Six thirty-two was the time Jotaro scrawled into the sign-in sheet next to his name, giving the passive, older man sitting at the desk a nod. He’d been worried that by the time he eventually arrived, they’d give him grief about it being too late and he wouldn’t be let in, but thankfully, no one seemed to care. If he’d managed to break his promise to Noriaki this quickly, it would’ve been pretty sh*tty of him, and he was trying not to follow that pattern in his life anymore.
Had things only gone according to plan, he would’ve been here earlier, but he’d been running late with Jolyne all day. She wasn’t even a preteen yet, but the issues getting her out of bed on the weekends were already starting, and after finally dropping her off at her mom’s, a sequence of emails from the head of the biology department at school, panicking over something he couldn’t find in some of the paperwork for the beginning of the year, had chimed in on his phone. Once Jotaro had gotten back to his place and started dealing with that, only to be informed ten minutes later it was a non-issue, it was past five o’clock, he hadn’t eaten dinner, and he still had the almost hour-long drive to the Foundation, with a mandatory pit stop at the nearest gas station to pick up the recommended cherry slushie.
It was that very slushie he handed over next so the attendant could clean the cup with a disinfecting wipe. The plastic-wrapped straw got a quick wipe too, then it was returned to Jotaro, who was now free to make his way into the main room—with his own keycard, this time.
The huge tank was still a marvel in itself. How hard it was to build these things and how much work it took to keep them running properly behind the scenes was no small feat. There had to be another room below full of heavy-duty machinery that needed its own dedicated staff just for the daily maintenance. Jotaro could only wonder if they were aware of what this whole operation was for, or if they were just as in the dark as he’d been until last week.
Noriaki didn’t make his appearance immediately, so Jotaro busied himself with washing his hands at the sink. It was once he was in the midst of putting on the medical gloves that he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye. The blur of green and red quickly glided past the front of the tank, taking a lap around the middle and then coming around again, this time slower.
Jotaro grabbed the slushie from the counter and approached the tank, stopping in front and waiting for Noriaki to do the same. After making another small circle that let Jotaro see the motion of his fins in better detail, he did, giving him a wave and a quick smile. Then, instead of gesturing upward this time, he pointed to the side, seeming hopeful that Jotaro would understand.
Jotaro gestured to the small door by the stairs to confirm, and Noriaki nodded enthusiastically, darting to the back of the tank not a moment later. Jotaro followed suit, heading through the door into the room with lighting much brighter than that of the tank’s subdued glow and the lights in the ceiling far above it. It was a harsh enough adjustment that he wished there was a dimmer switch on the damn fluorescents.
He stood by the large bath and watched curiously through the plexiglass covering of the tunnel, able to see Noriaki shimmying himself inside it and hitting a button. Then the water that had flooded in with him from the main tank slowly drained, and afterward, there was a quick shower of clean water from the piping above the tube. A small, hydraulic hiss signalled the lift of the cover on this end, and Noriaki pushed from the tunnel into the bath, repositioning himself onto his back with a fluid spin.
“Hello,” Noriaki said with that small smile back on his face. “It’s nice to see you. How are you?”
“I’m good,” Jotaro replied. “This isn’t too late, is it? I was supposed to leave earlier, but I got held up.”
“Oh, no, whatever time you can make it is perfectly fine. I sleep in smaller increments whenever I’m able to, so I know I’m awake at odder times than humans usually are. The main facility has certain hours they’ll let people in depending on their clearance, correct? But my wing is never closed, so as long as you make it in here, you can stay as long as you like. Is that for me?”
“Yeah,” Jotaro said, passing the cup into Noriaki’s outstretched hand. “They said you liked these.”
“I do. Thank you very much.” Noriaki quickly unwrapped the straw, popping it into the top and taking a sip before he asked, “Could you turn on the faucet, please?”
“Sure.” Jotaro leaned over the side of the tub, twisting the taps in the middle and noting as he did that the cool stream of water pouring out didn’t have the same smell of salt as the water in the tank. “You’re okay with freshwater?” he asked, stepping back and pulling one of the chairs from the wall over so he could sit in front of the bath.
“Yes, we’re euryhaline,” Noriaki said, settling against the backrest and periodically sipping from the cup as the water slowly filled the bath. It was reminiscent of an otter more than anything. “They presume we were somewhat migratory, given the different regions they found us in, although that could’ve been due more to habitat destruction and a lack of viable mates. It could’ve also been for spawning purposes, but it’s hard to know for sure. Either way, they found us in the oceans, so our tanks are saline, but for the areas we interact with people in more, it’s easier to use freshwater. And for the electronics’ sake,” he added quickly at the end.
“Yeah. You play video games,” Jotaro remarked, looking at the consoles under the TV he’d noticed before.
“I do. They’re very entertaining. They pass the time well.”
“My daughter tried to get me to play those with her a couple times, but I don’t really get them. I accidentally beat her in one of the matches and she got mad at me. Haven’t really tried again since then.”
“How did you accidentally beat her?” Noriaki asked, giggling around his straw.
“Well, the controls aren’t that hard once you get used to it. I just don’t understand the appeal, I guess. There’s this one that she plays where you find stuff so you can build more stuff, and that’s all you’re really supposed to do. I don’t get the point of it. I think it’s just about being creative…but I’m not that creative, so that’s probably why.”
Noriaki paused, looking at Jotaro strangely for a moment. “Are you talking about Minecraft?” he finally asked.
“Yeah, I think that’s what it’s called.”
“Oh. I quite like it. There’s a lot you can do in it, actually, but I suppose that’s hard to tell just from looking at it. I enjoy the creative aspects of the gameplay, and the exploration. It’s a nice way to indulge in those things.”
“It gets a little dry in here?” Jotaro wondered, leaning back in the chair that was slightly too small, as most were, and folding his arms. Only a moment after, he winced, realizing the bad pun he’d just unintentionally made, but thankfully Noriaki didn’t seem to pick up on it. It might’ve been too abstract for his direct, factual way of conversation—or he might’ve just pitied Jotaro enough not to mention it.
“It does,” Noriaki agreed. “The days tend to run together unless there’s something specific happening. I don’t typically keep track of them, but I did this week, since I knew you were coming,” he said with a quiet, rueful laugh.
“Is it just up to you to keep yourself busy?”
Jotaro tried to keep the judgement out of his voice as he asked the question, but he was honestly unimpressed by the seeming lack of engagement Noriaki had available to him, and that was coming from someone who enjoyed solitude and a general simplicity in life. It was like all the effort had gone into the underwater environment of the tank, with little consideration for how the other space he was meant to spend his time in looked or functioned in terms of comfort and interest. Maybe if the department head hadn’t tried to impress how important his human traits were, the discrepancy wouldn’t have stood out as much, but sitting in the room with him now, it was glaring. Thanks to the research and documentation Jotaro had been provided with so far, which he’d continued pouring through at home whenever he got the chance, he also had a good idea as to why.
This whole set-up seemed like an afterthought because it was. There were only eight more of these creatures still alive, but even in that tiny sample pool, Noriaki was an outlier, and it was almost certainly due to the circ*mstances of his rescue and his age at the time. The others had already been adults when they were moved to these facilities, and much warier of humans because of it. Wary was actually putting it lightly, given the documented displays of extreme aggression and stress. They’d had no understanding of what was actually going on, and no reason for it in their minds. The ones who were sicker weren’t sick to the point that the human intervention was well-received, and explaining how there was a good chance they’d die out there or suffer a worse fate in a matter of years was impossible. Even as they slowly adjusted, they’d never warmed to the idea of humans as a whole like Noriaki had. They all had certain people they trusted, a few of whom became the mates for the ones who needed that, but no desire to socialize like Noriaki did. Apparently only three others even talked, and it didn’t go beyond expediting their immediate wants and needs.
Noriaki was the only one who’d found what the humans around him were doing interesting when it didn’t pertain to food, threat assessment, or certain play or mating behaviours. He was the only one who’d wanted to participate in aspects of their society, who wanted to talk and converse and learn about what humans did, thanks to his natural curiosity and mental plasticity as a child. He’d been frightened at first, being sick and in an entirely new environment full of unfamiliar people performing all sorts of unfamiliar procedures on him, but how ill he was at the start had actually aided the process. His recovery had given him the awareness that most of them were just there to help, not hurt, and that had made the idea of interacting with them in a way they could understand much more advantageous and enticing. This difference was why so many researchers and staff had been clamouring to be on his team at the beginning, as evidenced by the numerous transfer requests from the other teams within the files, with that gradually shifting over the years. In the beginning, he’d been new and exciting and full of untapped potential, of so many facets yet unexplored. Now, he was far more like a human in mind than all the others, and that was probably what had relegated him to a bare room where he was mostly in charge of finding his own diversions.
No one really knew what to do with him anymore. He was too human to warrant the same amount of study the others still did, but too animal to go anywhere else.
“I usually just decide on what I feel like when I feel like it,” Noriaki said with a shrug, missing the much deeper point of Jotaro’s question. “I can come in here whenever I like—I just have to press the button—so if I feel like playing a game, or watching a movie, I do, yes.”
Jotaro nodded at that, still mulling over the picture he’d formed in his mind over the last week with all the added context. Maybe afterthought was too harsh of a word to describe this set-up: obviously, there’d been a lot of care and deliberation put into it in particular areas. The tunnel connecting this room with the tank wasn’t something that could’ve just been dreamt up and installed overnight, and the gaming systems he’d been provided with were all expensive. As Noriaki started showing him, clearly excited by the prospect to explain it all, he had dozens upon dozens of games in his online libraries, and the box hooked up to the TV gave him access to pretty much every streaming service available. Someone had taken the time to do all that for him, and someone else had made sure to allocate a line in the department budget to pay for everything—but at the same time, it reinforced the thought Jotaro still couldn’t shake. For them, it was easier to just give him this online world and its illusion of choice, rather than creating an environment that was actually suitable for his specific needs. At the very least, they could expend the effort to make it seem less like a prison or a hospital in here, but they hadn’t even done that.
“I really love how many things I can watch now through streaming,” Noriaki was saying, flicking through different titles on his list with the remote. “When I was younger, they used to have to rotate the VHS tapes and the DVDs for me, because there was only so much space in the cupboards,” he said with a light laugh, glancing back over his shoulder at the row along the wall behind him. “But I kept my favourites anyway. It’s just nice to have them, I think.”
“Yeah,” Jotaro agreed. “It gets annoying when they randomly take sh*t off.”
“Do you have a favourite movie?” Noriaki asked, looking at Jotaro expectantly, the fins by his ears fully flared.
“Never Cry Wolf,” Jotaro answered easily. “Have you seen it?”
“Yes, I have. I think twice. I enjoyed it—the scenery was very beautiful. But it also made me quite sad for the wolves. Thankfully the novel wasn’t as disheartening.”
“The story really isn’t that factual, anyway. Definitely not in the movie, but a lot of the book’s been contested by actual biologists too. The author was a writer first and foremost, so he made a compelling narrative like he was supposed to,” Jotaro said with a shrug. “It did some good, though. Got a lot more people concerned about wolf-culling. I just watched it a lot growing up. It was part of the reason why I was so interested in biology and environmentalism.”
“That’s lovely,” Noriaki said sincerely. “If you’d like, we can watch it. If it’s not on streaming, I can rent it.”
“Yeah, maybe later. You’re right that it’s kind of heavy at the end, so probably not the best thing right now.”
Jotaro shifted in the plastic chair, his arms remaining folded as he tried to get more comfortable. He understood why the material had been chosen, for practicality’s sake, but not only was it hard, it was also just a little too small for him, like most things, and he kept wanting to lean in like he normally did when he was getting into a conversation. He couldn’t, though—not when there was no table in front of him, only the tiled shelf around the bath that was just low enough to be awkward. Nothing about this room was really conducive to visiting for any prolonged period of time, but that tracked along with everything else.
“Would you like to watch something else then?” Noriaki offered.
“Sure. Do you have a favourite movie?”
“Oh, I couldn’t pick just one.”
“How about top five?” When Jotaro saw Noriaki’s doubtful expression, he chuckled. “Top ten?”
“I’d really have to consider it,” Noriaki said quietly. He looked intensely serious about it—even a little distressed, like he hadn’t expected to be asked the same in return. Usually people just rattled off whatever came to mind—it wasn’t that important of a question, and opinions changed all the time—but Jotaro had to remind himself that atypical reactions like this would be the norm with him. It probably was a lot harder to narrow things down with the sheer amount of media he must’ve watched in the span of over two decades.
“How about one you liked recently?” Jotaro suggested, hoping that adding another criteria in there would make the decision easier.
He really hadn’t expected that would result in them watching a detailed and oddly humorous documentary about the behind-the-scenes at the New York Public Library, which clocked in at almost three and a half hours, but honestly, the only complaint he had throughout was that he got pretty thirsty around the two hour mark. It was during that pause, after Noriaki informed him he could just summon one of the staff stationed in the monitoring room concealed behind the walls opposite them, and they’d get him whatever he wanted from the fridge they had in there, that Jotaro popped another one of those questions hovering around the back of his mind.
“Who got you started on the slushies?” he asked, cracking the top of the can of co*ke the person who’d come in through the other room had handed him. Apparently, one of the doors to access the station was in the next room he’d yet to get a look at. The other was back in the main room with the tank, just by the double doors he entered through, but he’d been pretty distracted every time he was in there, so it made sense he’d missed it.
“Oh, she doesn’t work here any more, but she was very nice. She tried introducing me to a lot of different things when I was younger. I don’t have a proper birthday, but she liked to celebrate the day I was found as my birthday, and she brought me one as a treat one year. I saw children drinking them a lot in movies, so I was curious. I’ve always liked them since then.”
“They’re not worried about the food colouring?” From his reading, Jotaro knew they tried to keep their diets pretty limited. Sugary water was nothing to worry about, but food colourings weren’t the best, even for humans—especially the red ones. The flavouring could also be problematic, but there was really no way to confirm what it was made of, given how vague manufacturers could be when it came to how they derived those.
“It’s a very occasional treat,” Noriaki admitted. “Maybe once a month.”
“You know you could have actual cherries,” Jotaro told him. “Most fruits and vegetables should be fine for you to eat. No one’s ever brought those in for you?”
“No,” Noriaki said, blinking at him owlishly. “I never asked. I’m usually full just with what I catch, but…I wouldn’t be opposed to trying it, I suppose.”
“I’ll bring you some,” Jotaro said with a definitive nod to himself. There were plenty of fruits and vegetables that shouldn’t pose a problem in moderate amounts, so long as he was still getting the proper nutrition from fish. The main issue was being able to clean and prepare them properly, so he didn’t get any traces of pesticides or chlorine in his system, but Jotaro was already used to the extra effort from feeding his own fish at home. The larger quantities would just mean a lot more scrubbing.
“Thank you, that’s very thoughtful. I think you’ll need to obtain permission first, though.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem.” Jotaro shook his head, not sharing the same look of concern Noriaki had. “It’s way healthier for you than the slushies, trust me.”
“Alright,” Noriaki said, picking up the remote and hitting play again before he settled back into his recline, gently eddying the water around his tail fin. It was the first indication of a pattern of his that Jotaro picked up pretty quick on: he wanted to try new things, but anything that strayed from his usual routine, or he thought might get him into trouble, was always met with a little resistance.
Jotaro was the interloper in this, after all. Sure, his presence had been pre-approved by the authority that seemed to be a constant weight at the back of Noriaki’s mind, which was probably why he’d been able to embrace the prospect of his visits with pure, unfettered excitement, but all the ideas he brought with? Those were new, and outlandish, just for how directly they contrasted with the state of things here. They threatened some unseen hand of reprisal, even though it never came. And it wasn’t like Jotaro was suggesting things that would be harmful. They were only meant to improve Noriaki’s life, to make things a little less monotonous, to actually give him something novel to experience that wasn’t limited to the confines of a screen. They were things everyone else had and took for granted, but after so many years of only being afforded less than the bare minimum in a lot of these contexts, Noriaki had to be desensitized to the concept almost every time.
It was definitely the product of prolonged isolation and not enough stimulation for someone who was obviously so intelligent and sensitive. The department head had posited that sending him to live out in some reserve away from society would be detrimental to his emotional well-being, but it wasn’t like this counted as ‘society’ either. Far from it, and Jotaro had to wonder if the awareness that everything was under twenty-four hour live surveillance wasn’t more damaging in the long-run. Even just being there for a few hours each week, it made him squirrelly at times. When he briefly forgot about it because he was engrossed in the movie they were watching together, or whatever conversation they were having, and was then struck with the realization again, it made it worse somehow. He’d feel the obsessive need to go back over everything he did and analyze it, despite the fact that whoever was watching likely didn’t care, or was hardly paying attention. Just the knowledge that it was happening, and all those countless hours of video were being stored and archived on servers for someone like him to randomly go and watch back months or years later—that f*cked with his head immensely. Maybe Noriaki didn’t know any different, but that didn’t make it okay.
“Does it look good?” Jotaro asked a few weeks later, opening the last of the take-out containers he’d brought with. They were all laid out on the short folding table he’d asked the staff to buy. It fit over the lip of the tub pretty well, although the height was still awkward. He also had a bigger chair with some actual padding, which was a vast improvement, even if it was still something straight out of a waiting room.
“It does,” Noriaki agreed, surveying the spread.
Half of it was off-limits to him because of the seasonings, but Jotaro had made sure that there was a lot of variety in the sashimi. He was also allowed to try a bit of the daikon, and Jotaro had spent some time at home making what was essentially just a seaweed soup stripped to down to its barest form, free of any seasonings or oils, and simmered in a dashi that used dried anchovies, rather than bonito flakes. It would’ve been easier if he could’ve just gotten Noriaki a traditional miso like he had, rather than having to make it all himself, but all the typical ingredients involved fermentation and smoking, and soybeans were on the same list as rice at the moment: maybe possible for him to eat in small amounts if prepared correctly and unseasoned, but not something to introduce when they were still testing the waters with things like cherries and apples.
So far, though, he’d really liked the fruit and carrots Jotaro had brought in for him. The first parts of the movies they watched were usually accompanied by the sound of crunching now, and it made Jotaro feel better about bringing in his own food to eat, instead of rushing around to fit in dinner when he was already pressed for time. Since raw fish was something humans also ate, the progression from that to just actually eating dinner together was pretty natural. Yeah, it required some thought and checking with the restaurant to make sure they sourced their fish correctly and didn’t add anything extra to it, but that part was simple enough. Cooking something like the soup wasn’t necessary; Jotaro had just wanted Noriaki to have more of a similar experience eating sushi, even if he couldn’t try everything, and he’d managed to mostly convince himself he’d gone to the effort because kelp and seaweed were a great addition to his diet.
“Is this correct?” Noriaki asked, demonstrating the motion of his chopsticks, just like Jotaro had taught him.
He’d initially given him the old training ones Jolyne had used when she was little that he’d found still hanging around in a drawer, and they’d started practicing with the fruit last week, but they really weren’t necessary for more than a few tries. He was very slow and deliberate with them, but his dexterity was probably better than most humans’, the way his fingers articulated, so it didn’t present more than a momentary challenge. He still kept looking to Jotaro for reassurance, though. More of an issue than him actually using them improperly was his worry that he would.
“Yeah, that’s perfect,” Jotaro said, busying himself with his own food while Noriaki gently picked up a slice of yellowtail.
Observing how he went about it all would’ve been interesting in both a scientific and cultural sense, but Jotaro was actively trying not to pay too much attention to those things anymore. Feeling like his every move was being scrutinized would only deepen Noriaki’s anxieties, which was the exact opposite of what he wanted to accomplish by introducing these things.
“How is it?” Jotaro asked before taking his first bite. Noriaki was chewing very slowly, and very thoughtfully.
“It’s delicious,” he said once he’d swallowed. He went for another piece in much the same way, holding it delicately between the wooden chopsticks, his expression extremely concentrated as he chewed.
“You can try the soup too,” Jotaro suggested. “Before it gets too cold.” It was probably approaching lukewarm already, but he’d done the best he could with transporting it.
“Does it not taste as good if it’s cold?” Noriaki asked. A prudent question, given that he’d never eaten hot food until now.
“If something’s made to be hot, it usually tastes better that way,” Jotaro explained with a shrug. “Same goes for cold food.”
“I see,” Noriaki said quietly, sniffing at the broth as he picked up the lid of the thermos Jotaro had poured it into. “It’s about the preparation.”
“Yeah.”
Noriaki’s verdict about the soup was that he liked the mix of saltiness with the bit of sweet from the wakame. Maybe even more than the soup, however, he enjoyed learning that it was a very traditional and popular recipe for people in Asia to eat during or after pregnancy, given the high nutritional content. He really craved context like that whenever he could get it, and Jotaro didn’t blame him. Inside these walls, there was nothing of the sort.
“That was very nice,” he said after they’d finished, and Jotaro was packing up all the remnants. “It’s a very beautiful way to eat.”
“That’s actually a big part of why sashimi looks the way it does,” Jotaro explained absently, half his attention focused on sorting out the containers and various leftovers so the techs didn’t have too much to clean up. “A lot of care goes into cutting it so it’s visually pleasing. The experience of eating it is just as important as the taste. Every culture has that to some degree, but Japan puts a big emphasis on it in a lot of dishes. Some of the bento my mom used to make were pretty impressive, and those were just for everyday lunches.”
“I feel very lucky that you can tell me about these things,” Noriaki said, his demeanour brightening from the serious focus of before. “I wasn’t in Japan for very long, and I couldn’t communicate much then, but I’ve always been curious about the culture, since that was where I was given my name. Actually, I tried to think more about what my favourite movie was since you asked, but it was easier to decide on my favourite actor, and he’s Japanese as well. Can I show you one of his shows? It’s what he was very well known for.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jotaro said. Noriaki pointed behind him, and he looked over his shoulder.
“The tapes are in the middle cupboard, on the top shelf. It’s called “Furuhata Ninzaburō.”
Jotaro paused momentarily before he reached the cupboard, struck by instant recognition at the name. “Yeah, I know that show. I watched it when I was growing up. It’s like Columbo.”
“You’re right, it is,” Noriaki said excitedly as Jotaro grabbed one of the tapes. “I watched that as well, but I suppose I preferred Masakazu Tamura’s performance. Most of the shows I’ve kept physical copies of are his, actually. It’s difficult to find them elsewhere.”
“I liked Columbo more,” Jotaro said, inspecting the back of the faded VHS. “I thought this was a little too cheesy, especially with the sidekick. I really didn’t think they needed that. But it was still good. I watched it whenever it was on.” After another moment of looking at the tape, he asked, “How did you even get your hands on this?” He knew it was something that wouldn’t have been readily available in America, especially at the time.
“The staff at the facility I lived at in Japan used to send them to me. It started with the cartoons they played for me when I was sick, and then I started requesting…whatever they could send me, really. I wanted to learn as much of the language as I could, and I became a fan of Masakazu-san, so I have a fairly large collection now.”
“You speak Japanese too?” Jotaro asked, feeling dumbfounded yet again.
“No, I don’t speak it,” Noriaki said, almost vehemently. “I don’t have anyone to speak it with. I just listen to it.”
“Yeah, but these don’t have subtitles, right?” At Noriaki’s nod, Jotaro continued, “But you can understand all of it?”
“Most of it. I think. I’m not sure. I don’t have anyone to correct me, but from the context, my understanding usually seems correct. I assume it’s because that’s what I heard people speaking while I was getting better there.”
“Yeah, probably,” Jotaro agreed. “Watching all this stuff would definitely help.” Looking at the tape one more time, he wondered, “So if I put this on, could you translate it for me?”
That was how he confirmed Noriaki was basically fluent in verbal Japanese. Understanding it, anyway—he still refused to speak it, although he probably could no problem after a little practice, if he even needed that. It was also how Jotaro learned that a mermaid living in a top-secret facility outside of Orlando had perhaps some of the only copies of old Japanese dramas that were now considered ‘lost media’, since he bothered looking some of the titles up at home. Theoretically, it was possible that some ojiisan had taped copies sitting in a box somewhere that could eventually be rediscovered, but without that, anyone trying to track a surviving version would be out of luck, since Noriaki’s copies likely wouldn’t be leaving the facility any time soon.
Things were just weird like that here. It was like stepping into a vacuum; sometimes, it almost felt like a time capsule, as Jotaro watched old episodes of Columbo and Furuhata Ninzaburō in alternating binge sessions, striking up a solid rhythm of banter with Noriaki over their favourite parts, and the things that stuck out as a lot goofier to Jotaro now decades later. Things he hadn’t watched since childhood—things he’d never watched, but still carried that sense of nostalgia with them, just for how ancient and low quality the recordings were. Things he’d watched so, so many times, like their eventual viewing of Never Cry Wolf, with its opening of haunting instrumentals and pensive narration that still never got old.
Most of what passed through those locked double-doors with their keypad entry didn’t come out, just like all those crates of supplies Tyler, the biologist, brought with him into the arctic tundra in the film. Jotaro wasn’t sure if he liked that or not. On one hand, he started to find the hours he spent here every Sunday almost…freeing. Sure, he was allowed to have his phone with him now since he’d jumped through all the hoops of paperwork and non-disclosures the Foundation had wanted him to, so he was trusted—to an extent—but he really never did more with it than occasionally looking something up for Noriaki, or checking to make sure there wasn’t an emergency. Other than that, he was entirely disconnected from the real world. The movies and shows they watched together connected back to it, but it wasn’t an actual bridge. Just something imaginary…safe, and easily consumable. He could see how that was comforting, in theory. He liked the break it provided—he did.
But he could see just how quickly someone could lose themselves in here, same as that tundra. Nothing ever changed; the fluorescents were always on, and so were the cameras. There was nothing on the walls except for that Sting poster, and nothing for Noriaki to look forward to except him. And he really looked forward to him—Jotaro could tell. Even as they became more comfortable with each other, even as the routine grew steadier and steadier, into some kind of constant, that eagerness never left. Sometimes it seemed like Noriaki was trying to tamp it down, or conceal part of it (whatever mechanisms were behind that were honestly more confusing to Jotaro than any instinctual behaviour he’d displayed before), but the way he lit up every time Jotaro walked into the room was always there. As good as that made Jotaro feel, though—no one had acted that way around him in ages—it still didn’t seem right. His world wasn’t meant to solely revolve around him. Everyone needed something more than that.
So Jotaro brought in a calendar, one that he got his mom to mail him from Japan, with scenery that Noriaki swooned over, and tacked it to the wall. Something to help the time seem a little more real, at least. Then it was a new Sting poster (although still a vintage one, because who was really buying Sting posters nowadays?), then a few others from the video games Jotaro really had no clue about, but heard Noriaki mention the most. Then some pictures he’d taken in Japan and had printed out, and a couple of video game figurines he found online and got his mom to send him, again, with the explanation they were for Jolyne. There was a bit of pushback and bureaucracy when he brought in a new wall-mounted shelf to put them on, but it got sorted out quickly enough (the department head just had some employees install it instead of him, because of liability—like that really made sense in this circ*mstance).
Inevitably, that led to Noriaki asking more about Jotaro’s family and his childhood, or Jotaro just offering some of those details up unprompted as he explained where these things came from. Sometimes, it was easier to show, rather than just tell, which was why they occasionally had to forgo a movie, as Jotaro became distracted flicking through old photos on his phone with him, and the few hours they had that evening suddenly disappeared. On other occasions, it was because Noriaki was too entranced by listening to some of his father’s albums, CDs that Jotaro dug out of his shelves at home because he didn’t own more than a few songs digitally, which were inevitably sacrificed to Noriaki’s collection along with everything else.
That was how the outside started seeping in. What Jotaro didn’t realize at first was how each one of those individual pieces represented part of a boundary, and with each one he crossed, those bigger ones—the ones he probably never would’ve considered at the start—really didn’t seem like such an issue anymore. Why would they, when this was naturally becoming a substantial part of his life, and he was bringing more and more with him past those doors each time?
The real problem wasn’t what he brought in with him, anyway. It was if he’d get in too far, too far over his head, and become that biologist stranded in the wilds. The one who sacrificed his heart to nature.
The one who never made it out again.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” Jotaro retorted as Jolyne came wandering into the kitchen from her room, clambering onto one of the barstools at the kitchen island.
“Ugh,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I know what you’re doing. But why are you doing it?”
Jotaro surveyed the mess currently in front of him: one half of the sink full of water and the carrots he was in the midst of scrubbing, the other with a colander full of draining cherries, and the counter covered with blueberries drying on sheets of paper towel.
“I like having snacks around,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. “Aren’t you supposed to be packing?”
“I finished,” she said, causing Jotaro to frown and turn around to look at the time on the oven.
“sh*t,” he muttered. The last hour had really gotten away from them—they had to get going soon. He’d stupidly overestimated himself with the blueberries. Those tiny f*ckers were really labour intensive.
“Can I have some?” Jolyne asked, leaning on her arms over the counter.
“Yeah, here,” Jotaro said, turning around again so he could grab the remaining pack of blueberries from the fridge. He gave them a quick rinse under the tap, pushing the colander out of the way, then tossed them into one of the many glass containers stacked on the countertop. “Go nuts.”
“Why can’t I just have those ones?” Jolyne pressed, even as she started eating out of the bowl.
“Because I had to wash those ones in a special way, and it took a lot of time,” Jotaro said, trying to finish off the remaining carrots as fast as he could. At least if he got the sink drained and everything drying, then he could cut up the carrots and get it all into the containers when he got back, and he’d still be on-time-ish.
“Why?”
Jotaro sighed, bracing his hands on the edges of the sink momentarily. He should’ve known better than to try doing this while Jolyne was around. Kids never let you get away with anything.
“Because I needed them to be really clean,” Jotaro said, waiting for the next, inevitable ‘why?’ that would bring.
“How come?”
“Because I have a friend in the hospital, and he needs everything to be really clean, or else he could get sick.”
Jolyne was now looking at him with a mixture of surprise and curiosity. “Why?”
“Because he was in an accident, and he can get infections really easily, so there can’t be any bacteria on what he eats,” Jotaro said, satisfied enough with the cover. He probably could’ve thought of something better if he hadn’t been forced to think on his feet like this, but it was good enough, especially for a ten year-old.
“Is that all for him?” Jolyne asked, looking at the sheer amount of produce sceptically.
“Yeah,” Jotaro said. “I’ll have a bit too, but…he doesn’t really have anyone else to come visit him, so I try to bring enough for a week.”
“Oh,” Jolyne said quietly. “That’s sad.”
“Yeah.”
“Is he going to get better?”
“Mmm…maybe. Not sure. He was hurt pretty bad, so he has to stay in the hospital for a long time.”
“Well maybe I could visit him too then,” Jolyne said, her expression serious. “Since he doesn’t have anyone else to come see him but you, and sometimes you’re really boring.”
Jotaro stared her down for a minute, trying to show he wasn’t impressed by that statement, but she never broke eye contact. “Actually, he really likes it when I visit him. He looks forward to it every week.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“What do you do?”
“We watch movies and stuff mostly. Sometimes we just talk about things. He likes video games, so sometimes he shows me those. He’s my age, so he likes the stuff I like that you think is boring.”
Of course, Jolyne immediately glossed over everything else he said and went straight for what was most interesting to her. “What games does he play?” she asked excitedly.
“Uh, a lot,” Jotaro said, trying to remember what he could from the numerous titles Noriaki had dropped into conversation or shown him on his different consoles. Mainly, it was the ones he already had some familiarity with from childhood that stuck out. “Like Mario, Zelda…all that stuff. Minecraft, too. You like that one, right?”
He didn’t know if Jolyne’s mouth being agape was a good thing or a bad thing. “Seriously? You’re not just lying to me, right? Because you kinda did that already.”
“No, I’m not lying to you. I’m not dumb enough to try lying to you about video games.”
“Well then why don’t you take me to visit him? He’d have way more fun playing with me than you.”
“He hasn’t made me try to play them with him,” Jotaro said. She was right—he wouldn’t have had much fun if he did.
“Who does he play with? Does he have a server?”
“A server for what?”
“Minecraft,” Jolyne said emphatically. She clearly still thought he was dumb anyway.
“No, I don’t think so,” Jotaro said, frowning. “I think he just plays on his own.”
“That’s way less fun though!” she protested, appearing increasingly dismayed. “Even less fun than playing with you.”
Jotaro furrowed his brow, eventually deciding to just let that backhanded compliment slide. “Thanks,” he said flatly. “But I don’t think he minds playing on his own.” Saying that was kind of the antithesis of everything he’d been trying to do for Noriaki over the last four months, but he couldn’t introduce Jolyne to him, so what would be the point in agreeing with her? Then she’d just keep bringing this up to him, and he’d have to come up with more lies to cover up the truth.
“Why don’t you just take me to visit one time, and we can try?” Jolyne argued, very stubbornly, and very pragmatically. It hurt to turn her down just out of principle.
“I can’t. Even if he had more people to come visit him, they wouldn’t be allowed. His immune system’s too weak right now, and more people mean more germs.”
“That’s not really fair,” Jolyne mumbled, looking down with a frown.
“Yeah, I know,” Jotaro said. It wasn’t gratifying to see her like that, but he was relieved she’d finally relented. “It’s just how it is, though. He needs to get better. Maybe after that, you can go see him,” he offered, even though he really shouldn’t have, given how empty of a promise it was.
“Actually, I have a better idea,” she said, suddenly perking up before she raced back into her room.
Jotaro froze, the last carrot he had left in one hand and the bristled brush he used to scour them in the other. “Uh, what are you doing?” he called after her.
Jolyne’s head popped out of her door, and she came running back into the kitchen with her pink duffel bag and a piece of coloured paper.
“When you take me back to Mom’s, can you wait a little bit?” she asked, slapping the paper and a pack of markers she’d also been carrying onto the island. “I don’t have all the supplies I need here, and I want this to look nice.”
“Supplies for what?”
“For the card!” she exclaimed, like it should’ve been obvious.
“Oh,” Jotaro said, trying to finish scrubbing the carrot even faster. “I can’t really hang around your mom’s, though. I need to come back and get all this stuff ready, and going back and forth is already going to take up a lot of time.”
“Well just do this first,” Jolyne said resolutely. “I’ll text Mom. How much longer until we leave?”
“It’ll probably be another half hour,” Jotaro estimated. “I just need to cut these carrots up and get everything packed, but…tell her forty minutes, just in case.”
“Okay. What’s your friend’s name?”
“Uh…Noriaki,” Jotaro said, hesitating slightly. He wasn’t sure if he was even supposed to give that up, but it was just a name. It wasn’t like she could figure anything out from that.
“How do you spell that?” Jolyne asked, looking up at him. “I mean, I know how to, I think, but I just wanna make sure I get it right.”
Jotaro spelled it out for her, and an hour later, he was standing in his ex-wife’s kitchen, drinking a cup of coffee she’d made for him.
“So what’s he in the hospital for?” she asked when she returned from checking on Jolyne. Jolyne had made a big fuss of her not hanging around for what she was doing, but it was smart to make sure she wasn’t going too crazy with glitter and f*cking up the rug.
“It’s classified,” Jotaro said, which briefly stopped her in her tracks. He knew he wouldn’t be able to lie to her about this like he had with Jolyne, though. He’d made the cover up on the fly, and there were too many holes—she’d see right through it, so it was better to give her as much of the truth as he could, and just spin it a different way. “He’s at the Foundation, and the treatment he’s undergoing is experimental, so I’m not allowed to disclose anything about it.”
“Really?” Mari asked quietly, evidently intrigued. She sat down across from him at the table, and with another glance past his shoulder to check that Jolyne was still out of earshot in the other room, she continued, “So that’s why he’s not allowed any visitors?”
“Yeah,” Jotaro said, nodding. “I just had the clearance already, so I said I could come visit. Keep him company.”
“Wow. So his condition…it must be serious, right?”
She was looking at him pensively, obviously forming a picture in her mind. She had enough knowledge of the Foundation’s medical division—she was in pharmaceuticals, after all—to understand that they only accepted the most novel and severe cases for their trials.
“It’s lifelong,” Jotaro said.
She contemplated that for a moment, then got up and collected her cup of tea that had been steeping on the counter. After disposing of the teabag, she sat back down. The concern in her eyes was apparent. “Do you think this is alright then? I know she just wants to play her games with him, but…”
“He’s not weird or anything like that,” Jotaro tried reassuring her. “Mentally, he’s fine. I wouldn’t allow it if he wasn’t.”
“No, that’s not what I mean,” Mari said, shaking her head. “He’s your friend. I trust your judgement in that department. I was just thinking that…depending on what could happen, you don’t think it would be too upsetting for her? If, you know…worst comes to worst.”
“He’s not dying,” Jotaro said automatically. Then he paused briefly, realizing that wasn’t exactly true. It was still entirely contingent on if he, or maybe someone else, was actually able to fill the role that was the whole reason he was even involved in this in the first place, but he couldn’t dwell on that right now. “It’s lifelong, but…stable,” he finally said. “They’re just trying to improve the outlook.”
“Not find a cure?” Mari wondered curiously.
“No such thing,” Jotaro said definitively. “Anyway, he’s not in bad shape, but I’m not allowed to go into more detail than that. Technically I wasn’t supposed to be talking about it at all, so just stick to the accident story with Jolyne.”
“Okay. I guess I can do that,” Mari said with a tight-lipped smile. She sipped at her tea, then called into the other room, “Jolyne, are you almost done in there? Your father has to leave soon!”
“Five more minutes!” Jolyne called back.
After exchanging their looks of fond exasperation at the response—it would definitely be more like ten—Mari asked, “So how do you know him?”
“He worked there for awhile, before he had to be hospitalized.”
“Oh. Is that why they accepted him for treatment?”
“Yeah.”
“Did I ever meet him?” she asked, clearly fishing for as much information as she could wring out of him.
“No,” Jotaro said, with a shake of his head. Her disappointment was plain to see, but she was merciful enough to give up on the topic after that.
After what turned out to be almost ten minutes on the dot, Jolyne skidded into the kitchen in her socks, eager to show off the fruits of her labour.
“Wow. You made your own envelope?” Jotaro asked, turning over the light blue paper that she’d folded and secured with some strategically placed stickers.
“Yeah. We learned how to in school. Pretty cool, right?”
“Pretty cool,” he agreed. He tucked the envelope into one of his pockets, which was wide and deep enough to conceal it, then stood up. “Thanks for doing that. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”
“He’s the one who has to open it,” Jolyne reminded him sternly. “You can’t look at it ahead of time.”
“I won’t,” Jotaro promised. It was one he could keep easily, but when it came to the Foundation employees, he wasn’t sure. But once he got past the initial security checks for the main building, they didn’t do anything extra at Noriaki’s wing like frisking him—thankfully the intrusiveness stopped short of that—so as long as they didn’t see it, it should be safe.
Jolyne also made him promise to text her when Noriaki did open it, which Jotaro agreed to, and then he was out the door, along with some well-wishes to pass on from Mari that she didn’t realize were entirely misplaced.
Him and his bags of containers were probably a familiar sight for most of the people frequenting the halls of the departments he had to walk through before he reached Noriaki’s. He couldn’t help wondering what they thought he was there for. Half of the Foundation’s organizational structure was extremely public-facing, showcasing their impressive range of technological progress and discoveries that governments and investors loved, while the rest was hidden behind red-tape and redactions for HIPAA and those very same governments’ sakes. Despite the level of privacy those other classified departments demanded, the mermaids’ program ran deeper than all of them, which was why Jotaro didn’t feel too paranoid for thinking a card from an innocent ten year-old, whose only intention was to play video games with someone she thought was sick and could use the company, had the potential to cause a huge stir.
One of the technicians on duty in the monitoring station met Jotaro at the door in the main tank room before he even had the chance to knock. He took one of the containers from the bag, then handed the remainder over to her.
“Thanks,” he said, looking back at the tank over his shoulder. More often than not now, Noriaki would already be waiting in the other room for him by the time he got there. “Can you put in a pick-up order for us?”
After some persistent internet sleuthing, he’d managed to find a ramen place in Orlando that offered shirataki as one of their noodle options, and with some in-person persistence to top it off—dropping by the restaurant himself and explaining the very unique dietary needs of his friend, while also offering to pay more to ensure things were done right—the people working there now knew that when his name came in for an order, one of the dishes they’d be making was basically a vegetarian ramen with only a few specific, blanched vegetables, skins removed, and a seaweed broth. The sushi place he preferred also had a similar arrangement, along with a Korean place that would make him a modified japchae, for a little variety. One of the employees would always go out and bring it back for them, and it saved a little more of that precious time, what with all the driving he was doing on Sundays now.
“Hey,” Jotaro said when he entered the other room, where Noriaki was waiting for him in the bath, just as he’d expected.
“Hello,” Noriaki said, brightening up. “How are you?”
“Good. You?”
“I’m well, thanks.”
“Good,” Jotaro said, leaning over the tub. “I ordered ramen for tonight. Is that alright?”
“Of course,” Noriaki said. He never complained about that kind of thing. It was all still too new and exciting for him.
“I have something else for you too. Not this,” Jotaro said, setting the container down on the corner of the ledge surrounding the tub. “Well, obviously it’s for you, and I brought blueberries this time. You haven’t tried those yet, but—here,” he said, reaching into his pocket and retrieving the card. “This is more important.”
“What is it?” Noriaki asked, drying his hands on one of the folded towels that sat nearby before he gingerly took the card.
“It’s a card. For you—from my daughter.”
Noriaki blinked up at him in shock, his eyes wide. “What?” he asked quietly.
“She doesn’t know what you are,” Jotaro explained. “I told her you’re sick and in the hospital, so if anything in there sounds weird, that’s why. But since I said she wasn’t allowed to visit, she wanted to make you that card instead. She wrote down her friend codes, or gamer codes…whatever they’re called, but they’re in there for you. She said you’d know what to do with them.”
“But…why?”
“She wants to play games with you. Online. You can do that, right?”
“I can, I just…” Noriaki paused for a moment, his expression almost entirely indiscernible. Then he sat up, leaning over the side of the bath. He opened the envelope carefully, not tearing it in the slightest, and handed it off to Jotaro after he’d removed the card.
Jotaro set it aside on the counter, surprised by how little emotion was showing in his face as he read. Typically he was more expressive than this. It almost made him worry about what Jolyne had written in there—maybe he should’ve checked it ahead of time, just in case…
“Can you pass me the remote, please?” Noriaki finally asked. Jotaro did so, after which Noriaki flicked the TV on, then switched to one of the inputs for his consoles. “And the black controller,” he said, trading the remote for it.
Jotaro watched as Noriaki booted up the system, deftly moving through menus until he got to one where he started punching in an elaborate combination of numbers. Once he was finished, his finger moved down to another line in the card, which he studied momentarily.
“White controller,” he said, trading Jotaro again. The process repeated: change the input, navigate some menus, enter what Jotaro could discern this time as a username Jolyne had obviously come up with, and then a confirmation message popping onto the screen.
“Is that it?” Jotaro asked once Noriaki seemed to be finished, back to scrolling through the more familiar screen of his game library and no longer prompting Jotaro for anything else.
“It should be. I haven’t added anyone before, so…hopefully it works,” he said, eyeing Jotaro cautiously.
“I’ll text her and check,” Jotaro said, reaching into his pocket. A familiar buzz was already vibrating against his leg. He figured it was Jolyne, and he was right—but not in the way he’d expected. “Uh, she’s calling me,” Jotaro said, holding up the screen of his phone to illustrate. “Is it alright if I take it?”
Noriaki looked at him completely wide-eyed again, his face otherwise blank. “I suppose so?”
Jotaro nodded, glancing around for a moment—totally pointless, given he knew where all the cameras were by now, and just how much sound they picked up—before he answered with a quiet, “Hey. What’s up?”
“You were supposed to text me!” Jolyne proclaimed loudly from the other end.
“Come on, it’s been two minutes,” Jotaro said, frowning. “Give me a break.”
“Can I say hi?” she asked excitedly—probably what she’d been trying to worm her way into from the start. “I need to ask him some questions first. It’s important.”
“Can she say hi?” Jotaro asked, pulling the phone away from his ear.
“Is that…that’s alright with you?”
“Yeah,” Jotaro said, switching the phone to speaker and setting it in front of Noriaki. Noriaki still looked hesitant, but after another moment, he spoke.
“Hello, Jolyne,” he said, his voice slightly stilted. “Um, thank you for the card. It was very thoughtful of you.”
“You’re welcome!” she chirped from the other end. “I just had to make it quick, so I could’ve made it prettier if I had more time, but I think it turned out nice.”
“It’s very beautiful. Your father’s brought me some other pictures for decoration, so I think I’ll put it with those. That way I can see it all the time.”
“Thanks! So Dad said you play Minecraft, right? Do you have your own server, or do you go on other people’s?”
“I’ve only played single-player until now,” Noriaki admitted, “but…I think I should be able to get something set-up for multiplayer. It might just take a few days.”
“Okay. What else do you play?”
“Well, a lot of Zelda, currently…Mario, some other platformers—”
“Do you play Smash?” Jolyne jumped in eagerly. Jotaro would’ve told her off for interrupting, but disrupting their conversation would probably make Noriaki more self-conscious. It was better to just let him figure out the flow for himself. Even if a ten year-old’s way of speaking was far from what he was used to, it was also more forgiving.
“Yes, I do.”
“Cool! You wanna play right now?”
“You ate dinner already?” Jotaro asked, considering this the one place he needed to step in so neither of them would be let down if her mom came by to pull her away from the TV in ten minutes.
“Yeah, after you left,” she said, the ‘duh’ apparent in her tone.
“Okay. Just checking.”
“Yes, we can play it now,” Noriaki said once he seemed sure Jotaro was done talking. “Can you pass me the black controller again?” he asked Jotaro quietly.
For the next two hours, Jotaro took a backseat and just watched. Their food showed up halfway through, and that was when he’d initially planned to end things, but in the actual moment, it didn’t seem fair. Noriaki had relaxed much quicker once they started playing, clearly in his element, and Jolyne was absolutely delighted by all the moves he could pull off with the different characters Jotaro had no real reference for. Obviously it didn’t matter if someone was beating her, so long as it wasn’t her dad, but with the way kids were, he could understand it. So he unpacked the take-out and ate, leaning back in his chair while Noriaki and Jolyne cycled through endless matches taking place in baffling locations, and Noriaki’s portion grew cold. That part didn’t matter that much, anyway—Noriaki still seemed to prefer cold food over hot, given the choice.
“Jolyne!” Jotaro finally heard from Jolyne’s side of the call. She groaned, while her mother said, slightly more distant, “It’s time to start getting ready for bed. Say goodnight.”
“Goodniiight,” she drawled reluctantly. “Thanks for playing with me. I had a lot of fun.”
“Yes, I did too,” Noriaki said, his head rising from the water. In between their chatter about video game things he didn’t understand, Jotaro had noticed that his head would slowly sink below the surface when he was concentrating—sometimes until the water was up to his eyes, if he went long enough without speaking. “Thank you. I will…try to get the multiplayer for Minecraft figured out. Once I do, I can invite you, correct?”
“Yeah, if I’m online. If I see you online, it’s okay to invite you to play something else too right?”
“Yes, um…we can’t talk like this unless your father’s here, but if you’re alright with that, then I would enjoy it.”
“Yeah, that’s fine! We can just message, so I’ll talk to you then! Goodnight, Dad!” she added at the end, much louder.
“Goodnight,” Jotaro said, picking up the phone and switching off the speaker. “Have fun at school tomorrow.”
“Yeah,” she agreed absently, obviously already in the middle of doing something else, from the shuffling he could hear.
“Okay, goodnight. Love you,” he finished before ending the call. He stared at the phone for a moment, then shoved it in his pocket, saying, “Thanks for doing that,” to Noriaki.
“It was my pleasure,” Noriaki said. “I really enjoyed myself. Really, I did.”
“She wasn’t too much for you?” Jotaro joked.
“No, I—I was nervous at first, but she was actually very easy to talk to. She’s very nice.”
“Good,” Jotaro said, nodding. “I know I kind of sprung it on you, but she just got it in her head today once I mentioned you, and when she’s like that, you can’t really stop her.” He turned, grabbing the large, plastic bowl of ramen from the counter, raising it in the air. “Still feel like dinner?”
“Yes,” Noriaki said with a sheepish smile, holding out his hand for the chopsticks Jotaro passed to him. “Thank you.”
Once Noriaki was set-up with the table, Jotaro took over the TV and started scrolling through their Netflix list for something they hadn’t watched yet that sparked his interest, but Noriaki quietly interrupted him.
“Actually, could you put on one of your father’s CDs again? My eyes are a little tired.”
“Yeah, sure,” Jotaro agreed, getting up. He confirmed there was still a CD in the player after flipping the top, a live recording from ‘85, which was probably the one Noriaki wanted. It seemed like it had been his favourite so far, which might’ve been thanks to the different atmosphere from the studio versions.
When the first track started playing, Noriaki smiled at him, and Jotaro returned to his seat, crossing his arms. He watched Noriaki eat for a few more minutes, contentedly humming along to the melodies he was already beginning to memorize through his mouthfuls, but eventually, Jotaro’s eyes couldn’t keep from closing.
“Jotaro,” he heard from beside him, a gentle whisper. There was a hand on his shoulder, cold through the fabric of his coat and shaking him back to reality.
“Hmm?”
Jotaro blinked awake, frowning as the bright light hit his eyes. He turned to see Noriaki leaning half out of the bath, looking at him with a simultaneous mix of concern and amusem*nt.
“Mmm, sorry,” Jotaro said, then sighed. He couldn’t have been out for that long—he knew this album pretty well, thanks to his mom frequently playing it while his father was away on tour, and it sounded like they were still at one of the saxophone solos in the middle—but that he’d even fallen asleep at all was annoying. Apparently the coffee earlier hadn’t done enough to combat the fatigue he was still trying to get a handle on with the demands of this new routine. Now he’d be groggy for the drive home, and he really didn’t want to waste their visits like this when they were only a few hours a week to begin with.
“It’s alright,” Noriaki assured him, his hand still on Jotaro’s shoulder. “I’m tired as well, so you don’t need to stay any longer.”
“Are you sure? You didn’t even try the blueberries,” Jotaro protested weakly.
Noriaki chuckled quietly, his smile reaching his eyes, and he said, “Yes, I’m sure. I’ll try them later. I know they’ll be delicious.”
“Okay,” Jotaro said, shifting in his chair. “Just…tell me how they were next week, then.”
“I will.”
After Noriaki nodded, he paused, looking at Jotaro strangely for a moment…almost in anticipation, before he propelled himself forward, the water sloshing as he did. His arms latched around Jotaro’s neck, the tips of his claws scraping his shoulders and teasing the nerves, even through the covering of his clothes.
Jotaro didn’t move for a second, surprised and instantly transported back to that first moment when Noriaki had done something like this, influenced by instincts Jotaro was slowly getting a better grasp on through his research. But this seemed different. There were none of the noises like before, none of that strange, hypnotic trilling, and the movement was intentional, with Noriaki’s arms pulling him in tighter and his head tucking against Jotaro’s neck.
Jotaro raised his arms to curl around his back, supporting him as he leaned in closer. A hug. It was just a hug.
“Thank you,” Noriaki said, his voice a reverent hush in Jotaro’s ear, “for sharing your family with me. I truly appreciate it.”
“Yeah,” Jotaro replied, almost a hollow echo at first. His chest had been so warm from falling asleep, but now the chill of the water was seeping into his front, pulling a shiver from him. “It’s not that big of a deal,” he mumbled, even though that wasn’t really true. Maybe for other people, but not him. Not when he had so few close relatives, and the ones he did he tried to protect more than anything, often to a fault.
“I understand that. But it still means a lot to me.”
Noriaki pulled back far enough for Jotaro to see his face, propped against him and still clinging to his neck for support with his torso entirely out of the bath now, his tail draped over the ledge and slightly struggling for balance. He was smiling, a soft curve that was almost lopsided, adding a warmth to those pale eyes, but as the moment dragged on, going just a little too long, it started to falter.
Jotaro reacted stronger than he would’ve liked, standing abruptly with Noriaki in his hold just to keep his face from getting too close—to prevent whatever had triggered before from happening again, like it seemed they were on the precipice of. After he did, he automatically regretted giving into such a panicked response. He should’ve just let it happen, but he hadn’t, and now he could feel Noriaki stiffening, his claws digging into his back in alarm as he tried to steady himself, to stay secure as Jotaro slowly lowered him into the tub. Probably a worse reaction than if he’d only allowed whatever instincts were coming into play to take hold, and he felt like sh*t for it.
“Sorry, I—” Jotaro said, bending over the edge of the bath as Noriaki watched him warily, eyes blown wide again. “It’s late. I should get going.”
“Yes…sorry,” Noriaki said quietly. “I didn’t mean to keep you.”
“No, it’s all good,” Jotaro reassured him. “I’ll see you next week, okay?”
“Okay,” Noriaki agreed, sinking into the water. Jotaro moved the table back into the corner and picked up the trash, but left the CD playing as he exited.
He’d thought he might need to stop for a coffee or something to keep him awake on the drive back, but it turned out that whole incident at the end had shocked his system better than any caffeine could.
“Dr. Kujo!”
Jotaro looked up to see the department head walking toward him, just as he was about to swipe his card over the reader that unlocked the doors to the reception area. “Where the hell did you come from?” he muttered, apparently not under his breath enough.
“Well, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, I’m normally not here on Sundays, but I made an exception for you,” he said. His eyes were the only hint that his smile wasn’t meant to be taken as friendly, like one might at face value. “My office, please?”
Jotaro sighed, setting his shoulders back and shoving his free hand back into his pocket. He followed the man another ten paces or so down the hall, to a smaller corridor that branched from the main one.
“Sit,” he said once they were inside, taking his own seat behind the desk. It was exceptionally neat inside—even more pristine than Jotaro’s office at home, and devoid of any visible personal touches. “So,” he said, clasping his hands over the glass top of the desk before he met Jotaro’s eyes, “you’re an incredibly intelligent man, Dr. Kujo. I’d be surprised if you didn’t already know what this is about.”
“My daughter doesn’t have any idea what he is,” Jotaro answered evenly. “She thinks he’s a friend in the hospital I come to visit.”
“Yes, not a bad excuse,” the department head conceded, although it sounded more patronizing, rather than anything meant to compliment Jotaro’s reasoning, “but that phone call wasn’t authorized. Nor do I remember anyone saying anything of the sort might be acceptable when we allowed you to use your personal cell phone while on the premises. Quite the opposite, really. I believe ‘emergencies only’ was the stipulation?”
“Don’t try to play this f*cking game with me,” Jotaro said, his face impassive as he stared the other man down. “You had employees’ kids coming in to meet him when he was a kid. If that wasn’t a problem, then my daughter just talking to him on the phone sure as hell shouldn’t be.”
“That was a different time. Over twenty years ago, in fact. I wasn’t in charge then, and security was lacking in certain areas. We’ve rectified that now.”
“They were playing video games. That’s all they did. She has no idea.”
“And how long do you think that’s going to last for?” The department head raised a questioning brow. “Be honest with yourself, Dr. Kujo. I’m sure your daughter is just as bright as you, and she’s old enough to have some scepticism. If this continues, is your ‘friend in the hospital’ story really going to seem as plausible six months from now, or in a year? Eventually she’s going to wonder what kind of hospital keeps a sweet little girl from visiting a sick friend. She might even think to ask other people about it—her friends, or their parents. Teachers, perhaps.”
Jotaro bit down on the inside of his lip, to keep it from curling and saying something that was going to get him in worse sh*t just to spite that smarmy, know-it-all attitude. “If I keep going along with this, and in six months I have to come up with some lie for why I can’t talk to her for days at a time, she’s going to have a lot more questions than that.”
“You tell her and her mother that you’re participating in a research project for us and you’ll be unavailable for a brief period,” the man said in a steady tone. “Just like you did before.”
“I already told them I wouldn’t do that again. No more trips halfway around the world where I’m out of contact for a month. Not until she’s older.”
“Then I don’t know what you’re expecting from this, Dr. Kujo.”
“What I’m expecting,” Jotaro said, getting to his feet and hefting the bag of chopped carrots and pears he’d brought with him, “is that I’m going to go in there and give him his snacks, and then I’m going to call my daughter so they can start planning whatever the hell they’re going to build in that weird little game, just like she asked me to.”
The department head tented his fingers, drumming them together for a moment as his lips pursed. Jotaro remained just as unaffected. “And what if she overhears something she shouldn’t? Something that makes her suspicious—like an awful lot of water splashing around?”
“I’ll come up with some explanation.”
“And? What if it happens again? What if it happens enough times that she’s not satisfied with those explanations anymore?”
“I doubt she’d ever jump to f*cking mermaids being real as her first conclusion to what Dad’s hiding from her. Even if she did, she’s ten. No one’s going to believe her if she starts talking about how her friend’s a mermaid. No one would even believe me. They’d tell me I’m crazy—I know that, and you know that. And that’s what you’re counting on.”
Jotaro stared him down for another moment, then turned, ready to head out the door. It was once his back was to him that he spoke up again.
“If lying to her about only a few days is such a problem for you, Dr. Kujo, then how is her realizing her father’s been hiding something much bigger from her going to feel?”
Jotaro left without answering, closing the door on him instead. As he walked back to the grey double doors, back to where he’d been interrupted, his main focus was keeping his agitation under control. He couldn’t bring that in with him to Noriaki—he knew he couldn’t.
“Hey,” he said, almost breezily—as close as he ever got—when he saw Noriaki, unpacking the containers. “Jolyne wants to call you again. Apparently she’s got ‘big plans’ for that Minecraft world you got set-up. Is that okay?”
“Yes, that’s fine,” Noriaki said, cracking the lid of the one he could see the carrots in. He pretty much always went for those first, except for when cherries were around.
“That wasn’t too much of a pain for you to figure out, was it?”
“No, they got it working for me.” Noriaki pointed to the door to the next room, indicating the technician’s station, and Jotaro opened his mouth in a silent ‘ah’ of understanding. “I needed another subscription, so I had to get approval for that. I already had online services for my Switch, but not the Xbox.”
“Huh,” Jotaro said, snagging one of the carrots. “And that lets you play multiplayer?”
“Yes, it does.”
“Why’d you already have it on the one then? I thought you said you hadn’t done multiplayer before.”
“Not for Minecraft. But on the Switch, you can join random matches for Mario Kart, or Smash, like Jolyne and I were playing. Sometimes I find it more interesting than going against NPCs, and the only messages you can send are pre-programmed, so it was the option I preferred.”
“Wow. That’s weird to think about,” Jotaro said after a moment’s consideration.
“What is?”
“That random people just played against you, and you know—they had no idea.”
“Oh,” Noriaki said blankly. “I suppose it is.”
He didn’t seem like he really agreed with the point Jotaro was making, though, or that he even really got it, which Jotaro didn’t blame him for. Noriaki was aware of the kind of reactions he got from people, mostly scientists, one-on-one, but not the broader concept of the kind of celebrity he’d elicit if people had any idea of his existence, that he’d even interacted with some of them unknowingly, albeit on such a minor level. Once again, it brought to Jotaro’s mind how much potential Noriaki and the others had to reshape the world, and here he was, just…eating carrots with him.
“Is he there?” Jolyne asked as soon as she answered the call, not even bothering with a ‘hi.’
“Yeah, one second,” Jotaro said, putting the phone onto speaker.
“Hello, Jolyne,” Noriaki said once the phone was in front of him, briefly shifting his attention from the TV.
“Hi!” she greeted him happily. “Okay, can you open the world so I can join?”
“Yes, it’s just loading.”
Pretty soon, they were on screen together with their funky-looking characters, navigating around a mountainous block world while they collected materials and started building a house. Then it got dark and they basically stopped playing while they sat in that tiny dirt house they’d just built, which was the part of these games Jotaro really didn’t get, but their enthusiasm didn’t waver whatsoever as they discussed some cave they’d seen they were going to check out once it was daytime again, and who was in charge of gathering what materials. It was during this visit that Jotaro realized he was probably going to need to start bringing a book, or maybe some of his work, if this would be taking up two hours of their time every week now. Definitely seemed like it, with how excitedly they made plans to play tomorrow before Jolyne had to end the call. Obviously, if they were doing more of it on their own, not while he was there, it wouldn’t be so bad, but he was pretty sure that whenever Jolyne knew he was visiting, she’d wheedle her way into a call, given how much they already liked talking freely.
It was also when Jotaro felt that first pang of almost…jealousy, which was really uncomfortable to admit. Given that it revolved around his own daughter getting along with the person whose isolation he’d been actively trying to alleviate for months now, it couldn’t get much pettier than that. And stupid—he felt f*cking stupid for it, but it was there, more and more as he watched his limited time with Noriaki get eaten up by gaming sessions while he worked on something in the corner.
It just didn’t feel the same as it had at first, not as comfortable, or cozy, and he found himself missing those moments when Noriaki would randomly interject with some fact about the specific time period or place the movie they were watching was set in, one of those lengthy (but always interesting) ones he’d basically memorized from all the encyclopedias he’d read when he was younger. He missed eating dinner together, instead of at staggered, disconnected times, and he missed those little glimpses, or opportunities, for something…more. Especially since he’d f*cked up the last one so badly.
So that was why Tuesdays became a thing. Jolyne had basketball those nights, and since Jotaro was getting more work in on Sundays again, freeing up a few hours in the middle of the week wasn’t an issue. All his colleagues said he needed to spend less time working, anyway. Of course Noriaki was also eager when he suggested it, but Jotaro didn’t let that go to his head. Another night of company each week would excite him no matter what, and he probably would’ve been just as happy if it were another gaming session. That was how Jotaro had to spin it to himself, anyway, because as much as he was glad Noriaki was actually getting along with Jolyne, and now had an entirely new person to talk to, it had put more doubt in his mind than he ever could’ve predicted. Maybe the only reason he’d seemed so special to Noriaki, had felt so special with the way he looked at him, was due to one, simple fact: scarcity.
“Why do you like these?” Jotaro asked on one of those Tuesday nights, turning to look at Noriaki, who was watching the movie rapt from his own vantage, leaning over the side of the tub with his head pillowed in his arms. It was probably a testament to the sheer amount of movies and shows they’d watched over the last four months that they were into the really obscure sh*t now, which included Noriaki’s selection of old Italian giallo. “I’m not trying to be rude. I was just wondering.”
“I think the visual direction is very stunning,” Noriaki said after a moment. “Other than that, I suppose I like the suspense. I always…connect to it.”
“How do you mean?”
He eyed Jotaro carefully before he spoke, like he was reticent to reveal what came next: “Sometimes, I find I struggle to understand the emotions the characters experience in other movies. I still enjoy them, but…a lot of it feels foreign, and I don’t know if I have the capacity to properly relate. I don’t have that issue with horror or suspense. Fear seems to be the most universal out of everything. I can always understand their fear.”
“Mmm. Okay. I get that,” Jotaro said thoughtfully. After a minute, he added, tipping his head to the side, “Movies are weird like that anyway. Everyone’s acting, so it’s never really ‘natural’. Half the time their reactions don’t make sense, or they’re really overdone. I don’t relate to most of them either.”
“It’s all based on something though, isn’t it? These are all human experiences, just written out and filmed…right?”
“Uh…there’s usually some kind of basis for it, yeah. But it’s all dramatized so it’s interesting. They simplify sh*t, leave out the boring stuff because they kind of have to so people want to watch it. Even with documentaries, it’s all…condensed. The average human experience doesn’t usually show up on a screen. It’s way too long and complicated for that. You see a fraction of something that could maybe happen in someone’s life, at most.”
“Hmm,” Noriaki hummed after a moment, tucking his head back against his arms. Whenever he made a noise like that, it always sounded a little different than it normally would. It was clearly something he’d picked up and replicated, but just like the rest of his speech, it had that slightly odd quality to it. That warbling tenor to remind Jotaro they were sounds he was never supposed to make in the first place.
It ate at him a lot more now—those reminders. That neither of them were supposed to be here in the first place. Noriaki had been meant for an entirely different life than this, and so had he. He’d thought he was on that track for awhile. Things had finally settled down, and even though life was still complicated—it always would be—there hadn’t been all those extra layers like before. No secrets he was keeping from his ex, or Jolyne. No spontaneous trips to derail plans they’d already made and make him unreachable by anything but a shared satellite phone that could only be used sparingly, because some opportunity had come up that he thought he just couldn’t afford to miss at that point in his career.
He wasn’t supposed to be in this position again, but he was, and he just kept complicating it. Just adding onto those layers—bringing Jolyne into something she wasn’t supposed to be involved in either, when he still didn’t know how involved in it he wanted to be. There’d been no time to think about it, was what he kept telling himself, and that had been true initially, sure. He had plenty of time now, though, but in those moments, he didn’t want to think about it. Because what the f*ck would this mean for him? For them? Now, and in the future. What was this kind of life supposed to look like?
Jotaro had seen versions of it, in pictures and video files, and for the people in them…he almost envied them. They were the people who could say it was just a job, who clocked in and out and didn’t have to bring anything home with them if they didn’t want to. They’d been chosen, and thanks to that, they had deniability. They weren’t the ones who had to make this choice, who had to navigate already tricky emotional connections in this labyrinth of lights and recording devices. But if Jotaro was honest, he didn’t want this to be a job, either. He had a job. That had been the first thing to come up in his mind at the start. He just wanted…something he could explore properly. Something that wasn’t surrounded by all this. But that option was never on the table. So many choices, and that was the one he would never be allowed to make. If he were, this all would’ve been so much easier.
He had to choose to keep coming back here, each and every time, even though he despised the surroundings. He had to choose to try and form some kind of relationship here, where Noriaki was the only reason to keep coming back, again and again and again, and he wasn’t even sure he was doing it right. He’d never been good at this stuff, and he’d just sort of…fallen into it before. Even though it had started that way with Noriaki—even though this whole concept had been dropped into his lap out of the clear blue—actively moving further had to be so deliberate, and conscious, and he felt like he was starting to hit a wall. He couldn’t put a name to his feelings, as muddled as they were, bogged down by an uncomfortable awareness of how close he was to becoming a subject, not an observer, with the impending deadline always in the background of his mind. Of how close he was to becoming that character in a movie stuck on repeat, trapped in an endless loop where nothing ever really changed and time never really moved.
“Do you ever see yourself on the screen? Your experience, I mean. Do you ever see it?”
Jotaro glanced down at Noriaki from the corner of his eye. He was still resting on the ledge, but looking more alert again, his eyes wide with that innocent expectation, the eagerness he always showed when he hoped to receive a new piece of insight. A new way of understanding, of organizing the vast amount of information he’d already accumulated in his mind.
Pursing his lips as he thought, Jotaro finally said, “Sometimes, yeah.” He had a reference in mind, given how recently they’d just watched the movie: Tyler. He just didn’t want to say it aloud, out of worry that Noriaki might start picking apart the implications like he already had.
Growing up, he’d obviously felt a kinship with the protagonist of his favourite movie, but that had gradually waned over the years, as he found out what it actually meant to be a biologist and a researcher. He’d never really felt like he was in that fish out of water position in his profession that Tyler found himself in at the start—not until now. Now, he’d actually started relating to him again, a lot. Being somewhere he wasn’t supposed to be, defying authority and f*cking common sense, honestly, just on a feeling. A hunch, that what he was doing here was purposeful, and he’d find a way through it, somehow. Manage to confront everything around him, all the systems put in the wrong place for the wrong reason, by the people who cared more about proving their own methods right than just doing the right f*cking thing. Dominion over matter, over nature. Intelligence over instinct.
Maybe he’d agreed to this because he’d wanted the same kind of thing as Tyler had in the beginning: to find the animal he hoped still lived somewhere inside himself. To become someone new; someone more attune. More caring. Someone with a greater purpose. But now, he was realizing the cold reality of such idealism. It was f*cking scary to become someone new. To blaze a trail in a part of the world almost entirely untouched, where few had ever gone before. Where he felt almost entirely alone in what he was doing. Idealism was only a hindrance to survival in these places, and maybe the thing that was happening here? Maybe it was too big for him.
“How about you?” he asked Noriaki after another moment.
All Noriaki said in reply was, “Yes,” before he went back to watching the movie. Jotaro didn’t press him on it, not just out of respect, but because he wasn’t sure if he’d like the answer, just as much as he didn’t like his own. Based on what Noriaki had said before, if it was right in front of them, in this claustrophobic, blue and black scene of a terrified woman being pursued through isolated halls, that would make sense. But Jotaro really didn’t want it to. He didn’t want that to be his reality anymore. No one was meant to be stuck like this. No one was meant to live that way.
Extending his hand slowly, Jotaro stopped when he brushed against silken hair and the edge of a fin. Noriaki was soundless as Jotaro’s fingers tentatively combed through the locks, searching for a place where it felt natural to linger. When they finally did, it was a painful, breathless moment until Noriaki leaned in, letting his head rest against his hand.
Jotaro’s eyes closed as they stayed in that position, long enough that his arm began to ache. Whatever he’d done wrong up to this point, at least it felt like he did something right then.
The holidays were unusually tense that year—for Jotaro, at least. Some amount of stress was a given, no matter what: coordinating who Jolyne was visiting, between his side of the family and her mom’s, was something they had to work out in advance, and it basically always involved her flying with him to his grandparents’ in New York during the busiest time to travel. Just what day and how busy it would be was the fun element of surprise.
It wasn’t because of that, though. Flying out there hadn’t been bad—a bit of a hassle, but not any more than any other year—and the first few days were fine, with Jolyne eager to see her grandparents, and Jotaro just as ready to see them and his mom. But as the days passed, the anxiety set in. Until now, Jotaro hadn’t missed a visit with Noriaki, and even though he’d told him about this weeks ahead of time, and Noriaki didn’t seem to have a problem with it, when Sunday came, it seemed like he did. It was hard to pinpoint the reason at first, but after a few more days, Jotaro attributed it to the disconnect. He wasn’t a clingy person—f*cking far from it—but not even having the option to check in with a casual ‘hey’ was weird to him. Well, technically he could, except it had to be filtered through whichever technician was manning the phone, a possible option that continued taunting him and kicking him in the ass while he refused to just dial the number out of principle.
It was the day after New Years, when everyone was having some downtime, that Jotaro noticed what Jolyne was playing on her Switch, and an idea occurred to him.
“Are you racing someone?” he asked, sitting down on the couch next to her.
“Yeah, Noriaki,” she said, her eyes not breaking from the screen.
“Can I do the next round?”
“Really?” she asked sarcastically. Jotaro could tell she wanted to give him a look to match it, but still wasn’t willing to break her focus.
“Yeah. Just one round. I won’t hog it.”
Jolyne handed the device over sceptically once that race was finished, and there was barely any time for her to give Jotaro a heads up on all the buttons before the next one started. Amazingly, for a kid who was nowhere near having a licence yet, she was already a pretty good backseat driver, shouting commands for what path he should take on the course, or when he should use a power-up he’d gotten, or groaning when he got himself stuck on some obstacle. At least the gameplay was fairly simple and forgiving, enough that he could mostly figure it out on the fly.
After he lost (obviously), he gave it back to Jolyne, watching her play for another twenty minutes or so while she grumbled that he’d messed up her score. He wondered if Noriaki could tell it was him—not just from the drop in skill, but the general style, the way he used the controls and the choices he made, or if he was none the wiser. Jotaro figured he must’ve been able to, but when he got back, Noriaki didn’t mention it.
It made him wonder if he really had been as faceless in that moment as Noriaki was to all those unaware people who randomly matched with him from across the world for a few, seemingly innocuous minutes. It made him wonder what the difference was between him and all the other people Noriaki had met over the years. Why had he reacted to him at the start? Why was he willing to let him get so close to him? Was it something about Jotaro specifically, or was it just because he was the only one who’d tried?
If it made no difference to Noriaki whether he was spending time with him or Jolyne, or some other potential random person, then how was he supposed to be the one who could fill that all-encompassing role of a mate. It was a lifetime, after all. It wasn’t the average relationship that Jotaro could take a step back from and admit things weren’t working anymore. Not for Noriaki. And what if he was just that…mistake. The wrong name on the wrong page. Someone who was never supposed to be there in the first place. There could be someone else out there—there could be. Someone who Noriaki just hadn’t been able to meet yet thanks to a lack of time and availability, just like their own meeting had apparently been delayed for years.
There could be someone out there who could handle this better than him—there had to be. There were so many f*cking people in the world, there had to be someone who had a better track record with relationships. Who had more time. Who didn’t have a young kid to worry about. Who could treat it more like a duty like the other human mates did, so that way, it didn’t feel so violating to have their most intimate moments, things they normally never would’ve shared with anyone, constantly surveilled. And what if what Jotaro was doing right now, what he’d thought he’d been doing with good intentions, was actually just him getting in the way of that?
Over the next weeks, those same thoughts raged through Jotaro’s psyche like a typhoon. They were on his mind constantly, during school and his time at the gym, when he ran through the trails down by the conservation area and the lake just trying to escape them, and when he was on those long drives to and from the Foundation, trapped with nothing else. He was distracted, and it was starting to become bad enough that people could tell. He turned thirty-two, and both Mari and his mom commented on how he seemed a little off. Jolyne was the only one who appeared generally oblivious, wrapped up in just being a kid and playing games and planning for her own impending birthday in a couple months.
As for Noriaki, well—Jotaro wasn’t sure if he could tell, but things felt a little off there too. Probably his fault, again. He was just too conscious that he’d reached the point of no return, that he’d wasted so much time for Noriaki, and neither of them really had anything to show for it. He didn’t know if Noriaki was still interviewing candidates on occasion—he never brought that up either—and the insecurity that fed into began to spiral out of control. On one hand, it would’ve been reassuring, knowing there were at least some potential other options. On the other, Jotaro despised any thought of it. He recognized how distorted it was. Unfair, when he hadn’t even made the commitment properly. But he was still stuck on the cusp.
He was too close now. He knew that. He was too close, Jolyne was too close, and there was no real recovery for them. No easy way to take this all back, no way to return to that ignorance of before. He cared too much, and so did she. But the mating was something that couldn’t be forced, and even if Jotaro had reckoned with the idea enough that some part of him…some part of him knew, as much as he was frantically scrambling for anything that could justify something different…if Noriaki didn’t want it, nothing could change that. And if he didn’t find anyone else because there was hardly any time left—if Jotaro had put him in that situation, if he’d put Jolyne in a situation where she had to find out her new friend was going to die when she was at such a young age, just like he’d told her mom she wouldn’t have to worry about…he’d never be able to forgive himself. Full-stop, he wouldn’t. It would be impossible, and he’d spend every waking minute of the rest of his life consumed with nothing but regret. Hating himself, knowing he caused that.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” Jotaro said quietly, unfolding his arms, then crossing them again a moment later when he couldn’t figure out anything else to do with his hands. His throat was thick, and he just felt weird. Awkward.
“Okay,” Noriaki said, just as quiet. He was watching Jotaro cautiously, all his attention redirected from the episode of Columbo playing on the TV.
“Just..got a lot on my mind,” Jotaro said, trying to reassure him, however unconvincing it might’ve been.
“From work?” Noriaki ventured.
“It’s…life. Just in general.”
Noriaki’s acceptance of that half-hearted explanation didn’t do anything to lift the weight in Jotaro’s chest. It seemed like it only dragged down further after that, with the air cloistering and heavy, closing in on Jotaro until it almost felt like he couldn’t breathe. What the f*ck was he going to do. What the f*ck was he supposed to do.
Half an hour later, Noriaki suggested that he was looking tired, and should maybe leave a bit earlier than usual. Jotaro agreed without any protest this time, and said his usual goodbye: “See you Sunday.”
“Yes…see you Sunday.”
Jotaro thought the odd expression Noriaki had when he said that was just because he was doubting if he’d be up to it, which he assured him he would. It still didn’t help the expression, but Jotaro couldn’t blame him for that. He couldn’t blame him for any of this—especially not when he found out the real reason he’d looked at him like that only a few days later.
Jotaro had just stepped out of the shower after another one of those Saturday morning runs when he noticed his phone buzzing on the counter, the display lit up with the caller ID. When he grabbed it, he could read what was emblazoned in white against the black background: ‘Restricted Number’.
It was a female voice who answered on the other end, sounding a little nervous. “Dr. Kujo?”
“What is it?” Jotaro asked bluntly. He didn’t like any of the potential avenues of where this was heading. The Foundation wouldn’t be calling him without reason, and anything that wasn’t urgent could easily be discussed while he was there, so this had to be something urgent.
“Um, I’m sorry to bother you. I’m calling from, uh, the department you’ve been working for,” she said, stumbling on the words as she tried to skirt around the obvious. She probably wasn’t used to making outgoing calls like this.
“I know that,” he said, cutting her off. “I’m alone right now, so just get to the point. What’s going on?”
“Well, I know you’d typically be coming in tomorrow afternoon, so I thought I should inform you that…you might want to reschedule. The subject had an interview this morning, and it didn’t go so well. It seems like he’ll need to be sedated, and when that happens, he usually needs a couple days to recover.”
Before she’d even finished speaking, Jotaro snapped into panic-fuelled action. “Don’t f*cking do that,” he said harshly into the receiver. “No sedation. I’ll handle it. I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Dr. Kujo, he’s very agitated,” the woman said hesitantly as Jotaro walked into his bedroom to start getting dressed. “I can’t recommend that, and my supervisor wouldn’t either.”
“I don’t care. No sedation. You make sure your supervisor and anyone else there knows that. Just leave him alone. I’ll be there in an hour, not a f*cking minute longer, and when I’m there, just stay out of my way and I’ll deal with it.”
“Uh, okay…I can talk to them and see, I suppose…”
“No, you tell them that’s what’s happening, and if anyone tries doing anything different, they’ll have to talk to me after. I need to get ready now. Call me back if there’s a problem.”
Jotaro threw the phone onto his bed after hanging up, hurriedly pulling on his pants. Once he was dressed and had his coat on, he collected it again, shoving it into his pockets, along with his wallet and keys. His hair was still wet when he donned his hat, but that didn’t matter. It would dry in the car.
Every pocket of traffic Jotaro hit and every light he missed on the way there was anxiety-inducing to a level he never normally experienced, but he kept his cool, making it to the Foundation in a flat forty-five. He had no patience for the guard at the gate checking his ID, or how long it took the elevator to arrive once he was parked in the underground, even though the delay was negligible. No one had called him back, but he wasn’t sure no news meant good news in this situation. Despite how threatening he’d tried to be, the people on duty right now could’ve just as easily overridden his direction, and he had no real recourse. He just had to hope that someone either cared enough to let him do this, or was morbidly curious enough to see what happened.
“He’s upstairs?” Jotaro asked when he was at the sink, trying to calm himself and not rush through washing his hands, and one of the technicians popped their head out of the door.
“Yes, but I’ve been advised to remind you once more that what you’re doing isn’t recommended,” she said. Jotaro recognized her now that it wasn’t just her voice. She was one of the younger people who worked there, around her mid-twenties, and definitely new to the job. That was probably why she’d even bothered calling so soon to give him the heads up. The older ones who were used to this kind of thing likely wouldn’t have.
“Thanks,” Jotaro said, shaking off his hands before he dried them. “No one bothers me while I’m up there—understood?”
“Yes,” she agreed with a nod. Jotaro wasn’t sure if she watched him walk the entire way up the stairs, but he never heard the door close. The sound of growling that gradually heightened as he neared the top drowned out anything else in his mind, anyway.
He knew what to expect, just based on the sound, but once Noriaki was in view, his heart sank all the same. He’d never seen him in such a defensive posture in person—only videos—and he’d already hated it then. It would’ve been different if it were a natural reaction to a threat in the wild, but it wasn’t. It was him trying to protect himself in a situation that didn’t afford him any other options, against the same kind of people who’d put him in this environment to begin with.
Jotaro knelt down at a relatively safe distance at first, taking a moment to study him. He’d tried swearing that off months ago, but it was necessary right now to assess the situation. He’d wandered into this without any real plan, after all, and if Noriaki really hurt him here, it had the potential to traumatize him and seal his fate regardless of Jotaro’s own reaction. He wasn’t going to let that happen, though. He may not have had a proper plan, but he had enough of an idea to start with, and he was going to see it through. It was time to finally test this. To finally be sure.
Noriaki’s head was bowed, his arms rigidly braced on the floor, claws sunk into the slots of the metal. Jotaro took that as a good sign. It meant he wasn’t prized to strike. He’d probably done that intentionally. Even with his instincts taking over, he didn’t want to fight if he didn’t have to. He only wanted to protect himself, and he was counting on the huge, raised frills on his back and the low growl he was emitting being enough of a warning.
“Noriaki,” Jotaro said quietly, trying not to shock him with it. He’d been stuck in this state for a long time, probably longer than he ever had. Jotaro knew the general rule was to wait about twenty minutes to see if they could calm down enough to snap themselves out of it, and if not, someone went in with the tranquilizer.
If there was a reaction to his voice, Jotaro couldn’t see it. The growling didn’t subside, and the frills on his back remained erect. After waiting a moment just to be sure, Jotaro switched to his next tactic, undeterred. He’d already established that Noriaki had a keen sense of smell, and given the behaviour he’d exhibited at their first meeting, Jotaro figured it was the best chance he had at being recognized.
“Noriaki,” he tried again, still quiet. When nothing changed, he shuffled forward slightly, just enough for his arm to be in reach. Then he took his hat off, slowly extending it toward Noriaki.
Approaching him this way first also offered an extra layer of protection, which, as reckless as Jotaro was being, he was glad for. If invading his space was what set him off, at least he’d likely go for what was closest, and Jotaro could back off while his hat was sacrificed. But there was no lunge—no attack. The only difference was a raise in pitch. Jotaro wasn’t sure if that was good or not, but it wasn’t overtly aggressive enough for him to stop.
“See? It’s just me,” he said, waving the hat under Noriaki’s nose.
Noriaki’s arms twitched, barely perceptible, and then, in a flash, his hand was on Jotaro’s wrist, holding him fast. Jotaro froze, feeling the dig of his claws, a blunt pressure in his skin, and the scrape of teeth that followed.
He stayed there, rigid and spellbound, as Noriaki’s mouth moved over his wrist, parted just enough for those jagged edges of teeth to graze him as he inhaled. The growling had stopped as soon as he moved, and when Noriaki buried his face in the fabric of his hat, his eyes still closed, that familiar trill started instead.
Jotaro exhaled deeply, letting himself relax. He was in the clear now. He knew as much, even though Noriaki’s eyes were still glazed when he finally looked at him for the first time. He definitely wasn’t back to himself yet, but that was fine. Even if that conscious, human recognition wasn’t there, the acceptance ran much deeper than that. It was undeniable now.
“You really like my hat,” Jotaro said, almost laughing to himself as Noriaki returned to nuzzling around his wrist. He seemed pretty determined to shove as much of his face in it as possible. He might’ve been trying to mark it with some of his scent too. It was one of those idiosyncrasies that was apparently fairly common with the others that had mated with humans.
Not that anyone really knew how they behaved when mated with their own kind, but given that they were in and out of the water so much, there were really only two explanations for it: they either spent a significant amount of time at least partly on land during some point in the mating cycle, which would allow them to retain transferred scents long enough for this kind of behaviour to matter, or it was something they developed specifically for humans. Maybe because with humans, it was impossible to constantly stay in close proximity, and whatever chemicals and hormones they produced were stronger than their own, so marking them with some of that helped them feel more secure about what they saw as another extension of their territory.
The noise Noriaki made when he looked at him again definitely wasn’t catered to humans, but Jotaro recognized a version of it from the footage he’d watched of the other mated pairs. It was a shortened trill, almost a chirp, and from the contexts the others had used it in, it seemed like an all-purpose sort of command. Usually it served as a summons, or affirmative: ‘come here, bring me that, I like what you’re doing’. Those kinds of things. So long as the human mate responded positively, they didn’t really seem to mind if the intended meaning was slightly misconstrued—and if they did mind, they were pretty quick to let the person know. Biting was typically the most favoured means of reprimand, but then there were love bites, too. That was where things could start getting confusing.
Jotaro moved forward, finally closing the gap between them, and the chirr he received in response let him know he’d decoded that correctly. All the cooing and nonverbal communication wouldn’t be a regular thing with Noriaki, and Jotaro’s anger over what had reverted him to this state in the first place was still simmering under the surface, but for the moment, it was making this a lot easier. Self-consciousness wasn’t much of a problem when he was only expected to respond in what were essentially yes or no scenarios, and the cues of whether or not Noriaki liked something weren’t masked by the veil of subtlety awareness seemed to create. Jotaro basically had a manual at his disposal for how mermaids formed relationships; unfortunately, he’d never been lucky enough to be provided with one for humans, and Noriaki was that incredible amalgam that demanded both.
“Here,” Jotaro said, using the hold Noriaki still had on his wrist to move his arm up to his neck. He guided the other in the same way, then tugged him forward by his waist.
He needed to grip under his tail to get him fully into his lap, and it was a little awkward to maneuver—definitely something that needed some practice—but once he had, it was comfortable enough for the time being, with his legs crossed and Noriaki’s tail draped over them, trailing off to the side. In this position, Jotaro was able to slowly sweep his hand over the spines on Noriaki’s back while Noriaki contentedly warbled into his neck, which was exactly what he’d wanted. His reading had also taught him that the reaction he’d previously noticed to his touch there wasn’t coincidental: it was a reflex they had, and mates typically used it to soothe each other in times of emotional distress. It was a strong enough reflex that it substituted sedation just as well in these circ*mstances, but it was never an option for the regular employees, given they couldn’t get close enough without being attacked, and trying to simulate it with something artificial like a long pole just didn’t work (it would also be attacked, and quickly rendered useless).
That Jotaro had even been able to do this with Noriaki the first time probably should’ve been his biggest clue that he was already accepted on a much baser level, but by the time he got to that point in his research, he’d already been in his head about everything. Too worried that it was a fluke, and too caught up in the pressure of the situation to let it happen again naturally. And it wasn’t like those reservations were magically gone: he still hated that this was all being filmed, and the reminder was just above him, invisible to his naked eyes but definitely there. He still felt strange thinking of himself in these alien terms: as a mate, a subject. No longer the scientist, the researcher, but the specimen now. He was that bug in a jar, the jaguar pacing behind the chainlink; the shark bumping against the glass, and he’d put himself in the damn enclosure willingly.
But at least he’d had a choice in it. Noriaki never had, and yet he’d managed to stay this optimistic. He hadn’t crumbled under it, hadn’t let the fear consume him—he still found joy here, somehow, and all he’d wanted was to share it. If he could do that, then Jotaro could too. He liked him. He wanted to keep sharing that joy, bringing it home at the end of the day, bringing new sources in with him, even if it still felt unfair that he got to escape temporarily, while Noriaki was never afforded the opportunity.
Maybe he could change that, one day. But for right now, this was the best change he could make. Just staying. Being in his life. Helping him live. It was a lot of pressure, literally being responsible for his survival, but it wasn’t unheard of in relationships, either. There were plenty of couples out there that involved one partner taking on a caregiving role for the other, and as Jotaro sat here, lulling Noriaki into a much-needed rest with careful caresses of his spine, it didn’t feel that dissimilar.
He knew he could frame it however he wanted, and people would find it weird anyway, but what did he really care? Keeping space in his mind for a phantom idea of how people in the world at large would react was entirely pointless when they’d never find out in the first place. He knew his family might eventually, and that was probably the biggest lingering hang-up, but all that mattered right now was what was between him and Noriaki, and he had to hold onto that as tightly as he could. He was already innately aware that the systems at play here would be threatening to strip them of it at every turn. If he kept trying to sabotage himself on top of that, he’d never survive either.
Jotaro watched the blue light in the tank flicker below the water’s surface as minuscule waves lapped over the edge of the deck, ticking away the seconds that stretched into minutes like a metronome. Noriaki’s breathing was even against his chest now, a slow rhythm that kept time in near synchronization. He was starting to get sore, sitting on bare metal, but he wasn’t going to wake Noriaki up before he was ready. This wasn’t a brief interlude like before, when he’d only lost his sense of self for a few minutes, and had therefore been able to regain it just as quick. He was obviously exhausted, and Jotaro could endure the discomfort for just as long as he must have, locked into that terror for over an hour.
Eventually, Jotaro did shift a little, and at the same time, let Noriaki drop from his shoulder into his arms. His eyes were still closed, the gills on his neck fluttering slightly with each breath, and his expression was utterly serene. As peaceful and relaxed as Jotaro had ever seen him, and when he brushed away some of the hair that had fallen over his face, he didn’t so much as flinch.
Beautiful, was all Jotaro could think as he watched him sleep. His skin was almost flawless, dappled with its speckles of scales and pale green colouring, like freckles; incredibly smooth, but still strong enough to withstand the harsh climate of the sea. He was the only one they’d found—alive, at least—who looked like this. The other ones had been grouped into three different species, all kinds that had lived in deep water environments, and their appearances reflected that. Noriaki’s species, meanwhile, had seemingly evolved for shallower, coastal waters, which accounted for the brighter colouring and sleeker skin. They were probably also the ones who’d interacted with humans the most all those centuries ago, providing the basis for their most common depictions in media and art, even if the general image had been drastically sanitized and simplified by the public. If his ancestors had overheard enough human language through generations, maybe even attempting to converse with them at certain points and living beyond those encounters, it could be another reason why Noriaki was so much more predisposed to it than the others.
Maybe someone else had been in this same position, a long time ago. But organically. In a world where they’d actually been able to co-exist, however fleeting that period was. Maybe someone else had once had the chance to appreciate this kind of natural beauty up close, just like Jotaro was now, but in the light of the sun. Maybe they’d felt what he was feeling, and he actually wasn’t as alone in it as he’d thought.
When Noriaki finally roused, it was with a quiet, confused noise. His first set of eyelids blinked open, and then the clearer ones underneath retracted, his pupils blowing wide as he focused on Jotaro’s face, swallowing his pale irises. “Jotaro…what are you doing here?”
“They called me. Told me what happened. So I came.”
Noriaki’s expression instantly shifted into concern after he said that. “How long was I asleep for?”
“Not that long. Maybe half an hour. I didn’t let them sedate you, so don’t worry. It’s still Saturday.”
“Oh.”
It seemed like Noriaki’s eyes got even wider after that, somehow, as he stared at Jotaro, unblinking, his chest rising and falling much more rapidly than the steady cadence of his sleep.
“You’re feeling better?” Jotaro asked, keeping his amusem*nt at bay. It was just so clear now. Every reaction was so pronounced and obvious, he felt ridiculous for ever trying to deny it.
“Yes, I am. Thank you.”
“Good. I’m glad.” Jotaro shifted again, then asked, “Is it okay if we go downstairs and get more comfortable?” He was definitely starting to feel the strain of staying in this position for too long in his back, and his legs were close to falling asleep.
“You’re staying?” Noriaki asked hesitantly.
“Yeah. I already made the trip out here. Might as well visit, and make sure you’re still feeling okay.”
“Um, alright…I’ll see you downstairs then.”
“Or I could bring you down there,” Jotaro said, just as Noriaki started to move in his arms. That caused him to pause, going entirely still again.
“…How?” he finally ventured.
“I can carry you. If you’re okay with that.”
When Noriaki didn’t respond at first, only continuing to stare in shock, Jotaro asked the question that was probably the most pertinent: “Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” Noriaki answered quickly.
“Then hold on.”
Noriaki immediately followed the command, slinging his arms around Jotaro’s neck and gripping tightly as Jotaro shifted onto his knees. With one hand steady around Noriaki’s waist and the other holding up the middle of his tail, Jotaro stood slowly, relying on the muscles in his core. It was a tricky position to stand from, but it actually wasn’t too difficult. Noriaki’s tail looked pretty solid and heavy, but once Jotaro was supporting all of his weight, he was lighter than he’d expected. It added another layer of confirmation to his initial hypothesis that he’d evolved for speed and maneuverability over anything else.
“You okay?” Jotaro asked, hefting Noriaki’s tail up slightly to get a better grip.
“Yes,” Noriaki said, nodding into his neck. Jotaro finally let a grin slip, knowing he couldn’t see it anyway. He definitely wasn’t used to heights like this.
“I’ve got you. Don’t worry,” Jotaro said as he started toward the stairs.
The distance actually was a little daunting from the top, since it would only take one wrong move to seriously hurt the both of them, but Jotaro wouldn’t have asked to do this if he wasn’t confident in his ability. Noriaki was still clinging to his neck, holding up most of his upper body by himself, so Jotaro was able to take the hand off his torso, placing it on the railing instead. Then, Noriaki’s tail curled around Jotaro’s lower back, the muscles tightening until he was almost wound around him like a serpent.
“Damn. You’re strong,” Jotaro remarked, making his way down the steps. The squeeze wasn’t uncomfortable, but it was verging on it. It was also just a genuinely cool use of his musculature that he hadn’t seen yet.
“So are you,” Noriaki said quietly, right next to his ear.
“No one’s been able to carry you since you were a kid, right?”
“No,” Noriaki confirmed. “I doubt they could…even if I’d let them.”
After reaching the bottom of the stairs, Jotaro pushed his way through the door into the other room, tugging his chair out from the spot it occupied in the corner when it wasn’t in use. He had to untangle Noriaki’s tail from his back before he could sit down, but it was a relief once he was finally able to, the cushion welcoming to his stiff joints as he readjusted Noriaki in his arms.
Noriaki seemed surprise by the arrangement once again. He’d likely been expecting Jotaro to move him into the bath, but Jotaro breezed past that before he could get hung up on it.
“Are you feeling too dried out yet?” he asked.
Noriaki had been out of the water for what had to be over two hours now, maybe close to three, depending on how long that failed interview had lasted, and it was his one major concern. He’d already felt entirely dry, aside from some spots in his hair, by the time Jotaro was able to hold him, and if he’d exceeded his level of tolerance, then he’d need to get a damp towel or something to hydrate his skin with in the interim. But Jotaro wanted to avoid putting him back in the water entirely, at least until they were finished talking. Their usual seating arrangement just created too much distance. The bath didn’t seem like that big of a barrier, but it still kept them on different levels, as if there was an unspoken boundary between the water and the air. Sitting together like this felt like what it was supposed to be all along.
“No, I’ll be alright,” Noriaki said. He’d pulled back from Jotaro’s neck, although his hands were still clasped around it, using it for support while Jotaro’s arm behind him gave him something else to lean on. He was studying Jotaro openly, but a lot of the shock had been replaced by puzzled curiosity.
“Okay. Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“How would you know when you’ve accepted someone as your mate?”
“I…” Noriaki paused, all that worry back in his expression again. Then he tipped his head down, his lips twisting in a slight frown to himself, almost a pout. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. He sounded…aggrieved. Disappointed. Some kind of upset. “I’ve never experienced it before.”
“What I did up there…getting close to you when you were like that. Would you have let anyone else do that?”
Noriaki’s eyes flicked back up, and his lips hung on the word. It was reluctance. Reluctance to give Jotaro that answer, but if there was one thing he’d never been conditioned to do, it was lie. Talk around the truth, sure…avoid certain things, but not lie. “No,” he said in a hush.
“You wouldn’t have let anyone else pick you up like that, either. You already admitted it.”
“Yes.”
“Then I think the fact that you’re sitting here with me like this means that you know.”
Noriaki’s voice was a hollow, quiet quaver when he spoke again. “I don’t want to force you,” he said, the words almost breaking.
“You’re not forcing me,” Jotaro said, shaking his head. “I was just…trying to figure out if I was right for this. For you. When I started coming to see you, I kind of made a promise to myself that I’d keep the scientific stuff out of it, for the most part. But that meant all I really had left to think about were the emotional things, and I have a pretty bad track record with figuring that sh*t out. I care about you a lot. Probably more than I was prepared for. But I like it. I like being with you.”
“I do too,” Noriaki breathed out slowly.
“Don’t schedule any more interviews then,” Jotaro said, his voice dropping as his stare turned serious. “You already decided I’m your mate, right? You can’t force yourself into pretending I’m not, and I don’t want you to keep trying.” It was bad enough that Noriaki had ended up in that situation again, when he really shouldn’t have, and it was all because of him. But at least if Jotaro knew it wouldn’t happen anymore, he could quell the rage at himself and whatever faceless scientist had hightailed it out of there hours ago, and save it for another time when he actually had someone to confront.
“Okay,” Noriaki said, nodding in a way that quickly turned furious, before reeling Jotaro in by his neck. His face pressed against the skin, his arms moving lower, clutching Jotaro’s shoulders tightly as he said another muffled, “Okay,” followed by, “you’re my mate.”
Jotaro’s eyes closed, and he exhaled deeply, everything he’d held inside until then suddenly releasing. It was done. There was no turning back, but somehow, that was the most freeing feeling of all.
“You sure you’re not too dry?” he asked quietly.
“No. I like this,” Noriaki replied swiftly, just as quiet.
Jotaro nodded, his hand running over the fine, scaled surface of his tail. When there were so many, and they were so tiny, the way they blended together was almost like glass.
Noriaki made a noise—a much more human one, this time—and then Jotaro felt the first rasp of teeth on his jaw. His eyes fought the urge to snap open as Noriaki tented the sharp tips of his teeth over the bone, holding him in his maw for the longest of seconds, until there was the slightest application of pressure.
“You’re going to mark me?” Jotaro wondered. It wasn’t really a question. He already had a pretty good understanding of this process.
Noriaki’s bite retracted, his voice sounding a little sheepish when he spoke: “Is that what I was doing? I wasn’t really thinking about it.”
“Yeah,” Jotaro said. The pressure didn’t return, though. Sensing some of that hesitancy again, he added, “You can do it. Go ahead.”
“I don’t have to,” Noriaki said softly. “If it’s too strange for you, we can just…kiss, if you’d like.”
“It’s not too strange. I just wanted to make sure you were aware of it this time.” Jotaro still liked the interactions they’d had while his animalistic side was in control, but it didn’t seem right for him to not even have a proper memory of it yet.
“I am. It’s me—the usual me.”
Jotaro quirked a smile at that, cupping Noriaki’s head so he could press him back into the crook of his neck. “Then go ahead.”
Jotaro’s neck slowly craned upward as Noriaki’s teeth settled back into his flesh, carving a phantom path along the cartilage. With all the sensitive nerve endings in his teeth, it had to feel good for him, but Jotaro was finding he liked the sensation too, even craving a little more pressure in the bites than he was getting. Noriaki was being exceptionally gentle about it—more than Jotaro even thought he could. He hadn’t expected the amount of blood that was evident in the aftermath of a few of the videos of the others, not with his temperament, but it didn’t even feel like he was leaving any marks behind. It was more like he was testing: the force of his jaw, the sharpness of his teeth, the give of Jotaro’s skin. His taste, and his scent. More important sometimes than the marking, however, was the immobilization, so that could’ve also been what he was after. There was one scene that stuck out in Jotaro’s mind in particular, one he’d eventually fast-forwarded through, because its nearly thirty minute runtime consisted of what could’ve been mistaken for a singular, static frame for most of it.
It had involved one of the largest mermaids, and their human mate wasn’t exactly small, but certainly in comparison to their bulk. From the context provided in that one’s files (their project’s internal nickname was ‘Alpha’, fittingly), it was something they liked to do a lot, and they could get pretty insistent about it, commanding their mate with barks until he finally acquiesced and lay down. All they wanted to do was pin him down and restrain him, holding the back of his neck or his shoulder in their teeth, and apparently they’d happily do that for hours if they were allowed. Obviously, that wasn’t practical, and it wasn’t really safe. With their size, the human mate ran the risk of compressive asphyxia if he was held in the wrong position for too long, and it just wasn’t very comfortable for a human in general. Luckily, they were bonded enough that he could show the same kind of authority to his mate, and they would listen after some playful complaining. Based on the interdepartmental memos, that subject was the one in the program upper management had been most worried about mating with a human, and some of the supervisors had even volleyed the idea of trying to introduce them to one of the older mermaids they assumed had previously gone through the process already in the wild, to see if that could somehow work, before it became clear that they’d already chosen one of the employees.
Out of the exceedingly small sample pool, that was a pattern Jotaro had noticed without fail: they never selected a mate who wasn’t suited to them. None of larger ones had mated with a human who couldn’t withstand their size, who they could kill without even trying. They still seemed to prefer humans who were comparatively smaller, though. Not someone who could outmatch them.
But as always, Noriaki was the apparent odd one out. Here he was, trying to hold Jotaro in place with his jaw, and the intrinsic point of that was utterly defeated, because he was already in Jotaro’s grasp. Jotaro had just as much power to break free of it, to put Noriaki in that same kind of restraint, yet he seemed entirely content, regardless of the possibility. Crooning and cooing into his neck as he fretted the skin, and only after he’d asked permission.
Too human to even find a mate as quickly as the others had. Too human to constantly bend to those biological imperatives. He’d tried to fight them, just like Jotaro, because he wanted more than that. He always had, and he deserved it.
“Hey…Noriaki,” Jotaro said, and this time, he answered in a moment.
“Yes?” he asked, his eyes brimming with that expectance Jotaro had seen in him so many times now.
“How about one kiss?”
Noriaki’s smile spread quickly, his nod measured but eager, and Jotaro pulled him in for the most delicate press of lips he’d ever felt.
When he walked past that last set of double doors a few hours later, the department head was waiting on the other side.
“So. I take it you’ve made your decision.”
“Yeah. I’ll do it,” Jotaro said, pulling on his leather gloves.
“Wonderful. We have some more paperwork to go through, of course. Do you have time?”
“Sure. But I have one condition first.”
“And what’s that?”
“Hey,” Jotaro said when Jolyne was almost finished with her lunch. She was already starting to eye her phone, which he usually made her leave face down on the table next to him while she was eating, but he wanted to get to her before she could get distracted by that. When she looked up at him questioningly, he asked, “What was that game you tried to get me to play before?”
“Mario Kart? Or Smash?” she wondered.
“No, not a video game. It was that one where you just asked each other questions. Like ‘would you rather do this thing, or some other weird thing?’”
“Dad,” she said, facing him with her most unimpressed stare. “That’s literally just called ‘Would You Rather?’”
“Makes sense,” Jotaro said, with a thoughtful nod to himself. “So can we play that?”
“Why?”
“I have a good question for it.”
“Uh, okay,” she said, obviously still sceptical.
“Okay. Would you rather know mermaids are real, but never be able to tell anyone about it, or never find out they’re real and just keep thinking they’re made up?”
Jolyne stared at him for what had to be a full five seconds, almost aghast. “That’s not a good question,” she finally said, rolling her eyes.
“Why not?”
“Because,” she insisted, obviously annoyed with him. “It’s supposed to be a hard choice! Like it should either be two really good things, or two really bad things that you don’t want to choose between. That one’s way too easy.”
“So what’s your answer then?”
Another eye roll. “I’d pick the mermaids. Duh.”
“Okay, but I want you to really listen to it,” Jotaro tried again. “Think about it seriously. It’s not just ‘would you rather find out if mermaids are real or not’. It’s would you be okay with finding out mermaids are real if you could never tell anyone else about them. Not your friends, or your teachers, or the waiter at the restaurant who asks you if you did anything cool that day. No one.”
“Seriously? Not even Mom?”
“No, not even your mom. Well—maybe. Eventually.” If Jolyne knew, it was basically an inevitability that her mom would have to find out at some point, but Jotaro only had so much leverage currently at his disposal, and he couldn’t get too co*cky and overplay his hand. “But not right away. The only other person who’d know would be me.”
Jolyne’s brow furrowed at that, wrinkling her nose slightly. “Wait—why you?”
“Because…I study marine life, so if anyone else was going to know they were real, it would be me, right?”
“Okay, sure,” she said after another moment. “So, would I just know they were real? Or would I actually get to meet them, and like, go swimming with them? Or could they teach me how to talk to dolphins? Something fun like that.”
“You could meet one,” Jotaro said. “Swimming…maybe. It would depend on how well you got along. No learning how to talk to animals, though. They only speak mermaid and English.” Well—and Japanese, but Jolyne was probably in the same boat as Noriaki with that. She understood most of it, but trying to get her to speak it was like pulling teeth. Reading, even worse. She could write her name, and that was it, so she wouldn’t care about that anyway.
“Then I’d still wanna know,” Jolyne said resolutely.
“Really? I mean, think about it…it’s a pretty big deal, and you can’t tell anyone else about it, no matter how much you want to. Is that worth it for you?” Jotaro asked. He still wanted her to say yes more than no—it would be a hell of a lot harder to deal with everything if she said no—but it was a massive responsibility to put on her shoulders when she was so young, and he had no way to properly warn her of it beforehand. Even if he’d tried approaching this truthfully, she never would have believed him. Maybe when she was five or six, but not now.
“You’re being weird, Dad,” she said, looking at him with a frown. “Why does it matter so much?”
“Because I want to take you to meet a real mermaid tomorrow.”
At that, Jolyne scoffed, getting up from the table. “You know I’m not a little kid anymore, right?” she asked, staring at Jotaro with her arms folded. Then she held out her hand. “Can I have my phone back now?”
Jotaro reluctantly passed it over, then admitted, eyeing her in defeat, “I actually just want to take you to see Noriaki.”
“Seriously?” she exclaimed. “Why didn’t you just tell me that in the first place?”
It was something she badgered him over all night, to which Jotaro held his tongue, knowing full well trying to give away anything else would be futile. Instead, he focused on preparing her for the things he could, like the security they’d have to go through once they were at the Foundation. He already had her visitor’s pass, one with an appropriate level of clearance, but that didn’t exclude her from all the usual checks everyone had to go through to enter the building.
Her excitement definitely took a noticeable dip the next day when he stopped the car at one of the guard kiosks flanking the gates of the outer perimeter. “This is a hospital?” she asked quietly, staring ahead at the huge, imposing concrete structure ahead of her, comprised of one main building in the centre, and countless smaller ones littered around it.
“A medical facility,” Jotaro clarified, taking their badges back from the guard. The barrier in front of them raised, and he was free to start driving again, veering off the main road to a smaller access one that led to the underground lot he normally parked in. “And a research centre. They have a few different departments.”
They made it through the metal detectors okay, but with each pass of security, and each errant stare from an employee who was understandably confused to see a child in these restricted areas, Jolyne visibly shrank a little more.
“Dad, I don’t like this,” she said when they got to that first set of double-doors before the reception area. She stopped just short of them, still holding his hand, but clearly balking after everything she’d already endured. Jotaro didn’t fault her for that. She already had good intuition—enough to tell when something was off like this was.
“It’s okay,” he said. “That’s the worst of it. I promise. Now we just go through here, we sign in, and you can see Noriaki.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay,” she said with a nod, and Jotaro pulled her forward, swiping his entry key.
“Your name’s Jolyne?” the lady at the desk asked after Jolyne had signed her name and handed the clipboard back. Upon seeing Jolyne, her usual bored demeanour had disappeared, and she was suddenly animated in a way Jotaro hadn’t thought possible. At Jolyne’s nod, she commented, “Wow, what a pretty name. How old are you?”
“Ten,” Jolyne said. “Almost eleven. My birthday’s in April.”
“Aw, you’re so tall already! Well, have fun. I’m sure this must be exciting for you,” she said with a knowing smile.
“Uh…sure,” Jolyne answered, looking confused. While Jotaro was entering his code for the next set of doors, she tugged him down, whispering in his ear, “Everyone’s really weird here.”
“Don’t say that where she can still hear you,” Jotaro whispered back, fighting a laugh. He watched Jolyne look over her shoulder again, forcing a smile and a wave to match the receptionist’s concerted attempt at being friendly. When her head whipped back, the doors were already open, and she finally caught sight of the huge tank in front of them.
“Woah!” she exclaimed, rushing forward. All her fear seemingly dissipated in an instant, replaced by surprise and curiosity as she planted her hands on the thick, plastic walls. “What is this?” she marvelled, not even sparing a glance at Jotaro, too caught up in scanning the environment inside. She seemed to have already spotted some of the fish, but there was no sign of Noriaki yet. Hopefully, he was still keeping that ‘gentle approach’ they’d discussed beforehand in mind.
“This is where Noriaki lives.”
Jolyne finally tore her eyes away then, staring at Jotaro in disbelief. Like she thought he was crazy—like he’d expected she would—and she seemed right on the verge of refuting him when the dark shape slowly glided into view from the side of the tank.
Jolyne’s eyes widened once she caught sight of him, and her face pressed tight to the glass above her hands. Noriaki’s eyes were also wide, taking her in just as she studied him, and Jotaro worried for a moment that the reaction wouldn’t be good. She was just a kid, so he didn’t think he’d interpret her as a threat, but he also hadn’t had the best experience with kids. It was possible that as much as Noriaki enjoyed talking to her on the phone, seeing her in person would tap into those bad memories from when he was younger, and trigger something he couldn’t really control.
Then Noriaki’s hand lifted, and he waved, with a much shyer smile than he’d given Jotaro the first time he saw him. Jolyne broke into a grin, and after waving back, she turned to Jotaro with an expression he wasn’t graced by very often.
“Dad, this is really cool, but I already told you I’m not a little kid anymore. We can just do something normal next time,” she said, with the sort of patronizing affection that should’ve been beyond her years.
“What do you mean?” Jotaro asked, his brows raised almost to the brim of his hat. This definitely wasn’t the kind of reaction he’d been expecting. Noriaki was still hanging around in front of her, and she was still waving to him like she was entertained, but there was no big freak-out. No reckoning with her entire worldview being shattered in an instance like he’d experienced the first time.
“I’ve already seen people do this,” she explained, watching as Noriaki swam up the side of the tank, then arced. Apparently he was even going to the trouble of putting on a little show for her. Too bad Jotaro couldn’t relay that she was mostly unfazed. “There were some girls at the aquarium who were in costume and swam around when we were on a field trip last year. It was cool, but I don’t really bother playing pretend like that anymore.”
Jotaro stared up into the tank for another moment, watching as Noriaki dove back down from the top. He was moving really fast now, heading into the wider, open areas further away, where the perspective made him look much smaller. “When was the last time I played pretend with you?” he finally asked.
“Uh, I don’t know…I don’t remember.”
“Probably when you were really little, right? I was never that good at it. Your mom was always better with that kind of thing. She had a lot more imagination than I did.”
“Okay…so?”
Jolyne’s voice was quieter, her face beginning to contort, but she was still reticent to go anywhere near where Jotaro was trying to lead. It was good that she had that sense of scepticism already—that response to always look for the most reasonable explanation first. He hoped she kept that same attitude going forward. He’d hate for this to lead her down the path of thinking the world was more magical than it really was, especially when a lot of his experiences here over the last six months had taught him the opposite.
“So why would I suddenly decide I wanted to play pretend now?” Jotaro finished. “Look at what we had to go through just to get here. This is a high-security facility. People work on really serious stuff here. World-altering stuff. I had to jump through enough hoops just to get you this.” Jotaro bent down in front of her then, grabbing the laminated visitor’s pass on the lanyard around her neck to demonstrate. “And those people—they’re not going to build a tank that probably cost more than your grandparents’ apartment just so I can try to pull one over on you for five minutes. I wouldn’t do that to you, either.”
“Dad, seriously…” she tried again, her voice getting quieter and quieter—like it was finally starting to hit her. She was looking off to the side, off into the blue void of the tank, where Noriaki was still lapping back and forth. “If you’re lying to me, that’s not funny. I’ll be really mad. Seriously.”
“I’m not lying. Promise.”
Jolyne nodded, and then suddenly, a couple of tears spilled past her lids.
“Woah. Hey. What’s the matter?” Jotaro asked, holding her arms. Panic struck him in that instant—panic that all his worst fears about her hating him for hiding things again would come true.
“It’s…it’s really cool,” she finally managed, “but I don’t get it. You said we were coming to meet Noriaki, and I was excited about that…but even if you’re not lying about this, that still means you were lying about something.”
“No,” Jotaro said, shaking his head. He extended his fist, rapping his knuckles against the side of the tank, and Noriaki raced over in a flash, actually making Jolyne jump this time as he stopped just short of the glass. “He’s right there.”
“This is so cool,” Jolyne said excitedly, running her gloved hands down the length of Noriaki’s tail. “Probably the coolest thing in the world.” She stopped just short of his fluke, then looked back at Noriaki with an eager grin. “Can you do the splash again?”
Noriaki lifted his tail up in the air, the tips of his fin rising the highest before he slammed it down into the edge of the water, breaking the surface with the flat of it and forcing a large, outward spray that dappled the water metres away.
“Awesome,” Jolyne breathed out. “What other tricks can you do?”
“He’s not a seal,” Jotaro reminded her.
“I know that,” Jolyne rebutted aggressively, frowning at Jotaro before her attention returned to Noriaki. “I was just wondering if you could do flips and stuff. That’s what everyone always thinks of when they think of mermaids.”
“Yes, I can do flips,” Noriaki answered, unperturbed.
“And you’re really not magic at all? You can’t just get legs instead like Ariel?” she joked. Jotaro knew there was a part of her still hoping that was secretly the case, the childish part she kept trying to deny wasn’t there anymore that probably could’ve been convinced those kinds of forces were real, with enough evidence.
“No. No legs,” Noriaki answered with a bemused smile.
“Well, that’s okay, I guess,” Jolyne said. “It sucks that you’re stuck here, but even if you could get legs, you still wouldn’t look like a regular person anyway. You look way cooler than that.”
“Thank you. You don’t think it’s scary?”
“No, it’s so cool,” Jolyne gushed. “You’re like a really pretty monster. Or an alien.” When Jotaro glared at her, indicating that kind of phrasing wasn’t okay, she quickly added, “But in a really good way. I like that kind of stuff. You know, like the Zora!” She paused, her eyes going wide, as if something had just occurred to her, and then she repeated in awe, “You’re like the Zora.”
Whatever they started talking about after she made that connection, Jotaro had no f*cking clue. Probably video game stuff, because it sounded weird enough to be something from a video game, and it was after that Jolyne finally experienced the same confusion Jotaro had when the department head revealed to him that Noriaki watched TV, wondering how he’d even been playing video games with her until now.
“Woah! It’s like a tiny waterslide!” she exclaimed when she saw Noriaki operate the tunnel downstairs for the first time.
She had to go around poking at everything else in the room afterward—thankfully, it didn’t look so depressing anymore, because she definitely would’ve complained if Jotaro hadn’t already taken the time to rectify that—and then they finally settled into another one of their gaming sessions like nothing had really changed. Well, not entirely: she was a little obsessed with how Noriaki’s fingers moved and the way he used the controller, preferring to keep it resting on the shelf of the tub rather than holding it in his hands, and operating the controls more like a keyboard in front of him. Jotaro had known he was really fast with it, but didn’t see much of a difference otherwise, but apparently his techniques really stood out to her. “Okay, now I don’t feel so bad that I literally haven’t won anything yet,” she finally remarked after she’d watched him playing for awhile, and with that, they were back to their usual chatter.
If Jotaro had thought getting her out of bed was bad though, it was nothing compared to the dozens of attempts it took to eventually get her to tear herself away. He’d started reminding her of the time about a half hour before they actually needed to get on the road, to see if that might help, but it really didn’t. Once he finally got on her case, telling her that they were already going to be late and she’d have to text her mom about it, she relented.
“Bye,” she said, hugging Noriaki with a towel draped over her front, to be sure her clothes weren’t uncomfortably damp for the long drive home. “I’m really happy I finally got to come see you properly.”
“Yes, it was very nice,” Noriaki said, pulling back. “I’m looking forward to next time.”
“Yeah, me too,” she agreed, then looked back at Jotaro plaintively. “Do I really have to wait two weeks?”
“Well, you can ask your mom about next weekend. See what she says.”
Jotaro figured she’d probably be alright with it, and for right now, it was okay if Jolyne tagged along for a few weekends in a row. She was excited, understandably, and most kids would’ve had a lot less patience than that in this situation. Hopefully it would work its way out of her system within the next months—before the summer, at least. Jotaro still wanted enough time with just him and Noriaki to feel more comfortable before his biology suddenly made things a lot more serious.
“You’re okay?” he asked Noriaki in the few minutes he had with Jolyne out of the room, under the direction to wash her hands in the sink outside and not go anywhere else while she waited for him. “That was alright?”
“It was wonderful,” Noriaki said, smiling widely. He was still supporting himself on his hands, staying balanced over the lip of the bath as he leaned out.
Jotaro searched his face for any hint of discomfort—any indication that part of him actually felt otherwise, but was trying to hide it for Jotaro’s sake, to not disappoint him—but there was none. “Okay,” Jotaro finally said, nodding. “Good. I’m glad you had fun.”
Noriaki propelled himself that extra inch forward, lifting his hands from the tile, and he would’ve toppled forward soon after if Jotaro wasn’t ready for it, catching him under his arms as they wound around his neck. “Thank you,” he said, the smile still in his voice, right next to Jotaro’s ear, his head tucking into the gap between the collar of Jotaro’s coat and his turtleneck.
“You’re welcome,” Jotaro murmured, his grip tightening around his back. He felt a light nip at the junction of his neck, and a smile of his own tugged at his lips before he pressed a kiss near the same spot on Noriaki, but mirrored on the opposite side, right below the line of his jaw.
Jolyne could barely contain herself on the way out of the Foundation, and it was only the threat of having the privileges Jotaro had just gotten her revoked that got her to quiet down initially. Once they made it to the car, however, all bets were off.
“Did that really just happen?” she asked, flopping into the passenger’s seat.
“Yeah. Did you text your mom? Tell her we should be there by five,” Jotaro said, pulling on his seatbelt. “Give or take ten minutes.”
Jolyne grumbled, getting her phone out of her pocket. That was where it had stayed for the majority of their visit. Jotaro had made sure when he was ironing out this whole deal that it wouldn’t be taken from her when she was there, agreeing that he’d ensure she didn’t take any pictures or video, or send anything to her friends, after making the point that her mom wouldn’t be very happy or willing to still entertain the story he’d given if he had to explain how they couldn’t be in direct contact whenever she was there.
The sh*t Jotaro had to sign to even swing this stuff in the first place—sh*t he knew wasn’t even legal, and would never hold up in court, but his hands were tied on because trying to bring his own lawyer into these negotiations would probably shut them down from the start—made him deeply uncomfortable in multiple areas, but he wasn’t going to think about that right now. He’d been assured most of those clauses were just to cover every possible outcome of this arrangement, but the probability of something like that ever happening was so extremely low that it was next to impossible. Even if he agreed in theory, that didn’t do much to make him feel better, but he couldn’t pick the contracts apart if he wanted to keep any good will between him and the department, so he hadn’t. It still nagged at him, even now, but he hadn’t, and he’d just have to live with that—and hope nature’s ability to shirk scientific methods and improbability at the most inconvenient of times never reared its head here.
“So how did you actually meet him?” Jolyne wondered when Jotaro was backing out of the parking spot. “Obviously he wasn’t in an accident, and if he lives here, you couldn’t just become friends normally.”
“No, I just met him here while I was working on a project,” Jotaro said vaguely. “The Foundation rescued him a long time ago. He’s been living here for over twenty years now.”
“And he’s never been outside in twenty years?” she asked incredulously. Noriaki had already explained to her in her first round of questioning that he didn’t have any memories of living in the ocean from when he was a child, and he’d never been to it since.
“Nope. I guess he was on a ship when they moved him here when he was a kid, but he doesn’t remember that very well either. He probably didn’t even get to see the sky,” Jotaro speculated, thinking of how locked-down an operation like that would’ve been.
“That’s why he doesn’t have anyone else to come visit him?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s sad.”
“I know.”
They drove in silence for a couple minutes, passing through the gates on the other side of the guard’s station, and then Jolyne released a long sigh that morphed into a groan of frustration. “I seriously can’t tell anyone else about this?” she muttered.
“I told you that. I said it would be hard.”
“Yeah, but like—” her hands came up, miming an explosion around her head, “you have no idea how crazy everyone at school would go if I could tell them. I’d be so friggin cool!”
“Aren’t you already cool?”
“Cooler,” she emphasized. “No one would ever wanna stop talking to me, and I’d get invited to everything.”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t that get annoying? Even if the whole world found out, it’s not like everyone else would be able to come meet him, but since they knew you were allowed to, they’d be bugging you about it all the time. Some of them would probably get jealous, too…start treating you differently.”
“Yeah…I guess…” Jolyne said quietly.
“Trust me. It’s better this way,” Jotaro said resolutely.
He was starting to think that more and more—that honestly, scientific progress could go f*ck itself, now that he was so personally wrapped up in this. He wasn’t dreaming about reshaping the fundamentals of the world anymore, of incredible new avenues for research into the species or sentient life as a whole. All he found his mind drifting to anymore were ideas of finding somewhere they could just live privately together, at some point. Maybe he could finally embrace his family’s stupid amount of wealth and become that reclusive millionaire with his own private island, if it gave Noriaki a place where he could safely experience the outside world for the first time in his life. They could leave all this other bullsh*t behind, and just…be happy, if only he could find some way to get him out of there.
“So it’s like you get the best of both worlds,” Jolyne said, breaking Jotaro’s reverie with a satisfied grin plastered on her face.
“Uh…what?”
“I’ll put the song on,” she said, flicking through her phone.
“Oh…this,” Jotaro said, recognizing the melody as it started blasting through the speakers.
Jolyne had closed her eyes and was dancing in her seat, throwing her head back and forth to the beat, and as Jotaro watched, glancing between her and the road, he remembered that those fantasies of packing up and leaving for some private island off the coast, away from the rest of civilization, were getting a little ahead of himself. Definitely years away, and in that interim, hopefully he could come up with a better solution that would let them stay closer to all the other important people in his life. There weren’t many, but the ones who were there—they mattered a lot.
“Did you have fun?” Mari asked when Jolyne came bounding up the steps an hour later, her duffel bag over her shoulder and Jotaro following a few steps behind.
“Yeah, tons! Is it okay if I go with Dad next week too? He said I needed to ask.”
“…Sure, if he’s alright with that. About the same time?” she asked, looking to Jotaro for confirmation.
“Yeah. I’ll pick her up.”
“Okay. Well, I’m glad everything went well. I thought you might get a little scared going to that kind of place,” she told Jolyne.
“No, it wasn’t scary,” Jolyne said breezily, and Jotaro bit his tongue. “Anyway, can you sign me up for the dive program this summer? Dad and I were talking about it, and I wanna try doing it again.”
“Of course,” Mari said, obviously a little surprised. “If that’s what you want to do.”
“Yeah, I really do,” she said with a grin, and Jotaro knew the delight in her eyes was solely due to her imagining that whole ‘swimming’ possibility they’d talked about in more detail on the way home. “Okay, bye, Dad. Thanks for taking me,” she said, doubling back to give Jotaro a hug before she ran inside.
“What’s all that about?” Mari asked once she was out of earshot.
“We were talking about it on the drive back, and she decided she wanted to give it another shot,” Jotaro said, shrugging. “It’s a long drive, so it just kinda came up.”
“Right…” Mari said, still scrutinizing him with a hint of confusion. She was probably still trying to reconcile the abrupt shift with the spectacular fuss Jolyne had made about quitting the kids’ program two summers ago. She brushed it off a moment later, asking, “So it went okay? She didn’t have any issues with the security?”
“She got a little freaked out at first,” Jotaro admitted, “but once she was in there she was fine. It wasn’t that different from when they’re on the phone. They just played their games…talked.”
“Uh-huh,” Mari said with a nod. She still looked like she thought something was up. “And he’s doing alright? Your friend?”
“Yeah, he’s doing really well.”
“Good. That’s good…” she said, trailing off with a slight frown to herself. When she looked back up, she said, “Well, have a good night. Oh, and we were thinking now that her party would be on the twentieth—it’s a Friday. It’s still not for sure, though. I have to talk to a few more of her friends’ parents, to make sure that works for them, but keep it in mind. Hopefully we’ll get it figured out soon.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay. Goodnight.”
“‘Night.”
That turned out to be the first Sunday in awhile that Jotaro ate dinner alone. It was then, as he reached for his cell to text Noriaki about it, he realized something.
He really needed to get him a phone.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” Jotaro said, looking away from the screen, down to Noriaki, who’d been quietly resting against his chest since he’d finished eating near the start of the movie.
“Are you Tyler?”
Jotaro held his gaze for a moment, one that seemed to almost be inquisitively studying him, then looked back to the screen. The scene about being the watcher of things, the observer, that closed with the poignant question of what a human’s interference might bring to the unsuspecting wolves, had just ended, and given Noriaki’s intelligence, it wasn’t surprising that he’d picked up on the similarities after another viewing.
“No,” Jotaro said. “No, I’m the Man with No Name.”
“Oh. A vigilante,” Noriaki commented with a burgeoning grin. Of course he knew that reference. He knew all of them.
“Yeah. And one day, I’m gonna break you out of here.”
Noriaki laughed at that, his grasp around Jotaro’s neck tightening. He didn’t laugh like this that often, which was pretty obvious—he couldn’t moderate the volume whatsoever—but Jotaro liked it. He obviously thought he was joking, and it was fine if he kept thinking that for now, even though Jotaro knew the feeling inside him was anything but a joke.
“Maybe you shouldn’t say that too loud though,” Noriaki murmured once he’d calmed down, rubbing Jotaro’s chest. Jotaro quirked his brow, but said nothing else.
He didn’t care if the cameras overheard. He wanted them to. Everything he did here now was going to be purposeful. He was going to make sure they all knew what his intentions were—how inevitably, he was going to put an end to all this, and make a new beginning. The one Noriaki deserved.
“I think I might be Tyler,” Noriaki said a few minutes later, no longer looking at Jotaro. He was still curled in his arms, his hand rubbing absently over Jotaro’s shoulder, but Jotaro’s grip, which had been keeping him close to his chest this whole time, suddenly stiffened.
That scene—thinking about it like that, from Noriaki’s perspective, not his, suddenly made so much sense, with so much startling clarity, it terrified him all over again. The isolated person, the one watching through glass lenses. The one who couldn’t feel or do things for himself. The one who felt envious for the wild creatures who got to experience a world he could never truly know.
The one who feared for anything exposed to his world. What would happen then—to them.
“Well…that’s good, right?” Jotaro posited, pushing that rising tide of anxiety down. “That means you can understand his emotions, and he’s not afraid all the time. He worries a lot, but…he figures it out in the end.”
“Yes, he does.”
Jotaro glanced down again, catching Noriaki’s eyes as a slow smile spread across his face. He huffed a brief laugh, feeling the same kind of emotion tugging at the corners of his lips, and he let Noriaki study it first, tracing the edges with his thumbs before he surrendered to a kiss.
Whatever fear there was, of all the things to come…at least he’d found his wonder again. Not in the place, but in the person.
