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Kyouka had seen him on the rocks for years, basking in the pale moonlight and swishing his great yellow tail. She’d known at first sight he wasn’t human by his aura, the ethereal look of his skin and scales, of his pointed ears and golden hair. She’d known he was dangerous even then, when she couldn’t read the fables and books by herself. It’s her mother who had taught her the lore by heart--
Don’t wander to the sea when the moon is high
For beneath the waves lurk monsters nigh
That will sing you to sleep on a lullaby.
She hadn’t been afraid. The boy who sat on the rocks was no monster, he didn’t have sharp teeth and claws. He didn’t look scary, not like what her mother taught her, and there was no singing or lullaby. There was only silence that stretched to the sea and the shadow of the boy against the rising sun.
And that’s how it stayed for years. The boy and the sun, Kyouka watching with fascination as she grew from standing on her tiptoes to stooping to watch. As he grew from thinning wiriness to broad and sleek. A silhouette with golden hair and a golden tail--a silent observer, a stranger who was so familiar yet a hair's breadth away.
Maybe it was the selfish part of her that wanted this boy all to herself, or the fear of being rejected, laughed at, but Kyouka never told a soul. The secret stayed with her, the sun and moon, and the ocean as it whispered to her with each lap against the rocks. Just her.
That’s how she liked it.
“Kyouka! Kyouka!”
“What?!” Her snappiness isn’t intentional, but he’d been calling her for a good minute now. Each time she replied he hadn’t heard her. Not once.
Usually, Kyouka would get up and go downstairs, round and round in circles from her room near the top of the lighthouse to the kitchen halfway down. Today was different. Today she’d woken up with a beat tapping against the window panes as sheets of rain fell outside, the ghost of lyrics forming on a hum and the sweet lilt of a crescendo. For the first time in months she had a song, and Kyouka wasn’t about to let that go easily.
“Kyouka!”
Her pencil drops from her hand with a grit of her teeth, rolling across the paper and falling to the floor. The clatter is enough to put her nerves on edge let alone the continuous echo of her name up the stairwell. Before she can shout back again, Kyouka comes to the horrifying realisation that those lyrics she was forming are gone. Dissipated. Her inspiration; gone.
“For fuck’s sake.” Her stomp downstairs is far from graceful and has her mother shooting her a look of disdain from over the cover of a book. She ignores her and heads where Kyouka knows her father will be, by the fireside at the piano, hands running up and down the worn keys with a familiarity like the back of his hand. As a musician--as her inspiration -- he should know better than to interrupt her. “I swear, if this is about--”
“Kyouka.” Kyotoku turns his thinning face towards her and smiles. “My little girl, love of my life. We received a transmission from the mainland.”
Although Kyotoku is quite renowned on the mainland for his eccentricity and theatrics, there’s something in his voice that makes Kyouka hesitate. An insistence, a spark of brightness that warns her to wait and listen. Her patience is wearing thin but she still arches an eyebrow. “From the mainland?”
“From the mainland.” He turns back to the piano and takes a slip of paper tucked behind the notebooks and sheet music, and hands it to her. “I think it’s something that may interest you.”
Kyouka takes it, eyes narrow. The mainland never sent overly complex messages to the lighthouse--usually just coordinates or predicted weather patterns--and although this message is just as simplistic, it’s not nearly as boring:
GOVERNOR REQUESTS MUSIC FOR BALL. JIROU WANTED.
Though Kyouka knows the ‘Jirou’ isn’t her but her father, her heart still skips a beat. No matter how renowned her father is as a lighthouse keeper and musician (a rare combination but one Kyouka had grown to love), to be requested for music is among the greatest of honours. To be requested by the town’s Governor is much the same as an invitation from royalty. When her gaze snaps up to her father’s, he’s smiling.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve been asked to play for a ball.”
“Half a century,” Kyouka bites back with the same sarcasm, and reads the note again. And again. She knows the story of the lighthouse keeper’s son who ran away to play the piano and eventually came back with a wife, she’d been told it as often as her mother taught her rhymes and her father the tune to go with it. It’s been years since Kyotoku left the island--the bumpy rock they call home--and it’s been years since he’s played a proper piano.
She doesn’t have to ask to know, but does anyway. “Are you going?”
“I’d be a fool not to!” In all his lanky glory, Kyotoku scrambles to his feet and gathers Kyouka’s face in his hands, kissing her forehead delicately. “Come with me. It’s been years since you’ve seen the mainland, little one. I want to show them how well I’ve passed down my musical genius--”
“Out of the question.”
The excited thump of Kyouka’s heart stops. The sharp bark from the doorway where Mika Jirou is standing is enough to tear even the smallest child’s dreams. Kyouka has to wrench her face away from her father’s hands, and meets the sincerity in her mother’s sharp eyes with her own burning passion. “Why not? Why can’t I go?”
“I can’t run this lighthouse by myself.”
“Grandpa taught you years ago,” she hisses back, startled by the lie. Mika wasn’t one for lying--she’s a woman who believes in honesty fiercely--and Kyouka knows she can handle the lighthouse. It was one of the first things her grandfather taught her when she came here. “Why can’t I go?”
“My love,” her father begins in a voice so soft he may as well be talking to an animal. Even from her peripheral, Kyouka can see his eyes--sullen with age--are bright with excitement, just like her heart. But then there’s his tone, his voice: what’s he so afraid of? “Maybe she should try--”
“ No.” The finality in her mother’s voice is indisputable, and Kyotoku’s shoulders sag in defeat, but Kyouka, ever her mother’s daughter, stands up straighter.
“Why are you so concerned now? I’ve been to the mainland before. Why can’t I play my music? What’s so--”
“Did your father ever tell you why he returned rather than stay a musician?”
Kyotoku freezes, and Kyouka hesitates. There’s a stiffness in her father’s shoulders she’s never seen before and it’s that, not her mother’s words, that make her look at him. She searches his expression and finds nothing. “What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Little one.” He turns to her with a fake smile, one through teeth that are too wide and too white, and lifts a hand to her shoulder. “You shouldn’t--”
“Tell her.”
Kyotoku glances at Mika and defeat swims in his eyes once again. He looks at his daughter and sees the expression mirrored. He smiles weakly. “You really are your mother’s daughter, aren’t you?” With one last elongated sigh, he takes a strand of Kyouka’s purple hair and twists it gently between his fingers: a gesture she’s seen him do to her mother countless times. Almost as if it kills him to say it, he grates out, “I came back because I didn’t have a choice. ”
“He came back because there wasn’t a penny to our names,” Mika says stiffly, stance rigid. “We were homeless and starving because your father wanted to be a musician. It got him nowhere. I don’t mind the songs and the piano, I don’t mind teaching Kyouka how to sing, but I won’t let you put ridiculous ideas in her head.”
The words break through like a knife through ice, shattering something inside her that she didn’t know could be. For years she’d listened to her father speak of music and musicians, of his childhood playing the piano to the wealthy, but never had he spoken of this. It feels like she’s been lied to, been led on with each song he encouraged, each note she played, each tune she hummed. It feels like a lie that he pressed out of hope that she might make it, not that she would.
Betrayed, betrayal. Worthless hours. The notepad and pencil in her bedroom are useless. These piano keys are futile. Her purpose of music isn’t a purpose, just a means of keeping her here so she could take over one day and forget about it.
She goes to bed with tears in her eyes and her stomps echoing up the stairwell. Her notepad hits the bottom step, followed by the crack of her pencil against the wall. It’s not devastating but humiliating, being cheered on for something she could never do. And music was her life .
By the time the tears begin to fade, and her pillowcase begins to dry, the sun is on the horizon; glistening above the waves in hues of pink and gold. Just like Kyouka knew he would be, her creature is sitting on the rocks with his back to the lighthouse, staring into the sun. The light bathes him in a brilliant orange, shimmering with every flick of his magnificent tail.
It’s watching him with the same fascination she always does that draws Kyouka to her conclusion: musician or not, she’s going to prove her mother wrong.
Dawn is breaking when Kyouka pushes the boat from the shore with a pole, the lantern the only light in endless dark.
The waves are beautifully jewelled in orange and pink with the rising sun, and it’s a gorgeous sight. One she can’t help but find herself enamoured with until the rocking of the boat brings her back to the waves. With one last look at the lighthouse, her home for the past sixteen years, she turns herself to the mainland in the distance. She’d made her decision last night and it’s too late to back out now; if she did, she’d never forgive herself.
Maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s just throwing a tantrum like a toddler. Maybe it’s pure spite. Whatever it is, the thought of staying in that lighthouse, of being cooped up winter on winter and spring upon spring, is enough for panic to rise in her chest all over again. She has to leave, or she’s never going to.
A shiver against the seeping cold is all it takes for her to compose herself, and she grabs the oars and begins rowing with her sight fixed on the distance. The line where the sky meets the sea and the sliver of land in between, there . They’re expecting a Jirou and, if she plays for them, they'll be convinced, they’ll know. It’s not her father she’s set on doing proud, but her dreams: the fantasies of a young girl imagining a future with her hands set upon a piano.
And she’s sure as hell is going to make sure she doesn’t disappoint.
“What are you doing?”
Kyouka nearly drops the oars in fright. Her head snaps around so fast her neck hurts, and, for a second, all she sees is the lap of the waves against the side of the boat. Then there, bobbing just below the surface, she sees it: yellow, gold, the light reflecting like a beacon shining neon.
Instinctively, she grabs the lantern at the head of the boat and holds it closer, letting the light wash over the waves and the figure floating at the surface. Kyouka didn’t need the light to know who it was, but she had to be sure--
“You,” she breathes out, almost afraid of speaking like he’d dissolve into an apparition. With a swish of his tail, his head pops up, bright with a sparkle in his eyes and the sharpness of his teeth in a smile.
“You’re the girl that walks along the beach and throws stones at the sea.”
“What?”
“You are, aren’t you?” He pushes up until his arms are resting on the boat, tipping it towards the water, smile sharper than ever. “You used to do it when you were angry at me.”
“I--” Of all things, of all the meetings she’d imagined, this wasn’t how she’d envisioned meeting her creature, the boy she’d watch grow. He isn’t necessarily wrong, she had thrown stones at the sea when she was smaller. She’d had a temper back then, when she couldn’t understand why her creature wasn’t responding when she called to him, but that was years ago. “How do you remember?”
“I have a long memory.” He puts all of his weight on his arms and lifts his tail out of the water, letting it splash delicately. “Why are you out here by yourself?”
The tone of his voice makes her stomach squirm, but she isn’t afraid. Even the lore and the threat of a watery grave can’t snatch away her childish curiosity. He’s like a long lost friend: familiar, like home.
She swallows her question and says, “I’m going to the mainland.”
“It’s dangerous out there,” he replies with a click of his tongue, glancing at the horizon. “My kind prey on people by themselves.”
“Then why haven’t you attacked me?” The siren seems to consider this, then pushes back again and lets his body rest under the water until only his chin is on the surface. Kyouka has to stop herself from reaching out and pulling him back. “And why didn’t you speak to me before?”
“You’ve never been alone before. Speaking to one human is better than three.”
Kyouka rests her forearms on the wooden edge, staring him down with her mother’s iciness. He stares back with a calmness like the sea. “Why haven’t you attacked me?”
The siren tips his head back as if praying to the Gods for help. When his head drops down again, his eyebrows are raised. “I’ll make you a deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
He gestures to the sea, to the mainland on the waves. “I’ll take you there and keep you safe if you teach me how to sing.”
What? Kyouka’s brain malfunctions, and she can only stare at him like he’d spoken another language. Maybe he had and she hadn’t realised. Maybe this was part of a ploy to pull her to the depths, maybe the boy she’d been watching for years wasn’t--
“Listen.” He flicks his tail again playfully, and showers Kyouka in a light spray. “I’ve heard you sing. You sing at the beach, you play music--I love hearing you sing. You sing better than any siren and I want you to teach me how. I’ll make sure you get to the mainland safely.”
“What’s the catch?” Her voice is rusty and stiff, and the siren laughs, a sound like a tinkling bell.
“No catches. I just wanna know.”
Kyouka finds her gaze torn to the mainland. There’s still a stretch of sea separating them, and there are so many things that can go wrong. The lore could be right, she could be deceived by a creature with a golden tail, but then she thinks of the lighthouse and the piano and her father’s sunken eyes. She thinks of endless days watching the mainland a lifetime away and wishing, wanting . Her throat grows tight.
So, Kyouka keeps her word and the siren keeps his, and she teaches him the only song she’s ever known by heart.
The path to the beach is one Kyouka knows well, one she’s followed for years whenever nostalgia or homesickness creeps up her chest. It’s here and only here that she has a clear view of the lighthouse where she grew up, with its beam still dancing on the waves.
She’s older now, her hair’s longer, but the feeling this part of the sea gives her is the same.
The sand gives way beneath her toes as she walks over rocks and dunes and damp to get to the shoreline, to where the wind is gentle and the sun is setting in brilliant hues of tangerine. Just before she reaches the tide, she picks up a rock and hurls it into the sea.
It takes a few minutes, and even then it’s only the flick of a tail with scales that shimmer iridescent. It’s enough to know she has his attention.
Kyouka meets him by the rockpools on the eastside, and by then he’s sitting at the edge of a natural pier, splashing his tail gently. Rather than disturb him when his eyes are so set on the sun, she sits by him, feet brushing the ocean like the tips of his fins.
“Kinda reminds me of the first time we met,” Denki says softly, and he glances at her. “How did the audition go?"
Kyouka returns his stare with a grin. “I’m playing for royalty next month.”
Denki whistles fondly, leaning back on his palms and letting the sea breeze ruffle his hair. Without hesitation, Kyouka does the same, brushing his hand with her own.
“Ever gonna go back to the lighthouse?” He asks, head inclined to the towering stripe of red and white way out in the distance, and Kyouka shrugs. The lighthouse is her past, just like the lantern and the boat and her trip to the mainland. Just like the spite towards her mother. Her parents always had front seats to her performances now.
“Maybe, one day. When I’ve played enough.”
“Which will be never.” Kyouka stares at him again, but Denki’s still watching the horizon, eyes half-lidded. A moment passes before he speaks again, “Sing for me?”
She sings a song from their childhood, from years past that her mother taught her, and that she taught Denki. The song she sings when her fingers dance up and down a piano, and the song that will attach itself to her name for centuries to come:
Don’t wander to the sea when the moon is high
For beneath the waves lurk monsters nigh
That will sing you to sleep on a lullaby. 