Chapter 5 #2
Ben closed the door behind us, then moved ahead toward the entrance without comment.
When he opened the front doors, he stepped inside only long enough to confirm something I couldn’t see before continuing deeper into the house on his own path, leaving Tobias and me alone in the entry hall as though that were the natural arrangement.
The inside of the home was like something out of a fantasy.
Glass walls stretched high, framing the ocean rather than hiding it, and the sound of the waves still carried faintly through the structure as though the building itself had learned to breathe with the tide. I actually pinched the inside of my arm just to be sure I wasn’t dreaming.
And that was before I even noticed the first aquarium.
It stood along the far wall of the entry space, a column of moving color and light, taller than I was, filled with branching coral that glowed faintly under carefully balanced lighting, while a pair of gorgeous reef fish moved through the structure like flickers of stained glass.
“Mandarinfish,” I whispered, stepping closer without thinking.
“This tank is relatively modest,” Tobias said, his voice drifting in the background as I pressed my hand lightly against the glass—not touching it, just hovering there—watching the way the current moved through the coral like breath through lungs.
“But I thought these two were well-deserving to be the first that someone coming in will see.”
“They’re beautiful,” I murmured, my eye catching on another tank across the room. I turned to look at it, then noticed another beyond that one. And another beyond it.
They weren’t arranged like displays.
They were integrated into the house itself, set into walls, dividing spaces, framing hallways so that moving through the home meant moving through water as often as through air.
A narrow tank stretched along the corridor leading toward what looked like the main living area, its long ribbon of seagrass shifting gently beneath a soft current while a pipefish threaded itself between the stems with patient precision.
Another tank stood recessed into a wall near what must have been a sitting room, this one colder in tone, its rockwork darker and heavier, holding species I recognized as temperate rather than tropical.
“You keep multiple temperature systems running simultaneously,” I said, already walking toward it before I realized I’d moved.
“Yes.”
“How are you managing the load balancing between them?” I asked, crouching slightly to watch a small wrasse slip between stones.
“Distributed support infrastructure,” he answered. “You’ll see it shortly.”
I nodded, feeling almost in a state of shock, then straightened again, turning slowly as I noticed another tank partially visible through the doorway of what had to be a bedroom.
“You have aquariums in your bedrooms, too?”
“Only some of them, but they’re much smaller than the ones in my dedicated wing.”
We moved deeper into the house together, passing through rooms that revealed tank after tank, each one different in scale and ecosystem and intent, some decorative, others clearly functional quarantine or observation environments disguised so seamlessly within the architecture that I almost missed what they were at first glance.
And then he stopped at a wide door.
And when he opened it, the breath rushed out of me all at once.
“This,” Tobias said, stepping aside to allow me through first, “is the primary collection.”
“God…”
Glass walls rose around me in quiet arcs of water, tanks layered into the structure from floor to ceiling, their combined glow turning the entire corridor into something closer to an underwater passage than part of a house.
Currents shifted in overlapping rhythms, pumps whispering softly somewhere beyond the walls while schools of fish moved through volumes of water large enough that my brain struggled to scale them properly.
“You built all of this?” I asked breathily, my voice barely louder than the filtration hum around us.
“Not personally, but I worked closely with those who did,” he stated, following behind me as I walked further in.
“How many liters is it?”
“Approximately twenty thousand,” he answered calmly, a stark contrast to what I was feeling.
Twenty thousand.
Inside a house.
My hand lifted again without thinking, hovering near the glass of the nearest tank as a ray passed overhead, its movement silent and effortless like a bird coasting on a gust of wind.
I turned toward him, still trying to process what I was seeing.
And somewhere, deep under the awe, under the fascination, under the part of me already mapping filtration lines and species compatibility and maintenance schedules.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
His pupils expanded as we stood there, surrounded by his personal ocean.
“Yes?” he questioned, watching my facial expressions intently.
“Yes,” I repeated, my heart thumping against my chest in an effort to escape my body and sink into the water where it had always belonged. “I’ll do it.”