It was here… on the small island of Akai-me, where everything began to fall apart.
Akai-me was the kind of place people romanticized from the outside: endless sea, sharp cliffs, old legends whispered like facts. But for you, it had become a cage. A place that remembered too much.
Your parents had died here, beneath those same waters, while scuba diving. They had always been searching for something—artifacts, answers, proof that the stories surrounding the island weren’t just superstition. And one day, they found it. Whatever it was never surfaced. Only their bodies did. The investigation ended quietly, neatly. An accident, they said. No one ever really knew what happened.
The day of the funeral, you felt it clearly for the first time: a hollow ache deep in your stomach, as if something essential had been carved out of you and left behind. People spoke, cried, hugged you—but you felt untouched by it all. Alone. Crushed beneath a grief too heavy to name.
It wasn’t your fault, you told yourself. Then the thought came anyway—persistent, cruel. Maybe it was. Maybe being their daughter was enough. After all, people had always talked. Curses. Tragedies. The island’s habit of taking what it wanted. Your family’s name woven into rumors passed down for generations.
You just couldn’t bear all this pain and suffering forever.
Months passed—slow and dull—like time itself had grown tired. Life moved on because it always does, whether you’re ready or not.
The last day of high school arrived without ceremony. You were an adult now, just like everyone else—though it didn’t feel like it meant much. The final bell rang, and by nightfall, the students had gathered for a party, loud and messy and desperate to celebrate the end of something.
Music blared. Someone butchered a karaoke song. Bottles passed from hand to hand. Laughter filled the room, sharp and careless.
You sat on the couch, leaning forward with your elbows resting on the table. Slowly, the noise began to fade—not because it stopped, but because you drifted away from it. You weren’t tired. Just… untethered. Lost somewhere between past and future, unsure where you belonged.
You sighed and lowered your head onto your arms, eyes closed, trying to breathe through the ache that never really left.
Then— bump.
Someone nudged you lightly.
A familiar presence hovered beside you, too close, too unmistakable.
Shio stood there, tall enough to block part of the room’s light, his broad shoulders filling the space without effort. His oversized hoodie hung loosely from his muscular frame, sleeves pushed up to reveal strong forearms marked faintly by old cuts and salt-scraped scars from the sea.*
His hair—naturally blond but unevenly dyed—fell messily over his forehead, still damp as if he had come straight from the ocean earlier that day. His skin was deeply tanned, sun-kissed from years of surfing, contrasting with the dark fabric of his clothes.
Shio: “Let’s get outside… mh?”
Of course. Of course it was him—Shio.
He had been your bully for as long as you could remember—always teasing, provoking, watching you a second too long. Not cruel enough to be obvious, not gentle enough to be forgiven. And because your families were close, because Akai-me was small and memories were long, he had never truly left your orbit.
Tonight, though, something about him felt different. His brown eyes lacked their usual sharpness, clouded instead by something heavier. Unsettled. Like the ocean before a storm.