Chapter Text
If you had asked Nanami Ryusui at twenty-years-old who he was, he'd have answered 'Conglomerate Bastard' with pride: exclaimed and punctuated and signed off to tabloids that would spin it into tales far and wide as the eye could read. For Ryusui cared little for what others thought of him, nevermind what the world perceived through the rumor-laden lens of a skeevy article, and most of his life he spent on the move wherever the seawind took him anyways. That was who he was at heart - someone who wanted more, whatever more was, whatever more could make him into. Excess could be interpreted in many different ways.
This question though, you'd have to ask him before India - which now, a day after his arrival back in Japan, he could not speak about. Even Francois steered clear of the topic despite a backlog of paperwork to yet be filed, documents yet unsigned from their excursion, grants waiting to be distributed to grant winners. He had left the Malabar Coast uneasy, in ways he thought he'd long forgotten, and not even the rush of sailing could take his mind off it.
They had been on a cruise that night. Cruises were his kind of luxury: Ryusui could imagine no greater pleasure than to chat away a night through crystal glasses swayed by the rhythmic undulations of an emerald sea. He should have been enjoying the noise as well, and there was music, there was dancing. It was not like now, with the sun beating hard on his shoulders, parting the infinite void of blue ocean in a desperate attempt to put himself at ease. Though the wind was deafening as the boat barreled onwards Ryusui could hear his own panting, anxious breaths. Even louder, the beating of his own heart rattled the cage of his chest.
It was only after Malabar that if you asked him who he was, he'd have given the same answer with sullen inflexion. Conglomerate Bastard, without a hint of pride in his tone. Not quite the act of rebellion it used to be.
("Did they send you?”)
Conglomerate bastard, fact. They'd reached the island quickly, and Ryusui's body docked the boat but his mind was still at sea.
"Ryusui-sama," Francois said gently, to draw his attention to a spark of green light dawning against the grey horizon. "Something strange is aproaching starboard." Ryusui had his hand on the winch, nails digging into rope.
(How were you supposed to know, anyways?
The pictures had always been small. Square digital ones, physical print ones, blurry ones. Wind-swept. He looked the very picture of a man who had sailed for too long. But he didn't, he barely left the edge of land.)
"Ryusui-sama," Francois repeated urgently. They took him by the shoulder and pulled him a few steps away from the railing. He looked up at Francois' insistence, saw the world swallowed in veridian, like the tempest sea at its most phenomenal.
("I'm not going back. You can't make me go back.")
The petrification beam swept over Ryusui, this memory. The very first of his to be embedded in stone.
*
Five years was a long time to forget about a man who didn't like you.
Under Ishigami Senku's new world order it should have been even easier to let something like that slip through Ryusui's memories and disappear altogether. After all, there was so much newness to the Stone World that he'd a hard time remembering every invention, every scrape-by, every near-death experience.
Senku himself spared little time for reminiscing. "Well, there's just no time for that," he'd snort, and roll out an actionable plan for the next season. "You think I give a damn about sentimentality?"
(The scientist's own words. He buried that fickle excuse under platinum panned out of a lonely river. Liquid immortality slipping through the cracks of old age.)
Maybe they were similar in that sense. Funny of Ryusui to think, then, that the excitable new world would be enough to forget about Malabar. Ryusui knew, of course, that he'd actually gone 3,700 years without it; length of time didn't matter anyhow. Malabar was a relapse: like a chronic alchoholic counting down the inevitable strike-off for sobriety, and his streak ended with the creation of the rocket.
They counted hours by the heaps of kindling Ukyo tossed into the fire the nights following Suika's successful revival plan. The five generals ate noisily, on the grounds of a fortress overgrown by years of neglect. Two tall statues dug shadows into the dirt. Unquestionably dangerous and yet now completely at the Kingdom of Science's mercy.
Ryusui raised his cup to toast the air. "So, how are we going about this? My sailor's instincts tell me we're going to revive Xeno! Am I right?"
"Yup. We need him for our space mission." Senku affirmed with a smug smile. "Not sure about Stanley though."
"Forget Stanley," Chrome gawked. "Really! Seriously! Lets forget him at the bottom of a river, or something!" Gen tittered, hiding his crooked smile behind his sleeve.
"Partial agree," he tilted his head. "On account of our Stanley-chan being such an irresistible piece of leverage."
"Yeah, yeah." Senku tapped two knuckles to his chin, thinking. "Those two are obsessed with each other, might be useful to have him around. We'll have Xeno build the engine with his old team while the Kingdom focuses efforts on reviving humanity."
"We'll need to send a few of us back to America then."
"Right," Ukyo spoke up suddenly. "I really wonder how things ended up back in Corn City."
There was some silence as the five of them struggled around their food and the thought of that unknown.
"I'm sure it was fine," Chrome responded after a while. "I mean, they managed to get the petrification device working, one way or the other. Better than us!"
They all turned to look at the two figures again. Xeno's pompadour was a cartoonish thing. Against the firelight, its curved shadow turned his front-profile into something unintentionally inhuman.
"Right," Ukyo said again, quieter. There was little time for sentimentality in the Kingdom of Science, even less for reflection. Senku's eyes were sharp and hard as he observed Xeno's stiff poise; there was no room for doubt in Ryusui's mind that their scientist was already past thinking of their deaths. It was something Ryusui admired about him - the ability to compartmentalize, to categorize and put away parts of himself in the face of severe adversity , so that his mechanism for survival worked to its fullest degree.
"We're reviving him to make our engine," Senku repeated. "We'll need a new ship - something that'll take us around the world, next level stuff. Superalloys should help with that - Chelsea can dig them up for us."
"Hah!" Ryusui snapped his fingers. "If we're lucky we'll strike a natural ore deposit too."
"No luck needed. She'll know where it is. And speaking of talent - we're going to recruit one more mind." Chrome perked up at that- "For what," he chirped, strangely defensive. "The ores?"
"For the rocket, Chrome-chan, those ores are all yours." Gen admonished. "Senku-chan, you're thinking too fast again."
"Eh," Senku shrugged, picking at his ear with a grin. "You caught up anyways, didn't you?" He stood suddenly, grabbing a nearby stick and started to scratch a map into the sand. At this point in time, Senku's maps had become virtually indecipherable - Ryusui surprised himself when he recognized the crude drawing of a boxy computer in its own stage of the Rocket Road Map.
"Would you look at that," Gen threw his hands up in the air, both helplessly confused and hopelessly endeared. "We're making a computer. Why not!"
"Not a pretty one, but it'll do." Senku responded. He paused a little before adding a stick figure beside it, as big as the computer itself. "In 1966, NASA developed the first aerospace program that would put people on the moon: the Apollo project. But in addition to making the rocket, they also installed a computer program onto the command module that would help perform precisicion maneuvers to steer them in the right direction. No hypothetical math involved- we'll need accuracy as pinpoint as multiplying with 15 decimals of pi."
"Pie?" Chrome frowned.
"Aha! We need a mathematician!" Ryusui exclaimed, as the thought dawned on him.
"Well," Senku scratched his head. "A mathematician and a programmer. Preferably someone who can do both; kill two birds with one stone. So," he continued, staring down Ryusui with a smirk. "I'm sure you'd desire a brain like that, Ryusui. Know anybody?"
Five years was a long time to forget about a man who didn't like you. Ryusui counted himself lucky that he had the grace of five years to go on without his old memory haunting him, as the urgency of Senku’s projects kept wandering thoughts at bay. Always in the back of his mind, it was inescapable. He picked up suddenly a spike of fear in his body, like an updraft of turbulent wind as Senku watched him. Gen, as well, tilted his head. He had the inherent skill to pick up moments of weakness; it was his nature as a mentalist.
"I do," Ryusui said, he smiled broadly. He threw away, for a brief moment, every part of his history that made the name sour on his tongue, even as bitterness made his mouth sharp with lie. "Sai is his name. He's the best I've ever known."
*
He did later consult Francois, despite having his mind set on the task already, though he would not be surprised if Francois had already suspected that the creation of the rocket would require Sai’s genius. When next they were seated together at the head of the New Perseus' dining table, on track to the southern coast of Math City, Ryusui told him properly.
"Excellent choice, Ryusui-sama," Francois had their back to him now, polishing a plate. "Nanami Sai is young, experienced but not jaded. Quick learner. Internshipped in Geneva, developing systems for CERN. Grant winner, as well. Innovative."
"Exactly!" Ryusui said, waving his fork. "His creative mind makes me think think he'd make fast friends with the team. And you know him, and I know him..." he trailed off.
"He is very charming. No doubt he'll adapt quickly to our new world, with some persuasion."
"He should come with us to Japan."
"In that case, I will do up the free room beside the captain's quarters." Francois replied and then froze. They shared a sudden look of awkward guilt. Naturally, the realisation hit that Sai would not want to be anywhere near the Nanami name. Ryusui was the Nanami name.
Francois corrected accordingly. "I will do up the storage room at the end of the corridor and turn it into temporary living quarters. Since we'll be anchoring at the southern coast, I think some of Kerala's local cuisine should do nicely for a first meal on board."
"Excellent," Ryusui put his hands together, interlaced tensely with thought. His head hurt thinking about it, despite the trajectory predetermined and the route set. Everything was falling into place without a hitch. They were building a rocket and they needed a programmer: Sai coded like a madman, so it only made sense to acquire him. The logic argument was simple and he did not lie about Sai's skill.
"Francois," Ryusui said, hesitating despite himself. "He is the one that best fits our needs. Am I right?"
Francois tilted their head at him, expressionless. They put the plate down on a fabric to dry, thought about what Ryusui had said.
"Is Sai the one you want?"
(Ryusui could never lie about Sai's skill. He had seen it firsthand. He had seen it along the boardwalk to the reception, the smooth white desk and secretary idly inspecting her manicure, checking tickets, checking cards. Those badges are for the winners, she said, like that handsome boy over there, he's only twenty-five.)
"Yes," Ryusui said. "He is."
Ryusui stood up, though he had no clear direction on where to go, left the room in a hurry anyways and let Francois do his work. A few hours later, stained in varnish and smelling like fresh flowers, Sai's room at the end of the brig was complete.
*
(
There was nothing wrong with what he’d done. There was nothing wrong. He left himself out of the honors, out of the ceremony, he was not interested in anything but establishing the family name in India. The port of Beypore and the forests of Kerala were rich in good teak: The boatmaking there was a passed-down art, and in history their craftmanship rivalled that of the Portuguese masters. A recent shift in production from cargo-boats to cruisers aligned with a current market trend in the upper elite circles Ryusui liked to dabble in - the only thing preventing the Conglomerate from approaching this angle was the culture barrier, and a preference for familiar European affiliations.
The Nanami Family liked to play safe, within the confines of what they knew. The patriarch followed a similar pattern; Ryusui was not his father. He wanted growth. He would have prosperity through desire.
This as well, the cruise-ship Andromeda, was just another investment that aligned with his goals. It mattered little to him who would be awarded his sponsorship or where they came from. The Nanami Conglomerate only sponsored grants that would be judged without bias: they were capable, so they would have it. He desired all brilliance. There was nothing wrong with what he’d done.
There was nothing wrong.
Ryusui watched his half-brother step up to the podium in a houndstooth collar. Something sunk and pulled his lungs in, stopped him in animation. Like an anchor at rest, at a trough, at the bottom of the sea.
)
*
Their mathematician was dressed in green, like all statues that withstood the 3,700 years post-petrification. He had the look of a deity from the way his arms had inexplicably merged with two others; very apt, of course, that one of Ryusui's own blood would strike such an imposing first impression. For all that Sai refused the Conglomerate, in stone he held the poise of an elite.
Then of course, once the shell was shattered, he returned to human form. There was a certain look about the man that Ryusui prided himself on recognizing - the same way he had known his half-brother preferred tranquility above sociability, Sai was timid even though he lacked in almost nothing. It made his shoulders slope lower than his collarbone, his head duck forward to provide an attentive ear; most of all, his fingers twitching, looking for something to do, something to keep his attention before it ran away with his mind. He looked now, 3,700 years into the future, the very same Sai Ryusui had bumped into in the Old Age.
Ryusui liked to think he had changed, and there was growth in the five years spent enduring the primitive early stages of the Stone World, but seeing Sai in front of him completely flipped the equation. The last memory he had of him was too modern, at the same time too old. Sai, who had not changed in the five years Ryusui had grown taller than him - he could still remember the shape of the cruise liner, the sound his heels made on the parquet flooring. Sai who was Sai, dressed to the nines for the Andromeda at 25, walking up the podium shaking hands under a stage light a scatter of applause for the prodigal mathematician saying his thanks to his mother his friends of course not The Family never The Family do you remember me? Do you remember —
"Ryusui-sama," Francois coughed, touching the back of his hand. "You're smiling."
Sai who was Sai— 25, prodigal mathematician-programmer Nanami Sai —
He looked up, screamed, and bolted.
Chelsea was the first to address the elephant in the room, as was like her — prompt, direct. With a bit of flair and a brandished finger: "I just gotta ask. Why d’you hate his ass so much?"
"Chelsea!" Gen admonished behind his sleeve, reaching out to smack her.
"I'm just saying," Chelsea spun on her heel. "Ryusui is kind of based."
"Is that really how you'd describe him?" Sai responded curiously. His eyes were darting round now, like a creature of prey.
“He’s… assertive.” Gen admitted. “Yo’s more of a menace than him.”
“Chrome’s louder.” Kohaku said, almost defensively. “And Ginro is a much bigger fool.”
“Well if we’re measuring by the decibel, Taiju has them all beat.” Senku muttered.
They talked over each other, the way the Kingdom of Science did at the crux of conversation, and all the while Ryusui watched Sai’s eyes dart left to right, a flush bleeding out across his cheeks from what he had incited. It started at the bridge of his nose, spreading outwards in all directions, it made his eyes look warm and soft, it ended at the root of his hairline just behind his ears. Then Sai swiveled to turn at Ryusui, stammering, “Either way it doesn’t matter. I suppose I owe you for this, don't I?”
“You're not indebted to us. We need a mathematician,” Ryusui answered immediately with a snap of his fingers. “Think of this as an exchange!”
“Don’t forget,” Chelsea squealed and pointed. “Cus you’re family, and a talent. Two birds one stone!”
"I don't see the birds," Kohaku frowned. Gen, with exasperation laced through his voice, needled back into the conversation with, "Oh, my dear Kohaku-chan, it's an idiom - you know I'm surprised you don't know this one…" The conversation branched fluidly. Sai was still looking at Ryusui - he was the newcomer after all, and unfamiliar with how flows of discussion were dictated in their social group. Anyways, he had another interest.
Ryusui felt his eyes sweep the contour of his body, and something about Sai's slow assessment made him uncomfortable. It would do them both good if he did not smile, but then again he was not one to prohibit his indulgences, and he was terrifically happy—
(terrified, terrified, happily terrified—)
He thought he heard two undulations of waves below them, two times of day, light and dark, the ghost of modernity sweeping over his shoulders. Sai's eyebrow twitched and his eyes darted left to right. The Kingdom chattered up a fog of noise, wholly ignorant and at ease.
("Did they send you," He took a step back. "Did you sponsor this?"
"Only Francois is with me."
Another step, another step. They were brothers, they were two of the same face, they repelled each other. It made sense. Another step, another step. Ryusui heard Francois's footsteps, running, running.
"I dont't believe it.")
Ryusui shook his head and two identities merged into one. He remembered who he was now, captain and leader of the New Perseus, and spoke again.
"So. We are 3,700 years into the future. The world as you know it no longer exists."
"Last I saw you," Sai started. His voice was very small and unsure but not afraid. He was counting under his breath, turned his face into his shoulder, picking at his nails. Laser focused on a piece of the plank beneath Ryusui's feet, which now, Ryusui remembered, was much the same as then, back then, back then in Malabar, "Last I saw you, not two days ago—"
"The Conglomerate no longer exists,"
"Clearly not,"
"I requested for your revival." Ryusui could feel his fingers itch, itch into fists like the shape of them would make him feel more grounded. He dug his nails into his palms for good measure. "For something else entirely, I assure you! It has nothing to do with-"
"—That, well of course it doesn't," Sai stumbled into Ryusui's words. "I mean, that's all moot now I suppose."
"Exactly!" Ryusui barked a laugh. He breathed in — sharp, almost painful. Nothing in the past mattered anymore, there was no grudge, there was no Family. "Yes, it's all irrelevant now. We're building a rocket to go to space."
Sai's mouth fell open. "What?"
"A rocket," Ryusui nodded over to Senku, who had lost interest in discussions over the Nanami brothers and was already strolling towards the stern, where Kaseki had begun to put together a crude draft of another rocket prototype using some of their excess sheet metal. "The ship will accomodate your every need while we catch you up to speed on what we're doing. We may be estranged, but I know you, at least on some level. The Kingdom of Science has something to offer that nothing else and no one else in the world can." he paused, considering, before confidently belting out, "including me!"
"Including you?" the corner of Sai's mouth lifted. "That's one way to put it."
Only a few things in his life could make Ryusui feel like a boy again. The Stone World had no stake against him to meet that challenge— at home none of the family were able to bend him to their will, and so he was as always: Conglomerate Bastard of the Nanami Corporation. Who did as he pleased, spent as he liked, thrived under the spotlight of infamy.
Sai however, was not The Family. He had never asked after Ryusui and was not interested in The Family's children. Removed himself from the picture even after he had long gone and established himself as an up-and-coming in his own industry. Never leveraged his blood— never needed to.
Maybe that was what made them different; two extreme sides of the spectrum. Two outcomes of a psychological experiment. Maybe that was what made Ryusui care about him more, that they were both bastards and they were both alone.
Maybe Sai was his exception.
"No one else beats me at chess but you," he said the next night, one hand clutching the back of a star-lit sky— the petrification had been kind to Sai. The scars on his hands were beautiful. "And that makes most chess boring, don't you think?"
Sai did not reply, though his face was a mask hidden in the shadow of his hair, downcast to the floor. Ryusui stood up abruptly to put away the game. He watched himself, disembodied from the encounter, stumbling out of the little shack. He only found his way back to land when he'd shut the door of his study on the Perseus, sinking to the floor with his head in his hands. He rummaged through his dresser, where he kept some practice rope for fidgeting, and tied a few knots before bed thinking less of himself than he did in the morning; grinning in the dark, because he could not help it, it was in his nature to want and feel wanted. So he was: made him terrified and elated at the same time. Desire did such things to a man.
It could be 10 years of what ifs becoming what nows becoming when to assuming best intent. Ryusui's mind ran away with himself quickly. His heart ran circles around his lungs. Say yes, say yes, say yes.
Sai boarded the ship permanently the next day. It was perhaps in the singular moment that his silhouette breached the top of the deck that Ryusui's heart finally gave in to the crushing relief that he had not been denied. He should have been ecstatic to see Sai fold and he was, briefly truly - you could never lie to yourself about things of instantaneous emotion - but there was no contentment in the panic that came after, under the brig, in his little private cabin. Second guessing himself in ways he'd not done before. Seeing reluctance where there might not have been any. Seeing it anyways.
I want him, and now I have him, Ryusui thought to himself fiercely. His hands shook, charting course to Australia. I want him. I have him. Some unconvincing argument, this daily affirmation. In all honesty it might as well have been the babble of insanity - he had no idea what the words actually meant at this point, all things considered: Sai existed in the flesh, on his ship. Yet there was something disatisfactory about this, even. That it was not enough to shake his hand, to see his room in the long corridor, to see the glint of his belt reflect off the stretch of blue sea.
He did not know what more he wanted from Sai. He felt suddenly, strangely, something he'd never felt before. That he maybe wanted too much. Maybe he should want less.
(Maybe Sai was his only exception.)
He discarded that train of thought to focus on what he knew best. Hammered the mantra into his brain, sought to scar it into his skin, until the New Perseus banked the bauxite shores of Weipa, though even then he could not stop.
*
(
There was nothing wrong with what he'd done. There was nothing wrong with coincidence.
"He has a different surname than mine.” Ryusui said slowly.
Francois peered over his shoulder. They had only minutes before it would be appropriate to leave their room again. Their new clients were enjoying the sight of the cruise ship Andromeda’s overnight voyage above deck but eventually they'd begin to wonder where the Nanamis were. "Sai Singh Mahtani, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Computing. He must have taken his mother’s maiden name after he left to avoid the press."
“I can’t have known that.”
“Of course not. Sai is quite a common name in India.”
Ryusui got up, got back down. He wiped his sweating face with a hand. “I was not prepared for this.”
“We’ll plan our manouevres across the deck then,” Francois started, “target our clients and chat up a few guests in a sequence that strategically avoids the grant winners. They’ll likely be moving in a group anyways so it should be easy to avoid them- Ryusui-sama?” They stopped, seeing that Ryusui had hidden a terrified grin behind his mouth, bent over on the edge of his bed. “What’s the matter?”
“Of course he would win.” Ryusui chuckled to himself, even as he was shaking, crowding his face in a forest of curled fingers. He could not help but be proud. “He’s fucking incredible. I always knew it. I always knew he was.”
Francois’ eyes softened looking at their ward, put a hand on his shoulder, and Ryusui leaned into it.
“That he is,” Francois said gently. Ryusui stood, took a breath, and opened the door.
)
*
Suffice to say, the other Nanami proved his pedigree immediately. It was just as Ryusui expected, and yet to see it in the flesh as Senku faxed page after page of instruction to Corn City, made it feel strangely realized. Sai at the helm of this project looked as he did when Ryusui had last seen him - the new world clothes Francois had put him in seemed to emphasize the wire-like poise of his body, a natural thinness that was different from the other Nanami children. Sai's Indian mother, even in her absence, featured prominently across his every sharply handsome feature.
"So the adder circuit is giving us a single bit just as it is, but we increase its power by connecting the adders to each other like so, and it'll give us the ability to add up numbers exponentially the larger the register…" Sai was explaining to himself more than to Kohaku trying not to fall asleep beside him. Suika listened as attentively as she could. A new flavour of intelligence had been added to the crew, and for all Sai's initial shyness towards his capabilities, with Senku in tow it was impossible to not be drawn into the synchronous movement of two like-minded individuals spit-balling ideas for the first computer of the stone world.
"Sai-chan doesn't look like a Nanami," Gen said beside him.
"No," Ryusui replied, oddly proud. "He doesn’t act like one either."
"Have you talked since that night?"
Ryusui picked at his belt. He was so far standing a measured distance away from the table, where his half-brother made fast friends with their leading scientist. Sai stopped for a moment, and when he looked up to meet Ryusui's stare, his eyes dropped to the table awkwardly and stumbled into his next sentence.
The only other time they’d spoken privately was on accident - Sai had wandered up topdeck in the middle of the night, gotten lost while Ryusui was taking in the twilight view of the ocean at the bow.
“Sorry, I couldn’t - you’re very tall now, I thought you were someone else.” Sai had sputtered out. In the present, he looked much the same - always that awkwardness around each other.
"Sure," he responded vaguely.
"So it was just a misunderstanding after all," Gen assured. "Siblings, you know. I mean look at Kinro-chan and Ginro-chan! They fight all the time, and they still love each other to bits. You've both got the revival of civilization to make up that lost time."
Perhaps. But they'd been moving so fast through the ages that the rocket loomed only a few years into their future. Ryusui felt out of sync ever since he'd been awake here - still wearing his captain's cloak like a medieval pirate, but steering a ship with its own plant, model rockets and alien rings in tow. The revival of civilization was very nearly upon all of them - it struck Ryusui suddenly, like a deadline of sorts, that if all 7 billion people in the world came back, Sai might as well pack up and go home, for all Ryusui could keep him here for was the rocket, and once the rocket was done Sai wouldn't have a reason to stay. How many years of lost time did they have? Two years, three? Four?
"It doesn't matter what he thinks." he said finally, clasping Gen's shoulder. He tacked a half-hearted laugh at the end of the sentence, and Gen turned sharply to look up at him with the narrowed eyes of a skeptic. "I desire his prowess whether he hates me or not."
"He can't hate you," Gen said disbelievingly. "He really can't. You're wonderful, Ryusui-chan. You're hard to get used to at first, but the whole crew can contest to how you really are."
"What's bothering you, really? Some old trauma between brothers?" he smiled cheekily, nudging Ryusui's shoulder. "I'll get it out of you sooner or later. Or him. Whoever bends first."
They ended up watching Sai at the war-room table, where he was still going at the new design schematics with both hands scribbling long lines down a page. "We'll need a minimum of 8-bit for ASCII," he was muttering. Bit his lip in concentration, brought one hand up to fidget it. "no, it may be more beneficial if we had a higher fidelity graphics interface for piloting, in which case maybe at the very least 16-bit…"
"Piece of cake. I'll make Yuzuriha handle the hardware," Senku snorted, and Sai looked up through his lashes, he laughed in shock at the audacity of that statement, in this world. Ryusui's fingers turned into a fist. He flexed it out carefully, frowning.
"I wanted a great programmer and now I have him," Ryusui looked away, out towards the sea. He was lying through his teeth. Gen could hear it in his voice, he knew, there was no helping it. "That's all."
"If you say so, Ryusui-chan." Gen drew in his sleeves. He could feel the magician's stare down the back of his shirt, long after he had gone.
*
For all their past estrangement Sai was a creature of habit, and the old mannerisms Ryusui remembered him by back when they had lived together in the Nanami Estate had not been outgrown. They had simply evolved to fit an older body, an aged-up version of the boy who liked to play with computers and do mental maths. Said boy, on account of said habits, had a penchant for high places but no laptop to use: as the design for the Parametron came to a close the frequency of Sai's topdeck visits increased, until it was clear one brightly lit morning that there was nothing more to be done for the computer and his lanky shadow made an appearance across the bulwark, hands fidgeting emptily at their sides.
"I think he's looking for a rooftop," Gen joked when Ryusui passed him by in the kitchen. "Sai-chan seems a little out of sorts without something to do. Maybe a game of chess might interest him."
"You forget who the captain of this ship is, Gen!" Ryusui couldn't be away from the bridge for long - a major flaw in the structure of their crew, the lack of a Second Mate. Ukyo could only perform half his job and he was thousands of miles away. "If I could step away for him, I would."
"Wouldn't you," Gen cooed. "You're a sweet brother, Ryusui-chan. I couldn't imagine you as a younger sibling before but the more I think about, the more it makes sense."
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, you know, the… I desire it!" Gen brandished a card mockingly and snapped his fingers. He tittered, hiding behind his sleeve again. "Sorry, sorry. I just mean to say you haven't shown much bias towards anyone, for all your talk of want and love. And now here we are, being familial over your brother."
"Nothing wrong with that," Ryusui dismissed with a laugh. He was walking quickly, and Gen just barely traced the shadow of his heel. "We were bastard children. It only made sense to stick to one another."
He turned at a corner, passing Senku and Chrome. Suika was at the other end of the table, some kind of diagram being discussed on graph paper. Ahead was the sound of an open workshop, where Kaseki lived and breathed. At the moment they had no pending tasks - really, the computer was their main goal, which left the craftsman equally bored, Ryusui thought, just like Sai.
Kaseki's new task would have to be quick and dirty; even with a perfectionist's touch, the artisan took less than an hour to produce the wooden toy and another thirty minutes to paint it - then, out of interest, Gen weaseled in between them to have a peek—
"Ryusui!" he exclaimed, impressed almost, as he held it up in his hand. "Oh, you really do know your brother best, don't you? Appropriately modern and mindlessly fun. I think he will like this, but suppose, if it's not too much to ask…"
Kaseki, waiting with baited breath, was already bursting at the seams.
They made another. And another. And a few more after that. It would not have surprised Ryusui if anyone dropped by the workshop shocked by a sudden influx of their "new" invention. Chelsea did eventually wander in out of curiousity, complaining about the racket until her eyes landed on Gen's gesturing hands.
"Oh my god!" she squeaked. "I fucking love rubik's cubes!"
(Kaseki never failed to deliver. They ended up with enough for the Kingdom of Science, in its entirety.)
"Where is Sai?" Ryusui asked. Far too many cubes weighed his hand- in a sack, he felt a bit like he'd just conducted a burglary. If it were anybody else they might've felt a bit stupid carrying something so bulbous like this around but Ryusui felt little shame in putting their leftover wood scraps to good use.
"Still outside," Gen said, fiddling with the cube in his own hand. "He's staring at the ocean."
Most of the Kingdom of Science took their petrification in tandem with whatever immediate emergency happened to also swing their way, so by the time the trauma sunk in they'd been through far too many colorful incidents to comprehend every one individually. There was no stone war anymore. There was no great escape across South America. No treasure island, no dogfights, no slaughterhouse. The simple fact of being stuck in a timeline thousands of years after modern civilization no longer bothered any of them.
For newcomers who had only one disaster to comprehend, the petrification was incomprehensible fiction. Sai most likely felt the same now, and was simply staring out into the ocean as the New Perseus glided past a colorful archipelago, seabirds maiming the low dipping clouds above, dive-bombing a surface of abundant fish. Nothing else to see for miles, no lights, no smoke, not even the glint of a radio tower. It would drive any normal person mad.
(Sai was not normal, Ryusui remembered. Sai was incredible.)
His marked up hands glided across the steel railing nervously, and every now and then he would tuck his hair behind his ears to no avail. It flew around him, played up lightly by the breeze.
"Sai! The view is beautiful, isn't it?" Ryusui joined him at the edge of the bow. "Some silver lining to petrification - we are the rare few in the world able to experience life untouched by civilization."
"I'm getting used to it," Sai said. "But I won't be able to enjoy it for long… Call it habit. I can't wait for humanity to catch up to us so I can use a keyboard again."
"I thought of something that might curb your boredom for a bit," Ryusui replied, "but if you want it, you'll have to come with me first."
Sai turned, his mouth twitching. It seemed always like he was trying to smile, but he didn't know how, or he was preventing himself, and so it just twitched awkwardly, like he was malfunctioning. "Just won't leave me alone, will you?"
"I thought you'd welcome the familiarity!"
"Well," Sai thought about it, "It's been a while since you bothered me. Ten years? Fifteen, for you," he added, and craned his neck to get a full view of Ryusui's tricorn hat. "You really did get tall."
"Does my height matter so much?" Ryusui mused. Sai was the same to Ryusui: his person was unchanged and maybe it was bitterness, but again, five years had passed, and still Malabar made Ryusui feel small next to him. Maybe not to his older brother.
"I mean, taller than me?" Sai answered, muttering under his breath. "That's just unfair. You have everything."
He followed Ryusui cautiously, not displeased but as Gen said - a little out of sorts. It was just the pace of the Kingdom to bring newcomers along for the ride: truthfully that was how all of them bonded, but the lull in excitement made all of them a little complacent as well, and learning on the fly was getting harder. Computer science was a much more modern field. You'd think Senku's quick lectures and complex road maps were difficult enough - Sai's understanding of technology seemed practically alien. It's strange - Ryusui liked that about him. Maybe that sounded possessive, or arrogantly proud. Sai's intelligence was of a different breed.
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere quiet," he replied, turning to grin, "come on. Don't you trust me?"
He brought Sai to the upper balcony of the bridge - you could round the corner of the outer railing to a lip that jutted out the right side, and there were pegs for Kohaku to climb the tower if she wanted to sight something in the far distance immediately without going through the interior. Just recently Suika expressed interest in accompanying her favourite, and the additional rungs were small but sturdy enough - Sai found a good foothold to lurch himself onto the platform. The breeze was very strong here, and light from the morning sun reflected harshly off the center gas tank seated midship. Chrome and Kaseki were doing rounds on the catwalk and there was more noise below them. Loudest of all though, was the wind's billowing and blowing, which Ryusui felt he could hold between his hands as strong as river current.
"The girls like to sleep up here occassionally, to look at the stars." Ryusui had to shout to make himself heard. "Mostly though, it's not used. It's quiet. Like a rooftop." Sai edged along the railing, and the windows of the bridge were slanted just so that if you leaned over the railing you'd be able to see a sliver of the inside, the glint of the command console, maybe even the wide brim of Ryusui's hat if he was there, which he almost always was.
"Better than a rooftop actually," Ryusui said, more to himself than anyone. "You'll have the best view of the sea, from all four directions."
"Not everyone's mad about sailing like you." Sai looked at him, but Ryusui was staring at the waves, the white crest that hugged the guardrail, snowed patches of foam across the pock-marked metal. "It's nice, Ryusui."
"It gets nicer," Ryusui brandished the sack cheerfully. "Take a look- this is for you!"
"Oh," Sai said, and his eyes lit up, his mouth curved as he reached in to pick one out, "Oh, you really… you didn't have to." No sooner had Sai picked up the cube than he completed the puzzle, like muscle memory, and the shocking blur of movement happened in the blink of an eye. There was a split second of humming, tossing it lightly back and forth, and then with the momentum of his catch Sai flicked the wooden contraption into a whir of sequences. It was like looking at factory automation. Outcome that preceded thought.
Different breed, Ryusui thought faintly.
There was a cheerful lilt to Sai's voice as he said, "We did play with these when we were younger, didn't we? I still have a few speedcubing medals from back then." He sat, crosslegged on the floor of the platform. Ryusui sat beside him. It was hard to fit the two of them comfortably.
"You know this will take me ten minutes, Ryusui." Sai sounded almost embarrassed and his voice came out a whisper; they had to put their heads together just to hear each other. It occurred to Ryusui that his mistake had been trusting his gut instinct for a cure to Sai's boredom — now that they were adults, something more complex might have been better. Perhaps something from Senku that would really pick at his brain. He hadn't thought of that. In the adrenaline rush to please Sai, he hadn't really been thinking at all.
"Fair point," he conceded defeatedly. "I… don't know why I thought this would keep you busy. Just pulled at a few strings in my memory. But now I'm glad I asked Kaseki to make so many!"
Sai was not looking at him, but in response the cube clicked and spun faster. Yaw, pitch, roll. Pitch, yaw, roll. He flexed his hands, and though the dark pattern encapsulated them fully Ryusui could see every tendon, every vein. It was dexterous and fine, it was pure instinct when he moved. Perhaps what fascinated Ryusui most of all was that not a single movement was wasted on hesitation: everything was didactic, it was like he was following a series of instructions. Sai set the cube down, finished, next to the four others he'd already done. A thrill ran up Ryusui's spine, that competence. It was ridiculously desirable.
"It's just a common formula," Sai divined what Ryusui was thinking. "There are several methods of speedsolving that involve getting the center blocks and edge pairs set up properly. Yau's method, if you want to look it up at some point. It's not rocket science."
"I'm starting to think you would have preferred rocket science, actually." Ryusui scratched his head sheepishly.
"Well—" Sai turned over his eighth cube now, spinning it idly with one hand. "Getting stuck in a problem is a different kind of enjoyment. Rubik's cubes are pretty zen. And nostalgic." he looked up, his brow made a furrowed, unsure gesture.
"Anyways, it's cute, Ryusui." he muttered finally. "Even though… it's… sweet of you. I appreciate it." He was looking away, to the ground again. Maybe his mouth was twitching again, Ryusui didn't know. "Well I'll try to solve them slowly. Make it worth your while."
Just then, the scout room window yawned open. Francois poked his head out, turning his body clockwise to find him.
"Ryusui-sama," he said, "Requesting your attention at the helm."
"Right away!" Ryusui returned, swiveled to Sai. "You should bother Senku and make him give you something to do."
"I'll find him later," Sai promised. It would be an hour before Sai retreated down below again - that hour, Ryusui thought, well spent even alone.
*
And then, in retrospect, maybe it would have been better to not have asked Senku at all.
The whole afternoon following, after dinner: not a word from his room. It was sealed shut and remained so for the duration of the next afternoon, peeked open slightly to grab something to chew on from the galley before leaving again.
Over the course of the next two days he remained isolated from the rest of the group. Sometimes if it was dark enough in the hallway you could see a slit of light from beneath the open door, and a shadow pacing back and forth quick as a metronome— he was calculating, under his breath, one two, no, that's not right, twenty-eight hundred, and so… multiply by the exponent…
"Senku-chan," Gen said at the table one day. "Really?"
"Mentalist," Senku responded, muffled into a bite of stollen. He looked up briefly to make eye contact, smirk, and jotted down something in his notebook. "Really."
"What'd you give him?"
"He asked for something hard so I gave it to him. Kept him busy. Didn't Ryusui want him busy, or something?"
"I did!" Ryusui snapped his fingers. "I approve of Senku's solution to Sai's boredom! Despite what it may look like, Sai is enjoying himself."
Comically enough, a thud sounded in the room at the far end of the corridor; just faint enough to be heard, Sai groaned and kicked the wall.
"It's just rocket science," Senku shrugged to Gen, who was glaring at him. "It's what he signed up for."
Sai had always been like this when he was younger, though it may have been the first time the Ishigami villagers experienced introversion on his level. It was in fact such a bizarre experience to the villagers that Ryusui woke mid-day in his sea cabin to an urgent knocking on his door, and a flabbergasted expression on Chrome's face.
"I can't get Sai to come out of his room." Chrome said. "He's been in there for days, I think he needs some air."
"I assured Chrome-sama that Sai-sama's work is more efficient when he does it alone." Francois responded, peeking out from behind Chrome's shoulder. The rest of the available crew were crowded behind him, enticed by curiousity.
"But there's nothing in there." The villagers nodded their heads towards the shut door, confused.
"He has his pen and paper, that's all he needs."
"What if he's ill?" Kohaku said very seriously. "Sick people don't go outside. Ruri was like that, she was shut in for months."
"Ruri had pneumonia, she was actively dying." Senku snorted, picking at his ear. "Sai's just an introvert. Still stuck on the propulsion calculations for the rocket I fed him. I gave him a list of options. We'll have a couple choices to choose from for fuel and my numbers are way off."
"Hah!" Ryusui barked, snapping his fingers. "This is no illness. Sai's brilliance comes from his dedication to his craft and his independence. He needs no one but himself."
"Perhaps that's true," Gen wheedled out a sigh. "But maybe you should see him, just in case."
"It's locked though, isn't it?" Ryusui said. Gen smiled, swaying a little as he walked inconspicuously away. Slid a piece of crooked wire right along his pinky as it poked out of his sleeve, a playful gesture.
"Last I checked, it wasn't." he pouted innocently.
Their mathematician was, in fact, deeply absorbed in his work when Ryusui opened the door. Papers upon papers of calculations littered the floor. His food was shoved to the side, all the way against the flat of the wall, and Sai had messed up his hair with his hands so that it flew out in the opposite direction. Ryusui had never seen it like that before - it was a bird's nest, hanging limp around his neck and stiff above his ears. It was oddly endearing.
"Sai!" Ryusui steeled himself before approaching. "Do you need anything?"
"Oh, Talika - perfect timing. Another pen would be great, I'm running out." Sai didn't look up from where he was sitting, but he pursed his lips in thought as he extended a hand towards a stack of clean paper to his right. "I think I might run out of paper in a minute too, and a glass of water would be so very nice -" he looked up, one hand extended, mid-sentence as he registered who he was talking to.
"Oh my god!" Sai blurted out. "Sorry, it's a habit."
"I can do all those things," Ryusui dismissed with a wave. "I came because the Ishigami villagers were worried about you. I told them this was par for the course."
"Right," Sai scratched his head sheepishly. "I suppose from their perspective being holed up like this is a little strange."
"But it's you," Ryusui shook his head. "It's just how you are."
Sai blinked slowly. It felt suddenly as if this was the wrong thing to say, and Ryusui for all his confidence repeated his own words in his head, finding fault.
"Yes." Sai said after a while. "It's just me."
“Yes.” Ryusui repeated. The conversation had lulled. They stayed looking at each other blankly until Sai scratched his head , could not find the confidence to look Ryusui in the eye and proceeded to bite the end of his pencil in a nervous, unsure way. He made a noise, perhaps on accident, that very much sounded like a sound caught between ‘um’ and ‘uh’, and Ryusui unfroze as years of charisma coaching flooded back into his brain, working again full speed ahead.
"Your cubes are in my drawer," Sai stammered out, at the same time that Ryusui blurted, "Who is Talika?”
“Oh.” Sai’s eyes widened. “Right! Talika. She’s a friend from college. She was an engineering major studying in the building across from mine. We shared a dorm room.”
“I see.”
“We collaborated on multiple projects together.” He tried to explain it away, hurriedly. His fingers rapped a melody into the wood, and every time it did his stub pencil would jolt slightly, until he pressed his thumb into the head and lifted the end - spun it through his fingers like a thread, and danced it across his other hand. “We were both working on the - that project, actually.”
“Which project?”
“You know-” Sai looked down. “The urban neighborhood simulation for my hometown. Using the game engine that was supplied by the- by you.”
“Oh-”
“For the grant.” They both said simultaneously. Sai dropped the stub pencil at that. Scrambled for it, on the floor, as it made a deafening noise in the vacuum of their silence.
“Sorry-!”
“Don’t apologize,” Ryusui rushed. As Sai leant down to pick up the rolling object his hair fell loose around him and he tucked it back behind his ear, fitted the pencil there, and shot up back into his seat with a flushed look about him. He did it naturally, in one motion, like it was a part of him. This, the sub-conscious fidgeting and spinning of the pencil, Ryusui saw once and it fit Sai’s image so perfectly he suddenly wondered how he could have ever gone knowing him without it.
(He had not known Sai for very long, then, maybe not known him at all,)
“Um, yes, the project- anyways, she’s a good friend. I ask too much of her, it’s a bad habit, as I said, I can get so caught up in projects.” He waved his hand across the table, gestured to Ryusui. "As you can probably tell."
"You did used to lose yourself in your head."
"I still do." Something about that caused Ryusui to laugh. It left him airy, and Sai’s voice petered out into a whisper. “What?”
“You had good friends.” Ryusui answered, “I’m happy.”
“Of course I did.” Sai scoffed a little reaching for the back of his neck, mumbling, "Thinking I have no friends… what's going on with you?"
"I'm just trying to be a better—" he said. Sai waited, but Ryusui's tongue got caught in nothing, got caught in some kind of lie he had not yet unraveled in his mouth. Time hung in still suspension, Ryusui blinked, his brow furrowed. He tried again, "I'm trying to be better," and it didn't feel right, it felt too broadly apologetic and not his style at all, so he corrected with, "better to you, I mean."
The both of them fell silent.
“Ryusui?” Kohaku’s voice rattled out from behind the wall. “Is he alright? If I don't hear back from you in 5 seconds I'm kicking the door down.”
“He’s fine,” Ryusui called, and then turned to Sai. “Paper and pen, right?”
Sai was fidgeting again with the pencil, and he hid his expression partially behind his hands, but Ryusui could discern no other meaning to the curl of his lip other than awkwardness. Then Sai opened his mouth as if to say something, and all that left his mouth was a strangled, “yes, please.”
“I’ll be back,” he replied, and shut the door gently behind him.
*
They had grown up in the East Wing of the Nanami Estate, the Educational Wing, which was a wholly separate building from the main house. The architecture was more modern and sleek on the outside - thick floor to ceiling glass that overlooked the quad; the Nanamis were homeschooled, and the patriarch saw no point in sending his children elsewhere when the country’s finest scholars could simply be hired straight to their doorstep. Every subject had its own tutor and classroom, tucked into that monolithic brick-and-mortar maze, which itself sprawled several thousand acres along the Ito sandbar of the Izu Peninsula.
Both Ryusui and Sai’s rooms overlooked the open lecture hall in the quadrangle of their wing. A shaded entrance with roman pillars gave it an anachronistic appearance, and joined to it was a long, modern colonnade that lead either back into the classrooms or straight towards the pier. Father’s ships were a battalion lined up against the dock: these were not the cargo boats of their trade but cruise liners and yachts purchased on a whim, well maintained but spotlessly non-functional. Ryusui's favourite row came right up to two tall and decorative pilings: these were traditional beauties, the relics and re-creations of cultural icons the Nanami Family owned for purely to show off when the Estate was open to the public. On breezy days the wind would catch their sails and it would appear as though the sky had been pulled down to earth, as the billowing of a thousand sturdy fabrics hid the masts of every ship along the coast ballooning out like herds of passing clouds.
Ryusui could never take his eyes off those sails, at any hour of the morning. It was this very view that bred the characteristic greed he was so infamous for - you could not look at those emerald waves, from within the confines of an ornate prison, and think that a cage was better than the sea.
Sai though, he stayed indoors too often to be ignored. Always there was the shadow of their father over him, the begrudging acceptance of their half-blood status on the condition that the two of them would serve the household indefinitely, in whatever sector was most appropriate. He let himself simmer in that little room, he had no interest in the sea, nothing of politics, of production. Ryusui wondered sometimes if Sai loved anything else besides his laptop, but the tells had always been there: at the sound of laughter past his window he would look up and stare wistfully over the edge of his monitor, his fingers would curl in on themselves to bite the skin of his palms, he would lift himself up on his hands for a better look at the chatter in the quads, three, four, five shimmering blonde heads vying for each others attention in and out of the Family Wing. He would sigh, long and low. In the stifling air of the small bedroom it would be impossible to not hear it.
“What are you looking at, Ryusui-sama?” Francois whispered. He would pick him up (while he was still small enough to be plucked), steering him into a corner. “Are you hungry? It’s almost lunchtime.”
“Sai doesn't want to play,” Ryusui would say, and start walking as he talked; Francois would take him by the scruff of his collar and gently guide him away from the closed door saying, "Sai-sama is busy with his studies."
"What's to study?"
"Your studies will deviate depending on your father's orders. Sai's gift is in mathematics, he may have to go into finance."
Nothing else came of such conversations. It was better to bother him later and stuff his mouth with candies now, led down the corridor out into the sunshine. Ryusui would always roll one under the green door for the lonely boy, like a reminder that he was also there, also a bastard, and the loneliness of estrangement was something they experienced together. The difference in personality between the two of them widened the rift of communication - an older Ryusui would eventually realize that, had it not been for The Family, either brother would not have gotten along at all.
He wouldn't know Sai felt the same until he was old enough to steal his first boat. Whether the theft was out of passion for the sea or simply a recalcitrant response to being so unloved, it didn't matter. The novelty of stroking the mast, running downwind towards a dot of sun along the dusking horizon, was blissfully rid of anxious thought. Ryusui focused his adrenaline on instead performing a jibe on instincts that could only be homegrown from a descendant of mariners; when that wasn't enough to carry him to the other side of the bay, he leaned over the guardrail and laughed at his own reflection in the water. The wind whipped his tiny body into mad dance along the starboard and the boom clocked him straight over, plunging him deep into the sea.
The ocean greeted him, eyeless and murky green. Ryusui's first time drowning would be his last and he felt, despite hands pulling him to the surface, that whichever way sent him to heaven he'd want this moment to go on forever. The gut-strong movements of the water around him, that long stretch of unexplorable deep, the infinite blue darkness that sucked a stretch of air from his lungs.
Warmth of bodies, sea-water sweat. When they rescued him he was breathless from the awe of the ocean but also from Sai, who was without his computer, cradling his head in his hands.
"Stupid Ryusui," Sai wept as he held him tightly, cried, "you stupid, stupid boy,"
This was the feeling he desired. It was ineffable.
*
Eventually, expectantly, the New Perseus was forcefully delayed by storm. That was unsurprising with Senku on board, though a fair number of the crew had yet to experience the extent Senku's ill-favor especially in regards to weather. Ryusui too found himself at fault now, standing behind Francois as the two of them stared at the spotty radar, the erratic, static snow coming from the speakers. Something about this storm was different than others they'd encountered: there was chaos in the air he could feel by gut alone, and the metal chassis was suffocating, as suffocating as his little room in the East Wing. The ship groaned - a wave slammed into her starboard side. He felt the water had rushed through him, straight into his lungs.
“I failed you,” Francois was turning their head now to meet Ryusui, who could barely afford another second of time. They bowed, “I did not prepare for this possibility-”
“It was my error.” Ryusui cut him off. "You wouldn't have the experience to make this call."
“We’ve just been lucky thus far.” they breathed in, tried to maintain calm. “Far too lucky and pre-occupied with other tasks.”
“3,700 years of natural evolution,” Ryusui paced back and forth at the helm. Francois had already contacted Kohaku to to check for stragglers still out on the open floor, though by now if any of them were still above deck the merciless gale would have knocked them into the sea. “3,700 years, of course there would have been changes to the currents!” He moved suddenly, reaching for the intercom that connected communications for all the rooms in the New Perseus together. A red light flickered on beside the switch to indicate comms were online and Chelsea answered, devilishly quick to intercept his call.
“Chelsea! This’ll be exciting, won’t it!”
“It’s not looking good boss,” her voice was a static, nervous squeak. “Based on where we are I think the currents here must’ve shifted 3,700 years from its original path. This storm is fierce AF!”
Ryusui snapped his fingers. “3 days earlier than I anticipated that we’d hit these drafts. My estimations aren’t usually wrong but we're about to pay for this miscalculation back in full.” Ryusui’s eyes were darting across the room now — Francois was running already, slamming the alarm on the way as they bolted for the open door to the corridor that led to the labs. “Where are you?”
She let out a yelp as the splintering of wood came cleanly through the speaker. “Lab 3! Gonna go secure our stuff ASAP!”
“Hello?” Senku tapped in, his voice brittle and harsh. “Oi, Ryusui, I almost got a face full of acid. Care to explain what the hell is going on?”
"Securing hazardous materials," Francois said above him. Ryusui could hear the sound of glass shattering rattling through Senku’s speaker - Chrome babbling in the background, footsteps rushing here and to.
“Just some impromptu sailing practice, Senku!” He boomed back. “Get everyone out of the labs!”
Chrome squawked frighteningly above the intelligible decibel. Others were chiming in now, as the rocking of the boat became so severe that it was impossible to ignore even at the lowest level of the ship. All around them the emergency siren stirred the whole crew into motion.
“Ryusui-chan?”
“Hey, what’s happening?”
“Ryusui, are we gonna be okay?"
Kohaku pinged in from the galley.
“Everything is bolted down here, Ryusui.” she was slightly out of breath. “At least, I think I got all of it. The deck is starting to flood and there's been some damage to the tanks, nothing that can’t be repaired once we anchor.”
“We’ll be altering course effective immediately.” Ryusui shouted at the intercom. “It's an emergency! Everyone but the captain stays in the war room until I give the all clear!”
There was, of course, standard procedure in the event of a high-seas weather event as severe as what they were heading into. Ryusui counted himself both incredibly lucky and highly unfortunate that their experience on the Perseus previously never had to include protocol of this kind - but that just meant complacency, as Francois mentioned, and a lack of stricter safety measures. His oversight as a captain - in the new world there were far too many things to keep track of. New ship, new waters, new world. He had only the grace of knowing the waterways were totally empty, and the only vessel capable of withstanding currents like these were ones he designed by hand.
The novelty of this was a double-edged sword on its own: In deep waters they had no other point of contact, no documentation of new phenomena, no longer a distinct trade route through the currents that had once been as familiar to Ryusui as the hallway to and fro his classes. Ukyo’s sonar equipment bled such a reminder into his ears, piercing as he met face to face with the source of the tempest in eyeshot pulling in a current so strong that it seemed trying to bend the ship's hull towards it like a black hole. The maelstrom ahead he could see clearly with naked eye, catastrophically vivid from his vantage point at the head of the bridge, and turning the angle of the New Perseus Ryusui knocked into the shoulder of their first meter-high wave as the weight of the water slammed into the ship like a slab of concrete. Water flooded the deck, light towers flickering ripping into the wood insets where they were nailed as debris collided with them.
He scrambled back to his feet and flipped on the intercom again.
“It's a whirlpool,” Holding back his shortness of breath. He laughed, the adrenaline of flirting death a toxic shot of dopamine. "one for the books, I suppose. Minami would be gutted to know she missed this."
“Her loss,” Senku responded with a snort. There was a murmur of noise behind him.
"Can I get a head count?" Gen came in through the speaker, his voice a shriek of panic as he said, "Everyone is here but you!"
Excellent. Sweat bled out between the ridges of his knuckles. He switched off two-way communication and focused his efforts ahead of him. “Flooding the ballasts. I’m going to adjust our center of gravity.”
The boardwalk at the bow was beginning to tear off. Pieces of the floor were colliding with the gas tanks, the backup storage units, they had their fuel stored externally— most of the flying debris caught on the main catwalk, and the operating station at the stern was safe from most of the damage.
“The New Perseus is situated on the outer circle of the maelstrom's current.” Ryusui’s hands were stiff and white-knuckled with concentration. "We'll make it out, it'll just be tough!”
He could count on his hand how many he had seen one this up close. The childish part of him reveled in the glory of the storm, which whipped around them so fiercely it felt almost as if you could not hear anything at all. But of course, any fool of a sailor who got close enough to a maelstrom was a poor navigator, a poor communicator, a bad chartplotter. Ryusui had the confidence to know he was none of those things; the New World looked kindly upon no one in its primitive forms.
It was of course, just as he yelled this into the intercom, that a piece of the catwalk came loose and spun ferociously across the length of the ship— the blunt side of the metal rod throttled right across the main window of the bridge like a bat hitting home run and the glass screamed as the current of the biting wind webbed quickly along the cracks of damage. He did not even notice he was bleeding until he brought his hand up to keep his hat on and felt the trickle of blood across his forehead turn from warm to ice-cold, as the suction of the wind through the glass made a caterwauling yowl, and with one hand on the rudder Ryusui wiped the blood away from his eye, smudging it into the intercom as he flicked it on again.
“Damage to some of our radar equipment, the window's broken.” He grunted. There was no way they wouldn’t have known, based on the rattling, the groaning. “Brace for impact—”
The window shattered. A piece of metal found its way in and the vacuous wind was dragging it across the floor, screeching, ripping through the varnish. Ryusui whooped, bold and clear as his eye met with the movement of the maelstrom, and he found it was true that stories made monsters of Mother Earth, that she was the great equalizer no matter if you were big or small or naive or experienced. Just as he had witnessed in Senku’s hot air balloon so many years ago, nature was beyond sentimentality. And yet in moments like these, staring down the face of something so terrifyingly interminable, Ryusui felt that drowning feeling again, that somehow there was nowhere else he’d rather be than here, one hair’s breadth away from death.
The Perseus broke free of the ripping vortex of water as it spat them out into the wider Indian Ocean, two days farther from Indonesia. It took only a moment more before he stepped away from the wheel of the ship, gaining awareness of his surroundings and the loose glass at his feet, the debris, the strong winds blowing in through the broken glass keeping the door to the bridge shut.
He felt little of what came after, reaching for the side of his head where a stinging heightened the senses in his left ear - it came away very wet and he realized with a sharp and sudden clarity how much he could see on the floor: glass embedded into the wood panels like daggers, sprays of salt water reflecting the muddy tracks of his boot soles, his hat and the silver buttons of his jacket swirled into an old wet rag. Only when the door burst open and Francois rushed in did Ryusui feel pain at all - and there was no petrification to dull his senses, nor would he ask for such a thing, not even as he fell to his knees into the steady arms of his ward who held him as if he were still a child.
“Unbolt the infirmary,” Francois was speaking above him. “He’s got a concussion and some scratches.” The cadence of their voice unraveled as he spoke, a fuzzy distortion. The storm had died and a sun shower sprinkled in through the broken windshield of the bridge now, and it made the oil-slick glass shimmer and glow like pebbles of sunlit sand. Always the sea stuck to him in his mind.
He fell into a dream.
They must have been close to land, enough that you could see the pier lights not as dots in the distance but glass and metal fastenings. This was not the Stone World, but the Old World. He dreamt he saw his home, those ships lined up like a brigade along the Izu bank, stationed on the calm glass surface of the emerald sea.
“I’m sorry,” someone whispered.
“What for?” Ryusui said.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t understand you.” They said again. “We were too young and you look just like our father and the pressure Ryusui the pressure I couldn’t take the pressure,”
They were hyperventilating now but Ryusui had still half his body stuck in a dream. He realized there was a hand stuck to his, and he put it closer to his heart, maybe it could calm its shivering, his mother told him long ago before she left him that he had a heart that beat steady like waves rolling past the hour of midnight, when the moon pulled the tide in and cleaned the bay out, in and out, calm the fear, calm it steady, listen to the sound and rush of my blood—
"Stay with me," Ryusui mumbled. "Just stay."
*
(
Truthfully, Francois had been working overtime. Ryusui's clients were more of a handful than he'd expected, but that was part of the job - he never expected anything to be easy.
It happened so fast. He'd been weaving too quickly through the crowd, he'd been too familiar with this dance. He did not take into account the clumsiness of people to whom a dressed up event like this was a rare occurence, and when he spun on his heel he expected to be out-manouvered - instead, his back bumped into the jut of bone and someone yelped as glass shattered across the floor.
Any gentlemen would have assisted. He leaned down and touched fingers with the man on the floor, who looked up into his eyes and smiled first, a flush on his cheeks from the embarrassment.
"Thanks," he said and his mouth curled into an O. His eyes laddered up and down his body and then up again, the blush deepened to something rose-like, reaching for the back of his neck. "Uh- thank you. I don't usually frequent parties like these, I'm too clumsy for them."
Ryusui said nothing. Sai was dressed to the nines, he looked handsomer than the pictures. Ryusui had not seen him in 10 years and yet he was exactly as Ryusui would have pictured him - the only difference being Sai was no longer in Ryusui's life and they had never played chess together, and the racetrack Ryusui had built for the both of them had since been re-renovated into an ice-rink for wintersports at the estate and Sai was not interested in him because they weren't the same and Ryusui was too much and Sai did not thank The Family and Ryusui was The Family would he never say his name-
"Oh, shit," Sai said. He looked, properly, saw the pin on Ryusui's suit, and this time his face drained of all color. Too much was the sacrifice Ryusui had been willing to pay and still, as Sai took a step back the 10 year old in him thought the price of that freedom steep, maybe it wasn't worth it. Nothing was worth the look Sai gave him now.
"I didn't know," Ryusui said. "Sai, I swear I didn't know."
Sai took another step back. His voice was very cold and shaky as he said, "did they send you? Did you sponsor this?"
"Only Francois is with me—"
"I don't believe it."
"The competition was unbiased, you won by pure skill." Ryusui could not look away. "It was just a coincidence."
"I'm not doing this right now." Sai stumbled as he took a step back. "I'm not doing this. I'm leaving. Give your grant to someone else."
"Sai-"
"No, no no." Sai said. He would not even look at him. Kept his gaze to the floor, to his heels. He was wearing heels, short black heels. "Nope. I'm not going back. You can't make me go back."
"I'm not taking you back." Ryusui surged forward, insistently, "I would never take you back,"
"Then why are you here?" Sai hissed. "Why else would you be here but to drag me back into that selfish family!" His eyes widened, he flinched at what he said, and it was too late to take it back but still he put his hands up to his face and whispered under his breath, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—"
Ryusui's feet were rooted to the ground as he stared, and Sai was pushing the remaining shattered glass on the floor with his foot - at once, a waitress came between them, severed the sightline, Ryusui was not moving, he was looking at the twist of Sai's face, the white of his eyes, the jut of his lip as he apologized under his breath like it was some sort of warding charm. Like Ryusui was a curse and he did not want to see him again, of course not, Ryusui was The Family and Sai was not Sai left him Sai left him Sai left him—
Please don't go, Ryusui thought. Please don't go again—
"I'm sorry," Sai said helplessly, his voice wrung high and painful. He turned and ran into the crowd.
)
*
The boat groaned. A clock ticked upwards in time he lost to his unconscious thought.
Eventually he woke up to the dark of the infirmary, felt an ache in his hands and his feet, a throbbing in his temple as the amorphous shadows of the room corrected themselves, shifted into shapes along his forearms. Somebody’s pencil rolled around in the valley of the thin sheet across his legs, a hand creasing waves into the blanket. There was quiet breathing to his left, an awkward, jutting shoulder trying to support its head beside Ryusui’s thigh. Sai had made an effort to fit himself against the narrowness of the bed.
In Malabar, Sai had run away. He had looked down angrily to the floor, scared, offended, confused— a mottled mess of indescribable emotions, from what Ryusui remembered. Here, he was sound asleep, and there was something so wistful about seeing someone's vulnerability, certainly someone you knew, maybe someone you loved.
Of course I love Sai, Ryusui thought, plain as day. I love everyone. It did not feel like much of a confession or a declaration. It was not enough, and again, Ryusui had no other explanation for the stitch in his gut other than attributing it his one flaw and strength; to his all encompassing desire.
Sai twitched then, and blinked his eyes open slowly, as if he’d known Ryusui was watching him. There was a drowsed look in his gaze that made Ryusui feel odd, it was too intimate, and they did not know each other like that, he did not know what to make of it. It unmoored him.
“You’re here.” Ryusui said as Sai scrambled to make himself upright. The moon shone in through the slit window, just enough light to tell time of day. He looked down at his wrist, almost instinctively, and realizing where he was shook his head with a self-inflicting tut.
“Drink some water,” He nearly knocked over a lamp on the nightstand trying to reach for the glass. Beside it were an assortment of ointments, uncapped. A handful of rubik's cubes, each one in sequential stages of incompletion. The glass of water Sai was reaching for was full, and spilled a little when he pushed it into Ryusui's hand, watched with a clueless sort of air about him as it was accepted. “How are you… after all that?”
“Good.” Ryusui stretched out his arms, testing his shoulders. Felt the sting of stitches along his forehead, where it had been cut by the glass. One of his ears was clogged, and when he popped it he felt fully conscious again, shaking himself out as he cleared his throat. “Who’s manning the Perseus?”
“Senku brought her closer to the shoreline so we could drop the anchor."
"Excellent," Ryusui snapped his fingers — hissed a little when the action tore open a cut on his ring finger. "Ah— and where are we?"
"Indonesia," Sai said. "We lost one of the smaller fuel tanks… or something, Chrome was saying, so they're trying to fix it right now— don’t worry about it though and— hey sit, sit down!”
Ryusui finally stilled, and Sai looked close to burning up, clutching at a little piece of his sleeve. He combed his hair back, scrounged it up in his hand, scrunched his face into one concentric wrinkle as he struggled to come up with, it seemed, something, anything to say. He was concentrating, he took a deep breath to calm himself. Ryusui held his own unknowingly.
“I really don't know you at all!” He said finally, throwing up his hands. “Making rubik's cubes, giving me paper, manning a cargo ship of some sort—"
"She's an exploration vessel," Ryusui corrected dutifuly.
"—very— very dangerous manouvers if I might say—”
“Very,” Ryusui puffed his chest out proudly, folding his arms. Then winced, as the deep sore of his healing injuries sharpened the pain. "Quite the challenge. I never had to worry about weather like that in the Old world. What did you think?"
"What did—" Sai spluttered, threw his hands up. The way he expressed his indignation, it made him so animated. It endeared Ryusui, just a little, made his worry feel so personal. "What did I think? I thought we were going to die!"
“This is really not where I thought I'd be in 3,700 years.” Sai said weakly. "Frankly we should all be fossilised and not—" he gestured wildly. "You know, sailing across the the deep ocean."
“Yet this is where we are. The Stone World is a completely different experience from the modern past.” Ryusui answered. “Anyways. I’m a captain, and I have a crew.” He reached out to grasp Sai’s shoulder. “I have a responsibility to my crew. After I,” he said, parsing his words slowly. “After I asked to revive you, it would be foolish of me to do a poor job of keeping you safe, right?”
Sai jerked awkwardly away and closed his eyes. He had his features scrunched up again, nervous and angry at the same time, like he could not help but express his thoughts across his face, and he picked up his pencil where it was between Ryusui’s legs and spun it wildly in his fingers saying nothing. Just breathing. He collected his thoughts methodically. Ryusui saw that every spin relaxed a string of tension across his furrowed brow, and finally as he spun his pencil for the tenth time Sai sighed, a weight lifted from his shoulders, and he looked up with so much guilt that Ryusui could not help but think in that moment that he would not be able to bear to see his half-brother cry.
Sai didn’t cry, of course, but he rattled out a shaky breath. “You're just as loud as I remember.”
“What can I say?” Ryusui shrugged. “Boosts the confidence."
"What, like a barking dog?" The corner of Sai's mouth twitched again, up, stayed up. He was smiling crookedly, for the first time since they'd met — smiling at him, not alongisde him (thrilling, a thrill ran up Ryusui's spine) — a small huff of laughter unraveling the final strand of frustration from his face. "Except you’re quiet when you talk to me. You don’t talk to me like you talk to everyone else.”
“Call it favoritism.”
“For the half-brother you haven't met in ten years? I couldn't even—” he stopped abruptly, looking away. The tips of his ears were red. "I uh, I couldn't even recognize you."
(his mouth curled into an O, his eyes laddered up and down and up again, so Ryusui did wonder, had always wondered, if he were a stranger—)
Ryusui looked to the floor. “I just don’t want to scare you away.”
Sai blinked. He seemed shocked at the prospect. He looked away muttering, “I’m on a boat, I couldn’t run if I tried.”
“Would you try?”
“No,” Sai insisted, and he shook his head, and his hair fell all over his face again. “Ryusui,” he said. "I swear."
“I never did get you that grant, did I?” Ryusui said after a while. “The one you won, in Malabar.”
“I didn't take it," Sai let himself be distracted by desk-light, watching the shadow of his fingers as they hovered over the lampshade. "but I shouldn't have… I shouldn't have said what I did.”
“I am not our father.” Ryusui said as he recalled his waking dream.
“Not at all.”
“Then, why are you still scared of me?”
“I'm not,” Sai combed his hair behind his left ear. Looking away he said, “I’m just overwhelmed by you.”
At this someone rapped sharply at the door and Sai sprung to his feet, spun on his heel to face the wall in immediate dismissal of their conversation. Suika burst into the room with a squeak, Kohaku at her back, and a bright red shade of summer burn along the bridge of her nose as she dived for the edge of Ryusui’s bed.
“You really scared us, Ryusui!” she bawled. “It was like what happened to Senku all over again, I really thought you would die!”
“Ha ha!” Ryusui barked, “now, how could I do that?” and for all that he was still recovering he found it in himself to laugh, messing Suika’s hair fondly as she sobbed messily across the blanket. Kohaku was speaking now, something about one of the smaller gas tanks needing repairs, and then Francois had come down, behind them, Chrome was making a noise along the stairwell with Kaseki in tow. Finally the whole of the kingdom of science squeezed themselves into the little infirmary - even Senku, making himself known via intercom, snarked about taking Ryusui's place at the helm.
All were present now but Sai, who had slipped out unnoticeably, left only his pencil beside Ryusui’s hand as he backed away from the crowd. Subtle as shadow sliding under moving light. Ryusui never even saw him leave.