Summary: Tsumugu casts his fishnet and catches a world. [12Years]
4 March 2015 - 23 October 2015
Author's Note: More drabble and character-study than true drama. A small tribute to (in my opinion) Okada Mari's most wtf pairing.
Part of the 12 Year series. Prompt: why, he said, live without the shadows
Beyond the Sea, My Lover is Waiting For Me
Tsumugu casts his fishnet and catches a girl.
Even without squirming, Manaka is completely, utterly tangled. Her limbs are crossed, and her eyes are barely visible over her knees. Even so, Tsumugu meets her gaze, bluer and deeper than the sky.
Maybe it was his fate. Maybe it was predetermined way back when his grandfather stepped, dripping and salty, onto the shore. The sea let old man Kihara go, let his son go, but demands the grandson's return.
Tsumugu is a bad poet and keeps his words to himself. But he can't keep his eyes from following the children of the sea, who sparkle like fish scales and make waves wherever they go.
It doesn't take Tsumugu long to figure out the lay of the land. Kaname is good at hiding his feeling only in comparison to the other three. Tsumugu can feel his own presence catalyzing the tension, even when he tries his very best to be anything but. Tsumugu succeeds for the most part, until he walks in on the broken wooden maiden.
Tears and teenage self-righteousness are easy things to ignore, but Chisaki is a potent mess of fury, shame, and fierce protectiveness. The eruption happens so suddenly, so unexpectedly, Tsumugu is forced to notice.
As much as Tsumugu tries to act like a tree—wooden, straight, near inflexible—he is only a fourteen year old boy.
"Will you be my sea slug?" Chisaki asks.
The question bewilders him. it's a direct violation of his impartiality, but it doesn't occur to Tsumugu to stop her. He is too fascinated, so much so, he realizes the extra pair of ears too late.
"Stop." In his urgency, his voice comes out harsh. Chisaki hardly notices and she doesn't say goodbye when she runs away.
That afternoon, on separate ends of a torn net, Tsumugu asks his grandfather about sea slugs.
"The red ones are secret keepers. You can tell them your heart's desire."
"I'm going to change."
Chisaki is standing in the sea. There's about three inches of sparkling thigh between the bottom of her sailor skirt and the water. Her hair, still dry, is dark in the afternoon sun.
"There's nothing wrong with you," Tsumugu says, which is really another way of saying, I like you the way you are now. Chisaki only hears the harshness in his voice, and responds accordingly. The look Kaname throws him is swift and sharp, but then Kaname dives and disappears after her. Tsumugu is stuck on the shore, with the sea gulls, the sand, and the abandoned sea shells.
Tsumugu isn't one to think too long about life and fairness, but for the first time in a long while, he wishes.
Chisaki saves him and the sea dooms her for it.
"She can live with us. I am from the sea as well," Grandfather says, even though he hasn't lived with a woman since Mother and Father moved out.
Chisaki is the perfect house guest. Too perfect. It takes the Kiharas an entire year to start relaxing in front of the her. It takes another year for her to start relaxing in front of them.
The Kiharas pretend not to see her tear-stained morning face or hear her shower sobs. Similarly, Chisaki pretends not to notice their awkwardness, and she takes over the cooking so seamlessly, it's months before Tsumugu realizes she's moved the salt. All in all, it's a relatively smooth process.
(The first time Chisaki drops a pair of black panties in the hallway, Tsumugu studies in the town library all afternoon rather than confront her. He comes home only after dark, and by then, the panties were blessedly gone. It's an entire year before she makes that mistake again, and by then, they're close enough for him to openly remark. He didn't really intend to tease her, but her blush streaks across her face and down her neck. Tsumugu wonders how far down the red goes.)
By the time they enter high school, Tsumugu has Hiradaira Chisaki more or less figured out. Chisaki is afraid of the wrong things and too passive to realize her fears. Her fear of changes is really the fear of being left behind, which is really the fear of being unloved. If Chisaki were just a little more active, a little more confident, she would have realized this.
It occurs to Tsumugu to push her, just a little, but every time he musters the courage, he finds her staring at the freezing sea. Tsumugu knows he's an idiot with words, and Chisaki is too obviously fragile for him to risk it. Besides, there are other things to worry about, like Chisaki's swelling chest and dipping hips. Chisaki's mind remains so firmly entrenched in Manaka's thin drowned shadow, she doesn't notice her own body.
Tsumugu does his best. He looms over her whenever he can, between lunch periods, after school. It helps he's taller than most, and the silent thing is easily interpreted as threatening. Most boys get the hint. Some of the girls too. But not all of them.
"How charming!" Chisaki says in a wondering, wistful fashion, the one time she catches him with the pink confession letters.
"Hm."
"Are you going to—?" she ventures.
"Too troublesome," he barks.
"But—"
"I need to study," Tsumugu says by way of ending the discussion. Chisaki meekly nods and vanishes to prepare dinner, leaving him feeling like an asshole.
Troublesome as those girls may be, none of them are nearly as troublesome as she.
Grandfather falls ill. The doctors blame it on the years of back-breaking wind and water. Tsumugu blames it on the heart-breaking ice.
"You don't have to visit me," Grandather grunts whenever Tsumugu makes it back to their small island. "Chisaki takes care of me just fine."
Grandfather's been calling Chisaki by her name since year two. Tsumugu doesn't trust himself to do the same. Over the phone, her gentle, reserved words are girlish, but in person, her body betrays her.
An accident, and he glimpses an eternity in the flesh.
"How is it?"
"That's a bold question."
Chisaki will never know how hard he grips the door. A nudge of a knuckle, and it'll open, and she'll be there.
But Tsumugu doesn't just want her body. He wants that fury, that femininity that is greater and more generous than men. He wants the utterly unapologetic Chisaki.
Growing up is shoving your hands into your pockets and walking away before you make a huge, irreversible mistake.
Hikari comes back.
Tsumugu half-expects Chisaki to race back to Hikari's side, but he's also not surprised to see her orbiting, close but never touching. Tsumugu isn't really jealous. If it was a long shot before, it's impossible now. Chisaki isn't tall, but Hikari comes up to her collarbone. Her boob is at his eye level. Not to mention the bitter years separating them.
Even after years of icy confinement, Hikari bristles at Tsumugu's presence. Tsumugu has to restrain himself from rolling his eyes.
"Welcome back."
The water is cold and heavy. Try as he might to hold his breath, the liquid world pours in, and nature is relentless.
Well that was dumb. What was he expecting, that she'll turn around and save him agian?
Tsumugu opens his mouth to die.
Once thicker than gravity, the water is now nothingness. His skin distantly perceive its existence, but his lungs ignore it, and if it weren't for Chisaki, Tsumugu would spend a day and a night just drifting in this water-turned-air.
"H-How?"
Tsumugu grips her wrists, not enough to bruise, but firmly. You are mine, he wants to say, but that sounds proprietary, and Chisaki isn't chattel.
"You love me," he says with a firmness he doesn't feel.
Chisaki sputters and it's as cute as it is terrifying.
Chisaki tries to die.
Tsumugu does his best to explain that love and pain is not a zero sum game. Someone's love is not necessarily someone else's pain, and someone's pain doesn't mean less love for someone else. But how to explain that to a girl who has only ever experienced the two in an inverse relationship?
Tsumugu is bad with words, and the most he can do is demand and shout. Chisaki cries and Tsumugu has to leave the room.
Doesn't she know he'll die with her?
The world is saved, the beach is too crowded, but at least she's standing in front of him.
"I'm so glad it's over," Chisaki's sighs. For once, she's not looking over her shoulder, through her bangs, at or for someone else.
Tsumugu can't resist grabbing her arm. She squeaks.
Tsumugu doesn't apologize nor does he let go.
Theirs is not a love that stands up under self-examination. Chisaki is too weak even with tolerant Tsumugu, and it'll be years before they find a working balance, never mind a fair equality. But for now at least, the sea is calm, and he can follow her wherever and whenever she tries to flee.
"I'm graduating next year," he says offhandedly. Chisaki is folding shirts on the veranda. The house is otherwise empty. Grandfather is back from the hospital and back out on his boat.
"Ah," she hums.
He waits, even when his patience becomes impatience.
"It'll be nice to go into the city again," Chisaki says finally, ever so casually.
The small smile on her face suggests she knows exactly what's she's doing to him, but their relationship is still too new, too soon for Tsumugu to call her out on it.
"Hmph," he mutters. He still has to make some point.
Chisaki laughs breathily, and the sea wind catches it, throws her smile deep into the house, and then back out into the world.
It's a lovely day.
End Notes: And so it is. Review darlings. 3