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Akutagawa’s breath was even and steady. He had it down to an art, if he was being honest—the ability to maintain deep breaths was integral to his physical therapy, and if he kept his breathing slow, on a good day he could still fill his lungs to capacity without coughing one out.
But here, now? With the saltwater winds whipping at his face, his chest heaving as he tilted his chin up and away from the steep view of the rocky sea?
Every breath stung. He was lucky he could still gasp between the coughing fits that came with the spray of the waves. Akutagawa’s chest burned as he held himself up against the back of the chain-link fence, only half a meter from the cliff’s edge.
And to think he was sent here because the ‘fresh sea air’ would do ‘wonders’ for his disease.
Terminal was terminal.
Akutagawa looked down, where the froth of white seafoam parted around rocky peaks and sharp stone edges rose from the water like teeth. He wondered how it would feel to fall in. Would his body break against the rocks or the waves first? How hard would he have to fight to rise above the waterline?
L’appel du vide. The call of the void. Would dashing his skull against the pacific maw below truly be favorable to the endless experimental injections, IVs, and mind-numbing pain pills? Pain and peace were measurable, but at what point did self-destruction become mercy?
Akutagawa sighed, fingers curling around the chain-link fence. He’d stay anchored here for now, at least while he could still breathe. Even if the benefits of seaside air turned out to be a lie, the view itself was gorgeous. Grand waves crashed over pillars of rock. Centuries of erosion revealed streaks of color through the land’s formation. The sea swirled in a kaleidoscopic array of shades, too—murky green, sapphire blue, inky black. The view was dizzying.
So dizzying, in fact, that Akutagawa caught himself swaying at the top of the cliff. He wouldn’t fall. But there was something cathartic about letting the wind pull him back and forth.
Suddenly, a swell of seawater split atop a spiny ridge of rock. As the foam and sand slipped away, something peculiar was left behind—the form of a man, tanned dark from the sun, with seaweed tangled in starlight-silver hair.
Akutagawa’s first thought?—Great. Another corpse for me to burn into my memory.
But when the man’s head turned upward, and his bright eyes met Akutagawa’s?—Shit.
The man was either moments from death, or minutes from reporting Akutagawa’s clifftop visit to the orderlies.
Akutagawa scrambled around to pull himself over the chain-link fence. He climbed up with practiced ease and dropped on the other side, back on facility grounds. But before he could return to his room, he had to go to the docks. Better to straighten things out now, before any of this was reported to the hospital.
He moved as quickly as he could down the stone stairs to the beach, then peeked around the jagged boulders to try to find where exactly the man had ended up. But there was no one to be seen: no body bobbing in the waves, and no one collapsed atop the ridges of rock.
There’s no way I imagined it.
Akutagawa wouldn’t even entertain the thought. He leaned over the water, scanning the waves for the form of a man who… What? He hadn’t gotten much of a look. He couldn’t even tell if he’d been wearing any clothes. Just that he looked like he’d been waterboarded to hell and back.
“It’s you!”
A sudden voice called out from the other side of the beach. At the end of the dock stood the man he’d seen, picking seaweed out of his hair. He was, in fact, wearing clothes—a slightly tight white tee littered with tiny, worn holes, through which his tanned skin was far too visible, and pastel bermuda swim shorts that looked a size too big. He was smiling like a fool.
Akutagawa practically growled as he spun on his heel and stormed down the pier.
“Let me make one thing clear,” he said, eyes flashing with anger. “I am not suicidal.” He stopped just in front of the man, who shook the excess water from his hair. A bit splashed on Akutagawa’s face.
“Oh!” the man exclaimed. “That’s… Good, I guess.”
Akutagawa had seen suicidal. He’d maybe even been there before. But the doctor kept him on a short enough leash already, and he had no interest in making it any shorter.
The man stretched his arms up, humming in satisfaction as his shirt revealed a sliver of his stomach. Akutagawa glanced down as disinterestedly as he could. The man’s abs were clearly defined with hours of regular hard labor, but his skin was littered with scars. Thick, jagged ones that looked like they’d been carved with blades or hooks. He was tan everywhere, a rich shade of golden-brown that Akutagawa could never reach if he tried. The sun would probably burn a hole through him instead.
Someone spends too much time shirtless, Akutagawa thought, certain now that the man hadn’t been wearing any part of this ridiculous ensemble before making his way to the pier.
“When I saw you up there, I thought for sure you were trying to die!” the man told him. “Lots of people do that sort of thing here. It’s horrible, honestly, so I’m glad you’re not one of them. It’s important to keep yourself safe, yeah?”
“What about you?” Akutagawa asked, a single brow raising in suspicion. “When I saw you, you looked dead on those rocks.”
A nervous laugh bubbled from the man’s mouth.
“Ah, no,” he said. “You must be mistaken. I was just fishing!”
“Fishing.”
He beckoned over his shoulder, where a knotted net floated beside the pier. Fish wriggled madly inside, but before they could fight any harder against the mesh, the man began to haul the bundle up over the dock.
“Yeah. I had to finish my haul before the market tonight.”
This man is a terrible liar, Akutagawa thought. His cheeks were flushed red. His flustered smile gave way to stuttered words. He wasn’t hauling a net when I saw him. He wasn’t even wearing clothes.
“You, on the other hand,” the man said, wiping seaslick hands on his shirt once the net was shored. “I was sure you were gonna jump. Why climb over that fence, huh? It’s there for a reason.”
“I don’t care for fences, seeing as I’m not a dog,” Akutagawa grumbled.
“Right. You’re a human.”
“Unfortunate, but true.” Akutagawa rolled his eyes. This man was clearly an idiot. But as long as he wasn’t going to report him to the hospital, there was no reason to further waste his time. “I’m leaving now.”
The man’s mouth opened and closed, not unlike the fish out of water gasping for breath behind him.
“Alright,” he replied, but Akutagawa was already halfway back to the sand, measuring his breaths evenly to prepare for his ascent up the stairs.
˚⋆𓇼˚⊹ 𖦹 ⁺｡°
The evening open-air fish market was considerably more pleasant than Akutagawa had expected.
It was a small market, with only half-a-dozen booths total, but Akutagawa preferred the quiet, anyway. And without the harsh sun beating down on him, the cool breeze off the ocean almost reminded him of his childhood, when he and his sister spent the better nights by the edge of the waves, trying to catch fish with their bare hands. Akutagawa had never succeeded, but something about Gin’s fast reflexes and sharp eye granted her the ability to catch all kinds of fish over the years.
They would grill them over the leftover embers of abandoned party bonfires, and after picking out a seemingly endless amount of thin bones, the fish made a delightfully nutritious meal considering they couldn’t afford anything else.
Well, Akutagawa had enough money now to buy all the fish he wanted—but his sister was nowhere to be found. Surely, she was still in Yokohama, but would he ever even make it back?
He didn’t want to think about it.
“It’s you again!” a familiar voice called from a nearby booth.
Of course. Just his luck. Akutagawa turned to see the man from before waving wildly behind a table topped with boxes of fish, crabs, and seashells. His hair was a bit neater than before, which didn’t say much considering his choppy haircut. His bangs stuck out every which way, frizzy with dried salt. Like this, Akutagawa finally noticed an errant streak of black hair that curled below his chin, stark against the rest.
Despite himself, Akutagawa approached the booth.
“I’ve been thinking about you, you know,” the man mentioned.
“Why?” Akutagawa’s voice was sharp, bitter. It brought a pleasant flush to the man’s cheeks. Akutagawa’s toes curled in the sand.
“Well, I was thinking more about what you said, really. About how being a human is unfortunate.”
“...Again, why?” Akutagawa’s expression must have shown true disgust, because the man’s smile tilted downward.
“Ahh, if it isn’t Atsushi!” Before the man could respond, they were interrupted by a rickety old woman who scanned the array of goods at his booth. “Such a gorgeous selection of shells, as usual,” she said. “I’ll never understand how you manage to find them all!”
“Miss Watanabe!” the man said with a smile. “Thank you! I actually found a few this week that I think your granddaughter would love.”
As the two chatted, Akutagawa glanced down. Sure enough, the shells the man—Atsushi, apparently—sold at his booth were quite pretty. Actually, Atsushi had more variety than any of the other tables he’d visited so far. Cones, conches, clams, and more had been laid out in a display of colors. Metallic silvers faded into dark blues, shining violets, and iridescent pinks. Cream conches with sparkling white interiors laid beside snail shells in sizes small and large, but all with complex, intricate patterns.
The old woman made her purchase and toddled away with a polite wave. Atsushi turned to grin to Akutagawa.
“That’s Miss Watanabe,” he said. “Her son runs the market, and she helped me get a table, so I always try to find something special for her.”
Why would I care? Akutagawa wanted to ask. Instead, he nodded.
“Anyways,” Atsushi continued, “I was hoping we could talk. If now’s a good time for you, I don’t mind stepping away for a bit.”
Alarm bells went off in Akutagawa’s mind.
“Fine,” he said anyway. “Just make it quick.”
Atsushi’s smile as he pulled out a ‘BE BACK SOON’ sign was almost frighteningly bright. It nearly outshone the full moon whose silver light glanced off the waves. Nearly overwhelmed by the persistence of his smile, Akutagawa led Atsushi away from the market. Instead, he wandered back down the pier where they’d first spoken.
Akutagawa sat at the end of the pier and let his legs dangle off the edge. In lieu of his usual dress pants, he wore the casual cotton shorts provided by the hospital, and with his legs bare below the knees, the spray of the sea against his skin was bracing. The tips of his toes skimmed the tops of the waves.
Atsushi stood behind him. He could feel the eyes boring into his back—it was unnerving.
“I think you’re a very suspicious man, Atsushi,” Akutagawa said as he faced the ocean.
“What?” Atsushi asked. His body stiffened. “Why? Because I wanted to talk to you?”
“Because for a pirate, you’re as dumb as a bag of rocks.”
The beat of silence between them was filled only by the static of distant waves.
“You…” Atsushi mumbled, voice suddenly low. “You think I’m a pirate?”
Akutagawa laughed dryly. His breath caught on a cough before he continued.
“I’m no fool,” Akutagawa said. “I’ve seen my fair share of riff-raff.”
The streets of Yokohama were no place for a child at night. Unfortunately, he and Gin weren’t given a choice—back when they were first turned from the foster homes, starving and without shelter, they’d been thrown into all kinds of dangerous situations. Under the cover of night the criminals did their best work: drug dealing, gang initiations, contraband trading. Akutagawa was more than familiar with the ways of the dealers, the mafia, and yes, the pirates.
Yokohama was a port city, after all.
And Atsushi was far too quiet behind him.
“I know you’re a pirate,” Akutagawa said. He looked over his shoulder. “You were adrift in the rockiest part of the sea, likely to hide your movements.” Atsushi blinked. “Your body is covered with scars, clearly from combat.” Atsushi cocked his head. “And to top it all off, you claim to be a small-town fisherman selling his local goods.”
“But I am!” Atsushi exclaimed.
“Really?” Akutagawa’s voice was flat, sardonic. “You expect me to believe you caught all those exotic seashells in your little net?”
Atsushi’s eyes shifted back and forth. They were a fascinating shade of gold, actually—unimportant.
“That’s exactly where I get all my wares,” Atsushi said. He couldn’t even keep eye contact.
“Hah!” Akutagawa coughed again. “The vast majority of your ‘local’ seashells are rare species only found hundreds of kilometers out at sea, in the deepest, coldest parts of the Sea of Japan. Which, if you weren’t aware, is on the opposite side of the country.”
Atsushi flushed red. “That’s because-”
“You’re aware that half your stock is considered illegal to sell based on environmental protection laws, right?”
“Illegal?”
“Don’t act stupid. Those shells are coveted for their beauty and their scarcity. Species hunted to near extinction for the use of their shells in the fine jewelry trade.”
If there was a school of theory for smuggling, this was all grade-school stuff, really. But why did Atsushi look so confused?
“I don’t know about any of that stuff,” he said helplessly. His eyes were wide. They practically sparkled in the light of the full moon—Wow. It seemed Atsushi had really perfected his innocent act. “I-I mean- I don’t even know your name!”
“My name is irrelevant.”
Atsushi stuck out his bottom lip.
“I’m not a pirate,” he said. “I just happened to find the shells, that’s all. I promise.”
“You promise?” Akutagawa scoffed. “Now I have to believe you.” Atsushi’s face brightened for a moment. “Not literally, you dunce.”
This man was really taking Akutagawa for a fool. While it was true that most people didn’t have a foundational knowledge of the illegal shell trade, anyone who had ever tried to source those very species would know: they were incredibly rare. And somehow, being sold for a fraction of the black-market price.
Akutagawa knew. One of his first gigs as a child was combing the beaches with his sister, searching for scrap metal to sell at the gram to the salvage yard, jewelry to sell at the pawn shop, and the ever-elusive rare shells to sell to the man who refused to give a name.
“Whatever,” Atsushi huffed finally. “Think I’m a pirate all you want. I don’t care, because I’m not. What does it matter, anyways?”
Akutagawa rolled his eyes.
“It doesn’t,” he replied. “I just hate dishonesty. Your lies disgust me.”
“Lies?” Atsushi said. “Like you’re one to talk.”
Akutagawa turned slowly to the man beside him. His stare was dangerous—practicedly so. Atsushi stiffened, but didn’t back down.
“I saw you about to jump,” he said.
“Careful.”
“You lied when you claimed you weren’t trying to kill yourself,” Atsushi continued. “Anyone could see you were about to jump.”
“I was not trying to kill myself,” Akutagawa spat. He coughed through the words. “I don’t know what you thought you saw, but I was only looking. I had no intention of jumping.”
“Ah, so you were only thinking about killing yourself, then.”
“I’m dying anyways.”
An unbearable silence swallowed the conversation. For a moment, Atsushi’s face was shocked, but it soon crumpled into something sad. Something pitying.
And this, Akutagawa thought, is why I hate telling people.
He didn’t want to be pitied. Didn’t want to be treated like he was weak, like there was nothing left for him. Like he needed to be treated with care lest he break.
Akutagawa didn’t break. He endured.
Beside him, Atsushi finally slid to a seat. He folded his legs beneath him and scooted closer to the edge of the pier. His lips parted softly like he was ready to apologize.
“I’m not a pirate,” Atsushi repeated instead. “But I’d like to try it.”
Akutagawa could only stare in response.
“What?” he finally managed.
“I think it would be fun to try,” Atsushi said. “But I could never do it. There are lots of things I wish I could do. Is it like that for you, too?”
Akutagawa didn’t know what to say, he was so caught off guard. Out of all the responses he’d ever gotten to the news of his terminal illness, this was the strangest.
“I suppose,” he said.
“If you could wish for anything, what would it be?” Atsushi asked.
Akutagawa blinked. Okay, so maybe this man wasn’t a pirate. Maybe he was just delusional.
When he didn’t reply, Atsushi continued.
“I wish I were a tiger shark,” he said. “If I could be anything, it’d probably be that. After human, of course.”
“What?”
“What, what?” Atsushi asked, glancing over with that vacant smile of his.
“You said you wish you could be human.”
Atsushi laughed a little too loudly.
“Did I? Well, I just meant that I like being a human more than anything. I wouldn’t trade it for the world!”
Weird. Akutagawa was aware it was a hypocritical thought, but Atsushi was weird. Probably the strangest person he’d ever met.
“Well, I despise being human,” Akutagawa grumbled. “Almost as much as I despise liars.”
His legs swung over the pier, kicking at the waves.
“I wasn’t lying,” Atsushi said softly. “Just so you know. I was just… Concealing the truth.”
“Pray tell, then,” Akutagawa asked dryly. “What is the truth, exactly?”
Atsushi swallowed. He glanced back at the beach, where people were still milling around the market.
“I can’t show you now,” he said. “But if you come back at sunrise tomorrow, I’ll show you then. Not at the pier—go to the rocks, where you first saw me.”
It would be stupid to agree, Akutagawa thought.
He shook Atsushi’s hand anyways.
It was warm.
˚⋆𓇼˚⊹ 𖦹 ⁺｡°
The next morning, Akutagawa was at the beach before sunrise.
The full moon still glowed on the horizon. Dusky pink skies melted into streaks of burnt orange as the sun steadily began to creep over the edge of the sea. The wind felt colder today, the salt in the air less forgiving; it was harsh against his cheeks.
No sign of Atsushi. Akutagawa had never bothered to ask where the man lived, but as he waited, he wondered—there was a small village a few kilometers from the hospital, but other than that, the only homes around were standalone cottages in the heights of the cliffs. He watched the clifftops from the bottom of the beach, but no figure came into view.
“Psst,” Akutagawa heard finally, and he turned to face its source:
The ocean.
Obviously not.
Akutagawa turned back around, only to hear a disgruntled sigh behind him.
“I’m right here!”
He spun on his heel and cast his gaze further out.
Sure enough, there was Atsushi, swimming in the murky waters beyond the boulders. He seemed a bit far out—Did he swim here? And if so, from where? The water churned aggressively, but Atsushi was clearly managing. He squinted to try and get a better look.
Akutagawa’s heart dropped.
“So…” Akutagawa mumbled, his mouth dry. The view in front of him was uncanny. It was impossible. Atsushi was in the water, arms treading with practiced grace, but where there should have been legs, there were none.
Instead, Atsushi had a tail.
It was hard to see in the distance beneath the waves, but it was definitely a tail, fish-like and covered in silver scales matching the starlight shade of his hair. Streaks of jet-black shot through the fin, wrapping around where there should have been legs, and back around his hip. It matched the wild streak of black in his bangs.
“So?” Atsushi asked. He looked nervous. Slowly, he swam closer to the beach, pausing behind every rocky outcropping like it would do anything to hide what Akutagawa had already seen.
“So…” Akutagawa swallowed. “I think I understand. You said that you want to be human.”
“Of course!” Atsushi replied. He was close enough now for Akutagawa to see the nervous glimmer in his eyes. “Who wouldn’t?”
“Me, for one,” Akutagawa said. “Humanity is vile.”
“I disagree,” Atsushi said. He pulled himself closer to the beach, winding an arm around a wooden post used to mark the tide. “I think humankind is beautiful. There’s nothing else like it.”
Plenty of other animals have legs, Akutagawa wanted to say. But Atsushi surely knew that. Right?
“Humanity lies,” he said instead. “Humankind is full of people who pretend to be allies, who fake trust. We conceal. We betray. It’s how we survive.”
“Okay…” Atsushi mused. “You don’t want to be human, then. You’ve made that really, super clear. So if you could be anything, what would you be?”
Akutagawa shook his head.
“I suppose I don’t know,” he admitted. “Probably not a tiger shark.”
Atsushi snickered, an anxious little laugh that bubbled into panic as the sun continued to rise.
“Listen,” he muttered quietly. “I need to know that you’re not going to tell anyone.”
Akutagawa’s brow furrowed.
“You mean to tell me,” he said, “that no one else knows?”
“No!” Atsushi hissed. “And they can’t. I’ve built something pretty good here, you know. I’ve wanted to do stuff like markets for a while, but you humans have all this paperwork and stuff… You know I searched for two years for something called the birth certificate before I met Miss Watanabe?”
Akutagawa huffed amusedly. “Tell me about it,” he said. “I don’t have my birth certificate, either. Made it hell getting healthcare at first.”
Atsushi’s lips tilted into a smile. “Then you won’t tell…?”
“As long as you don’t report my venture over the fence,” Akutagawa said, and Atsushi lit up. His hand shot out of the water to take Akutagawa’s.
“Deal!” he said.
Akutagawa was quiet as he stared at Atsushi’s hand in his. It looked very much like a normal human hand, but unlike last night, it was much colder, and the back was slick with scales. Where Atsushi had perfectly human-looking nails the night before, sharp black claws now protruded from his nailbeds instead.
Self-consciously, Atsushi sank further into the water until the waves went over his nose. It did little to hide the growing flush of his cheeks. Tiny bubbles spun in the water as Atsushi puffed out little bursts of air. He tried to pull his hand back, but Akutagawa held it fast.
“How is it that you had legs yesterday?” he asked. “Are you some kind of… I don’t know, were-maid?”
“I don’t know what that means,” Atsushi replied. “But it’s because of the full moon. Ever since I can remember, around the time of the full moon, if I pull myself onto dry land, my tail splits into human legs.”
“That sounds painful.”
“It’s not too bad. It’s a lot worse if they transform back into a tail when I’m still on land.”
“And you’ve never been spotted before?”
“Not in this town,” Atsushi admitted. “I move around a lot. Have to. But so far, this place has worked out nicely for me. I hope that won’t change.”
Atsushi stared at Akutagawa’s fingers around his. His face grew redder. Mercifully, Akutagawa released his hand.
“This place isn’t too bad,” Akutagawa said. “Though I don’t know how long I’ll be here. No one really knows how long I have left.”
Atsushi’s eyes flicked up. He curled his tail in the water, swishing it as he listened.
“More or less than a month?” he asked.
“More, probably,” Akutagawa said. “Though it’s hard to say under experimental treatment. My doctor tells me I have up to a year.”
“A year… Wow.”
“Don’t you dare start pitying me.”
“I’m not!” Atsushi said, raising his hands in surrender. “It’s just… If you’re here for at least another month, maybe you could show me around a bit more. You know, at the next full moon.”
Akutagawa was quiet. What exactly is he asking?
“I’ll make it worth your while,” Atsushi added quickly. “If there’s anything you want to see in the water, I’ll take you some day. Maybe even to where I find all the pretty shells. Some are really far away, but if you go just past those cliffs, there’s this underground cave where the ocean currents pocket all these shiny shells and rocks… It’s really something. I’ve never been able to show anyone before.”
Oh.
“Is that too forward?” Atsushi squeaked. “Or too soon? I don’t know, I just thought that you didn’t need to waste any more time… Not that you’ve been wasting it! I just- Oh.”
“What?”
“I just realized that I still don’t know your name.”
Akutagawa glanced over the horizon, where the ocean seemed to stretch on infinitely. The sunrise bled warm over the waves, and the light glittered with each crash of the water on the rocks.
It looked so different from yesterday, when the water churned dark and cold under the threat of death. From this angle, Akutagawa didn’t see an ending. He saw a future, however short, that dazzled him beyond what he could possibly dream.
L’appel du vide. For the first time in years, that call of the void didn’t feel empty. Perhaps it wasn’t a void at all.
No. With Atsushi, it was something far more tempting.
“Akutagawa,” he said, and there was absolutely nothing to be done about the tiny smile creeping over his face. “My name is Akutagawa.”