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It was commonplace for a little girl to say that she wanted to marry a prince when she grew older, that she wished to be swept off her feet in a tale of grandeur and taken away to a luxurious castle where they’d be waited on hand and feet. To dream of being a princess with a scepter and a crown, having maids calling you Senpai and butlers wait at your every beck and call was but a fantasy set up by the imagination of a little girl still believing she was stuck within a tower, waiting for the perfect prince to come and rescue her and while most girls did not dream of such a lifestyle, it was all Yashiro Nene could think since she had entered school. A dreamy boy would sweep her off her feet and they’d run away together to get married and live happily ever after. That was how most of these fairy tales went, prince saves the girl, prince marries the girl, prince and the girl live happily ever after. From beauty and the beast to Cinderella, it was clear that as the hopeless romantic she was, she’d do anything to find herself the perfect prince.
The problem? Anything didn’t quite cut yet. Boys talked about how they hated girly girls in elementary school and she found herself trying to get into masculine things to impress them (albeit enjoying all the video games, horror shows, and action figures her parents had given to her hesitantly) but then middle school hit the streets and girly girls were all that people spoke of. Pretty makeup and dainty hobbies, excellent bentos and sweet pastries all stuffed into a bag. This was the “princess” that boys were looking for, the girl of their dreams. To some, the princess lifestyle seemed to come easy to them as breathing (she thinks of Aoi with her hair up and her smile bright, her beauty unmatched, boys falling at her feet—a true queen amongst the school) while for others, hard work was all they could offer. Nene supposed that she didn’t quite mind this, that working to cook and trying to find outfits that matched each other was all too fun, putting on makeup and nail polish and presenting baked goods to solidify her love was not ludicrous to her in the slightest. It would all come to fruition eventually and she would be the princess of her dreams, paired up with a prince by her side—a true bride to be.
“Huh, you love me?” Faceless, utterly turned away, “who are you, gross… besides, you aren’t even my type, with those chunky radish legs of yours.”
And what was once supposed to be a fairy tale shattered before her very eyes. Princes were supposed to be sweet, Princes were supposed to be kind and yet Nene finds herself desperately searching for the school socks she’s worn since entering Kamome panting as she grips the sides of a bathroom sink and stares at her reflection in the mirror. What use would a Princess be if she couldn’t even look pretty ? What prince would take her as a bride if she couldn’t even appeal to them? The socks are gone by next week and when Aoi comments on her black stockings during the summer, Nene musters up the courage to smile and lie through her teeth. “My old socks all shrunk in the wash during laundry day,” she whispered as Aoi sympathetically patted her back, as the image of cut up socks being shoved into a garbage bag burns into her mind. She keeps the baggy ones to hide her ankles, she wears the stockings to ignore the elephant in the room.
But no matter, of course, she would do anything for love—anything in fact that the thought of making someone fall in love with her had been the most selfish thought her mind had come up with and yet, she knocks three times on an old bathroom stall door and becomes pulled into a fairy tale that she did not sign up for. Instead of a prince rescuing her from a tower, it’s a perverted ghost granting her wish to become human again, instead of a story where she was saved from an evil abusive childhood of being nothing but a servant, she’s more than turned into one with her duty as the designated bathroom cleaner and instead of transforming from a lowly peasant to a beautiful princess, Nene finds herself avoiding the water as much as possible lest her scales count her as nothing but the newest rumor on the block; the daikon fish girl sounded like such a horrible nickname.
Hanako-kun is nothing like a prince either. Loud and abrasive, perverted and too clingy, he haunted a bathroom for god’s sake and unless he could magically transform it into a three story castle—Nene found no reason to be interested in him. She was nothing but his assistant, nothing but a friend who helped him with his duties like all friends should. In the midst of ripping off yorishiros and juggling school life with the sudden reality that she was no longer as human she thought, however, had left a clear dent in her love life and what was once a dream for a prince to sweep her off her feet had become more of a plea that one day, she would be rescued by a prince to save the day. There was no telling what Hanako-kun would have her do and yet, she sticks by him out of the obligation of being his friend, out of the price of being selfish enough to flush his warnings down a toilet and down a mermaid scale without thinking of the consequences and now she was stuck cleaning toilets and fixing rumors monotonically wondering if they had Cinderella shoes that fit her feet.
She had been certain that there was nothing more to Hanako-kun than met the eye, that he was simply a perverted ghost with no redeeming qualities whatsoever and that whatever came out of his mouth regarding feelings and her were never to be taken seriously because Hanako-kun was a perverted flirt who only liked to tease and hold her when he shouldn’t be near her at all, nothing like a prince, nothing even close to her type.
So why did she feel as if her heart would burst from her chest when she saw him standing under the rumored confession tree? Why did she feel tears streaming down her face because she had once again made a fool out of herself into thinking that Hanako-kun would actually confess? Being held so close to him as tears slipped from her eyes and down her cheeks, staining his gakuran, was almost equal to being hugged as tight as ever possible and Nene could only hold onto him for as long as she felt like crying wondering why he never showed this side of himself before, wondering why she wanted to find out just exactly who Hanako-kun was, past and all.
Thus, her search for the ghost haunting the bathroom stall had begun.
It was supposed to be simple, it was supposed to be quick, but nothing in Yashiro Nene’s life had to come easy and when the first glimpse into his past becomes that of a bruised boy giving up on his dreams, dying too young and living life permanently as a ghost tethered to the near shore—watching people grow old like he had never gotten to—she can’t help but think that fate is not fair to those its hurt and Hanako-kun’s cold embrace was only part one of the evidence stacked against the damning truth. The more she learned of his past, the more Yashiro Nene felt like Hanako-kun was more like a tortured soul somehow still getting punished even in his afterlife from his tormenting brother to his duties as the seventh mystery, it all seemed like too much to place on the shoulders of a middle schooler who probably never even grew up to learn how to say no and that it was okay to feel bad and to tell your friends you felt bad but she knew that Hanako-kun would never take her up on such an offer, that it would be when pigs started flying would he ever willingly place his life within her hands to flip through the pages.
Somehow, it hurt that she wasn’t trusted enough to learn more about him. That she had to pull through thick and thin to understand who he was and even when he dumped her in a world where he had never died, where his brother was never tormented, where supernaturals had ceased to exist, it still wasn’t enough to show her who he was because through his excitement about space and his eagerness to show her the stars, Nene was still so clueless about everything about him and nothing helped when Hanako-kun had decided to continue this act of being a human, when Nene found herself enjoying her company with this Yugi Amane but missing the boy who called her legs radishes and squeezed her too hard when they hugged. She missed the boy who told stupid jokes that weren’t even funny, who comforted himself in the knowledge that he could help everyone with her assistance, who was kind and supportive and told her that humans like her, so determined to push through any odds against them, were humans who just never knew how to give up, who never knew how to back down no matter what the circumstances would be.
“The boy I like isn't here!” She remembers shouting it to him as he finally crossed the threshold of the academy, remembers ducking her head as a fierce blush overtook her cheeks, pink dusting across her the tips of her ears and the bottom of her neck because she had said that Hanako-kun wasn’t in the world, that the kind and strong boy who seemed to always appear when she needed him the most was the real person she liked and maybe, finding love with a prince was nothing but a fairy tale dream to her after all. Maybe trying to beautify herself for a prince to come waltzing through the doors was nothing but an attempt to hide away the feelings curling deep within the pits of her stomach because how could she like Hanako-kun, the same boy who had teased her relentlessly with no pause in between, how could she like Hanako-kun, the ghost who flourished his cape when danger emerged and shielded her even at the expense of his own soul?
The thought was ludicrous, far from ever sounding sane, and Nene figured she could entertain the idea that it was a one time crush, that having someone care for her and protect her and be there was just something her heart yearned for and found in a person who wasn’t even alive to have a heartbeat any longer. She supposed that like all her mid-fling desires, Hanako-kun would come and go like the changing of the seasons or the falling of autumn leaves, changing their bright green colors and swapping them for oranges and reds and sunset hues. So what if his eyes looked like delicate moons whenever she stared into him? So what if she grew panicked at the prospect of actually enjoying his company and what if she sat in her room huddled with her covers and staring at a rocket keychain being twisted in her fingers because Yugi Amane and Hanako-kun were one and the same and yet—they couldn’t have been more different than Minamoto Teru and Minamoto Kou.
It calms her somewhat, to convince herself that Hanako-kun was nothing but one of those fleeing crushes like Minamoto Teru or Fuji from the student council. It was easy to tell her brain that romances with a ghost was just the illogical part of her hopeless romanticism seeping through her better judgement, that maybe Hanako-kun flourishing his cape as he stood on the theatre chairs didn’t look like a prince ready to save her from any danger, that the way Hanako-kun fought with all his heart and soul just for her was something that he’d do for anyone else if he had to and that Yashiro Nene was not an exception to the rule and it was easy to trick her mind to believing that Hanako-kun’s desperate attempt to keep her alive, squashing her down into a world of fiction and bold imagination all boiled down to the fact that she was his loyal assistant, that she was helping him and whatever feelings arose from the close proximity they shared was nothing short of unprofessional, unneeded and untrue.
No one could love someone like her.
She wasn’t as popular as Aoi nor was she as pretty as her either. Her legs were too chunky and boys seemed much more inclined to like Aoi more than they could ever like her. There was nothing going for her that would have a boy like her and unless someone liked their girlfriend turning into a fish every time they touched water, she wasn’t so sure that they’d like her ‘uniqueness’ either—shallow as they are plain, Nene was almost used to the fact that finding her forever prince would never happen, almost used to the idea that she couldn’t find love even if she summoned a ghost and begged for someway to have it. All she would get in the end would be nothing but heartbreak. Either because she almost thrust someone into a relationship against their will or because there was no way that she could have feelings for a supernatural she had bonded to simply out of desperation. The mermaid scales had to have been the cause of all these strange occurrences.
They had to be the reason her heart picked up speed when Hanako-kun smirked in her direction, the reason why she felt her palms go sweaty as they held hands or he pressed himself close to her when protecting her from harm’s way or even when she was hugged to his chest while he used his body as a shield. It was the reason why she couldn’t get Hanako-kun out of her mind even on the smallest occasions, the explanation for the relief she felt whenever he appeared even if it was just to tease her. If she could just blame all her feelings on the stupid bond she had made out of desperation then it would be fine, Hanako-kun would have no reason to believe otherwise and even if she suggested the idea of them being together, it was as impossible as it was ludicrous.
A ghost and a human shouldn’t be together, a ghost and a human shouldn’t have feelings for each other, a ghost a human were on separate planes of existence and even if the mermaid scale bonded them to each other through life and death (and limbo if they were so lucky), Yashiro Nene could be content with having her feelings disappear, she could be fine with never having loved Hanako-kun to begin with and there was no reason for her to think otherwise.
That is, until Sumire came into play.
For as long she could remember, Nene had wanted a fairy tale romance that could be just like the books she read. Whether that be saved by a prince falling from the sky (though Minamoto Kou was more of a knight than anything else) or protected by a king wielding his sword (Aoi Akane comes into mind, holding out his stopwatch and turning into a supernatural before her very eyes and she thinks, lucky is what Aoi-chan must be), the premise of it had always been the same. A prince would come to her aid, brandishing their weapon and lifting her off her feet, pushing themselves into harm’s way simply because they wanted to keep her as unscathed as possible. It was a love story waiting to happen, a fantasy only come true with supernaturals crawling all over her legs and a cape blowing in the wind, the handle of a red knife as the silver blade glinted in the light and Hanako-kun doesn’t fall from the sky or stand in front of a foe too powerful for him to appease (he instead fights with everything and more, pulls her close and shields her from the aftermath, holds his weapon high and becomes a pseudo-prince in the making with wolf ears and a tail, she begins to wonder if she’s red riding hood instead of Cinderella).
Ignoring what was best described as a yearning for what she couldn’t have, Nene figured that the same old routine would transpire. She would grab the Yorishiro, rip it off, and then everything would turn back to normal. There would be nothing else to fix and she could go back to ignoring how her heart kept acting as if it was being sent into overdrive whenever Hanako-kun so much as flirted with her beyond mere teases and jabs. At least, that’s what should have happened. Instead, Life is not kind to Yashiro Nene and it’s even more cruel to Hanako-kun than ever before. Sumire is a girl Nene doesn’t think she has anything in common with, Sumire is a girl who is telling her of her story as she prepares a bath and smiles at her just like Aoi always does.
“Perhaps…Gon is your lover?”
And with every person who says such words, Nene flusters and flails until Sumire grabs her hands, until she smiles like Aoi and tells her it’s okay as if she had something to be ashamed of. “In this world, being attracted to supernaturals is a form of taboo…” she walks as if she’s floating and Nene can only stare as she continues to speak as if this whole ‘falling in love with the other shore’ was nothing but old news to her, “and if you fall in love despite that, you can’t do anything about it.” Her eyes look too bright to be filled with such sadness, her smile looks like it’s cracking at the edges.
“ Just like me.”
Fairy tales were meant to be happy, fairy tales were meant to sweep you into a world of wonder and grandeur that you could escape to whenever you had the chance. Yashiro Nene had once believed in fairy tales, she had once sought out a prince to make hers and discouraged any other person who couldn’t live up to such high expectations. They’d need to be good looking, they’d need to be able to fight and protect her, sweeping her off her feet, they’d need to be admired by all those who knew their name and huddled deeply underneath her covers, Nene stares at the full moon with wide eyes, the rocket keychain gently dangling from her hands.
Hanako-kun was not a prince who was tall and had every girl at his feet. Hanako-kun was not a prince who could sweep her off her feet and check off everything a fairy tale grandeur man could have. He was not something you would find in your local comic book or fairy tale story, not someone who held a crown and a scepter but flourished his cape and tipped his hat like a gentleman from a far away land. Her head shifts until she can lay it on her knees and holding the key up, watching the rocket swing in front of the moon, Yashiro Nene decides that falling in love with a supernatural being is utterly forsaken.
Maybe, Hanako-kun was her very own prince after all.