Copyright reserved to Masami Kurumada and Toei. This is a fan-to-fan, non-profit job.

WARNING: NSFW - CONTAINS SCENES OF SELF-MUTILATION AND SUICIDE. IF YOU ARE GOING THROUGH A SIMILAR SITUATION, SEEK PSYCHOLOGICAL HELP.

Lavrio, Attica, Greece, near Cape Sounion. 2018.

And God said, "Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water." So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. God called the vault "sky." And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.

And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "land," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

Genesis 1:6-10

POV Kanon

Kanon woke up in a jump, scared and sweaty, with heavy breathing. He was panting, his chest rising and falling, as he tried to remember the dream he had.

Once again, he had dreamed of the mermaid. She had been plaguing his dreams since that day.

After recovering from the shock, he got up and threw the blanket aside, and went to brush his teeth. Saga had not yet woken up, due to the effect of the remedies. It was good that Saga was sleeping, he was complaining of insomnia lately, so he thought it best not to disturb his brother.

His brother Saga, his twin.

Saga was better than him at everything.

Saga was 22 minutes and 36 seconds older than him. Saga, when he was born, was strong and fat, weighing his 3 kilos and 600 grams of pure glory and light, ready to come into the world. He, Kanon, was born withered and small, weighing 2 kilos, and had to stay in the ICU for a week. Saga's growth in his mother's belly hindered his development, and he almost died before he even knew what life is.

This has not changed during his growth.

Saga has always been strong and in good health. He never had any problems; he was vigorous and athletic. He played sports since he was a kid, and he was good at all of them. He did judo and karate and played football very well. In basketball, he was brilliant, because he was tall even in his childhood and adolescence and even in volleyball he was doing well, with everyone wanting him for his team.

Kanon, on the other hand, due to childbirth complications, had sequelae in the lung. In addition, he had terrible asthma in his childhood, which prevented him from running and playing sports. When he was younger, thanks to swimming (the only sport that was better than Saga) he managed to improve his breathing, but it was still a real disaster. They always ran into him in basketball. In football, he always tripped over his own ball when he was going to run and in volleyball, the ball always came towards his face. He was never chosen to join the team.

Saga was handsome and seductive. Girls (and some boys too) literally fought for him. Saga had long, shiny blue hair. His teeth were white and large, straight, which gave him a beautiful smile, capable of melting anyone's heart. His eyebrows were thick but well-shaped, his lips were rosy and delineated. His eyes were huge and full of goodness, with blue irises, slightly greenish, with full lashes. His nose was straight, his skin was smooth and pimple-free, his beard (when it grew, which was rare) was showy and full. During his youth, he already had an athletic and healthy body, with well-defined muscles and defined abdomen.

Kanon only became handsome in adulthood, as he became identical to his brother, to the point of being easily confused. But in childhood and adolescence, it was overly complicated. He had Saga's beautiful blue hair, slightly greener eyes, well-defined lips, and a straight nose. But only that. His teeth were crooked, he had to use braces during his pre-adolescence (which earned him a lot of fun). He was thin because he did not have Saga's athletic body. His skin was not good either, because he had pimples (And many. Even today he thanked the dermatologist who did the treatment for his skin, because now he looked like he had never seen a blackhead in his life). His beard, until today, was not as beautiful as Saga's (he did not let it grow because he was so angry about that). His luck was that this was a trauma of the past, because nowadays he also had an athletic body, his skin was wonderful and his teeth were straight, big, and white, he was as handsome as his brother. For this reason, he was not offended when he was compared or confused with him, because at least he was as beautiful as Saga.

Saga was smart and clever. The teachers admired him. He had a talent for everything, but a special taste for mathematics. Besides, he loved the sky. Almost every night he went to admire the stars, and he always told Kanon about the constellations and their stories. He wanted to unravel the mysteries of the Universe, so he went to study physics at the University of Athens. As if that were not enough, he became a PhD in astrophysics by MIT (with 100% scholarship!), he worked at NASA for a while and at 30 he was already a professor at the University of Athens, working at the National Observatory of Athens.

Kanon was ... hardworking. Let us face it, he was good, exceptionally good. He was above average. He just was not ... Saga. He was the second in the class, because the first was always Saga. He did not quite know what he wanted. But he loved the sea very much. Whenever his parents talked about moving, which was always close to Cape Sunion, Kanon started to scream and cry, because he could not live far from the sea. But he liked all subjects, he thought of studying history, he thought of studying law, he thought of studying physics like his brother. But he wanted something different. So, he studied biology at the University of Athens, and although they were from the same school, the School of Sciences at the University of Athens, there was no longer any reason to compare himself with Saga, even though they lived together in a kitchenette in the tumultuous city, far from their parents, who rented the house in Lavrio and moved to Crete, their home island and died there. In his master's degree, he separated from Saga, as he stayed at the University of Athens, but made an exchange to Cambridge, where he managed, who knows how, to go to Antarctica to research marine fauna and how it was affected by global warming.

It was there that all hell started.

Shortly after meeting the mermaid, Kanon became ill for weeks. The British base decided it was safer to send him to a hospital, so he ended up in Chile, while his brother packed his bags to try to meet with him. Arriving there, Saga found his brother intubated, with several breathing problems caused by cold, shortness of breath from drowning and fever, delirious about a mermaid, who he begged to return, begged to hug him. The doctors had never seen anything so weird. He woke up and saw Saga, who explained the whole situation to him. And he felt a huge emptiness in his chest, inexplicable, because he did not even know the woman's name.

And she has been chasing his dreams ever since. And he never reaches her, which causes anguish and grief to him.

His daydreams are interrupted by Saga who woke up while he was making coffee. He was still slow, due to the medication, and while he sat down, Kanon placed the medication pack in front of Saga.

"I will not take" said Saga "I feel good today. I slept better in the last few days."

"The psychiatrist said you were going to say that. You said you would say that. So, you gave me the medicines so that I could administer them, and you would not give up the treatment" said Kanon, incisively "so take the medicines now."

Saga reluctantly took them.

"Open your mouth for me to see if you swallowed."

"Kanon, I'm not a child."

"Open the mouth."

He had no medicine there, or under his tongue. Kanon was satisfied.

Saga could be considered a perfect being, and he wanted to be considered that way, but he had a "problem". He was unstable, very emotionally unstable. This was not a problem for Kanon, but Saga hated it, because he tried so hard to be perfect, and he always said that he considered his instability to be a defect.

Saga never had steady boyfriends or girlfriends. He had some affairs, but they always broke up with him, claiming that he was insecure, jealous, and sometimes violent. Saga never got too close to people, and although he did not say, Kanon was his twin, and he could see that he only maintained superficial friendships because he did not want to ruin his image of perfection that others had of him. He was under a lot of pressure to be perfect, from classmates, parents, friends, teachers, and Kanon understood that and tried to relieve it, but it was impossible. It was a burden that Saga carried alone and did not accept help from him.

Then things went wrong and got out of control. The parents passed away, very quickly. Saga had managed to become a professor at the university, but the position required many responsibilities, which put pressure on him. His personal life was not going well either, as his relationship with his girlfriend was over, he had no friends to talk about and Kanon was far away, living in another house, at the beginning of his PhD degree. He could not sleep properly, and he was becoming more and more unstable. In addition, his house was robbed and the promotion, together with the research and the laboratory he dreamed of, was given to another professor, less competent, but who had more contacts than he did. All of this in a few months.

Saga started to have strange and even self-destructive behaviors. He started going to bars and parties very often. He started using substances, legal and illegal ones. He went out with a lot of people, whom Kanon did not know, but who he was sure were not good for him. He had inconsequential behaviors, he even crashed the car because of that. He became compulsive for sex and pornographic videos. Kanon talked and fought, but Saga stated that he was not a child, that he knew how to take care of his own life.

Then one night Saga called Kanon, crying. In a slow voice, he said that he had taken several pills of tranquilizer, because he could not take any more of that, that pain, that emptiness. Kanon took the motorcycle and appeared at Saga's house, seeing that the place was a mess, with Saga almost dying. His wrists and arms were all severed. Saga had attempted suicide.

The news came as a blow to Kanon, who could not believe what had happened. The psychiatrist said that Saga was most likely depressed. After being discharged from the hospital, Saga started his treatment, but each doctor said that he had something different, prescribed different medicines and different dosages, which never worked. Each psychiatrist said something, Saga had depression, Saga was bipolar, Saga had anxiety. Saga had to be removed from teaching, but not before he heard malicious comments from his co-workers, saying he was crazy. The day he heard this, Saga attempted suicide once again, and once again Kanon was there, for him.

The situation dragged on for months. Kanon had no idea that a compromised mental health could affect someone's physical health so much. Saga had body aches, shortness of breath, headaches. He went to several doctors and everyone said the same thing: all of this was due to Saga's compromised mental health. The side effects of the drugs also did not help. Anxiolytics made him slow and airy, and antidepressants made him accelerate and with tachycardia.

The remedies for insomnia allowed him to have a little peace, but we could not count on Saga at dawn. God knows that these drugs would make any college student jealous of the effects and a high Saga was very problematic.

Given this situation, Saga thought it best to leave all the responsibility of his life to Kanon. That meant a lot to him, who was always very independent, but he was able to trust his brother in his life, and he did. Thus, Kanon even administered the medicines, so that, in one of his impulses, he would not give up the treatment.

For a while, it was terrible. Saga did not get out of bed, just to go to the bathroom. The bedroom was a mess, with clothes and books everywhere. He rarely ate. Kanon needed to fight with him to bathe. He went to therapy dragged, because Kanon forced him. On awfully bad days, Kanon even slept with Saga, holding his hand, so that he could prove that he was there, that he would do anything to save him, as many times as necessary, that he did not mind sacrificing everything for see the brother happy. He would never abandon his brother, never throw him in a cell and treat him as a problem.

They were family.

However, in recent weeks, Saga has shown improvement. He started to leave the room more, where he stayed all day. He started tidying up the house and taking more time in the baths, which Kanon hated, because he wasted water, but he also loved it, because Saga loved long baths, and knew he was feeling better. He started to eat more. He even came back with his perfumes and creams, because Saga was very vain and loved to have a good smell. Kanon smiled when he saw his brother doing the dishes in the morning, while he put some music on Spotify and hummed softly.

He wanted so badly to show the world who Saga was. Saga is not perfect, an untouchable god, but Kanon could not imagine him doing harm to anyone. When he hurts someone, he hurts himself, and he suffers a lot from it. And he wanted, perhaps one day, to show Saga that he is not perfect at all, that everything is fine, he does not need to be good at everything, he does not need to carry the world on his back.

Things would be fine.