Shinpei shoves his hands in his hair. He shakes his head, desperate to knock some sense into his racing thoughts.
It is not Ushio. The thing lying in his bed, wearing his old t-shirt. That is the one fact he knows, the one fact he has to hold onto, no matter what. No matter what it says, or does, or how it smiles or tilts its head. It is not Ushio!
Ushio died. She died three days ago. They held a funeral two days ago! He saw her, lying in the casket, fair skin two shades fairer in death. They asked him to help with the ceremony. To carry the casket. To help bury the girl he played in the waves with from five to fifteen.
Dead. His best friend since childhood is dead. This is not Ushio!
It stirs and Shinpei freezes.
His gaze darts over to it, watching carefully from the corner of his eyes. The creature settles and he releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding.
Shinpei slows his pacing, lowering his hands from his hair and crossing his arms over his chest.
Idiot, he’s going to wake the whole house with his neuroses! Then where would they be? Mio and Alan would find it here, this ‘Not Ushio’, and it would change everything because then they’d…
There’s no telling what they’d do.
Shinpei rests his palm against his chin. He sends the shadow another glance, shoving his hair back from his face.
Who knows what they’d think? They could be fooled. If they let their emotion get the best of them, their yearning for their sister and daughter to return. They could believe this was her, if they couldn’t stay objective like Shinpei.
A bitter laugh struggles to escape and he clamps his hand over his mouth. He shakes his head, ducking it in disbelief, staring at the familiar floorboards that have turned suddenly alien.
It’s not easy. Maintaining a clear head. Not when this– this thing looks just like Ushio. Talks just like. Acts just like, hugs just like her, laughs just like her. But it isn’t. It’s not Ushio, so it has to be a shadow.
And Shinpei is an idiot for letting it stay in his house.
What else was I supposed to do?
He groans and puts his hands on his head, threading his fingers through his hair as he starts pacing again.
I couldn’t just send it back outside. Not alone, where she could get into who knows what trouble, and not at night. She was only wearing a swimsuit, for heaven’s sake! Even in the tropics…
No. Stop. No, she’s not human. This thing is not human!
Shinpei jerks to a stop. Eyes wide and locked on the door, ears straining for more.
Someone heard him. Alan got sick of his footsteps and is making his way down the hall, grumbling sleepily under his breath. Or Mio woke to get a glass of water and is now returning to her room, slowing in confusion as noises slip through the crack beneath Shinpei’s door.
He clenches his teeth. Leaning forward, every muscle in his body tensing to steel.
Yes? Is that it? Is it Mio?
The sound again. Muffled and indistinct.
And not coming from the hallway.
Shinpei turns around. Feet scuffing softly on the floorboards. His eyes search the dim. They find Ushio’s shadow in the bed again.
Its shoulders rise and fall under Shinpei’s Summer Festival t-shirt, the green one from the year before he left. But the motion is not the steady rhythm of sleep.
Shinpei lowers his hands from his head. They hover mid-air, uncertain, as he creeps a half-step forward.
“U–Ushio?” he asks the darkness.
Ushio. He shouldn’t call it that. Not her name. But what else can he–
“Monster.” Her voice rises, wavering and tense with anguish. “She called me a monster.”
“Mio.” She gasps the name. Clutching the covers to her chest. “My– my Mio…”
She breaks off into wordless tears. Body shaking in earnest now, wails dropping to choked sobs as she remembers she has to keep quiet. So no one finds her. So no one knows.
Shinpei’s chest rises and falls with deep, quiet breaths. He watches the shadow, picturing the tears sliding from her face to soak his pillow. The damp stickiness of her wet eyelashes, the tight knit of that blonde brow Shinpei knows so well. He doesn’t have to close his eyes to see it. For his mind to find what his vision can’t in the suffocating dark.
He looks away. To the worn hardwood, unforgiving and cold beneath his bare feet. To the thin strip of moonlight escaping through the gap between curtain and wall, seeping across the floor and outlining the distance between Shinpei and the sobbing form in his bed.
His feet make a quarter turn. Toes slipping into the silver glow. Teasing the edges of the path promised by the moon. It pulls him in, leading him away from the window, to the head of the bed. To the girl the moonlight kisses the face of so gently.
Shinpei stares down at her blanketed form. Curled on her side, legs tangled in the covers, face buried in the sheets.
His hand slips into his pocket. He fingers the necklace there, tracing the radiating lines of the seashell. His hand tightens into a fist around it.
The sheets are cool as Shinpei climbs into bed behind Ushio’s shadow.
“Sh, sh,” he soothes, wrapping gentle arms around her waist. “Sh…”
“Don’t tell me it’s okay!” She tenses under his touch. He feels her push against his chest as she twists to glare back at him. “I know what you think, the same as Mio! You both think I’m– I’m…”
He says the name and she stills. The wave-tossed depths behind her eyes shifting in the spare moonlight. The anger melting. And something sharper and softer and more anguished sweeps in to take its place.
Shinpei feels it now. In every curve of her yet shaking body.
“Ushio.” He swallows. His gaze drops to the shell necklace, lying white against the sheets in front of her. “I–”
He closes his eyes. He inhales slowly..
“Whoever you are… Ushio or not… You are not a monster.”
He feels her staring at him, without opening his eyes. For one, two, three seconds, maybe ten. A short eternity.
Then she lets out a shaking breath. The mattress shifts beneath them as she settles back against him. Her hair brushes his face, smelling of salt and ocean and the strawberry ice cream they’d race each other to the pier to get every first day of summer.
She calms. Her breathing evens out. And, eventually, she sleeps.
Drenched in memories, in the exhaustion of the day, in the warmth and scent that belongs to his very best friend… Shinpei can’t help but do the same.
