Chapter 5: Blood in the Tide Pool
The path back up the cliff felt longer, the bucket sloshing a heavy, violent rhythm against his leg. The scorpionfish wasn’t giving up. It thrashed against the rusted metal, a dull, furious drumming that resonated up Yamato’s arm. His own forearm screamed a counterpoint, the puncture wound a hot, insistent pulse. Blood, dark and slick, seeped through the frayed fabric of his sleeve, mingling with saltwater.
He should have been more careful. He’d known what it was. The ugly, camouflaged lump under the ledge in the deepest pool, all spines and resentment. The net was too stiff, his lunge too clumsy. A blur of mottled brown, a pain like a heated nail driven into his flesh. He’d sworn, the sound swallowed by the gulls, and pinned the thing with the net’s rim, hauling it out before the shock could make him drop it.
Now, he shouldered the cottage door open, breathing hard.
Taichi’s head snapped around. His nostrils flared, sampling the air. He smelled the blood immediately; Yamato saw the recognition in the slight flare of his gills, the sharp focus in those amber eyes. They locked onto the bucket.
“You succeeded.” The statement was flat, devoid of thanks. It was an observation of fact.
“Barely,” Yamato grunted, crossing the room. He held the bucket over the tub. “And it got me. That spine is venomous, you know.”
Taichi’s eyes flicked to Yamato’s bleeding arm, then back to the bucket. “The pain will pass. The fish is what matters.” He pushed himself up slightly, his good hand gripping the tub’s edge, muscles coiling despite his injuries. “Give it.”
There was a hunger in his voice that was more than physical. It was a need for dominance, for the reassertion of a natural order. Yamato upended the bucket.
The scorpionfish fell into the water with a heavy splash. For a second, it lay stunned on the porcelain bottom beside Taichi’s tail. Then it righted itself, its fins flaring, its spines erect like a crown of poisoned needles. It was a survivor, too.
Taichi moved.
It wasn’t the graceful arc Yamato had imagined from a creature of the sea. It was a sudden, explosive strike, all constrained power and feral grace. His good hand shot out, not avoiding the spines, but moving so fast he grasped the fish just behind them, his fingers like iron bands. He yanked it towards him.
The thrashing was frenzied, water sloshing over the sides. Taichi bared his teeth, a row of sharp, bone-white points. He didn’t play with his food. He ducked his head and bit down just below the fish’s head with a wet, crushing sound.
Yamato flinched.
The fish went rigid, then limp. Blood bloomed in the water, a dark, spreading cloud that tinged the salt solution pink. Taichi tore a strip of flesh free with a turn of his head, chewing once, twice, before swallowing. He did it again. And again. The sounds were utterly primal: the rip of skin, the crunch of bone he made no effort to avoid, the low, almost purring rumble in his own throat.
Yamato stood frozen, his own pain forgotten. He was a spectator to something ancient and brutal and breathtakingly honest. This wasn’t a meal; it was a conquest. The savagery of it should have repulsed him. Instead, he felt a strange, hollow awe. This was Taichi as he was meant to be, not a broken prince in a tub, but a predator reclaiming a fragment of his strength.
The water darkened further. Scales and bits of viscera floated. Taichi finished the bulk of the meat, then sucked the life from the head, his cheeks hollowing, before dropping the ravaged skeleton. It sank slowly, a twisted, spiny ghost in the red haze.
Silence, broken only by the soft lap of water and Taichi’s breathing. He leaned back, running his tongue over his teeth and lips, cleaning them. A streak of blood painted his chin. His eyes, half-lidded, found Yamato’s. They were brighter now, the amber vivid and alert. The deep exhaustion that had haunted them since the tide pools had receded, chased back by raw sustenance.
Then those eyes dropped to Yamato’s wounded arm, still dripping a slow tap-tap-tap of crimson onto the floorboards.
Taichi was still for a long moment. The fierce triumph in his gaze softened into something more complex, more uncomfortable. He looked from the fresh blood to the clouded water around him, to the human who had provided it.
“You bleed for me,” he said. His voice was quiet, rough again, but not with weakness. It was thick with a new understanding. “That is a bond I did not ask for.”
He didn’t sound grateful. He sounded trapped. As if Yamato’s sacrifice, small and stupid as it was, had woven a thread between them that Taichi couldn’t simply bite through.
Yamato looked down at his own arm, at the welling puncture. The venom’s heat was spreading, a dull throb creeping toward his elbow. He thought of Riko, of her poultices and her warnings. He thought of the empty coin jar on his shelf.
“Yeah, well,” Yamato said, his voice strangely hoarse. He managed a weak shrug, wincing at the movement. “I didn’t ask for a merman in my bathtub. We’re both stuck with things we didn’t order.”
He turned to find a rag, to stem the flow, but the room tilted slightly. The adrenaline of the hunt and the shock of the spectacle were fading, leaving the venom to do its work. He steadied himself against the wall.
Behind him, in the reddened water, Taichi watched him sway. His slit pupils narrowed to thin, dark lines. A slow, thoughtful click echoed in the back of his throat.