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The sun-scorched sand was hot under Shigeo’s feet. He swerved closer to the water, letting out a soft sigh of relief when the heat gave way to a refreshing chill. Waves licked at his ankles as he made his way towards the rocks.
A bucket held tight in his hand, Shigeo left the over-crowded beach behind him. The smell of food and sunscreen faded the further he ventured, and it wasn’t long before they were replaced by the strong scent of salt and seaweed carried in on the wind. Something a little fishier. A little less pleasant.
Shigeo didn’t mind the tradeoff. It was quieter over here.
His shoulders relaxed when the rush of the waves overcame the sounds of constant chatter. He took a big breath, the corners of his mouth curling in a soft smile.
The beach was really fun, but sometimes it was too much.
Shigeo crouched on the edge of a pool, his shadow falling over the rippling surface of the water. For a minute he just watched, enjoying the stillness of the world below. Finally a tiny shrimp zipped through the water. The first brave soul to make a move.
Then another. A snail resumed his trek, leaving a narrow, winding path through the sand.
Shigeo bent lower, tracing the swirl of color along the snail’s shell with his eyes. It was really pretty. A soft purple and white spiral that shimmered in the sun. There was a part of him that wanted to reach out and rub a finger along the whirls, but he held himself back. He didn’t want to bother this one. It was very little.
“Bye,” Shigeo said as he stood again, giving the snail a short wave.
With careful feet, Shigeo made his way over the rocks towards the bigger tide pools. The bucket knocked loudly against the stone whenever he had to use his hands to ensure he didn’t slip on slick seaweed. It was a reminder that he’d have to find a different way back if he wanted to show anyone what he’d caught. It wouldn’t be good to have his little friends jostled around.
Shigeo huffed, climbing up onto a taller rock and looking back toward the beach. He blinked against the glare off the ocean and squinted, seeking out familiar faces in the crowd.
Ah. There they were. Shigeo wasn’t so far away that he couldn’t see his family. He knew better than that.
It wasn’t hard to spot Teru and Shishou. He had no idea what they were doing jumping around like that, but Teru’s smile was visible even from this distance and it made Shigeo’s heart happy. Teru was best when he was laughing. He always made Shigeo want to laugh too. That was a good feeling even when really feeling things was still sort of scary.
Shigeo blinked and brushed his hair out of his eyes, finding Ritsu not far from his friend. Ritsu bobbed around them, a little dark spot in the waves. He dipped under a swell of water and popped back up beside their father.
As if he somehow knew he was being watched, Shigeo’s dad suddenly looked towards his end of the beach. Shigeo stood tall and presented his bucket as an answer. His dad gave him a thumbs up and Ritsu looked over too, waving energetically.
With that approval, Shigeo turned and scooted back down to the sand. He’d told his mom that he was coming over here, but her hat had been down over her eyes and Shigeo wasn’t a hundred percent sure she wasn’t taking a nap. He had no idea how she could sleep when it was so noisy, but Dad fell asleep with the TV on all the time and Shigeo had even seen Teru nod off at times when Shigeo would have thought it impossible.
He needed it to be quiet, but maybe that wasn’t true for everybody.
His mind wandering, Shigeo let out a yelp of surprise when his foot slid out from under him and he toppled backwards. He just barely caught himself, arms flailing and eyes wide.
“Are you okay?”
There weren’t many people over here, and yet there was a woman was staring at him in concern.
Cheeks heating up with embarrassment, Shigeo quickly nodded.
“Yes, I’m fine. Thank you,” he said in a rush as he righted himself.
She shot him a sympathetic smile and Shigeo pulled his sunhat lower over his face, deliberately tracking a wide path around her and her family. Maybe if he pretended they didn’t exist they would grant him the same mercy. The nervous little knot in his belly loosened when she turned back to her own children.
The tide was coming in fast, but there were still some good pools left. Shigeo paused beside a particularly large one.
This was a good tide pool. A very good one. Lots of seaweed. Trickles of new water coming in between the rocks. A multitude of sparkling shells dotting the bottom.
Shigeo set down his bucket on the flattest stone available and cautiously slid down into the water, wary of the barnacles catching on his bathing suit. The water in the pool was sun-warmed, lapping around his knees like bathwater. Sand squished and crunched between his toes in the best way, and it was such a lovely sensation that a pleased hum vibrated in his chest.
It was perfect.
He could wait here all day, but it turned out he didn’t have to wait long for the marine life to go back to business. It was only a moment before there were miniscule fish darting around his feet and Shigeo couldn’t help but be honored that they were comfortable with him in their home.
One by one the anemones unfurled, coloring the pool with oranges and reds, and then, finally, came the crabs.
Shigeo bit his lip and held himself still when the first one scuttled over his toe. It was prickly and tickled at the same time and made him want to giggle, but it wouldn’t be any good if he moved and scared them all back to their hiding places.
The crabs were not why he was here. Not these feisty ones at least. These crabs were too fast and too pinchy for his tastes.
No, Shigeo greatly preferred…
“Ah… Hello.”
There they were. The hermit crabs.
Shigeo ever so slowly crouched over the water, stopping just before his sunhat tapped to the water’s shivering surface. With a gentle hand he scooped up the hermit crab making its way by his ankle. It retreated back into its shell in an instant, tiny claws blocking the entrance.
“I’m not going to eat you,” he told the creature.
It sat motionless in his hands, cool and smooth and barely a weight at all. Shigeo admired it. Tilted his hands this way and that to watch the sun sparkle off the hermit crab’s pearly shell.
As carefully as he could, he settled the animal into his bucket. It already had a little bit of sand and water in it so that the crabs would feel at home, and he grinned when it quickly started crawling around the edge of the container.
One.
Shigeo went back to his pool on silent feet, eyes hunting for movement. He reveled in the repetition. A flash of a shell. A dip of his hand. A quiet greeting and a reassurance.
The crashing of the waves blurred together, and the world shrank. Down, down, down, till it was just Shigeo and the slowly rising water. Shigeo and the grit of sand under his nails and the heat on his shoulders. Shigeo and-
“Shige!”
Shigeo startled, jerking upright and twisting to see his mom picking her way through the rocks.
“Shige, what are you doing over here? You know I don’t like you going off without telling me,” she said, her words a little sharper than he was used to.
Ah, well. Shigeo did understand why. Still, that didn’t mean that she was right. And Dad knew he was here anyways.
“Oh. You were asleep, I guess.”
His mom blinked at him and put a hand to her cheek, frowning. She looked a little flustered.
“Was I? Wake me up next time, Shige, alright?”
“Okay.”
Shigeo stayed quiet, but his mom didn’t say anything further. She made her way to the edge of the tide pool, her footing more confident than Shigeo could ever hope his would be. Her water shoes helped, he supposed.
She peeked into his bucket, the green plastic lighting her face from beneath. Shigeo watched her curiously when she hummed out a long sigh and sat down on the rocks beside it.
Not berating him further. Not demanding an explanation or a conversation.
Just joining him in an activity that made him happy.
Shigeo bent over the water and let his fingers trail over the surface, rings forming around his hand and swelling outward. His mom nagged him sometimes, and he hated to feel like he was in trouble, but…
But sometimes Shigeo thought of his mom’s chiding and the way it used to make Teru nervous. Of the way Teru would go super still and not blink and not look at any of them, even if Shigeo’s mom was only a little annoyed that they’d gotten water on the floor or brought a frog in the house. Shigeo wasn’t blind. He knew that not all families were the same as his. He knew that Teru didn’t like to talk about his parents… And then things had happened, and he understood why…
And then Teru had cried so much-
Shigeo shook his head and refocused on the water lapping at the bottom of his bathing suit. On the sweat beading along the band of his hat. Something glinted below him, and Shigeo reached for it.
Thinking about Teru’s parents made Shigeo too sad for words sometimes. Made him angry that there were parents out there that did not take care of their children. Shigeo frowned. He didn’t want this to be one of those times. It was Ritsu’s birthday.
His mom took off her hat and fanned herself with it, eyes fixed on the horizon.
A feeling bubbling up inside him when he looked at her. It ate away at the sadness and morphed into something good and warm and buoyant. Running his thumb over the top of the shell he’d picked up, Shigeo painstakingly waded over to where his mom sat. He held the stunning shell out to her.
“You’re a good mom.”
“Eh?” His mom took the shell from him absently, seemingly too distracted by his words to spare it a glance. “Goodness. I mean, thank you, Shigeo. What brought this on?”
Shigeo didn’t really want to answer that.
“You are. You and Dad are very good.”
His mom pressed her lips together like she was trying not to smile, her eyebrows furrowing oddly. Shigeo didn’t know what to call the emotion on her face, but it didn’t seem like a bad thing, so it was okay.
She shook her head and directed her attention to the shell dripping saltwater onto her shorts.
“This is lovely, honey,” she said. “Do you want it in here?”
Shigeo shook his head when she gestured to the bucket.
“It’s for you.”
Gratitude was a much better feeling than sadness.
“I’ll take it home then,” his mom said with a resolute nod. She wiped the damp shell off on the edge of her shorts and tucked it into a pocket for safekeeping.
Satisfied, Shigeo went back to work. Two more hermit crabs joined the others in the bucket, along with one particularly large snail that had basically invited himself by crawling up the handle.
“Are you going to empty the whole pool, Shige?” his mom asked, watching the creatures scuttle over each other.
“Mm, no. I wanted nine for Ritsu.”
“Well, you’ve got over a dozen.”
“Oh.”
It was probably time for him to be done anyway. The tide was nearly in and when he reached down to the bottom of the pool the water was nearly all the way up to his shoulder.
Shigeo shuffled through the churning sand to the rocks and gingerly attempted to remove himself from the pool. The weather-worn stone was smooth as it was, and dripping all over it made it almost impossible to get a grip on.
“Here.”
A hand wrapped around his and Shigeo happily held tight. His mom tugged him up out of the water and stood, her hand not leaving his own until they had safely navigated the rock path and set foot on the sand once again. She handed him his bucket and Shigeo shot her a smile.
He smiled even wider when he saw Teru hurrying towards them. Shishou followed after, looking skeptical.
“Come on, Reigen! They’re not the same,” Teru called back, his eyes dancing with humor.
“Crabs are just cockroaches with body armor,” Shishou argued. His hand whipped through the air and forced a seabird to swerve to avoid his fist.
Teru laughed and Shigeo’s mom choked out an odd sounding chuckle.
“Not a fan of bugs, I hear? Good luck with these two this summer…” She shook her head.
Shishou groaned.
Shigeo didn’t pay the adults much attention. Not when Teru had practically stuck his head into the bucket and was praising him for his excellent hermit crab hunting skills.
“Thank you!” Shigeo let all his joy spill out onto his face, his eyes crinkling at the corners.
Teru blinked at him and suddenly looked a lot pinker than he had a moment before. Was he getting sunburned? He wasn’t wearing a sunhat, after all. Before Shigeo could offer his own, Teru darted back towards the waves.
“Reigen wants to see the crabs!” he cried as he plunged back into the ocean.
Shigeo looked to his Shishou and held out the bucket, feeling a smidge mischievous when he cringed back.
“I do not. Teru’s full of it.”
Shigeo’s mom laughed and Shigeo cherished the sound. He hummed softly, the warm curl returning to his chest.
Yes. Gratitude was definitely better.