Penned Sea Hearts

It had been two days, and Ramos still hadn’t admitted to being wrong. And not only that, but he was also being super curt with Kai, almost cold shoulder variety.

But that was all right. Because Kai had a plan. And it was very simple—he’d just let the locals read the first chapter of Rami’s book, gather all the positive feedback, and then show Ramos that clearly, it didn’t matter what some publisher somewhere thought, he was talented. And the people liked what he had to say through his writing.

The only issue was that for some still baffling reason, most of the locals didn’t seem to like Ramos. But Kai had a plan to deal with that, also. He would just say that his nonexistent friend from the capital needs feedback and that they had written it. Kai had originally wanted to pretend he was the author, but then people would probably not give him honest criticism. Everyone loved him. And also this was not his genre at all, and he didn’t want people to think he was actually thinking of writing literary fiction.

And so now that he’d had breakfast, with all of this decided, with the manuscript in one hand and a notebook and his favorite pen in the other, he was swimming over to Ara the blacksmith, Rami’s only friend.

At least Kai assumed they were friends? She had called herself that, but Ramos had been pretty vague about it. Then again, the guy was a little emotionally slow, so Kai was more likely to trust Ara on this. Besides, a reality where Rami had no one in the whole world was too awful to consider.

Arriving at the colorful smithy, he knocked on the door, only for muffled laughter to come from behind it.

“It’s open. This is a shop, you know? You can just barge in.”

Kai rolled his eyes, smirking a bit. Right. That made sense. He’d forgotten it was business hours.

Opening the door, he stuck his head in, finding Ara at her closed forge, fiddling with something on it, wearing protective goggles and gloves. Kai had absolutely no idea how these things worked.

“Oh, Kai! Hi!” she said cheerfully, as usual, waving him in with a big smile. “What brings you here?”

“A quest!” Kai announced, swimming in and closing the door behind him. Then he raised the manuscript to show to Ara. “I have here Rami’s book.”

Ara immediately stops whatever she’s doing, her ear flippers spreading in shock as she stares at the stack of paper. “It is?” She rushes over, bubbles flying as she does, reaching for it, only to stop at the last second. “Wait.” She pulls the metal goggles up onto her forehead, frowning at Kai. “Why do you have this? Rami never even let me see his book before.”

Kai cleared his throat. “Well, the thing about that is….” He sighed. “He threw it out. I got it out of the garbage. And now I’m taking custody until he figures out how precious this manuscript is.”

Ara stared at him in shock for a moment, blinking, before raising her eyebrows, looking horrified. “He…threw it out? But he’s so proud of it.”

“Is he?” Kai nodded, pleased to hear that. Rami hadn’t seemed like he was proud at all, but Kai had had his doubts about that. If he hadn’t been proud, surely he wouldn’t be taking being rejected by publishers so hard. Rami didn’t strike Kai as doing this for money in the slightest.

“Yeah,” Ara said, nodding as she stared at the manuscript sadly. “That’s awful. Why would he do that? Did something happen?” She tilted her head then, now frowning, pointing at Kai. “Is that a thing writers do?”

Kai snorted, shrugging. He sure had wanted to throw some of his drafts in the garbage before, but not like this. He’d kept even his most hated work, deciding that he could either fix it later or read it later to feel better about not writing like that anymore.

“If they do, they really shouldn’t. We’re all entitled to a creative crisis, though, right?” He took a sweeping glance at the blacksmith shop, his eyes lingering on the various metal cups, hangers, even some jewelry. Ara was clearly good at her job, but moreover, Kai didn’t doubt that she was an artist too in her own way. He was getting the sense that she really liked her job.

“Tell me about it,” Ara said, chuckling, though her smile didn’t reach her eyes, worry still in them. “I smelted my fair share of things I got angry at for not looking the way I wanted them to.” She shook her head. “But I can’t imagine what would make Rami throw his book out.”

“I think he’s discouraged by a lack of positive feedback,” Kai said, waving the manuscript around. “So, I thought, why not get him some? You got time to read a chapter, and then tell me what you think about it?”

Ara immediately nodded, but then she hesitated, grimacing at the stack of papers. “Does Rami want that? I don’t want to do something he’ll get upset over.”

“Of course he doesn’t know.” Kai sighed, putting the manuscript under his arm. “He’d never agree to this. But I think he needs a little push, you know? And I think showing him he writes good will help him. He gets so down on himself.”

Ara’s eyes turn sad at that. “Yeah, he does sometimes. I wish he came by more often. I’m always ready to give him a pep talk, but I think he’s too proud for it.”

Kai resist telling her that Ramos might not even know his presence would be welcome here, given how he’d been talking about her. But he certainly didn’t want to bum Ara even more. “Right, and you can do that by telling him his book is good.”

Ara smiled, nodding. “Okay. I guess there’s no harm in it, though I still don’t like that he doesn’t know I’ll be reading it. It feels…invasive.”

Kai agreed with her on some level, but he was still sure he was in the right. He didn’t like going behind Rami’s back like this, but this was important and needed to be done. “Well, he’s been sending it off to publishers. Clearly, he’s ready to share it with the world. They’re just not taking it because they’re stupid.”

Ara beamed at him, her eyes aglow with amusement and delight as she clapped her hands together. “Wow, you really like Rami, huh?”

Kai rolled his eyes. “Everyone with half a brain would like Rami. Now,” he hands her the manuscript, “here you go. Take your time.”

Only then did Kai realize that Ara was at work right now, likely having been actively working on something before he’d barged in, but she took the manuscript without question, swimming over to her desk to sit down.

Kai joined her, not sure what else to do with himself for the moment it would take Ara to read the chapter, and so he busies himself with writing down some of his own thoughts about the chapter in his notebook. He really wanted to read the whole book before doing this properly, but he would wait for Rami’s approval with that. Reading one chapter was one thing, but this felt like too much.

He was about finishing his first impressions when Ara put the manuscript on the table, humming. Kai frowned at her, not seeing much delight on her face. That was…not how he had thought this would go.

“Didn’t like it?”

Ara stared at him for a moment, wide-eyed, as if shocked by him saying that. “Oh? No, I did, I did. It’s just….” She grimaced. “Well, a lot of stuff about the main character sounds kind of familiar?”

Kai raised an intrigued eyebrow at her. “Familiar how?”

Ara shrugged. “Well, he’s a lonely guy who swims away from home to prove to his family that doesn’t believe in him that he can achieve his dreams. Sounds like someone I know.”

Kai pauses, his eyes widening as he stares at the manuscript in front of him. Oh, he was so stupid. He wanted to smack himself on the forehead. How had he missed that?

“You’re right.” He paused, not sure what to say. “Huh. Now I really hope Rami doesn’t get mad at me for sharing it.”

“You don’t have to, you know,” Ara pointed out, but Kai wouldn’t even consider this an option.

“No, I do. He needs to see he’s plenty talented. Speaking of,” he said, pushing his notebook to her, turning it to a fresh page, putting his pen over it. “Got something nice to tell him?”

Ara smiled. “Of course.” She picked up the pen, humming a bit before starting to write, quickly covering a full page before handing it back to him. “Think that’s good enough?”

Kai quickly read Ara’s feedback, smiling at all the nice things she was saying about the main character. Very subtle, though he agreed with her. The first chapter did a good job of introducing the main character, Anri, and what Kai assumed was to be the main conflict—Anri’s struggle to become a full-time painter.

Though now that Ara had pointed out the similarities to Ramos, Kai was less ecstatic about reading the rest of this book. He had no idea how much overlap there was between Rami’s character and Ramos himself, but it still felt somewhat like he was intruding on something too personal.

“Yeah, that’s great. Thanks.” He chewed on his lip a bit, sighing before deciding he had to ask. “That thing you said about Rami’s character leaving his home to prove his parents wrong….” He sighed again. “Is that true for Rami, too?”

Ara grimaced, nodding after a moment, her face growing even gloomier. “He hasn’t really told me much about his life before he moved here, but I’ve picked up on a few things I’m pretty sure of. And that’s one.”

She folded her hands in front of her on the table, her gaze glazing over, staring at the table, but clearly being somewhere completely different mentally. “I once found him drunk on the roof of his apartment building when I came to visit him one night.”

Kai stared at her, not sure what to say to that. He couldn’t imagine the prim and proper Rami drunk. At all. Though if it were the happy sort of drunk, he’d love to see Ramos stumble over his words and relax for once in his life.

“Well, he wasn’t really coherent that night, but he did complain about his parents to me. Told me he would ‘show them’, mumbling something about his writing.” Ara shrugged. “You put two and two together.”

Kai nodded, frowning in thought. If this was true, then he wasn’t surprised that Rami was reacting so badly to being rejected by publishers. Maybe to him, getting published could even mean going back home?

Kai felt his heart give a sad twinge at that, and he almost had to scoff. As if he had any right to feel sad about Ramos moving away—they were barely friends. Not to mention that Kai wasn’t even from here, and as long as he found out where Ramos would move to, he could come visit him at any point, anyway.

“I’m glad you hit it off with him, I really am,” said Ara, smiling sadly. “He could use more friends. Or a boyfriend, I guess.” He blinked, staring at her, his face growing warm as she sniggered.

“Hey, now, is that what the local rumors are?” he joked, still blushing. He hadn’t really dared think about this stuff. It was too much to think about, not just because he had no idea what Rami’s take on it was, but also just logistically with Kai living in the capital.

“Actually….” Ara snorted, making Kai shake his head.

“I don’t wanna know,” he said before she could actually say something specific, chuckling as he grabbed his things and the manuscript. He had a lot of people to ambush with his request still. “Thanks again for the help. Rami will love reading this, I’m sure.”

Ara nodded, smiling, the sadness that had been in her eyes this whole time disappearing a bit. “’Course. Glad I could help. Do lemme know what he says, huh?”

“Definitely,” Kai promised, waving goodbye to her and swimming toward the center of the town, looking at all the people swimming around, going about their business, trying to identify the ones who weren’t too busy to read for a few minutes.

And once he found a target, he started swimming toward them, determined.

He had a lot of work to do.