"I want to see my mother again," Goro replies, crouched in the shallows; Akira looks up from the tidepools he's rooting around in and frowns, not really sure how that answers the question of why do you come to the beach all dressed up, and follows his gaze to the ocean's gently swelling waves. The water comes in in centimeters, almost imperceptible if not for the way Goro has to shuffle back further on the sand to keep his clothing from getting too wet and for the dwindling number of pools that Akira can investigate.

When the ocean's banished them from their original positions, they move to the pier; Goro prefers to sit and let his legs dangle off the sturdy wood, while Akira chooses the safer option of standing and holding onto the railing. He's older now, but legends of things in the water trying to drown unsuspecting people hold fast in his mind from years ago. Goro never makes fun of him for it, at least; he just offers him that same thin, tired smile and swings his feet, teasing his sandals off but never letting them slip into the salty brine.

"My mother is a selkie," Goro murmurs beneath the stars one night. He smells strongly of sea and salt, and Akira cards his fingers through chestnut locks and thinks about kissing him again. He tasted like the sea, too. "She escaped my father when I was very young... I haven't seen her since.

"I don't know what I'll do when I meet her." He turns his eyes to the sky, and Akira hums as he noses his throat. Goro chuckles, the noise vibrating against his skin, before his breath hiccups and stutters at the beginning of a moan. Akira smiles, keeping up his languid markings, and the upsetting conversation falls to the wayside in favor of teenage hormones.

When Akira asks him after if he's a selkie too, and if he wants to return to the ocean, Goro smiles in that small, tired way of his and shakes his head. "I'm human," he answers softly, and the last thing on his mind before he sleeps is how there wasn't another answer, there, for the second question he asked.