Kurogane took a deep breath and knocked smartly on the door of his family’s bungalow before pushing it open and taking a tentative step inside. As he’d remembered, it smelled pleasantly of wet wood and a warm fireplace; there was an inviting sort of darkness filling the room and as his boots clomped against the floorboards the sound of something wooden clattered to the ground to his side and someone gasped.

Turning, his heart froze when he took in the sight of his mother standing in the threshold, covering her mouth with her hands as tears welled up in her eyes and slid along her fingertips. He turned the rest of the way and took a step towards her.

“Mother...”

Trembling, his mother reached out and twined her arms around him, pulling him to her gently, almost calm, and buried her face in his shoulder. Her fingers clenched in his jacket as she finally made a soft sound against his shoulder and clutched him tightly.

“Kurogane,” she whispered, sobbing silently into his shoulder. “We heard of the ship. We... we thought you were...”

“Dad... Dad’s alive too,” Kurogane croaked, hesitantly bringing his hands up to rub his mother’s back comfortingly. He had never been good at offering comfort delicately, and so he settled on simply telling her the truth. “They took him. But I know he wouldn’t let himself die.”

His mother pulled back and looked at him questioningly, her eyes swimming with tears that she wiped hurriedly away.

“They?” she asked. Kurogane stared at her.

“The pirates,” he said. Her eyes widened slightly and she framed his face with her hands before letting them fall to his arms.

“We were told your ship overturned on a rogue wave,” she said. She kept her fingers clenched in his shirt sleeves as though worried he was an apparition that would dissipate the minute she blinked. Kurogane’s eyes narrowed in suspicion; why would such a story have made it all the way back to Paloma? Stories of pirate raids had never been kept from the public before. Had the gentlest story been crafted when they hadn’t shown up in their regular ports as to what happened?

And yet, he thought, his father’s ship had to have been seen with a pirate banner on it. It had to have been seen somewhere; it couldn’t have just disappeared from the face of the earth.

“Kurogane,” his mother said, her voice quiet but unwavering. “Please tell me what happened to the two of you.”

Kurogane nodded firmly, leading her to the kitchen table and letting her keep a grip on his hand as he told her of the attack.

“This is where he grew up?” Umi remarked, peering disapprovingly down at the sand that kept creeping into her sandals. She reached down and removed her sandals, flinging them over her shoulder by the straps. She was far too used to moving around barefoot to be able to stand the feeling. She hadn’t lived in the jungle her entire life just to go soft – the bottoms of her feet were tough and resilient, more than capable of handling the sandy, soft dirt and dewy grass they walked across.

“Guess so,” Watanuki replied, peering around, taking in all he could. “It’s kind of surprising. It seems like such a friendly, quaint place.”

“Yeah,” Umi replied, picking up the hem of her pastel blue and white dress and stepping over a puddle. A very light rain spat down on the earth even as the sun shone brightly in the sky and merchants and neighbours were out and about, socializing in the tiny, close-knit coastal town. “Souma says Paloma was always one of her favourite places to stop because the people were so friendly and inviting.”

“They’ve got a great marketplace, that’s for sure,” Watanuki replied, poking around in one of the merchant’s stalls for supplies. He bought a few vials of sauces and spices and moved on to the vegetable stand. Umi followed, uninterested in food but curious to see more of the town.

“I wonder how long Mister Kurogane wants to stay here,” Umi remarked pensively, picking up a strand of blue pearls from one stand and inspecting them. “His poor mother. She had to have been so worried about him.”

“It’ll be okay, though, right?” Watanuki asked, digging down to find a head of lettuce near the bottom where they were fresher. “He doesn’t seem like the type of guy to linger when there’s a job that needs to be done.”

“No,” Umi said, fiddling absently with the pearls before handing over a coin that Kurogane had given her. She pulled her hair back and strung the pearls over her head like a makeshift headband. She smiled at her reflection in one of the stall’s mirrors. “He’s not.”

“I’ve never had to cook for a crew before,” Watanuki said, wandering determinedly through the tiny food market. “Limes for the vitamins should be good, and salted meat and beans. Anything that can be kept without spoiling for a good amount of time.”

Wrinkling her nose at the mention of limes, Umi trailed after him.

“Mister Kurogane and I had lots of oatmeal and rice,” she supplied helpfully. Watanuki nodded, looking around for the aforementioned items.

“Chocolate should be good too,” he said. “It’ll keep and I can make it into a drink if I melt it down, too.”

“You won’t find that sweet shit here. Too expensive,” came a rumbling voice. Kurogane approached his crew with a large rucksack thrown over one shoulder, dressed in fresh, black clothes and looking clean and presentable for the first time since he’d been thrown from his father’s ship. He’d had his sister trim his hair after many hugs and tears and shaved the beginnings of a beard from his face after taking a quick bath. Watanuki gaped in shock and Umi smiled widely, clapping her hands.

“Wow, Mr. Kurogane!” she said, her cheeks a little pinker than usual. “You clean up pretty good! You don’t look like your usual self at all!”

“Hmph,” Kurogane grunted, one hand on his hip as he looked away pointedly. “Figured I might as well. Who knows how long we’ll be away?”

“Do you think we’ll be away for long?” Watanuki asked, gathering up the bags he’d dropped in his shock that the bedraggled, “drowned puppy” look he was used to seeing on Kurogane was not, in fact, the man’s chosen fashion statement.

“We’ll be away for as long as it takes,” he said, resting his hand on the pommel of his sword. “Are you ready to go in an hour?”

“An hour? That should be fine!” Watanuki said, cradling the cabbage head against his chest. “I can get the shopping done and loaded on the ship in forty minutes or so!”

“Good,” Kurogane grunted, secretly glad that they wouldn’t be surviving on piss-poor ale and stale biscuits for the rest of their journey. Watanuki turned and ran off into the thick of the marketplace, his head swivelling this way and that as he looked for suitable supplies.

“So soon?” Umi asked in surprise, trailing after the captain as he turned on his heel and headed back towards the ship. “I thought you’d want to visit your family for...”

“It’s more important that we track down that guy,” Kurogane said, cutting her off as he clomped down the dock. Water splashed up through the creaking planks and soaked into the soles of his boots, teasing the blisters on the undersides of his feet. There was a thin fog settling over the docks from the ocean that muffled the sounds of sails flapping in the breeze and nets being hauled up and over, the cry of the gulls that haunted the docks and the lapping of the waves against the hulls of ships, rocking them back and forth as the ropes tying them to the docks strained and whimpered at the movement. Yet despite the quiet, industrious cacophony of the docks he’d grown up on, Kurogane was unable to find comfort in the familiar sounds.

“I’m sure one day wouldn’t make a difference,” Umi remarked, ducking under a drunk man’s arm as he struggled to carry a large crate on top of his head. “Your sisters I’m sure will be worried sick about you, and your mother...”

“It’s fine,” Kurogane grunted. “I told them that I wouldn’t die.”

“Kurogane...” Umi began tentatively, hands clenched in her dress.

“I don’t say things I don’t mean,” he said resolutely, pausing a moment before stepping up onto the gangplank and shifting the sack over his shoulder. “Are you coming or not?”

Umi broke into a smile.

“Yup!” she said, trailing after him up the gangplank.

“You’re back?” Souma called, scrambling elegantly down the rigging to perch atop one of the crates of biscuit tins Ueda had left them with. Her bare feet were tangled up in coils of rope as she steadier herself with her hand, looking every inch the seasoned mast-climber.

“We should prepare to leave port,” Kurogane said. “That other kid’ll be back in less than an hour and we should be ready to cast off once everything’s loaded.”

“So soon?” Souma asked, kohl-lined eyes widening in surprise. “I thought you had things to settle here.”

“I settled ‘em,” Kurogane said, leaning heavily against the railing of the ship, irritated that he was being continually questioned by the female percentage of his mismatched crew.

“I’ll help however I can, Miss Souma,” Umi remarked, laying a hand on Souma’s. “Mr. Kurogane taught me a lot about sailing on the voyage here, I hope I can be useful to you.”

“Of course,” Souma said, smiling politely. “I’d be happy to show you how to do anything you’re uncertain of.”

“Alright!” Umi said, smiling brightly. “If you need us for anything, Mr. Kurogane, come find us, alright?”

“Hn,” Kurogane grunted, staring out over the expanse of the misty ocean. The wind from the waves chilled his skin, seeping through the fabric of his shirt and sending a shiver down his spine. He leaned against the salt-soaked wood and rested his chin on his arms, sighing periodically as the girls worked and eventually Watanuki struggled to haul his purchases onto the ship. He pulled himself from his stupor long enough to help him, carrying the heavier crates on his shoulders down to the galley and store them away for their voyage.

When they were finished, Kurogane pulled himself up to the helm only to find Souma already there, guiding the ship from the dock as Umi unfurled some of the sails they’d tied from above and awaiting his order.

“Where shall we go, Kurogane?” Souma asked him. He looked at her. She was dressed in men’s clothing with a feminine sash cinched around her waist to hold her pistols. Her tanned hands gripped the helm and the wind tore strands of her shorn hair from their nest beneath her wide-brimmed hat. She was waiting patiently for an answer; Kurogane ran over his options in his mind, realizing at once that the simple question wasn’t one he was immediately prepared to answer.

The map his father had given him had ended around the South Spider Islands, he remembered. He’d studied that map like a sacred text, in the lamplight late at night and the crow’s nest at all early hours of the morning. He could recall most of the details of the well-studied map in his mind when he closed his eyes, and he was certain that the pirates, if they’d gone to the trouble of taking it, were heading somewhere recently charted. While he had no idea where, specifically, they were headed, it was most likely they were heading south, to the islands that his father had only recently charted.

“Towards the southern border for now,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Towards Tarago?” Souma asked, turning the helm accordingly. “I thought as much.”

“No,” Kurogane said, looking away. “We’re not stopping unless we need to. We have enough supplies to be able to reach the siren’s passage at least. There’s no reason to stop there.”

“Oh?” Souma asked, green eyes widening in surprise. “Forgive me, Kurogane, but I was sure you’d want to check in on your friend.”

Kurogane stiffened.

“I’ve got something to do,” he said defensively, turning away. “And that guy... he’s an idiot, but he can take care of himself. The person who needs me most right now isn’t him.”

“Kurogane...” Souma began before she shook her head and gave him a soft smile. “Of course, you’re right. And I’m sure that you’ll be able to see him again soon.”

“Hn,” Kurogane grunted, colouring a little. “Like I care.”

“It’s sooo nice out!” Umi cried, holding her sun hat on her head as she stared out across the shimmering water, a wide smile on her face as the wind rushed past her and fluttered her pastel pink dress about her knees. “It looks kind of like there are stars in the water.”

“Hn,” Kurogane grunted, stoically manning the helm. They had been sailing for three weeks now, just having passed the coast of Tarago and continuing on towards the siren’s passage to the southwest. Above head he could see Souma hanging from the rigging, repairing a pulley, and close to the bow he could see the young chef peeling something over a bucket, his pants rolled up to his knees and his hands blistering. He shifted the wheel a little and turned his gaze back forward.

“The further south we go, the warmer it gets! It almost feels like home!” Umi was saying, turning from the ocean to smile at the captain. Her smile faded when he didn’t reply, staring broodingly into the distance. “Mr. Kurogane?”

“Hn.”

“Are you alright?”

“Fine.”

“You seem a little...”

“I’m fine,” Kurogane said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other, fidgeting. “This ‘s just a pain.”

“Steering the boat?” Umi asked, venturing closer.

“Manning the helm,” Kurogane corrected grumpily. Umi cheerfully ignored the tone and prodded him gently out of the way to look at the oak helm.

“It’s the most important job on the ship and you’re bored?” she asked, poking the knobs before curling her fingers tentatively around them. “Jeez, you’re fussy. If you’re so bored I can take over for a while.”

“You don’t know how,” Kurogane said, scowling (pouting) at being pushed aside.

“So teach me!” Umi said, smiling and tossing her hat down onto the deck. “Come on, don’t just stand around. I’m part of this crew right? So I should know.”

“...Hmph,” Kurogane grunted, crossing his arms. “I’ve never taught anything in my life.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything!” Umi declared, grabbing his arm and tugging him over. “So, which way do I turn it?”

“You - ! You don’t turn it anywhere, we’re on course right now!” Kurogane snapped, yanking his arm back.

“Okay, okay, jeez!” Umi said, righting the helm. “So I just... keep it steady?”

“Yeah,” Kurogane said, placing his hands on his hips. There was a long silence; the ocean swelled against the ship’s belly and the sails flapped against the masts. The wooden ship creaked as it cut through the waves, travelling ever onward towards the southern border.

Umi held the helm steady, determined, letting Kurogane correct her position once or twice before she sighed deeply.

“This is boring,” she declared, slumping over in defeat.

“That’s what I said!” Kurogane roared.

Meanwhile, across the ship, Watanuki sat with his back against the railing, working tirelessly with the fruit he’d managed to keep from spoiling. He cut them mechanically, preparing them for the dinner he was preparing for the crew. His first time trying to make something with them and he was finding it irritatingly difficult.

“Please don’t let it be a disaster,” Watanuki whispered fervently, dramatic tears welling in the corners of his eyes as he clenched his hands into fists around the peeler and fruit. He threw his fists up in the air dramatically and cried out to the open sea, “HIMAWARI-CHAN, I’M SLICING THESE FOR YOOOU!”

“Are those limes?” came a stoic voice.

“Of course they are,” Watanuki replied tersely, slicing another fruit in half.

“You’re cutting them up?”

“The crew needs their vitamins. There’s not too much I can make with limes without a proper kitchen, the least I can do is make them easier to eat.”

“Vitamins?” questioned the voice, sounding rather uninterested and muffled now, as though there was something shoved in the speaker’s voice. Irritated at the stream of pointless, short questions and the lack of emotion in tone, Watanuki whirled around to tell the boy leaning over the ship’s railing to shut up.

“Would you shut up?!” Watanuki snapped, freezing when he noticed the lime slices poking from between the boy’s bluish lips. He made an indignant sound, staring in horror as the stoic-faced teenager (naked from the waist up, the nerve!) chewed mechanically on the slices he’d just meticulously cut and swallowed, slurping up the juice from his fingers.

“It’s not bad,” the boy said simply.

“NOT BAD?! I SLAVED OVER THOSE!! AND ANYWAY, WHO SAID YOU COULD HAVE ANY?!” Watanuki shrieked, reaching out to strangle the stupid, half-naked, stoic-faced, idiotic loser who dared to crawl up onto their ship in the middle of the god-forsaken ocean and steal his food --

He stilled.

“WHERE THE HELL DID YOU COME FROM?!” he shrieked, scrambling back and holding out the carving knife as a makeshift weapon. The boy leaned over the railing further to grab up some more lime slices, scattered across the deck as a result of Watanuki knocking over the bowl in his haste to move.

“There,” the boy replied, chewing obnoxiously and pointing over his shoulder.

“Eh?! T-there’s no land for miles, what the hell do you mean ‘there’?! Are you - hey, quit eating those! – some kind of castaway?”

“I thought you just said there was no land for miles,” the boy remarked, chewing on a lime rind. Watanuki whacked him on the back of the head to make him spit it out.

“DON’T EAT THAT PART! Well, how else did you get all the way out here?!” Watanuki cried, crossing his arms indignantly.

“Swam,” the boy said simply, shrugging.

“SWAM?!” Watanuki cried, grabbing the boy’s ears and trying to tug him over the side. “Do you mind telling me how in the hell you swam all the way out to the middle of the...”

The boy hit the deck with a wet flop and Watanuki went silent. The boy sat up and ran a hand down his wet face, blinking obliviously before looking back up at him with that impassive expression.

“That hurt,” he said stoically, shifting so that he was sitting more comfortably, the long, grey fish tail that made up his bottom half flopping down with a squish on the deck. His fins unfurled as he crossed his arms and looked up at the half-cut lime in Watanuki’s hand. “Are you going to eat that?”

“WHAT-- WHAT--!”

“Nevermind, there’s more down here,” the mermaid (merman?! Watanuki thought in a brief and strange moment of clarity) remarked, pushing himself up onto what SHOULD HAVE BEEN knees but was instead an array of glistening scales and picking one up.

“GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!” Watanuki cried, scrambling back and away from the weird (hideous, gross, annoying, somehow INFURIATING) creature and throwing his arms up protectively. “What the hell are you supposed to be?”

“It’s Doumeki,” he remarked smoothly, five or six lime slices shoved in his mouth. “I never knew you could cut these up.”

“Of course you can! The inside is what you’re SUPPOSED to eat!” Watanuki grumbled. “AND THAT’S NOT WHAT I MEANT AND YOU KNOW IT!”

“You’re a human, right?” Doumeki said, holding up a hand. Watanuki nodded sickly, his mind reeling. “I’m not human.”

“I CAN SEE THAT, THANK YOU VERY MUCH!”

Doumeki shoved a finger in his ear.

“Would you shut up?” he asked. “I could hear you at the bottom of the sea.”

“YOU’RE THE ONE WHO NEEDS TO SHUT UP!” Watanuki roared, crawling up and poking Doumeki incessantly in the chest. “What kind of operation is this?! Mermaids don’t exist! And even if they did, mermaids are supposed to have MORE THAN ONE FACIAL EXPRESSION!”

“I’m not a mermaid,” Doumeki replied, looking vaguely irritated. “And you’re shouting in my ear.”

Sputtering, Watanuki made to strangle the annoying fish before Kurogane made his appearance, clomping up the stairs and up onto the deck.

“What the hell are you yelling about?!” he demanded.

“This guy!” Watanuki yelled, pointing with a glare at the blue-faced merman. “He has an annoying face!”

Kurogane stared incredulously as Doumeki pulled himself away from the lunatic chef and onto the railing.

“Yo,” he said. “You’re Kurogane, right?”

“Who... What the hell are you?” Kurogane asked, squinting in disbelief.

“What does it look like?” the merman asked, shrugging.

Kurogane shook his head.

“Stuff like this is just legends!” he declared. Watanuki flailed around.

“That’s what I said, captain, but he wouldn’t LISTEN!”

“Whatever,” Doumeki said, shoving a finger in his ear to block out the noise. “I just wanted to let you know there’s someone stranded on a rock out there. I think you know him.”

“Eh? Why didn’t you say that in the first place, you - ?!”

“Why should I care?” Kurogane asked, mostly for appearances’ sake. Just what he needed, another freeloader.

“I figured you would,” Doumeki said, shrugging. “He said your name in his delusion.”

Fai was shivering and unaware of where he was when they pulled him up onto the ship. He fell to his knees with a wet, soggy flop and his shirt slipped down past his shoulders. He fell forward and hit his head square on the deck. Souma and Watanuki gasped, but Kurogane figured there wouldn’t be much damage done considering what a moron he was to begin with.

“Oi,” Kurogane said, trying to keep his voice calm as he grabbed the idiot’s shirt and tugged him up. “Oi, wake up!”

Fai muttered a name, something that started with a “Y” that Kurogane didn’t recognize. He looked up at Souma, eyes blazing.

“I thought you said he was in Tarago?” he growled.

“H-he was,” Souma said, clasping her hands together. “At least, the last I’d heard...”

“He was on a ship,” Doumeki remarked, sitting on the canon protruding from the port. “They made him jump from the plank. He’s only been out there a day or two.”

“You idiot!” Kurogane growled down at Fai. “What the hell kind of mess did you get yourself into this time!?”

“It looks like he’s just waterlogged,” Umi remarked, kneeling next to the blond and giving him a once-over. “Mister Kurogane, maybe take him to your cabin to lay down? Yelling won’t do any good right now.”

Kurogane slumped in defeat and grumbled out an affirmative, throwing the blond’s soaking body over his shoulder and stomping off to his cabin. He slammed open the door and made to drop the blond on the bed (the only bed on board, in fact) before considering that it might not be the best idea in Fai’s current state and laying him down gently instead. He sank down on the mattress beside him, running a hand distractedly through his hair. Something didn’t fit, he thought anxiously. Fai should have died. He had been a bartender, not a sailor, he shouldn’t have even been on a ship in the first place, and yet here he was, with Kurogane. This wasn’t right. This luck, this ridiculous string of good fortune he’d been having, it felt so damned unnatural.

He looked down at Fai’s flushed face. He took the blanket folded at the foot of the bed and threw it over him. The blond was breathing deeply and shivering, but it appeared that a fever was the worst of his injuries. He’d probably swallowed too much water or something. Gone too long without air before being washed up on the rocks. Even then, it was an amazing stretch of the imagination to think that the stars has aligned so perfectly as to time Fai’s misfortune with the passing of Kurogane’s ship so close by.

Anxiously, he stood and stomped back out onto the deck purposefully, approaching the merman hanging over the side of his ship.

“Go watch him,” he barked at Souma, sending Umi and Watanuki scattering themselves with twin expressions of worry on their faces. He turned to the weird half-fish man and gave him a level stare.

“How’d you know I was ‘Kurogane’?” he asked, blunt and to the point. He wanted answers and he was sick of not understanding. The merman gave him an impassive look.

“They called you that when they pushed you from the boat,” he said, shrugging. Kurogane tensed, not having expected such an answer.

“What?” he asked incredulously. “How the hell do you know about that?”

Doumeki shrugged.

“Who do you think pulled you to shore?”

“Did you really think you kept all your effects by chance?”

Doumeki sighed at the look of disbelief on the captain’s face.

“You get good luck for a while if you’re saved by someone like me, moron,” Doumeki said tonelessly. “I haven’t saved anyone before. Figured this guy’s dumb luck might have been someone elses’ luck altogether.”

As Fai’s eyes fluttered open, someone was pacing back and forth, muttering to themselves and stomping dramatically.

“Kuro...” he began, before his vision cleared and he took in the sight of the young man at the foot of his bed, too young and skinny to be the person he’d thought. “Oh. Hello,” he said, smiling weakly as he pushed himself up onto his elbows. A wet cloth fell from his forehead to the ground with a squish.

“GAH!” Watanuki cried, wound so tightly that he all but jumped out of his boots at the sudden noise. “Y-you’re awake!”

“It looks that way!” Fai declared, trying to force his voice to sound cheerful and ending up exhausting himself. “Uwah, I feel terrible!” he said, flopping back on the bed and covering his eyes with his arms.

“You were found drifting out at sea!” Watanuki said, coming around the bed to pick up the wet cloth Fai had dropped. “Some really annoying, weird guy found you, and luckily he came and got us.”

Fai smiled weakly.

“It looks like I got myself into trouble,” he said, choking out a laugh. “How long have I been unconscious?”

“A week,” came a deep voice. Fai looked up to see Kurogane leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, glaring at him searchingly.

“Hyuu, it’s Kuro-pin!”

“C-captain...” Watanuki began. Kurogane gave him a look and he nodded, slipping past the captain and leaving them alone. Fai forced himself to sit up again, smiling absently at his old friend.

“It’s ‘captain’ now, huh? Looks like Kuro-ruu isn’t doing too bad!” he said, coughing.

“Shut up,” Kurogane said, swinging the door closed and blocking out the main source of sunlight from the room. The new darkness made Fai oddly nervous, and he pushed himself into a sitting position and squinted with his one good eye to better see the other man. Even without his other eye, his eyesight had never been the greatest.

Kurogane crossed the room and sank down in the chair next to the bed.

“What the hell happened?” he asked, to the point. Fai laughed.

“It’s nice to see you again, too, Kurogane.”