Chapter Text
Haruka Nanase was having a bad day.
He always had a bad day after an unexpected storm crashed against the shores of sleepy Iwatobi.
Storms made people uncomfortable, and made his neighbours bother him with unnecessary questions. It had taken him nearly twenty minutes to escape Mrs. Tamura's interrogation, insisting every few moments that yes, he had remembered to lock the door shutters and no, he didn't go stand in the back garden like he did when it rained last week.
Living by himself at the age of seventeen, Haruka felt, didn't give the neighbourhood the right to butt into his business even if the Yamamoto's had seen him in nothing but his swimsuit again.
Her misplaced concern had made him late for work and he recieved his second lecture of the day from his erstwhile employer, Mr. Sasabe.
Well into his forties, with a cheeky grin and haircut that was at least a decade too young for him, Goro launched into his regular spiel about hard work, dedication, and “I know you're only a part-timer, Haruka-kun, but at least pretend to care sometimes y'know?”
Haruka gave him a blank look from across the desk. He wasn't the type to pretend anything he didn't really feel and they both knew it.
Goro dismissed the matter with a wave of his hand. It wasn't the first time Haruka had been late and it certainly wouldn't be the last.
“In any case, you're on your own today. Most of the guys were working to dry-dock the boat last night. Fat lot of good that did, the hull still took a beating... You only have to look at her and she starts leaking!” He wailed.
Haruka graciously refrained from pointing out that the old squid boat had probably been doing that before any storm had gone near it.
The Big Catch Sasa was Goro's pride and joy. It has also been his father's pride and joy and his grandfather's pride and joy. She could barely stay afloat on the best of days, but Goro refused to listen to anyone who tried to tell him that that was the reason he was losing profits. He would blame every summer storm, all of his competitors and even the fish for not producing enough before he would even consider that the fault might lie with his precious boat.
And that was where Haruka came in. On paper, he worked an eight hour week doing running errands from Goro's small fishing business on both land and sea. In practice, Haruka did all the dirty work that his boss's cost-cutting measures required.
Including after every storm that battered the Iwatobi coastline, when he was sent out to scout the beaches for reusable nets, lost lobsters cages and any other fishing parphernalia he could swipe before whomever it really belonged to came looking for it.
Haruka suspected that most of what he did was probably not above board but Sasabe literally wasn't paying him enough to care.
His meager wage paid for nothing but gym membership where he could swim to his heart's content regardless of the season, while his absentee parents covered the utility bills of the house they had left behind, and occasionally called to nag him about his water usage.
It was not a fulfilling job or even a particularly safe one but Haruka knew that with his blunt personality and lack of 'transferable skills', he was lucky to have a job at all.
At least when it came to time-keeping, Sasabe was as lax as him as long as he got his work done.
Which was how Haruka Nanase found himself trawling the scraggy, stony inlets of Iwatobi at an unreasonable hour of the morning, tired and cranky.
Iwatobi had three white sandy beaches that featured on every postcard and holiday pamphlet and, if the local tourism board were to have their way, they would be Iwatobi's only beaches.
In reality, the coastline was dotted with smaller, far less picturesque swathes of land. They were covered with sharp rocks and discarded rubbish. The lay of them was uneven and rough. They were awful to look at and worse to walk on. They were hidden from tourists and avoided by locals, barren spaces that did not accommodate for human interference.
Naturally, these were where Haruka was required to go, three days per week, every week.
He hated them most of all on days after storms. This was when the things he had to collect were strewn every which way and he was forced to shift stones, climb boulders, explore every little inlet and dig through the dirt for his pay.
Most of the time, the clutter had been smashed to pieces by the wild weather and Sasabe didn't pay for goods he couldn't use.
After finding his seventh broken fishing rod four hours into his shift, Haruka decided it was high time to give up.
His current haul consisted of three small-ish nets, two large metal buckets and an eel trap that was a bit of a fixer-upper but still usable. He knew that given the harsh storm last night, it was as good as he was going to get.
Just one more inlet to trawl and he would be hiking back to base, where Sasabe would hopefully be brewing tea and not asking him to fix the eel trap.
Thoughts of a warm drink and being indoors for the rest of the day consumed his mind as he threw down his haul and his tool kit to scramble over the boulders that separated this tiny beach from the rest of the world.
The kit contained basic supplies like a first-aid kit, and a handful of simple tools. With it's bulky size and shape it wasn't exactly conductive to beach trawling but Sasabe insisted that he bring it with him every time.
What a pain.
Haruka was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't notice until he was almost on solid earth again.
But just before he put his feet on the ground, Haruka looked up and saw it.
Tangled in an enormous tuna net, laying on its side and staining the stones red was an orca.
Its huge body had been ripped and bloodied by the hundreds of tiny hooks sown into the net and the coarse rope cut further into it. It was completely trapped, not to mentioned beached several feet from the shore.
Later Haruka would be angry at himself for freezing where he stood, one foot hovering over the ground.
For now, he only panicked.
How on earth had such a huge creature washed up here? Why had it been so close to shore in the first place? Had it been the storm? Had it sought shelter only to be caught by a stray net? Should he run back for help? Would the beast even last that long?
His jumbled thoughts were interrupted by a low moan and he could only stare at the creature's back as it shifted on the rough sand in an attempt to free itself.
When it did so, Haruka knew it was probably better that he had not run for help straight away.
It stretched slowly but the rope was too tight for it to do much other than curl in on itself and straighten out again.
Where its head should have been the creature's body morphed into a man's torso and further up than that were two arms constrained to its sides and a very human-looking face.
Merman....
The word came unbidden to Haruka, a by-product of his upbringing by his superstitious Grandmother. She had always encouraged his imagination with stories of shrine spirits, ocean gods and keeping the Amefurikozo happy.
As wise as she had been, Haruka was sure even she could not have been prepared for something like this.