Chapter Text
Fishing was both a livelihood and a way of life for a lot of people, but especially those who went out on huge trawlers and other vessels for a week at a time. Usually those were entire crews, both for safety and productivity, but Kirishima was not one to group up with others, although he just went out every day rather than remain out. He hated bringing people into his stuff, feeling like he was always dragging them down and making them work too hard. Because of that, even to his detriment, he didn’t often go out with a companion. But it wasn’t all that bad as far as he was concerned. The solitude and the water were very good companions. If no one believed his fishing stories who cared?
The particular day in question was a little choppy but not bad. No storm clouds or dangerous weather forecasts, just wind and a grumpy sea. Other fishermen called him crazy for it but Kirishima loved days like this. He could haul good fish or hook good ones, didn’t matter if it was a net or a rod to him. But these days tended to be the ones that he cast a net on one side and then fished off the other. Sport fishing wasn’t really his jam but he also was cautious about what species he pulled up. Endangered or over-fished ones got put back in the water. Most females and egg-carrying creatures went back. He never caught more than he needed for a small amount of fresh fish at his stand each day and some for dinner at home. Usually he had little to no problems involving bringing up unwanted creatures—sharks, the accidental turtle, things of that nature. But that wasn’t the case on this day.
He felt a hard tug on his line and gave a toothy grin. Kiri let it give one, two, three more pulls before jerking the line to sink the hook in and locking the reel from unwinding. It was a big catch whatever it was. His fishing rod was starting to bend, the flexible fiberglass keeping it from breaking, and it sure wasn’t a small bend either. He had to fight just to keep it attached to the outrigger on his vessel.
The line threatened to snap despite the give and take Kirishima was trying to do. Go lax, let it fight, start reeling in, stop when it thrashes too hard. The line and then the reel and ultimately the rod were all threatening to give out altogether or just snap off of the outrigger. Not only would that suck wind because it was his best pole, he’d lose what felt like a killer catch. Hell, maybe it was a blue marlin. Not only was it a kick-ass sport fish but it was considered a delicacy and he knew he could make a very pretty penny off of one. ...if he didn’t get gored first, but who was counting? He was always cautious and responsible so hopefully things like that could be avoided.
It took him a while to start finally pulling the catch in. A good twenty minutes of fighting had it maybe halfway to the water’s surface while the catch continued to fight so hard it was rocking the trawler dangerously. By then he could start to make out whatever he’d hooked and by god it was a big beast. He was starting to suspect he’d hooked a large shark and just wanted to get the poor thing up to unhook it and keep both of them safe. He had no way of knowing how both right and wrong he was.
Most of the way to the surface he saw his catch thrash and an absolutely enormous tail breached the surface. It was shark-like but nothing he’d ever seen before. It was long and flexible like a snake’s body but with the skin and tones of a shark, down to the fins. Agile seeming but able to move way more than a fish should have been able to while maintaining the features. Then he yanked once more and nearly stumbled back in shock because he could have sworn he saw human arms. Was this a shark that had eaten someone?! Having come this far already, especially with the risk of a body being involved. he knew he had to unhook whatever the hell this thing was. The redhead was incredibly wary, stomach churning and spine tingling with anxiety. This had gone from probably dangerous to definitely dangerous, whether he let the thing stay hooked or unhooked it. At this rate it’d tip his boat.
That wasn’t the worst of it, or maybe it just wasn’t the most frightening part. Finally, finally he got this thing to breach the surface completely and gasped, hands slipping off of the rod altogether. Only reason it didn’t just slip right into the water was the outrigger (which to be fair, was its job). This wasn’t a fish. But it was! But it couldn’t be. This thing’s bottom half was like an overly agile shark just like he’d thought initially, but the top half was a humanesque torso with humanesque limbs and bizarrely aquatic features. It had gill slits on its throat with some more along its ribs, like two sets of breathing organs were there or something. There were frills on its head where a human’s ears would be and its hair nearly looked like aquatic flora—something like kelp mixed with human hair. Messy human hair, but that could be expected of a head popping out of the water. This thing was fairly built, too: a strong chest and strong arms stood out, muscles large but not overdone. It had likely gained all of that from swimming and surviving in the water but Kirishima had a feeling it was more than that. Did things like this work out?
Most of all though, it looked pissed. Crimson slit eyes glared up at him, daring him to come any closer. There were sharp cheekbones to this thing’s human features, a strong jaw, dentaldermic skin in patterns on one side of his face. The patches went down from one cheek toward its jaw and then down its shoulder. And from the way he was being looked at, Kirishima could tell this thing wanted nothing more than to harm him for hurting it.
The creature thrashed as it tried to unhook itself, hissing with a loud feral sound. The hook had dug deep into the base of his lower half, hooking flesh and dentaldermis alike as it poked out of the thing’s torso skin. Kirishima startled and then quickly went to the line, not sure what to do. He risked a bite unhooking it but what else was he going to do? Cut the line and let that wound fester and rot?
“H-Hey!” he called out with absolutely no idea if it… He? Would understand him or not. Domesticated animals understood the sounds of words but wild animals didn’t have a reason to. But was this a person or an animal or?? “Hang on let me unhook you!”
When he went to reach out to grab the line though the thing lashed out with sharply clawed, webbed hands. Yet one more distinctly aquatic feature on a humanoid creature, slamming it right into uncanny valley territory. “Woah! Shit…” He’d barely avoided the swipe, so close a call that he could feel the rush of air it caused rustle his own unruly hair. “I was just tryna help.”
As he tried to figure out what to do next a thought clicked, a completely crazy one that he didn’t entirely know how to process. Was this… A mermaid? Man? Merfolk? Was that even possible? What the hell else could it possibly be? This thing was definitely pissed off at him and put him directly at risk. But if this was in fact something most people thought was a myth, it was even more important to unhook it. Maybe it… Wouldn’t be as angry if he was slow about it? Like any other fauna? “Hey there big guy,” Kirishima said in a lower, calmer voice, like he would talking affectionately to a puppy. “Let me unhook you, yeah? Get that thing out of you so you can go home?” Very slowly, he reached over the rail precariously in order to grab the line and give it some slack, thinking maybe that would help show his good intentions.
The mer, because that was the only thing it could have been whether that seemed nutso or not, clicked quickly and sharply in its throat, his sharp shark-like eyes eyes narrowing dangerously. But Kirishima made sure to keep moving slowly and deliberately, keeping both hands where the creature could see them at all times. As he reached for the hook again he did get hissed at, but the mer didn’t lash out again despite sounding particularly mean about it this time around. After some mental coaxing and plenty of amping himself up the redhead grabbed the hook, getting ready to pull it out.
It earned him a sharp growl of pain and several clicks and whistles, all of them somehow translating as reprimand. The expression on the mer’s face nearly looked like it was scolding him or telling him off more like, definitely angry and unimpressed. “Sorry there big guy,” Kirishima said in that gentle voice. “I know it hurts but I gotta get this thing outta you, okay?” It would probably feel awful and it would definitely hurt, but Kirishima really felt like this was the best thing to do. It was a living, breathing thing. Just because he was scared and bewildered didn’t mean that the thing didn’t deserve to be safe. He very carefully shifted the hook, trying to work it back out the way it went in without ripping out more flesh. This time, interestingly, the thing stayed still, entire body tense and breathing sharp. Wait, breathing? This thing was breathing in the air, what the hell? So it had two sets of gill slits but it also had lungs? Was this thing literally half humanoid, half shark? The thought nearly knocked Kirishima out of his concentration but thankfully he reigned himself back in. “Just a couple more seconds, then it won’t hurt as bad.”
He worked the hook out of the… fish? Person? Animal? Without much struggle. It bled but that wasn’t unexpected considering it was a strong hook coming out of a wound hole. Kirishima carefully moved back to standing fully upright once finished before flashing the shark man with a bright smile. “There ya go, all better! Now you don’t have to-shit!”
The mer had very suddenly slashed its tail through the air and then water, dorsal fin bumping the boat and caudal fin slapping the side right near where Kirishima’s hand had been. Again he had jerked back just in time. And like that the mer had flipped himself back under the water, using his tail to splash and soak Kirishima fully and completely before vanishing.
“What the hell…” He felt like he’d slammed his head into one of the booms of his trawler and was hallucinating or dying or maybe just losing his damn mind. Kirishima stayed where he was, looking out at the water in bewilderment and confusion and a good bit of awe. “Man… No one’s gonna believe this. Not even Denki.” Even high as a kite Denki would tell him it was all bullshit. As he was mulling over what in the actual hell had just happened he reeled up his net with the drag boom, concentrating on the fact that he had gotten a good haul. Thank fuck he didn’t bring up anymore weird creatures.
He was halfway through unloading and sorting through fish to make sure he didn’t take anything he didn’t need or any females that were likely carrying eggs. There was a knock against the side of the trawler that made him look up from his work in concern. Then another, louder bump that shook the entire vessel. Kirishima got up and went to the side to peer into the water when a form burst out of it toward him.
Kirishima fell back with a shout, landing on one poor fish and slicing his hand open on another’s gills. The mer from before was there, weight supported on one of the rails so he could glare into the boat at the redhead. Just as he was getting his bearings again, the… blonde? mer with wild hair and angry red eyes reached down… And tossed a huge blue marlin onto the vessel. Then he chirped and clicked before huffing and dropping back into the water. The splash he made this time wasn’t enough to soak Kirishima any more than he already was, though at this stage it honestly wouldn’t have mattered.
That wasn’t to say he was out of hot water because that marlin put him in the frying pan. It was understandably frightened and very mad and Kirishima had to scramble up to keep from being speared by the fish’s bill. Once he’d gotten the situation under control though, something new clicked. Had this been a show of gratitude for getting the fishing hook out of the mer’s side? Did they have complex social interactions and Kirishima was just looking at him from an animal’s perspective? What other reason would it have had to bring him a catch than a thanks? One hell of a thank you at that. Marlin was expensive and super valuable. Kiri was gonna have enough to eat and sell.
At this stage he was just plain in awe again. The fact that this thing was obviously fully cognitive wasn’t as jarring since part of it looked human. There was a cognitive dissonance there and he was grateful for it. Seeing something humanoid act humanoid wasn’t as frightening. It was like just another person. But the way it interacted with Kirishima had felt totally different to how animals or people interacted with him even so. It was so intelligent but wild, communicative but non-speaking, or at least it didn’t speak Japanese. It sounded like it spoke dolphin or something really, what with all those clicks and whistles. Its hiss had sounded exactly like how he’d have pictured a shark would hiss if he’d ever even thought about it. It very much so seemed to be something of a hybrid. Kirishima was instantly fascinated by it all.
He thought of the mer the entire way back to the market, eyes and mind on the sea but in very different directions. Even as he was setting up his catch to sell for the day, knowing the fresh fish would go fast, his thoughts were on that blonde shark man. Who was he? Were there more of them? What sort of species was it? Where did they live? How did they live? How was it even possible for them to exist??
He’d been right, too, natch. Denki, smoked out and oozing off of his boyfriend’s lap as he relaxed, didn’t even believe Kirishima when he told them. “It’s not that I think you’re lying,” the hyper-charged blonde said as he sank even further into the couch, “but it sounds like something that just plain can’t happen dude. Guess you saw what you saw man but I’m not convinced it was a like, merman or some shit.”
“Yeah that sounds… Kinda fishy.” Sero flashed one of his token shit-eating grins as Denki burst into (very high) laughter and Kirishima groaned loudly. “Still Ei isn’t the type to make shit up, babe. I dunno I might not think that shit exists but that doesn’t mean it can’t exist. You know, like mothman.”
“Mothman is real dude,” Denki said with an offended noise. “I saw it! It was on the roof and everything, I wasn’t even that high!”
“But you were high,” the brunette pointed out, grinning even wider.
“Shuddup dude!”
The rest of the night went on like that, half serious and half taking the piss at each other. Sero, monster that he was, even managed to sneak in several more puns. Several. Think about that. Sheesh… They had a bit of further conversation about the potential merman and all three of them came to the same conclusion: If he saw it again, there was his personal proof. If in doing that he got concrete evidence then all the better. If he didn’t ever see it again, oh well, at least whatever had happened was cool enough to bag him a fish.
When Kirishima got home he knew he’d be up all night thinking about the encounter but for once he was wrong. Instead he fell asleep and dreamed of sleek tail fins, a sharky grin, and red, vertical-slit eyes.