AN: Also posted on AO3 under WriterRose. Titled comes from the song "To the Sea" by Seafret.

As most cliched stories like his go, Taiga didn't really want to move. Not entirely. He felt as though he had settled in America, found maybe not his place in the world but a place, which was a better lot than most people got in life.

His mom had found her place too. She was happy in LA and though that happiness came from her falling in love with someone other than his father, Taiga had long since gotten over his initial anger at his parents' split. Apart, they were happier than Taiga ever remembers seeing them together.

However, he still felt pretty hurt whenever he thought about his mom. It was difficult sometimes for Taiga to view the divorce as her becoming happier and not view it as abandoning him and his dad, even though she had made it super clear that the latter wasn't the case at all. She even expressed interest in being the one Taiga lived with when his dad announced he'd be going back to Japan. It was Taiga who picked living with his dad over her.

He supposed the reason he did that was because even though he understands his mom's motivations, he still sympathizes with his dad when it comes to their separation. His dad worked too much when it came to his job and hobbies alike, so it wasn't only his mom to blame for their falling out. She did end up being the one to find somebody else though; the one to choose someone else to make her happy. In the end, that's what won Taiga over, what made him choose his dad.

He needed a change of scenery, despite the fact that he loved Cali, loved who he became there; confident, happy Taiga, content to spend his days under the sun on the court. It took his falling out with Tatsuya and his parents' split for him to realize that maybe Cali Taiga wasn't actually all that happy, wasn't actually content. So, when his dad planned to move back to Japan to take on the job he's always dreamed of, Taiga decided to join him in his birth country.

Though Taiga was presently having second thoughts, since his dad's dreams entailed moving back to his sleepy seaside hometown and becoming the keeper of some tiny old lighthouse. Which made Taiga like, the lighthouse keeper's son. Not a turn he ever thought his life would take. He's sure he'd prefer to be Cali Taiga still.

It was no secret in their family that Taiga's dad had been obsessed with Japan's waters ever since he was a boy. It was once his goal to explore every nook and cranny, to discover all the secrets that the sea held...or so Taiga remembers his dad saying during story times growing up.

However, though his lifelong goals involved the ocean, his dad instead pursued a more practical career when he started a family, even moved overseas and tied himself down to a cushiony desk job. A necessary sacrifice, in order to feed that blackhole of a stomach of yours, Dad had always teased, but Taiga could sense that he wasn't entirely joking. Taiga even wondered if his dad giving up his dreams of the sea had built resentment between his parents? Maybe the divorce got his dad thinking there was no longer any need to sacrifice his own happiness for the sake of his wife and son? So, just as he was for his mother, Taiga was happy for his father, happy that he was doing something that made him happy.

But good god, was Taiga's life mundane now.

His new house was barely that. It was a little two story cottage-looking thing with two floors, located next to the lighthouse, It had two bedrooms, a kitchen, one bathroom, and most surprisingly of all, WiFi, but it was still barely big enough for one person to live in comfortably, without going stir crazy since it was nearly completely secluded from the rest of the town. The vibe it gave off was creepy in nearly every sense of the word. With the smallest gust of wind it would creak and groan and moan. Taiga swore he was already hearing voices at night. Plus even in Cali the sea air had always been too much for Taiga's sensitive sense of smell, let alone now when he's living right freakin' next to a bay or whatever. He's had a headache nearly everyday. All in all, Taiga wouldn't call it a place anyone would like to call home, let alone a teenage boy. Let alone him.

Taiga had wanted a change, but maybe as always, he had thought too soon. Though that's pretty ironic on its own, what's perhaps even more so is the fact that Taiga is now tasked with watching the place on his own, which was what was presently causing Taiga's sympathies to shift towards his mom. His dad claimed he had to take care of some unforeseen issues that arose with his departure from his old company. He assured Taiga that it wouldn't take long, promising he'd be back within a month at the latest. He felt bad about leaving his son on his own so soon, but insisted that it couldn't be helped. And Taiga believed him.

Besides, it wasn't like Taiga particularly minded being left on his own. He was a pretty independent guy in general. He just took issue with the place he was left.

Perhaps sleepy wasn't the right word for Seirin Sound; comatose felt more fitting. It was once a bustling port city but had considerably calmed down in recent years, due to some sort of recession or something. Though it wasn't a ghost town by any means. The only place on the whole sound that would be considered rundown would be Taiga's new place of residence.

The lighthouse was removed from the rest of the town, located on the East-most point of the bay. It and the keeper's quarters right next to it stood secluded on a sandy embankment, reachable only by the beach or (what felt like) the nearly half mile-long path connecting it to the main city streets, shrouded by tall beach grass, trees, and lined by cumbersome rocks; it was not an easy place to access. The only people Taiga has seen so far were those out on their boats or dedicated joggers who chose to run far enough along the beach.

That was why Taiga was so thrown when he ended up receiving well-wishers three days after his move, a day after his dad had left.

There was a rapping at the front door to the cottage. When Taiga opened it, standing on his stoop were two people he's never seen before. They fixed him with mildly startled looks, eyes fixed somewhere above him. Giving in to his curiosity - and his irrational fear that his new house was indeed haunted - Taiga turned around to see what they were looking at, but couldn't find anything. When Taiga turned back around, the strangers only continued to look at the spot, mouths partly agape.

"Can I help you." he finally grunted, already not in the mood to indulge these random people who came to his door and made him feel awkward for it. That finally seemed to break the strangers out of whatever daze they were in.

"Good morning!" greeted the scrap of a girl carrying some type of covered dish, to her credit, recovering rather quickly. "You must be Kagami Taiga-kun, right?"

"Yeah…?" he answered, eyeing her and the stern-faced boy standing next to her curiously. They were both young looking, probably around Taiga's age.

"I'm Aida Riko and this is Hyuuga Junpei. We go to Seirin High." the brown-haired girl, Aida, explained. "We're here to welcome you to Seirin Sound!" she proclaimed as she held out the dish towards Taiga.

The dark-haired boy with glasses, Hyuuga, looked as though he in fact wished to be somewhere else. "We're actually here to pick something up from your father." he elaborated.

"No need to jump straight to business, Hyuuga-kun." Aida chided with a side-long glance at her companion, looking very much like she would have slapped him, had it not been for what she were carrying. "Here. Curry." she instead explained, looking back to Taiga and once more pushing the covered dish through the air towards him. "Courtesy of Mitobe-kun and the rest of the Seirin High Sailing Club."

Taiga finally took the dish from her but her statement drew his attention away from the offered meal. "Sailing Club?" he repeated, brows drawn in confusion. That was a thing here? He guessed it made sense for a coastal town, but it also probably dashed Taiga's hopes of Seirin High having normal clubs, like some for sports, like basketball.

"That's right!" Aida practically chirped. "Kagami-san messaged and said he put together some things that he found in storage that he thought we'd be interested in. Mind if we take a look?"

Taiga really didn't have a good excuse to turn them away and he was desperately in need of some interaction with other people after spending so much time in this creepy place on his own, even with these strange visitors who were apparently never taught not to stare, so he agreed to show them inside and look for whatever it was they wanted. When he couldn't find it in the house (and after putting the curry away) Taiga took them over to the lighthouse, using the massive ring of keys to unlock the door. Then he found what it was they were looking for.

His dad had left everything he decided to donate to the school club in a crate, helpfully marked with a post-it note that read For Seirin, but it didn't really clear up any of Taiga's confusion. In fact, it only caused more.

Every item in the crate looked old, at least by a few decades. There was what looked to be weather-worn maps and journals, even little seashells and rocks and a healthy collection of sand lining the bottom of the crate. Though it were the journals that caused him the most confusion, when Taiga caught sight of what was written in them as Aida flipped through them, looking very much like someone who had found gold.

"These are amazing." Aida near sighed, eyes practically alight in sheer joy. "So detailed and thorough…" she trailed, one hand to her chin in thought as the other continued to flip through the pages, eyes moving back and forth across the pages at a rapid pace.

Taiga couldn't really make much sense of what the journals were about, exactly. The one he picked up and flipped through looked like it contained diagrams and detailed descriptions of lots of different normal sea-related things. Hand-drawn images of different types of knots that were useful on a boat, old fashioned ships, seashells… But then there were more confusing drawings and descriptions of places Taiga's never heard of, etchings of carvings or jewelry or something, and most surprisingly of all...

"Mermaids?" Taiga said, though it probably came out more like a scoff. His reading comprehension of Japanese had probably deteriorated over the years, but he could still make out that a lot of these pages were about mermaids. The writer dedicated lots of entries to them, describing their favorite places to live, their habits, their appearance, all kinds of things in such detail that it seemed almost as if the person who wrote all this down thought they were real.

"Isn't it incredible?" Aida answered, not sensing Taiga's judgement. "I've never seen such detailed reports before. Your father sure is dedicated."

And then Taiga was promptly blindsided. "My father?!" he repeated, looking back to the journal in his hands with a new sense of horror. Dear god, his dad made all these? Made all these drawings and wrote all these descriptions? That couldn't be true but, but it was. The cogs in Taiga's brain finally started turning and recognized his father's handwriting and drawing style. It was the same hand that doodled on his lunch when he paper bagged it growing up.

The volume and detail of the books would be impressive if Taiga wasn't so thrown by the fact that so many entries were, once again, about mermaids. And there were even entries for other creatures that he's never heard of before, but knew for a fact definitely didn't exist. His dad loved old myths and stories, sure, especially those pertaining to the sea, but to go to these lengths was a bit extreme…

Was his dad delusional? Was this why his parents split? But no, these journals were old, written before Taiga was even born probably. And his dad was giving them away, so it wasn't like he was attached to them or anything. But even still, the fact that he did all this was alarming. It must have taken him hours. Hell, probably days or months, even.

"Yes, your father. Who else?" Aida answered back, looking a little judgmental of Taiga's explosive reaction.

"Why?" Taiga found himself saying, unable to say anything else as the offending pages refused to leave his line of sight.

"To document his findings and travels, I suppose." Aida shrugged, now looking as though she were questioning Taiga's mental state. "It's what any good explorer would do. What I make my boys do." she informed with a sidelong look to one said boy next to her.

To his credit, Hyuuga only startled momentarily, as if Aida making such a statement brought up a sense of dread within him. "You've never seen these?" he instead asked of Taiga, taking the book that Aida had in front of her and handing it over to Taiga.

Taiga switched journals with him, quickly rifling through the new pages and finding much of the same content, with perhaps even more focus on things that seemed insane, like curses and magic and even more mermaids. "No. Never."

Aida hummed as she returned to the crate, riffling through what was left. "Strange. Though my dad can also be eerily mum with the details when it comes to talking about his time spent at sea."

That statement only caused Taiga somehow even more confusion. "What club did you guys say you were from again?"

"The Sailing Club." Hyuuga answered as Aida continued her riffling, without looking to Taiga as he stacked whatever his companion found interesting enough to take back with them.

"Is that popular here?" he asked. He's heard of similar clubs in the US, them being fairly popular in the west and east coast alike. He didn't know much about sailing in general, seeing as it never really ever interested him much. Surfing was the only water sport he tried and didn't immediately give up after the first time. Though even with the limited knowledge he had of sailing, Taiga knew that whatever all this was in the crate wasn't really what you'd considered part of the sport.

"Well, we're only in our second year of running it here at Seirin, but we hold our own against the others pretty well." Aida informed.

"Others?" Taiga repeated back once more. He was starting to sound like a damn parrot. "Sailing is popular in Japan? Like all of Japan?"

"The coastal cities, at least." Hyuuga answered, brows furrowed as both he and Aida looked away from their tasks and to Taiga with confused looks of their it own. They shared a look between each other before looking back to Taiga again. "Where is it that you're from again?"

"Los Angeles."

"America?" Aida said before she gave a soft chuckle. "No wonder you're confused. Japan's a little old world when it comes to sailing clubs. It's probably not even what you think it is." she furthered with a smirk, as if she found her own comment and Taiga's lack of knowledge rather amusing. "It's not yachting or racing sailboats or anything like that. You've probably seen it better represented in the movies."

"Movies?" Taiga was just very lost now.

"Hm, you're really having a hard time with this, let's see, how to word it…" Aida mused, as though to herself. She snapped her fingers and grinned. "Think of it less as sailing and more like swashbuckling."

"Exploring." Hyuuga corrected, eyeing his companion's zealous look with clear weariness.

Taiga was absolutely floored. "You guys are pirates? They have pirates in Japan?"

"You've only confused him more, Riko." Hyuuga huffed at Aida, as if chiding her for causing him more problems. "I don't think he's ever heard any of this before."

Aida sighed. "I'll start from the beginning then. But the abridged version." she all but warned.

And so, Taiga was given some startling information;

What some places would consider old myths and legends were still very much alive and believed in, in Japan, Aida explained. The myths and stories may have contained fantasy creatures, but they often rung with truth - and treasure. So much so in fact that a lot of these stories lead to many people actually finding treasures that were once though lost to history, with rather startling frequency, in Taiga's opinion. These seemingly once-in-a-lifetime findings happened so frequently that high schools even had clubs that allowed students to play pirate and find treasures of their own, to receive a bit of the reward but to mostly give their school bragging rights. Apparently, it was the world's best kept secret, since Taiga's never heard a damn word about it in his life.

"I really can't believe you've never heard any of this, considering who your father is and all." Hyuuga said once he and Aida were done with their little history lesson. Aida has long since gone back to looking through the journals, flipping through the one she hadn't read yet.

"And just who exactly do you think my dad is?" Taiga asked, eyeing the crate and wondering if even he really knew the answer to that question.

"Kagami Kaito? Renowned as one of the greatest seafarers in Japan?" Hyuuga supplied, fixing Taiga with a look that suggested he found the fact that he even had to say it quite strange. "He's struck more gold during expeditions than anyone else."

"And he means that both literally and figuratively." Aida helpfully clarified. "His research has led to more discoveries than anyone else has managed to. He's found lots of treasure, sure, but it's his treasure trove of knowledge that's really impressive. At least to me."

"You really don't know any of this, do you?" Hyuuga asked as he watched Taiga, his expression suggesting he knew the answer.

"No." Taiga answered honestly, feeling rather stumped as to why. "I know he likes the ocean. I guess I now know why… But he never told me all...this. Not in a serious way, anyway." he finished, loudly shutting the journal in his hands closed, as if putting the information out of sight would cast it out of his mind.

"Well, that's a shame." Aida sighed once more as she closed the journal in her hand and returned it to the crate. "I was hoping to get some information out of you."

"Like what?"

Aida shrugged before she pulled something new out of the crate, a tiny box no bigger than Taiga's fist. "Why he suddenly gave up the life?" she answered, inspecting the box in her hand curiously, something clicking against the sides as she turned it this way and that. "One day, he just disappeared. Donated all his things to different organizations and private charters and just left the field entirely. Everyone assumed it was to start a family. I always thought there was something more to it, but I guess not. This is strange." she then said, tone abruptly changed.

Her attention was focused solely on the box, so the other teens looked to it as well for an answer to the purpose of her remark.

"Black Child." Hyuuga read, the words written across the bottom of the box in a messy scrawl, in what looked like permanent marker.

Aida turned it around again and tried to open it up, but the box was locked, apparently, not budging one bit. She eyed the keyhole on the front of it before she turned to Taiga. "Do you have the key?"

"No. Never seen that before in my life." Taiga answered.

"You don't know much, do you, kid?" Aida remarked rhetorically as she looked to the crate once more, moving aside some papers in search of a possible key. When her search turned up empty, she simply returned the locked box back to the crate and placed all the journals back inside.

"No worries." Aida sighed for the final time as she stood back up from where she was resting on the floor. "If there was one to be found, your father would've given it to us, I'm sure. Besides, it shouldn't be too hard to crack open."

"He also wouldn't have given us the box at all if it was something that interesting." Hyuuga added as he too stood up.

"True true…" Aida tutted before she turned to Taiga once more and gave a polite bow. "Well, Kagami-kun. It was nice to meet you. Thanks for your hospitality. And do send our thanks to your father once again."

"Sure…" Taiga trailed, though he was pretty confident that when he saw his dad again, passing along Aida's thanks would be the last thing on his mind.

Pretty soon after, Aida and Hyuuga collected their new belongings and took their leave, Taiga sympathizing with the other male as he started in the arduous journey back to the main road, burdened by the crate. But he was only minorly sympathetic. His mind was sort of processing a lot, after all.

Before they hit the tall grasses and passed from Taiga's sight, Aida turned back to face the lighthouse, "Though you don't seem to know that much, you're of course welcomed to join the Sailing Club. We're always in the market for new crew!" she called, accompanied by a wink and everything.

The moment she made the offer, Taiga knew he wasn't going to take it. He thought they were kind of insane and sailing seemed like a stupid waste of time. His mother had instilled in him some manners though, so he at least knew better than to straight up say that. Instead, he waved back awkwardly, his face unable to pull an expression better than a grimace. When the visitors finally disappeared past the greenery, even that flat expression fell.

Taiga shut the door and decided he was rather fine with being stuck here alone if that's what the locals were like; absolutely batshit crazy. Apparently, just like his dad.

Taiga sighed and wiped a hand across his face. What a strange place he's ended up in.

The next few days were a grueling cycle of taking care of the lighthouse and the cottage, going to school, and trying not to lose his mind as he lived in more solitude than he's ever been in all his life. And live with the fact that his dad may in fact have had a secret life based on the insane notion that there were magical creatures out there in the ocean.

Taiga had texted his dad, told him that some kids from Seirin High had stopped by to pick up some of his old things, but instead of taking the bait and telling Taiga more about it, he just thanked him for taking care of it. Of course, Taiga couldn't get himself to just come right out and say that the things Seirin had said about him - not to mention the journals he had made himself - all seemed super crazy to Taiga. So it all went left unsaid and Taiga dwelled on his questions as he continued living in a monotonous cycle.

The walk to the main road was annoying more than it was tiring and there wasn't much he needed to do in terms of taking care of the lighthouse since it was pretty much automated. So he sort of just, hung around the beach and the cottage all day. When he wasn't at school.

He received a lot of looks at school - because he was a new kid, because he was an American returnee, because he was tall, because of his hair, probably - but no one bothered to talk to him. He's been told all his life that he has a rather intimidating aura and he's never really seen that as a bad thing. Until now.

Taiga had never felt so alone, not even after his falling out with Tatsuya. There was no one for him at school to talk to, obviously. The Sailing Club seemed to be under the impression that he was as looney as they thought his dad was, so he'd been avoiding them like the plague. His conversations with his mom had halted past her initial inquiries into how his new school was (though to be fair, Taiga's responses were dry and vapid at best). And he hadn't heard from his dad for a while either, which wasn't much of a surprise, but it was really annoying, especially when Taiga really wanted to talk to him.

His dad had never been one for open communication when it came to sharing explicit details of his past, Taiga realized. Mom claimed it was because it was sometimes too painful for him to even think about, let alone speak of. She assured him it wasn't anything too bad, but Taiga had never figured out what it was. Dad loved talking about his youth spent at sea, but he obviously left out some pretty major details. Taiga wondered what else he might have left out. He also wondered what he was doing that was keeping him away for so long.

His dad's absence only caused Taiga to dwell on the man's less favorable qualities; his inability to share details, for starters. Or his inability to balance work, life, and family. 'Work stuff' shouldn't really be thrown around as an excuse as much as it was by his dad, but it was. He said he'd only be gone for a short while and Taiga's solitude would only be temporary, but after some thought, Taiga remembers he's heard it all before.

Maybe he had made a mistake following his father and coming here to Japan, not choosing to stay with his mom and Alex? Sure, it'd be a bit weird, but it had to be better than this, this suffocating, repetitive solitude?

Though as awful as his days were, it were the nights that were truly awful for Taiga. As he lay in bed, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks a few yards away and the wind howling as it jetted into the lighthouse were more of a mockery than a comfort. The symphony of noises and the weight of his emotions kept him up till nearly sun up sometimes.

It was so frustrating. So annoying. Taiga was so tired, tired of everything. But most defeating and utterly humiliating of all, Taiga was so, so lonely…

It was only after he felt tears rolling along the side of his face and hitting the mattress below did Taiga's brain register that something was wrong. Not with his life, per say, but with his thoughts. He usually never felt so defeated by life, never pathetically pitied himself as much as he was now. Hell, he can't remember the last time he's cried. It wasn't during his parents split, he knew. Not even after Tatsuya. Something was wrong.

He sat up and looked around his dark room in confusion, scrubbing away his tears and willing the urge to keep wallowing in his own misery to go away. At some point during his pity party, his heart had begun racing, so he tried calming it down. He sat and listened to the sounds he so loathed for something to focus on.

And that's when he heard it.

He'd missed it at first, mistaking it for the wind hitting the shingles, but the more Taiga focused on it, the more distinct it became. It was a low droning. Though that wasn't entirely right because it wasn't really a flat, singular sound. It kept changing, as if it were...melodious, or something. Like a hum.

He felt more tears trailing down his chin and his confusion and frustration grew, which kept his emotions from tittering over the edge too much. It also kept his panic at bay, because Taiga had realized with harrowing clarity that the hum wasn't the wind at all. It was an entirely separate sound.

He yanked the sheet from off of his legs and swung them over the side of his bed, standing up before he stood stark still. His heart was racing again and this time he was able to figure out why that was - because of his panic - but it didn't really comfort him any. He stood and listened again, trying to figure out where the hum originated from. He closed his eyes, ignoring their sting again as he focused. The sound was slightly louder in one ear. He turned his head that way and the opposite to confirm it. His initial thought was right. His head turned back to where the sound was strongest and he opened his eyes. He saw the window.

He forced his feet to walk over to it and pressed his ear to the side, to a crack where he felt a slight draft as the air passed through. The sound was still low, but louder than it was anywhere else in the room. It was coming from outside.

Before he knew it, Taiga's feet were outside on the cold stone platform that the house and lighthouse rested on before he silently jumped down into the sand below, the sand somehow colder than the stone. But that didn't matter. Taiga's own lonely sorrow didn't matter either. All that mattered was his panic, because he finally figured out what the sound was. It was a voice.

He suppressed his fear the same way he was suppressing his strange anxious sadness, by focusing on his confusion and frustration and following the hum. Though it wasn't entirely a hum. He could hear a syllable or two of a word if he really focused. His panic was waning but worry was building. Who the hell was out here this time of night? Where were they?

He couldn't see anyone along the beach, only the light of the houses on the far end, past the dunes. The voice was also definitely straight ahead of him, which meant it was coming from the water. He might not have grown up here, but he knew it wasn't smart to take a swim in the dark. That's when most drownings occurred, his brain recalled from somewhere. And the wind was pretty wild tonight, causing some rougher waves. Yep, definitely no one should be swimming.

When Taiga finally reached the water's edge, he kept off the wet sand. He wasn't quit dumb enough to go wading into the water in search of the singer. Besides, he didn't have to search anymore, because he could see the person. Only it wasn't a person at all. Because they had a tail.

They…It was floating on its back, uncaring of the waves that crashed over its face - a sensation that would send any normal person spluttering. The...The creature didn't even move when that happened. It just flicked it's tail, a fin - an actual, real fin - breaching the surface and sending the creature back to a comfortable distance, away from the shore. Hell, the thing was so unbothered by the waves that the wordless humming song continued to softly pass through it's lips and into the air, slamming into Taiga with an uncomfortable force that caused his heart to stutter and his unbidden tears to start flowing again and to feel like he was the only poor creature left in the world.

He was alone on this beach, in this town. He was abandoned by his mom and in turn he abandoned her. His dad abandoned him and Taiga was going to abandon him too once they had their talk and he learned all the secrets his father had kept from him. It was awful. Taiga was awful, horrible, so very awful. He just wanted to sink to the floor and never get up again. It's what he deserved. He was so awful—

But no he wasn't. Taiga didn't think any of those things. Or rather, he didn't believe them. He didn't feel this way. He was Taiga freakin' Kagami, for cryin' out loud. Nothing bothered him. He didn't feel this way. These weren't his feelings...

Having had enough, Taiga did the only thing he could think to do in that moment. He dropped to the ground, furiously blinking the tears out of his eyes as he searched the rocky sand for something. After a moment, he found what he was looking for. Even in the dark he could see it; a medium sized stone with a large ridge passing through it, making it look like two rocks had somehow fused together. It was heavy enough to not be knocked back by the wind but light enough to soar through the air. It was perfect.

So Taiga righted himself and threw the stone, right at the humming creature in the water.

He must have overcompensated for the wind, because the rock Taiga threw absolutely pelted the thing as it floated. Taiga even heard a fleshy smack before the stone plunk'd into the water below.

The creature startled and the sound finally stopped, something in Taiga sagging with relief. But then the creature righted itself in the waves flawlessly, almost looking as if it were standing, but Taiga knew the water was too deep to do that where the creature was. It's pale back was now to Taiga as it clutched at the spot that had been hit; what would be a shoulder on anyone else, had it not been on a creature with a tail. Taiga's bright idea then suddenly seemed not so bright.

"Ouch." Taiga heard a soft, flat voice say. The relief that had flooded him at the stopping of the debilitating humming sound was then swiftly replaced with straight-up panic as the creature then turned in the water and looked straight to Taiga, expression blank, with skin impossibly pale and eyes impossibly blue.

"Hello." it said in the same, calm (emotionless) tone, voice low but carried by the wind, soft and (falsely) soothing, as if it had floated along through the air and nestled (un)comfortably within Taiga's ears.

Taiga then promptly turned heel and ran back to the cottage and slammed the door shut behind him, heart not even calming when he locked the door and pressed his back against it.

What the hell was that?

What the hell was his life?

Maybe Taiga was the one that was crazy.

AN: Please comment + review! Your interest in this story really drives my motivation to write/post, so please share your thoughts.

Chapter 2 is completed and chapter 3 is in progress. I expect for there to be around 4-5 chapters for this story, as I plan on this just being a prologue of sorts for now, detailing how Kagami + Kuroko meet, etc... If there's enough interest, I hope to continue this verse with some fics with more characters and stories. :)