Words on a yuri one-shot: "Nami no Ue no Tsuki"
"Nami no Ue no Tsuki" ("The Moon Above the Waves"), from Hikari no Umi by Kodama Yuki (ISBN: 9784091308405):
Hikari no Umi is a collection of stories centering around merfolk and their interactions with humans. "Nami no Ue no Tsuki" is about a woman, Saki, who has unrequited feelings for her friend Kyouko. As the story begins, Saki is going to visit Kyouko, whom she hasn't seen in two years. Saki and Kyouko were roommates during their student days, but Kyouko returned to her hometown after graduation to pursue a career as a teacher. The island Kyouko lives on is famous for the groups of young mermen and mermaids that gather there, and Kyouko takes Saki to see them. In this world, young merfolk are split into single-gender groups, and the one currently at Kyouko's island is all mermen. These mermen will soon be going off to warmer waters (their bodies can't take the cold once they've matured past a certain point) to mate with mermaids, but for now, they're practicing mating with each other. When Saki sees a certain pair of mermen kissing, she realizes that one of the mermen is like her--he's in love with the merman he's kissing.
Later, some of the people living on the island tell Saki more about the merfolk and how sometimes one or two of the group stay behind when the others all leave for the open sea. Since their bodies can't survive the winter in that climate, this amounts to suicide; some of them even bite the bullet and commit suicide outright. The men suggest that it's because some of the merfolk just don't fit in with the rest of their group, but Saki knows better--it's because some of them develop feelings for other members of their group that are more than just "practice" for interactions with the opposite gender.
In the course of the conversation, Saki receives some other unpleasant information: Kyouko is in a relationship with one of the village men, and it's serious. After this bombshell, we get a flashback to Saki and Kyouko's student days: Kyouko tells Saki that she's planning to return to her hometown, Saki asks her not to go and tells her she loves her, then passes it off as a joke. Back in the present, Saki reflects that she chose to be Kyouko's friend back then because she was afraid of losing her forever. As she's lying in a field, crying, she wonders if this is how a merman who's committing suicide feels: bathed in moonlight, surrounded by the pleasant sound of the night breeze moving through the grass... "I don't need to see the open sea. Goodbye. I'm dying."
As she's walking back to Kyouko's place, she discovers the merman from the other day, lying in the grass. His body is cold, and she frantically calls Kyouko for help from her cell phone. Internally, she reflects that what scared her was that he looked like Saki herself. Kyouko and her boyfriend come save the merman; Saki sits there watching. Though Saki knows that she should be concerned about the merman, it is the sight of Kyouko's boyfriend's strong arms that bring tears to her eyes. She can't seem to stop looking at them; her arms are nothing like his.
When the merman comes to, Saki offers to take him back to the water herself. When they get there, her suspicions about him are confirmed, and she comes up with an idea: she has him cut off her hair and attach it to his own. The merman he likes has a thing for females with long hair, so he poses as a mermaid to get his attention. When the other merman falls into his trap, the first merman tells him that he "died" and won't be returning to the group, but to think of any long-haired mermaids he meets as the first merman so that the two of them can have a lot of children "together." He bids him farewell, and swims away. Later, the first merman tells Saki that he's going to have to swim far away now that he can't stay with his group anymore because of the weird things he said. Still, it's better than being dead. He's become a stronger person.
Later, Saki kisses Kyouko, and realizes that she's become a stronger person too. She kisses her again, and then it cuts to a scene of Saki leaving the island, having apparently been able to move on from her feelings for Kyouko.
When I got the book, I was expecting the yuri one-shot to be about mermaids, so this was a bit of a disappointment in that respect. However, it was an interesting, touching story, and I liked that the author worked both yuri and BL into it.
The single-gender groups of adolescent merfolk are reminiscent of all-girl and all-boy schools, aren't they? This makes the suicides--and the one merman's choice of self-exile over suicide--even more significant. The merfolk culture tolerates homosexuality in adolescents, but once merfolk reach a certain age, they are expected to mate and produce offspring; if they don't they have no place in the social group, and are dead to it either literally or figuratively.
We only get a brief glimpse of one generation of mermen in one location, but they seem to be a metaphor for Saki's own environment and situation. Both Saki and the one merman move on, but to what? We are told that Saki is in love with Kyouko, but not whether she likes women in general, or what becomes of her afterwards. I suppose that isn't the point. The merman triumphs by living where others have died; that victory surely represents something, as does Saki's personal growth. It's not a traditional happy ending, but it is a happy ending of sorts.
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mizuno_youko) wrote,
