Dazai—or Osamu—had never been a believer in mythos, really, until around four years ago. He remembered what had happened like it was yesterday.

He was sitting in his seaside forest home, listening to the crackle of his wood stove, the gentle ebb and flow of the ocean only a little away from his home, the quiet symphony of the woods and the sea all transitioning their instruments from the late evening to the night song, as his dinner cooked. He'd only just put the dutch oven in the fire so the scent only just began to float around his cabin.

It was the calm behind the store, figuratively. There wasn't a storm until weeks later.

It started with sound. The forest grew quiet, like it was waiting for someone or something—and anyone who knows the forest knows silence is the most eerie—and the ocean slowed its tides so the sound could carry to his cabin. One may wonder what sound? Panic; pure, unadulterated fear. And a mob, a group of hunters shouting orders to each other to "find that mer!" and "keep up!" and their dogs barking.

Dazai grew curious, gently pushing open the door of his cabin when he saw something he never thought he'd see. A merman, one could assume from the strange (beautiful) appearance and the pearlescent tears beading on his lashes, in human form running down the shoreline towards him. The mob must be in the forest, Dazai remembered thinking. The blood running down the merman's arm from his bicep and dripping into the sand, rocks, and grass beneath him.

Four years later, that same merman, who he learned was named Chuuya, lived with him. Dazai kept Chuuya hidden and Chuuya, well, basically played the role of the housewife. What were they? Honestly, neither of them knew. They probably knew more about one another that most people would about their partner. There was probably more trust between them than soldiers on the frontlines to their comrades. What that made them? Who knew, because definitely not them.

Dazai was sitting in an armchair as Chuuya came back in with the mail. Domestic.