Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Three centimeters. That’s how close he came to dying, Goto Ryuji thinks, fingering the spot on his neck where the Ant King’s pincer would have ripped right through. 

The mission was a disaster, and they’re down three S-ranks (he was to be the fourth, and who knows how many more, if he had died). The island has been cleared, but at what cost? He bowed his head in shame to his guildmates’ families; he’s their leader, and he let them die in a foreign land on a mission that has nothing to do with them.

It was all because he wanted to be a national-level hunter, he scoffs. Three lives, for a title. A title that sounds too much like a taunt now, too much like a brand of shame. He’ll never know, but that’s all that title is, past the glitz and glam- an honor built on survivor’s guilt. 

After all that they’ve been through, he was happy to hand Go Gun-Hee that tape. He’s done with Matsumoto, and they both knows it. 

Chairman Go had nothing for him- not even platitudes- aside from a mere thanks and other business arrangements. He knows that it takes two to tango; Ryuji’s not guiltless in this, not that he ever pretended to be. 

He’d like to think that the shame is punishment enough, but on his bad days, he sometimes wishes that he had died with them- so Sugimoto can rightfully say that he wasn’t a part of this at all and be done with it.

His Vice knows him well and knows the political scene well, so he sends Ryuji away to the guild’s resort in Hokkaido to avoid the political backlash of a mission gone wrong. 

Hokkaido in the middle of winter- just what exactly is he supposed to even do here? He rolls his eyes. His answer? Get drunk and mope. There’s no Sugimoto to haul him back to reality, no guild to nag him to work. No dungeons this far out, to get himself accidentally-on-purposedly killed in. 

Ryuji looks out into the endless ocean from his spot on the cliffside. The snow hasn’t come in yet, and all there is now is autumn air that’s slowly turning frigid. The abyss stretches, a darkness lit up in parts by moonlight. It calls to him: the sound of waves lapping on the rocky shores is the only thing breaking the silence of the night. 

With a sigh, he answers. He hauls himself up to his feet and walks down to the ocean; the cold doesn’t bother him. Anyone A ranked and above- anyone worth their salt- wouldn’t even sneeze. 

He’s familiar with the winding path that leads down to the shore; he doesn’t know who it was who made such a trail, but he wonders if they were in the same mind as him. 

He lets the cold waters wash over his feet, the wet sand sinking under his weight. He looks out into horizon and wills himself to find where the world ends, so he can go there and apologize to his guildmates in person...to people who should have never died for his greed. 

Ryuuji loses himself in his own thoughts with a warmed sake in one hand- now chilled by the seashore winds, when he spies something that is most definitely not the waves or the moon. 

There- a flash of glistening purple- and a loud splash of water. A transparent lavender fin that flips out from the surface and disappears into the water, easily as big as his torso. 

A monster from a dungeon break? This far from populated cities and underwater at that? He tenses, preparing for a battle (his mind’s fuzzy from the alcohol, but he can still fight- can still do something)-

Only to be left alone by himself, standing at the edge where land meets ocean, looking askance at the secrets of the depths. 

He googles the purple mystery; he has nothing better to do all the way out here anyways, and he’s not about to go into a battle without doing his research. He stacks the deck as far as he can and then goes straight in for the kill. He’s a fighter with an assassin’s mindset, and that has never changed.

Nothing. There’s absolutely nothing on this unknown. This is Japan; if something exists in the oceans, they’ve eaten it. But yet there’s absolutely no record in existence of a purple fish this size, this close to the Hokkaido shore. 

His theory of dungeon breakout monster holds more weight by this point, and he has more duty than ever to make sure it doesn’t go sink a fishing boat and accidentally start a war (or something). 

Ryuji stands by the shore, now less of a nightly vigil and more of a curious prodding into uncharted territories. His lighting waxes and wanes by the moon, but night after night, the fish returns. It's almost playing in the waters, violet scales reflecting the moon’s pale light. He doesn’t see anything more than a tail and a couple of dorsal fins, and the monster never makes it to shore. But still, he looks. 

Then, one day (when the moon was edging on full again, and he can see), he spies a flip of a tail, and a distinctly humanoid torso rises up out of the waves, and he can’t stifle the shocked gasp that leaves his lips. The torso stops. Turns. And looks at him. 

A pair of glowing purple eyes blinks.

There’s a strange Uplander standing on the coast blatantly gawking at him. 

Does this stranger have no sense of propriety? He’s only so close to land because the rocks here are the smallest, smoothest, and his scales are itchy dammit from all the chemicals Uplanders dump into the water. The water here is cool on his scales and blissfully clean. It would be nice to forget about the existence of Uplanders, if only one wasn’t staring at right him. 

The odd man says something in that language of his- goodness, they have so many (why can’t they just pick one and stick with it)- and Jin-Woo raises an eyebrow. 

He assumes that a different species would understand his language… how?

Well, it’s a completely loony shot in the dark, but he’s not exactly wrong per se. Just... he has no idea how many decades it has been since he’s actually spoken Uplander language, so he narrows his eyes and wrinkles his nose in thought, then says haltingly,

“Who are you?” 

He hopes it’s human and not whale that he’s speaking.

“What are you?” Ryuji gasps, his eyes drinking in the sight of dark wavy hair, pale skin, and Asian features. Without the tail, he looks exactly human. He almost acts it too, if it weren’t for the purple fins flipping just at the surface of the ocean. 

There’s no murder in his aura, no weapons or sharp teeth (nor claws, but that is yet to be determined). No aggression. He’s never seen a monster without an innate hatred towards humans. 

The purple eyes look… vaguely unimpressed and then narrow in thought. The man? The fish? Opens his mouth, and Ryuji’s expecting monster tongue, but it seems like he’s not done being surprised today, because suddenly-

“Who are you?” the fish asks, in vaguely Korean accented Japanese. 

“I need to sit down,” Ryuji says, stupefied- is he drunk? But he hasn’t even touched his sake yet today (no point, when it gets so cold outside). He sits down in the water and doesn’t even care that he’s getting soaking wet. 

The fish- a ningyo?- shrugs and flips a fin at him. “Suit yourself,” he says flippantly. 

He takes a fortifying breath and tries to gather his scrambled brain from where he’s tossed it somewhere. He rights his priorities, and asks-

“Are you a dungeon break monster?” he says bluntly. In hindsight, there are probably better ways to ask the question, but he doesn’t even consider wording it more politely (polite to a monster?) until he finds himself slapped in the face with a great big, sopping wet tail.

“Excuse you,” the Jin-Woo snarls, feeling the fins on his spine rise up in rightful indignation. He’s about two seconds away from straight up hissing this Uplander away from his shore. How dare he call him a monster?

The idiot looks absolutely gobsmacked, his mouth open and his hair dripping wet with seawater and bits of sand. It’s a good look on him; suits him just fine.

He recovers admirably quickly, one mana bright hand reaching to grab the end of his tail, another angling straight at his throat for a kill. He’s still in the water and makes no move to head to shore; an idiot’s choice.

Jin-Woo scoffs- not at that speed, and not that waterlogged. He’s far too arrogant to believe that he’s the only one with mana around here, and he’s not even trained in underwater combat.

Dark shadows rise up from the edges of the water as his own mana lights up a malicious lavender. The Uplander lets go of his tail as if it were burning, and the shadows hold that hand back, pinned. 

The other hand he snatches by the wrist, a comfortable few inches away from his right eye. 

“Do you Uplanders honestly think you’re the only ones with mana around here?” he scoffs and lets just a sliver of his power through. He feels Ashborn’s knights linger around the edges of his own shadows, watchful and ready to step in if the situation calls for it. He absently waves them away; this isn’t serious. 

It’s just a friendly spar, if even that.

He hasn’t been slapped in the face since his teens, and now a fish goes and does it. He still hasn’t figured out if that thing is a monster or not, so of course he takes that slap as a pre-emptive attack (never mind that it deals more damage to his pride than his actual person) and goes for a jab.

He wasn’t expecting to be pinned and stopped in place by the waves’ shadows… the very waves he just went and sat down in. The weight of the shadows drag at him, invisible teeth and hands just itching to pull him under, and for a second he forgets that the water he’s in is barely even half a meter deep.

That mana- the bright purple that almost matches the scales and fins- is dense enough to stop him in place. He pushes forward with his mana blade, but it doesn’t even budge an inch. There’s no one he knows who can do that; he’d eat his hat if that fish isn’t an S rank (as absurd as it is to think that Korea’s long-awaited tenth S rank is a fish). 

Is he even Korea’s? Japan's? China's? The South China Sea's? The oceans have no borders, and he’s technically from territorially disputed waters; he’s a national level hunter now, a nation to his own, and he’s the first one to find this. He’s not Korea’s tenth S ranked, he’s Ryuji’s first.

It’s all a moot point, because he assumes this creature will simply agree to be kept. Judging by the weight of the mana pressing down on him, he’s not sure if it’s not going to be the other way around.

“I have to make sure the civilians are safe,” he replies. It’s not an apology, and he’s not going to give one for doing his duty as a Hunter.

Grudgingly, the shadows retreat, and the webbed hand lets go of his. 

“You could just ask,” the fish points out with a bit of a hiss. “And get a bit better at it too, if you don’t want to offend someone.” The mermaid sighs, and says, “If you have mana, you should know by now that no monster speaks human tongue.”

He feels an embarrassed flush creep up his neck. He didn’t know that, actually. But he does now. He’s being judged by seafood, for god’s sake. 

“You didn’t know that.” The judgement intensifies.

He says nothing in reply, his gaze focusing on the edge where the webs and scales disappear into human skin.

“Uplanders,” the mermaid rolls his eyes.

“We’re done here,” he says with finality and slides himself back into the depths. 

Ryuji stays sitting on the sand- his brain still trying to boot up one neuron at a time- and he realizes that he never even asked the mermaid’s name. 

The Uplander is back again, Jin-Woo thinks, annoyed. Granted, he’s not doing anything- at least he has the self preservation instincts of something with more than two brain cells to rub together- but he just can’t relax and enjoy his sandbar while getting stared at. 

He’s there every single day, just staring listlessly at the shore; Jin-Woo would know- he’s been coming back every single day too, in an effort to have a day of relaxation without a stranger peeping in on him. 

There’s a general air of depression that drapes over him like a cloak, and the acrid tang of alcohol tells him that he’s there by the shore to drown his sorrows, whatever they may be. 

(Does that mean he won’t be missed if he accidentally disappears?) 

Igris tells him a strict no, reminding him of the Siren Incident a couple centuries back and the laws put in place to restrict interaction with Uplanders thereafter. 

I’m not breaking any rules, Jinwoo mentally replies. He’s the one who approached me in the first place. And really, the Sirens never intended to eat those disgusting Uplanders in the first place, but who knew those idiots can’t swim- and nothing goes to waste in the oceans. It’s all a big misunderstanding. 

Ashborn will know of this, Igris warns him. 

So be it, Jin-Woo thinks. It’s not like he didn’t go on shore to mess around when he was young- the Kraken’s tale is his doing, and that’s just his equivalent of tossing darts when bored. He has no ground to stand on.

Igris shakes his head and gives a sigh but leaves him well alone. 

“Why are you here?” Jin-Woo pokes his head out near a rock cropping and asks.

The Uplander looks startled to be addressed, but there’s no aggression in his posture this time. Instead, he looks even more morose at the question. 

“To drink,” he toasts a drink to Jin-Woo. “To think,” he says quietly. Does he even have a brain to think with? Even he knows that this far north, normal humans would avoid the shore. 

“What is your name, strange human?” He muses. 

“Isn’t it considered impolite to ask for someone’s name without offering your own?” the Uplander retorts back. 

Jin-Woo grins. Not so braindead then- suits him just fine. “You may call me Sung Jin-Woo,” he says. 

“Korean, huh?” the man snorts. 

Korean? Jin-Woo scoffs. No- the seas are free flowing; it’s only the arrogance of humans that make them think they can divide up and claim the oceans like they can a piece of rock. It’s downright silly for the Uplander to think that he’d offer his true name when asked. Do they learn nothing from their legends of the past? This name is merely one that he found, drifting on a piece of fabric. The owner is long dead, so who’s there to stop him from claiming that name as his own?

“I’m Goto Ryuji,” the man says. He picks a dry spot to sit this time. 

He hesitates, as if to ask a question, and Jin-Woo raises an eyebrow at him. What now?

“If you don’t me mind asking”- he does mind, sort of- “what exactly are you?”

Ah, this. Well. 

“I am what I am; why do I care what terms you Uplanders use to describe me?” Jin-Woo says bluntly. “But I suppose the closest term in your language would be...ningyo?”

A mermaid, Ryuji breathes. A real, living and breathing mermaid. Unbelievable. 

Jin-Woo sees the disbelief on Ryuji’s face and says, “Just because you don’t know about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Not everything needs to be proven to be true.” 

“Now, it’s my turn to ask. What are you?” Jin-Woo props his chin on his hand, curious as to what the Uplander named Goto Ryuji would answer. 

“A failure,” he says automatically. He looks like he wants to take it back, but he doesn’t. Instead, he hunches his shoulders and turns away. 

Well, isn't that’s just depressing.

“What makes you think you failed?” Jin-Woo asks one day, curious despite himself. “I was under the impression that you Uplanders revere mana-users.”

“Hunters,” Ryuji corrects. He pauses, not quite sure how to answer that question. 

“I… made a mistake,” he confesses. 

Jin-Woo makes a noise, urging him to continue. If he slips a bit of sirensound into it to encourage the man to be a bit less tightlipped, no one needs to know. 

“It costed me three of my guild members’ lives; I was- am- so stupid,” he says with a slump. “For what? For pride.” He takes a swing of his sake.

“Tell me more,” Jin-Woo encourages, crooning slightly. If he can get this Uplander to quit moping, maybe he’ll disappear. For all he seems to think of himself as a worthless failure, Jin-Woo knows what he saw; that strike was fast enough that the majority of Ashborn’s knights wouldn’t have been able to block it. Surely that is worth something. 

“I- agreed to a mission for my guild- other Hunters I recruited- to go clear a dungeon break at Korea’s Jeju Island. It wasn’t in this country to begin with, but Japan wanted the island… for greed. And I wanted the recognition- the title,” he says quietly.

Jin-Woo blinks and considers the reply. Jeju Island? His geography is maybe half a century out of date- what with the Uplanders constantly changing the coastlines- but that island sounds vaguely familiar. 

“Not the one with all the ants?” Jin-Woo asks.

“You’ve heard of it?” Ryuji asks back, surprised. 

Jin-Woo hums a couple notes quietly under his breath; the tension in the Uplander’s shoulders drain. “I have; the ants don’t bother us. They can’t dive down beyond the surface. The humans have left the waters around the island alone since then; we quite enjoy the peace and quiet.”

“They were swimming across the sea to Japan,” Ryuji points out.

“They would have reached Japan a lot sooner if we didn’t kill them,” Jin-Woo retorts. “They’re fair game in the waters; they are no predators there.”

They’re prized catches, actually. Their mana crystals are quite useful, and their bodies nourishment for life in the depths. 

“And your guild- guildmates?- got killed by one?” Jin-Woo asks. In his recall, those ants weren’t anything specials; he has seen sharks harder to kill. 

Ryuji shakes his head. “Not those ants; there was an Ant King- a boss monster. I- we had taken down the Ant Queen by then and didn’t expect that there would be a second boss monster… We let our guards down.” In the end he wasn’t even the one to land the killing blow. It had taken the combination of Kei and Choi Jong-In’s magic to crack the exoskeleton of the ant, and Korea’s youngest S rank was the one to slip a lethal strike past the cracks. 

He had stood there, helping but not doing enough. Pathetic, he thinks, angry at himself.

Jin-Woo knows the Uplander is arrogant; that much is clear, but he seems to at least be arrogant with some sort of newfound awareness, and that’s rare to see. It’s a harsh lesson to learn, he knows; he was also once in Ryuji’s place, learning life’s lessons the hard way. 

He’s a leader, and that’s thrice the guilt, thrice the punishment over. It’s what leaders do; when all goes to hell, they’re the ones in front bracing themselves for the heat.

But not all of it. 

“Could they have chosen not to go if they didn’t want to?” Jin-Woo asks calmly. 

Ryuji blinks, as if he never considered that train of thought. “I- yes?”

Somehow, that feels like a question when it shouldn’t be, Jin-Woo thinks. “They’re Hunters with their own will; you wouldn’t be able to force them to come if they didn’t want to. Every fight with monsters bears a risk of death; isn’t that why you lot are so respected?”

Ryuji stays quiet. Privately, Jin-Woo thinks that if it wasn’t this fight that kills them, it’s some other fight anyways, and just how many deaths can this silly Uplander shoulder on until he collapses like a deck of cards? They’re given free choice to have their mana and not use it. For all this man leads them to their deaths, they didn’t go unwillingly. 

What is there to feel guilty over? Death is simply another part of life; learn your lessons and move on. Remember, mourn, but don’t slow. 

Silly Uplander. He doesn’t even look past half a century mark; what is he doing staring out into the ocean night after night like a geriatric?

They don’t say anything the rest of that night, and Jin-Woo simply lets this strange human have his peace. 

“Sleep,” he sings as the sun slowly rises. 

When Ryuji awakens, he’s washing ashore on the beach with a crab stuck in his hoodie and bits of sand and seaweed in his mouth. He spits them out; and he swears the very waves are laughing at him, but that can’t be right. 

He’s still not sure what Sugimoto intended when he sent him all the way out to god-forsaken Hokkaido of all places, but he’s sure that befriending a fish is not his objective.

When life hands you a fish, you eat it, is the general adage around here. (He’s pretty sure if he tries, he’d be the one eaten instead. And well, the ningyo has already implied that they’re not picky about food, if they’re eating monster meat of all things.)

But somehow, their meetings turn from random, to semi-regularly, to nightly. 

If he’s honest with himself, it’s what he looks forward to the most at the end of the day. He doesn’t realize it, but the nights seem less cold nowadays, less dark and abyssal. The waves don’t pull him under, and he doesn’t go. 

He starts bringing midnight snacks- nothing fancy, really- just food from the nearest conbini still open at midnight. 

The ningyo is Korean through and through, he thinks, watching it-him?- dig through a bowl of extra large Shin Ramyeon. He’s not even sure if the fish can have any of this to begin with, so he only gets about as much as he can finish, but the first night there Jin-Woo plows through all of it and asks for more. 

“How- can you even have that?” he asks incredulously. 

“Why not?” Jin-Woo raises an eyebrow. “We’re as omnivorous as you are.”

There’s steam rising up from his ramyeon, and it’s probably nearly zero degrees outside. He asks, and Jin-Woo only grins and wriggles a webbed hand at him, wisps of mana hovering over the bottom of the paper cup. The soup was boiling in seconds. 

It’s impressive mana control, and Ryuji says as such.

“It’s a common trick to do around the hydrothermal vents,” Jin-Woo says, making a grabbing motion towards his warmed can of corn soup. Ryuji passes it over and subtly tucks his sake closer to himself. 

“They’re a lot of fun,” he grins. “Only when they’re not about to blow though; we make ourselves scarce when the plates start moving.” He won’t be the one telling this Uplander- or Ashborn- but maybe more than one of those earthquakes were caused by him messing around a little too much around the vents.

Uncharted deep ocean, the last frontier to man, Ryuji thinks, and this ningyo speaks of it like it’s a neighbor’s house down the street. 

Despite himself, adventuring has always been in his blood, and he’s absolutely fascinated.

This Uplander sure is strange, Jin-Woo thinks for the upteenth time. The wanderlust is so clear to him that he’s not even sure why the man’s still relatively stationary in Hokkaido (the Uplander can leave anytime, he thinks- never mind why he’s still here himself).

There’s wonder on his face when Jin-Woo speaks casually of the oceans that he knows like the back of his hands, and it’s a better look on him than despondency. 

He doesn’t mind sharing the depths with this Hunter; humans will never be able to get down there for any significant amount of time anyways, so why does it matter? There’s wanderlust, and then there’s wanderlust (he had better not wake up one day at night with this Uplander’s face hovering in a robotic bubble in front of him).

“It’s boring on most days,” Jin-Woo shrugs, “but the thermal vents are a blessing on sore scales, and the mussels around the brine lakes are the most delicious. The nets that your kind makes will never be able to reach them.”

“That’s a shame,” Ryuji muses. He does enjoy sushi on occasion, and who else to trust on sushi but a ningyo?

Jin-Woo’s polite- occasionally- but a snob when it comes to fish, as Ryuji learns.

He brings sushi takeout from his favorite sushi places in town, one day- when he’s absolutely sick of conbini food, and sushi keeps even better in the cold. Perfect for a midnight picnic by the freezing ocean. 

“What is this stuff?” Jin-Woo bites into a piece of hotate sushi and turns up his nose. He adds a bit of wasabi and finishes it with a grimace. 

“Spoiled?” Ryuji asks with a frown. It tastes fine to him. 

“No- just…” he doesn’t elaborate. “Hang on,” he says, and disappears into the depths. 

He assumes the ningyo doesn’t want to eat today and thus finishes the meal himself. He’s almost done with his sake when Jin-Woo emerges from the surf, rivulets of seawater dripping off his hair, his eyes shining an eerie violet in the dark. He doesn’t want to know what the ningyo is pulling up from the water, for it to involve mana of all things.

He holds in his hands a red fish easy the size of an adult man’s arms, squirming and wriggling in his webbed hands. 

“Here,” Jin-Woo says. “Go ask whoever made that to make something with this instead.” 

If he squints, the fish looks vaguely familiar. “The shop might be closed by now,” he says dryly. It’s only a little past three in the morning. Ningyo have no concept of time, as he learned. (“What use do we have for your timekeeping? The tides tell us all we need to know,” he scoffed.)

Jin-Woo sighs, and Ryuji’s eyes are drawn to where one gossamer fins draped over his shoulder, shining twilight in the light. 

He pulls out a dagger from- somewhere- and for one split second Ryuji thinks that the other end of it is going to sink into him, but Jin-Woo simply puts it through the fish’s eye instead. He guts it with the efficiency of a person who’s been gutting fish all his life, cuts it open with precision. Barely five minutes later, there’s a platter of sashimi before him, lying on a flat rock atop a bed of seaweed. 

“Well?” Jinwoo smirks. “Try this instead.”

Skeptical, he takes a piece as offered- and while he’s no sushi connoisseur, that’s the best fish he has ever had in his entire life. He can’t keep the surprise off his face, and judging by the smug flip of a tail, his ningyo companion is quite pleased by the reaction.

The next day, he takes what’s left of the fish’s head to the sushi shop to identify it. 

“Holy shit! Where did you get such a big nodoguro?” The sushi chef exclaims, shock written across his face. “And such a fresh one too!” 

He has to chase off a gaggle of sushi chefs after that, and he makes sure to tell Jin-Woo of his newfound woes (it’s his fault). They’re so far out in bumpkin country that people here don’t even understand what “S-rank, national-level Hunter” means, to mob him over a fish of all things.

“We don’t let you have all of the ocean’s bounty,” was the smug response. 

The moon waxes and wanes; with it, the seasons shift ever so slowly into spring. The winter snow melts, and the air starts to warm.

Thank god, no more snow storms, Ryuji thinks. He doesn’t mind light snow, but he won’t step out in a blizzard. Just as well; apparently ningyo aren’t too fond of snow on their scales.

He’s perusing the supermarket for snack options one day when he gets a call from Sugimoto. 

“Hello?” He asks, stuffing his basket with more cup ramen. 

“Goto-san? How are you?” He asks.

“Get to the point,” he says flatly. He’s not here for idle chit-chat. “Is there a dungeon break?” Does he need to return?

Sugimoto chuckles. “Prickly as ever. No, there is no dungeon break. Nothing the guild cannot handle.” 

Ryuji taps his foot impatiently on the other end, not that his Vice can see. 

“The media has calmed down about the Jeju Island mission; Korea has openly given the Draw Sword Guild their highest honors for service to the country,” Sugimoto says quietly. 

It means proper compensation for the family of the dead, among other benefits. But mostly, for the living, it puts them in a good light and pulls the Japanese-Korean relations closer. 

He has been guildmaster of Tokyo’s largest guild long enough that he knows where this is going. “Oh? Am I out of exile now,” he asks sarcastically.

He’s not sure what Sugimoto extrapolates from their brief conversation, but the reply isn’t one he expected. 

“Only if you want to be,” he says.

What does that mean? Of course he wants to leave this place and go back to Tokyo… right?

“I’m leaving in a week,” Ryuji says one day when the night gives way to daybreak. 

Jin-Woo was just turning to leave, tossing wooden chopsticks in a paper bag, but he stops and turns.  

“Can you repeat that?” Jin-Woo asks, his tone placid.

“I’m leaving; the guild needs me to go back.” It doesn’t- not really-but his continued absence does make the guild look weak, and the neighboring guilds are already circling his territory like the hyenas they are.

For once, Jin-Woo pulls himself up onto the rock cropping, the entirety of his body above water, his tail arching and curving up towards the skies. He holds himself at full height, ignoring the waves that crash on him and wash his scales in morning sunlight, and stares at him.

He doesn’t back down; they’ve become- something- almost friends- in these few months, and their aggression is long gone. He doesn’t trust anyone other than himself, but he trusts this ningyo more than most, for all they don’t have any reasons to interact with each  other. 

Instead, he can’t help the way his eyes stray down, to where human skin join with pearlescent scales, in all shades of purple. From twilight to periwinkle, to the darkest of violets, they sparkle in the sun like gems, each and every single scale. It’s mesmerizing, and he can see why there are so many tales of mermaids across every continent. (It’s because they’re real , and they’ve been real for god knows how long.)

He doesn’t know what Jin-Woo finds when his mana-lit eyes stare into his soul, but instead of smiling or giving any sort of reaction, he stays blank. 

“Go, then… and don’t return,” Jin-Woo says, sliding quietly back into the waters and taking one last look at him. 

There’s something in him that hesitates, something so uncharacteristic of him that it gives him a pause. There’s something on the tip of his tongue that he wants to say, but he can’t seem to enunciate. Instead, all that comes out is a polite “Thank you,” said to empty waves.

Stupid. Silly. It’s pure idiocy of him to assume that the Uplander would stay forever. He knows the Hunter’s situation, his self imposed exile, his not-really-maybe deserved guilt. And yet he doesn’t account for the day that he will inevitably leave. 

Just like everyone else he has cared for, he presumes. But that’s what makes him such a good heir for Ashborn; there’s no one he needs to leave behind to take the Black Heart. 

He tells Ryuji not to return; he won’t be back. Not here anyways. It matters not if he speaks; no one will believe him. No one will find them. All that they are, and all that they’ll ever be, is a sailor’s fever dream, coming and going with the tides.

He leaves, as he must; they don’t meet up anymore, that week. Ryuji’s still there on the shores, but there’s no point for him to come up from the waves. Instead, he stays hidden in the deep waters, taking comfort in the stillness. He remembers the bright fire of that mana (a mana only a land dweller can have, to be so aligned with fire), and thinks that the depths are somehow colder without it. 

A week later, the shores are empty. He’s free now to go scratch his itches and clean his scales. He can come up to the rocks during the evening now, without needing to rely on the dead of the night to hide him. The water is as soothing and cool as ever, but something stays missing. 

You’re looking at the shore again, Igris remarks, his tone dry. The beta fish knight is a resplendent scarlet, a tropical fish out of his territory. His train is as meticulously groomed as ever as he materializes out of Jin-Woo’s shadow.

Jin-Woo shrugs. What of it?

Isn’t that my question to you? Igris asks back. 

He knows Igris; he trusts Igris. The knight has been with him since he was a child, since the day he was chosen to be the next Shadow Monarch, to rule the last frontier unconquered by mankind. There’s nothing he won’t tell Igris about, but he finds this- whatever this is- difficult to articulate. 

Igris looks pointedly at the hand he has unknowingly held over his chest. You are not ready for the Black Heart, he says. 

I’m as ready as I will be, Jin-Woo retorts. He has been groomed for decades to take over, and it’s almost time; Ashborn is tired, and he knows that it’s a kindness to put the Monarch out of his misery. 

No, you still have unfinished business- somewhere on shore, I presume. Igris remarks.

It’s as finished as it’s going to get, Jin-Woo says firmly. He’s not the one who had to leave. He looks away from the sandbar.

Igris sighs. Stubborn. You are so attached to this Uplander?

I am not, Jin-Woo says adamantly. 

Oh? Then would you tell me what’s so fascinating about this Uplander town that would keep you staring at it an entire month?

Jin-Woo pointedly doesn’t reply and pretends he doesn’t feel his skin heat up. 

Go, Igris says, covering Jinwoo’s tail with his own. Ashborn can wait a while longer. Settle your heart first, before you take another. 

I am fine, Jin-Woo snarls. 

Then go be fine on land, Igris snorts. Come back to the ocean when you’re at peace. You do no one favors if you attempt to take the Black Heart when your own is so turbulent. 

Jin-Woo grimaces. He knows; it’s what happened to Ashborn’s last heir, that ended in the biggest quake in a decade and a tsunami to boot. 

He sighs, the fight going out of him. He knows Igris is right; whatever this is, he has to find it, settle it (conquer it, kill it, forget it) before he can go home. He wills his shadows to climb up his tail, and slowly they melt away the scales and the flesh, the bones separating into legs, the fins elongating into feet. His hands turn smooth, and the fingers separate. He looks at his human hands in wonder; he’ll never be amazed at the dexterity of Uplander limbs; it’s a shame they use it to do such menial things. 

Go; you know to find me when you wish to return, Igris says a second time. 

He doesn’t need prompting a third time, so he stands up and takes his first steps away from the surf. (The first since centuries, since the death of all that he held dear).

He’s been back for all of six months, and the guild is in chaos again. 

“Get the Association President on the line now,” Ryuji snarls into his phone. Matsumoto’s replacement is no less incompetent, and the extra work gets heaped on him, as usual.

How incompetent do they have to be, to miss a B ranked gate right in the middle of a school? Heads will roll for this, and he’ll be happy to get them in motion. 

There’s a familiar knock-quiet-knock-knock staccato at his door. Sugimoto then; the knock is his way of saying “I’m behind the door, please don’t blast open this one.” It’s a system they’ve had in place for years now; he’s the only vice who hasn’t quit within three months of dealing with him. 

“What?” Ryuji snaps, what’s left of his patience fraying dangerously. 

“Goto-san,” Sugimoto says, nonplussed by Ryuji’s temper, “Did you schedule a meeting you didn’t tell me about?”

That gives him a pause; he raises an eyebrow. Why on Earth would he schedule a meeting when he’s not even done handling the clusterfuck he has on hand? “No,” he says.

“There’s someone at the door insisting you have a meeting with him and won’t leave,” Sugimoto reports.

“Send him away,” Ryuji sighs tiredly and waves a hand, used to dealing with stalkers aplenty. 

“He says to give you this,” Sugimoto says with a puzzled frown. 

His Vice holds up something that freezes the breath in his lungs; there, in his hands- is a lavender scale the size of a palm, and it can only belong to one person.

He’s up and out of his seat in a flash, startling Sugimoto in the process, and he pushes past the man without even so an apology, darts down the hallway- there, turn

He knocks aside Tawata and Hoshino on his way-

“Woah, watch it!” Tawata snarls, barely avoiding getting barreled over. Hoshino’s not as lucky, and he sits down hard on the floor with an ‘oof’. “What’s up with the boss?” he asks, rubbing his back. 

Tawata says something uncomplimentary, but he doesn’t care, not when-

He’s there, standing on the top steps of his building. He’s not quite old enough to be out of breath from a sprint, but he feels breathless all the same. 

There- there he is, dressed in a baggy black hoodie and white shirt and dark jeans on two legs.

Ryuji drinks in the sight of him, wavy black hair wind-tousled, glowing lilac eyes and pale skin, his hands in his pockets (but he knows they won’t be webbed), standing and looking up at him. 

“Hi,” he says, half annoyed, half self conscious. Is he- shy?

Goto scoffs, and a smile tugs on his face. “Hi yourself- come in,” he says, reaching for his hand.

Chapter Text

“Who’s that stranger?” Shimizu asks, poking her head out from the shoji screen covering one of the dojo doors. She hears a commotion outside and sees a black blur disappearing around the corner.

She looks at Kumamoto, who looks seemingly uninterested but she can tell by the way his eyes slide towards her that he wants to know as well. 

“Hey, you,” she prods a passing A ranker with a spike of mana.

“I don’t know,” the healer underling shrugs and swats away her mana. “Someone the boss brought into the office one day.”

She blinks, surprised. “The boss brought some stranger to his office?”

Surely she’s kidding. 

“I dunno- it’s what the receptionist told me,” she said, hasty to escape Shimizu’s interrogation on something that is definitely dangerous territory around here.

That’s just asking her to go digging, so dig she does. She drags her reluctant sparring partner with her to an even less enthusiastic adventure, all in a quest to satisfy her undying curiosity.

The gym yields a bit more information, but it's not the juicy bit she’s after. 

“Yeah, that was the day that dick nearly ran me over,” Tawata sneers and takes a chug from her water bottle. Hoshino gives her a calming pat on the back. 

That's not like the boss, Shimizu thinks. He's apathetic and downright lazy, but there's really nothing nowadays that can get him moving, let alone at that speed.

“He brought someone in,” Hoshino confirms. “No one we’ve seen before.”

“Huh,” she says, looking back at Kei, who slinks around in the back and tries to blend in with the heat enforced concrete walls.

He wants no part of this; he has seen Goto Ryuji pissed off before, and he does not want to be a part of this. He tries to book it, only to be dragged back in by the collar by Shimizu.  He struggles, but Shimizu’s grip is as strong as the battle axe she lugs around like a backpack.

"Hey, where do you think you're going?" she asks cutely. He slumps. 

“Is it a booty call?” Shimizu asks Tawata curiously with a smug little smirk. 

“You’re way too young to know what a booty call is,” Fushima says with a sigh. Where are the responsible adults when you need them? Oh yeah- him. He's just passing by during his coffee break, and it's just his misfortune that he ended up running into Shimizu of all people. Dammit, why is he her handler?

“Am not,” she pouts, sticking her cheeks out. 

She does know that it makes her look even younger, right? Instead, he restrains himself from patting her on the head; she broke the wrist of the last tanker who tried that one day after a dungeon. 

Then, the petulant look on her faces shifts to something more devious. He takes an unwilling step back, and he sees the others do the same. There’s a reason why there’s a berserker in her grasp, but it’s still the five foot-none healer that everyone’s afraid of. 

“Well, how about we find out then?” She grins. Oh no. He feels something sink in his gut, and it feels a lot like his chances to live to tomorrow.

“What are you lot doing here?” It’s Sugimoto who finds them next. 

They’re piled behind the corridor (that Corridor of Doom) leading to the boss’ office. Like a bunch of unruly gradeschoolers, Sugimoto thinks, his eyebrows writing the judgement he feels across his face. 

Eleven S-ranks in a guild, and he’s somehow still the most responsible one. He turns an accusing glare at Fushima; he’s usually in charge when he’s not around, and honestly- he expects better of him than this. 

“Hey, don’t look at me- I’m just damage control for that one over there,” he says, pointing at Shimizu. Hoshino has a hand hovering over Tawata’s elbow, where she’s crouched over and peeking an eye out. Kumamoto’s crouched under her, swatting her long hair away irritably. 

Hoshino looks back at their vice flatly; he’s got his hands full with the one.

He feels like he’s aged ten years in the span of ten seconds. They’ve been around here long enough to know that The Boss’ personal life is not up for debate, under any circumstances. It’s the first rule of Draw Sword; the second rule is to never forget the first rule. How is he going to find ten new S -ranks if Goto-san decides to eviscerate the lot of them?

But it is true, that Goto-san has never brought unvetted strangers back to his office before. And for that stranger to keep coming back to his office … He can’t deny that even his curiosity has peaked. 

“Just don’t get caught,” he says, annoyed at himself for even going along with this charade to begin with. 

Shimizu’s smugness kicks up a notch, and he almost calls her Garfield, to wipe that cheshire smile off her face.

The door cracks open, and they all inhale. Wait on baited breath. 

There’s Goto, pulling the door open. It’s the most relaxed Sugimoto has seen him since the Hokkaido Exile (he often wondered- just exactly what was Goto doing there, to end up more depressed than when he left), and he’s taken back at who’s behind him.

There’s that black haired stranger in normal civilian clothes, casual and unafraid of Japan’s national-level hunter in a way that even his own guildmates aren’t. He’s chatting amicably, a teasing smirk on his face. Whatever he’s saying, he stops mid sentence with an “Oh?”

The boss follows his gaze; they duck, but there’s no hiding ten S ranks’ mana signatures. That, and Shimizu’s buns and Tawata’s hat are still sticking out. Sugimoto spares himself the embarrassment and stands up. He clears his throat and straightens his suit.

The relaxed look slides off their boss’ face like oil on water. He’d rank that look an eight on a scale of ten, for Typhoon Goto Ryuji. 

“What is the meaning of this, Sugimoto?” He asks, deceptively calm. 

He feels the bright golden wave of mana start to grow claws behind him. How is any of this his fault? Tawata nudges Shimizu with one dainty foot, and she shoves back- but it’s too late. 

“Shimizu?” Goto-san asked, a question phrased like a command. 

“Oh er,” she says, now pushed onto front stage. It’s her fault, after all. 

“Is he your boyfriend, Boss?” She asks innocently, bold as brass. 

Boss has a boyfriend? Their collective thoughts come to a screeching halt. 

His expression storms over (that tone of hers is fooling no one) and -oh shit that’s hitting eleven on a scale of ten- But then a chuckle interrupts any harsh reprimand that's ready to spill from their boss' lips. “Are these your guildmates?"

The boss looks a mix of crossed and annoyed, on the verge of an impending explosion (he recognizes that red flush spreading up his neck), but in the end he just deflates with a tired sigh. 

“Holy shit,” Tawata whistles lowly. Now that’s something she hasn’t seen before; she was sure Shimizu’s toast, with how dark the boss' expression was. And now he just... forgets it? That's a first.

“They are,” he says, annoyed. “And if they want to stay that way, they'll leave… now .”

The stranger has the balls to roll his eyes at the boss. “What was the name they called me, again?” 

There’s that flush there- but Sugimoto has a feeling that it's here this time for a different reason- “He’s not,” Goto says succinctly in reply to their nosy questioning, pointedly not answering Jin-Woo's question.

Shimizu and Tawata glance at each other, and then raise an eyebrow each. Are you sure?

“Is he your friend then?” Sugimoto asks this time. Goto’s gaze slides to him, and he quickly backtracks. “If only for clearance and security reasons-”

The boss has friends? They look at the stranger, wide eyed and half scared out of their wits. 

The stranger chuckles again. “Such faith they have in you, Ryuji.”

He called the boss by his given name! Surely, they can hear something shattering behind him. Maybe porcelain, maybe glass, or maybe just what's left of their damn sanity. Straight out the window. 

The boss makes a face at that (curiously, the flush still there). “He’s not,” he says shortly. It amazes Sugimoto how his boss manages to make two words sound like a dozen knives pointed straight at his neck, but he knows a losing battle when he sees one and backs off.

“Then…?” Hoshino asks, one hand squishing Tawata down. He’s the tank. Not her. 

“Just an acquaintance, I guess” the stranger shrugs. 

One here to stay, Sugimoto adds, eyeing the way his boss casually doesn’t object to that. 

The boss’ acquaintance doesn’t like sushi, as they learn. (“I like sushi, but just not that place… not this one either. Or that one.”)

He’s a not-Korean with a Korean name. ("You can call me that, but it's not my name, no.")

He’s a Hunter who doesn’t know his rank. ("Never bothered getting tested.")

He accidentally makes a frontliner choke one day at the bar, when he’s obliviously getting hit on, gets asked where he lives- and replies with the boss’ Tokyo Penthouse address. 

Goto’s smug little smirk is not the only reason why the frontliner made himself scarce soon after. 

“Rude,” he rolls his eyes, eyeing the drink the frontliner bought him and downing it anyways.

“Hey, what rank are you?” one of the B-ranks yell from across the gym. Who is this guy, to just hover over their guild’s training session like he's entitled to, like has any business to?

He’s not even on the roster list, not doing dungeons, not pulling his weight, and yet the boss lets him into the office when he barely gives the rest of them the time of the day?

Ridiculous.

The stranger shrugs, doesn’t answer. He’s still leaning against the railing, without so much a by-your-leave. 

He’s had enough of this; he jumps in one mana augmented leap and snatches the stranger by the collar. He’ll bring him down to ground and show him where he belongs; under him on the pecking order. 

Or at least, he tries to. Mid air, the stranger twists just so, and they land, with his sternum hitting the mats first, his hand held in a vice grip behind his back. He hears a snap and cries in agony, barely getting enough breath for a wheeze.

The unknown ranker isn't even out of breath; it’s a joke to even consider him a civilian. He’s undoubtedly a Hunter, to be able to subdue a B rank so easily.

“Bored?” The boss walks in with casually slow steps. He dares to crane his head up to look at him, wishing for once their guildmaster would say something about this.

Instead, he feels a chill run its way down his spine at the cold- no, downright apathetic- look Goto Ryuji has in his eyes, the way he looks down his nose at him, a sneer barely on his face, looking at him like he’s trash fit to be taken out.

“I guess,” the stranger says but doesn’t make any motion to get up. “He wanted to spar.”

That is obviously not what was happening, Ryuji thinks with a sigh. He has indeed noticed the tension running high in his guild lately, mainly due to Jin-Woo’s presence. But he can’t just tell them he’s the guild’s newest S rank, not without being officially evaluated (but that’s also a headache and a half since the ningyo doesn’t have proper documentation). He's only in his office all the time because he can't just let an unknown S-ranker of dubious species free and about in the city without someone to watch him. (He's the only one who can, really.) They're all taking this the wrong way; they're acting like children, is what they are doing.

And if he’s honest, he doesn’t see the harm in keeping the mermaid to himself for just a while longer. 

“He’s in no shape to spar,” Ryuji says and shrugs off his jacket. “Someone take him to the infirmary.”

“Oh?” Jin- Woo grins, a spark of mana and bloodlust lighting up his eyes. A smirk plays at his lips, and he settles into a relaxed crouch. “Are you going to keep me company after all? Tired of sitting in that office of yours all day?”

“I’ve got work to do, unlike you,” he says dryly. “But stretching my neck won’t hurt.”

Jin-Woo hums, and they’re off in a blur, so quick that even Tawata misses the moment they start to move. 

“Go get the other S-ranks,” she mutters back to a healer. “They’re gonna want to see this.”

Ryuji’s very fond of chopping peoples’ heads off, Jin-Woo concludes, when the Uplander starts the fight much like how he started the last one- with a jab straight to the jugular.

Well, he’s much faster on land, he’ll give him that, but it’s still too slow to match the heir to Ashborn. 

He catches that hand again, but this time Ryuji is smarter; he has learned from his mistake, so he brings up his other hand to catch the ningyo around the waist, to put him off balance. 

Only to miss, yet again. 

He sees Ryuji gritting his teeth, and he knows he has hit a nerve.

Slowly, he grins. 

Shimizu gives a low whistle. “Holy shit.” She’s here again, in the gym this time- having rushed in here from the smithery when she heard of the Boss’ fight with Jin-Woo. 

“Do you think they realize what they’re doing?” Tawata asks with a skeptical look on her face. She still hasn’t taken her eyes off that fight, following each blow when she can. But she knows by her mana sensing that at least half of the guild is crowded into the gym, and she hopes that the sparring duo below her will keep their blows strictly to the mats. 

“Hm, depends on the boss’ definition of acquaintance,” Shimizu says slyly. 

Tawata rolls her eyes; the kid has been reading too much manga again. But even she can’t deny that something is going on; the bigger question is: have they realized it yet?

A loud bang brings her out of her reverie, and the fight is over.

To her surprise, the boss’ acquaintance has him pinned hard against the mat, wrists held high and the heavy weight of a body pressing down on him. 

Well, that’s something she doesn’t see every day. Usually, it’s the other way around.

The boss struggles for half a second more, before grudgingly going still, the mana crackling around him and still trying to find a crack in the armor, still trying to find a weakness to weedle and exploit.

But the stranger is no slacker either; his own dark, shadowy mana writhes on the ground, tendrils without light. For every spark of the boss’ power, he returns in triple. The shadows circle them lazily on the ground, prowling like lions waiting for a meal.

“He’s an S-rank.” Tawata says dryly, pointing out the obvious. “Anyone who wants to argue with me can go fight that.”

The open acknowledgement from an S-ranker; it’s public knowledge that S-ranks gravitate toward each other- that they can recognize one another by power levels alone. The word of an S-ranker might as well be an evaluation in itself. 

The hierarchy rights itself; Sung Jin-Woo joins them at the very top. (He’s the topmost one, and they’ll never know.)

The fight is over. The debate is over. But.

“Hey, is anyone going to tell them to get off the mats?” Shimuzu blinks and tilts her head. 

Tawata snorts. 

Chapter Text

It doesn’t even take him a year to screw up again, and he brings home another two guildmates in body bags as a result.

Or at least, he brings back what’s left of them. 

They’ve lost an A ranked tank and a B ranked Healer this time; it’s no great loss, but dammit he didn’t come back here to kill more people again. 

It was labelled an A ranked dungeon. It’s not. It’s S -ranked, and he’ll swear on his guildmates’ grave over it. It’s an S-ranked labelled wrong. The rest of them only came back because he put himself on the team on a last minute notice, for the team leader who called in sick. As it is, he took the majority of the damage in the dungeon. While he’s mana depleted, it’s not anything that won’t replenish with a couple days’ rest. He’s just plain tired. 

Someone up there is doing things to mess with his guild, and he doesn’t like it.

“You’re back,” Jin-Woo greets him causally, one leg dangling off the edge of the couch by the balcony. It’s a nice view; the penthouse overlooks the Tokyo skyline, and the sun has just set. In the twilight hour, the ningyo looks almost surreal. He has a travel magazine propped open in hands, one of the many he bought to keep him busy.

“Welcome back… Ryuji?” he frowns and looks up when he doesn’t hear a response.

He doesn’t bother with giving him a response, as nice as it is to have someone welcome him back home again. (He doesn’t bother saying “I’m back” because it would only remind him of two people who don’t get to say that today. There’s that voice in the back of his mind again, the one that whispers to him insidiously- that he should be one of them. To give his life in exchange for theirs, to attone for his sins.)

“What’s wrong?” Jin-Woo asks, snapping his magazine shut. He does a cursory scan on his slumped form, but there are no physical injuries to be found.

Ryuji shrugs off his jacket and shoes at the door, not even bothering to pick them up. Normally the ningyo would start berating him on his slovenly habits again, but he’s not in any mood to care. He doesn’t mind whatever he has to say; it only serves to validates his own feelings anyways. 

There’s something Jin-Woo sees in his expression because he keeps his silence this time and only helps him shed the rest of his guildwear gently.

He gets guided to the couch that Jin-Woo was sitting on just a moment ago, and he lays down, the day’s events starting to catch up with him. 

He doesn’t even care about the embarrassment of being coddled like a child; he’s comfortable where he is, his head cradled and soft. He feels his ears heat up when he realizes belatedly that it’s definitely not his cushions that his head is resting on.

Ryuji almost gets up, but a graceful hand finds his hair and his scalp and scratches just right- oh. He lays his head back down without complaints.

Jin-Woo chuckles above him, humming something of a melody under his breath. It’s different from his speaking voice, Ryuji thinks, suddenly sleepy and drifting off.

“What’s wrong?” he repeats.

There’s something off in his voice this time when he asks, and he frowns. His Hunter senses tingle, and he forces open his eyes to see nearly invisible threads of mana silk winding around Jin-Woo’s throat. 

“What are you doing to your voice?” Ryuji asks with a frown, curious but too tired to really hold any heat to the accusation.

“Oh? Finally noticed, have you?” Jin-Woo asks, amused. His voice is back to normal now, and the threads disappear like smoke. 

“What do you think this is?” he cocks his head and smirks, but the hand on his scalp never stops.

It’s distracting, that’s what this is, he thinks. Still, he puts together some sort of response. 

“Some sort of vocal manipulation,” Ryuji ventures a guess. “Mana control exercise, like your ramen heating ability?”

“I’m not trying to boil my vocal cords, no,” Jin-Woo snorts. “It’s sirensound,” he says simply.

“Siren… sound?” Ryuji raises an eyebrow. It’s a struggle to stay awake now; for a person with webbed hands, it should be illegal to be that good at a scalp massage. 

“Mhm. You’ve heard of the sirens of the old? From the European tales?” Jin-Woo asks. 

“Wait- they’re real?” Ryuji’s other eyebrow joins the first. At this rate, he thinks he wouldn’t be surprised to wake up one day to see a dragon roaring above his head and spitting fire. 

Jin-Woo laughs at that. “Real? That was an international incident- for us. The Uplanders weren’t meant to die, you see.”

“Then they weren’t eaten?” Surely that part was exaggerated then.

“Oh no, they were eaten alright. The kids practicing their acapella didn’t think to check whether or not there were Uplanders nearby… or whether those Uplanders could swim. They drowned, and well- we don’t eat disgusting Uplanders per se, but nothing’s ever wasted in the ocean.”

Ryuji thinks he turns a bit green around the gills at the thought of being fish food, but he remembers just exactly where his head is and goes Hunter still. 

He’s aware in the peripheries of his mind that the hand holding his head gently can crush it like an overripe fruit in seconds, but he knows Jin-Woo well enough by now that interacting with him usually doesn’t trigger his instincts. Well, until fish food gets mentioned. Besides, who’s going to pay rent if he’s gone?

“Relax,” Jin-Woo rolls his eyes exasperatedly. “If I was in the mood to eat depressed Uplanders, you would have died years ago.”

It’s not a guarantee, not an insurance- and he’s not depressed. He just… has his moments.

But to imply that a legend started by an accident … 

“The whole thing blew up; as far as things can blow up underwater anyways- and there were laws and such put in place to limit interaction with Uplanders as a result.” Jin-Woo shrugs. 

“Does that mean you’re an illegal alien then?” Ryuji smirks. “I’ll kick you out if you’re illegal.”

“First of all, I was here before your ancestors were- (and it was true; he once owned the piece of land this building is standing on, this silly Uplander)- and secondly, I didn’t break any laws… technically. You were the one who contacted me first.”

He remembers a shocked gasp and a half drunk bottle of sake by the seaside and wonders if that even counts as contact. He’s sure he would have just written it off as a hallucination, if the ningyo didn’t show up after.

Before the topic could drag away any further- he sees what that ningyo’s angling for- he asks. “Sirensound, then?”

Jin-Woo’s not as tightlipped as usual, maybe because he knows he’ll fall asleep in ten minutes flat, with or without freaky acoustics. 

“It’s a trick we can do with our voices. It’s a mix of confusion and compulsion… a natural captivation trick, per se. Uplanders are terribly weak to it,” he says with a snort. “I’m surprised it took you this long to pick it up.”

That implies he’s been on the other end of it before- but he can’t recall when. That time by the shore? Which time by the shore? He’s too tired to do anything more than sigh, especially when Jin-Woo’s fingers brush just past a tense spot.

“Just like this,” he demonstrates, the last part of his statement suddenly turning into music before Ryuji’s ears. 

“Won’t you tell me what’s upsetting you, Ryuji?” Jin-Woo croons gently with a grin. 

“Stop that,” Ryuji grumbles, reluctantly batting away the hand at his head. He ignores the way his heart skips a beat, hearing his name called out like that. “I would have told you without the mana trick.”

“Would you really?” Jin-Woo asks skeptically. 

Well, maybe not, he admits reluctantly. He sits up with a sigh and rubs his head. He thinks his hair must look a right mess, judging by Jin-Woo’s widening grin. Figures he’s really just secretly messing up his hair. 

“I sent a team on a dungeon mission today,” he began, his mind beginning a nightmarish replay reel of the disaster that happened.

“As usual,” Jin-Woo says nonchalantly, now familiar with guild protocols. 

“It was an S rank… labelled as A rank,” Ryuji bites, a snarl on his breath. Jin-Woo stills next to him, and suddenly the shadows at the corners of the apartment seem a thousand times more menacing. 

“On purpose?” he asks flatly. His eyes pulse mana bright, edging between lilac and lavender. 

Ryuji nods, his own mana rises with his agitation. He just wants to go up to the Association HQ and demolish it. They know they can’t hit at him directly; he’s far too well known to bring down, not without hurting Japan internationally. But his guild on the other hand. 

He just… doesn’t want innocent bystanders to be caught in this. Especially not his guildmates. Not a second time. Not on his behalf. 

“I see,” Jin-Woo smiles. It’s a terrifying thing, his smile. It holds all of the ocean’s secrets, none of which is benevolent to any degree. He’s less terrified of the ningyo when he’s snarking or smirking but smiling? That would give the most hard-hearted of them a pause. 

There’s a scheming part of him that sparks awake, and his eyes snap open wide. Jin-Woo cocks his head, his smile acidic enough to melt paint off the walls. 

“You said your voice is a compulsion,” Ryuji breathes. There’s a million things he can do with this. Starting by bringing down the Association. Completely legally too; if it took him, an S-rank almost two years to notice a compulsion, there’s no way anyone short of Liu Zhigang or Thomas Andre would find it. 

“Alive enough to scheme, I see. Clearly I was worried for nothing,” Jin-Woo chuckles. But there’s teeth in that laugh, a dark edge to it that has nothing to do with the night that fills his penthouse.

“What do you have in mind then?” he asks innocently. 

“Hm… would you mind coming in to work with me tomorrow to have a talk with someone? It shouldn’t take long; just… sit in on a meeting?” Ryuji asks slyly. 

Jin-Woo pretends to consider the request, but Ryuji knows he’ll agree. There’s bloodlust in the air, and it’s not his. 

“Sure, but only if you take me somewhere in return,” Jin-Woo says casually. That sneaky fish, Ryuji thinks with a roll of his eyes. 

“Fine,” he grumbles. It had better not be Hokkaido again, he thinks. 

“Now get back here,” Jin-Woo says sternly, gently tugging Ryuji back down, his head falling back in into his lap. “You’ve exhausted yourself again, you stupid Uplander.”

He doesn’t even pretend to resist or protest. He doesn’t want to, to be honest. So he lets his shoulders slump with a wary sigh and close his eyes. 

Jin-Woo’s not humming, this time singing a melody that sounds vaguely familiar. (He’ll never know, but it’s a lullaby from the Edo period, one that’s been circulated through the ages again and again.) 

He feels the voice echo in his mind, chasing his worries, feeling it cleanse his soul of stress and clutter. The higher notes cut through the miasma of guilt and shame, and he feels free like he hasn’t been since his childhood days. He takes a deep breath, smelling the scent of the sea that clings to Jin-Woo. He smells of the ocean, of Hokkaido shores and sea breeze; there’s an overtone of a scent that says home (he wears his clothes and uses his shampoo, that freeloader). Despite himself, he nods and drifts to sleep, a brief respite from his mind’s terrors.

It has taken him nearly two years to undo the clusterfuck that is his Uplander’s guilt complex, and it will absolutely not do for his hard work to unravel at the hands of some cretin.

Ryuji sighs gently in his sleep and finally goes soft in hs lap, the sirensong doing its job perfectly. 

He’s a schemer through and through, to come up with a plan like that on the fly, Jin-Woo thinks with a chuckle.

You know how many laws you’re breaking, Igris warns in the back of his mind. He feels his liege’s anger and heeds the call for blood; there’s a flash of scarlet by the dinner table that wasn’t there a moment ago, and the knight sits, shadows wrapping around him like armor.

I wrote some of those laws, so yes, I know what I’m breaking, Jin-Woo replies sarcastically.

Igris shakes his head, scattering crimson light with every movement. Then I hope you also know that you’re quite attached to this Uplander… far too attached for your own good.

Jin-Woo raises an eyebrow. That is his knight’s business… how? Igris isn’t one to tattle on him, isn’t one to interfere with his personal life, for all he had done some truly stupid things in his teenage centuries. He knows that his faithful knight has been watching from the shadows, yet curiously, he makes himself scarce nowadays.

He shrugged then, assuming that it was only because the Uplanders are repopulating Ant Island again and causing undue trouble for the rest of them underwater.

(It is, and it’s not. The Uplanders are back, but it’s not anything they can’t handle. No, he just about raised this boy, when Ashborn couldn’t be bothered to, and he sees how the Heir looks at this Uplander and knows exactly where this is going. He’s not keen to stick around to watch.)

You know Uplanders aren’t immortal, right? Igris says quietly, sure and neutral, not pitying like Jin-Woo expects him to be.

Jin-Woo looks down at Ryuji, sleeping quietly and unaware of the danger he’s in. Stupid Uplander, trusting him of all people. He’s the embodiment of ill will and misfortune and the merciless abyss. An omen, to be warned of and stayed away from at all costs; he’s what sailors pray at temples to avoid, and this man goes and falls asleep right on top of him. 

The lights of Tokyo’s skyline throw a warm amber glow onto him, multicolored lights reflecting on his skin. His hand continues petting his hair, and he thinks that sleep is a good look on him. He looks less stressed out this way.

I know, he says with a soft sigh and a softer look. 

Igris bows his head. Then I pray you know what you are doing.

His knight dips back into his shadows soundlessly, and he’s left alone once more, an immortal with fragile mortality hovering like a noose around his neck. Every second that passes, every moment that slips by, he feels it tightening around him- them - just that bit more.

Chapter Text

Ryuji gets his answer on Jin-Woo’s preferred vacation destination one day when he returns from the guild with takeout in hand. 

“I’d like to visit this place,” Jin-Woo says, chewing on a mouthful of yakisoba. He points to an open travel magazine on the table; Ryuji looks down and sees a page on koi fish. 

Gujo Hachiman, he thinks with a snort. Figures the ningyo would want to go to the City of Water. 

“It can be arranged,” he replies calmly. It is, after all, a part of their deal; the Hunters Association mess has long since finished, and spring was fading rapidly into summer. 

That particular fiasco had wrapped up relatively quickly after he figured out the full scope of Jin-Woo’s abilities when it comes to auditory mana tricks. 

The things he can do with that… he rarely gets ability envy as a hunter (he’d like to think that his own abilities are the envy of others, not the other way around), but there are exceptions to be made, and this- this is one of them for sure.

Jin-Woo merely looked amused to see the flabbergasted look on his face, when the Hunter Association President walked out of the meeting room with a dopey smile on his face… after confessing to all his crimes happily. 

“I hear you Uplanders are awfully fond of spring cleaning” he says casually with his hands in his pockets, as if remarking on the weather. The smirk doesn’t leave his face, though the mana glow gets wiped with an innocuous blink.

Jin-Woo rolls his eyes at his reaction. “Get that look off your face; you lot don’t have the mana control for this.” 

He’ll deny pouting; as if he’d do something so childish, but he grudgingly admits to being a bit sour about the whole thing. 

There’s a very public exposé with an even more public execution by his Guild, televised on national television. It is as much of an appeal to the displeased public (they are, after all- the largest guild in Japan, in member count, power, and popularity) as it is a warning for all those who come after. 

The next Association President is a right bootlicker, in Ryuji’s oh-so-high opinion. He’s used to dealing with cowards like him, so he leaves him be. 

“Do you want to go to the festivals?” Ryuji asks, bringing his mind back to the topic at hand. He’s under the impression that Jin-Woo dislikes crowds of people- something about there being too much fire.

Jin-Woo considers the question. “Not particularly,” he shrugs. 

“Then we can avoid the summer festivals if we go earlier,” Ryuji props his head against his hand, gesturing at the magazine with his chopsticks. 

“It shouldn’t be too much of a hassle to arrange a two week stay at one of the local ryokan,” he says. He’s overdue for a vacation, actually. It’s guild policy to have mandatory vacations for their Hunters, to get them to unwind. He has been putting off his vacation for far longer than most; he’s busy dammit. Doubly so, with minding an extra guest at all hours of the day. He gives it another week before HR comes knocking on his office door with a calendar and a pen. 

“Alright,” Jin-Woo says with a small smile. 

The ningyo is a hard one to read (for all his expression comes off as flat), but he’s been staying here for almost two and a half years now- there are little tells here and there. 

It’s all in the eyes, Ryuji thinks. The way the tightness around his eyes relaxes, the way the violet subtly brightens into a more welcoming lavender… he’s happy. 

He’s hardly going to deny such a useful ally something as simple as a vacation, so he texts Sugimoto and asks him to make the arrangements.

“The water is so clean here,” Jin-Woo marvels, letting the cold mountain stream water run through his fingers here. 

“It’s what this place is known for,” Ryuji shrugs. He doesn’t see what the big deal is; there are fish everywhere here, discounting the one walking next to him. The shops are a bit old fashioned, but it’s a tourist town through and through. 

“I didn’t know Uplanders still have places like this,” he mutters. It’s the most child-like he’s seen the immortal creature, all wide eyed wonder at the Edo-era shops. 

There’s an edge of wistfulness to the smile, something that could almost be homesickness in the tilt of those lips. There’s the sun setting, and the fireflies are starting to appear from the forests. Jin-Woo doesn’t particularly notice one flying near his hair, absorbed in examining the make of the one of the paper lanterns. 

He looks like a scene out of a painting, Ryuji thinks- and then promptly stuffs the thought in a box to never see the light of day. Acquaintance, he thinks to himself firmly. 

(Just who do you think you’re fooling, Goto Ryuji? A voice that sounds like his mother whispers in his mind. He ignores it.)

Is he going to spend two weeks feeding fish? He grumbles to himself. The ningyo beside him is having a right time crouching next to the gutters, feeding nishikigoi by hand. He’s standing awkwardly on the side, not quite guarding, not quite hovering. 

Well, there are worse ways to spend two weeks, he thinks with a sigh. There’s a disgruntled look on his face when he goes into the nearest shop to get more change for fish food, and the old grannie manning the storefront laughs. 

“More fish food, eh, young man?” She chuckles and hands him his change. 

He grimaces and doesn’t reply. He’s not the first one or the last one to be sent out to find change, but he’s willing to bet he’s the first one to do so with an actual mermaid in tow. 

“They’re so happy here,” Jin-Woo says with a soft smile. The nearest koi sucks in his fingers, and he doesn’t even mind that his appendages are disappearing into the mouth of a fish. 

“Do you talk to them?” Ryuji asks offhandedly. Even the local washerwoman looks surprised to see the conglomeration of koi that’s practically mobbing Jin-Woo. 

Jin-Woo raises an eyebrow. “Of course. What do you think I’m doing?” 

I don’t know- wasting time? He thinks automatically. He wisely keeps his mouth shut.

“They have a bit of a country accent, but they talk alright.” Jin-Woo hums. “They’re babies, all of them.” 

Compared to a centuries old sea creature, sure.

Jin-Woo finishes the bag of fish food in his hand and stands up from his crouch. “They told me there are temples that way”- fish are GPS now? Ryuji wonders with a sigh. He’s not even surprised- not really. 

“Let’s go,” Jin-Woo says and turns. 

He follows, because he has to keep an eye on him (not because he’ll always follow, wherever he goes). It’s not his vacation, not really- it’s Jin-Woo’s, and he knows it. 

“What are you doing?” Ryuji blinks back the sparks he sees behind his eyelids; it looks like… a weaving of mana, curiously enough. Purple shines in the air, each strand twisting on itself to Jin-Woo’s masterful hands. 

“It’s a blessing,” he says simply. Then, he smirks, quicksilver and sly, and asks- “Surely you didn’t think we are mythical creatures just for show?”

He must really like this town, to go all the way out here for this, Ryuji thinks. Then, another thought occurs to him; it’s been two and a half years of rent-free living. Where’s his blessing? He can’t help but grumble to himself. 

“It’s just a bit of a spell for general prosperity, luck, and health,” Jin-Woo says casually, like he’s not casually breaking every rule on mana-use there is. 

“We don’t learn this until past the fifth century mark- even we don’t have the control for it- but there are occasional Uplanders who manage to surprise us.”

“Abe no Seimei, I guess- is the most notable one,” he recalls. 

Abe no Seimei - Ryuji’s brain is done breaking for the day, and he’s been learning more about mythology than he has ever wanted to, so he files that away for a different day and pretends he didn’t hear anything. 

“What’s that bit?” Ryuji points instead at a kanji in the weaving that he can’t read.

“That’s to ensure there won’t be a dungeon break here,” Jin-Woo explains. His audience makes an enquiring noise, so he continues. “It’s not that dungeons won’t exist, but they just won’t open up here. They’ll miss by a mile, a foot, an inch. Not unless someone is very specifically aiming for this place.”

“You really do like this place,” Ryuji snorts. 

Jin-Woo doesn’t disagree. “We’re not cruel; not when Uplanders don’t make us that way. Once upon a time, we got along well. I’m pleased with what they’ve done here, what they’ve kept; a blessing is the least I can do to help keep things this way.”

A blessing from a god is a powerful thing, Ryuji considers. For a backwater town to get such a gift- he shakes his head. If only Tokyo- or even his guild- could have that instead… He shakes his head. The ningyo’s mana is his own; best not to dwell on such meaningless thoughts. 

It doesn’t occur that the only reason he doesn’t have Jin-Woo’s blessing yet is because he already has his favor, and that is by far a rarer treasure.

They pass by a small lake, an oxbow lake from where the river meanders its way down. It’s hidden a little way deep in the mountain, away from the most popular tourist paths. 

 A family of koi swim past lazily, a swipe of tail the equivalent of a wave- for Jin-Woo, of course. 

Ryuji sees the way Jin-Woo’s eyes light up, and he knows what’s going to happen next. He grips the ningyo’s arm and says firmly, “No- not when there are so many people nearby.”

Jin-Woo frowns petulantly. “You don’t even know what I was going to do.”

“I can guess,” he says dryly. He knew this would happen, the first time he saw Jin-Woo’s happiness in this town. “Might I remind you of the all laws you’re supposed to be following?”

Jin-Woo grumbles something that sounds like “I-gret”- he doubts he regrets any of this- but follows him away. 

There’s a lingering glance at the lakeside; Ryuji grimaces. This is not over- not by far. 

“There’s a purple koi in the river,” he hears a youth shout down the street. “I swear, I saw it at night! It’s huge!” The kid gestures with his arms wide, swinging them wildly.

“Don’t be silly,” the boy’s mother smacks him on the head lightly. “There’s no such thing as a purple koi that big. You need glasses, boy.”

“But Mom! I saw it!” he wails. 

I’m sure you did, Ryuji thinks with a long-suffering sigh. He can’t even pretend to be angry; why did he ever think he can keep a fish away from water anymore than he can keep water itself from running downstream? 

He knows where he will find that darn nuisance, so it’s to the full moon that he heads out into the forest. It’s a familiar path, lit by fireflies on his way, and he brushes aside the brambles as he goes.

Ryuji pauses and takes a second to drink in the sight. There- resting with his arms on a flat rock, his tail shining in the night… He has his eyes closed, a herd of smaller rainbow colored koi swimming next to him. The night casts a soft glow on him, each violet scale gossamer in the moonlight. He’s sleeping, as relaxed as one would be in an onsen. 

He doesn’t want to interrupt- not really (not when it’s so rare to see him relaxed and resting, all the power in the world laid out for him to see). But he doesn’t have to. 

“Come to get me to head back, Ryuji?” Jin-Woo asks, his eyes still closed. 

Ryuji walks out from the forest, not bothering to hide. There’s nowhere he can hide from Jin-Woo, not when he’s a walking beacon of mana. 

“Would you listen?” he asks sarcastically. “Come on- you can’t stay out here like that. The town folk saw you.” 

“Are you worried?” he smirks, peering cat-like at him. 

“Not in the least,” he denies vehemently. He’ll deny it until the day he dies. Worried? Preposterous. He… just doesn’t want any trouble. Not today.

“Well, if you want me out of the water, you’ll have to catch me first,” Jin-Woo grins. Before he can object, or really shout some sense into that damn menace, the ningyo dives down deep and reappears at the other side of the lake. He flips a tail rudely at Ryuji. 

He’s already stripping down his jacket and shoes before he knows it; it’s a terrible idea, as far as ideas go. But if there’s one way to manipulate him… well, he’s as susceptible to a good taunt as any other fighter. More so, if it’s from this particular pain in the ass. 

The cold water hits him like a wake up call, and he only realizes how stupendously bad of an idea this is when he feels like a half drowned cat, waterlogged and freezing. 

The water is ridiculously clear though, he’ll give them that. 

He hears Jin-Woo’s laugh from underneath the water’s surface. 

“You- you really never learn, do you?” He chuckles and flings a piece of algae at him. It lands smack on his forehead and bounces off. 

“Jeez, you’re not even trained to move underwater, and you want to catch me.” Jin-Woo says, swimming closer to him. 

He snarls something unintelligible, but he’s not nearly half as angry as he pretends to be. Not when he’s in the water with this fish for the first time and sees how gracefully he swims, how stunning and powerful he is. He’s not going to catch him. Not… without some tricks, anyways.

“Are you volunteering to teach me?” Ryuji taunts back. “Now is as good of a time as ever,” he snarks.

Jin-Woo mockingly considers the idea. “Only if you want to learn,” he says.

“Well, lesson one: don’t piss off the teacher,” he says with a grin and swims a quick circle around Ryuji. He finds himself backed against a rock outcropping; he may not know how to move underwater, but he knows enough about combat to not leave his back open. 

Black shadows twist and reach for his arms, pinning them high above his head; his fingers scramble at the bindings, but the shadows feel like liquid ice. He snarls. 

A fin brushes mockingly against his ankle. Those damn koi are still there, and he can feel them trying to eat his shirt. He kicks. 

“Hey now, no kicking children,” Jin-Woo says disapprovingly. “You dug yourself into this mess. You couldn’t just leave things well alone, hm?” 

He hovers close, his face dangerously so, and he can see how his teeth aren’t human teeth- not in this form. They’re serrated and in rows. There are fine scales, leading from the angle of his jaw back down to his neck. 

He looks like the abyssal god he claims to be.

But he’s close- and this is his chance. He tenses his core and lashes out with his legs, wrapping them around the slippery tail in a vice grip. If his ankles dig into the flesh more than necessary, then so be it. 

The surprise that flashes on Jin-Woo’s face feels like victory.

“Caught you,” he says triumphantly. 

Jin-Woo looks at him incredulously. “What are you, a crab?” 

He’ll be anything, if it means one-upping a mermaid in water. 

But then something shifts in Jin-Woo’s countenance, and he stops trying to wriggle his way out of the hold. Instead, he leans closer and presses him against the rock surface. 

He’s mesmerized by the color of those eyes, shining mana bright like embers in the night. 

“Would you like a prize? For a job well done?” Jin-Woo leans in and whispers.

It feels like a question within a question, and he doesn’t understand, not until he realizes the other has gone quiet and doesn’t close in on the distance left between them… looking at him in askance. Looking and searching for something- an answer… almost like permission. 

Oh. Oh. Now he understands. 

(Now you get it. How late do you want to be, boy? His mother’s voice whispers.)

What does it say of him, that he’s here and in the water and doing this with a fish of all things? He doesn’t think more on it; he finds himself not caring. He’s an army and a nation of his own. Anyone else’s rules are arbitrary. 

“Do I get your blessing now?” He says instead, a smirk on his face, and his voice almost a breathless confession. 

Jin-Woo chuckles. “You get something of mine far, far more priceless than that.”

(He already has it, this heart of his.)

“You’re buying a house?” Sugimoto shuffles past the pile of paperwork on his desk and pauses when he notices the expenditure. 

Ryuji grunts in his general direction.

“Is it for the guild, at least?” He asks, baffled. As long as he has known him, the boss has always had a terminal case of bachelorhood and more stalkers than he knows what to do with. It’s part of the reason why he’s always renting despite being rich enough that his great grand-children can retire at birth. It’s also part of the reason why the guild rules are laid out the way they are.

“...No.”

Sugimoto looks at the address. Gujo Hachiman… the boss liked that place enough to go buy a house there? He was under the impression that he hated the countryside. Just exactly what happened there to change his mind?

He sighs; he has to stop trying to make sense of the boss’ thought process before it gives him a headache. Nothing he does makes any sense; not since that acquaintance of his appeared. 

(It makes a lot of sense when he thinks of his boss as a normal man and not a walking nuclear bomb. And he’ll stop that train of thought right where it is before it goes somewhere he doesn’t want to consider.)

He flips through the rest of the order; a note catches his attention… 

“Why do you need such a big bath? On second thought- never mind.” He wisely backtracks when he sees the boss’s expression turning more murderous with every question. 

He’ll just… pretend he never saw this. The guild expenditures can cover it. Just… call it life insurance for the rest of them or something. 

Chapter Text

He’s searching for clothes one day in the closet, straight out of the shower, when this happens:

“Looking for something?” Jin-Woo says airily, leaning on the doorway and wearing his favorite shirt. The same one he has been looking for, for the past ten minutes. He stares at the way the shirt hangs on his lean shoulders, slipping a bit (he’s built for speed, but Jin-Woo even more so, and it shows in his build).

And he suddenly realizes it’s past time for this freeloader to get his own damn closet. 

“We’re going clothes shopping,” Ryuji declares flatly. 

“Today?” Jin-Woo blinks. Well, that was sudden. Ryuji nods, settling for his second-favorite shirt, since the first had been so rudely claimed.

“If you say so,” Jin-Woo says, an eyebrow raised at the walk-in closet crammed full and straining with the weight of clothes.

“For you,” he clarifies. 

He has been staying here for five years now, sharing Ryuji’s house, his food, his space, his office, his clothes… his bed. They’re past acquaintances, past friends. They’re… something undefined. (Weakness, he wants to say, but that’s not quite right either. Weak is the last word he’d use to describe that damn mermaid.)

They’re a familiar sight together at the guild by now, and no one dares to question Jin-Woo’s rank- not after that fight in the gym, but they question something else of his. 

He doesn’t miss the smug little glances from Shimizu, nor the sudden awkwardness from Hoshino and Tawata. He doesn’t miss the way Kei trails Jin-Woo down hallways and across the dojos. And he knows Sugimoto’s already suspicious about their living arrangements. There’s a dent outside his office wall in the shape of Kei’s respirator where he presumably… walked into a wall. He pointedly asks the cleaning lady not to bother contacting maintenance. If he was feeling a bit more generous, he’d get the spot on the wall framed.

It doesn’t help that five years after his appearance, Jin-Woo is still wearing his clothes.

“Why?” Jin-Woo asks, nonchalant. “Your clothes fit fine.”

That’s not the point, and it’s moments like this that Ryuji despairs at the cultural gap between their species (separated by eight thousand meters of water and enough pressure to flatten a man like a soda can).

He doesn’t know what to tell him, doesn’t know how to explain modern social conventions to someone whose last visit to above sea level was three hundred years ago. 

“Just… get some clothes that fit better for you, okay?” he sighs, feeling a headache coming on. It goes without saying that he’s the one who’s paying; Jin-Woo, after all, does not work. Nor does he clear dungeons (though he’s sure that nothing short of solo-ing an S rank would give him a pause). 

“Alright,” Jin-Woo says, humoring him. 

“Irasshaimase,” the tailor’s apprentice says politely and bows at the door. She gestures at the shoe rack, and they slot in their footwear perfunctually. 

It’s an old fashioned tailor they’re at, an unusual sight in the middle of metropolitan Tokyo, but this is the only tailor Ryuji goes to for his clothes. She’s the best there is in town, and he orders the guild’s uniform from no one else. As it is, he has a standing discount for the massive orders he puts in. 

It’s only a second thought that Jin-Woo is simply more comfortable in old fashioned places. 

“Ah, Goto-san,” the elderly lady ducks out of the hanging by the door, dressed in a traditional working kimono. “Here for your fitting?”

“Not mine this time,” he says, stepping aside to let the tailor get a good look at Jin-Woo. The bit sized elder looks up and down with a keen eye. The ningyo carefully doesn’t squirm under the assessing gaze. If she notices that the clothes she made are already on Jin-Woo’s frame, she says nothing of it. 

“A new customer- welcome,” she says with a polite bow. Jin-Woo returns one just as quickly. “I assume you’ll want a full set?”

“Yes,” Ryuji says before Jin-Woo can open his mouth to object. “How long would this take?”

The lady hums, already reaching for the tape measure the same way a samurai would reach for a sword. There’s an unsettling glint in her eyes that makes Jin-Woo suddenly a bit wary. There’s nothing for him to back into, so he stays where he is. “About three hours should do, methinks.”

“Alright, I’ll be back around then,” he says, and ducks out of the store as quickly as he can manage and still be marginally polite.

He has been on the receiving end of that lady’s tape measure before, and he doesn’t want to recall the experience. Jin-Woo looks vaguely betrayed- he knows not to underestimate the elderly- but the apprentice is already directing him politely to the backroom, and he can’t shake off the old tailor’s grip (surprisingly strong, for someone her age, he thinks) without being rude.

“I’ll get you take-out,” Ryuji says to appease him- a peace-making gesture, to avoid whatever revenge the mischievous ningyo would cook up in return. 

Jin-Woo grumbles but lets himself be led away for his fitting. 

Outside the deceptively harmless shop, Ryuji pulls up his hood and makes his way to the railways. The store he’s thinking of is a special one; it’s Jin-Woo’s favorite eatery, for no reason except the restaurant’s age. 

“That shack is still here?” Jin-Woo says suddenly one day while passing by a street near Ueno station, openly astounded at an unagi restaurant. He stops abruptly and gawks- or as close to gawking as someone like him would stoop to.

“Hm?” Ryuji asks, wondering what was so special about an ordinary restaurant by the station. 

“Ah, this place was around in the Edo period; it was just a ramshackle hut on wheels back then, but I knew the owner. He’s a hardworking, down to earth kind of guy. I can’t believe they have all this food now, and it’s still around after all this time,” Jin-Woo says, shaking his head. “Are his descendants running this place?” He wonders.

“Let’s eat here,” he says, sounding nostalgic. Ryuji has no complaints; they weren’t here for any particular cuisine, after all. They sit and order, and when the food arrives, even Ryuji has to admit... That’s some really good unagi. 

“It even tastes exactly the same,” he says, vaguely homesick. 

It suddenly hits him, just exactly far away this mermaid is from his home and his support, from what’s familiar to him. He’s three hundred years out of his time, miles away from the depths. 

(No one asked him to stay, he says firmly in his mind. Then, a separate voice whispers, no one asked him to go either.) 

When their meal is over, he calls the driver… and quietly takes a business card from the front desk on his way out. 

He’s back in the shop roughly three hours later (after getting take-out, scoping out the neighboring guilds’ territories and marking three infringements of guild borders, which he promptly sent to Sugimoto to handle.)

He enters the store, and for politeness’ sake, says “I’m back.”

“Oh, Ryuji, you’re back,” Jin-Woo voice comes echoing from the back. He brushes aside the cloth draperies… 

And then Ryuji finds himself suddenly choking on his breath. For a second, he doesn’t register what his eyes are telling his brain. 

“I guess this looks okay,” Jin-Woo says with a tilt of his head, turning around and giving Ryuji an eyeful of how tightly the black satin shirt stretches across his shoulder, the way the fabric folds just so across the dip of his neck. His mouth runs dry, and he puts the take-out on the counter before he drops it. 

He’s dressed in black, from head to toe, from the satin shirt to the fitted slacks. He’s vaguely aware of the elderly lady emerging half a beat behind him, and he doesn’t know what expression he’s wearing, but there’s an uncharacteristically predatory grin on the her face that wasn’t there this morning. The apprentice is conspicuously absent, but that hardly matters- not when Jin-Woo does a full turn and- that shirt’s just open enough in the front to show a sliver of chest when he moves.

“Yeah,” he says, clearing his throat. He can feel his ears heating up, his own neck steadily flushing pink and extending all the way up.

“We’ll take them,” he says with finality. He tries not to think about the odd tightness in his voice and pretends it isn’t something out of the ordinary.

“You haven’t even seen the rest yet,” Jin-Woo says, rolling his eyes. Clearly, his frugality is a carry-over from ancient times. They’re not starving now, and there’s no need to be a penny pincher when he has enough in his bank account that he loses track of all the commas. (He’d buy him an entire closet, if he can see more of that, he thinks. Then proceeds to bury the mutinous thought in a corner of his mind somewhere.)

“I figured you would,” the tailor says with a roguish grin. “Good doing business with you then, Goto-san. I’ll have the lot delivered to you in a week. To the guild address then?”

“... No, to my personal address,” Ryuji says, regaining his senses and scribbling his address hastily on the paper. 

“Ah,” she says sagely… and is that a wink?

“...You can keep wearing my clothes,” Ryuji says the week after, when Jin-Woo’s clothes arrive. 

“But you just bought these,” Jin-Woo says, puzzled. “You Uplanders are so wasteful.”

That’s not the point here, and he’s mentally tearing at his hair thinking of how to explain this to him. “You can keep your own set, just in case.” Of an emergency, where they need a fire lit right away. Or if they need another wall demolished; Kei would do that for them free of charge if he walks into it enough times. (Not that he would allow Jin-Woo to walk around the guild dressed like that. Then he realizes exactly what that sounds decides to ignore his own traitorous mind.)

“Oh well, your clothes fit better anyways,” he muses, ignoring that he got his own personally tailored. 

(He sees the hunger in Ryuji’s eyes and suddenly wonders what he looks like, dressed in modern clothes and walking on land with two legs, to earn a look like that. He smirks- he can guess, by Ryuji's reaction. Honestly, Uplanders- such complicated mating rituals they have.)

Chapter Text

He’s aware that the time they have is finite, even if what they have is infinite. 

“You’re greying at the roots,” Jin-Woo remarks one day, brushing his hands through Ryuji’s hair. And so he is, bits of silvery grey a stark contrast against a bed of black.

He glares, affronted and almost bristling. “I am not,” he says indignantly. (Jin-Woo sees him ducking his head in front of the mirror in the bathroom the next day, right after his shower. He chuckles; Ryuji’s much vainer than anyone in the guild gives him credit for. He’s dressed in baggy white shirts and hoodies not for aesthetics but for practicality.)

He is aging, and they both know it. The knowledge settles with more dread in one than the other. 

(He’s eighty, and even for a Hunter, this is getting a bit ridiculous. He’s lucky his youth has lasted this far, but even he’s not oblivious to the natural course of life. He chalks it up to good genes (and good water, probably); it can’t be the stress-free lifestyle, after all).

It’s not that, Jin-Woo knows. There’s a pearl of truth in every fable, and despite what mortals believe, the tale of yaobikuni- a mortal earning immortality by eating their kind’s flesh- is not a legend at all. 

Once upon a time, it was true. And for centuries after, none of them dared appear in their forms on land, for fear of getting eaten. 

He’s not going to agree to being turned into sashimi, but he’ll eat his own fins if Ryuji’s youth doesn’t have something to do with him. Immortality isn’t something diffusible, so what’s the cause of this?

Jin-Woo gets his answer one night, laid out on the bed and utterly spent, his hair matted with sweat and his body heaving and his hands gripping tightly at the sheets. He doesn’t want to know where Ryuji is; doesn’t want to think about what he’s doing, doesn’t want to think-

And then he doesn’t think at all.

In the afterglow, he suddenly realizes. It’s not his flesh that’s being consumed, but… 

Well, who knew the effect carried over onto other parts of him?

(He’ll have to sneak this in as a side note in the library, when he gets back. It’s far too interesting of a discovery for it to go uncharted. But he’ll have to do it quietly and on the sly; after all, he has no source to cite and doesn’t want to explain just how he discovered this little trick.)

How long do you intend to put aside your duties? Igris’ voice sounds like a death-knell in his mind. 

As long as it takes, Jin-Woo replies, his gaze held on Ryuji’s peaceful slumbering face. 

Igris stays silent, standing vigil at his lord’s side, then he says unexpectedly, Ashborn did this too, once upon a time.

Oh? Jin-Woo asks curiously. He doesn’t know as much about the current Shadow Monarch as he would like; everything he has ever heard about him was from Igris. The Monarch doesn’t leave his chambers. Hardly even shows his face around the depths; they know him by name and by reputation, but no one really knows him. 

Igris shakes his head, the scarlet fins on his neck flowing with an invisible current. He headed to land a long time before you did; long ago when angels, demons, gods, and creatures of all kinds still roamed free then, mingling with Uplanders. 

I knew he was old but not that old, Jin-Woo raises an eyebrow. There’s old, and then there’s old. 

Don’t let him hear you say that, Igris says dryly. He continues casually, He fell in love with an angel, once upon a time. 

Jin-Woo feels a moment of sympathy for him, but it’s less sympathy and more empathy, he thinks; he has no ground to stand on. There’s an angel on his lap this very moment, and he’s very much in love with this one. (Very few people would describe Goto Ryuji as such, but he’s an abyssal nightmare from legends long gone.)

Angels aren’t immortal, Jin-Woo says as casually as one would state the day of the week. 

No they are not, Igris agrees. He pauses, stops and stares straight at Jin-Woo. He killed a god, for his angel’s life. 

Do you think I would not, for mine? Jin-Woo says placidly. He’ll bring the heavens crashing down to earth, if that is what it takes. 

You two are far too much alike, Igris says dryly with a shake of his. All the way down to the stubbornness. Not for the first time, Jin-Woo wonders just exactly who Igris is, to be taking care of Ashborn before he ascended to the throne. He doesn’t know, but once upon a time, Igris was simply a creature of the depths, guarding an empty crown and an emptier throne… alone in a domain of one. 

That god ripped out his angel’s wings, as punishment for falling in love with a Monarch, Igris says. 

He would go kill a god too, if it was him. He’d kill a god for less. Did he win? Jin-Woo asks. He knows the answer already; Ashborn would not be here if he didn’t. He wouldn’t expect any less from the Shadow Monarch.

Of course. But he won as much as he lost that day. Igris says with a sigh. There’s a reason why he doesn’t stop you from coming up here.

Take care that you don’t end up the same, the knight warns. 

“Would you live forever, if you could, Ryuji?” Jin-Woo asks one day, his arms propping up his head easily. It’s barely past sunrise as the light streams in lazily on a peaceful Sunday morning. It’s not fair for him to spring this on him so early (and without coffee at that), but he realizes that one day, that this face will disappear. The easy companionship they have will vanish, and there will be no more lazy mornings. Not like this. Never like this.

It’ll be gone, like the wings that have vanished from the back of that angel. 

“Hm?” Ryuji rolls over with a satisfied sigh, sleepy and not quite awake.

“Live with me forever?” Jin-Woo asks quietly. 

“I’m not paying for you forever,” was the immediate, half grumbled response. Sixty years of free room and board- and he said he’s only going to be here for a while. Clearly, they have different definitions of a while.

There’s no laughter, no sound. That’s not right. Ryuji frowns, forcing his eyes open with an unwilling groan. Jin-Woo’s looking at him far too seriously for this to be a joke. 

“What brought this on?” he asks. 

“You’re eighty,” Jin-Woo says. Yes, thanks for reminding him of his age first thing in the morning. So pleasantly too. Ryuji rolls his eyes. “You… won’t be here forever.” 

“I won’t,” he says, an easy acceptance in his voice. He has long come to terms with his own mortality; he has more than doubled the average life expectancy as a hunter, and he has no delusions about his own end. Not when a single dungeon break killed so many of his guildmates. He’s lucky to already have had this much time. 

“You could, if you wanted to,” Jin-Woo says quietly, looking down. 

Ryuji makes an enquiring noise. “Don’t tell me the yaobikuni are real,” he says, finally sounding more awake.

That earns a small bitter smile for him. “They are- and they’re the reason why we haven’t been on land for centuries.”

“I’m not eating you,” he says dryly. Well, he does, but just not like that.

Jin-Woo rolls his eyes. “What’s that you always say about room and board? I think immortality is fair payment for a free lifetime of meals.” Then, he says with a sigh, “It doesn’t have to be very much; nothing I wouldn’t recover from.”

That’s just- he’s turning a bit green around the gills just thinking about flapping around with a tail of all things. But immortality- it sounds straight out of a dream or out of a fairytale, the treasure at the end of a long quest. To have it handed to him so simply, so easily on a silver platter… 

But he doesn’t want it. Not really. 

He’s tired, eighty and world-weary. He wants his rest, wants to one day know that he’ll close his eyes and never have to open them again. Wants to see all the people who have left him behind, all the ones he will leave behind one day and apologize in person. 

“No,” he says finally and sees Jin-Woo’s expression shutter. “I wouldn’t.”

He has his heart, freely given and priceless beyond all treasures, and with two simple words, he breaks it so, so easily. 

“Say my name,” Jin-Woo says breathlessly, a flush on his face, sweat beading over his forehead “That’s not my name.”

He leans in close, his mouth barely half an inch away from Ryuji’s ear. “Like this,” he breathes, a precious gift given freely. 

Ryuji feels a tidal wave of power wash over him, waking him up and startling a gasp from him. That name- what is in that name, to hold such power in it? It’s nothing he has ever felt before, in all his time. 

“Like this?” he whispers right back, biting back a shiver as he does. 

“Perfect,” Jin-Woo says with a warm smile, his eyes wide and burning bright with mana. “Just perfect.” 

He doesn’t know what he holds, to have such a powerful name falling so easily from his lips. He could ask for the oceans if he wished, all the force of the tides and the seasons, all the secrets of the farthest reaches of the Earth, his crown on bended knee, and he would be helpless to keep it from him. He wouldn’t want to, if he were the one to ask. 

Jin-Woo gives him his heart, his name- all that he is. But in the end, even he can’t keep his love’s future. The sands of time wait for no one as it flows, silently and surely.

The world’s balance hangs on these eight gates, Ryuji thinks, circling the general area where the Tokyo gate is charted to appear in a day’s time. 

Over five decades, and only now have they realized why gates appear, why humans have mana… and who is the final boss behind all this. 

One of these eight, he thinks. It’s only thanks to the intelligence they have collected from the other dungeon bosses- some of which are eerily humanoid- that they know what they do. 

Eight of them, in total. One gone hiding in shadows and never to reappear (though sometimes, he sees the black tendrils of Jin-Woo’s mana and wonders), six dead and turned to dust. One more, and humanity will be free. 

There aren’t that many of them left- not many national level Hunters who can still take on missions like this. Chris Reed is long dead, melting the Monarch of Iron Body with him in a fire that burns forty days and nights. Thomas Andre lost an arm, taking down the Monarch of Beastly Fangs. Liu Zhigang retired, much like him. His own guildmates chose to bring down the Giant’s Avatar in exchange for their lives, and he himself dealt the final blow to the Monarch pulling the Avatar’s strings. 

One more, and he has a feeling that it is the last one. One last one and then it will all  be over. He’ll go down with the rest; he has no delusions that the final boss would be the easiest. But he’ll go fighting, as he must.

That night before the dungeon, he slips away with a final brush of his lips on pale skin and closes the door gently behind him… the click of the door that sounds like one last goodbye. 

He doesn’t see the lavender eyes open in the dark.

“Get out of my way.” There’s a civilian there, dressed in a black shirt and slacks standing in front of Tokyo’s dungeon. It has been three days; the team that went in… has not come back out.

They’re bracing for the worst, the inevitable end of mankind and all that they know. They’re the last line of defense, but it isn’t much of a defense. Not against a calamity like that.

“Sir, I must insist,” the soldier says firmly, pulling him back with shaking hands. 

“I said, get out of my way,” the civilian snarls. 

He scrambles back. Suddenly, he has never wanted to move away so much in his life.

“Ryuji,” he hears. Is he dreaming? He’s lying on a bed of ashes; he can feel the fire sear away his skin, turning it to crisp. It’s over, and he’s waiting placidly for the end- for the credits to roll. 

He lost too much blood, he knows. But their healer is gone, their tank is dead. He’s the last left of his party, and he won’t back down. He earned his living, and so he’ll earn his death. 

Has he died then, and reached wherever it is that sinners go?

That can’t be right; he still feels that ominous mana behind him, a cloud of rage and destruction. Silly him, to think that he could go toe-to-toe with a dragon king, of all things. But he didn’t have any choice, not if it means the death of humanity is the only other option. 

That only means he’s still alive and hanging on by a thread. He’s not dead, and this is not a hallucination. He wants to warn Jin-Woo, tell him to get away, to run back to the depths where he’ll be safe. He wants to say a million things (good-bye was never supposed to one of them), but he’s drowning in his own blood and doesn’t have the breath. 

Breathe, he thinks, frustrated. He has maybe but one word in him left, so he whispers his name, so quietly that it is almost drowned by the winds. 

“Like that?” he asks with a weak smile. He feels what’s left of him drain out onto the ashes, and he closes his eyes quietly, as he must. 

“Yes, just like that,” Jin-Woo says and lays him down. There’s something wet on his face, but he doesn’t care; it drips into the ash, blood red. 

A mermaid’s tears- the crimson pearls of their heart. He collects them in his palm, but they won’t stop falling- not when Ryuji’s lying there, so still, so dead. 

Igris, Jin-Woo chokes. His faithful knight appears, his head bowed. He looks up past the film of red covering his eyes. 

Keep him safe, please, Jin-Woo says quietly. 

Of course, Igris says softly. He raises a hand to brush aside Jin-Woo’s tears, taking the ones already formed from his grip. 

He kneels. The ground spins around him, and he can’t breathe, he can’t think, can’t walk- not with the world collapsing around his ears like this. 

Get up, My Liege, Igris says with a sigh and holds him upright by the arm. Now is not the time to mourn. Not now. It’s not the time to cry. No: you, My Liege, have a god to kill. 

“Antares, Monarch of Destruction,” Jin-Woo says, his form already fading into shadows around the edges. He feels his control slipping, the hard won discipline that he spent centuries training vanishing. But he doesn’t care, not when what’s most precious to him is gone. He lets his mana out, tendrils of it already calling on all creatures of the abyss, all who have fallen to the depths throughout the ages. They wake, coming to the call of their sovereign.

“Heir to Ashborn, welcome to my domain,” Antares grins down at him, barely even bloodied by the fight he just finished. 

“Have you come to die?” he asks mockingly. “Just like those foolish mortals?”

“Oh, I’ve died alright,” Jin-Woo chuckles humorlessly. He unsheathes his swords, a pair crafted from the bones of ancient creatures that once roamed the seas. They crackle with his energy, eager to be used. He feels power build behind his eyes; he’s far away… detached and looking at the Monarch from a distance. An ant, swimming listlessly in the ocean. What is a dragon, to all the seas and oceans of a planet? 

“I’ll die a thousand times if it means taking you with me.” 

Igris, let’s go, Jin-Woo says tiredly. The deed is done, and he has the Dragon King’s jewel and heart as his prize. What worth is this junk, when what’s most important to him is irreparably gone? 

He chose to come ashore, that fateful day sixty years ago by the beach, to conquer his heart. To kill it and to forget it, and he can still only do two of those three things. 

He conquered his heart (the man holding it so gently like a pearl). 

He killed his heart (it breaks, grinds to sand and melts away, leaving only a void to show that it once existed.)

But he will never forget it. He’ll never want to, not when it’s all that he has left to show of his once dream (and what could have been, if a choice had been made differently).

Let’s go home, Igris, Jin-Woo says, his head bowed. 

He sees Ashborn, for the first and final time. 

(He looks like him- exactly like him. He sees the same empty look in his eyes, every time he sees himself in the mirror.)

He wears the largest of his crimson pearls on his ears, a reminder of what once was. 

He takes the Black Heart, as he must. It goes without a hitch and fits perfectly where his own once was. Jin-Woo’s not surprised; there’s nothing left there anymore. Ashborn sleeps, but Jin-Woo stays awake, holding vigil for a memory only he remembers. 

I’m not going back, and you can’t make me! Su-Ho screams at the knight trailing in his shadows and swims away, his tail kicking up furious bubbles in the water. 

Igris bites back a sigh. Three generations of Shadow Monarchs, and they’re all just as bad as each other. It’s this again, he rues. How many times must he see their heart break? (As many times as needed, as long as the Black Heart wants for an heir. That’s the last secret of the abyss; no one can hold the Black Heart as long as they still have their own.)

He brings news of Su-Ho’s adventure back to his lord. He knows the boy; he practically raised this one too. He’s not a perfect fit for the throne, not as he is, with only a smattering of purple on silver scales where his lord has a whole tail. He doesn’t fit here, always looking upwards and longing for the land- longing for a world where he belongs. He won’t be back, Igris says.

His lord laughs, for the first time in centuries showing an emotion other than perfect blankness on his face. He laughs and laughs and then starts crying, great blood red streaks staining the water. 

Igris wisely stays quiet. His lord doesn’t venture out from his chambers; not anymore. Not since the day he took up the Black Heart. Not since the day he returned from land with his heart in pieces. It’s the same with Ashborn, and he’s long used to it. 

Leave him be, Igris. His lord says, his eyes so very tired. He’ll be fine. Just… keep him safe.

Like I did, for you? Igris thinks, biting back a retort. But there’s only so much he can do, when this song and dance is written in their fate, for all those destined to take up the mantle as king of the seas. 

As you wish, Igris says, and could only hope that his lord’s end could come sooner for him than it did his predecessor. 

He’s back again, in the safety in his own chambers after a long day of governing the tides and the movement of the plates. 

It’s a humble room, barely more of an alcove in a wall. There’s an unopened chest in the corner next to the closet. He knows what’s in it, as clearly as the day he last opened it. 

(So wasteful, Uplanders, he thinks wistfully. He doesn’t wear the clothes in the end; not unless they’re worn with the intention to be torn off mere moments later, but he keeps them with him all the same. Each as dear to him as the finest seasilk from the shores, irreplaceable to him in his memories.)

There’s no furniture in the room otherwise, except for a chair and a couch by the wall. Instead, there’s a skeleton, sitting quietly on the chair. 

“I’m back, Ryuji,” Jin-Woo says quietly, swimming close. He loses count of the years, the decades and centuries since. His flesh has long worn away with time, his hair still showing bits of grey, and the clothes draped on him in tatters. But that’s what’s left of his once- lover, all that’s left of the man who once wields his name like a kindness (a blessing of his own, from a mortal whom he will never forget even past death). 

“Su-Ho left for the land,” Jin-Woo chuckles humorlessly. “Is this what Ashborn felt, all these years ago?”

There’s no response. He didn’t expect one. 

“I wonder what he’ll find there?” Humanity’s still intact, their crisis averted by a hair's breadth, but they still bleed iron and chemicals into the waters; humanity doesn’t change, even if the actors in this grand play of life do.” 

“Will he find you?” he asks tenderly. 

Silently, he lays a hand on his jaw, tracing up the path to where his ear would be. 

“Won’t you say my name again? Like that.. Just like that?” he whispers.

(He respects Ryuji’s decision- respects his right to choose to live his life the way he wants, but not for the first time, he desperately wishes that he could turn back time. To have just one more moment, one more day. To keep him in more ways than just a memory, but in the end the sands of time will always flow away from him and not towards.)

Chapter Text

He’s aware that the time they have is finite, even if what they have is infinite. 

“You’re greying at the roots,” Jin-Woo remarks causally one day, brushing his hands through Ryuji’s hair. And so he is, bits of silvery grey a stark contrast against a bed of black.

He glares, affronted and almost bristling. “I am not,” he says indignantly. (Jin-Woo sees him ducking his head in front of the mirror in the bathroom the next day, right after his shower. He chuckles; Ryuji’s much vainer than anyone in the guild gives him credit for. He’s dressed in baggy white shirts and hoodies not for aesthetics but for practicality.)

He is aging, and they both know it. The knowledge settles with more dread in one than the other. 

(He’s eighty, and even for a Hunter, this is getting a bit ridiculous. He’s lucky that his youth has lasted thus far, but even he’s not oblivious to the natural course of life. He chalks it up to good genes (and good water); it can’t be the stress-free lifestyle, after all).

It’s not that, Jin-Woo knows. There’s a pearl of truth in every fable, and despite what mortals believe, the tale of yaobikuni- of a mortal earning immortality by eating their kind’s flesh- is not a legend at all. 

Once upon a time, it was true. And for centuries after, none of them dared appear in their forms on land, for fear of getting eaten. 

He’s not going to agree to being turned into sashimi, but he’ll eat his own fins if Ryuji’s youth doesn’t have something to do with him. Immortality isn’t something diffusible, so how is this possible?

Jin-Woo gets his answer one night, laid out on the bed and utterly spent, his hair matted with sweat, his body heaving, and his hands gripping tightly at the sheets. He doesn’t want to know where Ryuji's mouth is-somewhere under the blankets; doesn’t want to think about what he’s doing, doesn’t want to think-

And then he doesn’t think at all.

In the afterglow, he suddenly realizes something. It’s not his flesh that’s being consumed, but… 

Well, who knew the effects carried over onto other parts of him?

(He’ll have to sneak this in as a side note in the library, when he gets back. It’s far too interesting of a discovery for it to go uncharted. But he’ll have to do it quietly and on the sly; after all, he has no source to cite and doesn’t want to explain just how he discovered this little trick.)

How long do you intend to put aside your duties? Igris’ voice sounds like a death-knell in his mind. 

As long as it takes, Jin-Woo replies, his gaze held on Ryuji’s peaceful, slumbering face. 

Igris stays silent, standing vigil at his lord’s side, then he says unexpectedly, Ashborn did this too, once upon a time.

Oh? Jin-Woo asks curiously. He doesn’t know as much about the current Shadow Monarch as he would like; everything he has ever heard about him was from Igris. The Monarch doesn’t leave his chambers. Hardly even shows his face around the depths; they know him by name and by reputation, but no one really knows him. 

Igris shakes his head, the scarlet fins on his neck flowing with an invisible current. He headed to land a long time before you did; long ago when angels, demons, gods, and creatures of all kinds still roamed free then, mingling with Uplanders. 

I knew he was old but not that old, Jin-Woo raises an eyebrow. There’s old, and then there’s old. 

Don’t let him hear you say that, Igris says dryly. He continues casually, He fell in love with an angel, once upon a time. 

Jin-Woo feels a moment of sympathy for him, but it’s less sympathy and more empathy; he has no ground to stand on. There’s an angel on his lap this very moment, and he’s very much in love with this one. (Very few people would describe S-ranked Hunter Goto Ryuji as such, but he’s an abyssal nightmare from legends long gone. His standards are his own.)

Angels aren’t immortal, Jin-Woo says as casually as one would state the day of the week. 

No, they are not, Igris agrees. He pauses, stops and stares straight at Jin-Woo. He killed a god, for his angel’s life. 

Do you think I would not, for mine? Jin-Woo says placidly. He’ll bring the heavens crashing down to earth, if that is what it takes. 

You two are far too much alike, Igris says dryly with a shake of his. All the way down to the stubbornness. Not for the first time, Jin-Woo wonders just exactly who Igris is, to be taking care of Ashborn before he ascended to the throne. He doesn’t know, but once upon a time, Igris was simply a creature of the depths, guarding an empty crown and an emptier throne… alone in a domain of one. 

That god ripped out his angel’s wings, as punishment for falling in love with a Monarch, Igris says grimly. 

He would go kill a god too, if it were him. He’d kill a god for less. Did he win? Jin-Woo asks. He knows the answer already; Ashborn would not be here if he didn’t. He wouldn’t expect any less from the Shadow Monarch.

Of course. But he won as much as he lost that day. Igris says with a sigh. There’s a reason why he didn’t stop you from coming up here.

Take care that you don’t end up the same, the knight warns. 

“Would you live forever if you could, Ryuji?” Jin-Woo asks one day, his arms propping up his head easily. It’s barely just past sunrise as the light streams in lazily on a peaceful Sunday morning. It’s not fair for him to spring this on Ryuji so early (and without coffee at that), but he realizes that one day, this face will disappear. The easy companionship they have will vanish, and there will be no more lazy mornings. Not like this. Never again like this.

It’ll be gone, like the wings that have vanished from the back of that angel. 

“Hm?” Ryuji rolls over with a satisfied sigh, sleepy and not quite awake.

“Live with me forever?” Jin-Woo asks quietly. 

“I’m not paying for you forever,” was the immediate, half grumbled response. Sixty years of free room and board- and he said he’s only going to be here for a while. Clearly, they have different definitions of a while. 

There’s no laughter, no sound. That’s not right. Ryuji frowns, forcing his eyes open with an unwilling groan. Jin-Woo’s looking at him far too seriously for this to be a joke. 

“What brought this on?” he asks finally. 

“You’re eighty,” Jin-Woo says. Yes, thanks for reminding him of his age first thing in the morning. So pleasantly too. Ryuji rolls his eyes. “You… won’t be here forever.” 

“I won’t,” he says, an easy acceptance in his voice. He has long come to terms with his own mortality; he has more than doubled the average life expectancy as a hunter, and he has no delusions about his own end. Not when a single dungeon break killed so many of his guildmates. He’s lucky to already have had this much time. 

“You could, if you wanted to,” Jin-Woo says quietly, looking down. 

Ryuji makes an enquiring noise. “Don’t tell me the yaobikuni are real,” he says, finally sounding more awake.

That earns a small bitter smile from Jin-Woo. “They are- and they’re the reason why we haven’t been on land for centuries.”

“I’m not eating you,” he says dryly. Well, he will (does so on the regular), but just not like that. 

Jin-Woo rolls his eyes. “What’s that you always say about room and board? I think immortality is fair payment for a free lifetime of meals.” Then, he adds with a sigh, “It doesn’t have to be very much; nothing I wouldn’t recover from. Just a bite?” Jin-Woo teases, pulling down his collar and turning his neck away from him with a smirk.

That’s just- he’s turning a bit green around the gills just thinking about flapping around with a tail of all things. But immortality- it sounds straight out of a dream or out of a fairytale, the treasure at the end of a long quest. To have it handed to him so simply, so easily on a silver platter… He didn’t even have to ask. 

He doesn’t want it. Not really. But he looks at Jin-Woo’s lavender eyes, fragile hope half a breath from breaking… and he knows he can’t say that. His life isn’t only his own anymore (as unexpected as it is for him to even consider this). 

He’s tired, eighty and world-weary. He wants his rest, wants to one day know that he’ll close his eyes and never have to open them again. Wants to see all the people whom he have left behind, all the ones he will leave behind one day and apologize in person. 

But then he thinks of Tawata’s last words to him, choking on her own blood and impaled on the Giant’s shiv, Hoshino scattered in bits behind her. 

“You gotta live, Boss: you-you have someone waiting at home for you, yeah? Do it as a favor for all of us.”

It speaks of her indomitable will that she wouldn’t close her eyes until he promised her. They both know that she wouldn’t make it home at all. 

He promises her, and he lives by his promises. Isn’t the best revenge- and the best gift, for people like them- living well? What would it say of him, that when given the option any of his guildmates would have taken in a heartbeat, he would turn away in their name?

But even he has bottom lines he wouldn’t cross.

“As long as I don’t have a tail at the end of it,” Ryuji concedes with a sigh. 

Jin-Woo’s eyes light up with relief and joy; he loops his arm easily around his neck, and he loses himself in the familiar rhythm of their love.

(Really, could he bear breaking that heart of his? He couldn’t. Not even at the cost of his own.) 

The world’s fate rests on these eight gates, Ryuji thinks, circling the general area where the Tokyo gate is charted to appear in a day’s time. 

Over five decades and only now have they realized why gates appear, why humans have mana… and who is the final boss behind all this. 

Well, one of these eight anyways, he thinks. It’s only thanks to the intelligence they collected from the other dungeon bosses- some of which are eerily humanoid- that they know what they do. 

Eight bosses, in total (they call themselves Monarchs, and Ryuji shudders at what they could possibly rule). One gone hiding in shadows and never to reappear (though sometimes, he sees the black tendrils of Jin-Woo’s mana and wonders), six dead and turned to dust. One more, and humanity will be free. 

There aren’t that many of them left- not many national level Hunters who can still take on missions like this. Chris Reed is long dead, melting the Monarch of Iron Body with him in a fire that burned forty days and nights. Thomas Andre lost an arm taking down the Monarch of Beastly Fangs. Liu Zhigang retired, much like him. His own guildmates chose to bring down the Giant’s Avatar in exchange for their lives, and he himself dealt the final blow to the Monarch pulling the Avatar’s strings. 

One more, and he has a feeling that it is the last one. One last one and then it will be over. He’ll go down fighting if he must; he has no delusions that the final boss would be easy. But he won’t go in without stacking his deck first… as always.

“Do you know anything about Monarchs?” Ryuji asks casually one day over dinner.

The chopsticks about to steal his chicken stops. And retreats, when Ryuji glares. But still, Jin-Woo stays silent. “There’s a gate appearing in Tokyo tomorrow: one of eight, opening all over the world. From our intelligence, we think it leads to the Monarch of Destruction.”

“... You’re going?” Jin-Woo’s question feels like a statement. Of course he is. 

“I am.” He is almost entirely sure that he won’t make it out- not this time. He meets Jin-Woo’s gaze steadily, willing him to see just exactly how serious he was about this. This is the last hurrah humanity has left, and he won’t turn from his duty. 

“None of you stand a chance against Antares,” Jin-Woo says, finally looking away with a sigh. There’s a tightness around his eyes that looks like grief, a downturn to his lips that speaks of stress.

“So you do know something about them,” Ryuji muses. He’s not here for a confrontation, but what Jin-Woo said might as well be a confirmation for his suspicions. 

Jin-Woo snorts. “Know about them? I guess you can say that.”

“Are you the Shadow Monarch then?” Ryuji ventures a guess. “The only thing we know about that one is that he’s not interested in humanity.”

“Close, but no- I am not him,” Jin-Woo says calmly. Then, he admits quietly, “I’m his heir.”

Heir implies that there will be a future when he is; a day when he wears that crown and sits on that abyssal throne. And to think he’s been wining and dining a prince for sixty years. No wonder he’s such a brat, Ryuji thinks. 

“I’m going with you,” Jin-Woo declares, pushing his dinner away- he has lost his appetite, just thinking about Ryuuji falling on Antares’ blade. “You’re not going to go face down Antares alone.”

“You’re not even registered as a Hunter,” Ryuji points out logically. Jin-Woo never cared for dungeons and monsters in all his years of staying; and to think the Monarch they have been searching for was living with him this whole time… doing a lot more than just living with him, if he was honest with himself.

“I’ll just go in your shadow,” Jin-Woo smirks, and Ryuji doesn’t understand - the statement doesn’t compute, but he doesn’t question that Jin-Woo would make it into the gate one way or another. “Though you should know that anyone who’s stupid enough to enter that dungeon is not going to make it out.”

Good to know, Ryuji thinks morbidly. He’s not sure how to work that particular bit into the mission debriefing and still have a team left at the end of the day.  

“You know where my will is,” he says dryly. “I left my stuff to you.”

Jin-Woo rolls his eyes, though a faint flush of pleasure appears on his cheek. “Except you- you’re not dying. Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“Ryuji,” he hears. Is he dreaming? He’s lying on a bed of ashes; he can feel the fire sear away his skin, turning it to crisp. It’s over, and he’s waiting placidly for the end- for the credits to roll.  

He lost too much blood, he knows. But their healer is gone, their tank is dead. He’s the last left of his party, but that last stab was headed straight for Jin-Woo... who was just emerging from his shadow. He moved without even realizing it, and he’ll never regret doing it, not if he has a million chances to step aside. He won’t see Jin-Woo dead. Not over his dead body, though that may be arranged soon enough. 

He earned his living, and so he’ll earn his death. Has he died then and reached wherever it is that sinners go?

That can’t be right; he still feels that ominous mana behind him, a cloud of rage and destruction. In hindsight, he thinks that it’s silly of him- one of his worst ideas to date- to think that he could go toe-to-toe with a dragon king, of all things. But he didn’t have any choice, not if it means the death of humanity is the only other option. 

The presence of that oppressive mana only means he’s still alive and hanging on by a thread. He’s not dead, and this is not a hallucination. He doesn’t know what to tell Jin-Woo. He wants to say a million things (he never intended good-bye to be one of them), but he’s drowning in his own blood and doesn’t have the breath. 

Breathe, he wills, frustrated. He has maybe one word in him left, so he whispers his name, so quietly that it is almost drowned by the winds. 

“Like that?” he asks with a weak smile. He feels what’s left of him drain out onto the ashes, and he’s so tired. He’ll close his eyes and rest, just for a moment. 

“Yes, just like that,” Jin-Woo says and lays him down. There’s something wet on his face, but he doesn’t care; it drips into the ash, blood red. 

A mermaid’s tears- the crimson pearls of their heart. He collects them in his palm, but they won’t stop falling- not when Ryuji’s lying there, so still, each breath a losing struggle against time.

Igris, Jin-Woo chokes. His faithful knight appears, his head bowed. He looks up past the film of red covering his eyes. 

Heal him, please, Jin-Woo says quietly. 

Of course, My Liege, Igris says softly. There is no try in this: he will heal him. This mortal Uplander is his liege’s heart, the last thing that spares him from going down Ashborn’s well worn path. He will save him, if it is the last thing he’ll do. He raises a hand to brush aside Jin-Woo’s tears, taking the ones already formed from his grip. Igris wraps Ryuji’s body with his blood red tail, and starts growing a bright crimson. 

He kneels. The ground spins around him, and he can’t breathe, he can’t think, can’t walk- not with the world collapsing around his ears like this. He shakes uncontrollably, and he grasps at the damp ashes, where Ryuji’s lifeblood stains it a dark, dark scarlet. 

Get up, My Liege, Igris says with a sigh and hauls him upright by the arm. Now is not the time to break. Not now. It’s not the time to cry. No: you, My Liege, have a god to kill. 

So he does. 

“Antares, Monarch of Destruction,” Jin-Woo says, his form already fading into shadows around the edges. He feels his control slipping, the hard won discipline that he spent centuries training vanishing like smoke. But he doesn’t care, not when what’s most precious to him is bleeding out on ashen ground. He lets his mana out, tendrils of it already calling all creatures of the abyss, all who have fallen to the depths throughout the ages. They wake, coming to the call of their sovereign. His shadows stretch to cover the skies, the grounds, the trees, the abyss a great yawning maw that engulfs the heavens.

“Heir to Ashborn, welcome to my domain,” Antares grins down at him, barely even bloodied by the fight he just finished. He’s not scared by the darkness; not when his own mana lights up the dark like an endless inferno.

“Have you come to die?” he asks mockingly. “Just like those foolish mortals?”

“The one dying here won’t be me,” Jin-Woo chuckles humorlessly, stepping out from the comfort of his darkness. He unsheathes his swords, a pair of blades crafted from the bones of ancient creatures that once roamed the seas. They crackle with his energy, eager to be used. He feels power build behind his eyes; he’s far away… detached and looking at the Monarch from a distance. An ant, swimming listlessly in the ocean. What is a dragon, to all the seas and oceans of a planet? 

“But I’ll die a thousand times if it means taking you with me.” The dark shadows surrounding him reach for the fallen soldiers lying cold on the ash, Hunters and dragon alike. 

“Arise,” he whispers, his gaze steady and glowing violet.

Igris, how is he? Jin-Woo kneels down next to his guardian. He’s still formless and fading around the edges, more abyss than man, but it’s been so long since he has let his power out. It’s going to take more than a couple of days to pull all that mana under his skin again. 

Better, My Liege, Igris says. But not stable- not by far. 

I have Antares’ jewel. Jin-Woo says succinctly, tossing the cracked dragon jewel onto the ash. It pulses weakly, a faint red where it was once a roaring crimson. Here is the throne to the skies, all the expanses under the sun. 

Among other things; he has enough dragon heads to fill out the Hall of Trophies practically on his own, and he took great pleasure in ripping out Antares’ wings one by one. His head is dripping somewhere behind him, where he left it half buried under a boulder. His heart is slowly dissolving into ash, to mingle amongst that of the fallen… a fitting end, for someone like him.

It’s the jewel that he wants. A dragon’s jewel is their greatest treasure- their Black Heart- and evidence of their reign across the skies. If he has this, then he has the throne of the skies. 

Give it to him; he needs it, Igris says. 

Will- will it take? Jin-Woo says worriedly. Ryuji, powerful as he’d like to think he is, is only a mere mortal. Can he handle it? 

(He doesn’t know, but the best decision he made was to continue living with Ryuji. There won’t be a rejection of mana. Not when he has been repeatedly exposed to Jin-Woo’s for so long.)

Have more faith, Igris says firmly. You chose this Uplander for a reason, didn’t you? 

Yes, because he wanted some stranger to stop peeking, once upon a time, Jin-Woo thinks with a bit of nostalgia. As far as reasons go, it’s not a strong one. But he doesn’t have any choice, not here and not now, so he lets the jewel slip from his shadowy fingers and prays. 

(He’s a god of his own with a domain of his own. But what use is it, here and now? Who do gods pray to when prayers are all they have left?)

He wakes up, to his surprise. He didn’t expect this, Ryuji wonders what manner of miracle Jin-Woo pulled this time to call him back from certain death (boiling ramen was only the first of many, many miracles he has hidden away, he thinks). 

Only, something feels wrong. Maybe it’s the way the world suddenly looks model sized, shrunk down to a miniature, or the way the ashes feel only pleasantly warm and not blistering like it was just a second ago. 

There’s a splotch of red on the ground, where a... beta fish is looking up at him with fins crossed on his chest. Beside him is Jin-Woo, whole and hale… well, as whole as an amorphous shadow with a head and a pair of eyes can be, stretching across the entirety of the ground from treelines to plains. 

“You’re awake,” Jin-Woo says, relief clear in his voice. He’s not sure how to look at him, or even where to look at him. “Don’t worry about my form; it’ll fade soon enough.”

I- What happened? He asks, but what comes out is a roar that startles him. He sneezes and sees a screen of smoke, and he reels back- only to find that his legs don’t seem to exist anymore. 

He’s falling over ass over teakettle before he knows it, staring up at the ash grey sky and wondering what on Earth happened to his body. 

The beta fish snorts. Are you sure you did the right thing choosing this one?

Quite sure, Jin-Woo laughs, relief ringing loud and clear. Give him some time. He was only six feet tall a couple hours ago. 

He was almost dead, is what he was, Igris says dryly. Jin-Woo pats him on the shoulder in thanks and comfort all the same.

“You look ridiculous,” he teases. It’s a lie; Ryuji looks absolutely breathtaking, all endlessly long coiling body and golden scales, a mane of snow white and antlers perched proudly on his head. Two long whiskers extend from his snout, a mark of his right as Monarch of Dragons. 

“I killed Antares, all his heirs, and those who after them,” Jin-Woo says casually like it wasn’t a massacre. Then, he bows formally (when Ryuji manages to figure out how to wriggle his body just so, to get his torso to straighten back up.)

“The Heir of Ashborne, Monarch of Shadows, bears his greetings to you, O new King of Dragons, Monarch of Destruction.” He closes his eyes, his greeting long practiced and smooth.

Then he can’t help but quip, “You were the one who said you didn’t want a tail.”

“I still ended up with a tail. Where did my legs go?”

“Yeah, well don’t complain- I saved you from certain death. And you killed all the other Monarchs who don’t have tails. It’s either this, or ningyo.”

“... I’m not complaining.” Then he says, “Dragon is preferable to seafood.”

“Even if you look like a catfish?” Jin-Woo teases. 

“I do not,” he says, his fur bristling and his whiskers whipping about. He still hasn’t figured out how to control his fur yet, and he doesn’t have arms to sooth down his mane. 

“That’s not what the seaweeds say,” Jin-Woo snorts. “And you can’t kick koi fish anymore; they’re as much your children as they are mine.”

Are they? There’s so much he still doesn’t know about his new domain, about the millennia of mythology… too bad they just finished annihilating anyone who could teach him. The shadows are no help; Antares kept his power close to his heart. The heir closest to inheriting had been Kamish, and they all saw what happened when that dragon general got too close to inheriting. 

“You’ll pick it up,” Jin-Woo pats him on the shoulder scales in comfort. Then, he concedes, “I’ll ask Ashborn about it.”

He sees Ashborn, for the first time. 

(He looks like him- exactly like him, down to the violet scales stretching down his spine. Only he looks tired, where Jin-Woo stands tall.)

You killed Antares? Ashborn snorts. Good riddance, he says. Figures his heir would kill a god. He did so too, once upon a time. The Monarch then had only waved his worries away and given him a pat on the back for a job well done. 

Jin-Woo looks back unrepentantly. And everyone else in his domain. 

He’s more impressed that the Uplander managed to take Antares’ mana to begin with than his heir killing a god and his entourage; most perish under the heat of an immortal’s mana, but he has a sneaking idea why the mortal has such a high tolerance. 

Oh he knows exactly what his heir does up there on land; he was young too, once. But he’s more than just a random young one- he’s the next one to sit on the Abyssal Throne, and he has to make sure. 

Are you going to rescind the throne then, Heir? His voice booms through the darkness. 

No, Jin-Woo replies surely. I can take up the Black Heart, he says. 

Even with yours still intact? Ashborn raises an eyebrow. He can hear his heir’s heart beat loudly through the silence, the only sound in the deep. (The Black Heart doesn’t beat, it only wrings, if even that.)

I have the space for it. Jin-Woo smirks slowly. My own heart is not with me, he explains.  

Clever boy, Ashborn thinks with a laugh. He sees what his heir has done, and he can’t help but feel a spark of pride bubble forward, to know that he has outwitted this twisted fate that they have all been victim to, for as long as the oceans have existed.To leave his heart with another immortal, one to safekeep it for him- the heart is not with him. Daring too, to trust an Uplander with so much power.  

(He won’t know, but Ryuji’s jewel isn’t with him either. There won’t be another Goto Ryuji to his Antares coming to snatch the throne- not when his dragon’s jewel rests on the bottom of the ocean.)

There is the void that the Black Heart yearns for, but it wasn’t carved out with grief. He feels something like relief to know that this cycle of tragedy and death that has marked their throne for generations has been broken for good.

He’s proud, he admits to himself finally. Proud of his legacy, proud of who he leaves his domain to. He has no complaints, and he can feel his love calling for him on the shores beyond the River Styx. 

Very well, then we can begin now if you wish. Ashborn bows his head to the next Shadow Monarch, relieved to finally be freed of his own curse. 

Wait, Jin-Woo says hesitantly. 

What now? Ashborn wonders with a tired sigh. He is reminded strangely of a child, scuffing his tail against the seafloor. 

… Do you know anything about ruling the Domain of Skies? His heir asks sheepishly. 

What on-? Ashborn blinks, for once wondering if the child even knows which realm he’s inheriting.

There are two hearts beating in time, one more gorgeous than the other, Ryuji thinks. 

He finally figured out how to shift back after three tiring days in that dungeon, and he emerges a national hero (he’s a national ranked hunter, and maybe this time he has really earned it). He packs his Penthouse  in short order (careful to separate Jin-Woo’s clothes from his) and while he wouldn’t be caught dead running for the hills, he makes his way to his backwater country retreat in Gujo Hachiman. 

He studies up on the mythology of dragons there, of what he is supposed to do as the new Dragon King.

Ashborn is surprisingly helpful, once he’s done laughing at the mess the two of them have landed themselves in. As it turns out, he had quite a bone to pick with Antares, and this is his way of sticking it to the lizard (as he calls him).

Time passes- as it must- and before long, even Gujo Hachiman was fading away, swallowed by inevitable modernization. 

Ready to go? Jin-Woo asks. His form is human again, though there’s no hiding the pulse of mana in those purple eyes. He’s regal, walking down the streets silently with koi trailing his every step. 

Ryuji nods, and they transform, one an enormous purple fish glowing in the moonlight, and the other a golden dragon, and they take to the shores. 

“Hey, do you think that unagi shop is still open?”

Oh for the love of- three thousand years. Ryuji doesn’t even dignify that with a response, only smacking his companion with an irate flick of his tail.