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There was no feeling quite as good as racing on the open ocean all by yourself, feeling that crispy, salty air on your cheek as your hair whips around.
Just kidding! There was a far better feeling: racing on the open ocean all by yourself but in a really cool boat that you’ve modified and tuned just how you like!
Tsubasa was a pretty normal girl from the TR Coast…for the most part. Unlike her friends from school, she had some comparatively unique interests. TV shows, music, idols…it wasn’t really her cup of tea. Sure, she tried to keep up, but the whole time, she was dissociating and daydreaming about what she’d rather be doing: helping at her grandfather’s shipyard!
Her parents didn’t know it, but this was what Tsubasa wanted to do for the rest of her life. Nothing quite compared to the passion she felt when she was working on repairing an old boat, or tuning a slick new one. And this year, for her 20th birthday, she received the greatest gift of all from her beloved grandpa…a beautiful speedboat! Of course, she’s been fast at work since turning it into the perfect motorboat of her dreams. This Saturday should have been no different.
So why did it have to end up like this? Here she was, on her beloved, sexy boat, under the beautiful blue sky and on nice, gentle waves…stranded.
Her engine had gone completely kaput. And worse? Her phone has no signal! Why did she decide to test drive those new parts and go so far out!? She can’t even see the shore anymore…She did what she could to try to fix her baby, but nothing’s working. At best, she’ll lose her whole Saturday waiting for the TRCG, the coast guard, to come find her…and at worst…
Well, she doesn’t want to think about the ‘at worst’.
An hour quickly becomes two. And then three…She’s already emptied her cooler of everything there was to drink. She’s already spent 30 minutes finding shapes and patterns in the clouds above. She’s already tried to count waves…What was next on the agenda? Searching for fish and dolphins? May as well, at this point…
But the second she decides to glance in the water, her eyes see something completely unexpected: two eyes, staring back at her.
Did she…imagine that!? She rubs her eyes, paces backwards, and thinks…then sprints back to the edge of her boat, and looks back down at the water.
Sure enough, a person has emerged from the water, at the edge of the boat.
“Shuuucks. I guess you caught me…”
It was a girl, with beautiful blue hair, just like the sea. Her makeup was beautifully unsmudged, for someone who just emerged from under the waves; Tsubasa would have to remember to ask what she was wearing, for the sake of her friends. Ah, but that’s not important right now!?
“WHAT!?” Tsubasa fell backwards onto her ass, rocking the boat in the process, and hitting the girl on the forehead.
“OW!?” The mysterious girl began to sink, and, in a panic, Tsubasa rushed back to her feet and threw over a life preserver. But she didn’t grab it…was that mysterious girl sinking!? Then…nothing for it. Tsubasa was wearing a rashguard anyway, and she was wearing swim bottoms under her shorts, so…nothing for it! She leapt into the water, searching for the girl…and she found her.
She quickly grabbed the girl’s arms, and tried to pull her to the surface, but, there was one problem…
That was no human girl. It was a fish.
Or something in between. Something that should only exist in books and legends: a mermaid.
Her fish body was far to heavy to drag up, but she lost all strength in her muscles anyway when she saw the girl’s bright-magenta fishtail. The air left her lungs, and she thought, just maybe, her eyes were stinging so much from the saltwater that she was seeing things…but that’s quickly disproved when the mermaid grabs her around the waist instead, and raises her back to the surface.
The two floated in terribly awkward silence for a moment. Tsubasa was refilling the air in her lungs, and staring at the mermaid’s face…and the mermaid seemed to be taking her all in, while still holding her by the waist.
“Y-You…” Tsubasa stammered, “You’re a-”
“Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m a mermaid, or whatever.”
“You’re-”
“Yup, I’m real. There’s a bunch of us actually. Real lovely society we’ve got down there, you know,” the mermaid spoke with a strangely sardonic tone…as if she expected the shock, rightly.
“Then how- I mean, what-”
“I saw a stranded boat, and I came to save you. That’s how it goes, right~?”
“S-Seriously!?”
“Just kidding! Kyohohoho!” The mermaid suddenly burst out into a maniacal laughter and stuck out her tongue.
“What?”
But if it wasn’t that…then why was a mythical creature showing herself now? This wasn’t some sort of elaborate prank, was it? No, science hadn’t advanced far enough to pull off a practical joke like this. If she wasn’t going to save her, did she maybe want to…eat her!? No, that couldn’t be it either; she would’ve dragged her under!
“You just got Darumi’d!” The mermaid released her hands, then poked her own cheek and looked up at the soon-to-set sun. “That’s me, by the way. Darumi. Darumi the mermaid, insert Title Card.”
“Title card…? You have TV down there?” Tsubasa shook her head, “No, wait, that’s not what matters! What’s going on!?”
“Oh, right. I didn’t come to save you.” Darumi sunk a little, so her mouth was barely above the waves. “Actually, I was hoping you’d catch me.”
“Catch you?”
“Yeah, like with a net! Can you catch me? You’re a fisherman, right?”
“No, this isn’t a fishing boat…”
“Grrr! What!? No nets!?” The mermaid scowled, and looked like a wet cat (well, she was very wet). “C’mon! Catch me!”
“I-I’m serious! It’s a speedboat…I was seeing how fast I could push it, and it broke. Even if I had a net, I mean, why would you want that?”
“’Cause then I’d have an excuse to get out of here.” Her face swapped up once again. Her brilliant eyes, pink, like a fluorescent coral, seemed to reflect the salt of the sea more than the water in this moment.
“Out of…the sea?”
“Yeah. You can like, capture me, donate me to science, or cut me up and eat me, or whatever.”
“What are you talking about?”
“It sucks ass! I hate it here! My bum ass brother won’t leave me alone, and my dad keeps losing bets at the Seahorse Races! And my low-tide job’s just got a bunch of coelacanth customers lately! Living fossils; they should hurry up and become dead fossils like fossils are supposed to be!”
“Oh, um, whoa…that’s a lot.”
“But, you don’t have a net…” Darumi said with a sigh, “So I guess I’ll just float back there and die or something.”
“Why do you need to be caught? Can’t you just swim away somewhere?”
“’Cause fish are everywhere. Word spreads fast. If I got caught, that’d be the easiest for everyone, right?”
“S-Sorry I can’t help…but even if I had a net, you saw that I was stranded, right?”
“Oh, yeah.” Suddenly, Darumi looked like she’d short-circuited; drool dripped from her mouth and her eyes went blank as if the logic error had collapsed her brain function.
“But, wait. I have an idea.” Tsubasa put a finger to her chin, and pulled away a wet strand of hair that was sticking to her face. “If you can push my boat back to shore, I can find a net there and capture you. Would that work?”
“Huh…” Darumi muttered, the light returning to her fuchsia eyes, “But look at my arms. They’re basically made of jellyfish. I can’t push a boat!”
Tsubasa sighed, and now she sunk down a bit, hiding her mouth beneath the sea as she tried to think.
“I can’t save your boat, but I can get you there. Mermaids are good at swimming, not much else. Oh, and anison karaoke. …Let me go to human karaoke! I wanna fuck it up!”
What? But…
Tears, saltier than the sea, began to well up in Tsubasa’s eyes at the mere suggestion of abandoning her precious boat. There was something deeply wrong with both of them that neither considered death as the least preferred option here.
“O-Okay…fine. I guess I don’t have a choice. Maybe after I catch you, I can borrow one of grandpa’s boats, and…”
“Seriously? Kay.”
“Mm, and I guess, then, I could try to hide you at the marina…I’ll figure out a way…”
Tsubasa’s mind was at work, trying to figure out the logistics of this arrangement. But before her brain could finish working out all the steps, a force was wrapping around her again. Darumi pulled her into a tight embrace, clinging like seaweed…but it wasn’t out of affection. She pulled her under the waves, and began to swim, beating her tail against the sea like the least graceful dolphin in the history of seakind.
It was…amazing. At first, she was startled, and of course, watching her boat shrink into a distant shadow would have made her misty-eyed, if she weren’t underwater. But the sensation of swimming so quickly, and being held so tightly, was incredible enough to turn her mind blank. She left home today with the intention of going fast, and now, she was outspeeding even the best engines.
Is this what it feels like to be a boat? Cutting through the water as if it was completely weightless…she can’t help but think it must be nice to be a mermaid, in spite of the stories Darumi told. And yet Darumi was here, probably thinking it must be nice to be a human.
But together, their bodies almost seemed to meld into one beneath the sea; she could feel Darumi’s chest moving up and down, and she didn’t even realize she’d been holding her breath. The sea was moving so quickly, she couldn’t make out shapes through the light flittering down from the surface…and sounds were so muffled, that all of her senses were deprived except for the feeling of this girl’s skin and water upon her own.
Even though they just met, for some reason, she felt sure that things would be fine. This mermaid would keep her safe. And soon, it would be her turn to keep Darumi safe. From her family, from mermaid society, and from humans, too. It was sudden, this feeling, but it was strong. Surely, it was infatuation, combined with marvelment…and yet, Tsubasa was on cloud nine, already thinking about what future might be like with this strange little mermaid.
Whatever awaited them ashore, she was sure nothing would be the same after this. But maybe, just maybe, she’d awaken a passion in her even greater than her love for boats. A love for…someone?