Anonmymous – I'll give it a try, I don't think it did that good compared to my other stories. If We Never pulled 5k views, Can I Call You Mine pulled close to 20k, The Dragon Emperor Pulled 30k and The God Complex pulled a stunning 200k views and 125k views from guests. This one got a staggering 200 views, my most under-performing story lmao. I'll keep it up and see if it gets better! I hope you like this chapter!

BlackDragon829 – Glad you liked it! I hope you stick around!

Leokunn – Glad you think it has potential; I just hope I can deliver.

The Song of Sirens

Chapter 2: Water

The memory was like knife that cut into him. Slicing deep into him with a jagged blade of hate.

He had been studying in the library, trying to mind his own business and worry about the group of girls that were to his left as he studied diligently. Naoto remembered everything ins beautiful detail, remembering the time of the clock on the wall as it blinked 3:21, remembered the exact page of his book he had flipped to, the exact sentence and the exact last word he read before his day was ruined.

That when he saw her move to set in front of him.

The conversation that followed was like a movie in his head. He had accidentally dropped his bag, and the reason the girl was in front of him now was because she held some of the manga he hand drew.

"I'm a first-year. Are you a second year?"

"Yeah."

"You're my senpai, then." She said with a vicious smile. She then held his papers up and read his manga line for line. "So basically, Siegfried is you, isn't he?"

"N-No, not really…"

"How gross! You projected yourself onto this unfortunate swordsman, who slowly grows closer to this beautiful knight! Oh, no. I don't mean to laugh at your creativity, Senpai!"

I didn't end there. It never did for him.

"But you know what? I feel sorry for you and Siegfried."

"Y-You feel sorry?"

"You don't get it? Let me make it simple for you. Just looking at you gives me the creeps, there is no way you're enough of a badass to pull off something this slick. Not your virgin-looking ass, Senpai! You're nothing like that!"

He was shocked, he didn't know what to say. He only adjusted his glasses and looked away.

"Why are you looking away, Senpai? You're supposed to look a person in the eye when they're talking to you, aren't you? Senpai, you're kind of…"

"Actually, you're really kind of creepy! What's this, Senpai? Are you9 crying? Ahaha!"

It only got worse. Her torment continued past just that, moving into the realm of hazing. She knew exactly what to say to hurt him, and she was a loose cannon.

"You're so gross. I think its gross how you look away whenever you get embarrassed when someone points the truth out to you. I think its gross how messy your hair is, maybe you should consider combing it. I think its gross how tall and thin you are. I think its gross how you try to pretend to be someone other than yourself in your drawings."

"Honestly, are you even aware of how the people in school look at you? Do you know what they call you? They call you the 'Creepy Prince.' Not prince because you're well-known or anything special, they just make fun of your last name. You're the bottom of the bucket of humanity. Nobody would miss you if you were gone!"

Nobody would miss him.

Nobody.

The words echoed through his head.

…

Naoto opened his eyes and screamed.

For a second, he forgot where he was. For a moment, he thought he was still crashing in the boat and on the verge of death. And then, he recalled the horrible meeting of Nagatoro. The dreaded things she said to him that made him genuinely contemplate his own life's worth. The girl that hazed him, made him cry in school and made him seem like a complete fool. Of course, she had turned out to be a lot nicer to him after that, and he had come to enjoy her company quite a lot. But still, the meeting was… something he wanted to put past him.

He continued to scream, the terror of things reaching him all at once as he realized the situation, he was in. He screamed until his breath was gone, the last of it being forced from his diaphragm as he scratched at the sand and looked around frantically.

The silence followed, filled with his own sobs form his sharp intakes of air. Things were silent. Like they were afraid to make a noise. And then it all came to him in a moment. The sound of breakers rushing up the sandy shores, splashing into rocks. The sea spray sprang up from rocks that sliced through breakers, misting the air and filling the air with a chilling humidity.

How could things have been so peaceful? In his mind, only moments ago there were screams at sea, crashing and tearing as a storm all but wrecked a ship of people. And now… only the sounds of nature calmly filled his ears. But how did he get on shore? When the ship had wrecked, there was no island anywhere in sight… which meant he was nowhere near the wreckage of his ship. So, where was he?

He tried to recall, but only remembered few things. A song that he had began to hum aloud, and something coming to save him.

He tried to move his legs, but he stopped abruptly as pain hammered into him and turned his normal breaths in to sharp gasps.

Extreme pain.

He turned and looked out at the ocean. Sun light skipped across the flowing water, dancing into his eyes and forcing him to squint as he looked.

It was over. The boat had sunk, and he was the only survivor.

He was alive.

He raised himself and crawled, grunting with the pain of each movement. His legs were on fire, and his forehead felt as if somebody had been pounding on it with a hammer, but he could move. He pulled his legs out of the sand and crawled on his hands and knees until he was away from the wet-soft shore and near a small stand of brush of some kind.

Then he went down again, collapsing from a lack of proper sleep. Darkness came to him…

…

There was almost no light when he opened his eyes again. The darkness of night was thick and for a moment he began to panic again. To see is everything. And he could not see. But he turned his head without moving his body and saw that across the ocean the sky was a light gray. The sun was starting to come up, and he remembered that it had been evening when he went to sleep.

"Almost… morning now," he mumbled, almost in a hoarse whisper. The tiredness he had left him completely in that moment.

He was still in pain. Pain that shot through him entirely. His legs were cramped and drawn up, tight and aching, and his back hurt when he tried to move. Worst was a keening throb in his head that pulsed with every beat of his heart.

He rolled on his back and felt his sides and his legs, moving things slowly. He rubbed his arms; nothing seemed to be shattered or even sprained all that badly. Nothing was broken. He had just been battered around. Badly.

His forehead felt massively swollen to the touch, almost like it puffed out over his eyes, and it was so tender that when his fingers grazed it, he nearly found himself crying. But there was nothing he could do about it and, like the rest of him, it seemed to be bruised more than it was broken.

But he was alive. And it could have been different. It could have been so much different.

Like the other passengers. He should have died along side them. But he was saved. He should have been with them by now… drowned by water at the bottom of the sea.

He tried to sit up, only to fail with his first attempt and fall back down. But on the second attempt, he fought through his pain with a grunt and eventually, perched himself in a sitting-up position. He began to shimmy his way backwards, moving until his back rested against a small tree. A tree that had coconuts growing on top. He was lucky one had dropped on his head and gave him a concussion while he was asleep. He looked out, watching the ocean grow bluer as the sun began to rise in the east, watching the sky get lighter and lighter, bluer and bluer.

The noise of movement caused his focus to shift to his right, and the horror that stared back at him was a crawling thing which must have been cast up by a previous wave. It dragged a wet, gleaming body laboriously along the sand. It was about four feet long and about four yards to the right. It regarded Naoto with bleak eyes on stalk. Its long, serrated beak dropped open and it began to make a noise that was weirdly like human speech: plaintive—even desperate sounding—questions in an alien tongue. "Wut-T-Fuk? Dums-a-chum? Dads-a-cham? Ded-a-cuck?"

Naoto had seen lobsters before. This creature wasn't one of them, although lobsters were the only things he had ever seen which this creature even vaguely resembled. It didn't seem afraid of him at all. Naoto didn't know if it was dangerous or not. He didn't care about his own mental confusion, his temporary inability to move his leg were the only thing he could focus on. He needed to move. He needed to tuck his legs into his body for warmth.

His clothes were wet and clammy. His shirt had almost completely been dried from his laying out in the sun, but his pants still stuck to his legs uncomfortably, and didn't do the best job at providing him comfort and warmth. If could take them off and let them sit in the sun to dry while he tried to move, he would be in a much better situation than he was in now.

He heard the grinding, swelling roar of water and looked from the creature, which had stopped and was holding up the claws with which it had been pulling itself along with, looking absurdly like a boxer, and back to the incoming breaker with its curdle of foam that washed onto the wet sandy shoreline. The curdle of water collected the strange boxing crustacean and disappeared into the breaker, swimming off and leaving him alone.

He sat on the sandy shore, leaned against the tree behind him and just… stared out. Nothing seemed believable. It felt like all this had happened to some other person, like he was watching through a movie screen, and he was so engrossed in the story he had tunnel vision. Like everything around him had been blurred out and forgotten. The he would feel the pain from his legs take hold again, the cold of the nights coming over his in a fit of shivers that pulled him back to reality and grounded him as a constant reminded that the life he was living right now was reality.

It took an hour, possibly two for the sun to rise half-way into the sky, basking him in its warm rays. Only small amounts of it at first, but shortly after, the insects came to him in swarms, flocking to him like a cloud and made a living cloak on his skin, clogging his nostrils as he inhaled, poured into his mouth when he opened to take a breath when his nostrils failed to get air.

The insects moved around him with impossible hunger. Like things that had been starved of the flesh of a human for hundreds of years. He coughed them up, spat them out, sneezed them out, closed his eyes a swatted and brushed at his face, crushing them by the dozens, only for more to take their places. Thick, whining, buzzing masses of insects. Mosquitos and black flies he had never seen on live flesh swarmed him. Flies that only at the bodies of the decaying.

All biting, chewing and taking form him. Eating him. Drinking him.

In moments his eyes were swollen shut and his face puffy and round to match his battered forehead. In desperation he pulled his T-shirt up to cover his face, but that exposed the skin of his lower back and the mosquitos and flies attacked the new soft flesh of his back so viciously that he pulled the shirt back down immediately.

In the end he sat with his shirt pulled up, brushed with his hands and took the damage that some of the flies and mosquitos brough him from the newly exposed flesh, almost crying in frustration and agony. There was nothing left to do. And when the sun was fully up and heating him up directly, bringing steam off of his wet clothes and bathing him in warmth, the mosquitos and flies disappeared. Almost that suddenly.

One minute he was sitting in the middle of a swarm; the next, they were gone and the sun was on him.

'Vampires,' he thought.

Apparently, they didn't like the deep of night because it was too cold, and they couldn't take the direct sunlight. But in that gray time in the morning, when it began to get warm and before the sun was full and hot—he couldn't believe it. Never, in all the movies and books he had watched on television about the outdoors and read at night, never once had they ever mentioned the mosquitos or flies. All they ever showed on the naturalist shows was beautiful scenery or animals jumping around having a good time. The kind of things he enjoyed drawing on his blank canvases.

Nobody ever mentioned mosquitos and flies.

He pulled himself up to stand against the tree and stretched, bringing new aches and pains as he did. His back muscles must have been hurt as well—probably from the fight he had with the ocean while swimming, just like his legs—and while the pain in his forehead seemed to be dispersing somewhat, just trying to stand made him weak enough to nearly collapse as he began to feel light-headed.

The backs of his hands were puffy, and his eyes were almost swollen shut from the mosquitos that had assaulted him, and he saw everything through a narrow squint.

In front of him lay the ocean, endless blue and deeper than he could imagine. He had a sudden picture of the boat, sunk in the ocean, down and deep in the blue with the passengers bodie's still trapped, their hair waving…

He shook his head. That wasn't something to think about right now.

He took a step forward towards the ocean. The first step, he almost fell as his legs locked and began to spasm. It felt like the muscles in his leg had torn with the slow movement. He balanced himself, throwing his arms out like an airplane. He managed to stay up, and take another step forward, waddling like a baby taking its first steps without help. But still, he moved, pushing himself because he knew… deep down, that if he gave up, he would surely die here.

When his feet could touch the breakers of the ocean, he stopped, curling his toes in the wet sand. And then he turned around. Behind him, everything was so green. Pines and palm trees. He was sure he was on an island that wasn't mainland, but behind him was what looked like a forest. Low brush smeared between the trees, and thick grass met sand shortly inland.

At first, things were silent again, or what he thought was silent, but when he started to listen, really listen, he heard thousands of things. Hisses and blurks, small sounds, birds singing, hum of insects, splashes from the fish jumping—there was great noise here, but a noise he did not know, and the colors were new to him, the colors and noise mixed in his mind to make a green-blue blur he could hear, hear as a hissing pulse-sound. And he was still tired.

So tired.

So horribly tired. Standing and walking had taken a lot of energy somehow, had drained him. He supposed he was still in some kind of shock from the crash and there was still the pain, the dizziness, the strange feeling. He moved back to the tree he originally perched himself on, not thinking about moving for his own safety and propped himself against the tree. Almost immediately he closed his eyes, not caring how early in the day it was.

…

…

His eyes snapped open as a revelation had come to him. Things he knew about his body as if it were instinct.

He was unbelievably, viciously thirsty. His mouth was dry and tasted foul, his tongue felt sticky as it raced his gums. His lips were cracked and were bleeding and if he did not drink water soon, he felt that he would wither up and die. Lots of water. All the water he could find. He needed it.

He knew the thirst and felt the burn on his face. It was still early morning and the sun had come up on a little bit, but the short few hours had cooked him while he slept, and his face was on fire. It would soon start to blister—start to peel. Which did not help his thirst at all but made it much worse. He stood, using the tree to pull himself up because there was still some pain and stiffness. He looked at the ocean… he would die if he drank from the ocean.

It was a miracle he managed to survive for as long as he did when inhaling the salty substance.

But it was water. Blue, and wet-looking. His mouth and throat raged with the thirst, and he didn't know where there might be another form of water he could drink from. In the movies they always showed the hero finding a clear spring with pure sweet water to drink but in the movies, they didn't have shipwrecks, heroes with swollen foreheads and aching bodies and a thirst that tore at the hero until he couldn't think.

Naoto took small steps down the shore to the breakers. And then he froze… what was he doing?

He turned and looked at the tree he had leaned against.

Coconuts.

He rushed over, moving like a crippled man with braces on his legs, but he kept moving.

He found one of the coconuts in the sand, one he hadn't noticed at all. He fell to his knees in front of it, picking the hard thing up. The smooth husk of the coconut wasn't something he had the strength to peel with his hands. He needed something pointy. Something hard.

A rock.

A sharp rock.

He looked towards the shore, letting his eyes trace the shoreline for rocks that had drifted. Thankfully, there were lots. But he needed to find one big enough to use. One that wouldn't be moved, and one small enough for the meat of the coconut. Thankfully, he didn't have to search for long. One of the rocks that had been breaking the waves of the ocean was the perfect thing for him to use.

So, he collected the coconut, and moved toward the rock. His mind was blank. He had one mission, and that was to reach the water inside the coconut. He held the thing above his head, and with all the strength hi could muster, he slammed the coconut onto the edge of the rock. Then did it again.

And again.

And again. Until the husk had broken and chipped away far enough for him to grab and pull, peeling it like he had gone feral, shaking the thing, beating it, punching it while he fell to his knees. Not caring that his pants were soaking in the water from an incoming wave. Once the shell of the coconut was in his sight and hands, he picked it from the husk and began his assault on the rock, using the coconut as a melee weapon.

He smacked the edge of the rock. Hard. The shell of the coconut cracked, and some of the flesh inside had been revealed as the shell chipped off. He thought for a moment, looking past his tunnel vision and thought for a second. If he grabbed a smaller rock and used it to pierce the flesh of the coconut… he could drink the water inside and spill a lot less.

So that's what he did. He stood and scoured the shoreline once more for a rock that was small enough to puncture the meat of the coconut and reveal the nectar inside. Shortly, he found one. And with his hand, he held the small rock like it was a knife, ready to stab the coconut. He swung towards it…

But missed, and instead, hit his fingers. He yelped aloud, his hand shaking from the pain he had just inflicted on himself. Thankfully, he didn't cut himself. At most he would only be sore by tomorrow. He raised the rock again, and swung, keeping the coconut as steady as he could as the rock made its way to the flesh of the coconut. And finally… his luck was looking up.

It was a direct hit on the meat of the coconut where the shell had been chipped away. Water swished inside the coconut, and in the moment of his thirst and panic, he brought his lips to the coarse shell of the coconut and tipped his head. He was going to drink it slowly. Was.

But when he brought the thing to his mouth and felt the Luke-warm water trickle past his cracked lips and over his parched tongue he could not stop. He had never, not even on long walks in the hot summer, been this thirsty. It was as if the water were more than water to him, as if the water had become the liquid of life, and he could not stop. He sucked as his mouth pressed to the coconut and drank and drank, pulling it deep and swallowing great gulps of it. He drank until his stomach was swollen, until he nearly fell back from his loss of balance, only to stagger-trip his way back to a proper standing position.

Where he was immediately beginning to feel sick and threw up most of the water he had drank, only for the wave to come and take the vomit away from him. He had drunk to much at one time, and it didn't hit his stomach well. But his thirst was gone, and the water seemed to reduce the pain in his head as well—although the sunburn still cooked his face.

He wobbled out of the water and walked to the tree he had leaned on. He fell to his knees when he go to it, and he quickly leaned against it. He looked out at the ocean and let his eyes fall downcast. His face was void of any emotions. There was nothing. No fire that burned behind his eyes, no motivation.

How long had he been here? A day? He knew it wasn't long, but each hour felt like an eternity. He was alone. No one was here to save him again. He was given a chance to live again, but he didn't know how to survive. He wasn't a survivalist. He was an artist. He only knew about plants and trees and things of nature just so he could draw them, how could somebody like him with no strength, no experience…

Possibly survive?

How long would it take for someone to come and save him? Would anyone even come to save him? Would they even try? Do they even know where he would be?

With each question he had, he was able to answer. And each answer he had, only led him to more depression. And with all the suppressing thoughts he had, piling on top of the survivors guilt he already felt… he wasn't okay.

And so he sat there.

Thinking. Wondering.

Why him? Why had he always been dealt the bad hand in life? What entity above him gave him such a shitty life? He met Nagatoro, and at first that was rough… but it had turned into the one of the best things that had happened to him. And now, it had been taken from him.

Tears stung at his eyes and fell down his sunburned cheeks, burning slightly as they went and dripped onto his cracked lips. He was sure he looked pitiful.

"Aha… ahahaha!" He began to laugh uncharacteristically. It was so funny to him. He was spared a death from the sea. Only to suffer a much… slower death. Where he would be slowly starve and dehydrate to death, just to fall among the sand where insects and flies would get him.

"Senpai! Why are you just sitting there, you look so gross!"

The fire in his eyes formed again. He looked up and looked around slowly. And sure enough, the girl who he had grown so fond of was in front of him again. A vision. An artificial construct of his mind, and he was more than aware he was seeing an illusion. But he wanted so desperately to believe it.

"You look like you're dying, Senpai! You'd better not die on me, Senpai!"

He looked at the girl, who smiled at him with those brown eyes of her that drew him in. Tears stung at his eyes again and fought so desperately to fight them off… but he was so weak.

"Let's go home together, Senpai!"

He froze for a moment. He wanted to laugh at himself. He didn't want to die. But the thoughts he had and the motivation to match it… he was sure to die if he continued. But he wasn't going to do that. He was going to make it. He was going to make it back to his family. He was going to make it back home.

He was going to make it back to Nagatoro.

He had to.

He wanted to.

He was an artist. He was creative. He could think outside the box. He would survive. He will. He had knowledge of plants and trees, but only a few. He knew the basics of survival. He could survive three hours in a harsh environment. Is this case, extreme heat. He could three days without drinkable water. And three weeks without food.

But he knew his parents would tear the world apart to look for him. And he knew that helicopters and boats would come and search for the ship that had been lost at sea. When the bodies of the passengers had been found, he would have been the only one not accounted for. They would look. He needed to start building something to make sure they noticed where to look.

His eyes followed the shore again… the rocks. He could draw something with rocks. A simple three letter symbol that was known through the world.

SOS.

He smiled, turned his head and looked at where the girl he had just seen, but she was gone from his sight.

"I'll make it… I promise. I'll survive this."

End of Chapter 2: Water

I wasn't planning to get this out so soon. Or ever, really. But as I was writing this, I felt really compelled. It was almost like I was going back to my roots, combining a wonderful mix of realistic horror with a scenario that is very real and happened to people all the time. Lost at sea is scary, and I wanted to capture some of the emotions that I thought people would go through, from depression to hallucinations.

Let me know what you think! I think this story is going to be very interesting to see progress, and I would love to see more people look at it! I think it will be quite a thriller, and with a happy ending to boot, I promise that. Just a hint of fantasy thrown in as an added touch as I try to keep the story grounded to a deep sense of reality is always something that catches the eyes.

-Stay awesome!