Rin Okumura - Part of Your World || Part o3

“And then my soul saw you and it kind of went, ‘oh, there you are. I’ve been looking for you.’”
- Iain Thomas, I Wrote This for You

“… Hey… Hey are you okay? Wake up…!” The distant and foggy sound of a girl’s voice was ringing in my ears like a persistent sea horse, and I wanted nothing more than to smack her in the face and tell her to go away. But she seemed so urgent and scared, and it made me feel nervous. My eyebrows pinched together as my lips wrinkled into a hard line.

“Oh man, is she really not getting up?!” I could hear someone else – a male, this time – calling from a little further away.

“This is bad. This is so bad. This is the exact opposite of good,” another masculine voice groaned.

“Guys, would you just shut up?! You’re really not helping the situation,” the female voice snapped, and finally I’d had enough. I opened my mouth to say something but was struck by how incredibly dry my throat was. Raising a hand to my spinning head, I slowly sat up.

“She’s up! She’s getting up!” one of the boys sang with clear relief. I opened my eyes slowly, and at first everything was a swirling blur. My lids narrowed as I tried to focus on the figure in front of me, my fingers trailing down the side of my face to rest over my aching throat. It took a moment for things to sift into a steadiness, but finally I realized who it was and it nearly made me panic.

I fell awkwardly back onto my forearms out of shock, my eyes now opened wide as I blinked up at her. “Hey it’s okay! Don’t be scared!” she tried to comfort, obviously under the impression that I was scared of her. Which I supposed in a sense was right. I’d just pranked the hell out of her earlier that day, and now here she was trying to – what? Help me? “Just take it easy, alright.” She reached one of her hands out to take me by the arm and help me back into a sitting position. I was hesitant, but let her do so anyways.

“My throat…” I choked out so quietly and hoarsely, I was doubtful if she’d heard me. “I need… water…” A light went off behind her eyes as she whirled around and said,

“Can someone go grab her a water bottle?! Jeez, you’re all so useless.” I followed her stare past her shoulder and to the people she was talking to. But it was dark outside, and my vision hadn’t come back to me well enough to really make anything out besides the general outline of two human bodies.  

“Yeah, I got it!” one of them responded before they jogged away.

And then it dawned on me. My pulse sparked just beneath the skin of my wrists as I stared blankly out ahead of me, suddenly terrified to look anywhere else.

“So are you alright? What happened?” I could hear the girl asking, but her questions weren’t making sense in my head. What she was interested in seemed so ridiculously irrelevant to the real dilemma at hand.

“My legs,” I hushed, my voice still sounding like sandpaper. “Do I have… legs?” There was a moment of silence after, and I was sure she was looking at me like I was insane. But she had no idea how radically important that question was for me – for all of my people. If I could be a mermaid who walked with the humans… I couldn’t help the smile that beckoned at my lips.

“Your legs are there, yeah,” she answered after what felt like too long of a time, and I immediately felt something both cold and hot rush over my body. My head dropped into my hands as I leaned over myself, scared to move my legs for reasons I couldn’t readily explain. A familiar heat started to build behind my eyes, and at first I couldn’t place where I recognized the feeling from. But then I remembered all those nights I’d spent laid up on the shore during thunderstorms, only dreaming of a life with feet, and having this blurred and burning feeling in my eyes.

A wetness started seeping onto my palms as my eyes began to itch just as a familiar voice approached the girl and I, saying, “Here you go.” I lifted my head up to see the boy and was greeted with an immediate sense of safety. It was him. The boy I’d spoken to earlier. The one with the pretty hair and dark eyes. His stare flickered down to mine as his hand was extended out, offering me something I didn’t recognize. When he met my gaze, however, his easy expression was replaced with one of panic. “H-Hey, why are you crying!?”

My lips turned down in confusion, reaching out to take from him what he offered. “What’s… crying?” I wheezed out, turning the object over in my hands as droplets of water streaked down my cheeks. There was water inside of the little container he gave me, which seemed completely ridiculous to me. Why would you go out of your way to do this when there was an entire ocean just to our left?

“What do you mean ‘what’s crying’?” the girl asked incredulously. I looked over at her, feeling slightly embarrassed for my incompetence on the subject. I turned my gaze back down onto the container as I clenched onto it more tightly. I never envisioned the moment when I finally got legs to be so… awkward.

“Hey, Izumo, why don’t you go back to the Inn with Shima? Tell teacher I’ll be there in a little bit. I just….” the boy I recognized was speaking now, and I was scared to look up at him. “I know this girl.” The one he called Izumo snorted disbelievingly through her nose as she retorted,

“Sure you can handle being alone with a girl wearing no bottoms?” she asked in a voice that made it seem like she was teasing him. I mustered up enough courage to glance his way, and was shocked by how red his face suddenly looked.

“Yes I’m sure! Just go, alright?!”

“Whatever,” she breathed shortly before standing up and walking away. I quickly turned my head back down and focused heavily on the object in hand. This boy was making me uncharacteristically nervous. Why did he want to be alone with me? Would he try to attack me? I was in an entirely new element up here – not only did I feel ridiculously heavy, but I didn’t even know how to walk yet. A confrontation was certainly the last thing I wanted.

So when he abruptly lowered himself down to be kneeling in front of me, I couldn’t help but to jump a little. I peeked at him through my lashes, feeling very squeamish under his scrutinizing stare. “Hey,” he said boldly, and I thought that that must’ve been a favorite word for humans. “You’re that girl that was in the water, aren’t you.” Though worded as a question, his tone made it seem like a statement. I didn’t respond.

He sighed and readjusted himself so that he was sitting on his bottom instead of crouching on his feet. He was so close our knees could’ve been touching if he moved just an inch over. “Look, I need you to be upfront with me right now because if I’m right about this, and other people find out, you’ll be in a lot of danger around here.” I watched my fingers as they wrenched pointlessly around the container he’d given me. All I wanted to do was drink the water inside, why was it so god forsakenly hard to open?

Abruptly he’d taken the container away from me and before I could protest had twisted off the top and handed it right back.  “You’re a demon, aren’t you.” Any moisture I might’ve still had inside my mouth and throat immediately ran dry at his accusation. Bringing the opening of the object up to my lips I downed nearly half the water in a single swallow. When I pulled it away, I answered,

“Aren’t we all a little demonic at times?” The boy breathed out heavily through his nose, as if disappointed with me, and for some reason it riddled me with guilt.

“Please, be serious here. I’m just trying to help you,” he said slowly, as if trying to keep himself calm. I swirled the liquid around inside the clear plastic for a moment, contemplating on what I should do. Demons were, generally, not something that were looked kindly upon in Assiah – and not that I blamed them in the slightest either. Those who came from Gehenna had a tendency of being major assholes. And while of course I knew that I wasn’t one such creature, what was the chances of being believed? That was something I’d have to prove with time and kindness. Neither of which I’d had the chance to exhibit for this guy.

“Why would… why would me telling you that help me…” I murmured as the rim of the plastic opening brushed across my lips.

“Because if you are, then I can help protect you – or, whatever…” Now it was his turn to sound unsure, his sentence trailing off as his cheeks flushed a deep ruby color. Again, I had nothing to say to him, and so he began to shift himself around until he was positioned directly in front of me. “Hey! Do you hear me talking to you?! Stop with this shit, alright? I want to help you. You don’t have to act like this.”

“If you’re so sure I’m a demon then why does it matter what I say?” I retorted, feeling like all of this was a bit ridiculous at this point. Surely if I wasn’t I would’ve retaliated the minute he accused me of being one.

“Because!” he snapped, startling me into looking at him. His stare was intense and transfixed directly onto me. It made me nervous. “I know how it feels to be accused of being something you’re not…” He spoke the last sentence so softly, I could easily tell that it was a tender subject for him. After a moment of thought, I came to a conclusion inside my mind.

“I’ll be honest if you tell me what your name is,” I offered gently, and his face looked a little shocked for a moment. Then he smiled, and I could feel my insides tightening. He has a really nice smile, I thought absentmindedly. Then his dark eyes sparked with excitement, as if right in that moment he realized or understood something. He extended his hand for me to shake and said,

“I’m Rin.” My lips pulled upward into a smile of my own as I accepted the handshake.

“I’m Nixie.”

“And for the record, you’ve got a nice smile too.”