Work Text:
His English, Souji knew, was pretty decent. Better than decent, actually. Pretty darn good, in fact.
Yet when faced with the lyrics of that song, he felt as if there was something vital and fundamental missing from his understanding of the English language. Maybe he was mishearing the words; the voices that were singing weren't exactly normal singing voices, but rather the sort of silly, whimsically exaggerated voices used for children's songs. He hadn't had any sort of exposure to this sort of pronunciation before. Maybe children's songs were just on a level that he wasn't able to comprehend yet.
Assuming this was actually a children's song. When he got to line about drinking in Italian restaurants, Souji had to pause the song, rewind it back, and then listen to it fifteen more times before confirming that, no, he hadn't misheard.
He was tempted at that point to cheat and just look up the lyric translations on the internet.
--
He managed to resist the temptation of looking up the lyrics until after his homework was returned to him. The 100 mark, followed by the professor's comment of, "Perfect! Good work, Seta! You've captured the true essence of this song!" and the scribble of a smiling fish head drained him of any desire to go look up the lyrics anyway.
He wasn't mistaken. It wasn't good to know.
--
He caught himself humming the song in the middle of sweeping his dorm room. He stopped, broom falling out of his numb fingers and clattering to the floor, and then let out a sound of frustration before seating himself at his desk and playing the song.
Fish heads. Fish heads. Rolly polly fish heads.
Wasn't there a recipe for fish head soup he'd seen somewhere?
--
"That's a catchy song, big bro! Can you sing it again for me? Maybe louder?"
He froze and turned to stare at Nanako, who had put down the small knife she was using to chop up celery in favor of smiling at him. Back in Inaba for Golden Week, and he was already corrupting his little sister during his first night. Something like shame unfurled itself in his heart.
"It's not that great of a song, actually. It's just a silly thing I had to translate for one of my English classes."
"Oh! I have to learn a foreign song for a presentation soon! Can you teach it to me, big bro?"
Souji looked down at the fish he was gutting. The mouth was open, and its milky dead eyes stared emptily at the sink it was being disemboweled in. Souji had one hand in the cavity of its stomach, ripping out the entrails that were attached to the flesh, and the other was holding the fish by the spine, a thumb resting in the cut that extended from the fin to the head in order to keep said cavity open.
He ripped out the guts, and a little bit of fish juice squirted out and hit the sides of the sink. The fish's dead eyes kept staring.
"You know what," Souji said as he dropped the fish guts in a little pile in the sink, "I'm going to teach you a song that's even better than that."
He desperately ran through all the songs he knew in English as Nanako cheered.
--
"What...is that?"
"Fish head soup," Souji replied calmly as he picked out an eye with his chopsticks. "Want some?"
Yosuke made a face and stepped back. "No, thanks. Not that I don't trust your cooking abilities, but that looks gross, man."
"What, you've never had whole fish before?"
"Dude, that's not a whole fish, and that's not soup. That's a thermos full of fish heads. Is there even liquid in there?"
He stabbed one of the heads viciously with a chopstick. Poor manners, yes, and the bit of fish stock that shot out of the head and hit Yosuke's faces was even poorer manners, but the point was made.
"Augh, partner, that's so—Oh, hey, not bad."
"You can't have any. Not after you've insulted it."
--
Last day of his Golden Week vacation, and Souji was spending it cooking a fish head soup dinner for all of his friends. It would be good, he decided, to get it out of his system while he still had people who would eat his cooking rather than cook up enough fish heads to feed a small army when he was by himself.
"Fish heads, fish heads, eat them up, yum," he sang under his breath, but then shut up for the rest of the cooking process when Naoto passed by and shot him a strange look.
Her English was good, too. He had to be careful around her.
--
When he got back to his dorm, he went straight for his laptop and searched for fish markets nearby his university. There were several. He memorized all of their addresses and plotted out a course for himself to make the most efficient visit to all of them.
There would probably be questions, he realized later that night, if he went to them everyday. Then again, if he bought enough at each store, he should technically have enough to last him at least a week. No, more than that if he bought them in bulk. Fish markets did that, didn't they? Sell fish heads in bulk. But if he bought too much, then he might have a hard time transporting them all, and the the fish markets probably would be happy seeing him carry in fish heads from competitor fish markets. He would have to find a way to smuggle them in—
And all of this was ridiculous.
--
He was in a library when the compulsion to listen to the song again struck him. For his own sanity, he didn't put the song on his MP3 player, although he had been sorely tempted to. He tried to ignore the feeling, to focus on the thick book of Jungian psychology in front of him, but when he caught himself humming the tune under his breath and probably disturbing the other students, he closed the book and went to the public computers.
He unplugged his earbuds from his MP3 player and connected it to the computer, then looked up the song. The first result was the official music video, and having never seen it before, he decided to watch and enrich his fish head experience.
The fact that he found himself identifying with the main character of the music video set off warning bells in his head. Somewhere, nestled comfortably in the back of his mind, Izanagi judged him.
--
"Senpai! What a surprise! I didn't expect to see you here! Looks like my decision to visit was a good idea."
Probably not true, knowing Rise, since this was the most popular cafe on campus for students, but Souji still put down his spoon and patted the chair next to him. Rise took the invitation without hesitation. After a few brief exchanges of greetings—Souji asking Rise about her career, Rise asking him about his classes—Rise looked over at his drink.
"Ooo, cappuccino. I heard they have good coffee here."
"They do," Souji said, handing her the menu he had been perusing. "They have good food, too."
"French and Italian," Rise said, flipping it open to the lunch entrées. "Very classy." She laughed and leaned against him a little. "Got any recommendations, senpai?"
Souji took a sip of his cappuccino. "The fish soup is good."
"Fish soup? Didn't you make that for us last Golden Week? I bet their soup can't compare to yours."
"It's true," he said sadly. "They don't put nearly as many fish heads in it as I do."
She stopped leaning on him.
--
After opening his fridge and freezer one night to find nothing but fish heads in them, Souji admitted to himself that he had a problem.
At least he wasn't dressing up the fish heads and having a party with them. Or actually taking them out to the movies. That would have been a waste of fish heads he could have eaten.
"I need help," he muttered to himself.
--
"I'm addicted to fish heads."
Margaret stopped in the middle of her explanation about her master's master and his physical guise to stare at him.
"I'm sorry," Souji said. "I know that it's important for me to learn about this Philemon person, but I thought that you should know. About my fish head addiction."
A beat, and then Margaret turned to the huge tome she carried. She flipped through the pages and eventually pointed at a colorful looking spread.
"The cups," she began. "A minor arcana, but one that will also guide your journey. Corresponding to the element of water, the cups..."
There was a fish on a few of the cards. They looked tasty.
--
"Why are you all at my—"
He was cut off by Kanji storming into his dorm room, the other investigation team members following closely behind.
"Intervention, senpai," Kanji said as Yosuke and Naoto made beelines to his fridge. "We're worried about you."
"Dude," Yosuke exclaimed as he pulled open the fridge, "what the hell?!"
"Sensei eats more fish than a bear does," Teddie quipped, sticking his head in between Naoto and Yosuke. "How can you bear such a diet?"
"It's not the only thing I eat—" Souji began, but he was cut off by Chie placing her hands on his shoulders.
"Souji, it's okay. We're here to help."
"Help," Yukiko muttered beside her, looking not at all pleased. Rise didn't look too happy either, and Souji got the impression that it wasn't because of his fish head problem.
"We have decided," Naoto said, moving over to his laptop, "that you needed an intervention. I know about the song," she went on as he walked over the laptop and closed it. "I don't know why you connected with it with such intensity, but for the sake of your own mental health, none of us will be leaving until you remove all traces of that song from your life."
"I have seven different remixes of the song."
"And all of them will be erased from your laptop. Your MP3 player will be confiscated as well."
"Confiscated?" Souji said with rapidly growing alarm as the guys started unloading the fish heads from the fridge. "You're going to confiscate my laptop?"
"I have determined that confiscating them is the best way to ensure that they are truly removed. Furthermore, I will be installing a block on your laptop to prevent you from coming across that song online."
"I think you're taking this too seriously," Souji said. "What are you guys doing to my fish?"
The girls were putting them into pots that they had pulled out from the shopping bags that he didn't realize they were holding before.
"That is part two of our plan," Naoto said nonchalantly, as if storming into his dorm room and confiscating his electronics and food were an ordinary, everyday event. "Our hope is that a strong negative association with fish heads will prevent you from purchasing any more in the future."
"That's why we're cooking!" Chie said proudly. She was the only in the room that looked happy about it, though.
"I have more persona now," Souji said as Yukiko opened a canister of vanilla yogurt. "Minor arcana. Very strong. I'll summon them if I have to."
The others stared at him.
"Senpai," Kanji said as he gave Souji a friendly smack on the shoulder, "just give up. You lost."
--
"Seta! You don't smell like fish today!"
Souji stared at his English professor and wondered if it would be rude to maybe punch him in the face.
"By the way," his professor went on, seemingly oblivious to Souji's ponderings about acts of violence on his person, "I've got another song lined up for translation! I think you'll like it. It's about ducks. Sinister ducks."
True to Margaret's word, the Cups was aligned with water, which was nifty, because he didn't even know that water spells existed before.