He could have sworn he was sweating. That never happened. His body didn't work like that. Neither did it usually shake with overwhelming. He didn't quite know what do to with it. Nourishment made the most sense at the moment. They would both need a pick-me-up before the long journey back to the cottage. And they would have to revise their plan, think of a way to get Makoto back home without him fainting on the docks. It would probably take some time. They'd have to get him reacquainted with the sea, slowly grow his comfort and confidence back — because there was no other way to get him home without facing it.

Haru's mind was already reeling as he made his way to the small cafeteria — which was really just a café attached to the same building. There were regular customers there that had nothing to do with whatever was going on in the "hospital."

He tried to think of ways to ease Makoto back into it, make it so that he wouldn't feel like he had to take giant leaping steps all at once. He was eager to get home, but Haru would rather not have him dropping to the ground in front of him like that again. It was scarier than he might have thought it would be. He hadn't realized he'd been so concerned.

He was standing in line by now, and his eyes glanced up to a TV on the wall next to the counter. The news was on.

He wondered, for a moment, how much TVs cost. Would it be burdensome to buy one? How would they get it back to the cottage without throwing their backs out along the way? And there was no way to swim something like that back the waterway. He had waterproof bags for transporting groceries and things like that, but a TV wouldn't fit in any of them, and he wouldn't venture to test his luck that it would make it in one piece.

They were showing bird's eye footage of the ocean and what appeared to be the very tip of the bow of a sailboat just barely sticking up out of the water. There was debris floating all around it, and the water rippled out in all directions, disturbed by the blades of a helicopter which was dropping down a team holding red rescue cans.

Haru found his head turning attentively toward the screen. His ears automatically drowned out the sounds of human chatter and espresso machine noises.

"… at approximately three p.m. yesterday afternoon. It has yet to be determined how long it had been since the boat was capsized, but four bodies have already been found — two males and two females, seemingly a husband and wife and their teenage children — all of whom were confirmed dead upon arrival. We're still waiting on identification of the family, and the rescue team still has a long way to go to get through the remainder of the wreckage."

A singular heartbeat went by, and the news story changed just that quickly to talk about new vaccinations and how they were affecting infants. Haru didn't get to read the bottom of the screen to see where the wreck was. But he'd suddenly stopped breathing.

"Sir … Sir … Sir?"

He blinked, turning away from the screen to face the older woman at the counter. It cocked its head at him.

"Would you still like to order?"

"Yes," his voice said on its own. His feet felt like they were stuck to the floor with magnets, but he managed to shuffle slowly forward, then looked up at the menu and dazedly asked for the first few things that got his attention. He watched the woman's hands as it counted his money and opened the register for change. He wasn't going to speak, but he found the words bubbling up out of his mouth before he could stop them.

"Do you know anything about that story?" he asked, nodding to the TV.

The woman glanced at it, then looked back to him with raised eyebrows. "Oh, the one from before about the boat wreck? Yeah, they keep rounding back to it every couple of hours, sometimes with new details. Apparently, they didn't find the boat until yesterday, but they think it's been out there longer than that. There was a whole family on board. Isn't that sad?"

He blinked at the human as it continued to count out his change. "Where did they find it?" he croaked, throat entirely dry.

"A little off the coast of the Tottori prefecture. It looks like maybe they were out for a day on the sea and got swept up by a sudden storm." It sighed. "I really hate hearing stories like that you know? Here you go."

It handed him the money he was owed, and he pocketed it blankly. They didn't talk anymore after that. He was given his order, and then he carried it back to where Makoto was, though he found his feet stopping just outside the door, and after staring at it for an elongated moment, he silently turned to the side and rested his back against the wall, bag of food hanging down by his side.

He didn't think anything in particular. He didn't know what to think. He didn't want to touch the possibilities, the similarities, the coincidences between the holes in the stories.

"Coincidence is a throw-away term. There's no such thing," his grandmother said. "Everything always happens exactly the way that it's supposed to, and anyone who thinks anything happens by accident has their nose in bird shit."

A chill ran down his spine. He immediately stopped thinking about it and pushed his way into the room.

They left hardly an hour later, and the trek back to the cottage was long.

Makoto kept pulling the phone out of his pocket to reattempt the same calls, but they never went through, and every time he sighed and stuffed the phone back into his pocket, Haru felt a gut-dropping pull of dread in his stomach. He didn't say anything about it. He refused to say anything about it, because he was already finding ways to convince himself that there was no correlation.

He was distracted, so he kept tripping over rocks, and Makoto had to catch him by the arm a couple of times. Haru breathed his thanks, but didn't ever look at him, and at one point, Makoto asked if he was okay and needed a break. So they sat for a minute, and nothing at all was said between them, but it seemed Makoto was too caught up in his own thoughts to read the strain in Haru's quiet.

At that point, the sun was already setting and had nearly gone. So they made the break a quick one, then continued on their way, but even still, the last hour was made in the dark, and Haru could feel Makoto walking closer beside him, even noticed his hands reaching out to touch his shoulder every now and then as though afraid to lose him. Haru allowed it. He never had trouble seeing in the dark, but he knew Makoto's eyes were built differently.

So he led the way back with confidence, and Makoto followed close, and they eventually made it back on the beach of his cove, breaking through the trees just behind the cottage.

He heard the breath of relief that Makoto exhaled, and it timed itself perfectly with the unraveling of the coiled knot in Haru's stomach that had been there all day, only winding tighter with the turn of events. He was also relieved to be back in his own territory, but the knot in his chest was a different story, and it did not unravel with relief.

"Do you want anything else to eat?" he asked numbly as they made it back inside.

He didn't think about it. His hand just closed the door automatically behind them, and Makoto paused with hesitation when he noticed, looking back and forth from Haru to the door, but Haru was already wandering mindlessly into the kitchen.

"Um … no. I'm okay for now … Thank you." His gratitude came out weakly as his voice just kind of dropped off the end while he watched Haru move about, and Haru could feel his eyes on him.

"You can have the bathroom first. I think I'm going to make some tea."

"Okay …"

"Do you want any?"

"… Sure."

He could feel Makoto's tension, could feel him wanting to say something or ask something, but he didn't for a while, and Haru just went about his way putting the kettle warming, and keeping his hands busy, waiting for that inevitable moment.

The time seemed to pass by so slowly.

And then all of a sudden Makoto was bowing deeply at the waist, and it was such an abrupt motion that Haru whipped around and froze, staring at the top of his head with wide eyes.

"I'm sorry!" Makoto exclaimed, arms tight by his sides. "I know you didn't plan for me to still be here. I promise I won't keep getting in your way, and I'll get over this phobia as fast as I can. You've been so hospitable and I don't deserve it."

Idiot, Haru thought, brow bending.

Makoto could tell he was tense, but he thought it was because Haru was bothered by him being there. It was such a senseless and illogical way to think. Why were humans so concerned with the thoughts of others? Why was Makoto so concerned? He was the one who was stranded and couldn't reach his family and was trapped by a fear that sucked the literal life out of him. But no, he was concerned about Haru.

Stupid. Don't be so stupid.

It made his throat tight, and he couldn't swallow at all. He just crossed the space between them and placed his hand on Makoto's chest, pushing him to stand upright. He looked him straight in the eye, even though it nearly killed him, and he knew his expression was all kinds of vulnerable, but he brushed that to the side and absently closed his fingers around the front of Makoto's shirt.

"Please stop apologizing to me," he said, in a much softer, much heavier tone than he meant to, but he hoped that meant Makoto could hear how sincere he was being right now. "Please stop worrying about me. I'm taking care of you. Everything is okay. You can have the bathroom first."

Makoto blinked at him, taken aback it seemed, but after a beat of silence he nodded and whispered an "Okay." And when Haru let him go, he turned away slowly and headed for the bathroom, throwing constant and wary glances over his shoulder along the way.

The very moment that the door closed, Haru strode outside and got as close to the shoreline as he dared, staring out across the waters and the endless stretch of the horizon. It was only here that his heart started pounding.

"What happened to him?" he asked, voice straining. "Please tell me. I have to know. What did you do? Why would you …? Where is his family?"

His eyes turned at the sound of a splash. The moment he picked out the fin of the bottlenose, he rushed into the waves and swam out to meet it, tripping along the way as his body snapped abruptly from legs to tail, utterly destroying his clothes, but he pushed forward with hardly any notice.

It was the dolphin from before, the one that had brought Makoto to him, and for a split second he found himself gasping with some kind of relief before he was swept up in an anxious anticipation two times the intensity. The bottlenose swam in circles around him, but he didn't have the patience to give him friendly pats and scratches.

"What did you find?" he blurted out, heart in his throat.

The dolphin dove into a graceful backflip, then drifted closer and opened his mouth. Haru stuck his hand in without hesitation, fingers immediately closing around a vaguely familiar object, and when he pulled it out, his heart sank to the very end of his fins.

It was a sandal. A slightly-smaller-than-an-adult's sandal, strappy with braids and all the colors of the rainbow — something that a human girl might wear.

The buckle on it was broken.

His fingers curled tightly around it, blood running cold. He stared at it as though it might turn into something else, might tell him a different story. He was afraid to look back up at the bottlenose, but he had to have some kind of confirmation, as much as he didn't want it. It was imperative that he know.

"Are you sure?" he gasped, turning his eyes back to him.

The dolphin whistled mournfully and told him about his journey, about finding the boat and the people that had been on it, about the sea insisting that he grab the attention of the first person he could reach, about how long it took to successfully do so, and about how difficult it was to find something to bring back to Haru after that. The humans had converged on that spot, pulling all kinds of things out of the water, and he had waited at a distance, swimming in circles, until he saw the sandal drifting away.

Haru could feel himself sinking with every detail. Gravity dragged him down into the deep dark cold and he sat on the ocean floor surrounded by a great stretch of pure sand. The dolphin clicked and chirped with concern, swimming around him and nudging his shoulders with his nose.

"You did good," he whispered faintly, knot rushing so quickly up his throat that his shoulders drew up to his neck and he squeezed the sandal in both hands, eyes shut, lip caught painfully between his teeth.

"I don't understand," he burst, willing the sea to answer with words. "Why would you do this? Why him? He doesn't … He doesn't deserve this."

He opened his eyes again. The ocean was so vast, so heavy. His eyes searched for a shape, a face, eyes, hands, a compassionate heart. He ached.

His head shook on its own. "He doesn't deserve this," he repeated. "How am I supposed to tell him? Why would you do this?"

The bottlenose shot by him, singing with sudden elation, and he was so caught of guard that he just sat there and watched as he swam top speed up to that same orca that Haru didn't realize had never left. The dolphin's squeaks and whistles were like cries of joy, like he was reuniting with a long lost love, and he swam in tight, happy circles around the whale that was just as equally elated and swam in circles around the dolphin too, adding to his song. They nudged and nuzzled each other with their noses.

Haru watched, arms growing heavier by the second. He didn't know how long he sat there like that, but the bottlenose rushed back to him, only to whip so quickly around him that it picked him up off of the sand. Then he swam back to the orca and resumed his affectionate nuzzles, pressing close to his side.

When Haru still made no move forward, the dolphin came back and nudged him in the spine, then swam away again. He followed absently, until he was right up at the whale's nose, and the dolphin nudged his elbow, clicking for him to greet his mate.

"He's yours?" he said, reaching up to place a hand on the orca's nose. The whale chirped merrily and pushed his head into Haru's palm, tail coming down with glee, moving the water with a great ripple.

The dolphin whistled with a bobbing nod and swam a giddy circle around them both.

"You've been waiting for him to come back then," he said to the orca, who blew out of his nose to confirm. Haru felt his chest sinking, and the sandal started to feel like a rock in his hand. "I'm sorry I sent him away."

The orca sang a relaxed song, not bothered in the slightest. The bottlenose cuddled up against his side. A heavy exhale fell out of Haru's lungs.

"You're cruel," he whispered under his breath, but the sea did not answer him. He turned away from the pair, mumbling half-hearted wishes of happiness, and swam to the sea cave.

He pulled himself out of the water immediately, dragging his body up to the ledge where he sat with the sandal on the rocks beside him and buried his face in his hands.