Chapter 4: The Ocean's Demand
The cottage was a cage of gray pre-dawn light when Yamato woke. Every joint protested. The floorboards had been unforgiving, and the damp salt air had seeped into his bones. He lay still for a moment, listening to the rhythmic, wet pull of gills filtering water.
Then he felt the weight of a stare.
He turned his head. Taichi was awake, his head turned on the porcelain rim, those amber eyes fixed on Yamato from across the room. They held no sleep in them. Just a cool, assessing intensity, like the water in the deep shadows under a jetty. The poultice had darkened on his scales, and the kelp bindings were holding. The splinted arm lay across his stomach.
“You watch me sleep often?” Yamato’s voice was gravelly with disuse.
Taichi didn’t smile. “I watch the only exit. I count your breaths. I learn the patterns of my cage.”
“It’s not a cage. It’s a tub.”
“It is a cage made of air.” Taichi’s voice was stronger today, less like grinding stones, more like the surge of a wave through a narrow channel. It was no less foreign. He shifted, a ripple of muscle that slopped water onto the floor. “Take me to the sea. Now. Before the sun finds the sky.”
Yamato pushed himself up, wincing. “You can’t swim. Your arm is broken. Your scales are like cracked pottery. The second you hit a current, you’d be dashed against the rocks.”
“My fate is mine to choose.” Taichi’s tail fin gave a feeble slap against the tub. It was a gesture of frustration, not power. The weakness of it seemed to anger him more. His gills flared. “This… this slow soaking in a human’s bucket is a death of degrees. I need the open water. I need the pressure of the deep.”
“What you need is to heal.” Yamato stood, his back cracking. He walked to the pump and worked the handle, splashing his face with cold water. It did little to clear the fog of responsibility. “Riko said—”
“I do not care what the land-witch said.” The word was a hiss. “Her poisons are on my skin. Her bindings are on my limb. I feel them. That is enough debt.”
“It’s not poison, it’s medicine. And it’s helping.” Yamato turned, leaning against the sink. “Look, I get it. You’re a prince. You’re used to giving orders. But you’re in my shack, and you’re in pieces. So for now, my rule is: you don’t get to die from sheer stubbornness.”
Taichi’s slit pupils narrowed. He looked away, out the small, salt-crusted window where the sky was lightening from black to bruised purple. The silence stretched, taut and humming. When he spoke again, the command was still there, but underpinned by something raw. A basic, biological need.
“Then you must feed me.”
Yamato blinked. “What?”
“Feed me.” Taichi looked back, his gaze unwavering. “The witch’s salt sustains my skin. It does not fill my belly. I am empty. The hunger is a second pain, and it is growing.” He lifted his good hand, fingers curled like claws. “I need live prey. Fresh from the deep. Muscle and blood and life. Not your… your cooked grains and dead, salted flesh.”
Yamato’s stomach dropped. He looked at the meager shelves: a half-loaf of stale bread, a tin of cheap tea, a jar of rice. He thought of the few coins in his guitar case, already spent. He thought of his net, the rusty one he’d mentioned to Riko, slumped in a cobwebbed corner behind the door.
“Live prey,” he repeated, the words feeling absurd.
“Crabs. Scorpion fish. An octopus, if you are capable. Anything that fights.” Taichi’s tongue, a darker pink than a human’s, flicked over his sharp canines. “I cannot hunt like this. So you will hunt for me.”
The sheer, audacious weight of it settled on Yamato’s shoulders. It was one thing to provide water, to apply medicine. It was another to become a provider for a predator. To venture into the sea’s larder and bring back a kicking, struggling life to be consumed in his bathing tub.
“I don’t have a boat,” Yamato said, the protest weak even to his own ears.
“The tide pools. At the base of these cliffs. When the tide recedes, it leaves gifts. And traps.” Taichi’s eyes gleamed. “You have legs. Use them.”
“It’s not that simple. The pools are fished out. And Kaito’s men…”
“The fisherman.” Taichi said the word like a curse. “His scent is on your fear. It is thick in this room. Will you let his shadow keep you from the water’s edge?” The challenge was deliberate, a hook set deep.
Yamato ran a hand through his tangled hair. He looked from the merman to the rusty net, then to the window, where dawn was now a pale, hungry streak over the water. The ocean’s demand, as Riko had said, was not a polite request. It was a tide. It came in, and you either met it or were drowned by it.
He walked to the corner and picked up the net. The metal rings were crusted with orange rust, the fibers stiff and rotten in places. It smelled of old failure. He slung it over his shoulder.
“I’ll see what I can find,” he said, his voice flat. “Don’t… don’t try to get out. You’ll wreck your arm and stain my floor.”
A sound escaped Taichi—a low, guttural click that wasn’t quite a laugh. “The floor is already stained. Go. The light is coming.”
Yamato paused at the door, a sudden, surreal question surfacing. “How do I… how will you…?”
“You will bring it alive. I will do the rest.” Taichi closed his eyes, dismissing him. The prince had given his order. The conversation was over.
Outside, the wind was a cold blade. Yamato picked his way down the steep, winding path to the shore, the rusty net tangling in the brambles. The tide was far out, leaving a vast, glistening expanse of wet sand and rocky shelves. The tide pools glittered in the growing light like lonely, trapped worlds.
He stood at the edge of the first pool, looking down at the sleepy hermit crabs and a single, listless minnow. Live prey. Something that fights.
He thought of Taichi’s teeth. The fierce, feral intelligence in those amber eyes. The absolute otherness of the hunger he had to now satisfy.
The weight on his shoulders was no longer just responsibility. It was complicity. He was no longer just a rescuer. He was about to become a feeder. And the ocean, stretching out before him, had just become his hunting ground.