Chapter Text
Shi Qingxuan let out a long, melodramatic sigh full of discontent as she asked her brother one last time, “Why do I have to go with you again?”
“I already told you at least seven times already, Qingxuan. Quit whining and get your things. We’re supposed to be in the air in two hours,” her brother replied coldly.
“I’m not whining, I’m complaining! If you want to hear me whine—”
“No. I don’t want to hear any of your nonsense– whining, complaining, grouching, bitching, moaning, none of it. Get your things and let’s go. I don’t want to be late to the airport because of you. We are not going to miss this flight.”
Shi Wudu was waiting impatiently in the kitchen next to his suitcase and duffle bag. He was leaning on the counter, scrolling on his phone.
“But why did you have to pick somewhere so dreadful?! You know I hate the water, ge! And we’re gonna be surrounded by it!” she complained further, crossing her arms childishly. “So just one more time, tell me why I have to go to that stupid, boring, old town and get on that stupid, boring, old boat everyday with your stupid, boring, dumb friends?”
Well, maybe Ling Wen didn’t really count as stupid, but she was definitely boring.
Shi Wudu didn’t even look up from his phone or acknowledge her in any way.
She continued, “It’s my vacation, too, you know! You’re dragging me along with you to your dream summer trip and said no to mine? Tell me how that’s fair?! I’m just gonna complain the entire time if you make me go. You might even hear me whine! So indulge me, ge.”
She pawed the phone away from his face when he made no moves and he scowled up at her.
“Make it make sense, ‘cuz so far, I’m only seeing more reasons to complain. You really should just let me stay here,” she insisted. “I will make this trip a waking nightmare for you if you make me go.”
Shi Wudu sighed just as dramatically and started massaging his temples with his free hand.
“Like I said the first time, it’s so I can keep an eye on you. For all I know, you’d drink yourself into a coma if I let you stay here or, god forbid, go to the capital alone,” he explained for the nth time. “I don’t trust you enough to go anywhere by yourself.”
“I’m not a child anymore, ge. You don’t have to—”
“Oh, I don’t have to take care of you anymore, do I? News to me!” he interrupted. “If you’re so independent, then why don’t you move out, hand over your credit cards that I pay for every month, and go get a real job?”
She rolled her eyes. Ouch. That one hurt.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” he grumbled, going back to staring at his screen. “If you’re still freeloading, you’re still my little sibling and I am still in charge of you. Until you actually make something of your life, we’ll do things my way, since I’m the only responsible adult here. So we’re going on vacation where I want to go and you’re going to have a great time spending some quality time with gege and his friends, alright? You’re gonna be nice and smile and nod and not be a pain in gege’s ass, yes?”
“You’re the worst.”
He slammed his phone down on the thigh of his designer sweatpants.
“Qingxuan, do you think I want to be taking you with me?” he spat back at her petty remark. “Believe me, this isn’t my ideal scenario, either. If you showed me I could actually trust you, maybe I’d let you go where you want, but until then, we’re both stuck with each other for the entire summer. So please. For my sanity, just go get your things and let’s get this flight over with. I already requested our taxi.”
“I’d rather drink myself into a coma than listen to Pei Ming and Xuan Ji make out the entire summer on some stupid boat…” she muttered.
“Ling Wen will be there, so I doubt she’ll tolerate their PDA for very long,” he replied, going back to his phone again. “And Pei Xiu is coming with us, so maybe you can get to know him better. He’s a nice kid. You might hit it off, who knows? Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.”
Her eyes narrowed dangerously and she could feel a bit of bile rise up in the back of her throat she had to swallow down. “If you’re trying to set me up with Pei Xiu, please know that I’d rather drown again than date anyone remotely related to that absolute scoundrel you call your best friend.”
“Stop being so dramatic, my friends aren’t that bad.”
“Your friends are the worst, ge. You have that in common, it seems.”
He just pointed to her bedroom, not looking up from his smartphone with the flight itinerary pulled up.
“Whatever,” she resigned in defeat, finally giving in and going to grab her suitcase. “Maybe there’ll be a super hot, tall and muscular, sexy lifeguard or a member of the coast guard to save me from drowning instead of a sea monster!”
“You’re not gonna drown. That was so long ago. Get over it,” he sneered. “And there was never any sea monster. How are you still on about that? Grow up.”
She started feigning some strained gurgling sounds, screaming melodramatically, “Save me! Save me!”
As she thrashed wildly in the hallway, she almost knocked over an old family photo on the wall. One of the only ones with all four of them in it before their parents died. She rescued the picture at the last second before it could crash to the hardwood floors, and held it to her chest melodramatically. Shi Wudu only looked up when he heard the collision.
“Hey, watch it. Be careful with that.”
“Oh, thank you so much for saving me, Mr. Sexy Lifeguard. Oh my, did you give me mouth to mouth? That was my first kiss, how could you! Oh no! My bikini top came undone! Oh, Mr. Sexy Lifeguard, we can’t do this here! Someone will see!”
She threw the picture back on the hallway table, not bothering to hang it back up, and started moaning loudly as she walked into her bedroom just to piss off her brother. She pulled up the suitcase handle with a quick pop and dragged it over the hardwood floors as loudly as possible into the kitchen, next to his.
Shi Wudu was trying desperately not to have an aneurysm at her infernal screeching. He tried to ignore her stupid antics and focused instead on reading the terms and conditions of the taxi app he downloaded in his desperation.
Shi Qingxuan gave him an overly fake smile and cried, “You know, maybe I will have some fun, after all!”
“This is going to be a long trip…” Shi Wudu muttered under his breath, head in his hands.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Get over it, he said, she grumbled to herself whilst leaning against the airplane window, looking out to watch the clouds. Yeah right. You can’t just erase trauma like that in the blink of an eye.
Shi Wudu didn’t know what it was like, almost drowning. He’d always loved swimming since he was a kid, and he was on the swim team in high school. Had a personal best of 29.41 seconds for the 50 meter butterfly and bragged about it nonstop.
How could he know what it was like? It was like he was made to be around the water.
Every summer when their parents were still alive, he’d beg them to take him out on the boat in that same stupid coastal town, despite her harrowing trist on said boat. They hadn’t been back to Fu Gu since the accident. Their parents never gave into Shi Wudu’s demands, and after they died, there wasn’t much point going on family vacations. (Until now, it seemed.)
Shi Qingxuan, however, never shared her older brother’s hydrophilic tendencies. No, she always preferred the company of the sand, shore, shells, and seagulls, as well as that amazing ocean breeze, rather than the murky depths of the fathomless ocean. She shivered just thinking about it.
She’d been afraid of the water even before her accident. Not that her brother seemed to care. He was currently leaning back in his first class seat with a satin eye mask over his face, resting peacefully as she recounted her painful memories.
Shi Qingxuan silently vowed to be eternally pissy and awful the whole summer for sweet vengeance sake.
She hated that town, and rightfully so. But another, maybe more masochistic, part of herself wanted to uncover the truth about what really happened that day she almost drowned. Maybe finally coming back would give her some much needed closure about the whole ordeal and she would be able to move past it. Maybe she could even learn to not hate the ocean, who knows!
There was one thing that wasn’t so horrible about that vacation, though… She’d briefly met a weird boy with the same name as her and his little sister on the beach all those years ago. She could never put on a finger on why they’d made such a strong impression on her, but she found herself thinking about them from time to time.
She wondered if they ever thought about her, too.
Doubt it… she thought, dismissing the crazy notion.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
Fu Gu was a perfectly picturesque little seaside town. In the past, it was a bustling fishing hamlet no one ever bothered to visit, but slowly people started flocking to the town because of the historical lighthouse, pristine beaches, and charming atmosphere. Popular tourist activities included flying kites on the beach, renting sailboats or other vessels, climbing up the stairs of the lighthouse, and sampling the local seafood.
Back during the summer of the accident, their mother and father had rented a bungalow and boat for the summer in the supposedly quaint coastal town of Fu Gu. The Shi family had some business ties with Fu Gu due to the oil pipes running along the ocean floor that lead to a rig many kilometers out past the coastline, so they got a good deal on the trip.
Little A-Xuan had kicked and screamed the whole way, not wanting to go, despite gege ’s and her parents insisting they would all have a great time by the ocean. She was incredibly insistent, though. Wailing and crying all the way to the docks, little A-Xuan vehemently refused to get on the boat that first day. Her mother ended up having to stay on the shore while her husband and son got to enjoy the boat for the first time.
Even on the beach, A-Xuan was causing quite the commotion. Her terribly embarrassed mother was trying to dip her little toes into the incredibly safe shallows to show her that it wouldn’t hurt, but A-Xuan just kept screaming bloody murder every time the foamy tide came running up towards her.
It was only until some little boy about her age ran over and invited her to play in the sand that she stopped her tantrum. The little boy led her over to his little sister who was dutifully helping her big bro build an elaborate sandcastle.
Finally able to relax, her mother sprawled out in a lounge chair under a big umbrella a little ways away with some alcoholic drink that wasn’t nearly strong enough for her ruined outing. She watched the three kids play while she waited for her husband and son to come back from the probably much more invigorating boating trip along the coast.
“The water isn’t scary,” the little boy said late into the construction of their joint sandcastle, taking a big scoop of sand into a colorful plastic pale. “It’s nice.”
“It’s scary,” A-Xuan insisted, a deep frown on her face. She had found several little cowrie shells along the beach and was sticking them into the outer walls of their compound.
“No, it’s not,” he said with a severe brow for someone so young.
“Yes, it is!” She put her hands on her hips to punctuate her sentence.
He gazed out to the horizon, his gaze softening instantly. “The ocean will be nice to you if you’re nice to it, right meimei?”
“Mn!” the little toddler sounded, nodding vigorously.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” A-Xuan pouted. “The ocean isn’t a person. It doesn’t have feelings.”
“If you keep saying that, it’ll get mad at you,” he warned, furrowing his brows with an intense golden gaze.
“That’s silly.”
“I’m serious,” he insisted, pouring out the pale to make a new section of the increasingly elaborate sandcastle. “Can you swim?” he asked, changing topics.
“No! And I don’t want to know!”
“No wonder it’s scary. Even meimei can swim. And she’s three.”
“Can Daiyu-er go swimming with gege?” she asked, tugging on the side of his swim shirt.
He shook his head. “Not right now. We have to finish the fortress together.”
“No, it’s scary because it’s scary. Not because I can’t swim. I don’t want to swim because it's scary,” A-Xuan continued.
“That doesn’t make sense,” he countered. “Scary things are scary because they make you afraid, not because they’re scary. Scary things are different from person to person.”
“Nuh-uh! Everyone’s scared of sharks. Sharks are scary.”
“I’m not afraid of sharks. They’re cool.”
“Cool?! They eat people!”
“They don’t want to hurt people. They mistake the people for food and then the humans make movies about sharks and start killing them ‘cuz they’re afraid. It’s not fair to the sharks. They just made a mistake. Everyone makes mistakes.”
The two stared at each other for a long moment before A-Xuan finally deduced, “You’re weird.”
“You’re weird,” he retorted back immediately.
“Gege’s weird!” Daiyu-er echoed happily.
The boy was about to argue with his little sister before A-Xuan stood up and dusted the sand off her legs.
“I’m gonna go get some more shells,” she said. “Does your sister wanna come with me?”
“No, we’ll keep working on the foundations of the fortress.”
“Oh yeah, her name is Daiyu-er, right? So what’s your name, weirdo? I’m–”
“A-Xuan!” called out her mother from under the shady umbrella.
Both older kids’ attention snapped over to see who was calling their name. Daiyu-er kept slapping her chubby little fingers against the sides of the outer walls, making sure they wouldn’t fall.
“YES?” they called out in unison.
Bright emerald green eyes locked onto stern golden brown ones.
“I’m A-Xuan,” they both said at the same time.
“Wait, what? No, you’re not. I’m A-Xuan,” A-Xuan insisted, pointing to herself. She was in a cute little green and white sailor outfit with her chestnut colored hair in tiny, curly pigtails.
“No, I’m A-Xuan,” the second A-Xuan said, in black swim trunks with a big shark mouth on one leg and a matching swim shirt. His inky black hair gently jostled about in the ocean breeze. He hadn’t gone back in the ocean for a while, but he was still dripping wet. Daiyu-er, too.
“A-Xuan?” her mother called out again.
“COMING!” they both yelled.
“Hey! Stop! That’s my name! You’re copying me!” she demanded, pushing him in the arm.
“No, it’s my name. Stop it!”
They started batting at each other like cats until A-Xuan’s mom finally came over to break them up. Daiyu-er was clapping happily, in a fit of giggles over their bickering.
“A-Xuan, stop that!” she called, horrified her child was hitting another kid.
“He started it!” “She started it!” they called out in unison, pointing accusatory fingers at the other.
“Mama, he says his name is A-Xuan, but that’s my name! Make him stop!”
“My name is A-Xuan! He Xuan!”
“A-Xuan gege!” Daiyu-er confirmed, pointing at her brother. “And A-Xuan jiejie!” She pointed to the other A-Xuan.
Her mom started laughing and said, “Oh, I see. There are two A-Xuan! Qingxuan, isn’t that something?”
“Two A-Xuan?” she asked, looking wildly affronted by the boy who dared to share her name. Thick tears started welling up in her eyes and she began absolutely wailing, screaming how she wanted to be the only A-Xuan.
“Fine, then I’ll be Xuan-er,” the boy finally huffed. “Xuan-er and Daiyu-er.”
“No, you don’t have to—” her mother tried to interject.
“Okay,” A-Xuan sniffed, instantly shutting off the tears. “A-Xuan and Xuan-er.”
“Xuan-er gege!” Daiyu-er accepted easily.
Her mother slapped a hand to her slightly red forehead. What am I gonna do with this stubborn, spoiled child? She should be an actress at this rate…
(She was so stubborn, in fact, that one day a couple of years before this vacation-turned-nightmare, A-Xuan had insisted that she was a little girl instead of a boy and there was nothing any of her family could do except just accept that A-Xuan was their daughter now.
They took her to a pediatrician and a child behavioral therapist, both of which couldn’t find anything clinically wrong, other than gender dysphoria. When she got older, they’d have to make some tough decisions, but before puberty, the best prescription was really just going along with it. Her family thought it wouldn’t be too long before she got bored of being a girl, but it had been nearly two years at this point and she showed zero signs of stopping anytime soon.)
“Anyways, A-Xuan, Baba and Gege are back from the boat! Let’s go meet them on the docks.”
Little A-Xuan looked back at the boy and said, “We didn’t finish the palace. Mama, can I come back to play with Xuan-er and Daiyu-er again tomorrow?”
“We’ll be here tomorrow if you wanna keep building the Nether Water Manor,” confirmed Xuan-er with a slight smirk.
“That’s not its name! It’s called the Palace of Wind and Water, not the stupid ‘Nether Water Manor’!”
Her mother cut in before her daughter could start another fight with the boy. “We promised your brother we’d try going back on the boat tomorrow, remember?” (A-Xuan definitely never made any such promises.)
She looked her mother dead in the eyes and stated plainly, “I'm not getting on that boat, Mama. I’ll scream the whole time if you make me. The ocean is mean and scary and there are sharks. I wanna finish building the sandcastle with Xuan-er.”
After a long moment, her mother just sighed and said, “I’ll think about it. We came all this way to enjoy the ocean, A-Xuan. Mama wants to be with Baba and Gege on the boat. Don’t you wanna be with Gege and have fun together?”
She shook her head violently back and forth and crossed her arms, puffing her cheeks out a bit. Xuan-er started snickering lightly at her. She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Maybe you’ll change your mind when you hear how fun it was,” her mother said, hoping and praying for her stubborn child to change her mind, knowing deep down that it was useless.
“Bye bye! I’ll see ya tomorrow, Xuan-er! See you Daiyu-er!”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Bye bye, A-Xuan jiejie!” Daiyu-er called back, waving excitedly.
𓆝 𓆟 𓆞 𓆝 𓆟
A-Xuan never showed up to build sandcastles the next day.
“YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!” she shrieked, flailing and struggling out of her father’s strong grip. “I WON’T GO! YOU CAN’T MAKE ME!”
“If you keep struggling and I drop you, you could fall in,” Baba said, the picture of calm, as he tried to wrangle her onto the anchored boat, still docked at the pier.
She gulped audibly, eyes going wide and she instantly went rigid like a piece of driftwood in his arms. Tears started welling up in her eyes as Baba set her down on the seating area of the speedboat.
“See, it’s not so scary!” Shi Wudu said, rushing to her side.
Except, it was very scary. She stared out into the endless horizon and all she could see was blue. Horrifying, dreadful, unknown ocean, as far as her eyes could see. She wanted to dash off the boat, run as far away as her legs could take her, and go back to the safety of the beach. Xuan-er and Daiyu-er were waiting for her to finish the sandcastle! But she was too terrified to even move from the bench. Her fingers turned into claws as she tried to ground herself deeper into the plastic-feeling leather upholstery.
“I wanna go back!” she cried, bursting into sobs.
Mama appeared at her side, holding two life jackets. She passed one over to Shi Wudu.
“Do I have to, Mama? I’m really good at swimming,” he protested.
“Yes, put it on,” she replied. “Just in case.”
Shi Wudu who buckled it around his torso reluctantly. He gave A-Xuan a quick but comforting pat on the shoulder and went to ask Baba if he needed any help with the boat.
A-Xuan kept crying and trying to fight Mama who was only trying to buckle the life jacket around her torso.
“I wanna go back! I wanna get off! I don’t wanna go on the boat!” she wailed, trying to swat Mama’s arms away.
“Do you want to fall in and drown?” Mama asked, already getting frustrated. A-Xuan stopped fighting her for a moment as that thought consumed her mind. She fervently shook her head. “Then let me put this on you.”
Mama huffed and sat down next to her once it was secured. A-Xuan clung to her mother’s arms, digging her tiny fingernails into her arm and continued weeping.
“It’s going to be fun! Look how Gege’s not afraid, yeah? Baba’s not afraid and neither am I,” she tried to soothe. “If there was really something scary out there, we would be scared, but we’re not. So it’s going to be fine!”
Mama made a fair point. Shi Wudu and Baba weren't scared of anything, but Mama was a scaredy cat like her. If everyone wasn’t scared, maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad…?
Except, right as she had that thought, Baba started up the engine of the boat. With a wicked lurch, they started a rather bumpy journey taxiing out into the open ocean.
A-Xuan practically jumped into Mama’s arms and hid her face into her armpit, screaming bloody murder from the sudden change in speed.
“I wanna go back! I don’t wanna go! Don’t take me out there!” Her sobs were muffled from the motor and by shouting directly into Mama’s arm.
“It’ll be alright, A-Xuan,” Mama said, tracing smooth circles on her arm since the life jacket covered up most of her back. “Come on, it’ll be okay. It’s really not so scary, I promise. The ocean is really pretty today. It’s nice and calm. The weather’s nice. We’re gonna have a lot of fun, yeah?”
“NO! I WANNA GO BACK! TAKE ME BACK!” She lifted her head and screamed directly into Mama’s face, her terror mingling with rage when they made no motions to turn around and take her back to shore.
And from such a wild motion of her head, combined with the jostling of the boat from the ocean waves, a wave of nausea picked up in her throat. It just made her cry even harder, scream even louder.
Mama was about to lose it. “A-Xuan! Stop screaming!”
“NO!”
Mama eventually pushed her out of her lap if she was just going to keep yelling directly into her ears.
“Mama, wait! No! Don’t go! I—” she tried to say, but Mama wasn’t listening. Her pleas died in her throat as another lurch of the boat made her screech in terror.
With Mama as her anchor gone, this left poor A-Xuan clinging desperately to the bench below her for purchase with every toss and turn of the boat in the waves.
“Wudu, tell your sister to stop screaming,” Mama ordered her older, more sensible son. A-Xuan actually listened to him. Maybe he could calm her down. Or else, this was going to be a very long day.
Shi Wudu sighed and did his best to try and comfort her, but at this point, A-Xuan was so angry and so thoroughly upset and helpless to do anything, that she was content to just keep wailing and screaming at the top of her lungs.
Her family thought that if A-Xuan had been set loose in the Monster’s Inc. universe, she would’ve supplied enough scream power to last for decades. Centuries even.
Mama resorted to drinking, as she usually did, just to cope with the noise. Baba felt sorry for A-Xuan and wanted to go comfort her, but he was the only one who knew how to drive the boat. Shi Wudu was trying to avoid his little sister because he was also growing irritated from her astronomical tantrum. Thank god, it was a fairly sizable speed boat, comfortable for the family to spread out in while her father raced around, chasing the waves at the insistence of Shi Wudu who wanted to feel the boat jostle and shake, much to A-Xuan’s absolute horror.
“Baba…” she cried out (softer this time), holding her hands out for him. “I wanna go back. Can we go back now?” She sniffled and whimpered her big, teary, emerald eyes at him.
Fuck, her puppy dog eyes were really good. A lethal weapon. Baba stopped the boat for a moment and went to go grab her. He pulled her into his lap in the cabin with the steering wheel.
“We can’t go back yet, but if you’re really scared, you can stay here with Baba, okay?” he compromised. “I’ll keep you safe. It’s better here than outside, anyway.”
She bristled in his arms, not fully satisfied with this arrangement since they were still out on the ocean, but she eventually conceded. She was already exhausted from crying so much. Her face and throat ached. She curled up into his chest and wept silently for a while. Baba helped her unbuckle her life jacket so she could snuggle up closer and discarded it on the floor of the cabin.
A-Xuan yelped and cried out whenever a particularly big wave or hard turn jostled her a little more than expected, but she found it really wasn’t so bad in Baba’s lap. She didn’t have to see the outside and she couldn’t get flung off in here.
“Baba, my tummy feels weird,” she croaked out. “I don’t like it out here. Can we go back? Please?”
He gave her one of the nasty tasting anti-nausea and sea sickness tablets Mama had stocked up on, but made no mention of turning the boat around.
That was the final straw.
She wasn’t getting what she wanted, her stomach felt awful, they weren’t taking her back, and the pill tasted like ash as it dissolved on her tongue.
“I wanna go back!” she screamed, hitting Baba's chest with her fists. It didn’t really have any strength behind it. “Take me back! I hate it here! I hate you for taking me out here!”
“If you’re gonna scream and hit me, I’m gonna have to kick you out, Princess,” Baba explained patiently. “I gotta keep driving the boat safely. I can’t do that with you hitting me.”
She screamed again and started flailing her limbs in his lap, even more enraged he wasn’t giving into her demands.
Mama had to come in and help wrangle her out of the cabin, kicking and screaming while Baba continued driving the boat. A-Xuan didn’t stop screaming for about two hours after that. Literal. Nonstop. Constant. Screaming. Her mother was already way past a tolerable amount of drunk just to cope. Shi Wudu was hanging onto the front railing of the boat with his bright orange life jacket tied loosely around his torso while Baba weaved and sped around trying to catch the biggest waves. They all tried to collectively ignore her, but wow, was she making it impossible.
“Stop that!” she demanded. “It’s too scary! I’ll fly out! Stop it and take me back! Right now!”
“Do it again, Baba!” Shi Wudu encouraged.
“NO!”
She hated seeing them ignore her and continue to have fun on the objectively horrible boating experience. It only encouraged her to scream and cry more.
With copious amounts of alcohol loosening her tongue, Mama finally lost her tempter.
“A-Xuan, shut up! Just shut up! Please, for the love of GOD, SHUT UP! Cry all you want as long as you do it quietly, I don’t care!” her Mama yelled, absolutely over it. “We’re not going anywhere! We’re staying here on the boat and you’re going to deal with it! We’re supposed to be having fun and you’re ruining it! This tantrum is not going to give you your way!”
In response, she just continued to scream and cry even louder and more desperate than before. But now instead of just her face and her throat, her little heart ached. Mama was always really mean when she drank.
Mama made her own loud, frustrated noise and stormed over to the cabin. She was already starting to feel sick from having a few too many drinks, and the rough ride coupled with her growing migraine from A-Xuan wasn’t exactly helping. She got up momentarily to go pop an extra anti-nausea and sea sickness pill in the interior cabin.
After a particularly nasty turn that only fed Shi Wudu’s adrenaline rush and left a huge spray of sea water in his face, he whipped his head around and started jumping up and down, begging his father to do it again.
It was only then that the screaming finally stopped.
Mama felt like it was music to her ears. She hoped that FINALLY A-Xuan and tired herself out and quit her infernal fussing.
She came tumbling out of the cabin interior, looking pale, “Do NOT do that again!”
“Come on, Mama! Just one more, please!”
“No, you’re gonna terrify your sister even more than she already is,” she said, not caring to mention that she was definitely going to hurl for sure if they kept this up.
“No, she loved it, didn’t you, meimei?” Shi Wudu called out to the back of the boat.
There was no response.
“Meimei, you loved it, right?” he asked again.
More blissful silence.
When no one replied, three heads immediately turned to look at the back of the boat. Much to everyone’s immediate horror, there was no little A-Xuan sitting on the bench.
“A-Xuan!” her mother called out, suddenly very sober. “A-Xuan?!”
She ran into the cabin again, but A-Xuan was not there, only a discarded, orange life jacket. Six frantic eyes searched the horizon, searching for any sign of the little girl.
“There! Baba, she’s over there! She’s in the water! She fell in!” Shi Wudu called out, hand pointing out in the exact opposite direction the boat was currently speeding in. A tiny flailing figure was struggling in the water.
“Oh my god,” Mama said, putting a horrified hand over her mouth. “Turn around right now, turn around! She can’t swim! Oh my god!”
“I am!” Baba insisted, already spinning the wheel in a 180.
Mama ran over to the edge of the boat and gripped the tiny orange life jacket like it was her anchor as her eyes stayed locked on the form of her daughter splashing helplessly in the ocean. This was exactly why she was so scared to get on the boat in the first place!
“Did she jump? Did she fall off? I didn’t see what happened!” Mama asked frantically. “Oh my god…”
“I don’t know, Mama,” Shi Wudu admitted.
“Why weren’t you looking after her?!” she spat at her eldest son, despite the fact that it was definitely not his responsibility to do that. “You should always be looking after her! That’s your job as her older brother!”
Shi Wudu’s eyes widened and he swallowed uncomfortably. “I’m sorry—”
“It’s not his fault,” Baba piped up, racing the boat over to where they’d seen A-Xuan as quickly as possible. “I’m the one that let her take off the life jacket…”
Poor little A-Xuan, who was still screaming her head off several dozen meters away, had gotten flung off the boat before she could realize what had happened. She tried her darndest to keep her head above the water, but the water felt like it was trying to swallow her whole. She couldn’t seem to kick hard enough and her arms were too busy flailing around to help keep her afloat. She immediately regretted unbuckling the life jacket her mother had tried to put on her torso.
She kept kicking and kicking and screaming and screaming as she watched her family’s boat get further and further away. Hot, panicked tears raced down her cheeks as she watched her only lifeline speed away.
Mama doesn’t wanna come back for me! was her first terrible thought. They hate me, they want me to drown! They took me out here to get rid of me!
It was too much work, all the screaming and splashing and kicking. The dark waters around her seem to grow rougher as waves began relentlessly pounding against her face, spilling salt water into her lungs. Every time she opened her mouth to gurgle and spit it out, another wave was there to flood her scratchy throat and aching lungs with more water.
It hurts! It burns! Everything hurts! I can’t keep… I don’t wanna…
She tried to redouble her efforts to keep her head above the water, but her entire body felt like it was on fire from her valiant struggle. She just couldn’t figure out a harmonious rhythm to keep in time with the waltz of waves slowly trying to overtake her.
One last hoarse scream ripped from her raw lungs as a particularly tall and powerful wave finally bullied her underneath the surface.
“Where did she go?” Mama searched frantically, running all over the boat, trying to see any shapes under the water. “She was around here somewhere! A-Xuan! A-Xuan!! Oh my god, I can’t see her! She’s wearing a green swimsuit! I can’t see her! Oh my god! A-Xuan!”
“I can go look for her, Mama!” Shi Wudu offered, already moving to jump off the edge of the boat.
Luckily Baba caught him by the scruff of his life jacket before he had the chance to do anything so foolish.
“No, stay here in case you see her,” he ordered, throwing his shirt on the deck. “I’ll find her.”
Mama caught hold of Shi Wudu, who was already going back to the edge of the boat to jump in after Baba, and hugged him tightly as they watched in bone-chilling suspense.
Baba didn’t resurface for a while, but when he did, he was empty handed. He immediately went back down after taking a gulp of fresh air to try and search a different direction.
The seconds of waiting turned into agonizing minutes. Still he couldn’t see her.
I have to find her. I have to find her. Where did she go? This is all my fault!
Mama was holding back sobs and Shi Wudu was practically vibrating in her arms, wanting to break free for the chance to search for his sister.
Flailing more than ever now that she was underwater, trying desperately to breach the surface again, A-Xuan undulated and squirmed all over and eventually lost her bearings. She couldn’t tell which way was the surface in her confusion. Her little lungs couldn’t hold much air to begin with, and with so much physical movement going into hopelessly trying not to drown, she had exhausted herself before a minute even passed.
I… I don’t want to die!
A-Xuan choked and sputtered, inhaling a huge mouthful of saltwater as her vision started darkening underneath the waves, trying desperately to scream for help. Water flooded her mouth and lungs, burning and choking her already shot throat and burning lungs. She looked up at the last rays of sunlight peeking through the waves as tears filled her eyes and washed away into the ocean current. Her body felt like the heaviest lead as she slowly sunk deeper and deeper into the darkness. Her ears felt like they were going to explode from the pressure.
Please… Someone! Baba, please! she begged, praying to anything. I don’t want to die!
She thought about how she had been so excited to go back to school after summer break and brag to classmates about where her family went for vacation.
I still want to be a fashion designer…! I can’t… this can’t be it! Please, someone!
Mama was only just now teaching her how to hand sew bigger things. She had already sewn some buttons on her clothes all by herself. When she was older, Mama promised to teach her how to use the sewing machine. She scrawled into her sketchbook different designs for skirts and dresses and cute ruffled shirts she wanted to make.
A soundless scream bubbled out of her throat when she thought about her family. She still needed to make Shi Wudu proud of her. She wanted to impress him with her accomplishments so he could tell her that she did a good job. He was already so good at everything. She wanted to be just like him.
She wanted to snuggle into Baba’s chest one last time and hear him read a story to her at night even though she was way too old for bedtime stories. She wanted to walk in on him in his study late at night and grab ice cream from the kitchen as he whispered, “Don’t tell Mama!”
Her eyes started stinging and going cloudy from the added darkness and pressure.
Please…! I just… I want to live!
She thought of that serious weirdo boy she met yesterday and his little sister. She promised them! She promised she’d come back and finish the Palace of Wind and Water. She wanted to be his friend. There was something about him…
She wondered if they’d forget about her if she never showed up.
I’m sorry I hit you, Xuan-er…
There was no one. There was nothing she could see other than emptiness. She closed her eyes as a stray tear bled into the fathomless saltwater trying to devour her, helpless to stop it.
And then, a rush of cold water jostled her a little to the side. She startled, eyes shooting open in terror. A black shadow darted underneath her.
Oh god, please don’t be a shark!
Something lithe and slimy grabbed hold of her foot and began climbing up her body. She opened her mouth to scream, but that slimy something reached a large, bony, webbed hand up and covered her mouth.
Suddenly, A-Xuan was face to face with a creature darker than ink with eyes even more golden than the sun. Its bioluminescent eyes glowered fiercely at her through furrowed brows as it held onto her shoulder with one hand and covered her mouth with another.
It was definitely not a shark, that was for certain.
A-Xuan tried to thrash and fight to break away, but her rapidly fading consciousness didn’t make for much of a fight. She squirmed her mouth away from the creature and tried to scream again, but in her panic, she just ended up swallowing more sea water into her already burning lungs. And coughing was little salve to her oxygen-deprived lungs when submerged underwater. The creature tried again and firmly slapped its hand over her mouth. The texture alone of its skin was enough to make her want to throw up.
Much to her continued horror, the creature then opened its maw, revealing rows and rows of razor sharp teeth and forced her face closer to its own, despite her pitiful attempts at resisting.
This was even worse than drowning, she realized, too terrified and exhausted to fight back anymore as the edges of her vision began enveloping her in the calm darkness. But she was so, so scared and trying to cling to any shred of consciousness left, but she also didn’t want to be awake for her inevitable demise. A-Xuan scrunched her eyes shut, waiting to finally asphyxiate and drown or have her face ripped off by this monster.
No, please! Not like this! I just wanted… to finish the sandcastle with Xuan-er…!
Except, the creature neither attacked, nor did she suffocate.
She couldn’t say what exactly that creature did, but it must’ve been something akin to mouth-to-mouth. Smooth, slimy lips attached to her mouth. It held her face close, webbed hand on either side for support. Saltwater streamed out of her mouth and lungs in swathes, and the creature just gulped it all down. Once all the saltwater was gone, it breathed in precious air, filling her aching lungs.
A-Xuan opened her eyes only to behold these eerie but determined golden orbs with a slitted pupil beaming directly at her bright emerald eyes. They looked a bit like lightbulbs or like the dangly bit on an angler fish in the darkness. The creature had a vaguely humanoid face amidst the inky black scales dotting its face.
This was nothing like the sea monsters from the movie Luca. Those were nice sea monsters with pretty colors and not terrifying teeth. This was something much more grotesque and horrifying, but also exceptionally beautiful.
Fully taking it all in, she determined it really was the most stunningly beautiful thing she’d ever seen. The scaly skin reflected off dancing and undulating rainbows like an oil spill, completely mesmerizing her by the way it dazzled underneath the waves.
She blinked several times, brain trying to put a name to the creature, but it was nothing like she’d ever heard of or seen. And the creature blinked back at her, slits turning softer and rounder the longer they held her gaze.
Finally detaching from her lips after the last big breath of air that rattled around her lungs, the creature covered her mouth with its hand. Instinctively, she flinched away from the slimy touch, so instead the creature grabbed her own hand and placed it over her mouth. After a moment of staring at each other, the creature blinked at her with that same determined gaze and pointed a clawed finger up towards the surface. He gently wrapped an arm around her waist, and started escorting her up to the surface.
A-Xuan couldn’t rip her eyes away from her strange savior. Its assemblage of fins, legs, and maybe even a few tentacles if her eyes were seeing correctly, glided effortlessly and gracefully through the water. She wanted desperately to open her mouth in shock, but she kept her mouth closed with her hand covering it for good measure.
Once they breached the surface, she immediately started coughing and taking in gulps of fresh air to her exhausted lungs. Her head whirled around trying to get her bearings in the unfamiliar ocean. A firm push to the small of her back had her floating over to a small boat bobbing in the water a couple meters away.
“Wait!” she called out, finding her voice hoarse and barely more than a whisper. She kept trying to swim back as its murky visage under the water disappeared. “THANK YOU!” she screamed out to it, feeling like her throat was going to tear open.
“A-Xuan!” Mama called, crying tears of relief. “A-Xuan!!”
Mama nearly jumped in after her when she spotted her, but luckily Baba swooped in immediately underneath and grabbed hold of her waist, clutching her tightly to his chest to keep her head above the water. But she struggled weakly in her Baba’s grip, straining her head to look underneath the waves to catch a glimpse of the creature that helped her.
“Did you see it, Baba? Where did it go?”
“See what?” he asked, breathless from all the tireless searching.
“The monster! With the eyes!” she said, like it was obvious. “It saved me!”
But Baba hadn’t seen anything. No one had.
Maybe she hallucinated it after all…