BL on note: Goldfish Backstroke

Nantoka Eleven, feeling good~♪ Thank you as always for the Nago project!

【Theme】Summer festival, zombie, water
【Body】3737 characters
【Subtitle】~Adding a touch of unease to youth, basking in overwhelming sunlight~

Water-attribute zombie means a drowned corpse? That's too gross, let's go with a water burial... that's the idea that started this work. It's a summer festival, and it was fine until I decided to bring out my own youth boys (the temporary name is lame), but Nishi-kun (the seme in this story) kept evolving into a character of unease.
At the time of the wonderful 100-character BL project by Tsuki wa Higashi ni, he was just a little twisted...

↑ Click here for the wonderful project.
↓ Click here for past works featuring the same characters.

Also, click here for the previous work featuring a classmate couple with an incredible presence ↓.

I think you can read this as a standalone without knowing any of the others, but if you're interested, please enjoy it like a Lumonde cookie during a tea break.

Gurgle, gurgle, a sound like a bubble popping.
It is the sound of an oxygen bubble, supplied by no one, bursting in an empty fish tank.

"There was a goldfish here until a little while ago, but it died."

The man smiles bitterly, saying that if he removed the tank, the room would be too bleak.
He looks like a young man, about college age. He is wearing a yukata with a blue vine-like pattern on a white background, and because he is fair-skinned, he looks pale overall. His slightly long bangs cast shadows on his expression.

"It was a fish my little sister caught at the summer festival goldfish scooping stall. I thought it would die soon, but I think it lived for five years."

His thin hand indicates a size of nearly ten centimeters. If that's the size of a goldfish, it's quite huge.

"People who didn't know probably thought it was a crucian carp."

Goldfish are small species improved from crucian carp for viewing, so I wonder if it lived long enough to start returning to the wild. Does that even happen?

"In the end, it was pitiful; it had something like a tumor on its back."

Pop.
The largest bubble burst.

"It probably couldn't swim well anymore. It was moving upside down, like it was doing the backstroke, with its belly facing up."

The man speaks with his eyebrows drawn down in a sad expression, eyes cast down in pity, yet his face remains smiling.
I know that kind of smile—the one chosen by process of elimination because he doesn't know what expression is the correct one to show.
Yes, I know this face.
I suddenly remembered. I hated that plastered-on smile on that pale face that looked so much like mine.

"It was just like when I died."

Goldfish Backstroke

"Suruga-chi, won't you go to the summer festival with me?"
"When and where are you talking about?"

The classroom, with the end-of-term ceremony just around the corner, is noisy with the signs of summer.
Komazawa, a classmate who has his bangs messily pinned back with a glittery pink rabbit hairpin he claims he got from a girl, smiles at me. It was a refreshing yet sweltering smile, like a sunflower field in midsummer.

"You hate it when I ask 'Are you free on this day?' first, don't you, Suruga-chi?"
"I'll give you credit for starting to state your business first."

When I messily ruffled his hair again, his smile softened even more, even as he told me to stop.

"There are events somewhere every week, so let's go to one where our schedules match."
"Hmm. So, who's going?"
"I was thinking of inviting the class rep..."
"Just go together, you two."

When I whispered to him that they were dating, his expression froze instantly.

"…………………………We're not dating."
"Oh?"

To be frank, Daiki Suruga was surprised.
This Komazawa and the class representative, Aoyama, are always clinging to each other and are very close. The general consensus in the class is that they must be in love, and it has even become a running joke. Every time that happens, it's a set routine for Komazawa, who is unnecessarily dense in strange ways, to laugh it off saying, "That's not true at all."
It was a set routine, but.

"Should I just go ahead and cook some red bean rice?"
"WHY!?"
"You know, that 'And I will always love you' thing."
"Who taught Suruga-chi such weird things!"

Has he finally realized it? A girl at a nearby seat was giving a thumbs up with a huge smile, but since he doesn't seem to have noticed, I'll keep it to myself.

"Good grief, I guess I'll lend a hand for the sake of Koma-kun, who can't be honest when it's just the two of you."
"I told you, that's not it!"

I wonder if he doesn't notice that his boyfriend (provisional) is glancing over here from behind Komazawa, who is shouting that I don't even call him Koma-kun usually.

(Yeah, yeah, it's cute how your expression changes so much. I'm not going to take him, so don't make such a complicated face. Thanks for the treat.)

While ignoring my inner monologue, I run my mechanical pencil across a piece of loose-leaf paper I took out.

"I wrote down my schedule here, so compare it with yours. Let me know once the date is set. Give my regards to your darling, too."
"I told you—!"

—A while after that exchange.
The day of the summer festival, after we adjusted our schedules a few times.

"Why are you here too?"
"Oh, what a warm greeting."

A certain temple on the outskirts of the city. It's a small mountain temple that the locals call Uozuka-san.
With a cozy Bon dance venue and a dozen or so food stalls lined up, it has the look of a "festival for the locals."
It's a bit too early to call it evening, though the peak of the heat has passed, it's still hot. Suruga was extremely displeased at the meeting spot in front of the temple gate.
Komazawa and Aoyama, these two are fine. Just as planned. With a navy blue jinbei and a white yukata, their enthusiasm for this date (provisional) is admirable.

"Don't be so cold. ...Even for you two, if you were to get separated while alone, it wouldn't be much of a date, would it?"

This man, whispering secretly as if he were confessing a criminal plan with the smile of a prankster. Shiro Hitoshi from the next class is a student in the same kendo club as Aoyama.

“...If our goals align, I’ll concede.”
“Suruga, what have you been talking about since earlier?”

Perhaps because he is used to wearing a martial arts uniform, Aoyama looks surprisingly natural, but Komazawa, unable to look him directly in the eye, is acting suspicious—though mercy is unnecessary.

“No? I just meant let’s enjoy the festival.”

---
--
—

“The signal is terrible... wait, was this part of the plan too, you guy?”
“It seems there are more people than I expected.”

For now, they visited the shrine, teased the shooting gallery and lottery stalls. Just as someone’s gaze started to grow doting while watching Komazawa get excited early on, they wandered off as planned. I took out my smartphone to send a line just in case, but frowned at the screen. As expected of a mountain in the countryside, it wasn't completely out of range, but it would be difficult to meet up like this.
I took out my smartphone to send a line just in case, but frowned at the screen. As expected of a mountain in the countryside, it wasn't completely out of range, but it would be difficult to meet up like this.

“Good thing we decided on a meeting place for the way home just in case.”
“How transparent... hehe.”

Nishi, who had burst out laughing, also had a smug look on his face as if to say, 'I got you.' Leave the rest to the two young ones, was it? I feel completely like a matchmaker auntie.

“So, what shall we do?”
“Because we want to avoid running into them.”

In the noisy crowd, it was a whim that made me pull on the arm extending from the light blue short sleeves.

“Let’s go test our courage.”

The sight of his eyes rounding in rare honesty was amusing, and Suruga told him with a smug look.

“A shell mound is a place to discard shells, and a head mound is a place where severed heads were enshrined. So, what is a fish mound?”
“A place to discard fish, or perhaps a memorial site?”
“Correct.”

According to legend, there is a pond on the temple grounds. It seems this pond was originally called the Fish Mound.
This pond is connected to an underground water vein at the bottom, and it is also an eternal waterway that leads to the sea over a long period of time.

“Given the region, seafood must have been rare. They must have thought, is it right to bury something that came all the way from the sea in a mountain without even a sea breeze?”

They say the dead return to the earth, but for sea creatures, the place they should return to is the dark bottom of the water. There is even a legend that a soft-shelled turtle eaten by humans cursed them, so don't underestimate them just because they are seafood.

“So, this is that pond.”

The place we headed to while talking. What spread out behind the main hall looked like a garden pond in the elegant Shinden-zukuri style, with irises and lotus flowers.
There were no stalls around here, and perhaps because the lighting was sparse, it was quietly silent.

“Is it called a water burial? Even though the temple doesn't handle such things anymore, they say people sometimes come to sink goldfish they were keeping.”
“Goldfish.”

—Plop

A fish shadow leaps across the water's surface.
It's certainly not a goldfish floating upside down; perhaps it's a koi.

“Do koi eat carrion?”

I crouch at the edge of the pond while voicing this unsettling question.
My exposed nape felt sticky with sweat and uncomfortable, but the breeze blowing across the water cooled it somewhat. Just as I vaguely thought that wearing a black T-shirt had been a mistake, a voice even more vague than my thoughts drifted down.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they? Both the koi and the goldfish.”

For Hitoshi, he had always thought that things like love and affection must take a form like these fish.
Beautiful, adorable, and something you want to protect—like those friends of his whose backs he feels the urge to push—something sparkling.
I thought that was what it was, he murmurs softly, looking down at the nape of the neck so defenselessly exposed. If I were to push this back, which is so good at maintaining its posture, would it be like shoving it into a disproportionately narrow cage?

“If it were me, I wouldn't be able to take them out of the tank.”

A world that exists only on the oxygen I provide in that lonely tank.
Somewhere, another bubble popped.

“If you released goldfish or koi into the wild, they’d become feral and ruin the ecosystem, you know.”

They’re omnivores, aren’t they? The nonsensical reply that followed left me feeling deflated.

“Ah, if you’re talking about wanting to keep a pet’s corpse by your side, I’d seriously advise against it. In short, it’s the same as raw fish, so it’ll definitely smell.”
“Please stop, you’re making me feel like I won’t be able to eat fish anymore.”
“Then a zombie. ...That also sounds like it would have the body odor of raw fish.”

Hitoshi stared, dumbfounded, as he stood up with a serious, thoughtful expression.
Whether he knew it or not, his baby face, which looked three or four years younger than his actual age, mocked him cruelly.

“Well, life in a tank might not be so bad. The frog in the well knows nothing of the great ocean, yet it knows the blueness of the sky.”

In the first place, if you put a frog in the ocean, it would die from osmotic pressure. Because he said something so blunt with a smile like a villain seducing a child, I felt like I’d been let down. With no other choice, I thought about the way home with a listless mind.

“However,”

A hand strikes the shoulder over the shirt, at a position higher than Suruga’s. Naturally, it wasn't enough to cause pain, but today we are both doing things that aren't like us. Perhaps it’s because it’s summer.

“If you have the grand confidence that you won’t let me get bored in such a tiny world, that is.”

This is more than just feral goldfish.
A declaration of war, like a migrating whale, for whom even the seven seas are not enough.

“...I surrender.”

Because it’s summer, I make excuses for my melted reason and obsession, and simply smile. It was a smile from the heart, one that had leaped over even the process of elimination.

Goldfish Backstroke, Whale’s Love Song

Thank you so much for reading this far!
Below is a bonus section with some extra background details.

A Next Conan's Hint for the question, 'Who exactly is the man at the beginning?' ↓

Yukino-san's full name is Yukino Suruga.
Both Shiro-kun and Daiki-kun are younger brothers who have older sisters. They interacted during childhood, but they went to different schools in elementary and junior high, so Daiki-kun probably doesn't remember much.
Shiro-kun? He remembers perfectly, and in fact, it was his first love, so what about it? It's a love he's resigned himself to, accepting that even if he kills it a thousand times, it keeps coming back like a zombie, so a double suicide is unavoidable, right?