Notes: This was written for week #67 - vacation of the LJ community dn_contest. Basically, this is my version of stress relief—when you study too much for your phonetics exam, just take it out on the completely innocent Yagami family and make Sayu attempt to learn German! Or something. Anyway, I wish you as much pleasure in the reading as I had in the writing. :)

She's heard it said that some Germans call it Mordsee, 'murder sea', instead of North Sea; and well, looking out at it from the window of their hotel room, she feels like she understands.

It's almost completely dark outside, a few lanterns lighting winding footpaths through the dunes, and Sayu can't really make out the sea, save for the occasional sparkle of water catching the fading light of dusk. But she can smell it in the breeze that catches her hair, almost tastes it on her tongue—a sharp tang of salt and seaweed, not altogether unfamiliar.

Invisible waves crest and push against a foreign shore, and it's strange how oddly forceful the sound is, as if the sea is digging its teeth into the sand, tugging and tearing at every grain, every pebble, to pull it under. Sayu's homeland is completely smothered in the Pacific Ocean's enormous embrace, after all, but somehow the waves she's heard on weekend trips to the outskirts of Tokyo never sounded quite this combative.

"Close the window, dear," her mother says as she stuffs the empty trunk under the bed, sounding tired and worn. They're all exhausted from the flight and then the train ride that seemed to take forever, and so Sayu complies without hesitation; she's dead on her feet too. The old-fashioned silver handle is cool against her fingers, and her eyelids begin to droop as soon as the chilly night air gets shut out of the room.

Later, when her brother's deep breathing is the only sound in their adjoining bedroom, she stumbles over to the window and opens it a crack, just enough to let the sounds of the wind and the waves drown out the muffled hustle and bustle of the hotel. She could never sleep on airplanes. They make her nervous; not to the point of panicking, but the vague, unsettling feeling of nothing but air around and beneath her always keeps her awake. She hasn't slept for twenty-four hours, but she would have liked to get down to the shore, just for a few minutes, to get a better look at the sea that's roaring back and forth outside—like a wild animal pacing the length of its cage, again and again, without any hope of getting out.

But somehow the sound, as ferocious as it is, comforts her, unravels her tightly-wound nerves and fills her mouth with the taste of salt. Back in her safe cocoon of blankets, Sayu turns her head until she can watch the window, and promptly falls asleep, the sunset's faint afterglow the only light on the heavy sheet of clouds that slowly waltzes across the sky.

When Sayu looks out of the window the next morning, she thinks for a moment that she's still asleep and dreaming.

Light is already up and about, brushing his teeth noisily as if to remind her that she's supposed to get out of bed too, but she can't move. She can just sit there and stare stupidly at the... the sheer impossibility outside that not even the morning fog can hide.

"I thought we'd come to the North Sea," she says numbly when Light is rummaging through the cupboard for his shoes. He shoots her a bewildered look, nodding in response, and she motions weakly towards the window. "So where is it?"

Her brother laughs once, moving to sit on the edge of his bed to tie his shoelaces—and somehow, the deep, familiar baritone of his chuckle sounds different here, devoid of that barest edge of mockery that she's probably been imagining in the first place. Amusement is sparkling in his eyes when he glances out of the window to follow her gaze, but it doesn't raise her hackles like it used to in Japan. She knows that he doesn't mean anything by it—moreover, she reminds herself with a familiar cold bitterness, she'd probably laugh too if she had a younger sister who, compared to her own vast ocean of knowledge, doesn't know anything.

"The tide is out," he explains, keeping his eyes on the endless stretch of black mud where the sea should be. "The North Sea is the largest tideland in the world—nine thousand square kilometers. You can walk for hours on end and never see the surf. The locals call it Wattenmeer, wadden sea."

Fifteen minutes later, she's following Light downstairs into the hotel's restaurant, to join their parents for breakfast. Sayu has been careful to avoid looking out of the bathroom window when she brushed her teeth, took a quick shower and combed the tangles out of her hair. Sure, she has seen bared seabeds before, but somehow, this is different. It's like the sea that she's heard roaring just yesterday is completely gone, as if it has decided to draw back all the way to the north pole. Back home in Japan, she could still see the Pacific's surf glinting in the distance even when the tide was out, a thin blue band at the very edge of the horizon, almost like a friendly wave. But she knows that among this faceless expanse of mud, she wouldn't find this foreign sea even with binoculars, until it decides to come back.

She thinks to herself that the single German word that Light used before sounds just like the very thing it describes—an endless stretch of dark slush, lying cold and bare without the surf to cover it. She can't help wondering what it would feel like to step on it, with a sort of frightened curiosity that makes no sense at all; if it would support her weight, and let her walk where only waves have treaded before, or if it would wrap the black mud around her ankles and tug before she could even scream, sucking her down and under into a heavy, wet embrace.

The restaurant is bigger than she expected, small round tables arranged around a large sideboard, the room abuzz with the voices of the other guests, chattering to each other in a number of foreign languages. A blond young man with impossibly blue eyes shows them to a table near the large windows, and Sayu is quick to grab the only chair that's facing the room—hoping, irrationally, that the expanse of slick wetness behind her will be gone when they finally head down to the shore. Breakfast is being served as a buffet, which puzzles her a bit until the blond waiter smiles, hands her a large tray and points her to the end of the queue. The homely smells of still-warm bread and freshly-brewed coffee make her mouth water, and she only hesitates for a second before scooping just a few of the tiny shrimps onto her plate; she does like seafood, but she's heard a lot of horrifying stories about what non-Asian countries do to their fish, and she figures she'd better play it safe.

When Sayu returns to the table, Sachiko asks her what she'd like to do today, with a warmth that Sayu belatedly recognizes as excitement. Her mother still looks a little tired around the eyes, but the familiar tense line of her shoulders has smoothed into relaxation, as if she's been holding her breath for a long time and has finally allowed herself to let it out. It makes warmth bloom in Sayu's stomach, to know that her mother likes it here, and she'd like to say that she doesn't really care what they do as long as Sachiko is happy. But her mouth is full of the surprisingly good shrimps, and so she just shrugs noncommittally and gives her mother a smile.

"They're offering tours," Light says eagerly as he sits down across from Sayu and sets down his cup of coffee. "I just talked to the waiter, and he said that the surf'll stay out for another few hours, so it's safe to go exploring on the tideland."

No, she thinks but doesn't say aloud, and swallows the shrimps with some difficulty, suddenly feeling nauseous. Her gaze darts to her parents almost on its own accord. Soichiro is nodding thoughtfully, staring out at something behind Sayu—the black desert where the sea should be, probably—and looks very much like he's going to agree with Light. There's a glint in his eyes that Sayu has come to associate with his job, a challenging case or a new lead, and she almost sighs. She knows that she'll tag along without complaint, probably without anyone even noticing her discomfort and fear of the dark slush, just as long as her parents are happy.

To her surprise, it's Sachiko who saves her. "I was thinking we could just relax for now," she says mildly, smiling at her husband apologetically. "I don't know about you, Soichiro, but I'm just so tired from the flight."

Sayu breathes out slowly, feeling the tension in her shoulders dissipate when her father agrees immediately, saying that the sea will still be there in a few days' time, and that they have four weeks left to explore their vacation home, after all. She looks down at her plate, hoping that none of the others will see the relief that she can't quite stop from flooding her expression, and wonders vaguely if she should get some more of those shrimps. And really, Sayu has no idea what exactly she is so afraid of—technically, she knows that it's a mudflat just like back home in Japan, only a lot bigger, and that it won't jump out and eat her if she so much as sticks a toe into the black slush. But she can't help being unsettled by it, as deeply as if she had spent hours and hours staring at it, searching for a glimpse of the sea, instead of just a few minutes.

"You talked to the waiter?" Sayu hears Sachiko ask, and she lifts her gaze from the food again. She should have seen it coming, she thinks—as soon as the family had decided to go to Germany for their long-overdue vacation, Light had purchased enough books to walk himself through an entire language course. Even after completing his daily load of homework, he had studied the books in the evenings, slowly leafing through page after page of German lessons with that familiar, tiny frown of concentration.

It had occurred to Sayu that he'd been strangely insistent about it, as if he was determined to master even the highest levels of this language in just the few weeks before their vacation. Even now, remembering the expression on his face is almost enough to bring a frown to her own features—she can't quite describe it, but it had reminded her of someone preparing for a battle. As if Light was determined to win whatever fight he'd seen coming, rising to an unspoken challenge.

Her brother smiles at their mother's question, though, looking a little bit like he thinks he's won. "Yes," Light just says airily, as if it's nothing to be proud of at all, and Sayu doesn't really know if her brother's modesty should be making this so much harder to bear, but somehow it does.

She wonders, sometimes, if her hate of these situations would be dulled if Light were actually a braggy, insufferable know-it-all—maybe she even wants him to, in the deepest recesses of her mind. Because if he were the show-off he has the right to be, Sayu could feel... better than him, on a purely instinctual level that no one but herself would even see; but she suspects, with a conviction bordering on certainty, that that would be enough. It would make everything easier, if Light jumped at every chance to prove himself and make her feel like the dirt stuck on the heel of his shoe; but the knowledge that he'd never, ever do something like that to her makes Sayu clutch her fork until her knuckles turn white.

Watching the tide rush back in is almost anticlimatic; it happens so slowly that Sayu wouldn't even notice if she weren't staring so fixedly, ignoring Light's occasional amused comments. The family has gone down to the shore after breakfast, although the sky is so white with clouds that looking at it almost hurts. Light has assured them that the waiter said it'd clear up, though, and they're wearing their swimsuits under two layers of clothing against the morning chill.

The sun is a silver, feeble coin in the sky, surprisingly warm on Sayu's back, and even with the water being miles and miles away she can still hear the sea roaring faintly in the distance. Sharp gusts of wind whip this way and that without reason or even a general direction, pulling and tugging on her hair as if wanting to tear the scrunchy to shreds, and she draws her knees up to her chest to rest her chin on them. Even the sand is rougher than she'd expected it to be when she digs her bare toes into it absently, although it's been warmed by the sun and sticks to her sun-lotioned skin in tiny grains.

It looks gray rather than white or golden when Sayu picks up a handful of it, idly letting it run through her fingers—she notices with a start that there are pieces of shells mixed into it, so small that she can barely make out the cracked, broken edges among even tinier, bizarrely smooth stones. And she realizes that the North Sea must have crushed them, pounding down on fragile shapes hard enough to break with a force that is neither cruel nor eager, squelching them into pieces tiny enough to get pushed into the sand by the uncompromising pull of the tide, and she can't help the shiver that ripples across her shoulders.

But she has to admit that the endless stretch of mud doesn't look quite as intimidating as it did before, from the higher vantage point of their hotel room. Now, it seems to have shrunk into a broad, but not nearly as fathomless band of darkness that isn't actually as black as it had seemed to be. Light had started to talk about tidal creeks and outflowing residual water when she'd commented on it, and to her own surprise, Sayu had felt the familiar spark of annoyance kindle itself into a small, but persistent flame. She'd welcomed the wind whipping her hair across her face, and sat down, pretending not to hear her brother over the distant clamor of the sea.

Tidal creeks aren't what she'd been talking about, anyway. There are... patches in the mud, for lack of a better word—shallow puddles of water that pick up the bright color of the sky, almost like holes in a fabric. They interrupt the shapeless texture of slush every-so-often, and somehow, they make the wadden sea easier and easier to look at, especially now that the rushing of the surf is getting closer.

Sayu doesn't quite know what she was expecting when she forced herself to look at the tideland, really look and not just let her eyes dart away to the kids playing beach volleyball on their left—but it surely wasn't this.

The first thing she notices is a band of blue forming on the horizon, and she leans forward in anticipation, scooting forward on her heels without noticing. But for what feels like hours on end, the band just keeps getting broader and broader, the North Sea returning to reclaim what it left, and for the longest time Sayu doesn't even see a wave cresting. The water is creeping closer, lazily slopping over the mud, always withdrawing again, as if pulling itself back into the seabed is the hardest work the sea has ever done, and Sayu sees the bright puddles being linked together like jigsaw pieces. She knows that it'll take time for the tide to rush back in, but she can't help feeling like the ferocious whirl of water she's heard the night before is now letting her down.

And she's not disappointed, exactly, because that would be stupid. But she still remembers standing at the window the night before, listening to a force of nature so enormous that she'd almost felt it smashing layer after layer of saline water into the shore, scratching over sand, shells and stones with a thousand vicious fingernails, drawing back only for an instant before crashing back in.

Later, she thinks that she must have dozed off for a while, because she knows that the sound of the waves can't have changed so abruptly—but it certainly feels like it.

One moment she's idly watching the glittering, gray-blue water reclaim the wadden sea with an odd, unhurried precision, absently listens to Light talking to their mother, and actually feels her eyelids droop a bit. And the next thing she knows is that the violent, merciless force she's heard just an evening ago is suddenly back.

Not even an hour of listening to the waves last night could have prepared Sayu for the sight of it. White, boiling waves are crashing in where there was only a black expanse of mud before, spitting white foam when they collide with the shore and fan out into broad arcs of water across the sand. Even the darker sea in the distance seems to be in constant, agitated motion, rocking back and forth in colors that are more gray than blue, as if to encourage the white crests of foam that race towards the shore. The waves certainly aren't as high as the Pacific ones back home—but they make Sayu think of cycle racing, where the bikers crouch down on the handlebars to offer as little resistance to the wind as possible, making up for the lack of height in speed.

For what seems like an eternity, Sayu just sits there with her mouth half-open, and almost forgets to breathe. Her gaze darts from wet sand to the stormy gray of the deeper waters back to the waves, not quite knowing where to look because everything is in motion, drawing and dividing her attention between an entire spectrum of things happening all at once. Just when the crest she's been following with her eyes is foaming into a white spray of bubbles, a deep, circular movement in the North Sea's slate gray heralds an even bigger wave, the water drawing itself up with what oddly looks like an intake of breath. It towers there for a few drawn-out seconds, as if waiting to come crashing down on the shore with all its weight—and somehow, Sayu thinks that in all the world there can't be a more perfect moment for time to stop than this.

It looks like the waves are falling over each other in an effort to get to the shore first, as if they've raced here all the way from wherever the tide went and are now putting their everything into these last crucial meters. Sayu takes a deep breath, listens to the tide's thundering clamor, and wonders at how strange it makes her feel—like her hands will start shaking any minute now, and like her lips are just waiting to stretch into an elated, feral grin. Something physically draws her to the water, as determined as a firm hand tugging on hers, to the point that the endless cycle of waves crashing in and rushing out gets dizzying.

She cares neither about the wind whipping through her hair and chilling her skin when she takes off her sweater, nor about her family's surprised glances when she wiggles out of her trousers and stands up. Light's mouth is moving in what seems like a question, but the wind chooses that exact moment to blast a current of air directly into her ear, and then she's out of hearing range, jogging down towards the water with long, uneven strides.

If she's had any reservations left about walking on the dark mud, now mercifully hidden by the sea, they vanish into thin air as soon as the first wave laps at her toes. It's like being bitten by a hundred icy teeth, the water not yet heated up by the feeble sunlight, but she doesn't care, doesn't even think until she's passed the lifeguards and the outskirts of the shore have vanished from her peripheral vision, and all she can see is the sea.

Sayu doesn't really know what she expected, but it certainly wasn't this. The mud feels just like any seabed she's treaded on before, shot through with stones and cracked shells that bite into her soles and make her feet slip on long tendrils of seaweed. Waves gently encircle her ankles, already having spent their ferocity several meters ago, and she takes three long, decisive steps and lets herself fall forward.

Swimming is nothing like Sayu thought it would be—and well, she doesn't even get in deep enough to really swim, let alone do anything but quiver and shake until her teeth are rattling. Of course she knew that the water would be cold, but the sheer, brutal iciness of it takes her cruelly by surprise. It feels like a rabid animal is tearing at her entire body, raking thousands of claws down her arms and punching tiny needles into every inch of skin on her legs. She gasps when all the air is squeezed from her chest, and the North Sea chooses that exact moment to throw a handful of foam into her face, making her cough and splutter and squeeze her eyes shut.

For a few minutes she stays silent and still, makes herself go rigid and solid against the white-topped waves slamming into her, and forces breath after breath into her constricting lungs, until the cold is more like just a sheet of ice being wrapped around her body instead of knives slicing her open. The sea is tugging at Sayu's feet, as if it's puzzled about the intruder and can't quite decide whether to throw her out again just yet.

When she hits the deeper waters, it gets more and more difficult to avoid being dunked under by the push and pull of the tide, and Sayu makes a habit of closing her eyes every few seconds, allowing the sea to lift her off her feet with every wave. Salt has burned an aching path down her throat, and it's hard not to panic when everything happens all at once, just as it looked like from the shore. Water is mounting up in front of her, with an ominous precision that feels not unlike a threat, or a warning—but she knows that even if she did choose flight over fight, she'd never make it back to the beach before the wave catches up with her.

And so she tries to crouch down low when she sees the first white flakes of spume, the crest leaning down as if preparing to swallow her whole, and tries to somehow roll up with the deep, massive force of it, following the glittering arc of water and curving her body into it until it breaks, sweeping her off her feet in a chaotic roar of foam until she no longer knows which way is up.

It feels a bit like the water doesn't want her there, like it's doing everything in its power to push Sayu out—as if her presence is a challenge that the entire North Sea is rising to with an eager ferocity that should probably scare her but doesn't. The waters are unleashing all their untamed harshness, using the rising tide to push liquid ice into her ears, nose and mouth—and Sayu doesn't quite know when this derailed into a fight, but it did.

Whatever this means, but she doesn't want to back down. Digging her toes into the seabed, Sayu struggles to control her breathing, blinks water from her eyes, and grits her teeth so hard that they hurt. When the next wave is towering above her, she throws her body and mind into the deafening clamor of the surf rushing in, and plows through the solid mass of foam and water with her shoulder. She keeps her head held high, but refuses to close her eyes even as the salt water spraying into her face makes them sting and burn, something in her simply hating the thought of getting thrown back to the shore. She'll be damned if she loses this.

Later, Sayu has no idea how long it took, although it can't have been more than a few minutes—but at some point she slips, toes scrabbling for purchase on the slick, too-soft mud, and then the ground suddenly drops out from underneath her feet. It's not just out of reach, it's gone altogether when she kicks her legs wildly around and down—and for a moment she distinctly feels panic seep into her mind, like steel bands enclosing her chest, preparing to squeeze the air from her lungs and send her heart into a crazed sprint.

But then she notices something else, and it takes her breath away in an entirely different fashion. The sea isn't fighting her anymore, it has stopped throwing all of its vigor into pushing her out. Even the cold has grown more bearable, and the restless movement of the tide has gentled, the push and pull no longer tossing her around. Behind her, Sayu can still hear the sound of waves cresting and falling into seething foam, but around her the water is darker, deeper, a slate gray tinged with hues of blue and green that somehow make it look alive.

The waves are now cradling her rather than trying to break her in half, with a soothing gentleness so at odds with their earlier ferocity that it makes Sayu's eyes sting in the strangest way. It's not really a victory, but to her own surprise, she finds that she doesn't mind—it's more like the sea has deemed her worthy, has pulled her in, and is now never going to let her go.

Her breath is coming in short, sharp bursts from the effort of staying afloat with nothing but water to support her, but she risks a short glance back to the shore all the same. The sun has managed to break through the thick layer of clouds, glistening on bright waves and white sand, and, in the distance, long, swaying fields of marram grass. The muscles in her neck are burning with the exertion of holding her head above the water, and her legs are getting tired. But that doesn't stop a wild, joyous smile from slowly spreading across Sayu's face—a soul-deep, quivering excitement rattling through her muscles, as if the thrumming roar of the sea has settled into her very bones, pounding up into her skull with the quickening beat of her heart.

A week later, her parents finally get around to booking a tour across the tideland; and although she curses her own foolishness, Sayu chickens out, clutches tight and tighter at her ice cream cone and says she'd rather go to Bremen, the nearest large city, and take photos. Light decides to go with her, and it's not like she minds, exactly; she'd just rather go alone. They haven't been interacting much, with Sayu spending every minute of the high tide in the water, and Light making friends with pretty much the entire hotel in that way of his, practicing his German. But ever since the first morning of their vacation, something feels... off when they talk, even if it's just exchanging sleepy good-mornings in their bedroom.

Sayu can't quite put her finger on it, and she refuses to even consider that she's just jealous of her brother yet again without even knowing why, because really, she should be used to that by now—but even that thought is forgotten when they get off the train at Bremen's central station and mount the stairs up to the main hall.

Her first thought is that it's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen.

Light only barely avoids bumping into her from behind when she suddenly stops as if she's ran into a wall, but she doesn't even notice his shoulder brushing hers, or his startled exclamation. She tilts her head back and back until she can see the ceiling, and stares.

Sunlight is streaming in through high, arched windows, only broken by thin white mutins that form oddly fragile-looking patterns on the glass. Sayu has never been anywhere this bright—the entire hall is lined with white marble that reflects the light, charging the air with its luminance, until she feels like she's being doused in a glow so radiant that it takes her breath away. Graceful, carved strands of white stone cling to the walls, stretching to cup the gentle swell of the dome-like ceiling, severing into twines that encircle windows and run down walls like rivulets of water. Solid, bulky pillars support the white walls, strangely at odds with the thin, folded layers of marble just beneath the windowsills that somehow make Sayu think of a cake's icing. People are hurrying downstairs to the subway, studying the plans mounted on the far wall, and generally not seeming to even notice the architecture, this incredible work of art they're surrounded by; but it occurs to Sayu that she's probably making up for it.

She cannot even imagine what kind of craftsmanship it took to build this—to carve pristine curls of shimmering whiteness out of what must once have been a solid block of marble, to force coils into unbending stone. And maybe it's the sun that lathers everything in bright gold, but somehow the hall looks strangely... inviting to Sayu, not majestic or imposing like the old buildings at the outskirts of Bremen that she'd seen from the train. She'd shrunk back from those, almost feeling the weight of centuries, of council meetings and coronations and whatever history bearing down on the stones. But here, watching the dust dance in rays of sunlight, she simply imagines what this building must have looked like before, without plasma screens adorning the walls and small, brightly-colored shops squeezed into the corners.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Light says, and she can hear the smile in his voice—when Sayu reluctantly tears her gaze away from the dome above, she sees him stare at the far wall, eyes gleaming in a way that looks like he's just found something he has only seen in history books before. She hasn't even noticed the mosaic before—she's been too entranced by the architectural miracle that's unraveling around them, and looking at the blue, gold and silver-white patterns, she thinks it's kind of... plain, compared to the towering stone arcs reaching for the stucco-plastered ceiling.

Her hand starts digging through her purse almost on its own accord, and she pointedly concentrates on searching and finding the comfortingly cool shell of her digital camera. It makes her feel stupid, it really does; but Sayu can't help being almost angry with Light for distracting her from sunlight bouncing off of white marble.

"It was made in the 1920s," Light continues, his voice taking on a tone she knows and hates, but she tries not to listen, lifts her camera with numb fingers to point it at the nearest pillar, "by the cigarette factory that was the main employer here around then. It basically depicts city life around that time, along with the coats of arms of Bremen and also Hanover. Did you know that the animals on the left are called the Bremen Town Musicians?"

Not even the delicate white ornaments coming into focus on her camera's LCD screen can distract her from this, and Sayu almost but not quite gasps in surprise at the sudden, meaningless wave of something that is nothing short of anger rushing up into her head like fog obscuring her vision. This, just this is exactly why she'd rather have come here alone. Trust Light to find some sort of historical site he can spout off knowledge about even in a train station—ruining, just as she'd known he would, her own fascination, trivializing it into foolishness.

She lowers her hands and gives him a scowl so fierce that his eyes widen in surprise, and he opens his mouth as if to say something, but she doesn't give him the chance; just turns away, clutches the camera to her chest with white-knuckled fingers and swallows the hot knot of frustration that's forming in her throat.

Usually, Sayu is a professional at forgetting.

She's had her entire life to get used to it, after all; the daily little stings of a pride that should have wilted away into nothingness long ago, whenever her brother does or says something to remind her of the vast, insuperable chasm that yawns between them. By the end of the day, she's usually forgotten them, not because they aren't worth remembering, but simply because turning them over and over in her head wouldn't change anything. And really, she doesn't know why this particular occurrence makes her so angry that she refuses to talk to Light at all for the rest of the day aside from yes and no and noncommittal grunts.

She has no idea if it's something to be proud of, but she pointedly doesn't try to snap herself out of her brooding even when she feels her brother's confused gaze linger on her back, when he thinks she doesn't notice. Maybe it's the salty air that tastes like a challenge when she sucks it deep into her lungs, or the food, or even the relentless, volatile sea with its agitated, never-ending cycle of rushing in and rushing out—she doesn't quite know what it is, but something is making her brave.

"Are you okay?" Light asks when they're having dinner in their little hotel by the shore, and Sayu lowers her forkful of salad back to her plate with deliberate care. Their parents are talking avidly about their trip across the tideland, an excitement in their voices that Sayu hasn't heard in a long time; it takes her a few seconds to deduce it simply as the absence of stress.

She looks up and meets her brother's gaze, seeing nothing but sincerity there, maybe even concern; and while that could have appeased her, back home in Japan, here it only serves to aggravate her more, bringing back the memory of a humiliation that Light did not even notice enough to remember.

Light is looking at her strangely, but when it finally occurs to her that she's supposed to answer his question, he has already started talking again, an foreign, barely noticeable undercurrent of nervousness in his voice. "You've been weird since we went to Bremen," he explains hesitantly, as if he suddenly doesn't want to hear her answer anymore. "Did something upset you?"

The genuine trace of concern in his furrowed brow isn't enough, and although she has no idea what would be, Sayu can't help wondering if it would hurt this much if she actually knew. She can feel the familiar lump rise in her throat again, hot and thick, choking off her breaths and filling her nose with a tang of salt that has nothing to do with the sea, and for a single, terrifying second she thinks she's going to cry.

"I didn't want a history lesson," she says without preamble—too loudly, and her parents interrupt their conversation and stare at her in surprise, but she's already standing up, her fork clattering on the porcelain of her dish. "I just wanted to take a picture."

Light calls her name just when she's made it to the door, but she doesn't look back, just flees upstairs as fast as she can and only allows herself to stop running when the bedroom door has slammed shut behind her, the lock snapping into place with a satisfying click. Her hair has come loose from the from the updo she's coiled it into earlier that afternoon, vaguely remembering fragile layers of stone bending to curl around windowpanes. It's hanging into her face, and she watches the black strands swing back and forth with every ragged exhale of her breath, listens to the pounding of her heart and tries to think of nothing at all.

She snatches up the book on a whim, assuring herself with just a hint of bitterness that Light won't need it anymore since it's for beginners, wraps a blanket around her shoulders, and sits down close to the open window. The breeze plays with her loose hair when she turns the first page, sees the first words of this foreign language stare out at her as if in enticement, and tells herself firmly that she has imagined the note of apologetic confusion in her brother's voice.

German is an oddly solid language to learn, sturdy and strong and unbending even in the first few words she teaches herself out of Light's book. The lessons start out easy enough, with things like hello and good morning and my name is, but Sayu only knows a few letters of the phonetic alphabet, and so even the short words are enough to frustrate her.

Light has mentioned often enough, in that just slightly imperious, schoolmasterly tone that she loathes with all her heart, that German is a Germanic language, just like English; but no amount of English lessons could have prepared her for the challenge she's facing now. She'd roll her eyes at herself if she didn't find it so oddly fitting—that the language reminds her a bit of that first day at the sea, of the way the waves had pounded into her body, shoving at her shoulders and effortlessly pulling her feet out from underneath her as if to push her out. Later, she learns that what makes her think of relentless, wavy gallons of water trying their damnedest to erode away an equally stubborn shore is called final devoicing—the devoicing of consonants at the ends of words, twisting even gentle nasals into well-concealed weapons, visible only in flashes until the moment of attack.

She doesn't think that she'll ever get her head around it—true, she does recognize bits and pieces of the vocabulary from English, but there's no way of grasping the complicated, multi-layered grammar. She has no idea where to start trying to wrap her mouth around the foreign vowels, so much darker than the ones she knows from English, or the consonant clusters that make her wonder if there's any way to speak German without your tongue permanently glued to the roof of your mouth.

It seems impossible to learn, to even distinguish between simple words with all those obstruent sounds tucked neatly at the end as if to mock her efforts of recognizing them in the conversations she overhears in the hallways. The tone, somehow warbling everything together into a mass of pointed edges and sudden stops, reminds her of a rocky road that only the toughest travelers dare to walk on. Or a black, bared seabed, for that matter, lying cold and inhospitable even in the temperate glow of the European sun, with a fake, all-too innocent tranquility that makes it hard to look at for too long.

And just like on that first day in the water, Sayu has no idea when or how it happens—just that it does, although she doesn't get better at understanding why in all the world this strange language has three genders and too many cases to count. But one day she listens to the blond waiter talking to another guest, hands sweeping this way and that as if he's giving directions, and thinks, out of nowhere, that the edges of the words aren't all that pointed and rough as she'd thought they were. It's still just mostly indistinguishable lumps of consonants to her untrained ears, but suddenly she hears something else between the syllables, in the voiced glides of diphthongs and nasals.

There's a strange sense of tranquility in the plosive stops and voiceless fricatives, like landmarks in a vast expanse of space stretching out and out towards the horizon—something to hold on to rather than trip over, she realizes with no small amount of surprise. A beat is thrumming through even the shortest words, fitting neatly into the spaces between sounds that are over too quickly for a closer listen, something so steady and serene that it makes her breath catch in her throat, with a feeling like she's been caught in a fall by something gentle yet unyielding.

She really doesn't know what's with her and her strange fluctuating moods—but something about that makes Sayu pause and go back, retracing the thought to its origins. She spends hours on the beach even when the tide is out, lying on a towel in the sand, and lets the sun warm her back and dry her hair into salt-encrusted tangles. And she listens, with a careful attentiveness that she herself hadn't even thought she possessed, to the people around her chattering in German, to families talking and laughing together in blunt edges smoothing out into raised vowels. And although she still can't articulate more than a few words, she's gotten a pretty good grasp on the timbre and pitch of the German language, to the point that she can actually filter out the local accent from the rest.

It's like the people of Northern Germany have decided to blur the harshness and sandpaper off all the rough edges, shaping their language into something more fluent that reminds Sayu of a fast-paced mountain creek lapping playfully at her toes. And she knows, as surely as if she'd asked him outright, that Light will never hear that, no matter how many hours he spends memorizing irregular verbs and endless lists of oddly-gendered nouns, and somehow, that thought makes a strange shiver roll down her spine.

Compared to what Light has, this is nothing, and so it probably shouldn't matter so much—but even Sayu's slight feeling of foolishness isn't enough to stop the slow, profound wave of satisfaction from engulfing her, soothing the frayed edges of her pride. It isn't much, and it doesn't even count, not in that earth-shaking way that Light's pristine grades and perfect manners do, but it's hers and hers alone. The thought is as unfamiliar as it is heady, and it makes a knot unravel in her chest, a tightly-wound coil finally shaking off the rust and coming loose.

On the next day, she walks up to the blond waiter with her heart pounding wildly in her chest, in a way that has nothing to do with how blue his eyes are, but rather with how she can feel Light's gaze on her back, calculating and maybe a little bewildered. Reaching for the bread, she wishes the man a good morning, touches the back of her tongue against her palate in that strange, strange way and shapes her lips around the vowels as deliberately as she can. She does not falter even once, and when she forces her lazy tongue to run over the last consonant cluster like it's a rocky road, the waiter returns the greeting, handing her the bread with a nod and a smile.

Her hands are shaking just the slightest bit when she rejoins her family around the table, and she imagines she can feel her brother still looking at her although he's talking to Dad about their plans for the day. It's not a victory, not in the way she no longer wishes it was, and she wonders if the sense of pride swelling in her chest makes her cruel.

"Your pronunciation is getting better," Light says conversationally, as if he neither realizes nor cares about the impact his words are going to have, on a stormy afternoon when the tide is out and they're building a sand castle.

Sayu stops, just stops, and freezes as thoroughly as if her brother had slapped her, hands stilling in the damp moat she's been digging around the castle. All the blood in her body seems to rush to her face in a dizzying mix of mortification and dread, and for a second she wonders, wildly, if there's a chance in denying.

"I noticed that you took my book," he explains, misinterpreting her silence, and presses both of his hands to the castle wall, his fingers leaving imprints in the sand. "And I heard you practice in the shower. I think it's good that you're trying to learn a bit of the language while we're here."

Even if she knew what to say to that, Sayu wouldn't speak, a strange sense of shock wiping her mind clear of all thoughts until the stuttering throb of her heart is almost loud enough to drown out the sound of the wind. She doesn't care that technically, Light has just paid her a compliment—something good, something to smile at and tuck close to her pride for warmth, like a small sun. She just thinks that coming from him, the words mean even less than nothing.

Her brother doesn't notice her slipping expression, just smiles, flashes teeth as white as the marble hall at her, with the dunes in his back and the sun in his eyes. And she realizes with a sudden start that he isn't trying to mock her—that he never did, even though she can't help feeling like it sometimes, with an old, remembered guilt tying her stomach into knots. Because Light doesn't need to. He'll always be better than her, whether he shows it off or not, and so he doesn't even need to boast or brag, or try to make her feel like even her best efforts are nothing compared to his accomplishments.

It all rushes up into her throat, mingling there into something that's too big to swallow or spit out, and it's all she can do to bite down on the first sob that tries to wrench itself from her chest, and even through the mist of tears she can see the smile sliding off of Light's face, giving way to startled dismay. But she just stands up on shaking legs, stumbling momentarily so that her foot smashes into the sand castle, and doesn't even think before she turns around and runs.

With tears choking off her breath into short gasps and the wind whipping into her face, it doesn't strike Sayu as ironic that it's Light, of all people, who has managed to make her set foot on the tideland after weeks of trepidation. She just runs, her feet splashing water on her yellow dress whenever she steps into a puddle, and wishes, with a desperation that startles her, that the surf were closer, so that she could jump right into the deep, dark waters and be carried away.

She finally stops due to the stitch in her side, and presses a hand to her ribs, sucking in air in big sobbing gulps, and doesn't even take the time to wipe her face. The mud is cold under the bare soles of her feet, slick and eerily smooth, completely soaked through with slate gray water—but although she can feel it give just the slightest bit under her weight, it does not swallow her whole as she'd thought it would. She looks down, the blurred whiteness of her feet even visible through her tears, and when she wiggles her toes, the mud squishes between them, sliding wetly over her skin in nothing short of a caress.

It's quite possibly the most peculiar thing she's ever experienced. She knows it's technically impossible—Sayu can physically feel the tideland's weight stretching out underneath her, burdened with a history reaching back into the fathomless depths of time. It soothes her as much as it makes her dizzy, deepening the heaving of her chest into a slower pattern and eroding away the constriction in her throat. She breathes it all in as deeply as she can, the smell of salt, heavy in the air and thick on her tongue, sliding down her throat and filling her lungs, and she suddenly realizes that Light is standing behind her.

For what feels like minutes, neither of them says anything, the distant rushing of the sea the only sound filling the silence, until Light speaks.

"I... apologize?" he tries, the words coming out as more of a question than an offering of remorse, and she can all but feel his hand hovering uncertainly over her shoulder before he drops it back to his side, even his sigh sounding helpless. "I mean— I don't know what I did, but for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

All her life, Sayu had thought that it wouldn't matter to hear these words from him—mostly because you can't be sorry for what you don't understand, and she is convinced that Light would never, ever get what it feels like to be her even if he tried. But with an acuteness entirely out of her control, she abruptly remembers him sitting on the couch back home, trying to cram as much German into his head as possible, and the frown on his face, born from concentration and an underlying tension that she, in turn, does not understand either.

She wonders, suddenly, if that's what it's like to be Light—to see a challenge to his intellect everywhere he goes, in little opportunities to confirm himself that Sayu wouldn't even see, let alone accredit any meaning to. Surely Light knows that no one expects him to prove anything—there is nothing that needs proof, after all, because if they ever had any doubts about him being just about the most intelligent person in the world, they vanished into nothingness when he got into school. Their parents just shake their head in wonder at his grades, his friends, the almost frightening perfection in everything he does. Sayu herself would have flunked her algebra exam, if it hadn't been for Light patiently tutoring her for weeks. All their friends look up to Light, with an admiration that's only rarely tinged with jealousy.

Everyone sees it—how great her brother is, how everything he touches turns out the best way possible, and it'd be foolish to think that he doesn't see it himself. But right then and there, Sayu is struck by the thought that maybe, just maybe, there's a part of him that doesn't. Even though she'd rather bite off her own tongue than ask him about it, and thus has no idea if this assumption is true, it makes his apology matter enough to make her swallow the last remains of tightness in her throat. And that, along with the hesitant touch of his hand on hers, she understands.

Sayu turns around to clasp his fingers between hers, noticing for the first time in the three weeks they've been here that the sun has tanned their skin into the exact same shade of the lightest brown. The sunlight is hitting Light squarely in the face, making him squint against the brightness as he looks down at their hands in surprise, but Sayu is already tugging him around to face the shore, seeing how far she's come in her flight. The marram grass sways in the distance, and she knows that the tide is coming in, and thinks briefly how strange it is to see the brightness of the beach contrast with the tideland, a strip of white over black shot through with puddles reflecting the blue sky. She gives her brother a watery smile, and if he notices her shaky breathing or the wetness on her cheeks, he doesn't say.