Chapter Text
Don’t make any waves
Be calm (silent)
Stay safe (trapped)
Keep your feet in the sand (ashes)
Smell the ocean breeze (smoke)
Waves clean
Waves smoothe
Waves devour
Waves kill
They’re coming for me (they always were)
I’m going back to them (I always was)
Their salt can clean my wounds
And maybe I’ll finally scar
- Kairi, age 14
Eleven weeks ago
Kairi stares at the ocean, feet buried in the sand. Another wave rolls in, water rising to her knees, then retreats. It’s colder than usual. She doesn’t move.
From behind her, Riku tosses their shoes into the sand and rolls up their pants, running forward. Their feet reach the water and they yelp. “Shit, that’s cold!”
Kairi snorts and glances back at them. “Really? I don’t think so.”
“You’re kidding. It’s fucking freezing.”
She makes a show of rolling her eyes and walking further into the ocean. “Maybe, if you’re a wimp.”
Riku glares, but takes another step into the water, and another, and another. “You’re crazy if you don’t think this is cold.”
“What was that? I don’t hear wimps.”
They run to catch up to Kairi so the water is at their thighs. “I said you’re crazy,” they bite out through gritted teeth.
Kairi just shrugs.
The ocean looks almost red under the setting sun, gorgeous and jarring all at once. They’re going to have to go home soon. Home, where her dad won’t be, because he never is. Home, where Riku’s parents will be fighting again. The word is starting to lose meaning.
She’s not ready to leave yet. Images flash in her mind of different ways to keep Riku here with her just a little longer, ranging from a polite request to near-violence.
There’s a larger wave coming towards them. She glances at Riku, but they haven’t noticed it yet. She should tell them, so they can both get back to shore.
“The sunset is pretty tonight,” she says instead.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Kairi sighs and playfully shoves their shoulder. “Oh, come one, really look at it. Take a deep breath, and let that beauty sink in.”
Riku raises an eyebrow. “Okay, crazy.”
Kairi watches as their eyes focus on the sky and they inhale, slowly, letting their shoulders drop.
Kairi tackles Riku and pushes them both under the water just as the massive wave crashes over them.
Salt stings her eyes as she swims up to the surface, Riku close behind her.
Riku flips their hair back once they’re both on dry land, shivering, teeth chattering. “What was th-that for?!”
Kairi tries to hide it, but she can’t stop her teeth from clacking against each other as the cold laces its way through her body. “F-fun.”
“No! N-not fun!” Riku grabs their towel and throws another at Kairi. They wrap the paopu-print fabric around themselves and glare. “You know my mom hates it when I come home wet!”
“Oh, no, I forgot, I’m sorry,” Kairi says, averting her eyes and clutching the towel around her shoulders. She knows they’ll believe her. Everyone always does. “We’ll just stay here until we’re both dry, then. Come on.”
Kairi leads them up the ladder and into the small treehouse. They both sit down against the wall, barely an inch apart. The last rays of sun slip through the cracks in the walls and warm the planks beneath them.
It’s quieter than usual. It doesn’t feel right.
“I miss Sora,” Riku says, voice low. “I wish he could have come today.”
Their words linger as if to fill his empty space, to fill the silence he would never leave.
“Me, too.” Kairi inches closer and rests her head on Riku’s shoulder, shivering slightly still. “We’ll see him tomorrow.”
Riku smirks down at her. “Not cold, huh?”
“Nope.”
“Sure.”
Kairi waits for an I told you so or for them to scoot away from her, but they just rest their head on hers.
Kairi closes her eyes and the only sounds for a few minutes are the waves and their breath.
When Kairi was a kid, her mom would take her out to the beach on the mainland and hold her close as they watched the ocean together. The smell of the water, the warmth of her mother’s breath, the sound of the birds—they meant everything to her. They filled the hole her lost life had left.
Now the hole is back, and the ocean and the birds can’t fill it.
A tear falls onto the towel before she even realizes she’s crying.
“Riku?” She hates how small her voice sounds.
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want to go home.”
Riku doesn’t speak for a minute, but their body shakes, and when they do finally respond, their voice sounds choked. “I don’t either.”
“I hate that we have to.”
For a moment the two of them just quietly cry, and then Riku stiffens a little, straightening their back. “What if we didn’t have to go home?”
“What do you mean?” Her voice is hoarse, and she’s too exhausted from crying to open her eyes.
“You came from another world, right?”
The question jolts her awake.
Kairi’s breath hitches. Her heart is beating too fast. She leans back so she can look at them, her awareness narrowing just to their eyes, their voice. Riku has their idea face, and when they have their idea face they don’t let the idea go. They just push and push, and Kairi doesn’t want to talk about where she came from. She doesn’t want to think about it.
She swallows and says, “Yeah.”
“That means there are other worlds. That means we could just… go to one!”
Riku sounds so excited, and she’s not following. Why would they want to go to another world?
“What are you saying?”
“We can just leave!”
It clicks.
If they leave, if they get to another world, no one can bring them back. If they leave, they won’t have to worry about their parents. They’ll never have to go home again. They can just… live .
Kairi nods, a smile slowly growing. A real one, this time. “Let’s do it. We’ll build a raft, and we’ll just fucking leave.”
“Do you know how to build a raft?”
“Nope, but I’ll do some research and figure it out.”
Riku nods, laughing. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, we’re really doing this.”
Figuring out how to build a raft wouldn’t be too difficult, right? There had to be at least one book about it in the library. It would all take time, though—months, probably.
“Let’s tell Sora tomorrow,” Riku says.
Kairi’s plans come to a screeching halt. No, Sora’s not coming. She’ll miss him, sure, but Sora’s happy here. His moms are good to him, he likes living here, he’s doing well in school—that’s so rare, she can’t just let him throw all that away! And he would, too! He would throw everything away to come with them. And, besides, she hasn’t spent this much time just with Riku in forever, and she’s really looking forward to it. Don’t they want that, too? Or is her company not good enough for them?
Do they think she’s not good enough for them?
“No. Sora’s not coming, and we’re not telling him,” Kairi insists.
“What?!”
“Sora’s not like us! He’s happy here!”
“So? We’ll come back,” Riku says, but they hesitate.
“Will we? When? We have no way of knowing that. Sora will want to come home, and we can’t promise him that. That’s not fair to him.”
Riku stands, crossing their arms. “What, so we never see him again? We just go the two of us, leaving him behind forever? I don’t want to do that.”
She can feel the sting of their words on her cheek and for a moment she’s stunned.
So she really isn’t enough for them.
The thought echoes off the walls, louder and louder.
Fine.
Fine, she’s not enough for Riku. Well, that’s too fucking bad. They agreed to run away with her, just the two of them , and there’s no way in hell she’s letting them back out now.
Kairi stands and takes a step towards Riku, looking right in their eyes. “So you’re not willing to go without Sora, one of your two best friends, but you’re perfectly happy for him to never see both of his moms again?” She lets the words sink in, watches as they seep under Riku’s skin and into their wide, turquoise eyes. “I didn’t think you were that selfish.”
She turns around before she can see the hurt on their face, but she can still hear their choked sob. She bites her tongue. Say something now and the blow will be for nothing. Say something now and Riku won’t care about her ever again.
For a moment nothing happens, and Kairi wonders if she just lost everything.
“You’re right,” Riku murmurs finally, resigned. “We can’t ask him to come with us. We’ll—we’ll go alone.”
Kairi blinks back tears. Maybe she shouldn’t feel as relieved as she does. Maybe she shouldn’t be doing any of this.
Maybe she doesn’t care.
Maybe she cares too much.
She paints a comforting smile on her face and turns back around to face them. “We’ll still have plenty of time with him. Let’s leave a week after school gets out, that way we have multiple days of Sora all to ourselves.”
Riku wipes their reddened eyes. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
Kairi takes Riku’s hand and has to focus to keep herself from gripping too hard. They’re coming with her. In a few months, the two of them will get on a raft together, and then Riku will be stuck with her, and they’ll have to rely on her. They’ll have to think she’s enough.
Riku squeezes her hand once, crushing the breath from her lungs. The way they’re looking at her—the trust, the compassion, the gratitude… They don’t get it. They don’t see what she’s doing. They don’t know what she is.
She looks away so she doesn’t have to see it.
“I’m glad you’re coming with me,” they say.
Kairi blinks back tears and smiles, but it’s hollow. They won’t notice. “I can’t wait!”
Today
3 weeks before departure
Kairi stares at the numbers in front of her, clamping down on the urge to tap her pencil on the desk. She glances at the clock. 24 minutes left.
It’s plenty of time. She knows this stuff so well she could probably finish the test in half that. But then what? Another A? Another “perfect!” in red ink at the top of the page?
She glances to her left. Riku’s chewing on their lip, staring intensely down at their exam.
Riku spent days reviewing this material with her. It felt like they were at her place almost every night, asking her again and again how to do the same problems. And then every time they just… left. Just a “thank you, see you tomorrow,” and then gone. She had even brought up the raft a few times, and they just redirected the conversation back to their homework.
When was the last time they actually talked to her? When was the last time they actually wanted her to be their friend, not their tutor?
Is that all she is to them?
She imagines failing the test. Crying as she gets her first failing grade, claiming that she was so focused on helping her friend that she didn’t get any time to actually study how she needed to. Hearing Riku apologize, brushing it off just enough to seem kind, but not enough to ease their guilt, watching as those tears fall. She wonders if their tears would taste like medicine, sweet and burning as they boil her venomous tongue.
Would her dad even notice if she failed? Would he care? Or would it be just one bad grade among hundreds of stellar scores, not nearly enough to prove that she was anything other than his perfect, brilliant daughter?
He would have to notice. She would make him notice.
She looks over the first problem again, analyzing how best to present an effort at the problem while completely fucking it up.
Something moves in the corner of her eye. She glances up from the test to find Sora flashing her a thumbs-up and mouthing, “You got this!” from a few desks away.
Her plans to fail the test sink down into her stomach, guilt and shame crashing over her. Sora just… believes in her. Not because he wants anything from her, just because he cares and because he can.
She imagines lying to him. She imagines ripping out another thread from the tapestry of trust they’ve built.
She finishes the test in fifteen minutes.
-
The heat clings to her skin as she, Sora, and Riku walk home. She pulls out her water bottle and drains what’s left of it.
“So Kairi,” Sora says, folding his arms behind his head, “how do you think you did on the test?”
Kairi forces a laugh. “I don’t know, I don’t think it went too badly.” She doesn’t want to talk about it, she doesn’t want to think about it. She can’t shake the thought of Riku’s tears or her father’s shock.
Riku shoves her shoulder with theirs, jolting her to the present. “Oh, please, you’re a genius. You’re the only reason I had any idea what I was doing.” They pause, and then quietly say, “Thank you for that, by the way.”
The lingering resentment writhing in Kairi’s stomach stills, and when she looks at Riku it’s like she’s seeing them with new eyes. Or maybe she’s seeing them with old eyes, the ones she had before the islands started feeling like a cage.
“How do you think you did, Sora?” Riku asks.
Sora flashes his signature grin. “I’m no Kairi, but I think I did alright.”
The air feels even warmer than it did before somehow. “Okay, okay, stop it,” Kairi insists, stretching her arms behind her back and leaning forward to look at the two of them. “You’re both still coming to the play islands tomorrow, right?”
“Yup,” says Riku. “I’ve been looking forward to it all week.” They give her a look, and she knows they mean that they’ve been preparing to work on the raft, reading through the several books on construction and boats she got from the school library.
Sora smiles. “Of course! Mama and I are gonna make cookies tonight so I can bring some with us.”
Riku starts gushing over Sora’s amazing cookie recipe, but Kairi’s excitement for tomorrow fizzles out. She thinks of Sora in the kitchen with his mom all night, laughing and getting cookie dough on their hands. Her throat closes up. When was the last time she and her dad had done something like that? When was the last time she and her did anything together at all?
Kairi’s house is furthest from the school, so she sees Sora and Riku off to their respective houses and walks the rest of the way home alone.
It’s too quiet without them—everything else becomes magnified to fill the space. The air is stickier. Her thighs burn from the uphill climb. There’s a song stuck in her head and it keeps getting louder.
The last few steps to her front door are a relief. She rummages around in her bag for a moment, grabs her key, and opens the door.
Her dad is standing over the counter in the kitchen, hurriedly spooning soup into his mouth.
Kairi drops her bag at the door and toes her shoes off. “Dad, you’re home!”
He glances towards her. “Yeah, I’m actually—”
She cuts him off with a tight hug, knocking the breath from his lungs with a soft “oof.” Kairi was certain he would be at work right now. He usually doesn’t get home for another few hours, but maybe this is one of his days off. She’s never been very good at understanding what exactly his work schedule looks like.
Then she notices he’s wearing his scrubs.
She lets go and thinks of Sora measuring out the flour for the cookies while his mom cracks an egg.
“I’m actually heading out in a few minutes,” her dad finishes. He drinks another spoonful of soup.
“Oh. Right.”
“How was school?” he asks before bringing the bowl to his mouth and pouring the rest of the broth down his throat.
Kairi hops up onto one of the stools at the counter. She rests her chin on her hands and tilts her head. “It was okay, I guess. We had a math test and I don’t feel too great about how I did.”
“I’m sure you did just fine, sweetheart.”
She clenches her jaw. Of course she did just fine, but couldn’t he just listen to her for once? “I really don’t know, I—”
“You’re a perfect student, and I know you did perfect.” He says it in a matter-of-fact way as he sets his bowl in the sink, like there’s no further room for discussion.
Kairi thinks of Sora’s mom preheating the oven as he mixes the dough.
Her dad walks over to the door and slips his shoes on. “There’s more soup in the fridge for you for dinner, okay? I won’t be home until pretty late, so don’t wait up.”
“Okay.”
“Call me if you need anything. If I don’t pick up, I’ll call you as soon as I can after.”
“Okay.”
He turns to the door, and it’s as if she’s seeing him reach for the handle in slow motion. She thinks of him leaving like this, over and over and over, not a moment spent with her until she’s gone, sailing away on a raft with Riku. She wants one night with him. Just one, the night before she leaves.
“Um, Dad?”
He pauses. “Yeah?”
“Do you think maybe in a few weeks you could ask for the day off and we could have a game night or something?”
He looks back, fixing his dark brown eyes on her, raising an eyebrow. “Um, sure. Just write it on the calendar, okay?”
“I will.”
He reaches for the door again, brown curls bouncing as he turns his head. “Love you.” He doesn’t look at her when he says it.
“Love you too.”
The door closes behind him.
Tears sting at the corners of Kairi’s eyes.
It doesn’t usually bother her how different she and her dad look. He’s an islander, through and through, just like Sora, and she’s… not. Of course they look different.
But sometimes she wonders if he would care about her more if she looked more like him. If he’d be able to look her in the eye when he says he loves her if she had brown eyes like his. If he’d notice the tension in her jaw if her face looked more like his.
Her mom was the one who had decided to adopt her. Kairi has always known that. Though it couldn’t have been much of a decision—if a child falls from the sky and ends up on the mayor’s doorstep, the mayor doesn’t have many options other than to take the child in.
But maybe her dad didn’t want her. Maybe it was something he and her mom had argued about.
Of course he’s never said anything like that, but he’s never refuted it either.
She thinks of Sora pushing the cookie tray into the oven as his mom chews on her lip, watching over his shoulder to make sure he doesn’t burn himself.
Kairi screams into the empty house, the sound ripping up her throat, not bothering to muffle the noise.
No one responds.