Chapter Text
“Hiyori-kun.”
She looks back into the room. The seas outside were particularly calm today, and she was having fun watching a school of fish swim past the window, trying to catch their attention. But she is called for, and she responds. “Something on your mind?”
“I saw… something. Someone, I think.”
That catches her attention. They rarely see , not in that way. And yet, every time, it’s come true. She can only hope that today’s vision is a good omen.
“Anything fun?” she replies, nonchalantly, shifting her gaze back to the window.
“I saw…” In the reflection of the window, she sees them purse their lips, brow furrowing as they try to remember. “Blue and pink. Something… strange, and new. Not familiar — not from here. Fire. You kissing someone. And…”
They pause for long enough that she turns back towards them, the passing schools of fish forgotten. “And… I wonder if that is what the sky looks like, when the clouds part… Like a gift of sunshine, for all of us…”
There’s always a point in the visions where they start speaking in tongues. She lets the moment wash over her like a particularly blustering current, then says, “You know, one of these days we have to sneak out so you can see the actual sun, Nagisa-kun.” She laughs, turning to face them, and watches as they give her a slight smile. “Your visions are so confusing sometimes, you know? And cheesy…”
“I do not control the visions, Hiyori-kun,” they say.
She swims over to them, pressing a kiss against their cheek. “I know, Nagisa-kun. I’m just teasing.” A pause, and then she says, “Is this a good vision, or a bad one?”
“... They are not so easily defined,” they say. Their hand finds hers, twining their fingers tightly together. “But… I cannot tell. I think it is up to us to decide.”
Another school of fish passes in front of their bedroom window.
-
Jun opens his eyes.
It stings. Saltwater. He’s surrounded by water on all sides, far enough down that the light is weak, and Jun can only barely tell which way is supposed to be up. His head spins, and there’s a steady, pulsing ache against the back of his head that steals most of his conscious thoughts from him. He can’t remember how he got here.
His lungs burn. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to be awake. He doesn’t think he’s supposed to be alive.
Jun’s limbs feel heavy, so heavy. He tries to kick his way up to the surface, but his legs refuse to cooperate. His arms feel full of lead, barely managing to push through the water, almost thick with how much pressure there is.
There’s a flash of green and teal in front of him. “Blue, huh… I wonder if this is part of Nagisa-kun’s vision?” he thinks he hears, but that isn’t right, because that voice is way too clear for what Jun should be hearing underwater, where everything is muffled and unreal and dreamlike. Or maybe that’s the fact that he’s rapidly losing oxygen and can barely remember where the surface is supposed to be.
Another flash. Violet jewels, or maybe they’re eyes — pretty enough that Jun can’t tell the difference. A wide grin. “You’re cute — it’d be a real shame if you died like this~!”
Jun loses consciousness before he can even figure out how to try and respond.
-
Ibara’s sure it’ll work.
He knows the risks. He doesn’t have a ton of magic as is — and a ritual like this is definitely way , way above Ibara’s magical pay grade. But if the texts he’s found are right, then a transformation ritual like this should translate all of the magical capabilities he currently has as a human exponentially into the sea magic of mythical merfolk. And then Ibara will be powerful, and unstoppable.
The ritual is meant to be done with two parties, he knows this. But the thought of binding his own soul to another’s for eternity sends a cold, slithering wave of disgust down his throat, enough to make him nauseous. Ibara doesn’t rely on anyone — a lesson he’s had to learn too many times, too quickly. He might not have a lot of magic, but he’s studied it thoroughly and relentlessly, and Ibara’s sure that the altered version of the ritual he’s created — one that will let him complete it on his own — will work.
He utters the final words of the ritual, pouring the last bits of his magic into the sea around him, into the various bits and bobs he’s had to collect in order to make this work. Ibara waits, a tense moment hanging in the air, to see if the magic catches, to see if his efforts come to fruition, with bated breath. The ocean water is cold where it laps at his waist.
Against Ibara’s will, his legs spasm, and then start to burn — and Ibara hopes, desperately, that the pain that starts to climb from his ankles up into his thighs is a part of the transformation process.
What used to be his knees buckle, and Ibara finds himself submerged in water up to his chest as his legs can no longer hold his weight. His legs are drawn together, each limb thickening and engorging large enough to tear his pants before beginning to fuse together. His lower half continues to thicken as it elongates, feet disappearing into the beginnings of a tail, and Ibara grits his teeth around the crackling, burning pain of his bones rearranging themselves inside his skin and smiles at the results of all his hard work and determination.
Ibara manages to pull himself farther out into the water, giving his elongating tail even more room to grow. The pain is unpleasant, definitely, but Ibara is willing to bear whatever it takes to bring himself a better, more powerful form of existence. Ibara watches the shifting of his limbs with a sick fascination, the pain building and building alongside a roiling nausea deep in his gut as his body shifts into something new, something better.
A building itchiness starts to join the crackling pain that sparks up Ibara’s new tail. He doesn’t pay it much attention, at first — he’s far more occupied by the sudden, stabbing pain along the side of his neck. He cries out, clapping a hand against the skin, only to find a loose flap peeling back. His gut roils once more — it’s a wonder Ibara hasn’t thrown up.
A rush of dizziness — like he can’t get enough air — causes Ibara to lose his balance, and he tips fully backwards into the ocean until he is completely submerged, the sunlight rippling in kaleidoscope waves as it filters through the water. His neck spasms again, the pain causing Ibara to cry out, and he watches the last of his breath bubble upwards from his mouth.
He’s turning into a mermaid, which means that soon enough, it’ll be impossible for Ibara to drown — logically, Ibara knows this, but he can’t get himself to inhale again, letting his empty lungs burn from exertion as he clings stubbornly to the last bits of instinct left in him. The pain, the itching, the grinding of his shifting bones, steals every rational thought from Ibara’s mind, and all he can focus on is keeping track of where the surface is, and trying not to let the sea swallow him whole.
Against every instinct he has, Ibara breathes in, and the choking sensation of the water is almost immediately replaced by the flap of skin on his neck fluttering against his hand, the sensation sending a jolt of surprise through Ibara and a shriek tearing through his vocal cords. They’re gills — not that the texts Ibara read said anything about him having those now, or about any mermaids having gills, but it isn’t a stretch to think that a lot of the finer details might have been left off of them. Most people don’t even believe mermaids exist — of course these old texts Ibara found must have gotten the details wrong. That’s all there is to that, surely.
Still, as strange and horrifying as the sudden change to Ibara’s anatomy is, he’s glad that he can at least breathe underwater. It would be such a waste for him to go through all of this effort only to drown before the transformation can even take effect.
Ibara breathes in, trying to get used to the sensation of the gills fluttering at the sides of his neck. There’s no use in panicking, even as the pain intensifies, as the itching sensation creeping along the skin of his new tail grows and spreads — so Ibara takes a deep breath and tries to adjust the best he can to the strangeness of his new reality.
Ibara lets himself drift underneath the surface of the water for a bit, focusing on his breath as the tide pulls him farther and farther out into the ocean. There’s no worry of drowning now — it doesn’t matter how far out he gets dragged. This is where he’s meant to be.
His tail really itches; Ibara only catches himself unconsciously scratching at the side of the new limb, thick and unwieldy and hardening gradually with every moment, when the texture of the skin under the pads of his fingers and nails seems to change, a sharp and burning pain as his nails drag along the surface its own confirmation. The jolting sting fades into a lingering, throbbing ache as Ibara snaps his hand away, twisting his body despite how it causes his bones to groan and protest to stare at the side of his tail. Did he scratch hard enough to break skin? No, he isn’t that strong… and he’s just itchy, after all, this shouldn’t be anything bad—
The sight that greets Ibara is enough to cause his stomach to churn anew, and he swallows back a rush of bile as he stares down at his limb. His skin is peeling away from where was scratching — a thin, almost translucent layer that ripples like seaweed in the gentle tides of the water. A bit of blood discolours the water around the opening, but when Ibara stares directly at what should be an open wound, he’s greeted instead by a greenish-brown surface, smooth to the touch, decorated with scales that are far smaller than they should be.
His curiosity gets the better of him, and Ibara pokes a probing finger into the wound. He hisses as soon as his own finger makes contact, the skin unbelievably sensitive to the touch — like a live nerve, sparking and hissing as soon as anything gets close to brushing up against it. The twisting nausea in Ibara’s gut only gets worse, coupled with a rising rush of anxiety — those are not fish scales. Those are not fish scales, that is decidedly not what a fish tail looks like, Ibara’s skin is peeling off of him , and something has gone very, very wrong.
Ibara resists the urge to scratch further, even as the itchiness becomes almost too much to bear. It spreads with every passing second — down to the tip of his tail, which flicks and spasms against his will, and up his hips, converging along his back. It snakes up his spine, before splitting and wrapping around the top of his torso, the itching bleeding into his chest and the tops of his shoulders. His gills flutter as that pinprick sensation tracks up the back of his neck, curving up his jaw all the way to underneath his eyes, on his cheekbones.
His teeth begin to ache — reminiscent of that time as a child when Ibara ate too many sweets and ended up with a cavity that gave him a toothache for the better part of two weeks, but deeper, bigger. Ibara bites his lip in an attempt to stop himself from grinding his teeth together, which only serves to worsen the ache.
The taste of blood joins the bile still lingering in the back of his throat. Ibara runs a tentative tongue along his bottom lip, trying to seal the wound or slow the bleeding — only for his tongue to come in contact with his canines, obstructing the path his tongue tries to take along his bottom lip. They seem longer than they used to be. Sharper. Ibara can taste blood, fresh, on the points of his lenghtening canines. The ache in his teeth only deepens, spreading to his gums and the roof of his mouth.
His shirt has remained mercifully intact, even as his pants were torn to make way for the new limb. Even amidst the haze of pain, Ibara is sharp enough to notice a building discomfort in his chest, the skin and muscles bulging until it collides, raw and sensitive, with the soaked fabric of his shirt.
Ibara can’t stop himself from scratching. His skin peels away in flakes, drifting off and immediately getting lost amidst the detritus of the sea, replaced with nothing but that slippery-smooth and sensitive skin, with those miniscule scales and greenish-brown colour. Ibara remembers with a jolt, as another expanse reveals itself, that snakes are the ones to shed their skin.
His mouth opens in an anguished scream as his body curls in on itself, the pain of moving limbs not fully formed negligible in comparison to the pain of the reformation itself. The canines — fangs , Ibara thinks, in a brief moment of terrifying lucidity — take that moment to elongate rapidly, jutting outwards until they stretch from Ibara’s gums to his chin, his jaw opening wider than it should reasonably be able to as he cries out.
A voice whispers into the back of his mind — a terrible, snaking thing. It’s unintelligible, but the sound alone is enough to send a terrifying shiver down Ibara’s spine, fading in and out until it’s all Ibara can hear. Ibara blinks, and suddenly he is staring into a deep crevasse, a trench older than time itself and full of terrors no mortal could possibly bear witness to and he cannot move his head to look away from what will curse him until eternity ends, and then Ibara blinks again and despite being underwater, his cheeks are warm with tears. His ears are ringing.
His mouth has shut, somehow, despite the terrifyingly long fangs. Ibara doesn’t want to know how. His gums haven’t stopped aching. His skin hasn’t stopped peeling off in strips and strands to reveal the snakeskin beneath. His chest is throbbing and sensitive and Ibara is scared to touch it, scared to know what will happen to his body as a result of his own hubris. If he doesn’t touch it, it can’t get worse. Ibara scratches his face and grimaces when a patch of skin comes loose, the sensitive scales stinging as the saltwater hits them.
The pain doesn’t ease, no matter how long Ibara spends watching the snakeskin appear along his tail and knowing his body is rebuilding itself, rearranging itself into something he never wanted it to be. It doesn’t come as much of a surprise, then, when a particularly strong wave of agony causes Ibara to black out, limbs going limp as he loses consciousness.
The tides and currents pull his shifting body deeper and deeper into the sea, following the call of the beings he has angered, beings he could not possibly fathom or know.
-
Jun opens his eyes to the alarming realization that he’s still underwater.
Before he can even attempt to move, there’s a gasp from somewhere to his right. Jun tries to move his head to follow the source of the noise, but no matter how hard he tries he can’t get his head to move.
A face appears in the space in front of him. “You’re awake, good!” It’s a pretty face — a wide, bright smile with violet eyes that sparkle like jewels and short, wavy green hair.
Everything around Jun feels sort of hazy and unreal, like he’s moving at half speed while the world continues to shift and change around him. There’s a shifting mobile on the ceiling made of what looks like pieces of sea glass and coral, throwing dancing colours around the room as it reflects the lights. Jun’s not sure how there are lights at all — it isn’t like there’s fire underwater.
“I’m… underwater…?” Jun says. His voice is hoarse, and his voice sounds muffled to his own ears, but the voice of that other person in front of him is delightfully clear, like songbirds cutting through the still morning air. “How am I breathing…?”
“Magic, silly!” The other person laughs, just as bright and clear and melodious as their voice. “But you’re really injured, which is why you can’t move.”
“Injured…?” Jun tries to move any of his limbs and fails spectacularly.
The person in front of him nods. “You’d hurt yourself doing something stupid like trying to move around down here,” they say, “so I’m using my magic to protect your body for now. Not the best solution, but it works in the meantime…”
“So…” Jun says. His head feels like it’s full of cotton. Or clouds. The mobile on the ceiling spins and clatters as the glass and coral click together, and Jun feels like he’s in a dream. “Am I going to die?”
“What? Of course not,” the person says, pouting. “After I put in all the effort to bring you here… no, that simply wouldn’t do! I do need your permission to let me save you, though…”
Jun wonders if he closes his eyes, he’ll be able to wake up and find out that all of this was just one really long, really weird dream. “Save me?”
“Mhm! By turning you into a mermaid, too!” the person says. They float upwards, and Jun can now see the rest of them — a teal-green tail starting from their hips, covered in glittering scales and ending in large, fancy fins. White robes that ombre into a teal to match their tail flutter out almost like a skirt from their hips, held onto them by a golden belt covered in beads that catches the light. It shimmers in a way that almost makes Jun think that the thread is made out of real gold — but that would be crazy, wouldn’t it? The tip of their tail is similarly wound in golden thread with sparkling beads and decorations, and their chest is covered in a short, equally frilly and pretty-looking shirt, their arms and neck adorned with equally glittering jewelry.
Jun’s certain , now, that this is just a weird dream. It would explain why he feels so dizzy and floaty, at least.
“Thanks, but you’re not real,” Jun tells the mermaid in front of him sincerely, and before the mermaid can even start to respond, the black creeping into the edges of Jun’s vision claims him once more.
-
The good part about being the orphaned, young king of one of the kingdoms of the seas is that if you simply tell people that you want to venture out of the palace alone, they cannot stop you.
Nagisa does not like wielding their power in this way, necessarily; but, they hate feeling trapped in the palace even more, when there are rocks to collect and inspect and treasures to bring back to Hiyori. Hiyori, who suffers a fate not necessarily as kind as Nagisa — Hiyori’s escapades from the palace are far riskier, and far more likely to end in some kind of punitive measures for the both of them. But all Nagisa has to do, to gain a blissful escape into the waters that lie beyond the palace’s grounds, is simply tell his attendants and servants and guards that they would like to adventure alone.
(It is risky, as all ventures are when you are one of the most well-known and targeted people in the seven seas. But Nagisa is also one of the most powerful people within those same seven seas, and there is more risk for whoever attempts to attack them that they end up taking the full brunt of his raw, forceful magic.)
A tug of intuition pulls Nagisa down a path they rarely tread, and a large rock, about the size of their head, is their reward for it. A combination of experience and a strong gut feeling leads Nagisa to crack the rock open on a larger promontory, and they are further rewarded as the rock breaks open to reveal a stunning geode, in a deep green that reminds them of Hiyori. They smile, tucking the two halves of the geode into their satchel, and continue to swim forward.
What clues them in first is not anything audible or visible, but a strange rippling of the sea’s magic that they can feel singing, a deep and discordant note. Nagisa is often scolded by their tutors or their guards or Hiyori for following these strange urges, listening to visions and messages that no one else seems to know exactly why they can see, but they have always been right about something begging their attention, calling out in a voice that only Nagisa seems to be able to hear.
And so they follow it, off the beaten path, satchel carefully held against their body while they swim.
They turn around a bend that leads into a small clearing, shielded by rocks surrounding it on all sides, and see her — the same pink that they have seen already, and a long, coiling snake’s tail in smooth greens and browns. A tattered white shirt decorates her torso, and her face is locked in a permanent grimace, her expression and the tension in her shoulders and fingers giving indication to her pain.
“Hello,” Nagisa calls out.
Her eyes crack open, mouth still firmly shut in a tight line as she winces. Her eyes are a bright, brilliant blue — bluer than the ocean around them. Nagisa wonders if that is how the sky looks — they still have never dared to venture far enough from the palace to see it for themself.
That same discordant note of seasong pulses, digging deep into Nagisa’s skull. They swim closer — this snakelike appearance is clearly the source, and Nagisa has also never been able to turn away from anything or anyone in pain.
“Who are you?” she hisses out between gritted teeth. Strange — almost as though she’s scared to open her mouth all the way.
“Ran Nagisa,” they answer honestly, because they have no reason not to. The snake-person’s expression doesn’t change; she doesn’t seem to recognize Nagisa’s name, and that intrigues them even further. And then, because Nagisa sees no reason why they would not indicate that they recognize the strange seasong emanating from her tense and twisted form, the tint of her hair and the timbre of her voice, they say, “I’ve been expecting you.”
Her face twists from discomfort to fear, and Nagisa barely has enough time to blink before she shoots through the water towards him, the singing of the sea around her a loud and terrible warning.
-
Ibara doesn’t remember much of the past few days.
At some point, the pain and the terror combined into a mockery of feverish delirium. Ibara’s memories piece themselves together in technicolour, terrible flashes — sinking farther and farther into the ocean, unable to control even the tips of his fingers; blood discolouring the water around him as he frantically rubs his body against any rough surface and rock he can find, just to get that terrible itchy coating of skin off ; a horrible, aching hunger that hollows out his stomach, a hunger he can never fill for how his instincts beg him to swallow a fish whole, to bear no mind to any kind of preparation and simply swallow it and let his body take care of the rest. Ibara disgusts himself, and the hunger joins the pain and the fear (and the whispers, the whispering of beings he cannot even begin to fathom, beings that he has angered, beings that want him to pay) as the minutes slip away from him.
His bones stop shifting and settle in place, but every movement aches and sends pinpricks of pain along his tail. The hunger gnaws at his stomach, the nausea twofold as the reality of the changes to his body begin to set in. Ibara wakes one day in a clearing that seems relatively shielded from the rest of the seafloor around him and thinks that he’s lucky to have found a shielded place for him to rot away.
He doesn’t eat. He drifts in and out of consciousness. He wonders, more than a few times, if this was worth it, when it wasn’t what he wanted at all.
After some indeterminate amount of time (Ibara lost count long ago — besides, it isn’t like he can track the rise and fall of the sun down here, nor has he ever been conscious enough to do it consistently) Ibara hears a voice, deep and yet restrained and quiet, say, “Hello.”
He opens his eyes. It’s more of an effort than he cares to admit. In front of him is a mermaid — and oh, how Ibara boils with anger at the sight of his tail, a muted amber colour that matches their eyes, how it’s everything Ibara has ever wanted out of this stupid transformation ritual and this stupid, desperate leap for more power, for an escape—
“Who are you?” Ibara hisses out. He keeps his lips pressed as tightly together as he can — his gums stopped aching a while ago, but he doesn’t want to be forced to confront whatever his mouth has turned into as a result of this whole transformation. A part of Ibara aches deeply as it tells him that he never should have messed around with forbidden sea magic in the first place.
“Ran Nagisa,” they say. That tells Ibara nothing. And then, after a terrible pause, after a piercing gaze that makes Ibara feel like there is some kind of power Nagisa has to stare directly into his soul and list out all of his sins, they say, with a surety that is completely unwarranted and yet entirely correct, “I’ve been expecting you.”
Ibara can’t explain the terror that overtakes him, the thick and choking fear of being known , of someone knowing that he is trapped like this and found him when all he has tried to do is run away and keep himself safe. Someone has been expecting him. Ran Nagisa has been expecting him. Ran Nagisa is here, and Ibara is at his weakest, and this was expected —
Ibara’s body lunges before he can even finish his thought, shooting straight towards Nagisa in a sharp bolt. His mouth opens, expanding, stretching wider than it has ever or should be able to, and Ibara can feel something in the front of his mouth unfolding, can feel something wet sliding out of a gland buried deep in his gums and through his fangs , the fangs he’s been trying so hard to keep hidden and ignore because of the terrible reality they spell for him. His eyes lock on Nagisa’s neck, exposed and vulnerable — but before he can make contact with his target, Nagisa brings up a swift arm, and Ibara’s fangs sink into the meaty flesh of Nagisa’s forearm, piercing through a few layers of thin robes before hitting muscle. That wet, almost dripping feeling returns, and Ibara can feel something seep from deep in his gums down into his fangs and then into Nagisa’s flesh.
Nagisa stares down at Ibara with an almost disappointed look. Ibara comes to the quick and shameful realization that he doesn’t know how to detach himself from Nagisa’s arm without grabbing Nagisa in some equally embarrassing way to leverage himself off.
“That wasn’t very nice,” they tell him neutrally, calmly, like they’re talking to a pet or a dog or a toddler and not Ibara , and Ibara seethes and really wishes that his mouth wasn’t trapped around Nagisa’s arm so that he could make some angry, witty retort.
Ibara decides that being stuck to this guy is worse than the shame of having to grab onto them to dislodge himself, and pushes against their shoulder in order to pop his mouth free, his fangs folding back as soon as Ibara goes to close his mouth. Before Ibara can get a word in, Nagisa says, “You are in pain,” in that same quiet-but-steadfast way, and Ibara has absolutely no idea how to respond to that.
“I’m fine,” Ibara says. A bolt of pain lances up his tail and into the base of his spine, and he’s just tired enough that he can’t hold back his wince. Ibara ignores how that immediately disproves his own response. He’s fine .
“I will help you,” Nagisa says. It’s a statement, not a question, and that in combination with the fact that their expression doesn’t seem to have changed at all since Ibara first laid eyes on them and the utter monotone of their voice only serves to make Ibara more confused.
They start to sing, a low humming set of notes that makes Ibara feel more lucid and awake just from listening to it. The wound on their arm glows amber, the same warm orange-yellow-reds as their tail, and then seals over entirely. The song shifts into something more melodic and varied, and their hands trace a pattern that Ibara’s eyes can’t help but follow, almost mesmerized by the movements and the sweet notes dancing through the sea around them.
Ibara blinks, and then realizes that he is now surrounded by a net that seems to be made out of glowing, silver rope.
“What are you doing?” The net shifts, tightening to trap him more completely. Ibara reaches out to grab onto the rope, trying to tear himself out, and realizes it isn’t rope at all, not when touching it causes the whispering in the back of his mind to spin and sing and praise Nagisa. He swallows down a rising tide of fear and stares into Nagisa’s amber eyes. “Let me out.”
“You are in pain,” Nagisa repeats. “Someone has to take care of you. But you also bit me, so I do not think you will cooperate easily.”
Ibara scowls. “I’ll bite you again,” he threatens. He doesn’t think he knows how to get his fangs to extend like that again, but the threat is more than enough when Nagisa knows that Ibara could hypothetically make good on it.
“It was not very effective,” Nagisa tells him, with that same quiet monotone that makes Ibara almost think it could be pity. They start to swim, and Ibara’s limbs are too stiff with pain, and the net too impenetrable, for him to do anything but bite his tongue on more retorts and insults and simply hope that wherever Nagisa is taking him, it’s somewhere he can sneak out of easily.
-
Jun wakes up again.
That mobile spins gently on the ceiling. Sea glass and coral, a rainbow of blue-greens and pink-reds. This time around, Jun finds that he can move his head, so when the world stops spinning around him he tips his head to the side, away from the wall that lines the left side of the bed he’s been set down in, and comes face to face with that mermaid again.
“You know,” the mermaid says, in a tone that’s somehow so sweet it seems patronizing, “you really should stop passing out. It makes it really hard to have a conversation, and then I get so bored.”
Jun blinks. He opens his mouth, and though his voice is rough and hoarse with disuse and dryness, he manages to say, “Sorry.”
His voice sounds strange to his own ears — slightly muffled and distorted. “How am I able to speak and breathe?” Jun asks, now that he’s lucid enough to realize how strange it is that he’s completely submerged underwater and not dead or drowning.
“Magic,” the mermaid replies simply. It explains a lot — Jun knows magic exists, and has heard tales since childhood about sea magic and land magic and how the seas are often full of wild, unpredictable magic that is infinitely more powerful than anything the landfolk could ever come up with. But most of it has always been dismissed as nothing but old wives’ tales and myths, so for Jun to wrap his head around this being his reality is… a lot, to say the least. “Hey, now that you’re awake, can we do the turning ritual now?”
Jun pauses, tired mind stuttering as he tries to process everything happening in front of him. “The… what?”
“The turning ritual! The thing that’ll let me save you by turning you into a mermaid, duh,” the mermaid says.
Jun feels like he’s entered an alternate dimension or something. Nothing seems to be making sense. “Sorry, what did you say your name was?”
The mermaid laughs. “Oh, silly me, I forgot to introduce myself — Tomoe Hiyori, second son of the Tomoe line, and eternal delight to all who meet her!”
“Tomoe… right,” Jun says. The name is unfamiliar, but that makes sense, seeing as Hiyori is a mermaid and Jun didn’t think they were completely real until just now. “Then, uh… Tomoe-san? I really appreciate you saving me and all, but I’d like to just get back to the surface, if it’s alright with you.”
Hiyori pouts. “That’s no way to reward my hard work,” she says with a slight frown. It’s somehow cute and endearing on her, despite how petulant her tone is. “Besides, I don’t think you can.”
A sharp spear of shock pierces through Jun. “You don’t think I can?” he repeats, his voice sounding farther and farther away from him, like someone else is speaking through his mouth. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He has a job to get back to. Parents he needs to provide for and avoid disappointing. He can’t just be stuck here, unless—
“You can’t keep me captive,” Jun warns, hackles rising as an anxious fear climbs up his ribcage and settles into the space right next to his quickly beating heart.
“Well, you can’t move, so I think I kinda can,” Hiyori says flippantly. Jun doesn’t know if he likes how she discusses his fate as easily as she would the weather. “Besides, your body is really injured, and I’m not particularly good with healing magic… Even if I did bring you back up to the surface, there’s no guarantee you’d be able to walk again.”
A rush of cold, clammy realization washes over Jun. “Is that why I can’t move anything but my head?” he asks, almost afraid to hear the answer despite knowing that at this point, all he’s looking for is confirmation.
Hiyori nods. “I don’t know a ton about human anatomy — you know, when you’re raised to be married off as soon as you hit the right age, they really don’t teach you anything more than merfolk politics and court manners, since you can’t be useful in any other way,” Hiyori says, an aside that’s as intriguing as it is horrifying (Jun doesn’t think he’d ever be able to stomach being nothing more than a political pawn), “but your bones are broken, like, everywhere .”
“What the hell happened while I was unconscious?” Jun says, some of the shock and frustration he’s feeling slipping into his tone.
Hiyori looks at him with a confused look that slowly shifts into something sadder. Pity, maybe, if Jun wants to be uncharitable. “Oh, um… your body was like this when I found you drifting…” she says softly, like she’s worried about scaring Jun away, like he’s some kind of feral beast she needs to tame before she can help him. “I don’t think it was the sea that did this to you.”
“Then why…?” Jun says. He trails off as a slow, pounding headache makes itself known, beating heavy hammers against his temples. “I don’t… understand…”
He blinks, and his own screams fill his ears. Jun is back on the surface, back on a rocking boat in the middle of a storm, rushing around a cold, slippery deck and trying to finish all the jobs he’s been assigned, to keep the ship upright, to follow orders. Jun is cold and terrified and determined to do things right.
The ship’s captain leers over him. He shouts something, unintelligible in the memory against the harsh pounding of the rain against the deck and Jun’s own heartbeat in his ears. The rest of the crew crowd up around him, surround him, back him into a corner.
Jun doesn’t remember much — flashes, glimpses. Sharp, blunt pain that shatters bones. Begging for a mercy that would never come. A small, hidden fire deep in his chest, a burning sense of injustice and anger for all that he’s had to go through, all that he hasn’t deserved. The crackling agony of his limbs as he was dumped overboard, like nothing more than dead weight.
Jun blinks, and hot tears spill from the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision.
“Oh,” Jun says. His voice shakes, his breath catching unsteadily in his chest.
“Are you okay?” Hiyori asks. It’s more sincere than Jun is expecting. It catches him off guard, and he can’t stifle the sob that escapes him.
“I don’t know,” Jun says. There’s a heavy pit of grief opening up somewhere near his heart. He never was a fan of loss. His voice is distant and hollow when he asks, “Tomoe-san? I can’t go back to the surface. What do I do now?”
Hiyori smiles, gently. For some reason, it reminds Jun of the sun peeking up over the horizon of the ocean, a warm hello to break the quiet solitude of night. “Why don’t we start with your name?”
-
The palace is quietly busy, as it always is, when Nagisa returns.
The guards that line the path to the front door give Nagisa a strange look as they pass by. Or, rather, it isn’t Nagisa that receives the strange look — it’s the petulant and unhappy snake girl in the net behind him.
She hasn’t made any more biting remarks since Nagisa started pulling her out of the sheltered clearing with the net. They tried to move slowly and carefully, so as not to put her in even more pain, but Nagisa can’t tell at this point if their efforts have been successful — she seems intent on not letting Nagisa perceive even a hint of her current condition, outside of involuntary winces or grimaces that let Nagisa know she’s in pain.
In due time, they reach the door to their quarters. Hiyori should be there, if Nagisa is correct — Hiyori likes to explore and amuse herself on the palace grounds when she can, but since she found that human boy in the middle of the waters that Nagisa governs two days ago she’s been diligently watching over him, asking the myriad of palace servants to bring her meals into the lounge area of Nagisa’s quarters rather than taking it in the expansive dining hall.
Hiyori has her own quarters, a wing that begins down the hallway from Nagisa’s own, but after a few months of living together Hiyori unofficially moved herself into Nagisa’s. At the very least, she’s moved herself into Nagisa’s bed — Nagisa has spent too many afternoons sitting in Hiyori’s large, stuffed closet and watching her try on everything she owns to decide what to wear to a gala or a family dinner to think that Hiyori has moved all of her belongings into Nagisa’s quarters. But they’ve both realized and value that the loneliness is easier to keep at bay when they can fall asleep in each other’s arms.
Nagisa opens the door to their quarters, greeted by the pleasant sight of Hiyori chatting amiably with the human boy she saved. Hiyori seems to have propped him up with a few pillows so that he’s in something closer to a reclining position instead of lying flat on the couch that Hiyori and Nagisa had laid him down on, and Hiyori herself is curled up in her favourite chair, hands gesticulating wildly to punctuate her expressive speech.
“I am back,” Nagisa says, and Hiyori turns to the door with a delighted gasp, shooting out of her seat to press a kiss against Nagisa’s cheek and rest a reassuring hand against their shoulder.
“Nagisa-kun, Nagisa-kun!” she says, eyes bright and cheeks flushed with excitement. “Jun-kun over here was just telling me about the surface— You really have to sneak me away one day so I can see the sky, you know? And—” Hiyori’s eyes land, finally, on the net Nagisa is holding in one hand and the snake girl behind him, and her mouth opens in a perfectly round ‘O’ before she says, “Nagisa-kun, who’s this cutie you dragged in?”
“I knew her,” Nagisa says, simply. It’s enough for Hiyori to understand them, at least — pink and blue — and she nods, peering around Nagisa to get a better look. “She is in pain.”
Hiyori nods sagely. “Yeah, that does not look like a turning ritual gone right. What are you planning to do, though?”
“I’m right here,” the snake girl says, the first words she’s uttered since Nagisa first moved from the clearing. “While I understand I am completely at your mercy right now, please do not discuss my fate like I can’t hear you.” Nagisa can hear it, clear as day — the strain of her voice, the underlying discomfort she ignores and pushes away to present herself as bitter, angry, strong.
“She bit me,” Nagisa says, showing Hiyori their torn sleeve and the faded-white pinpricks where her fangs had punctured flesh.
“After you were so nice, too,” Hiyori says in a simpering tone. It earns a scowl and a glare from the snake girl, and a slight, muffled laugh from Jun.
“Can I be let out of this net, now?”
Hiyori looks at her with a sparkling glance, the one she uses whenever she finds a particularly bold and interesting suitor at a gala to toy with. “At a cost,” Hiyori says, words almost haughty. Nagisa finds it enjoyable, to watch Hiyori play the part of the spoiled, demanding prince that she is expected to be. (Not that she isn’t spoiled, in her own way; but she is unfailingly kind and sweet despite everything, and Nagisa knows this as deeply as they know that the world can be cruel.) “Give us your name, and then we’ll let you out.”
A beat passes, that tension stretching thicker and tighter between Hiyori and the girl, until finally, begrudgingly, she says, “Saegusa Ibara.”
“Then, Ibara-chan,” Hiyori says, and Nagisa doesn’t miss the way Ibara’s scowl deepens at how Hiyori has chosen to address her, “how’d you corrupt your turning?”
Ibara’s mouth remains firmly shut, brows furrowed as she refuses to answer.
“Be like that,” Hiyori says flippantly, after another moment passes. “I’m going to attend to Jun-kun again~! Jun-kun, Jun-kun, tell me more about the land, I’m so curious~”
Nagisa is left with Ibara, still stuck in a net.
“I upheld your part of the deal,” Ibara reminds them, and Nagisa nods before dissolving the net. The magical toll to upkeep the structure as they swam wasn’t significant enough to exhaust them, but Nagisa is certainly glad that they can release the net now. Ibara seems wary that Nagisa let the net drop just like that — but Nagisa’s own suspicions are confirmed as Ibara tries to swim forward and immediately lets out a sharp yelp, face screwing up and shoulders tensing as Nagisa can only assume that pain lances through her body.
“You are in pain,” Nagisa says. “Let me help you.”
Ibara looks at them with eyes that betray exactly how untrusting she is. “How exactly do you plan to help me?” she asks, voice as cautious and wary as her gaze.
“You are corrupted,” Nagisa answers simply. The magic that spills from her is old, and terrible, and angry. The sea gods do not take kindly to outsiders, nor do they like being taken advantage of. “You have ignored the keystone of turning. Binding your soul to mine will fix it.”
“No,” Ibara replies sharply and instantaneously. Her arms cross over her chest — it would be easy to read the movement as threatening, angry, but Nagisa looks at her and sees a scared, terrified girl trying her hardest to disguise that she is in desperate need of help and comfort. “I’m not binding my soul to anyone’s.”
“Your symptoms will only get worse,” Nagisa warns her. The libraries they’ve been able to access since they learned how to read have always been full of information that most of their tutors thought was useless. Nagisa, now being faced with a situation where they must figure out how to help a corrupted one, does not think that their tutors were right. “The form your body has taken is irreversible, but you are still able to save yourself if you act quickly.”
“Do you think I missed that part of the instruction manual?” Ibara hisses, defensive and angry. “I altered the ritual. I’m not binding my soul to anyone — that’s the entire point of getting stronger.”
“Do you think you have made yourself stronger?” Nagisa asks.
Ibara’s eyes narrow. “I won’t play your games,” she says.
“I am not playing any games,” Nagisa replies mildly. They simply want to know what Ibara thinks of what she has done to herself.
Ibara’s gaze stays trained on them for a moment longer, and then the moment breaks, and Ibara goes back to not-so-subtly scanning her surroundings. “The book I found mentioned something about a true form,” Ibara says, voice guarded as she speaks. Nagisa wonders, idly, what happened to Ibara for her to put up this many obvious walls. “The corrupting — how would that impact it?”
“I thought you did not want my help,” Nagisa observes.
“I don’t want you to bind your soul to mine,” Ibara says, as though it’s an obvious distinction. “Information is a different thing entirely. And you appear to have a lot of specific knowledge about this subject, and I’m not enough of an idiot to ignore that you’re a good resource to take advantage of.”
Nagisa thinks that there is perhaps something slightly sinister about the way Ibara has phrased her sentence. But they are also one of the most powerful people in the ocean, and Ibara is immobilized from pain and a cursed, corrupted soul, so Nagisa does not feel any need to worry.
“One’s true form cannot be affected by corruption,” Nagisa says. “That aspect of the transformation has always been preserved, no matter how corrupted the rest of the end result often is.”
Ibara seems unsettled by that answer, if the conflicted expression on her face and the way her hands tighten ever so slightly into fists is any indication. “I’m not a girl,” she tells Nagisa, but her words sound uncertain. “That true form stuff is bullshit, probably.”
Nagisa stares at her, contemplative and unblinking, until Ibara’s gaze shifts away from Nagisa’s once more.
“Regardless of whether or not you will accept a soulbinding,” Nagisa says, “I will take care of you. Would you like to find a room that is more comfortable?”
Ibara glares at Nagisa. Nagisa stares back.
“No,” she says eventually, when Nagisa refuses to break their gaze. “Stop trying to help me. That won’t convince me to bind my soul to anyone’s.”
“I am not trying to convince you,” Nagisa tells her. They swim back towards the door, a short distance from where Ibara’s new settlement on the floor seems to be. “I am going to find food for you. I will be back soon.”
Ibara doesn’t respond, but when Nagisa glances back just as they slip through the arched doorway, there’s a quiet, contemplative expression on Ibara’s face.