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My sister is seasick.
It’s not that Nagisa has ever really entered a boat willingly. She detests the very idea of being on a ship, she claims that it’s what takes away good men from their families, only leaving behind scattered ruins of houses built with hard-wired hands. For a practical hand-down person, she always became arguably poetic about the sea. I mistakenly brushed it off as melancholy, but even my calculations are wrong.
So here we go, she wakes me up a few hours before dawn, and her eyes are wide open drooping onto the bags formed under her sockets. I can tell right away that she hasn’t had any sleep, because she looks like a harpy ready to go on a manhunt. But that’s just her sickness, which I have told her many times that it goes away.
“Tomohiko,” her voice cuts through glass even in the high-pitched whispers of her range, “Tomohiko!”
But I was already awake in front of her when she called out my name. It’s as if she enjoys the way it rolls on her tongue, a hint of need here, a hint of security there.
“I went on a walk- yes, don’t be mad. I went on a walk because I couldn’t sleep at the be-beach and I saw Mokuzu!”
There it is. The monster under my little sister’s bed. The most pleasant monster of them all, a mermaid. A siren who has stolen her heart, her five senses and her mind. I won’t bother scolding her, there would be no point in that. She is usually reasonable, but not today. She’s wearing her school uniform from a month ago, from the middle school she no longer attends. The sleeves are a little too short on her, her blouse tight around her waist, but she is prideful. Nagisa stays close to the monster that is haunting her.
“I swear, she turned into a mermaid! I-I’m not making this up, she turned into foam and joined the ocean, even if it’s polluted. She was resting on the beach but swam away when I approached her.” At this point I already know where this is going. I’m putting on my jacket and taking out my flashlight. I know I have a role to fulfill, at least until I can check her medication cabinet after she’s slept. I have to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Who knows? Mokuzu always claimed she’d turn into foam and become a mermaid. She has always been an exotic urban legend, suffocating on the oxygen of our closed off premises in a town that is more or less a ruin of a village. I confirm this when I get out to be greeted by concrete skies and a half moon, coveted in cloud smog.
Nagisa leads the way through the pavements and the soft breeze that rushes next to the dying flowers next to our feet as we march towards the beach. The sounds of the sea grow louder and it’s horrifying, like approaching a gravesite. Then again, aren’t we? Mokuzu did abandon this world for the heart of the ocean. ‘Her mark on the earth was a tsunami, hoping to swallow up our soulless town.’ Is what Nagisa says whenever she refers to her shell of a friend.
The sand is deep and it finds its way into my shoes, tingling with the fabric of my socks. So far the walk is quiet, derived of my sister’s murmurs and white face. She’s seeking her like a maniac, dried sea water on her lips. I ask her about it and she chuckles a bit, like it’s obvious.
“How else am I supposed to punish her for this cliffhanger? I’ll drink her up.”
Nagisa opens her arms and takes off her shoes. No care in the world, her clothes soaking wet, she runs to the depth of the ice-chapped sea. It’s a cold night, the moon freezing over salt water. It almost appears to be sweet.
My sister becomes seasick. She starts dipping her head in. I can tell from afar that she’s drinking up the water.
“She was here. This is where she dove!” Nagisa dives again and my gut falls heavy on my abdomen. “Don’t be useless! Come see her!”
I slowly approach the ill girl that took over Nagisa. I take a look underwater. It’s all black. Dark like charcoal. She doesn’t like my answer.
“You’re not touching her! If you dive, you’ll find her laying on the ground. She’s tricking me Tomohiko!” My sister’s orders are now frantic. She pushes my head in with force I did not know she had. I have no choice but to indulge her.
The bottom of the ocean is empty and heartless. I can only rely on touch, since my ears and eyes are filled with the gust of sand hitting against me the deeper I dive. I feel a hard surface, surprisingly lean, but still hard enough to be a part of the sea’s large family. A shiny rock, a huge pebble. The kids on my street collect these all the time. I probably did too when I still could barely count the digits on my right hand.
I show it to her in excitement, but Nagisa moans in despair.
“Mokuzu is no rock! Mokuzu can’t be a rock! She’s too frail for those rough edges!” She screams now, and she dives in. I remember the passage I thought to myself earlier about a town swallowed up by the sea. The dreadful feeling comes to me when I realize that perhaps Nagisa wishes to be swallowed up by Mokuzu in a way to numb her ability to feel. Or perhaps remember it.
Truth be told, I resent that insane girl. She hurt my sister beyond words can tell. What kind of friend just dies on you like that, after hinting so heavily on pain and suffering that can’t be comprehended by a mere human being? Who the hell is born as a mermaid only to be eaten by a man like raw salmon?
I get worried when I fail to see my sister’s face pop out of the water. She’s losing all of the air inside her lungs, but she can’t help but dig at the rocks and pearls she can’t see under our feet. She’s a tiny crab, holding onto the relics of an underwater kingdom, forgetting her place in the mainland. Until I fish her out, and her face is now black.
“Did you find her?”
“No.” She spits out sea-water. “I think I’m getting seasick.”
“I don’t think she would go here.”
“Why not?” Nagisa says between deep breaths. “Why the fuck not? This her home. This is where she’s meant to rest.”
“Nagisa-“ I’m slapped to the face.
“She ran off here! I fucking know she did! And now she’s trying to get away from me because she’s an immature brat who can’t be a loyal friend to me! Because she can’t forgive me!” The girl wails, and her breathing is out of control. My mouth remains agape as I watch my sister lose her ability to swim and struggle against the waves. Her teary eyes blew off the mask she puts on all the time, and I can see that she will choke.
She kicks me when I pick her up. She kicks me and bites me all over. I have scab marks on my back and my face because she was too caught up hating her body’s natural processes in the water than calming down. Removing her from the ocean hurts my legs, but I manage. I reach the beach and ignore her screams. Her curses. Her threats of how she will kill me, how she will kill herself.
All for that damned siren.
Not damn, damned. Because Mokuzu was doomed from the very start to become one with the water. That’s where she belonged, even if she died far away from it.
When we reach the stairs that connect the beach to the town she quiets down. She’s hyperventilating silently, soaking the street with quiet tears so as not to create issues on her name around the city. Not that I’d care if she did, but I appreciate her not hitting me anymore.
We reach our place soon enough, and her voice is drowned in her own misery. The piggyback ride ends and we enter the house to go to our room. I’m surprised my mother didn’t hear a thing, but maybe it was better this way. She’d freak out if she saw Nagisa revert to a fetal position covered in seaweed.
“I’m seasick.” She repeats to me when we lie down, wetting the futons. “And the water is not salty enough. It’s still sweet.”
“I noticed the same thing. I think that’s why Mokuzu migrated.”
“You think?” Nagisa turns over to me. “She went away?”
“Leaving this place is best for her. She will be in cleaner water, away from the bad memories.”
I can tell that pains my little sister. She drives her hands to wrap around her figure. I bring our futons closer, covering her up with the blanket she purchased for me a few birthdays ago. It’s heavy like a mammoth, and it dries well.
“What about our memories?” Nagisa sobs, and I curse that filthy siren. I curse her for taking my cold sister’s heart and dropping it when she fell upon her own death. “What about the promises she made to me? Isn’t that unfair, Tomohiko? Isn’t it? Isn’t she cruel?”
Her sobs wake up every pang in my heart that stabs my chest, and I envelop her in my arms so that she doesn't wake anyone up.