I'm lowkey so scared to ask, but first, I'd like to say how amazing your writing is, and also, I wish you would release part 10 and hopefully more parts of your h20: just add water with the jjk characters series. It's so peak. Only if you can. I hate putting any sort of pressure on people.
Hiiii thank you so much!! And omg, please don't be scared to ask/reach out! Honestly, I love when I get reminders to post because sometimes I do forget to LOL. Feel free to flood my notifs if you're ever looking for the next part (or anything else)!!!! 🤍
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟
𝖩𝖩𝖪 𝗑 𝖧𝟤𝖮: 𝖩𝗎𝗌𝗍 𝖠𝖽𝖽 𝖶𝖺𝗍𝖾𝗋 𝖠𝖴 - 𝖯𝖺𝗋𝗍 10!
🌊𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 🌊
It took forty excruciating minutes, every dry piece of fabric in the closet, and a level of frantic bailing that resembled a sinking cruise ship just to get all three of you back on two legs.
The bathroom floor was a lost cause, warped and damp, but as the last of Shoko’s sea-glass green scales melted back into human skin, a heavy, breathless silence fell over the room.
Shoko didn’t say a word. She just stood up, her face completely expressionless, and marched out of the room.
“So…” Utahime whispered, sitting cross-legged against the wall, her eyes wide as she looked at you. “We’re… we’re actually…”
“Mermaids,” you finished for her, the word still tasting absurd on your tongue. “Yeah. We are.”
Ten minutes later, the three of you had regrouped in the living room.
Shoko, now dressed in an oversized university hoodie and sweatpants, had a mug of coffee in one hand like transforming into a mythical sea creature before breakfast had merely been an inconvenience.
She took one sip. "...This is going to be a very long weekend."
Utahime was wrapped in fluffy socks despite the warm weather, clutching another towel around her shoulders as though the fabric alone could protect her from spontaneous fishhood.
"I don't trust water anymore," she announced.
You blinked. "...That's unfortunate. We're seventy percent water."
Shoko snorted into her coffee.
Utahime shot her a glare. "Don't laugh."
"I'm trying very hard not to."
Eventually Shoko leaned forward, elbows resting on her knees. "So."
"It goes away when we're dry."
"We apparently all have different tails."
You paused. "...I guess we do."
Utahime frowned. "...Yours was silver."
You both looked toward Shoko.
“A nice, sea-glass green,” you offered, trying to sound encouraging.
Shoko stared into her coffee mug. “Fabulous. I’m a walking recycling bin.”
“It actually looked really pretty!” Utahime defended, though she immediately winced as she shifted, checking her legs under her towel just to be absolutely sure. “But that’s not the point. The point is, how are we supposed to live like this? We live in a coastal town! It rains! People spill drinks! Haibara is a walking splash hazard!”
“We adapt,” Shoko said, her pragmatic brain finally taking over the shock. She set her mug down with a definitive clink. “First things first: we need to test the boundaries. The bathtub was claustrophobic and terrible because we were fighting it. Reader, you said you went to the beach yesterday?”
You rubbed the back of your neck. “Yeah. By the rocks just off the old trail.”
“And?” Utahime pressed, leaning forward. “Was it… awful?”
“No,” you admitted softly, the memory of the deep, intoxicating glide making your chest warm. “It was actually… incredible. Once you stop fighting the current, your body just knows what to do. It feels like you’re finally where you’re supposed to be.”
Utahime and Shoko exchanged a long look. The fear in Utahime's eyes was still there, but beneath it, a spark of curiosity was blooming in Shoko’s gaze.
“We’re going to the secluded cove,” Shoko declared, standing up and grabbing her car keys from the counter. “The one past the old logging road. Grab every spare towel we own and put them in my trunk.”
“Wait, right now? What about the boys?” Utahime panicked, looking toward the hallway. “Aren’t they supposed to come over today?”
“They’re probably still asleep,” Shoko said, already heading for the front door. “We have a two-hour window. Let's move, salmon sisters.”
As the car rolled onto the hidden gravel turnout, the engine died, and the heavy, rhythmic roar of the crashing waves hit your ears.
Your skin prickled instantly as a deep, familiar hum vibrated down your spine, your pulse syncing effortlessly with the movement of the tide.
You looked over at Utahime and Shoko—both of them had frozen, their breaths catching as their eyes locked onto the glistening water through the windshield. They felt it, too. That undeniable, magnetic pull.
“Come on,” you said, kicking off your sneakers and hopping out of the car.
You walked straight toward the shoreline, the wet sand squishing between your toes. Behind you, Utahime let out a nervous breath, her footsteps following close behind, while Shoko kept her hands shoved into her pockets, her gaze scanning the empty horizon.
The cool foam of a receding wave swirled over your ankles.
The heat flared beneath your ribs like striking a match, a beautiful, electric current running through your veins.
You let your knees buckle, collapsing into the shallow surf as the liquid-silver shimmer exploded across your limbs. Right beside you, two loud splashes echoed through the cove.
Utahime tumbled into the waves as a brilliant, sapphire-blue light raced down her skin, her legs shifting into a long, powerful fin that scattered rainbow patterns across the foam.
Shoko hit the water with a low grunt, her body instantly answering the tide as her deep, iridescent sea-glass green tail cut through the surface.
For a second, the three of you just floated in the shallows, the water lapping gently against your shoulders.
Utahime was staring down at her sapphire fin in absolute awe, the initial terror completely gone, replaced by the sheer wonder of how natural the weight felt.
Shoko flexed her webbed fingers, watching the light fracture through the emerald-tinted water around her hands, a faint, rare smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
“See?” you said, your voice echoing with that strange, resonant hum it always did underwater, like the ocean itself was helping you speak. “I told you.”
You flicked your silver tail, pushing yourself off the sandy bottom. The motion sent a brilliant cascade of bubbles trailing behind you as you dove beneath the surface, and without a second thought, the blue and green fins snapped through the water right on your heels.
You giggled as you spun and weaved through the shifting curtains of light beneath the surface, Utahime and Shoko trailing you in a loose, uneven formation—like a school of fish that hadn’t quite agreed on choreography yet.
Utahime shrieked with laughter the first time a current caught her sideways, spinning her clean around before she righted herself with a flick of her sapphire tail. “Okay—okay, that was actually kind of awesome—”
“Told you,” you called back, your voice carrying.
Shoko, for her part, wasn’t saying much of anything. She’d gone quiet in the way she did when she was cataloguing something, green eyes tracking the water with clinical fascination as her tail moved with ease. She trailed her fingers through a passing current, watching the way it curled and clung to her skin.
“It responds to us,” she said finally, almost to herself. “Not just—moving through it. It’s reactive. Watch.”
She flicked her wrist, and the water around her rippled outward in a small, deliberate wave, rolling toward you and Utahime with more shape than a normal current should have had.
Utahime yelped as it hit her, sending her tumbling sideways in a spray of bubbles. “Hey—!”
“Sorry,” Shoko said, sounding not sorry at all. “Science.”
You stared at the fading ripple, something cold prickling under the warmth of the moment. “Wait. Do that again.”
Shoko arched a brow, but obliged—another flick, another small pulse of water bending to her will, gentler this time.
“That’s not just current,” you said slowly. “That’s you doing that.”
Shoko blinked, looking down at her own hand. “...Huh.”
Utahime had gone still, treading water a few feet away, all traces of laughter gone from her face. “Okay, hold on. Hold on. We can control water now? Actual magic, water-bending, whatever that was?”
“I don’t know if I’d call it bending,” Shoko said, though the small furrow in her brow said otherwise. “More like... it listens. A little. When I ask it to.”
You flexed your own fingers under the surface, feeling foolish, and pushed—not physically, just a thought, a want, the way you’d push air out of your lungs to speak.
You tried again, chasing the same instinct that had let you understand what your tail wanted before your brain caught up that first night in the pool.
The water in front of you shivered. Barely. A faint distortion, like heat over asphalt, gone before you could be sure you hadn’t imagined it.
“Did you see that?” you breathed.
Utahime shook her head, eyes wide. “No—but I felt something. Like a—a hum. Right here.” She pressed a hand to her sternum.
“I felt it too,” Shoko murmured, scanning the water between you. “A vibration. It felt like... sound.”
“I didn't make a sound,” you said, your brow furrowing.
“You didn’t have to,” Utahime said, her voice dropping to a whisper. She looked down at the water, her sapphire tail swaying slowly to keep her afloat. “It’s like... the water itself was trying to echo whatever you were thinking. Like a tuning fork.”
You stared at your hands underwater, the silver scales on your wrists catching the midday light. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath, letting the tide carry you. You didn't try to push the water this time. Instead, you thought of the sound of the ocean itself—the deep, rhythmic sigh of the waves hitting the rocks.
When you opened your mouth to speak, your voice didn't sound like your own.
It was the deep, resonant crash of a breaker against the stone, layered with the high, rushing hiss of retreating seafoam. It vibrated physically through the water, a low, pulsing shockwave that made Utahime’s floating hair whip violently around her face like she’d been caught in an updraft.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Utahime gasped, moving backward. “What was that?!”
“I... I don't know,” you stammered. But as you spoke, your voice split, perfectly mimicking Utahime’s exact, high-pitched gasp from a second ago, down to the very frequency of her panic.
Utahime froze, her jaw dropping. “Did you just... did you just steal my voice?”
“I didn’t mean to!” you said, and this time, the words came out in Shoko’s distinct, dry, low-register drawl.
Shoko let out a rare, guttural laugh. “Oh, that is incredibly unsettling. Do it again. Say ‘I’m a genius and you all are idiots.’”
“I’m a genius and you all are idiots,” you said, still perfectly mimicking Shoko’s voice. You quickly clamped a hand over your mouth, flustered, which only made your voice crack and briefly sound like Yuji’s boisterous laugh.
“Okay, that’s officially creepy,” Utahime shuddered, though she couldn't hide her grin. “Your voice is like a parrot on supernatural steroids.”
“It’s mimicry,” Shoko analyzed, swimming closer. She reached out, her fingers brushing against your arm to steady herself against a sudden swell. “Some kind of siren mechanism. The water acts as a medium for—”
The clinical, calm expression on her face vanished, replaced by a sudden, intense look of sheer, unadulterated bewilderment. Her hand stayed clamped to your arm, her fingers twitching.
“Shoko?” you asked, your voice finally snapping back to your own tone. “What’s wrong?”
For a three-second window, Shoko’s eyes glazed over completely.
“Shoko?” You said again, waving your hand in front of her face before cupping her cheeks.
She blinked, shaking her head. She ripped her hand away from your arm like she’d been burned, staring at her palm.
“What was that?” Utahime demanded, swimming over to grab Shoko’s shoulder. “Shoko, you look like you just saw a ghost.”
The moment Utahime touched her, Shoko’s eyes widened again as she froze momentarily.
“Get off me!” Shoko gasped, slapping Utahime’s hand away.
Utahime recoiled, hurt. “I was just checking on you?”
“No, it’s not—it’s not that,” Shoko breathed, pressing the heels of her hands to her temples. Her green tail whipped back and forth, agitated. “When I touched you, Reader... I saw something. I saw Choso driving you guys somewhere, and Yuji arguing about hotdogs. And then when you touched me, Utahime, I saw you crying over burnt cookies while Satoru laughed at you.”
Utahime’s face turned bright red. “You—you saw what?! That was years ago! How do you even know about that?!”
Shoko pressed her palms flat against her own face, like she could physically push the images back out. “I don’t know how! I just—I saw it. Like I was standing right there in the kitchen. I could smell the smoke.”
“That is deeply invasive,” Utahime huffed. “You cannot just…see things.”
“I didn’t ask for it!” Shoko snapped back, though there was no real heat in it—just the frayed edge of someone still reeling. She stared down at her own hands like they’d betrayed her twice in one morning. “It wasn’t even anything important. Burnt cookies. Hot dogs. It’s not like I saw your diary.”
“Wait.” You pushed forward through the water, catching Shoko’s wrist gently before she could pull away again. “Does it happen every time you touch someone?”
Shoko flinched at the contact—but this time, nothing happened. No glazed eyes, no far-off stare. Just Shoko, looking faintly relieved and deeply unsettled in equal measure.
“No,” she said slowly. “It didn’t happen just now.”
“So it’s not constant.” You released her wrist, testing the theory. “Maybe it’s a first-touch thing? Like it only shows you something the first time?”
Shoko’s brow furrowed, already turning it over in her mind. “That would track. I touched you first. Got the Choso-and-hotdogs thing. Touched Utahime for the first time. Got the cookies.” She looked up, squinting slightly. “It’s not random. It’s specific. Recent-ish, but not always. Embarrassing, or personal.”
“Fantastic,” Utahime muttered, crossing her arms over her chest, sapphire tail curling defensively beneath her. “So now I can’t even high-five you without you seeing my most humiliating childhood trauma.”
“I’ll try to control it,” Shoko said, though she didn’t sound entirely convinced she could.
The three of you floated there for a moment, catching your breath, the currents rocking gently around you. The sun had climbed higher, warm on your shoulders even through the water, and for the first time all morning it didn’t feel like you were drowning in the size of what was happening to you. It felt like you were, all three of you, just barely beginning to understand it.
“Okay,” Utahime said eventually, voice quieter. “I know we said no cursed islands. But—if this is what a random cove does, what happens if we actually go back to where it started? To the pool?”
Shoko's eyes lit instantly. "That's what I've been saying."
You gave her a look. “You’ve never said that before.”
“I’ve been thinking it,” Shoko said primly. “Loudly. In my head. Where all my best ideas live, unappreciated.”
Utahime groaned, running a hand through her floating hair. “Okay, see, this is exactly what I was afraid of. One good discovery and suddenly we’re plotting a return trip to the island that almost killed us.”
“It didn’t almost kill us,” Shoko said. “The jetskis almost killed us. The island just rearranged our DNA.”
You watched them bicker, something warm loosening in your chest despite the absurdity of it—despite everything. A week ago this would’ve been an argument about split fries or who forgot to refill the gas tank. Now it was about whether to return to a possibly-cursed cave that had turned all three of you into mythological creatures, and somehow it still sounded exactly like them.
“I think,” you said slowly, cutting through before Utahime could fire back, “we don’t decide anything today. We just… keep this in our pocket. We know the option exists. We know it’s not going anywhere.” You glanced toward Shoko. “But we don’t go without a plan. Not after last time.”
Shoko considered that, then gave a short, grudging nod. “Fine. Reasonable. Boring, but reasonable.”
“Thank you,” Utahime said, relief evident before she furrowed her brows. “Wait, what time is it?”
“Because,” Utahime said, her voice rising in pitch, “the boys said they were coming over around noon to help with the fence, and then we were supposed to go get lunch! It was almost eleven when we left!”
Shoko looked down at her wrist, but her watch was safely tucked away in her glove box. “Well, we’ve been in the water for at least forty minutes.”
“Shit,” you breathed, already twisting toward the shore. “Alright, how far out are we?”
You squinted towards where the coastline should have been.
Not close, anyway. Just a hazy green smudge of cliffs on the horizon, the cove you’d started in reduced to a rumor of trees and rock so far away it barely registered as land at all.
You let out a breath - which came out as a stream of bubbles. “Okay. That’s..that’s a problem.”
“Well, we can’t exactly walk,” Shoko pointed out dryly. “So we better start paddling.”
“Paddling?!” Utahime said, voice climbing an octave. “Do you know how long it takes to swim that? As a human? We would die. We would die of exhaustion before we ever saw the dock again—”
“We’re not human right now,” Shoko cut in, turning to scan the water, already running the math in real time. “We got out here in what, twenty minutes? Without trying?”
“We weren’t trying to go fast,” you said slowly, the realization dawning even as you said it. “We were just messing around. Swimming for fun.”
Shoko’s eyes lit with that spark again. “So what happens if we actually try?”
“No,” Utahime said immediately. “No, we are not doing an experiment right now, we are doing an emergency—”
“The emergency is the experiment,” Shoko said. “Come on. On three. Just—go. Whatever your body wants to do, let it.”
“I hate you both,” Utahime hissed, her tail already coiling beneath her.
You sucked in a breath, heart hammering, and let go of every instinct that told you to fight the current instead of trust it.
Your body snapped forward like a released bowstring, the ocean tearing past you in a rush of foam and light, your tail cutting the water with a force that didn’t feel like muscle at all—it felt like momentum, like something ancient and enormous had reached down and simply decided you should be somewhere else, now.
You couldn’t even hear anything except the roar of water in your ears and your own pulse slamming in time with it. Beside you—no, in front of you—you caught a flash of two massive, colored streaks of light tearing through the water.
Utahime was screaming—a high, underwater screech of pure adrenaline—as her sapphire tail propelled her forward in a dizzying zigzag. Shoko was right behind her, her green tail moving in a rhythmic wave. She looked less like a panicked university student and more like a shark hunting its prey, her face a mix of deep concentration and absolute thrill.
You snapped your tail down, locking into the draft behind them. The three of you became a blur of silver, sapphire, and sea-glass green, carving through the deep ocean at speeds unknown.
The sheer G-force of the water pressed against your face, pulling your hair straight back as you cut through the ocean with impossible, terrifying speed.
The coastline quickly stopped being a smudge.
It became cliffs. Then rocks. Then the pale curve of the cove’s sand, rushing up so fast you barely had time to think slow down before your body obeyed anyway, some deep instinct hauling you to a stop in the shallows in an explosion of spray that soaked the last dry inch of beach for ten feet in every direction.
You skidded onto the sand on your hands, tail still twitching with leftover momentum, chest heaving like you’d just sprinted a marathon you hadn’t felt at all.
A second later, Utahime crashed down beside you with significantly less grace, sapphire tail flopping hard against the wet sand. “I HATE THAT,” she gasped. “I hate that so so much, I actually think I’m gonna puke—”
Shoko landed a beat after, considerably more composed, though even she was breathing hard, hands braced against the sand, hair plastered flat to her skull. She looked, for the first time all morning, completely and utterly delighted.
“That,” she gasped, “was the most efficient commute of my entire life. We are never driving to campus again.”
“It was TERRIFYING,” Utahime wheezed.
“No time to celebrate!” you yelled, dragging yourself onto the dry sand as the familiar, burning heat began to flare under your ribs. “Towel! Now!”
The three of you scrambled up the beach like three stranded seals, desperately grabbing the stack of towels. You scrubbed at your arms, Shoko furiously dried her tail with two towels at once, and Utahime was practically vibrating with anxiety as she shook out her hair.
“Time,” you said, breathless, urgent. “What time is it, someone check a phone—”
Shoko lunged for her sweatpants, digging her phone out of the pocket with wet, clumsy fingers. She squinted at the screen, and her face went from delighted to horrified in under a second.
“WHAT,” Utahime shrieked, “That gives us eight minutes—”
“We're not even close to the house from here,” you said, panic spiking clean through the exhaustion. “It’s a ten minute drive on a good day—”
“Then we drive like we just discovered we can swim at the speed of sound,” Shoko snapped, hauling her now-human legs into her pants frantically. “Move, move, MOVE—”
The three of you tore across the sand toward the car in a chaos of half-dried limbs, tangled towels, and inside-out shirts, praying to whatever ancient thing lived in that glowing cave that your driveway would be empty when you screeched back into it.
“My hair is still soaking wet,” Shoko complained, sliding into the driver’s seat. “If they ask, we went for an aggressive, unscheduled jog in the rain.”
“Then we fell in a tide pool. Let's go!”
Within two minutes, the car doors slammed shut, and Shoko peeled out of the gravel turnout, spraying rocks behind her. The heater was blasted to maximum, the car smelling heavily of salt water and damp fleece.
You looked at Utahime in the passenger seat, whose hair was plastered to her forehead, and then at Shoko in the rearview mirror, who was aggressively steering with one hand while trying to dry her bangs with a spare towel in the other.
You couldn't help it. A bubble of laughter escaped your throat, and soon, all three of you were howling with laughter as the car sped back toward the house, completely unaware of the chaos that was about to unfold when you got home.
🌊𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆡 𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 🌊
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