Carrying shopping bags full of clothes, the three of them exited the shop onto the sidewalk. Verónica kept her tablet in the bag she held to be able to hold onto Manami’s wheelchair.
“Okay, then,” Manami said, her wheelchair pushed by Yoichi. “What’s the place you wanna check?”
“An aquarium on a rooftop,” he answered.
Verónica took her tablet out to show her the place on the Map app, but Manami spoke before she unlocked it.
“Ah, of course. It’s quite neat.”
“You’ve been there before?” Verónica asked.
“Yeah. A guy invited me during high school. Turns out it was a popular spot for dates. I didn’t know until my friends teased me about it. To be honest, I was too absorbed in the fish and stuff and kinda forgot about the guy. Anyway. I haven’t been there since. Didn’t make sense to go again unless it’s with someone who hasn’t seen it, so this is the perfect chance. On we go!”
Verónica and Yoichi stared at her as she raised her arm to point ahead.
“That’s the signal for you to push me forward,” she said.
“Oh, right.”
Once again, they navigated the sea of people under Manami’s command and eventually reached the mall beneath the aquarium.
Despite the stairs being a safer option for Verónica and Yoichi, they couldn’t push Manami’s wheelchair upstairs. They had no choice but to take the elevator.
“Push the button,” Manami said.
Verónica was closest to it, so she pressed it. It lit up and a bell quietly chimed.
She observed the car slowly lower down the glass tube until it reached their floor. The glass doors slid sideways, allowing the two people inside to step out.
Yoichi pushed Manami into it, bringing Verónica along since she held onto her wheelchair.
“Push the button for the top floor,” Manami requested once inside.
The cramped space didn’t allow them to maneuver around, while Verónica simply let go of the wheelchair and swapped the shopping bag she held from one hand to another. She pressed the button at the top of the panel.
After a strange pause, the doors slid to close. Out of nowhere, her knees bent. Her whole body felt heavier, especially her stomach. That stopped to matter as they elevated from the floor.
The dread of falling matched the distance from the ground. She felt the need to hold onto something even though she already did, but no handlebars were around. She could only tighten the grip on the wheelchair’s metal.
Then, her brain processed the scenery in front: three floors of a crowded mall with stalls and shops everywhere in sight.
She realized every person was there for a reason, whether to buy something they needed, look around, or spend time with people. They all came in diverse moods from different places with distinct goals. She couldn’t guess anyone’s intentions, not even judge them.
“Next time, step into the elevator backward,” Manami said.
She could only see a column with two thick cables through the glass.
A strange pressure emerged in Verónica’s chest and traveled up her throat. She could only suppress it by tightening her throat, making a weird growl come out of her mouth.
Manami and Yoichi looked at her with weak smiles. They then chuckled.
She had felt something similar at times while watching Yoichi’s stream or talking with Dr. Herrera, but never to the point of causing a sound.
Suddenly, black walls surrounded the elevator, yet the tubular ceiling lamp kept the interior lit. Mere seconds later, the white light tinted blue as the wall in front of the elevator opened up again.
Four people stood on the other side of the glass doors. They moved aside as soon as the doors opened to let Verónica, Manami, and Yoichi get out.
They entered a dark, wide room contoured by wooden ramps and wave patterns on the walls. People lined up in front of machines on each side.
“It’ll be faster to pay with a phone,” Manami said.
Yoichi grabbed his phone from his pocket. “I’ll do it.”
“Sure. I’ll send you my part later.”
They stepped through a frame, where a man stood.
“Welcome,” he smiled. “Do you have tickets or will you pay with a phone?”
Yoichi answered, “Phone.”
“Please hover it above the sensor over here.”
He did so and the light turned green along with a beep.
“Enjoy your stay. Don’t forget to take a look at the gift shop.”
“Thanks,” Yoichi replied.
He pocketed his phone once more, so he could push Manami’s wheelchair again.
More and more sunlight illuminated the corridor. A cardboard sign with the aquarium’s name and logo stood on the floor just before the room opened up. A few food stalls served customers to the right, while a courtyard awaited to the left.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
Yoichi guided Manami’s wheelchair to the left.
“Smash the brakes,” she ordered. “Let’s go see the small fish first and save this area for last.”
“Okay. Where’s that?”
She pointed with her thumb. “Keep going straight past the stalls.”
He turned the wheelchair and headed in that direction. Verónica made sure to hold tightly as they passed between countless people.
After going through a resting area filled with advertising posters, they entered another dark room lit with dim blue light. The group in front of them walked away and revealed what they observed: a crab as big as Verónica’s head stood behind the glass.
“What’s small about that?!” Yoichi exclaimed.
Manami laughed. “Right? It could chop our heads off with its claws.”
“It has the strength to do that?” Verónica doubted.
Manami hummed. “Probably not. Doesn’t the info board say?”
“Why would it state a fact like that?” Yoichi questioned. “We shouldn’t talk about those things around this many children.”
Manami booed in disappointment.
They headed to the next display: tiny shrimps.
“That’s more like it,” Yoichi smiled. “Aren’t they cute?”
Manami slightly leaned forward and inspected them in silence.
“I bet I could eat two in one bite. Whatcha say, Verónica?”
She thought for a moment. “Depends if they are cooked.”
Yoichi sighed. “She was joking.” He looked at Manami. “It was a joke, right?”
She snickered.
“It’s going to be like that, huh?”
They went to the next display, and the next, and the next.
They saw minuscule fishes and creatures swimming around, like seahorses, or hiding beneath pebbles, like eels. More common, medium-sized animals moved behind separate displays, like lobsters and catfish, but they were overshadowed by funny-looking species with huge foreheads or human-like lips.
Most creatures had colorful bodies, swam in strange ways, or had unique characteristics like thorns all around them. Some seahorses were so dark and long they looked like they had been taken out of a grimdark fantasy.
The creepiness rose with the huge octopus inside the tubular water tank, yet their fascination overpowered any other feeling. Its tentacles remained still and its face was nowhere to be seen. Verónica knew they were eerily smart, and the information board outside the tube reassured her. She couldn’t help but feel bad for it for being caged.
They then entered a tunnel, where a void of blue jellyfish washed all the sourness away. Their silky, round bodies pulsated to thrust themselves behind the glass ceiling, causing their short, thin tentacles to undulate. It didn’t seem like there was water at all.
Unexpectedly, the room on the other side of the tunnel was even more captivating.
Hundreds of smaller, purple jellyfish swam behind the curved glass wall. They illuminated the room like a sea of stars illuminated the night sky.
Verónica followed one of them with her eyes. It didn’t do anything special, it merely kept swimming around the other jellyfish. At some point, she didn’t even know if she was looking at the same one.
They eventually got back to where they started and headed to the courtyard enclosures. Turtles received them, slowly walking or swimming in a small pond, or doing nothing.
The otters in the following enclosure did similar things but faster. A few of them were even washing themselves in the deeper pool. They acted like dogs but with arms and hands.
On the other hand, the penguins did nothing in their cramped habitat. They stood beside one another under a rock ceiling for five minutes straight.
Verónica turned around to walk alongside Manami and Yoichi, when a pelican floated on the narrow, glass water bridge above them.
“Whoa, that’s a big bird,” said Yoichi.
Manami replied, “And you haven’t even seen the chunky sea lions. They’re just ahead.”
They kept going forward until reaching a huge glass water tank. Verónica had to look up to see the water line, and the walls extended beyond that.
A splash made her look ahead. A sea lion filled her vision for the first time as it swam underwater. Just as Manami said, it was big, yet the round, black eyes and glistening skin took any sense of danger away.
Two more promptly joined it.
“Aren’t they cuties?” Manami smiled. She raised her hand to wave at them. “I wonder if they are the same from—”
The three sea lions suddenly dove to the bottom of the tank in unison just to shoot back up into the air. They hovered for what felt like a minute before turning around to dive back in, summoning a huge wave. It crashed against the glass wall and spilled over the lip of it when someone snatched Verónica away by her arm.
It was a man, wearing the same colors as the aquarium’s brand. He bumped into her from the front and kept pushing her back.
“I don’t know why I can’t—”
Her mutated disease kept pulling him until she slipped and fell backward. Her back hurt, but she closed her eyes and braced herself for the impact from above.
No sound reached her ears for seconds. Then, she opened her eyes when she heard the man’s voice. However, the subtitles were gone, and so were the translating glasses.
The man looked frantically in every direction and tried to move away. She understood none of his shouting, yet she could see he was desperate.
She opened her mouth to speak in English and tell him it was her fault, when he suddenly stood up.
Yoichi appeared behind him. He exchanged words in Japanese with the man and then looked at her. She understood he asked her if she was fine but didn’t know how to answer.
He looked down to her left. She did the same and saw the frame of her glasses snapped in half on the ground. Not far from them, her shopping bag lay on the floor. The clothes remained inside of it, but her tablet hadn’t.
She crawled on the wet ground to grab it. Water dripped from its case. Hopefully, that protected the inside. She couldn’t afford to lose it.
“Are you okay?” Yoichi asked in English.
He held the bag and the broken glasses, which he gave to Manami when she arrived in her wheelchair. She seemed unscathed.
Verónica inspected herself and focused on what she felt, especially her ribs. Aside from the mild pain and moisture in her back, there was nothing else that caused her worry. She nodded at Yoichi.
He offered her his hand. She grabbed it and he pulled her to help her stand up.
A woman arrived and, along with words Verónica didn’t understand, offered her a towel. She dried what she could of herself before Manami approached to help her. Once done, she wrapped the towel around her.
The man who pulled Verónica away talked to Manami and Yoichi. He pointed at a sign hanging on one of the water tank columns. It displayed a waving hand behind a prohibition mark and Japanese text below. Manami bowed her head several times and apologized.
However, Verónica couldn’t focus on anything other than the blood dripping down the man’s palm. Although it wasn’t much, she only had the towel to help him. The thought had barely crossed her mind when the woman returned with a small first-aid kit.
A crowd surrounded them, yet they gave them enough space. They were probably scared that something might happen to them, too.
“We’ll go to the infirmary,” Manami told Verónica in Spanish.
They headed back to where they came from.
None of that would’ve happened had Verónica been more cautious.