Chapter Text
The water is a dimly lit void in the early morning hour.
The light spray that hits your face as the little speedboat bumps over swells is briny, with something behind it that isn’t quite fishy, but not entirely pleasant. You wonder if it is the fabled smell of the sea as the first rays of sunrise crest the horizon and illuminate the outline of the island you are going to call home for a year. It’s a small thing, still encased in the shroud of night.
At only roughly four acres with very limited trees, you should be able to see the steep end of the island where a dark, rocky cliff side kissed the sea while your feet would be buried in warm, sun-kissed sand on the other end. Miles away from the mainland and an hour-long trip by a speedy little boat manned by a big burly man with wild red locks of hair named Eijirou Kirishima. He insists you call him Eijirou like you’re old friends.
Your guide is friendly. Overwhelmingly so.
His big grin with teeth a little too sharp that a shapely woman with equally wild pink curls waved your curious eyes away from when you had first met him. Ms. Ashido is the one you are renting from, but her ‘companion’ as she described him, knows the island better than she does. He seems to know the waters a whole as his robust, jovial voice booms over the high-pitched whir of the boat’s engine; he tries to explain where the best places to see dolphins and whales will be if they’re around, and when there’s going to be a migration of rays passing a few miles south of the island in late summer.
You’ve heard him say you need to be wary of swimming around the island as sharks like to lurk around the rough maze of rocks on the east side of the island. It would be better to take the dinky little rowboat you are going to have further away or to wait until your scheduled mainland day for that kind of thing.
His voice is idle notes being cataloged away in the back of your mind while you focus on staying hunkered down close to the two luggage cases you are praying are as waterproof as the label claims them to be. All you have left to care about is safely padded away in them.
When Kirishima slows the boat, you let your tired gaze fall away from the crawling light of dawn to take in your island. While still dimmed, you could see individual shapes at least. The momentary burst of trees in the middle of the island takes up your attention at first, but your eyes stray closer to where there is the shape of your modest abode, and even closer to you is the long, weather-worn dock. The bridge of your nose scrunches up either in quiet amusement or expected disgust when the engine of the boat dies to silence as it slowly cuts through the water next to the dock. On the opposite side is an ancient-looking rowboat; the main reason for your conflicted amusement.
“Well Y/N, here we are! Home sweet home for ya!” the big man says with an excitable laugh. He surprises you with the nimble maneuvers he makes to get around your little bundle of existence so he can jump to the dock. As he works to secure the boat, he gestures vaguely with a hand. “Is it as isolated as you could ever hope for? Mina and I had a lot of great summers here. Got a lot of great views for that cool picture work you do.”
“It’ll be a good place for the book,” you breathe into the soft linen of the light scarf around your throat when he’s back in the boat to unbox you from supplies you will need for two weeks.
“That’s what you keep saying,” Kirishima nods, though he has only a vague idea what you mean. He takes one of your luggage bags and gently tosses it on the dock next to the supplies. “Mina’s real interested in it.”
Other than ‘the book’ you haven’t told either of your hosts what ‘the book’ is. Nor do you intend on explaining it further. You watch with scrutinizing eyes when he takes the last of your personal luggage in his well-worn hands. It is a look he doesn’t miss, even with the steadily rising sun casting deep shadows over your eyes. He treats the bulky thing like one would a sleeping child, gingerly placing it down next to its twin before he turns back to you. His red hues shimmer with his boundless energy and you sigh inwardly at it. It really is too early for his enthusiasm. You heave yourself up with his aide and take your first step into a year.
After having been on a constantly moving boat for the past hour, you nearly stumble as you touch down on solid land again. The unexpected difference catches you off guard. Kirishima’s easy transition between them had made it look effortless. Though, you suppose that a coastal resident who goes between both land and sea regularly would be used to it. You can only hope it becomes less jarring with your biweekly trips.
“I’ll get most of this stuff,” he calls to you, drawing your attention away from your internal musings. “Go ahead and bring your stuff up and we’ll go over the radio, yeah?”
You do as he says, grabbing up the handles of your two bulky pieces containing everything you have to your name and follow him. Your tightly strapped sandals slide slightly when your foot first touches down in the soft sand. The tiny grains agitate at the intrusion and they pour forward as if in a wave of their own to drown out your toes. It isn’t a pleasant feeling having it grind at the soles of your feet when you take your next step, but much like the unpleasant tinge to the air, you’re going to have to adjust. You will. You always do.
You walk up the small path created by a thousand footsteps from when the beach turned to tall beach grass. It’s entrenched in the dirt so well that you don’t stumble once hauling your suitcases to the door where Kirishima is struggling to unlock it. Your eye wanders before catching sight of two sturdy poles a few steps from the front door with a string of wire between them. A clothesline?
The big redhead lets out a curse, which seems to finally frighten the lock into letting the key turn over. The smell of staleness hits your nose the moment he pushes the door open. Mothballs assault your nose and, even with the early light of the day, you can see layers of dust coating everything.
Strangely, it calls to you. Draws you in with a bated breath that has you ignoring the man twittering about the mess and how you’ll need to clean up the place to make it a little cozier.
You take another first step.
The emptiness of the place makes it feel cold even in the tepid spring air. You can hear the gentle break of the waves against the beach, the slight creak of the old floorboard beneath your sandals; the stillness of the tiny house settles over your shoulders like a blanket. There’s a sleeping spirit here, you want to believe. One that has stirred with your arrival. You can feel it in the dust that floats like snowflakes in the baby yellow rays of the morning when you disturb it by entering. It’s a small fluttering of lashes on soft, round cheeks-
“Alright! Enough gawking, let’s get to it!” The moment is gone; stolen away with the house being roused with a gasp as Kirishima sweeps past you with a big box of your supplies. “There are tools and other household stuff in that cabinet by the door. The kitchen’s pretty small, but I’ll let you put stuff where you want.”
“Thank you,” you murmur, following the path his large boots had taken. Past the tiny entrance space is the kitchen that he’s easily taking up half the space of. “Won’t be getting lost in here.”
“Haha, nah,” he laughs to humor you, though your joke is half-hearted at best. He leans his large frame back against the sink basin and leans over to a squat black box next to it. The radio. “This baby here will be your ‘in case of emergencies’ friend. Don’t worry too much about remembering what channel goes to what. It’s set to reach Mina’s office already, but there’s a list over here as well if it’s a life-or-death emergency.”
You try to focus on what he’s telling you as you stand next to him, but being this close has led to your notice of a small scar on his eyelid that stretches up into the curve of his eyebrow. It must be an old one with how faded the scar tissue is, and it looks harmless among the other various ones that litter his tanned arms. From a life fishing, he had said when he caught your stare the first time you had met him. He must wrestle some very angry fish. But this one, in particular, seems so out of place. It looks so gentle and accidental that you almost want to reach out and touch it. But you have enough decency to not embarrass yourself or your host by doing so.
“And try to keep track of the tide. While it’s not too much of a concern, you won’t want to leave anything important on the beach when high tide comes in to steal it.” Again, his voice pulls you from your observations.
“Will do. Thank you. Kirishima,” you reply, another mental note made. “Any secrets on the island I should know about? A secret stash of booze or a curse that will find me in my sleep?”
The red-haired man startles at your question, but he recovers just as quickly. “No booze stashes, sorry. Maybe you can pick some up in two weeks. No curses, either, so you’re safe.”
Then Kirishima falls quiet rubbing his chin as he looks at you. You shift in place at the sudden intense expression in his ruby eyes.
But just as you felt uncomfortable, he speaks again, “It’d be unmanly to tell you, but there’s an underwater cave on the west end on the island. But like I said before, it’s dangerous over there because of the rocks and how much sharks like it over there. Mina’s been in once and she swears up and down there’s an open space somewhere under the island with a glowing pool of water.”
Now it’s your turn to eyeball the man. There are a few strange things about Kirishima that you don’t quite understand. His teeth that have too sharp of a point to them, those red irises that watch the slightest move you make, and the kind, open personality that he has that just blurs out the way he dominates everything. You could brush it off at your own quiet, unobtrusive personality or the way you take small, tiny things and turn it over and over in your thoughts until it fills your headspace entirely; yet it feels more distinct. Unintentional but as if he expects no one else to stake a claim to his bubble of existence.
Even with those things aside, you can’t miss the undercurrent of something not quite right in his gaze while he waits for your response. Is it a dare, a warning, a temptation of holding a sweet behind his back waiting for you to choose which hand it’s in? You shake your head, finally freeing your eyes from his to look out a window that desperately needs a scrub down.
“Noted, but I think I’ll steer clear of it,” you dismiss his bait with a half-smile. “As cool as it would be to get photos, I’m not a diver by any means.”
“Probably a good idea,” his mischievous grin settles back into his friendly one. “Sun’s up, so I need to head back. Anything you need this manly man to do for you before I head off?”
“No, I think I’ve got it from here.” You’re still polite in tone. But you’re ready to be alone. “Thank you again for everything. Tell Ms. Ashido thank you as well for me, please.”
“Yeah, of course,” he says, moving out the door with you following him a few paces behind. “Radio us if you get stir crazy or something out here all alone, ‘kay?”
“Will do.” It feels like you’re parroting someone with how often you’ve said that in only a few hours.
Then you’re standing at the edge of the dock waving gently with one arm tucked against your ribs, watching his boat get smaller and smaller in the distance. When it’s gone from sight, your hand is suspended in the air for a moment. You are still. A frozen thing standing on the dock while the island moves in constant life around you.
Slowly, like the water breaking against the sand of your new beach, your fingers curled of their own accord towards your palm. The gentle crash flows down your arm, finally pushes the swell of hot tears from your eyes, and it fells you to your knees. Kissed softly by sea air and warm sun, grieving sobs wrack your frame and you’re left alone to cradle yourself through it.
When your self-pity fest is over, you return to the house. The door feels flimsy under your hand when you pull it closed. You don’t take your shoes off, not sure what you might step on until you’ve cleaned the floors.
Back in the kitchen, you take it in once more now that there are signs of life. The sink is nestled under a wide window that was framed by tacky yellow plaid curtains. You like them, though you would need to take them down and outside to beat the dust from them. You probably need to do that for any fabric in the house.
There is no living room space. The most seating you get is the other side of the kitchen, where a little wooden table sits in all its chipped glory with its equally rough plastic chairs; decorated with countless rings left behind by someone too careless to put a coaster or a napkin down. Your hand gently pats the top of the table in a silent promise to not add any more. But beyond the small kitchen are two more doors.
The first is a tiny bathroom. There isn’t running water on the island, meaning you have to rely on water brought from the mainland. Ms. Ashido said there was a tank for the small shower, but there would not be hot water and it would need to be filled roughly every week, depending on how often you shower. You didn’t tell her it would be a longer time between refills in that case. You were most curious about the toilet, though. With no running water, the solution was an incinerating toilet. The concept amuses you.
The other door is to the bedroom. It’s a cramped space with a dresser and a twin-sized bed. There’s a closed tub with the words ‘SHEETS AND BLANKETS’ in messy handwriting. You pry the lid off and while they reek of mothballs, there isn’t dust on them. The sheets are pure cotton and feel soft against your dry, over-worked hands. You pull a pale salmon pink fitted sheet out and a large throw blanket before shutting the lid and tucking it under the bed where a neat space was waiting for it.
As you do, however, something catches your eye. Barely peeking out from its place, wedged between the wall and the bed frame, is a corner of a book. It takes a bit of wiggling, but it comes free and you're left staring at the front of a little journal. Simple doodles of fish, seabirds, and mermaids litter its front, but you don’t find a name. Flipping it open, you’re greeted by the jagged edges of pages having been torn from the spine; still lacking the author’s name. There’s a date at the top, giving you a time frame of when the writer filled the lines of the journal a whopping twelve years ago.
You read the first few lines, then snap it closed. It’s a diary. And the first entry the writer hadn’t removed was the messy scrawl of a child angry at their mother. It’s probably Ms. Ashido’s from her youth and you have no business reading it. Instead, you quickly gather your bedding again, toss the diary on the kitchen table, and bustle outside.
You don’t have clothespins, but the sheet and throw are big enough to hang over the line without slipping. You pause, taking the fabric between your fingers and trace the tightly woven threads. Just observing something that seems simple, but you could never do.
Without meaning to, you reach up lightly to feel the warm, tender skin under your eyes, swollen after a crying session. There’s a certain pain that lingers in the tissue there that dulls your senses. A peaceful kind of pain you both love and hate though there’s no reason for either. But before you can sink too far into the depths of your melancholic pool a loud splash startles you.
You turn, hand still pressing into your puffy, tear-stained skin with wide, uneasy eyes. It’s a fish obviously, it has to be, but that splash had sounded like it was a big fish. Though, you can’t see a disturbance in the water from where you’re standing.
Curious, if not a little afraid, you leave the bedding on the clothesline to breathe for the day. You near the dock, but don’t step out onto. As sturdy as it is, there is no railing to keep you from falling into the water if a fish were to leap from the salty depths and spooked you bad enough, you tripped over your own feet. Your gaze follows a random path of the waves as if you might catch whatever is out there in the act again.
Your patience is rewarded. Several long minutes later, just as your legs started to murmur a protest of standing still for so long, you see it. Far from you and just hidden by the wavering lines of the morning horizon, a flash of the sun reflecting off of something catches your eyes. The moment lasts shorter than a second, but you saw it. A brief glimpse of something slipping beneath the distant waves.
You think of Kirishima’s warnings about sharks. After another sweep of the waters surrounding your little island, you head back inside. There’s a lot to tidy up and you haven’t unpacked your suitcases or your supplies.
You don’t see the water ripple as something passes under the dock, pushing the little old rowboat with its wake.