanging at the window sent a chill across his being, the faint taste of salt on his lips as he licked them. It will be another sunny day soon. He planned to visit Mito up on the hill in her still-standing house. He planned to tell her about the merman.

⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤

     Something bothered him, however, as he was making the trek to Mito’s house. It wasn’t the satisfying crunch of dirt under his boots nor the song of the gulls overhead, but the thought that people would get curious. What if they tried to search for the merfolk? What if news reached places beyond Whale Isle - what then ? There will be tourists and trophy hunters wanting to get a piece of the myth for themselves. But surely, Gon thought, that merfolk were smarter than that; how else would they have been able to stay unknown for the past few centuries?

     It was a great discovery, but at what cost? They could have gone on living without knowing merfolk exist without causing harm. Now that people could find out about it, something was bound to go wrong.

     “Gon!” Mito cried atop the hill, catching Gon out of his train of thought. He smiled and waved, rushing up to rush his aunt into a tight hug.

     “Good morning,” he kissed her cheek.

     The thirty-four year old woman cupped his cheeks, kissed his forehead, and wiped sleep from the corners of Gon’s sleepy eyes. “How have you been? And Naife - how is she and Kala?” Mito pulled her nephew into the kitchen, tugging out a chair at the rounded dining table for him. He sat down with a small “thank you” and dusted his knees.

     “I’m great. Naife’s working hard. Kala’s as quiet as ever. I got her to laugh yesterday. Mrs. Durral was babysitting, she invited me ‘round to dinner.”

     Mito attended to the soup sitting on the hob. “Oh, bless her. She works so hard, poor soul.”

     “Actually, we pulled up something yesterday afternoon,” Gon muttered. He spaced out, tracing his index tip into the wood grain. Mito acknowledged him with a gentle hum, hand poised on her hip. She turned when he didn’t speak. Gon’s brows furrowed. “There was a big fish in the net. Well, it wasn’t a fish. I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you we caught a merman.”

     Mito’s stirring of the soup slowed.

     “I guess you’ll hear about it around town sooner or later. But we all saw it. It was huge! And it was beautiful - so, so beautiful, Aunt Mito!” He reached into his backpack to retrieve the paintings.

     She echoed, “A real merman?” Gon didn’t think she really believed him with that look on her face. “Those are myths, aren’t they? I used to tell you stories about them when you were younger. You loved them. Don’t you mean a siren?”

     “I know, but they’re real! I swear - I wouldn’t lie to you. But it wasn’t a siren, I don’t think it was at least. But it looked so afraid, it barely moved a muscle!”

     She hummed again, resuming to her soup. “And then what happened?”

     “I… I cut the net. The day wasn’t the same after we let it go, all anybody could talk about was that creature. I’m not sure if I was just daydreaming.”

     “It’s for the best. But what do you know, a real merman in our waters! I wonder what it was doing so close to the surface… did it speak?”

     “No, no it didn’t. I want to find it again, I want to see if it can speak.”

     Mito didn’t reply, she continued to stir and hum a sea shanty. Gon wondered again, did it have a name? Where did it come from and why was it swimming around Whale Isle? He had to find out.

     Mito, leaving her meal for the moment, leaned over and left a kiss on Gon’s crown. “If you do, please be careful. I don’t want those nasty myths to be true. I’d like you to come back alive, please.”

     He chuckled, “Don’t worry, Aunt Mito. I’ll come back safe and sound, hopefully with some success.”

     “I’m assuming you’ll take the team with you?” she said as she took a seat opposite him.

     “Of course. I think that’d give me more of an excuse to put forward some restrictions on boats going on search parties. Truthfully… I don’t want anybody to find it. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I’d like to meet it, if it will let me.”

     She smiled. “If it hasn’t retreated deeper into the sea, you mean." Mito takes one of his paintings and fiddles with the corners. “If you do, you must tell me all about it.”

     Gon eyed the counter where an assortment of flowers laid useless in the light cast through from the window. His shoulders sagged a little. He assumed she was going to visit grandma Abe’s grave up on the cliff. She always said she wanted to rest there and look over the ocean and the island, to watch the generations go by. Gon had never seen his aunt so depressed in his lifetime. He felt that all the island had been hit by the loss of Abe.

     “Can I come with you?” he asked. They didn’t need to confirm what he meant by that.

     “Of course. We’ll go together and tell her all about this creature of yours.”

     Gon, buzzed and brightened at the idea, blushed softly.

Chapter Text

Killua paced between a cluster of coral and rock for what felt to be the hundredth time that afternoon. He recounted the loose, broken shells that were scattered in, around, and between the anemones, muttering manically to himself. If anybody had caught the current and swam by, they would’ve thought him to be deranged.

What the hell do I do? he thought, pulling at his hair for the nth time in the last five minutes. He bit the inside of his cheek, and then he bit his bottom lip, and then stared expectantly at his little starfish companion that sat silent on a collection of smooth pebbles. 

“What? Stop looking at me like that!”

With a sigh, the creature scooped up his companion with utmost delicacy - despite his inner turmoil, and the accompanying urge to take a rock and throw it at the next jesting crab - but it was a little tricky because his pet had decided to glue itself to the rock; in which Killua wriggled his fingers under it and peeled back each of the five arms. He took a seat against the stem of a cluster of table coral and bit his lip again, pushing out the heaviest sigh he’d thought to have ever let out, whilst absently stroking the strange texture of the starfish with his thumb.

He’d only gone and broken the one very, most basic, rule of his people; to steer clear of the land dwellers, the curious folk with two legs. Killua dreaded to think about what would become of him. Would they come and hunt him down for his scales, his eyes, his teeth? The thought alone made Killua want to shove his head into the mouth of a great white shark! And what would happen to him if his family found out? Not that it really mattered, Padokenia was miles away, down in the deep where it was forever midnight, as cold as the northern pole - maybe even colder considering the bastards that lived there.

He was becoming desperate.

Without a moment to lose, he swam with the warm current farther into the deep, weaving through schools of fish and dolphin pods, passing a couple of lone sharks—not very threatening with the speed Killua was swimming at—on his way. He spotted the sunken wreckage of an old boat. It had found itself there over three hundred moons ago. He and Ikalgo had come across it whilst on a dare to explore closer to land. They played there sometimes; tag was their favourite at the moment, although Ikalgo hated it because Killua was so naturally speedy. He’d seen few divers brave the plunge to look for things - he didn’t know what for , exactly, but it still left some curiousness on their behalf.

Killua eventually, with a breath of relief, reached the ocean grottos. This settlement was relatively small, but the people who lived there were humble and understanding. They were located in the reef, but deep enough to be hidden; specifically embedded between a rather wide crack in the earth, but it was shallow. Killua liked it here, for it was colourful around every corner and lush with life.

Luckily for his kind, there were temples for each settlement, and with those temples came guardians, priestesses, or shamans; they were responsible for keeping their livelihood hidden from potential land dwellers, and they did this by casting a protective spell around the settlement; most spells would push curious explorers away with a fierce jet of hot or cold current. Merfolk could pass in and out freely, but were advised to stay within the boundaries. Killua, to his knowledge, had been the first one to brave the outside sea.

He’d heard from regular customers at the Red Reef Bar—a cosy little snack bar on the outskirts of Killua’s village—that if one of their kind were to betray the community by purposely showing themselves to the humans, they would be cursed and sent to land as a human with their memories wiped clean. Some were apparently turned into fish, since some priestesses and shamans were worried - despite their curses being efficient and high-quality - that exiles would somehow remember their past lives in the ocean. The thought sent a shudder through him. He didn’t want to be turned into a small-fry.

“Ikalgo!”

Killua pushed into his grotto, slithering through the shell curtain. He liked that curtain with the way the shells would gently clack together. It was a nice grotto - small at first since all that had been living in it was an octopus, so over the past few years he’d been branching it out into a proper home (it took a lot of digging and chipping and he’d rather think about kissing a pufferfish than remember the work he laboured through).

He peered into the bedrooms, separated and boxed by leftover driftwood from the shipwreck. The walls were decorated with shells (it took him almost two months to collect so many of them). The texture was lumpy and bumpy if you ran your hands across it. But so far, there was no sign of Ikalgo. Killua sped into the kitchen and absently touched the starfish on his shoulder. He clicked his tongue.

“Messy fuck. He’s left all the pans out,” he muttered. “Ikalgo!”

Still no sign.

“I’m gonna get turned into a little fish at this point, if I don’t find him. Of all times, he’s missing when I need him. ‘Tch.” Killua pushed his head out of the shell curtain and peered down the slope of other grottos. They were evenly spread out with gardens of their own; finely raked sand and kelp plots. Killua and Ikalgo hadn’t bothered making a garden of their own, they were both young and didn’t have the care to put time into something like that.

Killua wished he had his sisters with him. Alluka and Nanika would know what to do. They were smart, incredibly intelligent. They were so smart that they could become priestesses in their own right, were it not for their… family. He couldn’t stand the idea of being cursed into a fish - he still had to find a way to save them, and one can’t do that in a titchy little body.

He peeled his companion from his shoulder and sat at the dining table; a wooden barrel with a custom-made wooden top (he’d even installed a door in the barrel to store the salt grain). He thumbed the alien texture with a gradiented look. 

“What should I do?”

It’s not every day that you get swept up into a fishing net. It’s not every day that you come face-to-face with a handful of sailors. Killua remembered how shocked they looked, how amazed, floored . Like they’d seen a god. 

He remembered the man who set him free. Killua saw the sea in his warm, caramel eyes, the freckles that dotted his brilliant tan, the gentle curl of his chapped lips.

That man , he thought, wasn’t afraid.

⏅⤤🛥⥿⏅⤤🛥⥿

There was a hearty cackle and a snort that came from inside the bar that sounded a lot like Ikalgo. After half an hour to forty-five minutes of searching for the octopus, Killua found him here of all places; knocking back mussels with the jellyfish (it astonished even Killua to find Ikalgo hanging out with those devilish things, everybody knew not to consort with jellyfish ), boasting about how he was a squid in his past life. Reincarnation sure hadn’t favoured Ikalgo if that squid nonsense was true.

“There you are!” Killua huffed as he pushed through the shell curtain (folk here like their shell curtains), smacking his best friend upside the head.

“Ow! K-Killua!”

He scowled, hands on his hips. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you! What lies were you telling this time, hm? That same shit with the squid?”

“Nothing like the lies you’ve parted with-”

“Yeah, yeah, gotcha. Look, we need to talk.”

He grabbed Ikalgo by one of his healthy tentacle arms and yanked him off his stool, leaving with several sucker pops back through the curtain.

“K-Killua, hold your seahorses for a minute, would you?!” Ikalgo protested, thumping the merman’s head with his severed arms. “What’s the big rush? You finally done yourself in? Pissed off the priestess? I was havin’ some fun and you gotta rush in and-”

Killua looked back over his shoulder. “What? No! Nothing like that - just shut your fat mouth, I’ll tell you when we get there.”

They swam against the warm afternoon current, passing through schools of fish and the manta ray that hugged the ocean floor. They couldn’t talk anywhere where there were ears, so Killua planned to talk things through at their usual spot.

It was a plateau of wavy sand and scattered lumps of rock. There wasn’t much life around, it was pretty much barren all except for a rock the size of a buoy, rounded by decades of ocean current. In the middle was a circular cut-out. This was their favourite place to hang out. It’s not like they’d get interrupted, being in a place such as this.

Killua sat himself down inside the cut-out hole in the rock. Ikalgo floated down and sat on Killua’s tail, his arms crossed and his chunky eyebrows furrowed.

“And? What’s so important that you have to drag me out of my happy place?”

He wasn’t sure where to begin - well, where do you begin, exactly? How do you tell your best friend that you were whisked up into a human net? How do you explain that you survived? How do you say that you’ll be turned into a fish? How do you explain all this to an octopus who was downing mussels with jellyfish?!

“I fucked up.”

Ikalgo arched one of his eyebrows. “You fucked up? Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Shut up,” he glared, then gazed down into his lap. “I-I mean, something happened. I- er-”

“Spit it out already, you’re puttin’ me on edge!”

Flashing his teeth in a snarl, Killua harrumphed.

“I got caught in a net, okay?” He waited, and watched silently as the colour in Ikalgo’s skin changed to the colour of the navy rock, a bit like blood draining from one’s face. Only octopus style.

“You-You what? A human net?”

“Of course, ain’t no other nets around, dumbass.”

“And? What happened?” Ikalgo’s eyes blew up and bulged.

Killua chewed his lip, thinking of what life would be like living as a fish waiting to be eaten by a shark. A pretty short one, he imagined.

“Nothing. W-Well, I remember that I got winched up - it was one of those huge nets, you know what I’m on about?”

Ikalgo nodded.

“They pulled me up. It was a fishing boat, I think, and gee , you should’ve seen how many land-dwellers there were! I wish I’d have counted. It seemed like a whole shawl of fish. And their eyes were wide, like that cuttlefish we bumped into last week. They were all gawping.”

The octopus snorted. “Well, they would .” 

Killua saw his friend eyeball him from head to toe. He hated it when Ikalgo did that. He didn’t need any more people insinuating that he was of unnatural beauty - he’d heard enough of it from his mother, who loved to talk his ear off. If you were a Southern/Northern Earendil (or Barracudon, but that’d be pushing it) you were born  pretty, unlike those other merfolk - the Volturey.

To Killua’s knowledge in this part of the sea, anyway.

“I dunno what they were thinking. I thought they were gonna eat me, honestly. I thought that was it for me. And—and then one of them - there was one of them that said to let me go. You should’ve seen his face, Ikalgo. I’ve never seen a man so tan! And his eyes—he had big, big googly eyes, like one of those fluffy things we’ve seen out on the harbor. And he got really close to me—he actually got up onto the rail and started cuttin’ the net!”

He felt himself hunching a little, and he instinctively went to pet his companion starfish, as if that would somehow cure the strange urge to talk until he ran out of breath.

Ikalgo shook his arm. “And? Then what? What happened next?”

“Before I fell back in the ocean, I heard him say goodbye. I saw him waving, too.” Killua fiddled, uncomfortable at the silence between him and his friend.

“... You want to go find that guy, right?”

Killua’s wince was apparently enough for Ikalgo to confirm.

The octopus blurted, “You’re crazy! In daylight? You’d be spotted in an instant! You’ll be turned into a fish! You won’t even remember me!”

Killua spared a glance. Immediately from the look, Ikalgo reeled. “Oh, no, no, no. You are not dragging me into this. Not another one of your ‘adventurous’ trips.”

“Please,” Killua pleaded, turning to his friend and taking his little, sliced tentacle stumps. There’s no chance he’d win him over with a pout. “Come with me? We’re not just going because of him. I wanna see if the land-dwellers know about it - about the haul. Do you think they’d tell?”

The quietness from Ikalgo unnerved Killua, so much so that it made him shudder to think of what rumours could be going around on land. Every muscle in his body stiffened when the rumble of a hum vibrated from the octopus.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised. I want to, Killua, but the risk…” Ikalgo eyed him, almost suspiciously so. “As long as we’re out of sight, then sure. But one red flag, and we’re outta there. Deal?”

Killua raised his hand, meeting Ikalgo in the middle with a fist-bump. “Deal.”

⏅⤤🛥⥿⏅⤤🛥⥿

The docks were pleasantly alive with the smell of oranges, fish, salt, and other imported goods. It was loud and bustling in the evening sun. One or two small humans were dossing around the seafront shops. Wives were brushing the cobblestones, sorting the boxed goods, carting trolleys of flowers and sacks of soil, Killua could barely keep track; his eyes were darting all over the place, and in the end trying to survey everything made his brain spin.

Movement caught his eye from aside and he shot out a hand to push down on Ikalgo’s squishy head.

“Don’t move, idiot! We’ll be seen if you keep fidgeting like that.”

Ikalgo groaned and slapped Killua away. “I’m tired tryin’ to stay afloat like this!”

“Then sit on my shoulders, but no higher than my head,” Killua ordered.

The octopus, with a huff, shifted onto his friend’s shoulders. He swept a parting in the middle of Killua’s hair, to which Killua hissed and batted his tentacles with an irritated “Don’t flatten my hair!”

“I can’t see!” Ikalgo complained. Killua was submerged up to the bridge of his nose and only lifted himself when he spoke, trying not to sound like a spluttering seal under the water. “Isn’t there a way you could get closer?”

They were a fair distance away from the dock, hidden partially behind a petite, grassy island with coconut trees to spare. Killua was sure nobody would be able to spot them; for one, he was well-camouflaged against the blue waters and white sand beneath. Any closer and they’d both be risking getting turned into fish.

Killua regrettably submerged himself, but not without a startled yabber from his squishy friend, who grappled onto locks of his hair as though they were reigns to control him. They swam down the slope of the bank, the acre-length field of sea grass tickling Killua’s leathery skin as they made their way closer to the dock. The sea was darker during the evening; it had this mystical, foggy tone to it which made it hard to see. No merperson would have ever dared going out in these conditions, depending on what kind of merperson they were. But Killua was different; he was a Zoldyck.

He spotted the long, mould-ridden posts that held the weight of the wooden dock directly above them. He weaved in and out and around strands of chains with slick expertise, until he came up against the hard rock wall that was the beginning of the harbour, and the ocean-front market. They surfaced directly under the deck where they wouldn’t be spotted. The weight of passersby and sailors creaked above them, the wood grain moaning and groaning as though it protested being walked all over.

“What now?” Ikalgo said, and Killua whipped his head around with a sharp “shhh!”, a finger cradled against his pasty lips.

They waited like that for a while. Killua didn’t know how much more he could stand, to stay afloat there and simply wait for the very thing he wished wouldn’t take flame. All he wanted was to go home, eat dinner, and daydream in bed. What a mess he’d gotten himself into.

Then, he heard something.

The exact thing he didn’t want to hear.

Gossip.

“You don’t think they’re trying to make fools of us, do you?” He heard a woman’s voice echo above the gentle ripples of the water. He and Ikalgo shared a concerned glance.

“Ida wouldn’t lie! At least, I don’t think she would. She hates that lot, you know how she is,” another woman spoke.

This was very bad.

“Siren, she said it was. Big. Silver and still, she said.”

The first woman snorted. “Sirens are folklore. Don’t be silly. It must be a joke. It would have sung had it been one of them nasty buggers. Did it?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a lie. They’re all in on it,” the first woman seemed to click her tongue, but it was chaste and dry.

Silence. A bit of relief.

“But what about that young lad? Gon - is that his name? Mito’s boy. You know, the lively, strapping one. I heard he was with the crew when it happened, supposedly.”

Gon?

“Oh, him?” the second woman hummed. “That’s the strangest thing - Ida did say something about him, actually. Said it was weird enough that he insisted on letting it go.”

Killua leaned back against the rock wall and pondered to himself. Gon… are they talking about the man who cut me loose? He felt himself go a little red, the excitement of finding out about his saviour flickering in his gut like hot, volcanic vents.

“That wouldn’t surprise me. The boy’s a wildlife fanatic. Anything about him?” the first asked.

The other was silent. “No. Not that I know. Maybe Ida said he looked worried when everybody left for home.”

Worried?

That was enough information for now, Killua determined, ducking under the water and retreating to the grass bank. The silence between him and Ikalgo was deafening, so loud that they couldn’t bear looking at each other. It was relieving to know somebody thought it was a lie, but how many people believed that, exactly? How many people knew?

It was what they feared.

⏅⤤🛥⥿ That Afternoon  ⏅⤤🛥⥿

The net was a force to be reckoned with, an untamable strength that scooped Killua up into its palm with such ease and confidence that it sucked all the breath out of him as it rose up, closing tight at the seams. The current was strong as it pulled, pulled, pulled him up through the water, pushing him back against the hard knots and worn rope. It dug into Killua’s skin and left friction burns. It was a whirr, a dizzying storm, then a giant splash! of daylight that knocked the sense from him.

Breaching sent the creature into paralyzing shock. There were hard lumps pressed hard against his skull. There was a cluster of cheers from above and beyond that a wooden monster, the screeching and cranking of a winch (it was to Killua’s understanding from having studied about the humans in his earlier years) deafening on his ears the further he was hauled up. Something flapped underneath him—multiple things, actually—and Killua unconsciously felt, with a panicked wriggle, that there were fish gasping under him, squished between him and the strength-swallowing net.

Killua couldn’t honestly bring himself to open his eyes, they were heavy, the force keeping them three-quarters mast too powerful to go against; his energy had already been swallowed by the rope, the bonds that dug into him. There was an awful swinging motion going on, he was oscillating back and forth, spinning. The clouds were all a mess the next time he managed to open his eyes fully and blink, sick to his stomach with an urge to keel over and empty everything onto the migraine-inducing sounds. He had to rest his eyes again in fear of puking.

But then the earth plunged into silence.

The sun was hot on his fair complexion, so much so that he was already drying up, the comforting wetness on his scales departing for another rainy day. A groan grated on the back of his tongue, as he found the slightest bit of willpower to knot his fingers into the diamonds, and force himself to tempt his eyelids awake. His pulse had never dropped so quickly in his one-hundred and twenty-two years of living.

They were staring. Big, wide, white, unblinking eyes. Open jaws. Motionless.

Killua swept the foundations of a wooden fishing boat, big enough for the net he was currently strung up in. There were about twenty of them, possibly more - that was all he could manage at a quick glance. He wasn’t going to start a head count.

When they—the land-dwellers, though not once tearing their eyes away from Killua—started to mumble and whisper amongst themselves, Killua was too weak to push through a rearing flood of shaken thoughts. His vision started to blur as they crashed down and poured out of his ears. 

What are they going to do to me? 

Will they release me?

Is this the end of the road for me?

The fear was very real and very existent on his plate, so much so that his escalating heartbeat had overcome and covered the underlying clap of the ocean waves; the hissing of the crowd; the heat burning into him; the knots in his skin. The real fear of death or a fate much worse occupied Killua’s spiralling thoughts. He hadn’t realised that his knuckles had faded sheet-white from gripping the diamonds so tightly.

“Wait!”

A knife through butter, the slash of air through water.

“Put it back.”

Put what back? Killua thought, blinking away the storm brewing over his head. Through the haze and heat of the summer afternoon, in a light so blinding to the eye, he followed a figure that pushed through the crowd, as it stepped onto what he figured was the railing, grabbing hold of the knots and diamonds, gazing down with a warm face of freckles and dreamy hues of calm chocolate-caramel, a cinnamon-plated breath overriding a ridge of cracked skin.

“It’s okay…” Killua heard, although the voice seemed to drift as his focus dwindled again.

The net shuddered and suddenly he was wrenched to the present for another moment. Killua squinted away from the blaring sun that hung behind the figure’s head, which cast a dark silhouette across the moving muscle and fluttering spikes. There was the sea, the gulls, the chaffing of the blade, the rugged breath from the figure, and Killua’s own heartbeat.

“Goodbye.”

That’s when the net gave way and Killua felt himself slink back. The knots caught on his body but the pain was a fleeting one, for his eyes were cast on the looming shadow; cheeks full of freckles, warm eyes of fresh soil, cracked lips, a wave, a somber smile.

Then the naked slap of flesh on water plunged Killua into another dizzying tide.

Chapter Text

⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤

“Anything yet?”

Gon looked over his shoulder to Toza, one of his close friends outside of work, who flashed a hopeful smile. He shook his head, and his teammate’s hopeful ego fell clean from his face. There was still no sign of the creature, but he was playing devil’s advocate - of course it wouldn’t show. As if it would reveal itself now .

All three men sighed in unison.

He flinched as a heavy hand clapped his back, wobbling like a fresh cube of jelly. Eno pulled a light shrug beside him, his legs kicking back and forth in the clear water. Gon’s eyebrows knitted together. It’s not as if he wanted to be of any danger to the merman. They’d already done so much to try and put restrictions on the area where they were fishing (without any luck considering the season). He at least wanted to pinpoint how it was doing, if it was injured and where it hung about so he could take further steps to make sure it was left well and truly alone.

It’s afternoon. They’ve been unbelievably patient. But sitting in a little boat doing nothing but casting lines and watching the radar for any anomalies wasn’t getting them any further from where they started. This was far from where the sighting had been, and it was far enough as far as he was concerned.

Toza patted both men on the shoulder. “Let’s have lunch. It’s egg sandwiches this time.”

Eno took charge of their precious rowing boat, not too small but not too large either, big enough to host their diving gear, maps, lures, and technical equipment. The main body had been painted a beautiful carolina-blue, bordered with white and patterned with pineapple-yellow, but with age the paint had worn along the sides.

It had started out as the three of them, Toza and Eno fresh out of college and Gon with barely any merit to his name. He hadn’t been able to support himself to be able to go to college, and asking Mito for help hadn’t been a viable option either. Six years down the line they were still together, scaling the seas around their humble island in search for adventure and… well, aquatic life. Gon was already grateful to be able to experience it with his friends, despite the lacking diploma. It was enough to satisfy him.

“Even when we find it, what’re you gonna do?” Toza asked, jabbing Gon with the handle of a broken fishing pole. “I know we agreed we just wanted to like, check it out and whatever.”

Gon held his friend’s eye carefully. That’s what they agreed for sure, and he’d be sure of a scolding from them both if they ever found out his true intentions. That they weren’t just looking for a rare sun-scaled shark.

“Then we make sure it stays hidden. I couldn’t imagine what it’d be like if the island found out there was a rare shark species out there.” He lowered his focus to the morphing puzzle pieces that danced under the clear, shallow tide, nibbling on his lip out of bad habit. “I mean… what if they assume that this shark is dangerous? Imagine the talk. What- What if word spreads? And then it’ll be in danger of us, and it’ll be our fault, my fault-”

The pu-dlonk-sploosh of the oars vanished for a moment, and Eno leaned forward, combing back his mousy-brown hair and quickly regaining control of the oar that was near slipping into the water. “Whoa, whoa… don’t get ahead of yourself, dude. Chill for a moment, okay? Nothing’s happened yet. Don’t go jumping to conclusions. We’ve still got to find it first.”

Before every other curious person, Gon reiterated to himself. It wasn’t ethical, but they had the equipment that could track where his creature had last hung about (despite the fact they had lacking evidence.) And that’s all he’d be using his friends for, even if he did feel selfish about using them.

The boat rocked and tilted as they reached the shoreline. Their gear shifted underneath the seats, a box of lures sliding to the other end of the boat. Toza was already treading water, heaving and grunting as he pulled the boat up against the sand. It was amusing to imagine the guy having trouble when he was built pretty well, with a toned abdomen that could have framed the gates to the heavens. Besides being an ocean fanatic, a very, very fitness-obsessed adrenaline junky.

“I’ll stay here with ‘er,” he proposed with a toothy grin and flared nostrils. “No point in you sitting ‘round here with a sad mug like that. No wonder you don’t have a girlfriend!”

But it didn’t feel right to leave the boat. As if by chance, Gon felt he’d be lucky enough to see the creature peeking from behind the rocks, or hiding in the patches of seaweed that stretched across the sand like long, shadow-like fingers.

Maybe, just maybe, it would want to say hello.

⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤

“--well it’s a whopper today, Nick! It’s three forty-five and it is H.O.T. at thirty-two degrees celsius--”

Gon pulled at the tarp withholding the fishing poles from under the rickety seats of the boat, knocking the crackling, old radio behind him to the base of the boat. He sat straight and twisted left and right, ducking down, picking the equipment from behind his heels.

“Sorry. You’re all worn out,” he said, rotating the radio and inspecting it for damage. There were a few small scuffs to the edges but nothing too frightening a case for Mito’s wireless receiver. He dusted it off with care and held it in his lap. The sound crackled again and fizzed, ebbing in and out of what he could compare to consciousness.

A sigh pushed from his chest. He felt the sun beginning to burn his nape.

Gon was disheartened, he couldn’t lie about that.

He turned his head to the blue horizon and the ever expanding depth of the ocean. There wasn’t an evident breeze, maybe just a featherlight kiss that would sometimes swoop in from the west. Evidently not enough to rock the boat; the water was calm and untouched, almost so clear that Gon could lean over the side and see the coral reef.

Brushing his thumb along the worn, red paint on the radio, Gon twisted the channel button, skipping from elusive steel drums to deafening rock music. He stuck with the steel drums.

The boat suddenly rocked, as if it had scraped the bottom of something. Or something scraped the bottom of it. Gon felt his stomach flip. It was only a small nudge, maybe a little alarming, but nothing so frightening it would suck the soul from one’s body.

He set the radio down at his feet and looked out towards the horizon again, this time sweeping from left to right, blocking the harsh glare of the sun. He then peered down the side of the boat.

“Strange,” Gon muttered.

The water had been disturbed.

He waited again, leaning back and resuming to his idle cleaning.

Another nudge, this time harder, pulled a yelp straight out of Gon’s mouth and he lurched forward, grabbing each side of the boat. His heart leaped into his mouth. Something was definitely underneath. It couldn’t have been anything like a whale or a shark. He would have laughed at the idea.

“Maybe a dolphin?”

Excitement bubbled in his stomach and clambered into his chest. He’d swam with dolphins before. He wouldn’t be surprised if this was one of them having fun.

Out of the corner of his eye, Gon caught a shimmer of movement beneath the waves. A tail…!

He stood quickly but the strength of his curiosity made the boat tilt and sway, knocking the fisherman off balance. Gon regained his composure after almost tipping the boat over, his heart a rampant train in his chest, thudding its fists against his outer shell.

He surveyed the water again, faintly seeing the outline of a creature that resembled something close to a dolphin, although more agile and thin. It was gone in one powerful burst of speed. Gon found himself picking apart the rest of the ocean desperately. Could it have been the merman from the haul? The one with eyes like frigid ice dipped in a deep, wild blue, with hair the colour of silver silk and sea foam.

Over by the cliff dwellings he spotted a dazzling glimmer of turquoise and porcelain. He almost leaped out of the boat, jaw slack and eyes wide and unblinking. Whatever it was, he was elated.

It was gone in a matter of seconds, lost in the waves.

And yet, Gon couldn’t tear his heaping grin from his face.

⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤

“What’s up, Gon?” Ida clapped Gon’s burnt shoulder as he was tidying up the nets, in and out of his head. The abrupt wakeup call made him twitch and stare back at his shipmate.

He pulled a sheepish smile. “Oh, it’s just you.”

“Pff-” She scoffed. “Who’d you think it was? So what’s up? You’ve been dazed all morning.” Gon disliked the teasing smirk that curled into her thin lips, and the glint in her eye. “Thinking about someone?”

Gon coiled back, hands up. “No! No, no, no- I mean- Not really, um-”

Ida let her head hang back as she released a booming laugh, which caught the attention of their crew-mates. Her fish braid slipped back from her shoulder like a snake, and Gon couldn’t help but watch it flop.

“I’m just teasing.” She ruffled his hair. Ida was tall in a weirdly handsome way, her skin a glowing tan like Gon’s but riddled with freckles from head-to-toe; straight out of the island’s countryside and ready for adventures across the sea. He admired that about her. She always spoke her mind. Ida was strong, independent, and loved the wilderness. That’s initially how they became friends so quickly. But unlike Gon she wasn’t so gullible, and more level-headed.

He couldn’t, however, shake her penetrating gaze. It was like she was trying to decipher something that maybe even Gon didn’t know. He could feel his willpower crumbling like cheese on a chopping board, under the sharp edge of the knife.

“You don’t think, maybe… someone from our team has spoken about the creature we found, do you?”

Gon couldn’t peel his eyes away from the netting he had resumed tending. As if maybe looking at Ida would give him the answer he didn’t want to hear. He knew Ida knew that too from her troubling silence.

She sighed. “I can’t tell you, Gon, I really can’t. You never know with people. They could promise one thing and go behind your back and…yeah.” Ida’s voice was low and cautious, tenacious. He didn’t like how she was tiptoeing around him.

“You wouldn’t, right?” He looked at her this time, eyes hard and demanding. A bead of sweat inched down Ida’s temple.

“Of course not. I wouldn’t do that to you, buddy. You asked for us to keep it a secret, so a secret it shall be. Besides...I wouldn’t mind helping you keep it safe. I’m a little curious, too.” Her smile was gentle, genuine, and made that little flicker of hope in Gon’s chest spark.

He grinned a big, beaming grin. “You’re amazing, Ida.” To which she blushed. “Thanks. I can take you with me to find it sometime. I could use some more help, more eyes. I’ve tried requesting for a restriction on the area we found it in, but it didn’t pan out.”

Gon turned and watched the crew, a little less tense than before, but still uncertain as his shipmates carried on with their jobs.

⏅ ⤤ ⏅ ⤤

Gon drew a long, deep breath in and held it in his chest before letting it slip from his lips, parting with a groan. His shoulders deflated like a balloon as did the rest of his body. He glanced back at the tub sitting under the seats of the boat, craning himself towards it to peek inside, smiling at the few crabs he’d caught from the docks. He’d brought the boat out farther into the open water, and yet no luck of catching any fish. It’d be easier to try out the rivers, but something kept him tied to the ocean. Maybe if he went further to shore.

Besides, he didn’t have to fish. Toza had suggested chilling out on the water. What better medicine was there for stress but the outdoors?

He sat back and reclined against the seats, his eyes on the cloudless sky and still partially on his fishing rod. Just in case something happened to tug - which was unlikely by now.

Gon hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything else. He had become dazed at work. Sometimes he’d find himself staring at the tanks in the local aquarium where he cleaned on weekdays, leaning his face against the end of his mop, thinking, thinking, thinking . Even Eno and Toza had commented on how obsessed Gon had become with this ‘shark sighting’, but to them it wasn’t entirely a surprise.

It’d been a full two weeks since that thrilling experience, and the excitement of it was barely able to keep up. Gon was contemplating letting it go. For good.

Maybe he was going mad. Every movement on the water would send a beam of hope through him, and the paintings kept piling on his desk. Page after page of wicked, wild eyes and enchanting colours. He could paint the creature with his eyes closed. Part of him, naturally, didn’t want to let his curiosity die. That was the problem if he really wanted to keep the creature safe. He’d be putting it in danger. He knew it and yet was selfish enough to go after it.

Gon was deep in his thoughts when he almost missed the echo of trickling water. The thrill was back, but ten times weaker than it ever was. He attempted to ignore it for as long as possible. His fingers were itching.

Then the line tugged a few times. Small, experimental tugs.

He ignored it again.

But his eyes couldn’t part from the peak of his fishing rod.

It tugged three more times. Nothing followed. There was a peaceful pause right up until the boat was knocked by a force from underneath that sent Gon lurching forward, hands grabbing at the fishing pole. His heart was thudding like a galloping horse, in his tongue and in his ears. Du-dum, du-dum, du-dum.

There was nothing in the water that he could see except for his own reflection.

He teasingly bobbed the rod and waited. Suddenly, the end of the line replied. Gon repeated his teasing and sure enough there was the same response. He didn’t try to pull the lure out, because deep, deep down he thought it might be the thing he’d been searching for. This could be his lucky break.

So...it must have only been interested in him, as wild and childish that sounded.

Abruptly, the boat rocked once more, and Gon would have been tipped overboard if he hadn’t leaned back. He took in heaps of air all at once and it hung in the back of his throat until he could breathe again.

“H-Hey!” he sat up, shouting to the water. “What was that for? I nearly fell out!”

The fisherman huffed. The line pulled.

“I know you’re down there. I ain’t stupid!”

The next time the line tugged Gon quickly pulled back. It was so quick a moment that he managed to pull out a pale, colourful hand that had one finger hooked on the lure. Seeing it alone had his head spinning and his stomach squirming. His gut had been right all along! (Though he didn’t doubt his gut had ever been wrong.)

“Aha!”

As quick as the hand appeared, it let go of the lure and plunged back into the water. Gon swore he was able to see the movement of a long-tail, but it was gone before he could get a proper look. He began to panic.

His line sat undisturbed and the boat completely still.

Gon pursed his lips. He pulled out the lure and set his fishing pole across the seats, gazing down at the turquoise ripples that were just then beginning to fade. An unusual urge guided his bare arm into the water. The depths were warm having bathed all day in the hot sun and Gon felt a pleasant tingle crawl up through the hairs along his limb. He bore the desire to take off his clothes and slip away into the waves.

There he waited for a comfortable amount of time. He was patient and trusting that his admirer would return to play some more.

On the backs of his fingers he felt something soft. Quite quickly he recognised it as a hand, a very smooth, lightly-scaled hand. It followed the edges of his fingertips and down into his palm, where he couldn’t refrain from giggling at his sensitivity. The hand was pinching each and every one of his digits as if it were studying him. An exhilarating buzz sent his heartbeat flurrying into his throat when he felt sharp claws.

Now there were two hands feeling him up. There was a strong temptation to get into the water but Gon didn’t want to frighten it away again by being too cocky, but he was so elated! He would happily go at the creature’s pace. And he was content enough to want to stay there for the rest of the day, holding hands but still too cautious to let himself take a peek.

“I always dreamed of there being merpeople in the ocean,” he muttered, leaning his cheek against the edge of the boat. He assumed his company could hear him, so Gon continued his sentiment.

“Most people think your kind are just fables. I’ve heard stories of you luring sailors into the sea with your songs. I could tell you all sorts of stories...but I guess you’ve already heard of them, huh?”

Gon’s mind floated back to their first meeting. He’d almost been convinced that it had been a dream, a hallucination. He bravely brushed his thumb across the back of it’s hand, and it flinched. He was right, there were tiny, tiny scales all under his thumb, but still smooth enough to feel like flesh. Gon memorised the feeling for his paintings later on.

“I haven’t told anyone, and I won’t. Can’t say the same for my shipmates, though I’ve asked them to keep quiet… Guess I can only hope you can remain my little secret,” Gon chuckled. He opened his mouth to speak when something arising from the surface caught his eye, double taking. One of its hands was out of the water, held out as if it wanted to shake his own. Gon couldn’t tell you how enamored he was!

It was delicate and ethereal, pale as a pearl against his own brilliant suntan. It pitted in his palm and he held it as if it were made of the finest porcelain, rotating it, inspecting it. Along the back of its hand were a display of multi-coloured scales like the swarms of fish that roamed the fishing hotspots: blue, silver, purple, and pink that reflected the rainbow. On the ends of each finger were sharp, deadly claws.

Momentarily he felt a sudden rush of heat on the back of his neck. Gon looked around to reassure himself that they were truly alone in each other’s company. He lowered their joined hands back into the water.

“Would you mind if I came to see you again?” He asked, but there was no answer. “By myself of course.”

Nothing could withhold the intensity of his heaping grin when the merman replied with a squeeze of the hand. That’s all Gon needed. All his previous curiosity was back again full force.

This time he wouldn’t let it go.