Chapter Text
Sun on scales or sun on skin. Sun glimmering through penetrable water, reaching only the shallowest parts of the underwater world, or sun fresh through the ozone layer, warming the land it shines upon.
The way they feel— there’s a difference that's impossible to pinpoint. It's a vague, imperceptible line because nobody really knows where the ocean and land meet. Almost synonyms, but not quite. Interchangeable to those who don’t experience both worlds.
Sometimes the difference is stark, other times it's subtle. But regardless— scales or skin, water or land, stark or subtle— the sun always makes Rin feel some sort of uncomfortable.
And right now, filtering in through the limpid car window, the sunlight is making his unblemished, faux skin itch.
“Stop scratching yourself, Rin,” Sae lightly scolds, taking Rin's hand in his own and guiding it away from his knee. “It'll make it worse.”
It takes a lot in Rin to not whine, even though he knows Sae is always right. It just feels— unnatural, even more so on the surface. Like Rin was never meant to glimpse the sun, let alone be caressed by its rays. He thinks if he got out of the car right now, he'd shrivel up into ash like a vampire.
Thinking about it only makes him more itchier. But Sae told him to stop, so instead Rin squirms uncomfortably in his seat, trying to squeeze himself into the corner to get out of the sun's reach.
After a few seconds of Rin failing to contort his body to be completely out of the sun, Sae sighs and asks, “Are we almost there?”
“Not quite. We still have about an hour left to go,” their mother replies, her eyes trained on the barren road. “Why?”
“The sun's getting to Rin.”
Their father looks back at them from the passenger seat, donning a worried frown. “Will you be okay, Rin? It's going to be a really hot summer, and you've only been to the surface twice.”
“He's already been to the surface twice. Rin will be fine.” Sae grabs a hold of a box in the back and fishes out a hoodie, a pillow, and then— a towel. He looks at the towel, looks at Rin, and throws the towel on Rin's head without warning. Then, as an addendum, “Plus, he has me.”
The towel doesn't do much to muffle the teasing coos of their parents, but Rin's thankful it at least hides his smiley, bashful face that would otherwise give away how happy he is. And he knows Sae is sitting beside him, silent and confused because he doesn't understand.
It's always like this. Sae never tries to be a good big brother, he just is.
But after their parents' conversation diverts into a new topic— one about the new attendees this year and the rumours that are coming with them— Sae taps Rin's covered shoulder and whispers, “Remind me to look for a sun protection charm for you when we arrive.”
Rin blinks in a quick succession before peeking out from under the towel. “It's okay, Nii-chan, I should be getting used to the sun by now anyway—”
“Remind me in case I forget, okay?”
“... ‘Kay.”
So maybe Sae does try to be a good big brother. Not that he needs to, since he'll always be the best one to Rin, biased as it may be.
The car ride after that is long, but peaceful. It's still early morning, meaning the sky is still painting a pale, forenoon blue over its sunrise ombre of orange and pink. Calm, leisurely strokes made by a singular paintbrush, leaving traces of skies before in flecks and smudges of gold to dark blue to gunmetal grey.
Still, Rin finds himself missing the wavering blue of the sea. Nothing can compare to home, after all. Not even the multihued sky.
Hit with a profound sense of longing, Rin retreats back under the towel, listening as Sae snores lightly beside him.
“We're here,” their mother announces when the car has stopped moving and the engine has stopped purring. A series of sounds come after her words: the unbuckling of a seatbelt, a yawn, and the jingle of keys on a keychain. “Rin, use the black key and go to your room. Upstairs, last room on the left, the walls should be teal—”
“Where are we?” Rin interrupts, his seafoam eyes blessed with the pigment of the ocean wide with something akin to bewilderment. He's looking out the window, the towel forgotten beside him, itchy sunshine now the least of his worries.
This is not where they go for these magical, nonhuman summer meetings. This is a house, cream-coloured with summer flora growing on its side, patently separated from a small town not even a kilometer away. A small town littered with humans.
“The basilisks gifted us a summer vacation house as an apology of sorts.” The keychain jingles again, but this time more forcefully, urging Rin to take them. He hastily does. “Bow low when you see them, but no more than that, Rin. And don't go anywhere without Sae when we're gone.”
“And try to avoid the humans!” their father chimes in, pushing his door open. “Who knows, maybe this little village is into merfolk sushi.”
Merfolk sushi. It's instinctive, the way Rin shivers.
“You shouldn't be scared of those things anymore, Rin,” Sae offhandedly remarks, yawning. He's blinking the sunlight out of his eyes, throwing the discarded towel back on Rin, and then climbing out of the car. Fluid motions blending into one like a memorized routine. Assured. At ease. Always just offhanded Sae, no matter what he's doing or where he is.
As he gets out of the car, Rin wonders if he could be as cool as Sae one day. It's a nice thought, one he'll save to really ponder over late at night.
While Sae helps their parents bring their stuff in, Rin slots the key into the front door lock and pushes the door open. By typical human standard, the interior is, well, normal. Ordinary, but pretty in its intricate design and soft colour palette. Like a house that would belong to the whimsical florist protagonist of a romance webnovel.
(Humans talk a lot, and they talk loud. Rin lives deep in the hadal zone, but if he swims up just a few thousand meters, the abyssal water will recite conversations for him in its underwater, ghostly echo. Conversations between an artist who can't meet her webnovel deadlines and her friend who's thinking about getting a dog. Between a middle schooler who likes collecting Pokémon cards and his older sister who likes watching anime. Between classmates and cashiers and mothers and businessmen alike.
So many people, so many words, Rin could drown in them.)
“Rin, what're you doing just standing there? You're blocking the way,” Sae calls, approaching with three boxes in his arms. They're stacked high enough that they block his face.
“Sorry, Nii-chan.” Rin crosses the threshold of the house, moving to the side of the genkan to take off his shoes. Having legs, let alone feet, still doesn't feel right. “Be careful not to trip!”
Sae hums in acknowledgement, and Rin heads up to his room sock-footed. There are ancient runes and complex sigils carved into the wood of the stairs, some of them Rin has never seen before. And where there are no visible runes or sigils, there is infused magic that runs rampant like veins through the walls of this house. Rin can feel it as his fingers glide across them, passing several doors until he gets to the last one on the left.
When he opens the door, the first thing he notices is that the walls aren't teal, they're turquoise. (Yes, there's a difference, like water and land and ocean and sea.) The second thing he notices is the tiny, ivory balcony, curtains brushed to the side and the glass sliding door wide open. And the third thing—
A boy. Standing below his balcony, staring up at him.
At first glance, Rin thinks this boy is painfully human. Nothing about him screams magical, not until Rin takes one hesitant step forward and sees his eyes. Those eyes take Rin by surprise, almost making him flinch.
Rin has lived in nothing but blue his whole life, but he's certain he's never seen that blue before.
He can't describe the colour other than it's fluorescent, so instead he gives it a name: eyesore blue.
“Hi! I like your home!” Eyesore blue boy shouts up at him with a smile that makes Rin itch.
“It's not my home,” Rin states matter-of-factly. “It's my summer vacation house.”
Eyesore blue boy nods, seemingly unbothered by Rin's intense and prolonged eye contact. “My family comes here every summer to visit my grandma. Your summer vacation house wasn't here last time, so I got curious.”
“You got curious. About the house?”
“About you!” the boy exclaims, and then pauses. “Well, not you specifically since— you know what I mean.”
Obviously Rin knows what he means. Except for his eyes, there is really nothing special about this boy, Rin quickly concludes. He should be embarrassed at how long he's been talking to this nameless human. Sae wouldn't waste a second of his time with such a mediocre human, so it's only logical that Rin shouldn't either.
“Anyway, I'm Isagi Yoichi! Wanna be friends?”
Earnest eyes the colour of the bluest of blues stare up at him, big and unyielding, and Rin thinks he might've just found his number one weakness at the tender age of ten.
And here's the thing: he considers saying yes, even just for a second. Because Rin's never had a friend before, because maybe he wants to, because he knows he can only rely so much on Sae—
He considers it, but that is all.
With a moment's hesitation, Rin slides the balcony door shut and closes the curtains and makes it his mission to forget about Isagi and his freaky blue eyes and his itchy, sunny smile.
“Do you wanna go with me?” Sae wakes Rin up with a question the next day, dropping an ofuda on his forehead.
Rin slowly sits up in his bed and the ofuda falls gently, almost gracefully, into his lap. He picks up the thin strip of paper with only his thumb and index, careful like it's cherry blossom delicate. Protection against the sun, it reads, written in precise jindai moji.
“Eh? Why not an omamori?”
“Because we didn't bring one, you ungrateful brat.” Sae flicks his forehead. “Dad said he'll ask the vampires for one today anyways, so deal with my makeshift ofuda in the time being. It'll probably last you an entire day. Long enough to explore with me, at least.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
It's five in the morning, the sun is just barely peeking over the horizon, and a terribly tired Rin gets out of his bed to start the day early.
Sae gives him a smile— a subtle, approving thing— and it's unfair, really, how motivating something so small could be.
“Where are we going?” Rin belatedly asks, following closely behind Sae as they walk on the dirt path connecting their outsider house to the village-slash-town. He's not sure what the difference is, not sure if it's a big one like water and land and teal and turquoise.
“The village, duh.” Ah, but Sae calls it a village. “Where else?”
Anywhere else, Rin wants to say. Beg, even.
When Rin doesn't respond, Sae lets out a sigh and ruffles his hair. “I told you not to be scared anymore, didn't I?”
Pouting, “I'm not scared, Nii-chan.”
“Oh, we’re here.” Sae doesn't even drawl a sarcastic sure. “I'll do all the talking, Rin, so don't worry about becoming sushi anytime soon.”
From dirt path to stone, Sae officially enters the village and looks back at Rin, expectant.
It's only natural that Rin follows, loyal to a fault, warmth blooming in his chest like an early summer flower.
The village is a picturesque sort, surrounded by oceans worth of meadows and wildlife and flowers. So, so many flowers. Enough of them to make Rin wince out of sympathy for hayfever victims.
“This place would be a great tourist attraction if they built a hotel around,” Sae says, more of a comment to fill the air than a muse.
“Right?” An unfamiliar voice intrudes from their left, timeworn and cheery. “It'd be a great business, but then our lovely little village would lose its peaceful charm to flashing cameras and crying babies.”
There, crouching under the shade of a roof, pruning flowers in wooden planters, is an old woman. Grey hair, wrinkles, a tranquil smile— the whole works. She checkmarks all the conventional characteristics of standard grandmas.
Which means she also checkmarks all the conventional characteristics of standard witches.
“Oh, how rude of me!” The maybe-grandma-maybe-witch stands up and dusts the dirt off her green apron. She reaches out her gloved hand, the one without the pruners. “You two are the ones living in that pretty new house, right? It's nice to finally meet its residents! I'm this village's Akina-san.”
The outstretched hand goes unshaken, stretching out the silence like a rubber band waiting to snap. But Sae isn't saying anything, so Rin isn't saying anything either.
“No handshake? Don't wanna catch my old person germs?” A laugh, light and airy to cut the tension. “Can I at least get your names?”
A beat of silence, and then, “I'm Sae. He's Rin. We're going now.”
Curt as always, Sae starts walking away, and Rin wordlessly follows.
They make it three steps before they stop again, pausing for words tied together with a question mark at the end. An offer sweet enough to entice:
“Say, how does two thousand yen and a lifetime supply of free popsicles sound for a bit of garden labour?”
Then, to drive it home, “I promise I’m not a witch or a kidnapper, if that’s what you’re scared about.”
“You're very sassy for a— how old are you, eight?”
“I'm twelve, you old hag.”
Long story short, Sae didn’t take too kindly to being called scared.
(“She’s ancient, so we can fight her off if we need to,” Sae had assured him, so resolute that Rin couldn’t not believe him.)
Sitting on the top of the stairs of Akina-san's backyard porch, Rin quietly watches as his popsicle melts over his knuckles, trickling down in sugary, artificial blue. He licks it off when he notices and pops the whole thing in his mouth, tongue against the wooden stick that told him, you won!
Surprisingly, today does feel like a win. Sae's red hued hair is comfortably in sight, Sae's voice is loud and clear and not just a one word whisper, and Rin isn't itchy at all because of the ofuda hidden underneath his shirt.
But Rin has known for far too long that nothing can be perfect. Paranoia settles in his bones, in the breeze that carries Sae's voice to him, in the last sliver of popsicle stubbornly clinging onto the stick, nothing but a melting blue—
“Obaachan?”
There it is. The first felt raindrops on a picnic's supposed sunny day. First comes uncertainty, thinking that maybe you imagined the droplet on your head. Then you feel another one. And another. And suddenly the drizzle turns into a downpour and the sky's perfect blue darkens into something stormy and unforgiving.
Or, in Rin's case, it brightens into a blue that can permanently damage the human eye.
“Yocchan, my precious grandson! Come here and meet Sae and Rin, the ones living in that new flowery house outside the village,” Akina-san insists, sunlight coaxing her dark irises to flash a violent, hidden blue that mocks Rin.
“I'm... Isagi Yoichi.” Blue eyes burn into Rin's back, and he swears he can feel the ofuda charring at the edges. There's an awkward pause, and then, “Your house is really cool, by the way! I like the flowers and stuff.”
Sincerity is laced in Isagi’s every word. It’s horrible, and it makes Rin want to get up and start running for his life.
Sae stares— like, really stares— and then nods, delayed and jerky and painfully awkward. And— it's nothing Rin hasn't seen before, not even close to Sae's worst, but his cheeks burn like it is. Like they're pressed against the sun. Like Sae just screamed in immense detail Rin's most embarrassing moment, whatever it may be.
It's a weird, unwelcomed feeling to be embarrassed of Sae, and Rin wants to plunge himself into the coldest, bluest waters to get rid of the foreign burn.
“You three are all close in age, hm? Ten, eleven, twelve.” Traces of laughter fill in the creases of Akina-san's voice. The mediator for Rin’s distress. “You could attend the same school as a first year, second year, and third year— ah, but you two probably don't live in Saitama, huh?”
Prompting of the worst kind, but Sae doesn't even blink. “No. Kanagawa.”
“Really? You're not hustle-bustle busy city boys? I thought maybe somewhere in Tokyo, like Shibuya.” Akina-san wipes away the sweat on her forehead and puts both hands on her hips, looking around. “We still have a lot of work to get done. Rin, you can have one more popsicle before your break is over! Yocchan, feel free to have one as well!”
The wind chimes start singing with the breeze, and it's like time reversed. The sun is in its rising period, Akina-san and Sae are pulling weeds and sometimes bickering, and Rin is tearing apart the wrapper of a blue popsicle. Nothing changed, except—
“Can I sit beside you?” Isagi asks, sheepish and hopeful and still, still blue.
Rin doesn't respond. Instead, he takes a bite of his popsicle and scoots all the way to the left.
Isagi beams like he's the sun incarnate and sits down beside Rin, careful to leave a generous gap between them. Like Rin's a twitchy stray cat that'll bolt at any sudden movement.
And— Rin has nothing to say to that.
They sit side by side in silence for a while, both staining their tongues blue with their respective popsicles.
“Is soda your favourite flavour too?” Isagi asks, voice light and casual like they're friends.
They're not friends, and Rin doesn't even know what he's talking about— soda is a flavour, not a carbonated drink that has flavours?— so instead he says, “Blue is my favourite colour.”
Another pause of silence as blue burns into blue, saturation rapidly rising above one hundred. Blue on blue on blue on blue. If Rin touched Isagi right now, who would melt into who?
Then Isagi laughs, bright and honest, and he's not eyesore blue anymore. He's heaven's sky. He's hell's Cocytus. He's every blue that has ever existed, every blue known to man and more.
“Guess what, Rin?” Isagi is smiling, wide and childish, dripping in blue. “Blue's my favourite colour too.”