Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Momo liked to walk the beach when Granny took her to the ocean shrine. She wasn’t old enough to sit still though all the ceremonies, dances, and rituals that her Granny did when she went to other shrines, so Granny turned her loose to do as she pleased as long as she was back at the shrine by sunset.

Her favorite part of the beach was a rocky little cove full of rocks small enough to flip over. She liked laughing at the crabs as they skittered around, or hunting for shiny bits of sea glass, or even just taking a nap in the sun.

She was taking one such nap on a grassy patch slightly above the tide line when she heard a scratchy voice. She furrowed her brows and rolled over, only for the sound to get hoarser and more insistent. She pushed herself up, only to see a baby seal caught in a plastic ring, halfway up the beach. It was futilely trying to use its flippers to take off the plastic ring and making sad little ‘weh’ noises.

Momo got up to help it, but as soon as it saw her, it began to wiggle away back to the water.

“Wait, wait, wait, I’m not going to hurt you!” Momo cried, chasing after the baby seal. “I just want to help you!”

The baby seal stopped its wiggling back to the ocean and that was enough for Momo to grab it, sit on its back, and get to work taking off the plastic rings from its neck. As soon as she was seated, it went still and quiet, although it was shaking so hard Momo could feel it. It looked at her from the corner of its dark eyes and Momo smiled her nicest smile.

After a really long time of pulling and prying, the plastic rings slipped off its head and Momo collapsed to the ground next to it, exhausted.

“You can go now, baby seal!” Momo told it, but it stayed there next to her and made little huffing noises. Maybe it was as tired as she was?

Her eyes drifted shut and she dozed for a few minutes as she regained her energy.

Eventually Momo sat up and looked at the baby seal. It had relaxed at some point, making a silly pose that looked like a banana next to her. It was soft and fluffy-looking, with small grey and black circles on its face and back. She reached out and gasped in delight as her hand sank into the seal’s plush fur. The seal cracked open an eye and then shut it.

“You’re really a baby seal, aren’t you?” Momo asked it. “Where’s your mama?”

She’d learned about baby seals in school and how they stayed on land while their mamas took care of them. She didn’t have a mama, but Granny was kind of like a seal mama, she thought. She also got left places while Granny worked and then came back to take care of her. She told the baby seal this and it rolled over, exposing a fluffy white belly. It let out a happy-sounding squeak when she hugged it and buried her face into its fur.

Momo pulled back and told the baby seal, “I’ll stay with you until your mama gets here, okay? But it can’t be for too long because Granny worries if I’m not back when the sun goes down.”

It nodded and stretched out next to her, sighing a happy little sigh as Momo squished its chubby cheeks and played with the sharp claws on its flippers.

She chattered to it while they waited for its mama to come back, telling it how she didn’t have a mama or papa, but that was okay because she had Granny and Granny loved her very much and was also, like, the coolest granny of anyone in school because other people’s grannies just sat around all day while her granny talked to real actual ghosts! And also cooked the best food for Momo and her friends, and oh! Momo’s not actually from here, she’s from Kamigoe City way up north, but she came here on a trip with Granny.

The seal nodded and shook its head in all the right places as the sun crept lower and lower on the horizon. Right before sunset, Momo frowned. “I’ll have to go soon, baby seal. But I’ll be back tomorrow! You’ll have to tell me if your mama gets here, okay?”

She patted its belly, then giggled and kissed the top of its head. “That’s a promise! I’ll see you tomorrow!”

The baby seal waved at her as she left.

Momo looked over her shoulder before she walked out of sight of the seal and saw it, alone, staring at the water and waiting.

It made her sad and when she got back to her and Granny’s room, she gave Granny an extra-tight hug.

The first thing she did after waking up the next morning was run to the baby seal’s cove. She didn’t even eat breakfast, she was so excited! When she got there, the baby seal was sitting where she’d left it last night, still looking out at the water.

“Baby seal!” Momo cheered, waving at it.

It let out a bark when it saw her and began bouncing its way over to her. There was something in its mouth. When it finally reached her, it reached up to give her a pretty shell.

Momo oohed and ahhed, gently taking the shell from its mouth to admire its pretty glitter in the sunlight. It was pink and white and tinkled softly when she set it on the sand. “Did you get this for me?”

The baby seal nodded shyly, and Momo reached over to hug it. “Thank you! I’ll keep it forever and ever.”

The rest of the trip slipped by with the warm honey of summer. The baby seal followed Momo around as she wandered around the island’s beaches and the small oceanside town, its little white head bobbing around whenever she went to the harbor. They shared onigiri and read Momo’s favorite manga together, and it was the happiest Momo had been since her parents went away.

But everything had to come to an end. Momo explained to the baby seal that she would be going home and it cried. She cried too, but only on the train home because she didn’t want the baby seal to see her cry.

When she told Granny about her new friend on the ride home, Granny had ruffled her hair. “Spirits have a way of returning to people. I have a feeling you’ll see your seal spirit again.”

Momo didn’t understand what she meant by that. Granny said Momo was too young to take the train to the ocean shrine by herself, and Kamigoe City wasn’t close to the ocean. Momo had no way of talking to her friend.

The next year they came back and Momo foolishly hoped that her seal friend would greet her at their cove like it had in the past. But it wasn’t there when she visited that day, or the next, or any of the days after that. She wondered if maybe she was too old or too different than she had been. Would it even recognize her if it saw her?

The year after that, Momo yelled at her grandmother and was never taken along on a trip to a shrine again.

Chapter Text

The month that Momo discovered aliens were real, it rained for twenty days straight in a creeping, omnipresent drizzle. It wasn’t entirely unusual to have long periods of rain, and Momo wasn’t unprepared. But even her umbrella and warm pink fleece didn’t protect her from the slow, grey cold that crawled close to her bones and stayed curled up there even after she’d long since dried off.

Okarun didn’t like the rain, she was learning. It made sense, he was unusually fastidious about his appearance, but his distaste seemed extreme even for him. He refused to share an umbrella with her (much to her disappointment), and wore both a raincoat and waterproof pants to and from school. When Momo snickered at the schwif schwif schwif noise he made as he walked, he gave her a scathing glare. “I don’t like being wet,” he said.

And he didn’t. For some reason that she couldn’t quite pin down, Momo was surprised that Okarun wasn’t a good swimmer. Something about his presence whispered to her that he should be good at swimming, but when Nessie flooded the halls of their high school, Okarun’s response was to flail around. So, she made a harebrained plan to slip-squeeze them around Nessie’s domain with her powers, which worked, but not enough to stop Okarun from panicking the first time they slipped below the surface. It was only when Aira had been separated from them and they were treading water before Nessie’s next attack that he explained he didn’t just dislike the water—he was afraid of it.

When Nessie was defeated and they were shamefacedly drying off in the safety of Nurse-sensei’s office, Momo realized that Okarun studiously avoided getting wet to the point where she’d never seen him drink plain water, only energy drinks and tea. Learning this also explained his reaction to getting thrown into the rice paddy outside the shrine: he’d screamed and leapt out of the water like he’d been electrocuted on top of being burned.

When she asked him why he was afraid of the water, he deflated so much that she could only think of bullies or an unfortunate experience as the cause. She felt bad and changed the subject, but kept ruminating on this new fact about Okarun.

He was afraid of a lot of things, Momo knew from experience, although he tried hard not to show it. He jumped at loud noises and cringed at raised hands and flinched when boys from school got too close to him (they didn’t anymore; Momo made damn sure of that). But it was only water that made him become distant and quiet.

She wasn’t sure how else to describe it. It was like he was wishing so hard to be anywhere else that he just… left his body until Momo guided him away from the body of water causing the fogginess.

Granny had noticed it too, and Turbo Granny. She caught them talking late at night sometimes, discussing Okarun in voices too low for her to eavesdrop on.

At the hot springs, Okarun seemed peaky and anxious. She asked him if anything else was going on that first quiet night at Jiji’s house before all hell broke loose, and he’d turned over in his futon. She frowned at his back as he responded, “Just missing something, is all.”

He was being cagey, so Momo shuffled over until she was close enough to gently kick him, and then they were tussling until Jiji snored loudly and they broke out into a fit of giggles.

“Do you want to go to the hot springs tomorrow?” Momo whispered. “It’d be nice, I promise!”

Okarun grimaced. “I told you, Miss Ayase. I don’t like the water.”

Momo couldn’t imagine disliking hot springs. When she was little, shortly after her parents’ deaths, she had hazy memories of her grandmother taking her to Tamatsukuriyu Shrine. She’d received a wish stone and a wish card like the rest of the tourists, and Grandmother had helped her pen out the shaky characters that stated her wish for her parents to come home.

She still had the wish stone somewhere, although she’d thrown it somewhere into the depths of her room in a fit of sadness when she’d realized her parents were never coming back.

She wondered if she could find it the next day as she floated in the hot springs. Maybe she’d give it to Okarun as a good luck token? Then, maybe, he’d be less afraid of the water.

The door to the hot spring pool creaked open and Momo cracked open an eye to see grey-skinned men filing into the pool one by one, leering a horrible grin.

After the chaotic stretch of days at the cursed house and the confusion of Jiji turning into the Evil Eye—another reason for Okarun to be scared of water, she thought as the spirit choked her and she swished her cold bubble tea around in her mouth—she took a morning to look for the wish stone. But it was nowhere to be found.

She felt an odd sense of loss at that, for the young Momo who had still believed in miracles and for the possibility of her parents coming back. Now, ten years on, Momo knew that when people left you, they tended not to come back.

Momo had hoped to hang out with Okarun more at Jiji’s house than she’d actually managed to do. It made sense, what with all the curses and death worms and all, but she wanted actual time together that wasn’t spent running away from a monster or an alien or creepy landlords.

“Hey, Okarun,” she asked after school when it was just the two of them, trying to sound casual. “You want to grab a coffee together?”

Okarun jerked and looked around wildly, as though she were asking some other person that was there with them. “Me?” he asked, pointing at himself.

Momo rolled her eyes and punched his shoulder. “Yeah, dingus. You. There’s a cute cafe that I’ve been wanting to go to that’s selling little alien plushies, and I thought that you’d like it!”

He smiled bashfully, looking down at his shoes and rubbing the back of his neck. “I’d love to, Miss Ayase.”

The cafe itself was lovely but—it was by a river. The little green alien plush that Momo bought for him didn’t assuage his anxiety as he glanced nervously at the rushing water outside the window they’d been seated next to.

Momo felt a sinking feeling as Okarun’s discomfort mounted. He kept up a strong face, but the darting of his eyes betrayed him. Even as Momo tried to push through it and distract him, even when she moved tables so that the river was no longer in sight, he remained fidgety and withdrawn.

Eventually, he sighed and gave Momo a wan smile. “Miss Ayase, could we please leave? I should go home.”

Momo bit back her disappointment and nodded.

Okarun must have seen something of it on her face though, because he said, “We can try somewhere else next week?”

They didn’t have the chance to do so, what with Vamola crashing into their lives the next night and all of the following chaos. Instead of dreaming about the endless, empty ocean, she began to dream of Okarun’s crumpled body hooked to the ventilator and the hazy nights spent in the warehouse.

When they— or Reiko, rather— finally defeated the Kur, the dreams lingered. Okarun’s third all-out had taken some measure of his humanity from him, visible in a star of white spidering through his hair.

Momo stayed glued to Okarun’s side during the reconstruction of the shrine grounds and the house. He seemed content to let her fuss. For once he was too tired to react to her touches and teases, bearing them all with exhausted little huffs of breath.

Eventually everything returned to how it had been. Okarun’s unnatural healing speed reduced his injuries from hobbling around to perfectly healthy within two days, and then there was no excuse for him to continue staying over. He packed his backpack with his belongings and mounted his bike outside of the torii gates, waving goodbye to Momo. She couldn’t help but feel that if she let him leave now, she would never see him again.

Momo tried to smile as she waved goodbye back. She ignored the rising anxiety until he vanished and the anxiety spiked into a bolt of dread, straight through her heart. She broke out into a run without really meaning to, heedless of the fact that she was still in house slippers, until he came back into view and the sickening gut feeling of him being gone forever lessened.

“Okarun!” She called.

“M-miss Ayase?” Okarun said confusedly, his rusted bicycle squealing to a halt. “Is everything okay?”

Momo crashed into him, clinging to his thin frame and then, to both of their surprise, burst into tears.

She could feel Okarun’s sharp intake of breath, and then two warm arms encircled her and hugged her close until the sobs petered off and she was left taking shuddery breaths with her hands fisted so tightly in Okarun’s borrowed sweater they went numb. He rubbed small circles between her shoulder blades in an attempt to soothe her, making small reassurances. When she pulled back to wipe her face clean, he looked bewildered.

“I– sorry,” Momo stammered, her voice thick. She hiccuped. “Can I– can I stay with you tonight?”

Okarun blinked at her tiredly, but didn’t protest or dissemble. Instead, he simply helped Momo onto the back of his bike and took her with him on his way home. Momo buried her face into his neck, holding him tight.

“Will Miss Seiko be upset?” Okarun asked.

Momo shook her head. Granny would forgive her. But she wouldn’t— couldn’t— bear being separated from Okarun at the moment and she didn’t want to sleep next to Vamola, even if Vamola was on their side. It was hard not to look at her and think of Okarun on his deathbed. She felt a few more hot tears slip from her eyes.

They pedalled to Okarun’s home in silence, Momo clinging tight to him the whole time. Eventually she drifted off into a haze of exhaustion so strong that all she could think of was the warmth of his body and the movement of his muscles under the shirt.

When they arrived, Okarun quietly showed Momo to his room. It was her first time visiting, but she was too exhausted to stir up any kind of interest in her surroundings. Okarun didn’t ask if she wanted to eat or shower or have her own bed, he just slid under the covers of his small bed in his outside clothes and made a spot next to him for Momo to curl up into. His bed smelled like Okarun; a blend of his favored green tea shampoo and the decay-smell of the ocean he always seemed to carry with him.

She was asleep in seconds.

It was light outside when she woke up. Okarun was asleep beside her, breathing slowly and deeply. She watched him and noted the deep shadows beneath his eyes, the furrow in his brows. His cheeks, usually so round, were slightly hollowed. His lips were cracked.

Momo slipped out from her covers, tucking Okarun tightly back in, and sat on the edge of the bed with her head in her hands until the room stopped spinning around her. Finally, when she could lift her head without wanting to be sick, she looked around. The room was tiny and devoid of personality. She wasn’t entirely sure what she expected— alien posters, maybe? But there was no sign that Okarun lived there other than the alien charm she’d given him sitting on his backpack and the stack of Mu magazines sitting on his desk.

His walls were grey, his sheets were grey, and everything was so neat and tidy that she wanted to scream.

She couldn’t stay in this miserable little room for a moment longer.

With a guilty glance back at the still-sleeping Okarun, Momo crept out of his bedroom. To her dismay, the rest of the apartment was all as empty and small as his room had been; just a small kitchenette and dining room that opened into the hallway and genkan. There was only one chair at the dining room table. When Momo peeked into the genkan, there was a small shoe cubby with five identical pairs of shoes she recognized as the shoes Okarun insisted on buying for himself even though he tore through them every time he transformed.

The whole apartment was grey. There was visible water damage on the ceiling, the windows were small and grimy on the outside, and the flooring was worn. Everything that could be cleaned was impeccably clean, and the air smelled faintly of cleaning solvent.

Momo returned to the kitchenette and looked through his cupboards until she found his rice and set to making a simple breakfast of rice with eggs for the both of them. His rice cooker was tiny, and he only had two eggs left.

It would do.

Momo set out the eggs next to the rice cooker so that she wouldn’t forget about them, and resumed snooping around Okarun’s apartment. There was a nagging feeling that she was missing something. She followed that insistent tugging in the back of her head to Okarun’s coat closet.

Tucked away in his coat closet was a moldy cardboard box. Something within felt… alive. Its aura was a dull, neglected navy blue. Momo paused for a second, her conscience nagging at her that opening the box was an invasion of Okarun’s privacy. But also, she reminded herself, Okarun was a cagey bastard who didn’t tell his best friend anything about his life! She didn’t know he lived alone, even though she’d suspected as much when Okarun hadn’t worried about anyone worrying over him. And something drew her to the box.

She opened the box. Cradled inside of the dingy cardboard was an animal pelt that looked so luxurious Momo thought for a moment that she was imagining its existence. She paused, hands hovering over the plush fur, before carefully picking it up. It felt warm and heavy in her arms.

“Wow,” Momo breathed as it unfurled into a glimmering silvery-grey cloak.

The floor creaking from Okarun’s room reminded her that she wasn’t supposed to be doing this, and she guiltily folded it back up in the box. It was a pity something so beautiful was kept in a cardboard box– and an old one, at that.

Momo returned to the small kitchen, where the rice cooker was steaming away. It was eerily silent in his apartment. Back home, there were always the sounds of Baketono reruns, or Turbo Granny pattering around, or the familiar sounds of Granny in the kitchen. Here there was nothing but the sound of Momo’s own breathing and the clicks of the rice cooker. Even the noises of Kamigoe outside were hushed.

Momo thought of Okarun growing up here, alone, and her eyes burned.

The rice cooker beeped.

Momo went to divvy the rice up into bowls, but was briefly stymied by the fact that Okarun only had one of each type of dinnerware. She compromised by putting her share of the rice onto his only plate and leaving Okarun with the bowl, then cracked one egg into each portion. There was another creak from Okarun’s room and then the door slid open to reveal Okarun: tired and haggard, but whole.

His eyes widened when he saw her, and then he broke out into a genuine smile. “Miss Ayase!”

Momo pushed the rice bowl at him, blushing. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was blushing, but it seemed apt for the situation. Why wouldn’t she blush when her- her Okarun found her in his home? Even though she’d been invited.

There was still only one chair at the table. Okarun coughed awkwardly and instead lead her to sit on the floor with him, their knees brushing. Momo became abruptly aware of just how bad she smelled. But it wasn’t too much to bear, especially since Okarun smelled of the same alien blood and guts and machinery as she did.

They ate the simple breakfast in companionable silence. When they’d both finished and were washing their plates, Momo nudged him. “Okarun?”

“Hm?”

“Where are your parents?” Momo asked, not wanting to pry but also… she was curious. “If I can ask that.”

“Uh, I don’t mind. My father works in Kyoto, and my mother is— out of the picture.” His eyes widened. “Wait! Um, she’s not dead. She’s just. You know. Not here.”

To Momo, that was worse. She couldn’t remember much about her own parents, but she couldn’t imagine being rejected by her hazy concepts of them. “I’m sorry,” she said.

Okarun shrugged. “It’s okay. Our lifestyles weren’t compatible.”

Momo mulled that over as he scrubbed their dishes clean. “Do you have anything of hers?”

Okarun looked up, his glasses fogged an opaque white from the hot water. It reminded her eerily of the monster he’d become at the third all-out. “One thing. But it’s not really hers, just something she passed down to me that I wish I didn’t have.”

There were gaps in Okarun’s education. Momo supposed that this was part of the reason why he struggled so hard to fit in: by his own admission, Okarun was complete pants at anything that wasn’t reading. Even his handwriting was terrible, his kana and kanji were spidery things that were near-impossible to read.

Momo helped to tutor him most nights. Tutoring him generally turned into him staying for dinner, which became him being convinced to stay over. Which led to Momo’s favorite thing in the whole world: quiet, late nights when it was just the two of them using the kotatsu, their knees brushing together while they chattered about nothing in particular. Okarun had began bringing his precious Mu Magazines to the house, and they would argue about the merits of the articles.

It was one such night that Momo asked Okarun if he’d gone to school as a child. She didn’t mean it in a cruel way! She just was genuinely curious. But the way Okarun shrank in on himself told her that maybe she was treading on unstable ground.

There was a long, awkward silence that Momo was just about to break by apologising to Okarun for being nosy when Okarun spoke up. “I was… a bit of a surprise for my father,” he confessed. “And my mother wasn’t, ah, big on education. So I didn’t go to school until I came to my father’s care, and by then it was difficult for me to catch up with my peers. And they noticed how I was always last in exams.”

“Oh.” Momo said. “I see.”

Okarun took off his glasses and polished them on his shirt, exposing a strip of soft belly. He laughed softly. “I’ve always envied you, you know. You and your grandmother are so close, and she cares about you so much that she also cares for all of your friends, too. The home-cooked meals, the concern for my wellbeing…I really enjoy it. It’s not something I’ve ever had before.”

Momo looked at her hands, cataloguing the ragged edges of her ring finger where she’d bitten the nail off a few days ago. “We didn’t always get along, you know.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “Um, when I was younger, she taught me this method for meditating that looked like,” she assumed the position: right hand pointing to the sky atop her head and left hand curled protectively over her lower stomach. “Like this. And she told me to do it every day as I went to school and as I came home. And, um, the kids in my class thought it was dumb and teased me. And I was embarrassed, you know? So one day when I was leaving for school I told her that she was a fake and that I hated her.”

Okarun sucked in a breath. “Oh no.”

“Yeah. Um, we didn’t really talk much after that. Work got busy as Santa Dodoria became more famous, so she wasn’t around much, and I was too embarrassed to apologise. And as I got older, I kind of got used to it. I had friends at school, so I didn’t think I really needed her. I got into a lot of trouble, too. I think I was trying to get her attention? But she never punished me for acting out. There were…a lot of meals I cooked myself. A lot of empty houses. But she always cared and provided for me.”

“I never really realized,” Okarun admitted. “I noticed that sometimes things get awkward between you two, but I never guessed…”

Momo shrugged. “It was you, actually, that changed things. When you were cursed and in the shrine, I apologised to her. And our talk, the one where you had to pee? That was the most we had talked in almost ten years. I think Gran really likes you for that.” She nudged him with her knee.

“Really?” Okarun said. He was hard to read sometimes, but not now, not with the hesitant hope shining in his eyes.

“You’re basically family now,” Momo said.

Okarun smiled, his eyes suspiciously wet, fiddling with his hair. “That’s very kind of you and Miss Seiko.”

“It’s just my gran,” Momo says. “It’s not a big deal.”

Okarun shook his head. “It is a big deal. Miss Seiko loves you a lot, enough to be upset with you instead of just vanishing when you got mad at her. That’s a gift, Miss Ayase.” He leaned against her. Said again, quieter, “That’s a gift.”

Momo stared down at her tea, at her hands wrapped around the teacup. “What was your mother like?”

This close, she could feel Okarun’s breath hitch in surprise. He was silent for a long while. “She was…free spirited. She didn’t like to be tied down to anything or anyone. Um, she liked to have fun and eat fresh foods and nap in the sun. She had brown eyes, big ones. My father said that my eyes reminded him of her.”

Those same eyes were downcast, long lashes brushing against his cheeks.

“I know you like being free, Miss Ayase. It’s not a bad thing to want freedom and no responsibilities. But my mother…I think she resented that I slowed her down. I had to grow up quickly, because she didn’t want to wait for me. We travelled everywhere,” he said, a ghost of a smile on his face. “And the whole time, I just wanted to have a home. A steady one.”

“Didn’t you want to be abducted?” Momo asked.

“I did, I guess. But mostly that was because I wanted to be made into something different than what I am, something that fits in with people and is a person and can be loved. I saw how easily everyone else made friends and I asked myself why I was so different, even though I knew why and even though I tried and tried to be a normal person. And I hoped that, if the aliens couldn’t change me, maybe I’d fit in with them instead. I just wanted somewhere to belong.”

Momo frowned. “You are a person though? I don’t like hearing you talk about yourself like this.” It was somehow viscerally upsetting, to think that Okarun—her Okarun!--- didn’t think of himself as someone worth loving.

Okarun shrugged. “I know that now, I think. And I’ve found somewhere to belong. I don’t want to be abducted anymore,” he added. “That’s why I’m so scared of water. Have you ever been to the ocean, Miss Ayase?”

Momo wanted to change the topic to something less charged, less infused with years of Okarun’s grief. But here, as the clock ticked midnight, she found a willingness to hear him and to share his burden. “Not for a while. But when I was little, I used to go to Itsukushima Shrine with my grandmother—that’s the one with the floating torii gate.”

“You know how when you stand on the shore of the ocean and look out, and it never ends?” Okarun said. “And you feel so small and insignificant, and all you want to do is run away and never look back?”

Momo didn’t remember feeling small and insignificant. Back at Itsukushima, she’d always felt like the ocean was a gift waiting to be unwrapped, full of unknown delights like friendly spirit seal pups and sunken treasure.

“I feel like I’d lose myself, out there. I’m one person, I’d just get swept away.” Okarun sighed. “I’m terrified of being lost. I don’t think anyone would look for me.”

“I’d find you,” Momo said. She knew she would. She punched his arm lightly, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “Sorry, you can’t get away from me! We’re stuck with each other.”

Okarun adjusted his glasses, looking up at her. “You would, wouldn’t you.” It wasn’t a question. He studied her face for a long moment before nodding, mind seemingly made up about something.

Chapter Text

Momo was seated on the steps to the shrine, enjoying the weak sunlight and slowly making her way through her maths homework when Okarun took a seat next to her. She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and, deeming him calm enough that he probably wouldn’t surprise too badly, leaned over until her head was resting on his shoulder and she could feel his aura overlapping with her own.

In his lap was the grimy box she had uncovered from his closet a few weeks ago, crumpled and dirty.

“What’s that, Okarun?” she asked, wondering why he had brought some old family heirloom all the way out here.

Like this, with her forehead pressed to his neck, she could feel the temperature change as he flushed. She pulled back and raised a brow at the redness of his skin, so dark she feared he might faint.

Okarun didn’t respond, seemingly formulating what he was going to say. She waited patiently for him to find his words until he took a deep breath and opened the box, covering his hands in his sleeves before picking up the animal pelt and shoving it at her.

Momo stared down at the puddle of luxurious fur sitting atop her classwork, shining silvery-black in the watery light.

“I—it’s my mother’s heirloom. I don’t really have a use for it and don’t like having it in my apartment, and thought that maybe you could take care of it,” Okarun said,

When she pinned him with an incredulous stare, he somehow flushed even harder, keeping her gaze with what must have been an incredible force of will. Okarun treated eye contact as a way to emphasize his words—he only made eye contact with Momo when he was trying to prove his worthiness.

Momo looked away first, picking up a corner of the cloak and admiring how smoothly it was cut at the edges. Other skins she’d seen— Granny had a bearskin and a wolfskin in one of the storage rooms that she said she’d won off a kitsune— had rough edges where the skin curled up, or the fur had sloughed off. Not this. It was thick and luxurious even under the dust and dirt that had accumulated on its fur.

He exhaled shakily as she dusted off the cloak, turning away from her as though he couldn’t bear to look at the cloak.

“It’s nice and all, but Okarun…is it really that important you give it to me?”

He nodded once, firmly. “I don’t want it. And it’s—I’m—it’s yours.”

Momo stared down at the cloak on her lap. The silvery spots seemed to shift with the light, like sunbeams on water. The effect was dizzying in the stifling silence of the shrine now that Okarun was done speaking. “What type of animal was it?” she blurted, suddenly desperate to hear a person’s voice.

“It’s a seal,” he responded quietly. “Was a seal.”

“Huh.” Momo hadn’t seen many seals in her life, just the spirit seal so long ago. The skin was much larger than she’d thought it would be, but she supposed that was because the seal spirit had been a pup. She thought that, if she were to put the cloak on, it would trail behind her.

Somehow, putting it on felt weirdly intimate. Even putting aside that the cloak was creepy, with the hollowed-out eyes of its hood and the limp flippers, there was something very Okarun about the cloak, as if to wear it would be to wear him.

Okarun left in a haste only a few minutes after giving her his family heirloom, leaving Momo wondering what it meant for him to give her such a valuable possession. Maybe he thought that she could keep it safer than he was able to?

She wasn’t sure what she should do with it. Grandmother wasn’t home as she took it into the house, and Vamola wrinkled her nose at it when Momo tried draping it over her desk chair.

“Creepy,” was all she said.

No matter what, Momo decided, the cloak couldn’t stay in the same dissolving cardboard box. She folded it gently into a cubby in her closet and stared at it within that cubby. Something drew her to it, the same way she’d been drawn to it at Okarun’s apartment.

There was a foreign, lonely prickle at her fingertips as she reached out to brush them over the cloak’s soft fur.

When she blinked, she could see the faded blue of its aura, a flickering ember that was a pale ghost of Okarun’s navy blue. It was strange. All items had auras, of course, but most of them had some sort of unique, indescribable property distinguishing them from the auras of living things. If the cloak’s aura was more vivid, it would be the same color of Okarun’s aura—minus the crimson of Turbo Granny’s curse, of course. Perhaps it was just that Okarun had been around this pelt so often that it had absorbed some of his aura?

Or perhaps the cloak was haunted by the spirit of the seal.

She squinted at it. If it was haunted, wouldn’t it be best to deal with it now instead of later? Maybe that was why Okarun wanted it gone so badly: he sensed the spirit inside. But if she couldn’t really sense the spirit inside, there was no way Okarun could, with his dulled sensitivity.

And what would Okarun say if Momo rolled up the next day and told him, “Oh, sorry, your priceless family heirloom got destroyed because it was secretly a seal seeking revenge?”

So she’d have to do this carefully. Maybe she could just… convince the spirit to go away?

She closed her eyes and reached out with her powers, touching the thinnest thread of her teal to its faded blue.

Surprise. Relief.

The spirit was lonely, lonely enough that even the barest acknowledgement of hers made it flare with a confused delight. It really did feel like Okarun when they first met. It was hard to imagine anything that felt like Okarun hurting her.

Momo looked around guiltily.

Vamola was already asleep, snoring softly on her futon next to Momo’s bed. Surely she wouldn’t mind if…?

She licked her lips and took the cloak back out of the cubby, bundling it up in her arms and carrying it over to her bed. It didn’t feel right, leaving it in her closet to moulder. Even without the chance of disrespecting the spirit, it really was a lovely fur, carefully crafted into a cloak sewn together so finely she couldn’t see any seams, the seal’s hollow head serving as the cloak’s hood.

Around the empty eye sockets were twinned patches of white that brought back distant memories of a beach in the summer of childhood. She frowned, trying to remember where she’d seen markings like that before, but the memories were too fuzzy and indeterminate.

She sank down onto the pillows next to the cloak, tracing her fingers around the black and silver spots on its back, looping up and down and around in a mindless rhythm until she eventually fell asleep atop the cloak, her cheek nestled against plush fur.

She was young and it was raining. Fat drops of fresh rainwater collided with the gentle swells above her, merging with the salty sea and creating a surreal haze. Somewhere far away, her mother was singing, but she didn’t know where she was and it was just her and the dark sea, with the hidden eyes of predators all around her and she felt so exposed and lonely. She wondered when her mother would come back.

She was four and a half years old and it was the heat of summer, so humid she couldn’t breathe. She was waiting in an air conditioned room with Granny and holding her hand, and Granny looked so terribly sad and lost. She didn’t understand why. She wondered when her parents would come back.

She was seventeen and she’d just made a friend, the first friend she’d ever had as a human. For the first time in her life, she felt like she belonged somewhere.

“Momo?” Vamola said. “Auntie says you’re going to be late for school.”

It was pouring rain. Momo and Vamola shared an umbrella, and Momo listened to Vamola gush in halting Japanese about how she’d found Turbo Granny’s kitten yesterday. She hadn’t known cats could be that small.

Momo took the umbrella from Vamola’s hands as Vamola mimed just how tiny the kitten was. She wondered absently if Okarun was going to skip school today. He didn’t like getting wet. She thought of him in his apartment alone all day and frowned.

Despite the rain, Okarun was waiting by the school gates when they arrived. His face brightened as he saw Momo, and he waved at her from beneath the alien-themed umbrella she’d bought him last month.

“Miss Ayase!” he called eagerly.

He had deep shadows beneath his eyes, and his skin was ashier than usual. Momo wondered if he was coming down with a cold. It would explain why he hadn’t stayed for dinner last night. Nonetheless, as she took his arm in hers, he beamed through his blush as they made small talk about nothing in particular. How was your morning? What did you eat? I missed you.

The school day dripped by. Momo stared out the window, watching raindrops race each other down the window pane. She thought of the cloak during maths, of Okarun during English, of the tattered memories of her dreams the night before.

She rested her head in her arms and drifted off.

The cloak remained in the back of her mind and closet. The dreams, the weird feelings, they had to have came from it, right?

She slid open her closet door and picked up the cloak. The seal head slipped onto her arm, its sharp yellow teeth resting against her skin.

“Let’s dance,” she told the spirit within, and then reached, weaving her aura into a bridge to connect with the sealskin spirit.

Immediately, a headache blossomed in her temples, the warning signs of strain she’d felt when connecting to the Acrobatic Silky, when she’d manipulated the dead death worm, when overusing her powers against the Kur. The spirit was shrinking back from her, uncertainty evident in its aura.

She pressed on, grabbing the thin strands of its aura and holding tight.

She saw Okarun, young and with long, curly hair, stumbling as a woman with the same wild hair as he did dragged him through strange, unfamiliar streets. She could feel the woman’s long fingernails biting into Okarun’s skin. The straight silvery lines of the buildings around him made him dizzy, the cars speeding past made him nauseous with fear. He didn’t know where she was taking him and

He sat quietly as a man and a woman screamed at each other with words he barely understood in the next room. He stared down at his skin, spread out in his lap, and played quietly with the claws of his flippers.

It was put into a box.

It was left behind.

It was forgotten.

It was abandoned.

There was a huge, blinding power reaching out to it and it, remembered for the first time in years and years, reached back. It was so delighted to be remembered and hoped to be loved and useful that it let the blinding power take a part of itself, even though it was already fractured.

It wanted to be useful. It wanted to be worn. It wanted to be free.

Momo gasped for air as she tried to withdraw from the cloak’s aura, but it stuck on like a stubborn tick, the dull navy gorging itself on her teal. After a few moments the draw became negligible and the fibres of the cloak’s aura blended into hers, clicking into place to fill an absence she’d never known was there. She shuddered, fell back onto her bed, stared up at the ceiling, and tried to blink back tears.

In the distance, she could hear the crashing of waves.

She slept with the cloak on her bed, now. It wasn’t its fault that it was lonely, just like it wasn’t its fault that Okarun had abandoned it. She’d treat it better than he did. And it wasn’t like he was a bad person, anyways.

She tried to share the memories of the Okarun she knew—loyal, protective, gentle—with the cloak’s spirit, but it turned away. It seemed almost offended that she’d taken the time to defend Okarun, that she’d been privy to an aspect of him it didn’t know.

It projected hurt rejection distaste at her strongly enough Momo decided to stop sharing her memories of Okarun with the spirit. She didn’t want the spirit’s grief at being abandoned by him to taint her own perception of him.

“I don’t know, Momo,” Vamola said, on her belly on Momo’s bed. She kicked her feet idly as she watched Momo brush out the cloak’s fur. “Maybe there were bad memories for him?”

“Eh? What do you mean?” Momo asked, brushing a hand over a thin patch of furless hide. When she closed her eyes and focused on the spirit inside the cloak, it rolled over with excitement, showing her its soft belly.

“On Earth… I do not wear my clothes from Sumer, yes? I wear Earth clothes because Granny has my Sumer clothes in the shrine. But I have not put them on again because it makes me sad to wear them and remember my mothers and my world, because I cannot go back to it. And if I had to wear those clothes again, I would be very sad. Maybe Okarun is the same?” Vamola said, her star-bright gaze fixed on the cloak.

Momo hadn’t considered that. She’d thought that the forgetting had been accidental, because surely Okarun wouldn’t have purposefully abandoned something that loved him as the cloak did?

But then again, she’d abandoned her grandmother when she was little, too. And it was much easier to abandon an item with a spirit you might not have even been aware of than a part of your family. She passed the brush through the cloak again.

“Granny said everything has a spirit,” she mumbled. “Do you think your clothes have a spirit, too?”

Vamola looked at her with weary eyes. “That is a hard thing to ask me, Momo. Are there not things you also want to leave?”

Somewhere in the back of her closet was a box full of all of her clothes when she was young. Momo had thought about doing something to get rid of them many times, especially since she could never wear them again, but they were full of memories. A pair of leopard-print boots she’d worn nonstop as a toddler, the last sweater her parents had bought her, the furisode she’d worn through the years, her old school uniforms.

She wouldn’t want to re-examine the memories associated with them, especially the ones tainted by her ruptured relationship with her grandmother, or the death of her parents.

“Sorry, Vamola,” she mumbled. “So I probably shouldn’t tell him about the spirit?”

There was a creak as Vamola rolled off of Momo’s bed. Warm arms encircled her as Vamola embraced her from behind, hooking her chin over Momo’s shoulder. “Maybe it is kinder not to.”

For whatever reason, Okarun was avoiding Momo’s home. She hadn’t noticed, not at first. He was irritatingly good at squirming his way out of social engagements without her noticing, but after a week straight of him not showing up to dinner when previously he’d been a regular at the household or walking her from home to school and from work to home, it was obvious.

She’d be worried about his avoiding her entirely, but he was constantly by her side during the school day. He still walked her from school to work, and he still greeted her by the gates every day, and he had somehow grown even sweeter, always bringing her snacks and small gifts he said reminded him of her. He looked happy, even though he walked more stiffly now, would have to take breaks at uphills to cough quietly.

Momo thought that she’d prefer having Okarun at her house than having his gifts in his absence, but didn’t verbalize the thought. It wasn’t worth it, especially since he seemed so tired all the time. Was he ill? Should she tell him to see a doctor?

When she’d asked him as much that morning, he just tilted his head and lied to her face about feeling, “Great actually!”

She didn’t feel like eating lunch with him if he was going to be dancing around his problems with her. She didn’t want to think about him and the spirit he abandoned in the back of his closet. She wanted to feel angry or indignant on the spirit’s behalf, but instead all she felt was an exhausted, resentful emptiness that she did her best to drown.

Which led her to sulkily taking her lunch in an unused classroom, away from their usual haunts. With any luck, Okarun would be too busy with their friends to look for her. She didn’t really want to see him, anyway.

Of course he found her anyways. She was staring listlessly outside the window at the dark clouds on the horizon, wishing she’d brought the cloak with her to school, when there was a soft knock at the door.

“Miss Ayase?” Okarun didn’t wait for permission to enter before sliding the door open and pulling up a chair next to the desk Momo had claimed. “Are you feeling okay?”

Momo looked at him, incredulous at the audacity of him asking her if she was feeling okay when Okarun was the one who looked like death warmed over. Then she wondered at why he would come after her, when he hadn’t come after her when… when had he abandoned her, again?

He winced. “Is that a no?”

Momo turned back to the window and resolved to ignore him.

Momo watched the faint reflection of him in the window as he rested his head in his arms on the desk with a soft thump, then sighed. “I don’t know what I did to upset you, Miss Ayase, but I’m sorry.” He curled a hand in the loose fabric of her sweater sleeve, as if afraid she’d run away.

She didn’t know why Okarun was afraid she’d run away, when he was the one avoiding her home. She gently distangled her sleeve from his grasp. At his soft, hurt inhale, she rested her hand on the back of his head and played with his hair. It was much drier than usual.

Okarun leaned in to the touch.

Outside, the rain fell. Beyond it and the occasional cough that rippled through his body, Momo could hear the pounding of waves calling her.

Momo was sitting on the covered porch of the honden, watching the rain fall. The cloak was spread over her legs, trapping warmth close to her body.

The door to the main house opened. Momo rolled over and squinted at the door. A tall haze of bright colors waved eagerly at her. “Hey, Momo!”

She grunted and rolled back over. He’d probably come to talk with her, which wasn’t unwelcome, it was just…

She missed Okarun.

“Momo?” Jiji was much closer now. “Are you okay?”

Momo draped an arm over her eyes rather than respond.

There was a short pause, and then the porch creaked as Jiji sat next to her. “What’s that on your legs?”

“This cloak that Okarun gave me. I don’t know why,” she muttered. “I think he’s avoiding it.”

“Huh. Evil Eye doesn’t much like it,” Jiji said.

“There’s a spirit in it, that’s probably why.”

“Oh.”

“You and Okarun are friends, right?” Momo asked. “Do you, like, know anything about his past?” It stung to admit to another person how little she knew about Okarun, even though they were usually almost constantly around each other.

The cloak on her lap shifted as Jiji took a corner of it and examined it. “Not really, he’s pretty private about that. And, uh, most things. Is this real fur?”

Momo nodded. “Seal.”

“Huh. I think I ate seal once… Mom brought home a can from Hokkaido and we made curry,” Jiji said. “Whoa, the fur’s really soft!”

The rain drummed on the roof of the porch.

“You know, Okarun’s been looking a lot happier recently. He was always kind of sad unless he was around you, you know?” Jiji mused. “I wonder what happened?”

Momo suspected it had to do with the cloak, but she didn’t understand how. She felt as though Okarun were a puzzle that she had most of the pieces to, but no understanding of how they fit together. She pushed herself up and stared down at the cloak.

Empty eye sockets stared back at her, revealing nothing of the shared past between Okarun and the seal spirit.

“Hey, Momo?” Jiji asked. “Do you ever miss being young?” He still held a corner of the cloak in his hands, twisting it over itself. His face was unreadable.

Momo shrugged. “Maybe sometimes, but I think it’s better to leave the past in the past. Don’t you?”

He hummed. “Not really, I guess. There are so many good memories there, I don’t know if I’d get rid of them to forget the bad, too.” He tugged the cloak closer to him, then winced and touched his head. “Oof. Evil Eye really doesn’t like that thing.”

He placed the cloak back into her lap and continued his previous train of thought. “One of my last memories at your house as a kid was running around in puddles with you until you tripped and fell, and Auntie scolded both of us for getting our clothes wet. But we both had so much fun. It would be a shame to forget that, wouldn’t it?”

Momo smiled at the thought. Granny hadn’t actually been that mad at them, but she had made Momo clean up the muddy tracks they’d left in the genkan after Jiji’d left.

“Do you have any memories like that?” Jiji asked, turning to look at her.

Momo tilted her head, fishing through her memories. She knew she had good memories, several of them, but being put on the spot made them hard to recall. “There was… a sunset, when I was younger. I remember the red of the sky reflecting on the waves, and the way it faded to purple after a while. And my mother was there, I think? It felt like everything was going to be okay.” She could taste the saltwater on her tongue, feel the way the water cradled her as she bobbed among the waves.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you still had memories of your parents,” Jiji said.

She didn’t have memories of her parents, not really. Just their loss. She frowned. Where had that memory come from?

Jiji, ever-observant, picked up on her confusion. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah…” Momo trailed off, trying to pick out more of the memory.

But nothing surfaced.

“Do you want to do a do-over cafe visit?” Okarun asked a week later as they were eating lunch together on the roof. It had stopped raining a few days ago and they were taking advantage of the dry weather to reclaim their favorite spot.

“Huh?” Momo said, picking through her rice to get to the sardines. She wasn’t very hungry, but their salty crunch appealed to her.

“We could, y’know, go to the cafe,” Okarun said, adjusting his glasses. He looked terrible. The dark shadows under his eyes had only gotten worse as the week progressed and his lips were dried and cracked. “Get some coffee, study together. If you want. It’s been a while since we’ve hung out.”

Momo pushed a Pampy toward him and thought. She did want, very much. But it had only been a while since they’d hung out because Okarun was avoiding her house as though he’d be lit on fire if he went within the shrine’s boundaries.

Everyone had noticed. Jiji asked her a few days ago if they’d fought, and Momo just shrugged helplessly. She hadn’t done anything wrong that she was aware of.

“I don’t know if I want to go back there,” Momo hedged, remembering the terrible absence in his gaze the last time they’d visited. “Why don’t you come over for dinner instead? Granny’s making shabu-shabu, and everyone’s been wondering where you’ve been.”

Okarun raised a hand to scratch at the back of his neck. “Oh, well, I haven’t been feeling very well recently. Sorry.”

Momo tried not to be hurt by his words. So he felt healthy enough to go to a cafe, but not enough to go to her home? It didn’t make sense, and she bit down the urge to tell him as such. But he did look terrible. Maybe he was just sick? She supposed her house was pretty far away from his apartment when compared to the cafe.

Okarun was sweating, a dead tell that he was lying. She looked at him, at his tired eyes and wan face, the subtle tremor in his hands, and wondered what would happen if they were attacked by aliens or ghosts. Would he even be able to transform like this?

She couldn’t muster the energy to be upset, not when she was trying so hard to see the good in Okarun. Momo sighed. “How about we go to your place instead?”

Okarun beamed, lips cracking. “Sure, if you want to. It’s not much, though.”

She knew that.

The apartment had changed since she’d been there last a few weeks ago. Okarun had put up various posters around the living room, added a lamp that cast a warm, honey-tinted glow on the dingy walls. Momo tilted her head as she surveyed the changes.

“You’ve been living here a while, right? What made you want to put up posters?”

Okarun smiled that soft, shy smile of his that she loved so much. He traced a hand over the bottom of the poster. “I just realized I might be staying here a while, is all.”

Chapter Text

Momo was staring out the window at the low-hanging clouds when Miko rapped her knuckles on Momo’s desk.

Momo jolted. She hadn’t heard her begin talking. “What?”

“I said, what’s up with you lately?” There was genuine worry in her voice. “We haven’t hung out in ages! Kei thinks you’re mad at us, but you haven’t been hanging out with your little boyfriend lately, either. We’re worried about you, girl. Are you sick? You look like shit.”

She tried and failed not to bristle at the not-so-gentle worrying. “Miko, I’ve been fine. I’ve just been busy with my job,” she lied.

Miko pursed her lips together. She seemed unimpressed. “You sure about that? Because we’ve been trying to catch you after work and you’re, like, never there.”

She wasn’t wrong. Momo had been picking up fewer shifts, but not for any particular reason. She’d just been spending time with the lonely seal spirit, wandering around Kamigoe in a futile effort to burn off the strange energy that bubbled beneath her skin. She thought the energy might have been the seal spirit’s fault, but she couldn’t see the point in being angry at it. It was just a seal, after all. It couldn’t understand that she was feeling torn between her friends and family as well as itself.

At some point, Momo had stopped thinking of the cloak as Okarun’s and began thinking of it as her own. And why wouldn’t she?

Okarun didn’t want it.

He didn’t care for it like she could, he didn’t brighten its aura from a dull navy to a vibrant indigo like she could, he didn’t take it on long walks to the Inuma riverside and sit with it there talking about nothing at all like she did. He went out of his way to avoid it, and worst of all, he’d abandoned it. Not just when he’d given it to her, but before, when he’d hidden it away in his closet and didn’t take it out again for almost ten years.

Okarun didn’t even ask about the cloak and how it was doing, which caused her seal spirit a bright flare of agony at the thought and Momo a spark of deep irritation. It was just like Okarun, wasn’t it.

But it was difficult to stay mad at him for long these days. He just looked so sick. He was losing weight. He struggled to stay awake. Sometimes, when she looked at him, she was reminded of his ashen face when he was hooked up to the ventilator.

At night, when Momo curled up with her cloak on her bed, Momo had strange dreams: dreams of being put up on a high shelf and being forgotten, dreams of freedom lost, dreams of the tide rolling in as she sat on the ground.

Okarun would walk up in those dreams, dry and unaffected by the water, and look her up and down before shaking his head and walking away to dry ground. The tide would recede, pulling Momo out with it to the wide-open sea. She’d slip beneath the waves and gravity would lose its grip on her and she would be free to swim forever. There were no human worries. Just one breath and, eventually, the next. She felt complete. She felt free.

She luxuriated in her streamlined shape, her eyes large enough to see in the dark. Sensitive whiskers detected the faintest eddies in the water left by movement, and she chased after small silver miracles until she woke up, crying from the loss of a life she’d never known.

She woke up crying most nights these days.

It felt as though the ocean followed her even in her waking hours, whispering sweet nothings into her ears. As soon as she got home, she would rush up to her room to check that her cloak was still there, stroking a hand over its silvery head and murmuring apologies for leaving it.

“You’ve got something up there, don’t you?” Gran said to her one day as she dumped out her ashtray into the trash. “You better not have brought home another kitten, you know Turbo Granny’s cat gets territorial.”

Momo, seated at the chabudai between Vamola and Jiji, froze. She didn’t know why she felt so guilty at concealing her cloak’s presence, but it felt as though something terrible would happen if Gran learned about her cloak.

Both Vamola and Jiji were watching her. She tried not to sweat as she remembered how both of them had seen her with the cloak. Vamola even knew about the seal spirit within.

Vamola opened her mouth and Momo elbowed her. Hard. Her starry green eyes narrowed in frustration, but her antennae quivered in resignation and she said, “Nevermind, Granny.”

Her grandmother set down the ashtray, bringing her full attention to Momo. She looked her up and down, assessing her. Momo wondered if she would be able to see the way Momo’s bones ached more often than not these days, if she was able to see the vivid dreams she’d been having. If she already knew about the cloak and wanted Momo to tell her herself.

After a long, uncomfortable moment, Gran shrugged. “Well, whatever it is, don’t bring trouble back to me. You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, Momo. I trust you to make the right decisions.”

It was becoming more and more difficult to leave her cloak behind. She so keenly felt its absence when she was separated for more than an hour that it became easier to simply keep her cloak folded up at the bottom of her backpack during school. When it called to her during class, she would unzip her bag and place her hand atop it, feeling the spirit’s warmth at being remembered and brought along. These days, being separated from it felt like an almost-physical pain.

Miko and Kei probably thought she was crazy, especially since she refused to tell them what exactly was inside of her bag.

Okarun checked on her, even though he was sick with whatever he was sick with. He asked once, and only once, if the skin was okay. He said that everyone was concerned about how Momo was doing and was worried that maybe the skin was bad for her…?

Momo shot him a glare so withering that Okarun deflated, looking once again pale and wan. “It’s just a cloak, Okarun. Besides, you never took care of it. It’s mine now, and it wants to be mine.”

Okarun flinched and looked at her with tired eyes. “You’re right, Miss Ayase. I’m sorry. I don’t think it ever should have been mine to begin with.”

Momo felt a strange disquiet at that, but the bell rang and lunch was over. During physical education, Momo put her cloak in her cubby and was so uncomfortable without it that she felt ill.

On some level, she registered that this wasn’t normal. The crashing of waves in her head at all times of the day, the nameless longing for something that she couldn’t put words to, the slow ache growing in her bones that didn’t fit her body—none of this was normal. She was trapped in a web of something beyond her ken, something that terrified and fascinated her in equal measure. But all of that was muted, drowned beneath the crashing of waves in her head.

There was a strange song in the air, a crooning melody that was just barely audible. Momo found herself swaying along to it despite herself, humming along as Okarun stared at her in confusion.

They ate their lunch in an awkward silence until her cloak’s call was too strong to resist and she took out her cloak, spreading its heavy warmth over her legs. It was a cool day, she reasoned to herself. Why wouldn’t she want a bit of extra warmth?

Okarun looked at the cloak, terrified. “Miss Ayase, have you—have you just been carrying it around?”

Momo shrugged. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I? It’s a nice coat.”

He closed his eyes for a few seconds, exhaling through his nose, seeming to seek out some inner strength. When he opened them again, he just seemed sad. “I see.”

He avoided looking at her cloak or letting Momo touch him for the rest of the lunch period, vacuuming up his meal and then disappearing to wherever Okarun went when he wanted time alone.

Okarun was saying something, but Momo was busy looking out the window at the small creek outside of the cafe. It looked refreshing. It drew her attention. It—

“Miss Ayase, are you feeling okay?” Okarun asked, his voice sharp and irritated as it cut through her daze.

She shook her head free of the pull of the water. “Sorry, Okarun, what was that?”

He looked hurt. “You haven’t been listening to me at all, have you. I was talking about the alien that attacked us today.”

She blinked. An alien had attacked them today? There had been a moment where she felt cleanly cut off from her skin, but she’d been more focused on getting back to it safely than focusing on anything around her. She supposed she’d remembered something strange going on around her, some blond, blue-skinned person ranting about something or the other, but it hadn’t mattered when she’d be separated from her skin.

Like a magnet, her eyes were drawn back to the stream. She wondered how far she’d have to swim before it connected to the ocean.

When she looked back at Okarun, he was gone, a paid receipt placed in front of her.

The walk home from the cafe was cold, wet, and lonely. Vamola had left school early because of a stomach ache, Jiji was visiting his parents, and Okarun was gone. So Momo walked home on her own, listening to that crooning melody as it called and called and called. She found her cloak in her arms at one point, but she didn’t remember taking it out of her backpack. She didn’t remember much of the walk home. But she did remember, at one point, veering off almost off the side of the road and into the ditch beside. It was only at the last minute that she realized what she was doing and scrambled back up the banks.

Grandmother wasn’t home, off on some day trip with Turbo Granny. Momo didn’t register that as she walked up the stairs, soaked to the bone from the rain. She turned on the shower with a stream of cold water and stepped beneath it. She shuddered at the sensation of water creeping down her shirt and quickly stripped until it was just her, naked, and her cloak.

She put it on.

The head of the seal fit over her own, its flippers draping over her breasts. There was a strange prickling sensation and then the melody of the sea became louder until Momo’s head pulsed with its crooning.

She closed the stopper of the ofuro and stood there, stock-still, as the tub filled with water. When she sat down, her extremities tingled and ached with a sensation not unlike a joint needing to be popped. She stretched and flexed, but couldn’t relieve the sensation and stayed there in the freezing-cold water, listening to the ocean’s song.

The flow of water from the faucet created waves that lapped against her bare skin, reminding her of when she was little and would wake up in the middle of the night to check on her grandmother, making sure she wouldn't vanish like her parents had.

There had been a thunderstorm, one night, and she'd crawled into her grandmother's bed next to her, crying and certain that her grandmother would vanish at each peal of thunder. Gran had held her and shushed her as she sobbed until eventually she'd fallen into an uneasy sleep. She remembered the feeling of her grandmother's arms, warm around her, a then-familiar pressure of an act of love.

The skin—her skin— loved her, too.

She just had to meet it on its terms.

Momo sank deeper and deeper into the ofuro's water until Vamola knocked on the door.

“Momo? You have been in the bathroom for a long time. Are you okay? I need to use the toilet.”

Momo jolted back to herself. What was she doing? She was shaking with cold so hard her teeth were chattering. When she took off the cloak, it felt like she was peeling skin off a sunburn. “Vamola….? Sorry. You can come in.”

When Vamola crept through the door, her antennae perked at the sight of the cloak. “Why is that here?” she asked, pointing. Then she frowned. “I need to poop,” she repeated.

Momo scrambled out of the tub, well aware of Vamola’s lack of privacy when it came to bodily functions. She wrapped a towel around herself and, pulling her skin out of the remaining water, shook it out and left the room.

She laid it out on her bed as normal, uncaring of the water soaking into her sheets, and her skin twitched.

Somehow, this more than anything else broke through her haze. She screamed and stumbled back onto her ass. The floodwaters receded.

What had she been doing? Why had she showered with this thing?

Momo covered her mouth with her hand, feeling out every tether that had grown between her aura and the seal spirit. They were so closely tied together that Momo had trouble differentiating the seal spirit’s aura and her own. She trembled as she picked up the skin and threw it into her closet.

She would ask Gran to exorcise it tomorrow.

The seal spirit within the skin projected desperation, fear, loneliness, rejection at her as she closed the door on it.

Come home.

Momo jolted awake with a gasp. The waxing moon shone through her window, casting stark shadows across her room.

Momo got up, stepping over a sleeping Vamola as she slid open her closet door and reached down to where the sealskin cloak was crumpled up on the floor. It fell from its loose folds as she unwrapped it, the whites of its flippers almost glowing in the soft light and the sharp teeth that laid in the hood gleaming. Something about it called to her in a whisper as soft as ocean waves.

Come home.

In a daze, she placed the flippers over her shoulders. Their claws rested heavily on her torso, a signifier that she was the skin’s and the skin was hers. The cloak swished behind her as she opened the door to her room and drifted down the stairs and out of the house, uncaring that she was clad only in her underclothes and the cloak. The cold didn’t touch her.

She wandered across the road and into the irrigation ditch of the rice field opposing the house. The water was cool and pleasant on her skin, but it didn’t feel right. There was no crisp tang of salt, no endless waves, no magnetic pull of the moon’s power.

It would have to do. She could follow it until the flow rejoined the ocean, and then she'd be free. They'd both be free.

She shuddered at the sensation of clothes touching both her skins. They didn’t belong there. Impatiently, she stripped. But still, even without the impersonal itch of cotton, something didn’t feel right. She could feel both her skins touching each other, nerve fibers confused about which skin to attach to.

Her bones creaked and her vision blurred as it split between the eyes of her sealskin and the eyes of her humanskin. Hot agony burst in her veins as her bones lengthened and pushed against their human confines. She kneeled. Even the cool water lapping higher on her chest wasn’t a relief from the pain.

This was taking too long. This was supposed to be instantaneous, she knew this, even though the only experience she’d had with transforming before was when she had been brought to land by her mother.

Momo shrieked, the air split between her skins exploding from her in a howl that felt grated out of her. Something was wrong. She clawed at her hands where the sealskin’s flippers were covering them, but she couldn’t find purchase.

She wheezed and twitched and then howled as her skin was torn from her body with an excruciating ripping sensation that left her struck dumb for several seconds before she whipped around to see who dared interrupt her.

The interloper was her grandmother, angrier than she’d ever seen her, her skin fisted uncomfortably tight in one hand. She could feel her grandmother’s iron grip on the cloak and wanted to cry out, but the words escaped her.

Gran shook the cloak and Momo staggered. “What are you doing with something like this?”

Momo swayed, shaking her head. She could feel blood trickling hotly down her face.

“Get back in the house. Now. We’re going to have a little talk, and you’re going to tell me exactly where you found this.”

Gran pinched Momo’s ear and dragged her out of the ditch (when had she gotten in there?) and to the dining room, where she roughly shoved Momo down at the chabudai.

Momo didn’t have the wherewithal to protest, still dazed, tired, and confused about what was happening. Why was she outside?

Gran left the room with a stern, “Don’t move a muscle.”

Momo shook slightly where she was kneeling at the chabudai. It felt as though she’d just ripped off a strip of wax from her body, and the upper layer of skin had gone with it. She felt her cloak’s loss as keenly as she felt the pain, a stretching and snapping of the tether that bound them together. In its wake, her skin was raw and beading with blood.

Gran returned with a cup of tea and a blanket, pushing the teacup into Momo’s hands and draping the blanket over her shoulders. The weight was grounding, but it wasn’t right. Where was her cloak? Gran hadn’t returned with it, and Momo found herself twisting to look for it before Gran’s hand slammed onto the chabudai.

“Drink,” she ordered.

Momo drank. The barley tea was warm and helped chase the taste of salt and loss from her mouth. Her hands, when she looked at them, didn’t look familiar. They were the red of peeled skin and curled into claws, the nails longer than she remembered them being.

Across her, Gran’s hands were folded in front of her mouth as she grimly watched Momo drink. Her hair was down, spilling silver across the chabudai. It reminded Momo of the moonlight on her cloak. Where was her cloak?

“Momo, focus.” Gran commanded. “Pay attention to me. Where did you get the cloak?”

It was hers, wasn’t it? Momo opened her mouth to protest, but all that escaped was a harsh creaking noise.

Gran looked like she’d been slapped. Which was dumb, because Momo hadn’t moved. She licked her lips and found them crusted and dry. She took another sip of tea. Gran reached across the chabudai and tucked the blanket tighter around Momo’s shoulders.

“Try again,” she urged.

Momo obeyed. How could she not, when her grandmother looked so scared? “Okarun gave it to me.”

Gran’s face settled into grim resignation. “Tell me about it. All of it.”

Momo explained with halting words about the sealskin she’d found in his closet, then about how Okarun lived alone, and how he’d given it to her for safekeeping.

“And you’ve never seen him use it?” Gran asked.

Why would Okarun use a sealskin? Momo tilted her head.

“You got very lucky. Or unlucky,” Gran began, then paused. She shook her head. “Unlucky. I hadn’t thought a human could be compatible with a skin. You wouldn't have survived transforming, you know. If Vamola hadn’t awakened when you left the room, you might have been gone by now.”

“I don’t understand.”

Her grandmother sighed, suddenly looking very old in the soft lighting of the dining room, and took her hand. “There are groups of people— bloodlines, really— that have a certain connection to the natural world. From the day they’re born, they spend their lives with one foot in the world of humanity and the other with the world of the spirits. Your little husband is one of them, and it looks like he’s tried damn hard to keep both feet in the world of humanity. With you.”

Something about that sentence sounded important. Momo’s brows furrowed as she sorted through the words, then flushed as she finally parsed the meaning. “He’s not my husband,” she said.

“That cloak you were wearing? People like him used to be forced to marry people that took their skins. You said he gave it to you willingly? That’s a proposal, you taking ownership of the spiritual half of his life.”

Momo gaped, embarrassment and no small amount of anger seeping through the numbness of the cloak’s loss. “He- he didn’t mean it like that, did he?”

Gran hummed. “No, I suppose not. He hid his bloodline well enough that I didn’t think the cloak was his until you said anything. I don’t think he was aware of the implications.”

“Why do you think he gave it to me, then?” Momo asked. It was getting easier to think now that the skin was hidden, but she still felt its loss as keenly as she would feel the loss of a limb. Without it, the world felt small and single-faceted. Her skin burned, her joints ached.

“You tell me,” Gran said, sweeping her long hair over her shoulder.

Momo didn’t know. How could she, when she’d tasted the freedom of the skin? If it was hers— truly hers— she never would have given it away. She would have kept it by her side and used it as she saw fit, free from worldly constraints like schoolwork and familial relationships and memories. Just her and the wide-open ocean, the world laid out for her to explore.

Chapter Text

Gran enforced an empty house until Momo had recovered. Vamola, Jiji, and Turbo Granny were all sent off to… Momo didn’t quite know, actually. The silent house was unnerving. Even more unnerving was how gently Gran was treating Momo. Every morning, Gran delivered a tray of steamed eggs and rice to Momo in bed, changed out her bandages, told Momo to call if she needed anything, and then left Momo alone to read and watch TV.

It took two days until Momo was able to walk again. Not so much because of the pain, but because her spiritual energy was confused on which form to take and would try reaching out to the cloak, which Gran had squirreled away to the far edges of their property without telling Momo.

She didn’t dare find it again.

She dozed and had dreams of what might have happened had Gran not intervened—a death, a transformation, a loss. When she was awake, her skin felt too small and fragile for her body.

Momo healed quickly. She always had. The scraped-raw skin on her body scabbed over and the scabs fell off to reveal healthy, fresh skin below. On the third day, Gran helped Momo out of her bandages. Momo watched Gran in the mirror as she slowly unwrapped Momo’s upper arms. Her eyes were downcast and red-rimmed. Momo thought that she must not have been sleeping well, either, just the two of them in the empty, empty house. She inhaled, as if to tell Momo something, then shook her head.

The moment passed.

On the fourth day, Momo felt well enough to get properly dressed. Her skin itched as she pulled on her most comfortable hoodie and sweatpants, but something in her felt more alive with the familiar press of her clothes against her body. She was restless.

“Gran, can I do something today?” she asked quietly when Gran brought her a lunch of soup and salmon.

Gran’s lips tightened at the request before she regained control of her expression, pasting on a bored haughtiness that Momo was deeply familiar with. “Why you asking permission, brat?”

“I’m not gonna go far,” Momo promised, “I’m just gonna go crazy if I stay in my room any longer.”

Gran’s shoulders relaxed. “Well, there’s always cleaning the main shrine.”

So Momo cleaned the shrine. The repetitive motions of the scrubbing brush on the aged wood soothed her, brought her back to be connected with her body in a way she hadn’t been for a long while. Her shoulders ached and her fingers prickled from the cleaning solvent, but it felt good.

How long had it been since she’d last done her chores? The past weeks were a hazy blur of grey. The cloak’s influence, she guessed. For the first time, she felt a spark of anger at Okarun for getting her into this mess in the first place. Why had he decided to give her his skin? And, more importantly, why had he run away from her when she had it?

She realized she was gripping the brush so hard her knuckles were white. She took a shuddery breath and relaxed her hand, bent her head, and returned to scrubbing.

That night, her arms ached pleasantly as she lay in bed and watched mindless soap operas.

Gran knocked on the door.

“Come in,” Momo said, muting the television.

Gran was carrying something delicious-smelling, but her apprehensive expression gave Momo pause as she set down the tray of Momo’s dinner on her bed and then, hesitantly, sat next to it.

“Your friends are asking about you,” Gran began, her voice uncomfortably gentle. “Including Four Eyes.”

Momo flinched and looked away. “I don’t wanna see him.”

“Momo.”

“What! I don’t want to, okay? He-he’s why this whole thing happened. I never want to see him or his stupid skin again,” Momo said, hot tears stinging her eyes.

She knew Gran didn’t believe her as she buried her head in her arms and tried not to cry or think about Okarun and how he hadn’t checked in on her for four whole days or just shown up like he used to do because he was so scared of that stupid fucking cloak.

Gran sighed and rubbed a hand between Momo’s shoulderblades. “You two should talk,” she said. Then, “And you need to give him back his skin.”

“He doesn’t want it!” Momo sobbed. “He doesn’t want it, so he gave it to me, because he hates me.” Then: “Ow! W-what the hell, hag?” as Gran flicked the back of her neck.

“You know that’s not true, Momo. The kid adores you,” Gran scolded. “Something went wrong in your communication, so that’s why you two need to talk. He’s coming over for dinner tomorrow.”

Momo turned to look at her grandmother, betrayed. “What?”

“Four Eyes is coming over for dinner. Tomorrow.”

“You can’t—you can’t just invite him over! He hates it here!”

“He insisted on coming over to check on you, actually. Kid’s not as much of a pushover as he looks. I caught him and your other little friends at the wards, trying to get in.”

“You warded them out?” Momo said, aghast. “But—but Jiji and Turbo Granny and Vamola all live here!”

Gran shrugged, unbothered. “And my granddaughter takes priority. They’ve been staying with Manjirou.”

Momo twisted her blanket in her hands, at a loss for words.

She met Okarun at the door. He looked terrible. She remembered him looking ill, sure, but somehow he looked even worse now that Momo was separated from the daze of the cloak. She wondered if he should have travelled all the way out of town to meet with her. Was this even healthy? But Gran had been the one to invite Okarun over, even though she’d seen how bad he looked.

Maybe she wanted to supervise their conversation. Something soured in the pit of Momo’s belly. She hated this, hated being treated like she was made of glass.

There was a long, awkward silence as Momo looked at her slippered feet and Okarun stood there, fidgeting with cracked nails.

Something went wrong with your communication, and you need to talk.

Momo licked her lips.

“I—” they said in unison, then stopped.

“You go first,” Okarun said.

“No, you,” Momo responded.

“I don’t—I think you should be the one to go first,” Okarun confessed.

Momo glanced up. Okarun had moved on from fidgeting with his nails and was now twisting and pulling his hair.

She sighed and looked at him— really looked. His eyes were sunken, his cheeks hollow. She wondered how much weight he’d lost over the past few weeks—certainly it was an unhealthy amount. There was a subtle wheeze to his breath, and when she looked at his aura, it was just as dull as the cloak’s had been. It felt wrong to see on a living person. It felt like she was looking at a ghost.

She could do this. “So, um, that skin,” Momo began.

Okarun jumped guiltily, then looked guilty for acting guilty. Despite herself, despite the hurt that she felt at Okarun not telling her about this part of himself, Momo felt her lips quirk up in a small smile.

“It’s your skin, isn’t it? Um, Gran told me.”

Okarun nodded once; a short, jerky motion. His jaw ticced.

Momo looked away, to the corner of the property where Gran had put her—the skin in a bag. She wasn’t allowed to touch it, not until enough time had passed that her aura went back to normal and the skin’s influence on her was minimal. Even now, she could sense its exact location, its childish anger and very real hurt at being rejected a second time by someone who had said she would keep it and love it.

She itched to pick it up and bury her face in it, smell its scent of sun-warmed fur and ocean. She forced herself to look away, to look back at its rightful owner even as her bones ached with the sense-memory of weightlessness. It wasn’t her own memory, she realized that now, and by knowing that she could identify the subtle inconsistencies, the taste of the skin’s aura embedded within it. It felt like an invasion of Okarun’s privacy to be experiencing his memories like this.

Momo took a deep breath. Exhaled. Cut the connection with the skin.

Okarun mirrored her.

“I can’t keep it,” she blurted. “It’s not—it’s not right.”

His brows drew together. “What do you mean, it’s not right?”

“I can’t just keep you from the water like this!”

“But I’m not being kept from the water, I hate the water,” Okarun said mulishly. “I’m never going to use it anyways.”

“I—that should be your choice, though. I can’t be responsible for your cloak,” Momo said, anger rising in her. Who did Okarun think she was to make her responsible for this? When it was so dangerous? Who put their lives in someone else’s hands like that?

And then, just as quickly as it rose, the anger dissipated, chased away by the immense exhaustion that she’d struggled with since the night with the cloak. Momo sighed. “...Come in for dinner, at least?”

Gran had set up dinner— yakiniku. It was Momo’s first real meal since she’d gotten hurt and she couldn’t help but notice that Gran had set out and already roasted both Okarun and Momo’s favored foods, two plates set up piled high with their favorites.

Gran was dressed properly, for once, not her outrageous Santa Dodoria clothes. She was seated on the far side of the chabudai, observing the two of them quietly as they silently took their seats across from her.

Momo heard Okarun swallow.

“I—” he began.

Gran raised a hand and he shut up. “We can talk after you’ve both eaten,” she said.

Momo picked up her chopsticks and began shovelling food into her mouth. It didn’t escape her notice how Okarun was just picking at his meal. It wasn’t uncommon for him, but he looked like he hadn’t had a good meal in weeks. Gran had noticed, too, her eyes tightening at the corners. Was it anger? Worry?

Momo couldn’t tell.

Momo couldn’t finish her plate, either. The heavy meal sat uncomfortably in her stomach.

When Gran had deemed them both finished, she cleared her throat and both Momo and Okarun stiffened. “Four Eyes, aren’t you going to eat more?”

Okarun shook his head and whispered, “I’m not hungry. Sorry.”

“You’re not in trouble, kid,” Gran said. “And you look like shit.”

Okarun shrugged miserably, then gathered himself and raised his head. “I don’t know what’s going on, Miss Seiko.”

Gran sighed heavily. “We need to talk about your skin.”

Okarun flinched, curling his hands into fits where they were resting on his lap. He darted a glance over at Momo, who looked away before they made eye contact. She didn’t want to know what she’d find in his eyes. “You—” Okarun began heatedly, and then regained control of his tone. “You had no right to tell her. It wasn’t your secret to tell.”

Gran raised a silvery eyebrow and the fight left Okarun in a rush. “Sorry. That was uncalled for,” he mumbled. His fists were clenched so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

“So you wanted to give her your skin without her knowing?” Gran asked. Her face was completely unreadable.

“I didn’t—I would have told her!” Okarun protested. “Eventually. It’s not like it matters, anyways, it’s just some nasty old thing.”

Momo sat there quietly as they talked, trying to sort out her feelings from the sharp, painful hurt and betrayal she felt into something that wouldn’t burst messily out of her mouth. “It’s not, though,” she said without really meaning to. “It does matter.”

Okarun rounded on her, his cheeks starting to flush with anger. “It really, really doesn’t! It’s gross, and creepy, and—and—”

“— and you still gave it to me,” Momo interrupted. “You didn’t throw it in the trash or give it to someone else, you gave it to me. Why?”

“I thought you’d be able to get rid of it! Do something to destroy it, or lock it up forever so that I’d never have to look at it again. I thought that, no matter what happened, you’d never, ever give it back to me!” Okarun cried. “Why are you trying to give it back? I know you don’t want to be around—around me anymore, but why can’t you just keep the skin?”

“Because it hurt me,” Momo said. “It didn’t mean to, but it hurt me and it’s not safe for me to keep it anymore.”

The room was silent except for the quiet clink of Gran resting her chopsticks on the plate. The blood drained from Okarun’s face. “What?”

“It—it—” Momo began. Okarun’s genuine shock took away the words she’d been thinking about all night.

Gran cut smoothly in. “She tried to transform.”

Okarun looked like he’d been slapped as he turned to Momo. “That’s possible? Miss Ayase?”

Momo wrapped her arms around herself and avoided Okarun’s searching gaze, remembering how it had felt for the skin to be removed from her body: the pain, the fear, the complete lack of understanding of what was going on.

“I- I’ll take it back, Miss Seiko. I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have if I had. I thought it would just— be hers. That she’d take care of it and keep it safe and away from me. I’m so sorry,” Okarun said, sounding choked. “I would never hurt Miss Ayase, not on purpose.”

Gran’s voice softened. “I know that. What happened shouldn’t have happened, and I’ve been spending the last few days trying to figure out why it happened.”

“It was the cloak,” Momo said, still hugging herself. “It—it was lonely, and I wanted to help it.”

“It’s just a stupid old skin,” Okarun mumbled.

“It’s not!” Momo said. “It’s a part of you, and I think it is you and it was so sad and lonely that I couldn’t ignore it.”

“It doesn’t have feelings!”

“Yes, it does!”

“It’s not unheard of for objects that conduct spiritual energy to have an imprint of their owners,” Gran said over their arguing. “Especially since it’s something you were born with. And Momo’s so spiritually sensitive that she must have been able to communicate with that imprint of you.”

There was a long silence after that. Okarun sniffled.

Gran sighed and pushed herself to her feet, her knees audibly creaking. “I’m going to make us all tea and give you both some privacy.”

Her footsteps faded as she left the dining room.

“Sorry,” Okarun whispered brokenly. “I didn’t—”

“I know,” Momo said. She rolled over the words she wanted to say on her tongue, feeling out the shape and taste of them.

Okarun sniffled again.

“You look sick,” she said, and then instantly regretted it. That wasn’t what she wanted to say.

“Miss Ayase, this isn’t about me,” Okarun said.

“But it is, isn’t it?” Momo said, gaining confidence as she went on. “Gran told me that this happened because we haven’t been talking, and I think she’s right. So… let’s talk.” She forced herself to let go of her own arms and look up at Okarun, who had tears slipping down his cheeks and looked like he wanted to be anywhere but at the chabudai.

She hesitated, then reached a hand over to him, settling it over his own.

Okarun slowly, carefully, flipped his hand over so that they were palm-to-palm.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Chapter Text

Gran’s footsteps got softer as she walked away, then vanished with the sound of the door sliding open. Okarun’s hand was warm and slightly damp in her own.

“So,” Momo started, then trailed off. She forced a laugh. “I don’t know where to start.”

“I want to ask you questions, too!” Okarun said. “Why did you just vanish like that? Why didn’t you tell me what was happening? Why didn’t—” his voice broke, “ —why didn’t you trust me?”

Momo tried to pull away, but this time it was Okarun’s turn to hold tight. She fought back the urge to lash out, closing her eyes centering all the ugly emotions in her stomach and imagining them blanketed in a calming wave of her spiritual energy.

This was so hard. Maybe even harder than that first day after the incident.

She exhaled and opened her eyes. Okarun was still staring at her with his brow knit in anger and worry. “I think I was affected by the skin. Somehow. It—it spoke to me, shared memories with me about missing you and—and what you are. Used to be. I don’t know. And I didn’t think anything was wrong until it was too late and I was in too deep because I think I was missing you too.”

“So why didn’t you tell me?” Okarun pleaded. “I thought you were mad. Or angry, or disgusted, or just bored of me.”

“Why would I be bored of you?” Momo said, hurt. “I thought you were mad at me!”

“What was I supposed to think, when you spent every moment we were together staring off into space?” Okarun said. “I tried so hard to get your attention back, and apologise, and ask what was wrong, but you didn’t do anything except stare at me!”

“What? No, you just left me,” Momo said, trying to remember when exactly Okarun had stopped trying. It was a blur. “You and everybody else.”

“We all tried to talk to you, Miss Ayase. We were all worried about you! And then you vanished and Vamola said that there was screaming and then Miss Seiko shut everyone out, and I–I tried calling you, and checking in on you, but she updated the wards to keep me and everyone else out and we thought—we thought you did something terrible.”

“Oh.” Momo said softly. “I don’t. I don’t remember that.”

Okarun scrubbed the back of his free hand over his eyes. At some point, his grip on her hand had tightened until it bordered just on the verge of pain, like he was scared she’d vanish if he let go.

Momo shuffled closer to him, close enough that their knees brushed and Okarun took a steadying breath. “Sorry,” she offered. It didn’t feel adequate for the emotions she was feeling.

“I was so scared, Miss Ayase,” Okarun mumbled. “And now I find out that it’s my—the skin’s fault? I don’t know what to do.”

“Me neither,” Momo confessed.

“I wish I had just thrown that thing away when I had the chance,” Okarun said.

Momo jerked back, aghast.

Gran chose that moment to step back into the dining room with a tray laden with three steaming cups of tea. With a preternatural grace, she kneeled at the chabudai and passed Okarun and Momo their cups. Momo looked at hers. Barley tea. She didn’t want to let go of Okarun’s hand to pick it up.

“There’s a reason why I only invited you over, Four Eyes,” she said. “You don’t know much about your heritage, do you.”

It wasn’t a question.

Momo could feel Okarun’s minute flinch beneath her hands. “N-no ma’am.”

Momo flashed back to the night of the incident, of Gran telling her that the skin was a proposal, for some people. She couldn’t decide if she felt relieved or disappointed by learning that Okarun didn’t mean to imply anything by giving her the skin. But that wasn’t important, was it? Because Gran looked gravely serious and tired, the same way she’d been looking when she thought Momo wasn’t watching her.

Gran sighed heavily and took off her glasses to polish them on the hem of her waistwarmer. “You can stop looking at me like I’m about to execute you, Four Eyes. I’m not mad at you. I’m worried. You’re clearly wasting away without your skin, so why do you want to give it away so badly?” Gran asked.

“I just— I don’t want it. I don’t like not being a person.” Okarun said.

“But you didn’t mind the curse, right?” Momo interjected.

“That was different, I think. I was still me when I used Turbo Granny’s power, and I couldn’t stay like that for very long. When I was growing up, I would stay at sea for months on end. Life on land didn’t matter, not when I had my skin on. And- and it’s one thing when there’s nothing to come home to, to have the skin. If I ever gave up on being a person, I could have the option of living as a seal. So I kept the skin in my closet, even though I really, really, really wanted to be a person.

“But then I met you, Miss Ayase. And I couldn’t just leave, not when I’d made a friend, and not when you’d miss me if I were gone.” Okarun gave Momo a tremulous smile.

Momo frowned. “It’s still you though, isn’t it? And you’re a person, so that means seal-you is a person. And you’re getting sick without that part of you— don’t give me that look, I can see your aura. It looks bad right now, Okarun. I don’t want to lose you,” Momo said.

She couldn’t imagine rejecting her powers. It was a part of herself, just as much of her body as her legs and arms. Even now, just a few months after she’d awoken them, she shuddered to think of being separated from them somehow.

Okarun lifted his chin. “I’m fine. I feel great. Better than I have in years.”

“Okarun…” Momo trailed off.

“I don’t think you’d leave,” Gran said suddenly. “For a few days, sure, but not forever. And you’d feel better once you came back, you’d be less of a liability.”

Okarun flinched at that and Momo gave Gran a hard look.

“She’s right though,” Momo said. “You’ll come back, I know you will.”

“But you don’t know that, Miss Ayase. I don’t—I need to keep myself on land, because I—we—ugh—” he paused for a moment to get his words under control, then carefully said, “I don’t think I would come back.”

“How do you know that?” Momo said, stung.

“Because we don’t come back! Ever.”

“Okay, then you never come back and you’re healthy,” Momo said, trying to keep her voice from trembling. “And that’s worth it, to me.”

He wouldn’t abandon her, though. They’d been through so much, he wouldn’t. He couldn’t.

“It’s not about you, Miss Ayase,” Okarun snapped.

Across the table, Gran’s brows shot up.

Okarun exhaled. “Sorry. That was cruel.”

Momo felt like she’d been slapped.

There was a long silence. And Momo thought.

“Is it because your mother never came back?”

“Momo,” Gran warned.

Okarun jerked his hand out of her grip. “Excuse me?”

Judging by the sudden, terrified, cornered-animal anger in his face, she had the right of it. She quashed any guilt she felt at bringing up bad memories. She had to make him listen. “Just— you’re not her. You know that, right? You’re Okarun, my brave, loyal friend. You wouldn’t leave me, because I don’t think you want to.”

“And besides,” Momo continued. “If you don’t come back, I’ll fish you out of the ocean. Can’t be that many seals with Turbo Granny’s curse now, can there?”

Okarun blinked. “What?”

“Yeah. I’ll become a fisherwoman if you don’t come back, and then I’ll take you out of the sea myself,” Momo said. “But I don’t think I’ll have to.”

She could hear the click of his throat as he swallowed. Then, at last, in a small voice, he said, “You’ll wait for me?”

“I will.”

Things moved quickly after that. Gran convinced Okarun that he shouldn’t wait longer than was absolutely necessary before reuniting with his skin, and took him out to the corner of the shrine where she’d stashed it while Momo did the dishes in the kitchen.

She heard them talking softly as they left and tried not to feel left out. Gran was probably giving sage advice to Okarun, or something. She wished Gran had given her that same advice, or some sort of guidance on what she was supposed to do. Was she doing the right thing in encouraging him to leave?

She stared down at the half-scrubbed plate in her hands. Did she really believe Okarun was going to come back? She didn’t know if she would have come back. But, as she searched her gut, she realized that yes, yes she did believe Okarun was going to return to her. She had to believe it, because she couldn’t imagine an Okarun not being in her life. She had to believe it, because Okarun was her steadfast companion, and he wouldn’t abandon her.

She gagged and dropped the plate on the ground as she hastened to the bathroom and vomited up nothing but clear seawater. The salt stung where she’d chewed the inside of her cheeks raw as she retched. She heaved until she tasted bile instead of the overwhelming salt, until her stomach muscles ached with the effort of expelling all the remaining seawater from her body. It felt like dying. It felt like a baptism.

When she stood up and staggered to wash her hands, she made eye contact with herself in the mirror. Her eyes were watery and red, salt-tracks running down her eyes, nose, and mouth, but she felt more aware than she had in the past month. She breathed raggedly, gripping the sink as she kept staring at herself.

The reflection in the mirror was familiar yet unfamiliar. Momo’s gaze roved over landmarks—there, where she had cut her chin open when she was a toddler and there, where she had tried giving herself an eyebrow scar because she thought it would look cool. But had her eyes always been so distant? Had her cheeks always been so sunken?

She dragged her gaze away from the figure in the mirror and cupped her hands beneath the faucet, gathering a handful of water to swish around her mouth and spit out to try and get rid of that awful salt.

It wasn’t the first time she’d vomited up seawater after giving up the skin. Gran said it was the skin’s influence wearing off on her now that she’d tightened her spiritual energy so that there was no way the skin could reach her.

She left the bathroom.

Gran stood alone in the kitchen, sweeping up the shards of the plate Momo had dropped. She was smoking.

A cold hand gripped Momo’s heart. “Where’s Okarun?” she demanded, terrified that Okarun had left while she’d been gone. She hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye.

Gran pointed upstairs.

Momo’s knees almost buckled from the relief.

“Something you want to talk about?” Gran said, pausing her sweeping.

Momo shook her head.

Gran waited patiently.

“What if he doesn’t come back?” Momo blurted. She felt sick to her stomach at the thought.

“He will,” Gran said. “You know that.”

Momo wrapped her arms around herself. “But he sounds like he thinks he’s not coming back.”

“He’s come back to you before, hasn’t he? When he took his walkabout as an astral projection, when he was trapped in the cursed house. I told you this a long time ago, and I’m going to tell you it again now. Spirits have a way of returning to people. And your little husband is no different, no matter what he thinks.” Her voice turned gently teasing at the end.

Momo’s breath hitched. Warm tears rolled down her cheeks and she scrubbed them away angrily.

“Oh, Momo,” Gran said, and wrapped her into a hug. Her arms were thin with age, but there was a reassuring strength in them. Momo looked up at her, the deep wrinkles carved into her face, and then couldn’t bear to keep looking at her aging guardian. She tucked her head into Gran’s shoulder and cried. Gran curled a hand around the back of Momo’s head and held her close, humming an old-fashioned song. “It’ll all be okay.”

Then, again. “It’ll all be okay.”

When she and Gran finished cleaning up their dinner, Momo headed upstairs.

Okarun was sitting on her bed, his head in his hands and his skin crumpled on the floor by his feet. He looked up as Momo closed the door behind her, a wild light in his eyes. “You can stop me, you know,” he said desperately. “You can take the pelt and hide it somewhere where I’ll never be able to find it, and I’ll be yours forever.”

Momo bared her teeth. “You’ll die, Okarun! You can’t ask this of me. It’s not fair! I want to see you happy and healthy and not dying by my side.”

“I was happy,” Okarun said. “I’ve never been happier than when I’m with you. I don’t want to abandon everything that I’ve gained in the past year because of you—I don’t want to lose you! You can keep me! I’d be happier that way, Miss Ayase. Really.”

“I don’t want to keep you!” Momo said, her voice cracking. “You’re not something to be kept, you’re my best friend.”

“I love you!” Okarun said, reaching desperately for her.

Momo batted his hands away. How could he tell her this now? “Fuck you, don’t you dare put that on me right now. Tell me that after you get back,” Momo snapped. She was so mad she was shaking.

They got ready for bed together in an uneasy silence, their elbows brushing as they brushed their teeth.

When they got back to Momo’s room, she paused in front of the skin, steeling herself and stooping down to pick it up. Beneath the skin, something glimmered. The wish stone Momo had made so long ago was resting beneath her bed, forgotten. Momo stared at it for a long second, then closed her eyes. She didn’t need it anymore.

Maybe she never had.

She picked up the skin and folded it neatly onto the foot of her bed before slipping beneath the covers. Okarun lingered outside the room until she held the covers open for him. The bed dipped beneath his weight as he joined her. Momo pulled him close and drank in his familiar ocean-decay smell. “I’m really, really mad at you,” she mumbled against his chest. “But I don’t want to be.”

“Sorry,” Okarun whispered.

They lay there in silence.

Momo thought about the freedom the skin promised her. If she’d succeeded somehow in transforming, she would never have come back—not for Gran, not for Okarun, not for anybody.

Chapter Text

Breakfast was a subdued affair. Momo had fallen asleep at some point, but judging by the deep bags under Okarun’s eyes, he hadn’t been so lucky. Neither of them could stomach eating much, and Gran didn’t push them.

The drive to the ocean was similarly silent. Momo sat in the middle seat next to Okarun, feeling his warmth next to her. An old backpack of hers sat on his lap, its tarnished buckle occasionally catching the light as the sun struggled free of the clouds. Gran eventually stopped at a pullout alongside the highway. The scent of the sea was overwhelming.

“There’s a rocky beach at the end of this path,” Gran said, lighting a cigarette. “You’ve got an hour, Momo.”

Okarun helped her out of the car. They walked down the sandy path together, hand in hand. Momo carried the backpack with his skin in it. When Okarun spoke, she jumped.

“I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you for helping me that day. My mother was… gone that day, and I was so scared. I didn’t really know what to do when I got caught in the plastic.”

Momo squeezed his hand, and he squeezed back.

“I think my mother was mad at me. Boys that are seals grow up slower than real seal pups. I didn’t really know why I was different, though, just that every other seal I knew was aging faster than I was. So she left me there at the beach, and then you helped me, and it… it really meant a lot. So thank you.” Okarun took a deep breath.

The crashing of waves was audible beneath his quiet, steady voice.

He continued. “Maybe a month after I met you, my mother took me into a city harbour. And in the middle of the night, she woke me up and she left the water and took off her cloak. I’d never seen her as a human before— I didn’t even know it was possible, really. And then she took off my cloak as well, and I was too scared of what I’d become to be scared of her anymore. And then she gave me to my father and disappeared.”

The path was coming to an end, now, the thick trees walling them in turning strange and twisted from the ocean winds. Above them, a layer of thick silver clouds chased across the sky.

“I’ve always wondered if it was a test of some sort, to see if I was really a boy or a seal. I think I chose wrong, Miss Ayase, in not returning to the ocean. If I chose differently, if I ever put the skin back on, maybe she would have come back. But if she’d come back, then I never would have met you.”

“Why should you care about what your shitty mother thinks?” Momo said, angry.

Okarun continued, distant and soft as if he hadn’t heard her interruption. “Maybe it didn’t matter. I don’t think she’d accept me either way.”

The beach was rocky and desolate. Waves crashed against the shore in a steady rhythm.

“This is it, isn’t it?” Okarun said when they’d drawn so close to the water that the waves lapped at their shoes.

Momo reached into the backpack and pulled out the silvery expanse of Okarun’s skin.

He stared at it with hungry, terrified eyes. “I’m scared,” he confessed.

“I know,” Momo said. “Me too.”

They walked into the water together. It was a shock of cold. Okarun stopped when they were waist-deep.

“Can you turn around?” Okarun asked. His voice was high and thready, pinched with anxiety.

Momo turned around as he undressed, the waves lapping gently at her waist. She’d have to wash her clothes when she got home. Okarun would have to wash his clothes, too, when he got home.

The clouds broke. She turned around and saw Okarun, naked as the day he was born, chest-deep in the freezing ocean swells. He was looking at his outstretched arms, examining them as though he would never see them again.

“Okarun?”

He gave her a wan smile and handed her his clothes. She used her powers to deposit them on the rocky shore. Then, unbidden, she stepped forward and hugged him.

Okarun clutched her like he was afraid to let her go. Maybe he was. She was afraid to let him go, too. But she had to.

Momo pressed her fingers against the bare, warm skin of his back, faintly goose-pimpled. He was soft and warm and familiar and loved, and she was possibly about to lose him forever. She buried her nose in his neck and blinked back tears.

She forced herself to unwind her arms from him, then draped his pelt over his back so that his paws were resting over his chest and the mouth of the seal’s head sat atop his own. It looked natural and Momo wondered for a second how she had ever thought it could be hers to wear.

Okarun caught her fingers as she withdrew from him, clutching them in a desperate grip for a second. “Wait for me?”

Momo squeezed back. “I will.”

She brushed her lips against his forehead.

Okarun took a deep breath. “Okay. I think I’m ready.”

She couldn’t tell which of them was the one to let go. Okarun retreated deeper until only the hollow eyes of the seal hood remained above water, and then those eyes blinked.

And then he was gone.