Episode 2. Rendezvous in the Dark Grotto.
I guess it had always been hard for me to breathe whenever I spent too much time around someone. For all the years I'd lived in my Versailles (that's what my only friend pompously called this structure—and the name stuck), I'd never had guests (aside from that same friend). And right now, I was feeling… conflicted, to say the least.
On one hand, having a new person in the house made me incredibly tense, and I had no clue how to act. Everything in my routine felt flipped upside down. But on the other hand—deep down inside—I caught little sparks of curiosity about whether I could actually coexist, even for a couple days, with my loud sister.
I really needed to sort myself out.
After closing the door to her room, I leaned my whole body against it and started breathing deeply, trying to get some air. Damn, it's hard talking to people from the big world out there! Every social interaction felt like poison—at least according to my heart, which was trying to escape my chest. I started calming it, and the rest of the anxious gang—tremors and excessive sweating included—with my breathing exercises.
Yeah, I definitely had to endure and outlast this first contact with the bizarre alien that was—Louise!
The pounding in my chest finally eased up a bit, and I wiped the sweat off my face with a handkerchief. Time to deal with the problem the usual way—by running from it. Or, more accurately—swimming away...
I went into the storage room and pulled out my gear: wetsuit with thermal lining, an oxygen tank, fins, mask, and of course—my loyal companion and partner-in-crime, my camera, with its 4-inch
LCD screen, Super35 CMOS sensor, and Dual Pixel autofocus. I could ramble on about its features for hours (obviously, just in my head), and I gave it a gentle stroke through the case.
Time to gear up.
I put everything on as usual, calm and slow, except for the fins. I already felt triple-armored: the suit always helped block out the world and all its mess. With the camera strap around my neck, the escape plan was ready to go.
I could still hear her moving around in her room, getting ready for bed, so I figured I'd leave her be and headed outside (which, for me, meant the ocean shore). The pounding rain had calmed down to a light, annoying drizzle—not exactly ideal, but at least I could see again, and I definitely still felt like diving into the darkening water.
I always loved this kind of weather, even with all its minor domestic drawbacks. What mattered more were the emotions it brought up and that drive to soak in the local beauty, which I somehow never got tired of…
Equipment check went smoothly. Everything was in place. All that was left was to shuffle down the wet sand toward the incoming waves and slip on the fins. That was it—time to dive deep.
My heart hadn't fluttered with awe or fear before a dive in ages. That stuff usually came later, once I was down there. The first stage of it all had turned into plain routine—but that brief moment when my head still hadn't dipped below, that borderline between two worlds, still felt magical.
I twisted the valve open, activated the air flow, and dove down like a sleek little minnow, adjusting my position as I went. My experience always had my back—being a diver had fed me for years. Not to mention the inheritance from my parents, this made this whole life possible. Still, in recent years, my skills had really leveled up, and my photos had started showing up on image stock platforms, niche media, and even some magazines. More and more money was trickling into my wallet.
I wasn't rolling in billions of yen. Sometimes I barely scraped by. But thanks to the simplicity of my hermit life, I managed to survive—both out in the world and down in the deep.
Tonight, I wasn't here to take photos. I just needed to calm the hell down and lose myself in the one place that relaxed me better than any surface-world distraction ever could. Down here, I had quiet. Solitude. Even though the water was murky from all the clouds and rain, it didn't stop me. I switched on the headlamp mounted on my mask and—
Jolted back in shock.
Right through the beam of my light, something massive slid by—long body, fins, a tail! And I swear I saw huge arms too, vaguely human-like. It was fast for something that size and quickly vanished out of sight—both from the lamp and from my eyes. I froze in place, paddling just enough to stay put, trying to fend off a new wave of breathlessness—way more dangerous at this depth.
Gotta surface! I need air! I hadn't felt this kind of paralyzing fear since my early diving days, when the dark waters seemed so foreign, so resistant to human presence. And now—I was starting to think maybe I hadn't been wrong back then.
The ocean was a shelter not only for me...
Paralyzing fear locked me in place, keeping every limb frozen. I just couldn't find the strength to shoot upward. The only thing still working was my head—and with it, the beam of my flashlight darting back and forth, slicing through the gloom, finding nothing but empty murk. That's when I
started blaming it all on my overactive imagination. Taking big gulps of air, I forced myself to calm down just a bit.
That worked… right up until the moment the curtain of darkness parted again under the flashlight, and a massive hand came into view—its twisted fingers ending in claws. The skin looked pale, powdery—like it was made of alabaster dust. I poured every bit of strength into my trembling arms, fumbling to grab my camera, unhooking the lens cap.
This is it—I'm gonna take the shot! Right now… I can do it! I have to know it's not just something my brain made up. I need proof. But my hands weren't cooperating—and that clawed hand was moving, curling its pointer finger toward me in a clear, unmistakable -come closer- gesture. Then it did it again. And again...
I turned the beam slightly, and it lit up a bumpy, hairless head with a sloped forehead and a long protrusion—almost like an antenna. The creature clearly didn't appreciate the light and jerked its huge, bulky body with surprising speed, darting off downward.
And you'd think that would be the moment I finally felt relief—time to kick for the surface and breathe some sweet air, right? But no. The abyss was pulling me in harder than fear ever could. I shoved aside all those thoughts of escape, of safety, and started following it—slowly, carefully kicking forward.
- I'm in tracking mode. Like a spy.
That line just floated up from somewhere in the back of my brain. A memory? A quote? Did I say that once? Maybe not...
Despite the creature's speed, I somehow kept it in sight. Its size actually helped—it was too big to lose. Every so often, I'd catch a flash of that tail—something worthy of any mythic mermaid or siren. The chase couldn't last forever, of course. From what I could tell, we were nearing the shelf. This wasn't open ocean—we weren't about to tumble into the Challenger Deep. What I was worried about was whether my own resolve would hit the bottom first.
Apparently, all those years of therapy and meds hadn't been in vain—because a stunt like this?
Yeah, I'd only have pulled this off as a kid. But in the middle of those scattered thoughts, it hit me— where the creature was headed: the grotto.
And almost as soon as I guessed it, my flashlight lit up a gaping hole in the rocky seafloor. The creature's tail vanished inside, right after the rest of it.
A wave of boldness surged through me. That stone mouth—it had always creeped me out. I'd never dared to swim into it, no matter how much I'd wanted to explore. Every time I floated near, I'd
freeze, staring into that blackness so long my eyes stung. Hoping to see something. Usually? Nothing but swarms of tiny fish and the lazy dance of seaweed.
What the hell is in there? Even thinking about going in made my skin crawl. Why would I do this? Should I really accept an invitation from a creature science hasn't even catalogued yet? It was clearly intelligent. Deliberate. It wanted me to follow.
I scrambled to remember every breathing technique I knew and tried to steady myself—but then I noticed something odd. The grotto was starting to blur around the edges. Losing its shape.
It was… fading out of reality?
If this kept going, I'd never find out what was inside. And then—lying awake at night, drenched in cold sweat—I'd be left torturing myself with regret. Knowing I missed the mystery. The one that might've mattered in my otherwise slow, grey life. Because mysteries—those were the sparks that kept me tethered to this nasty little planet.
I clenched my fists, spun around to hype myself up, and took off like a submarine on a mission, swimming as fast as my body could manage. I never even noticed that the grotto's walls had already stabilized—settling back into their usual centuries-old stillness.
The moment I crossed the threshold, my headlamp swept side to side, lighting up rocky walls covered in colonies of tiny organisms. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the water behind me churn—and I tried to whip around, but my eyes shut tight on their own, seized by pure terror...