There was quiet for the first few hours that they were in his human's territory.

Once Makoto had taken his time to absorb being back in his family's house, around all of their belongings and all the empty spaces they'd left, he seemed to decide he didn't want to spend the day wallowing around. He found some of his old clothes that he'd out-grown, and gave them to Haru to wear — an orange t-shirt, and pants that he had to roll up on the bottom, but they were comfortable enough, and they smelled deeply of his Makoto. Then he found some fresh clothing for himself, and dug through the belongings he'd brought with him from Tokyo until he found a laptop that he plugged in and sat at for a while.

During that time, Haru wandered in close proximity, allowing his fingers to brush along the walls, studying the family pictures with goosebumps all along his skin.

After that conversation with his grandmother, he wasn't so sure "dream" was the right word for the vision he'd had of meeting Makoto's family either. The faces in the pictures were the exact faces that he'd seen in his dream, and it burdened his heart with yet more grief, unsure how to carry all the responsibility. He didn't know why the sea, why his grandmother, why Makoto's family would all go to such great lengths to come to him with smiles and comfort and gratitude and grant him Makoto as a gift.

He didn't deserve all of that. And he still didn't believe that he was worth all of the pain Makoto was going through.

A scream came from the living room, from where he'd wandered off, and he ran back with his heart in his throat, skin crawling, only to find Makoto in tears again, but with a pain-filled smile that he half covered with his palm, staring at the computer screen. The scream, turned out, had not come from him.

A very garbled voice was screeching through the speakers of the laptop, layered just barely by a second voice that wasn't nearly as loud. Haru could hardly understand what the voices were saying.

"OHMYGODS! We thought —"

"… can't believe this right now …"

"I'm literally shaking."

" … SO so sorry."

"Mako-chan~"

Makoto laughed a very warbled laugh, trying to wipe the tears from his face. "I'm sorry, you guys."

"You're sorry?!" said one of the voices, much clearer now, though it was obvious that they were crying too. There was also extra sniffling going on in the background. "Don't apologize to us," the voice whined. "We're just happy you're okay! I couldn't believe it, Mako-chan. I couldn't believe it."

"It's been all over the news," said a different voice. "They've been looking for you everywhere. Makoto-senpai … I'm really sorry about your family — truly. Is there anything we can do? We'll come back to Iwatobi right away."

"Yes! Like right now."

Makoto shook his head, still struggling to gather his composure. In fact, he seemed to cry harder. "No," he moaned, shaking his head. The smile was still there though, and all of these emotions were really hard to read all at once. "No. Stay where you are. You don't have to do that."

"Of course we do! You can't be there by yourself."

"I'm not. I'm not. I have …" He looked up suddenly, cheeks streaked with tears. He smiled a wet smile across the room and waved his hand, beckoning for Haru to come closer. "Haru, come here."

He obeyed, tentatively, though there was no way he'd have ever declined. Makoto grabbed his hand once he was close enough and pulled him down to sit next to him, scooting over enough that they both had space but were still pressed together at the hip.

There were humans on the screen — one of those video calls, Haru guessed. There were two of them, a smallish blond one, and another with glasses. Both of their faces were red and also smudged with tears, and the blond one seemed to burst with emotion when Haru sat down in view of the camera.

"This is Haru," Makoto introduced, before the blond one could say whatever was eagerly waiting on its lips. "He's the one I've been with this whole time. He's been taking care of me. He saved my life."

Haru wanted to cringe at the words. At this point in time, he felt he'd done his Makoto more harm than good, but Makoto's fingers were still squeezing his hand.

"Haru-chan~!" the blond one wailed. "Thank you so much! You're an angel!"

The one with glasses bowed its head with deep respect. "Our gratitude to you, Haru-san. We'll never be able to thank you enough. We were so afraid …" Its voice died off, clipped by a warbled breath and it hid its face in its hands, shoulders shaking as it cried fresh tears.

The blond one huddled close to it with an arm around its shoulders and new tears of its own. It smiled through the screen. "We didn't know what to do without him," it explained.

Haru was not familiar with video calls. He didn't very much know how they worked. He knew of their existence, was aware that the phenomenon was something that the humans often participated in, but he'd never had any use for electronic devices in general, much less video calls, so he didn't know what to say, or what was the proper way to respond. He decided just simply to nod and trusted that they were able to see him as clearly as he was able to see them.

"This is Nagisa and Rei," Makoto explained, leaning his shoulder against his, swiping away more of his own tears with his free hand. "They're my best friends. We all grew up here, but they've been living in Tokyo too."

"Oh please let us come, Mako-chan. It's only a couple hours by plane," said the blond one that Makoto had pointed out as Nagisa.

Makoto shook his head again. "It's okay, I promise. I'm going to make my way to you guys soon enough. I'm just going to …" He squeezed at Haru's hand, and seemed to struggle to swallow for a second. "I'm just going to get things straightened out here as much as I can with — with my family, and then I'll … I'll come your way."

"Makoto-senpai …"

"It's okay, Rei." He nodded again, lifting another smile, though this one was more forced. "You guys can come back with me when we do a send off for them, okay?"

Both the Rei and the Nagisa nodded, and there was just a brief pause as none of them seemed to know how to proceed, but then the Rei adjusted its glasses and cleared its throat.

"What is your plan going forward, if I may ask?"

The Nagisa nodded, as equally interested to know the answer. "And whatever it is that you need from us, we can help."

Makoto breathed out a warm breath. "Thank you." He brushed his fingers over his cheeks and sniffed. "I'm going to pack up my apartment and bring everything back here. It's … I just can't imagine going back to life as normal after … after all of this."

His human's friends seemed saddened by this information, but they both nodded in understanding.

"I wouldn't expect you to," the Rei said tenderly.

The Nagisa pouted very lightly, but also smiled. "We'll miss having you around. We've been missing you." It laughed very airily.

"I've missed you guys too," Makoto said. "I hate to move so far away, but … Tokyo's too much for me right now."

"We understand."

"Yeah, and we'll help you with the move. We can go ahead and start packing up your stuff for you if you want. We still have the spare key, and you know Rei-chan is extra organized. It'll be one less thing for you to worry about."

Makoto gave them a shaky but genuine smile. "Thanks, you guys. That would actually be a huge help. You wouldn't mind?"

"Not a single bit."

"Consider it done, Makoto-senpai."

Makoto nodded. "Okay. I'll trust you with that then." He pulled in a breath and exhaled it back out heavily, tears finally stopped. "I'm going to get a new phone as soon as I can, and I'll reach back out and let you know when exactly I'm headed that way."

"Okay. We'll keep an ear out."

"I'm gonna go ahead and start getting things done. I'll see you soon okay?"

"Okay, Mako-chan!"

"Just call us if you need anything else. Even if it's just to talk."

"I will."

"We love you."

"I love you guys too. I'll talk to you later."

"Okay, bye, Mako-chan. Bye, Haru-chan!"

Haru just simply nodded again, and after another string of goodbyes and I love yous were said, the other humans disappeared and Makoto breathed out another heavy breath. He closed the laptop and dropped his head onto Haru's shoulder, which caught him off guard, but he nudged himself closer and squeezed Makoto's hand in return.

"I'm glad you're here," Makoto mumbled.

Haru's chest sank heavily, still so unworthy of such words, but he turned his head just enough to tentatively nuzzle his nose into Makoto's hair.

The next several days were rather chaotic, and an intensely emotional roller-coaster for his Makoto.

It truly wasn't long after speaking with his friends and going back outside to get his new phone that they ran into more humans, and all of a sudden, his arrival back in Iwatobi caused something of an uproar.

They were swarmed very quickly by a lot of different faces and voices and many of the humans were crying. Makoto appeared to know a lot of them, but after the initial wave of familiar faces, came the people with the cameras and the microphones insisting on talking to him and asking him questions about where he'd been. It seemed that once they had identified the family that they'd pulled out of the ocean, they'd come to realize that they were missing one person, and quite obviously couldn't find Makoto anywhere, and apparently everyone had been looking for him — just as the Rei had said.

Divers and excavation teams had been searching the ocean top to bottom. Police had been traveling through every town along the coast. His face, his name, his age, his occupation and entire life's story had been all over everyone's televisions, and the news crew had been begging the people of the Tottori prefecture and beyond to share any information they could, just to find this one young man that they'd all been holding their breath over, hoping that he would turn up to be the one survivor.

Everyone was invested, because the story was so dramatic and heartbreaking, and the fact that Makoto had gone missing — as though erased from the face of the earth — was such a bizarre piece of the puzzle. So they were buzzing now, extra eager, extra excited, and absolutely starving for answers.

The problem was that Makoto was overwhelmed. He tried to be nice and friendly and cooperative, but the way that they thrust their microphones into his face was aggressive, and they were asking him really hard, really personal questions about the family he'd just lost, so it was difficult for him to hold himself together, and Haru was livid.

At first, it was too much for him to respond to. All of these things were unfamiliar to him, and his heart was pounding nauseously in his throat, being surrounded by so many humans. The hair was standing up on the back of his neck, his skin was riddled with itching goosebumps, and his natural inclination was to hide behind Makoto's large frame, clutching the back of his shirt and willing the other humans to disperse. He felt himself trying to speak to the sea, but, where they were, the sea's voice was too faint to be comforted by, and that put him more on edge.

He squinted against flashing cameras, turning his head away only to be blinded by more. The noises were so loud, and the collective body heat from them all was smothering. He started quietly suffocating, pressing close to Makoto's back, very aware that Makoto was doing his best to keep him protected.

But then one of the humans asked his Makoto what it was like to be the only survivor of such a tragic incident, and Haru felt every minute way that Makoto stiffened. He felt his pulse through his back, he felt the overheating dampness of his shirt, he felt the way that his body began to tremble, and Haru gritted his teeth, deciding that was more than enough.

He didn't say anything to anybody. He just grabbed Makoto by the hand and stomped away, pulling him out of the swarm. It tried to follow, but he pushed Makoto in front of him and barked at them over his shoulder.

"Enough!"

They seemed scared enough of his glare that they stopped what they were doing and didn't take a step after them after that.

It was hard to truly get away to the point that there was no one else around, but they managed to find an alley to stop in, and it took a long time to calm Makoto down. Unfortunately, the next day of trying to get things done in town went much the same way, and there were a lot of things to do — things that Haru would have never thought of in his lifetime.

When beings of the sea breathed their last breath, they turned into sea foam. They had to be in the sea in order for that to happen, but there normally wasn't an instance in which that was an issue. Haru's grandmother had been somewhat of an anomaly, since her last breath was taken on land, but Haru had been there to carry her to the shore and give her back to the water, as much as it had killed him to do so.

Humans didn't work like that. They didn't dissolve, they didn't naturally recycle back into the earth they'd come from in an instant, their bodies had to be disposed of, and this was Haru's first time learning that a great percentage of them were burned to ashes. He thought that a much more violent way of dissolving than becoming sea foam, but he kept quiet about it, because one of Makoto's tasks was that he had to claim the bodies of his family and approve of their "cremation," and that proved to be the most difficult one of them all for him to get through.

He got to see them one more time, as he'd wished to, but the way that he wailed, Haru wondered it if was worth it. He didn't question him though, just kept resolutely by his side and let whatever needed to come out of his system, come out of his system. The humans at the morgue were much nicer than the ones with all the cameras, and they gave their condolences in hushed voices, rather than poking at him for answers about how all of this had happened and what he was feeling about it.

What he was feeling about it was quite clear.

His Makoto had to do a lot of "paperwork," which also seemed to be hard on him, and was another thing that Haru never would have guessed was part of the process. It all seemed like such an official hassle, for someone who was mourning their loved ones to have to read and sign papers and make decisions about what was to happen with all of their belongings. They even had to go to Ren and Ran's school to pick up things that had been left behind and sign yet more papers.

He had to talk to police, approve reports of what all had happened — which involved him having to relive everything — just so that they could do their own paperwork and close out their missing person file. He had to talk to the bank about his family's house, provide proof that it was under his ownership now, and that wasn't even a process that could apparently be done in just a few hours. By the time they left, he had even more tasks to do, and he ended up in the middle of the living room floor on that particular night glassy-eyed and silent, just staring at the wall with bags under his eyes, and Haru didn't know what to do for him.

He'd been trying to get familiar with the kitchen and all of its niceties, and felt the best he could manage was to make something.

He baked a chocolate cake.

Makoto dissolved into more tears.