Chapter 6 - Fishy Cao’s Home
clownfish - 0 | clownfish - 5 | clownfish - 7
Shen Dong rarely spoke. Chen-shu knew this so rarely chatted with him. After all these years on the island, for Shen Dong, hearing so many words made his head ache.
Did Cao Mu and his grandfather talk this much? It was like he’d been holding back ten years worth of talking.
“Shen Dong, you’re not from the village on the mainland, right?” Cao Mu drew up another chair and sat next to Shen Dong as he played minesweepers.
“No,” Shen Dong replied. He clicked and detonated a mine.
“Ah, you blew up!” Cao Mu did not know how to play minesweepers but after a quick explanation from Shen Dong and a bit more watching, he figured out that getting blown up was bad. “This is the third time.”
“Oh.” Shen Dong restarted the game.
“Where’s your home? Is it far? When are you going home?” Cao Mu rocked back and forth on his chair.
Shen Dong didn’t know how to reply to this triplet of questions. He clicked another mine.
“You blew up again!” Cao Mu announced.
“You…” Shen Dong turned to look at him.
“Where’s your home?”
“North.” Shen Dong stopped playing and instead dropped the mouse and looked at Cao Mu.
“North? Where North? Is it far?” Cao Mu seemed to have little sense for the cardinal directions and just lumped them all together.
“Far.” Shen Dong stood to get a cup of water. After finishing it, he paused, then gave Cao Mu a cup.
Shen Dong felt a profound sense of relief as Cao Mu gulped down the water, that is, until Cao Mu finished and continued to ask his questions. “When you going home then?”
That question gave Shen Dong pause and he remained silent.
Go home? Theoretically he had a home yet this phrase felt strangely foreign to him.
“So when you going home then?” Cao Mu asked again when he didn’t respond.
“Not going.” Shen Dong booted up minesweepers again with a half mind to roll up something and stuff it in Cao Mu’s mouth.
“You don’t miss your grandpa then?” Cao Mu seemed surprised and he leaned on the back of Shen Dong’s chair. “Sometimes when I’ve been out a while, I miss my grandpa.”
Shen Dong didn’t make a sound. Perhaps Cao Mu thought that every person had a grandfather as their one family member. At first he wanted to ask if Cao Mu was missing his grandfather right now, but in the end he didn’t.
Shen Dong finally completed a game of minesweepers. Not only that, but he’d beaten his old record. Feeling pleased with himself, he stretched then realised that he hadn’t heard Cao Mu say anything in a while.
He turned and saw that Cao Mu was leaning against the back of his chair fast asleep.
Shen Dong checked the time. It was past three. He tapped Cao Mu’s elbow with the intention of telling him to lie down on the sofa.
But as he did, Cao Mu suddenly jumped up.
“Ah!” He shouted then stared wide eyed at Shen Dong.
“G-go there to… sleep,” Shen Dong said, pointing at the sofa. Suddenly hearing such a shout in the middle of the night had his heart leaping out of his chest.
“Shen Dong?” Cao Mu looked confusedly at him.
“Yep,” Shen Dong nodded his head and pointed again at the sofa. “You…”
“What am I doing here?” Cao Mu asked.
Shen Dong lowered his hand and turned back to his game of minesweepers. Looks like the guy’s memory span was on the short side.
“What you doing?” Cao Mu seemed no longer interested in what he himself was doing and instead looked curiously at the computer screen.
“M-mine…sweepers.” Shen Dong was in despair. Did he have any hope of beating the record again? Once Cao Mu’s old loop started again, just being able to not get blown up was a miracle already.
“How to sweep?” Cao Mu asked as he leaned closer to the screen.
Shen Dong let go of the mouse and shut his eyes. He really didn’t want to explain it all over again. He was powerless against Cao Mu’s ability to forget everything after sleeping.
“How to sweep?” Cao Mu asked again. He picked up the mouse and imitated Shen Dong’s actions from earlier and clicked. He clicked very accurately on a hidden bomb. “It blew up!” he shouted.
“Move!” Shen Dong whacked him on the back.
“You’re hitting people again!” Cao Mu moved away and rubbed his back. “I remember now. You’ve blown up many times earlier.”
“G-go sleep.” Shen Dong shoved the chair away with a foot then pointed to the sofa.
“No.” Cao Mu sat on the sofa and bounced a little. “So soft.”
The sofa was real old and was collapsing in no small number of places to the point that sitting on it was nearly painful, but Cao Mu seemed to not feel it at all. Instead, he bounced happily on it.
Shen Dong decided to ignore him. If he could just bounce quietly on the sofa, that would be great, but after a few bounces, he stopped.
“I need to go back.” He suddenly stood.
“Oh?” Shen Dong was surprised.
“I’m tired. Been out too long. Feels bad.” Cao Mu sighed then, without waiting for Shen Dong to reply, turned and walked out of the room. But before leaving, he turned and said, “Come to my home tomorrow to pay. I’ll find you.”
“Oh.” Shen Dong replied.
Shen Dong heard Cao Mu slowly go down, the sound of his feet gradually fading. Finally he heard the clang of the metal door then all fell silent.
Too long made him feel uncomfortable? Was it, because he was a fish, being out of the water too long would make him suffocate?
Shen Dong shook his head then turned back to his minesweepers.
Theoretically, without Cao Mu there to disturb him, Shen Dong should have been able to play smoothly, but instead he found he was in a good enough spirit to play. In the end, the number of mines he hit was no fewer than when Cao Mu had been there.
The sky lightened. Shen Dong dropped his mouse and gave a big stretch. He’d played the whole night. As he relaxed again he suddenly felt as though it was rather quiet around him.
After a while he suddenly realised why. The computer was silent. Its screen was black.
“No way!” Shen Dong tapped his foot hard against the casing. Was the power out? No, that wasn’t the case. If it were, then all the lights and equipment would have gone too. There was clearly electricity?
Was it broken?
He kneeled by the machine and took a close look at the power outlet. It all looked normal.
The thing he dreaded the most had come to pass.
Had the computer that had struggled on for who knows how many years finally given up its ghost?
“Fuuuuck.” Shen Dong swore hotly. To him, the computer was of incredible importance. Sure, it could only play minesweepers and it took half an hour to clank its way fully on, but it was the sole method for him to alleviate his boredom.
If the computer broke, then all he and Chen-shu could do when they were on duty was to just stare into space.
Shen Dong cracked open the case of the computer and squatted there for a while.
He didn’t know how to fix computers but he still poked around for a while. Finally, he couldn’t find the problem and had to settle with clearing out all the dust from inside it, coughing as he did.
He tried to turn it on again. It didn’t respond.
“It’s really deaaaaaad…”
It would probably be at least a month before the ship would come and he could get it fixed, but then that was accounting for the next month of waiting for the job to be done.
In other words, he was looking at staring at the wall of the Watch Room for the next two months.
Shen Dong was not one to fear boredom, he’d spent years playing minesweepers after all. All he needed was a little something to do to keep the boredom at bay.
Looks like the time had come to find the joy in staring at a white wall.
By the time Shen Dong returned to his home, the sun was already up. He’d been planning on sleeping after a shower, when he suddenly remembered that Cao Mu had said he would come find him that day.
To go play at his home.
Did Cao Mu, a fish, have a home?
Did he live in a sea anemone or in a coral?
Shen Dong didn’t know when he’d be coming but from what he could guess based on the guy’s nature, he probably didn’t have enough time to sneak in a nap, so he decided to take a walk around instead.
There were twelve chickens in total, all of them real skinny, but after half a year, they’d become as lithe as a trained athlete. One flap of their wings shot them forward no small distance. Perhaps some of them had ended up drowning in the ocean because of that.
Actually having twelve live chickens was rather shocking. It was a good few more than two years ago. Incredible.
As Shen Dong passed by the coral rocks, he suddenly stopped.
Cao Mu was lying in that hollow on the craggy rocks. Not as a human, but as he real form, a fish.
“Hey!” Shen Dong shouted.
The fish didn’t move an inch, not even its tail.
Shen Dong had thought with Cao Mu’s personality, if he’d invited someone to go play, he’d go around to get them early. As it turned out, he was here sun bathing.
Shen Dong squatted down and planned to wait for Cao Mu to wake up.
But as he looked more carefully at the fish, he suddenly felt that something was wrong.
The scar on his dorsal was now doubled.
To be more precise, the scales near the old scar looked to have been ripped away leaving a wound that almost looked like it was still seeping blood. Shen Dong gasped and quickly picked up Cao Mu and jumped into the ocean.
“Cao Mu?” Shen Dong didn’t dare poke the fish. Instead, he just lightly touched it.
The scar on its back looked fresh. Were he a normal fish, he’d probably be dead in a few days, but since he was… something else… Shen Dong didn’t know if he had any kind of special healing ability or something like that.
He had no medicine for fish, but even if he did, he had no idea how to deal with this kind of wound. All he could do was stare out at the ocean.
What to do?
Suddenly the little clownfish’s tail moved and it started to move back toward the rocks again. Shen Dong quickly reached out and took it by the tail and returned it back to the water.
In the water, it didn’t swim around but instead floated then fizzled like a disolvable tablet in a cup of water.
When the bubbles finally subsided, a hand reached out from the water and grabbed onto the reef. Next appeared Cao Mu’s head and shoulders. His brow was furrowed. He looked exhausted.
“Cao…” This was the first time Shen Dong had seen Cao Mu like this. Before when he said he was tired, he hadn’t looked nearly as bad.
Cao Mu turned and stared at him, his blank expression cutting off Shen Dong’s words. “Who are you?”
Shen Dong felt helpless. He turned and clambered up the rocks. He had meant to help pull Cao Mu up but then discovered that he’d already jumped up himself then lain front down on the ground.
Shen Dong looked him up and down but found no wounds on his body.
Right when he was about to crouch down for a closer inspection, Cao Mu suddenly turned to look at him then smiled. “Shen Dong.”
“Oh,” Shen Dong replied. “Y-you remember?”
“Just then I was too tired so forgot.” Cao Mu closed his eyes. “My back hurts.”
“W-what ha-happened?” Shen Dong looked down Cao Mu’s smooth back and his… well defined butt. It was good looking but there were clearly no wounds. Why was he in pain then?
“I swam too far today, ran into a fishnet.” Cao Mu replied, his eyes still closed.
Fishnet? Shen Dong imagined a clownfish and the size of gauge the mesh would be to catch one. “Th-that small?”
“Yeah. It caught lots of small fish.” Cao Mu’s eyes opened a crack. He looked sad. “The nets are getting finer and finer.”
“I… I can’t see… a-any wounds.” Shen Dong rubbed his back.
“Don’t touch, hurts,” Cao Mu gasped. He propped himself up on his elbows then slowly sat. “But it’ll be fine soon. It’s not the first time.”
Shen Dong sat down opposite Cao Mu. He hadn’t known Cao Mu for all that long but the thing that gave him the strongest impression of him was his liveliness.
But just now, seeing a lifeless, depressed Cao Mu… it made his heart give a painful throb.
If today Cao Mu hadn’t been able to escape the net, what would have happened to him? Each time he transformed between fish and human it was always in the water. If he was dredged up onto land, would he lose his ability to change?
Shen Dong imagined Cao Mu being dragged and dropped onto the deck of a boat. His back broke out in cold sweat. He’d never thought all that much about fishing, but if that fish were Cao Mu…
“Grandpa probably got caught that way,” Cao Mu rubbed his nose then stood. “Let’s go to my home!”
“Ah?” Shen Dong stared at him.
“Let’s go to my home to play. I told you yesterday, right?” Cao Mu thought a moment. “Did I not say? I thought I did. I don’t remember…”
“Y-you did.”
“Then let’s go!” Cao Mu turned without hesitation.
“Wait!” Shen Dong hastened to catch up. “I-isn’t it… painful?”
“Painful,” Cao Mu rubbed his back with the back of his hand. “But I said we’d go to my place to play.”
Shen Dong didn’t quite follow Cao Mu’s logic, but Cao Mu didn’t give him any time to figure it out and instead looked ahead. “After a bit, we’ll dive down and I’ll take you. It’s pretty close. Strip.”
Shen Dong clasped the waistband of his shorts but didn’t continue. He felt embarassed.
A fully grown man loudly proclaiming you to strip… Shen Dong just couldn’t do it.
“Strip,” Cao Mu repeated when he saw Shen Dong freeze. He looked at him a bit. “You planning on swimming with clothes on?”
“You…” Shen Dong sighed and pointed at him. “C-can you you not l-look?”
“Oh, I won’t look,” Cao Mu looked at him blankly then turned away. “Actually I’ve already seen everything. It looks good.”
You want me to thank you for the compliment?
Shen Dong said nothing and instead took advantage of Cao Mu’s diverted attention to pull off his clothes. He was right. He’d already seen everything.
After they got in the water, Cao Mu lead him leisurely forward and Shen Dong did his best to not check out Cao Mu’s truly good looking body. This situation with two naked bodies, floating around in the water, made him recall a short porn clip he’d brought with him on the island. Of course, that clip was now gone along with the computer.
From time to time, Shen Dong broke the surface for air as he followed after Cao Mu. In contrast, he noticed that Cao Mu never did this and didn’t even seem to breath out bubbles. In other words, under the water, Cao Mu didn’t need to go up for air.
Real handy.
Shen Dong couldn’t figure out their direction when he was under the water and could only wait until he broke the surface each time to see the island slowly recede behind them.
Before them were the hazy images of the small islands. It was hightide and the sea water divided them up into small pockets.
After they’d been swimming about twenty minutes, right as Shen Dong was planning on asking Cao Mu how much longer they had to go, Cao Mu’s head suddenly rose out of the water. He turned to Shen Dong. “You should take a deep breath before we dive.”
“Oh?” Shen Dong, about to obey, felt that something was amiss. Wait, dive?
There was no way Cao Mu’s home was in the sea, right? How far exactly did they need to dive? Cao Mu wasn’t about to invite him to his home to chat on the sea floor, right?
“The entrance is underneath.” Cao Mu could see his hesitation. “First we go down, then we go up again. Actually it’s a cave, it’s…”
He pointed toward one of the islands. “See that mountain? It’s there. The cave is underneath.”
Mountain? Shen Dong looked at the island and saw how mountainous it was, like a little volcano. He and Chen-shu had never been to that island. Beside there being too many of them, these islands were all uninhabitied and the slopes were steep. He never guessed there were caves under it.
“G-got it.” He nodded his head.
Perhaps it was to reduce the amount of time they were underwater, but when they dove, Cao Mu grabbed Shen Dong by the elbow and dragged him along, swimming far faster than any normal human.
When Shen Dong saw the cave opening, however… Cave opening? What cave opening? That’s just a crack in the rock! Someone just a little fatter, maybe like Chen-shu, wouldn’t be able to fit. If he were five or ten kg heavier, he wouldn’t fit. Actually, he wasn’t sure if he could fit right now.
Were it not for Cao Mu leading the way, he wouldn’t dare come here. It was far too dangerous.
After squeezing through the crack for a bit, the walls diverged and curved outward, making the space bigger.
Right as Shen Dong was about to run out of breath, he finally saw the surface of the water and the shimmering light.
The cave wasn’t truly a cave, perse. There were many cracks in the wall that let in light, some even big enough to fit an arm through, though none big enough to let through a human.
Cao Mu rose out of the water and got out. All around was rock with some water plants.
Shen Dong followed and was about to push himself out of the water when he suddenly heard a shout. “Ha!”
Fuck?! Shen Dong was scared speechless. How the hell was there another person in this cave? And why were they yelling so heartily?!
Before he could look around to see who it was, the person yelled again from behind them. “Fishy Cao!”
Shen Dong paddled in the water and looked around to see that in a rocky crevice behind them was a person. He wore colourless clothes and somewhat messy hair. Covering his left eye was a black eyepatch.
“Who’re you?” Cao Mu, nonchalantly, asked evenly. He seemed to have no opinion on this person suddenly barging into his home.
“The captain!” The guy laughed heartily, then he sighed and pointed at his eyepatch. “You don’t remember me again?”