“So, the Sea World scheme was sort of a flop,” Kyungsoo said as he carried the tote bag full of costumes. Behind him, Yixing carried the wooden boards and tool box that Kyungsoo had asked him to bring along. Mei and Jinyu trailed behind the two boys, dressed in thin shirts and shorts to off-set the heat of the sun.

“Now there’s an understatement,” Yixing said, scoffing. Kyungsoo ignored his sarcasm and continued.

“But I figured out why!” Kyungsoo said.

“Oh, did you?” Yixing said. “So which one was it? The fake fire panic or the fact that the police showed up at our doorstep?”

“It was because we decided to do it at your place!” Kyungsoo answered. “Private property! It was a disaster as soon as we planned it! But the new business I have in mind will be better off because this time we’ll set it up in a little booth right here at the beach! And Jinyu can help us again!”

Yixing widened his eyes. “Because the last Jinyu-exploitation-plan worked out so well, right?” he asked. “What are you planning this time?”

“Stop here,” Kyungsoo said, putting a hand up to halt their march. He looked out toward the crowd of people enjoying the sunny day out on the sand. Jinyu looked at the ocean and smile at the way the water sparkled with the sunlight. Days like these were perfects for recreational swimming under the sea. There was a slight ache in her heart; a part of her wanted to jump back into the ocean and be a mermaid again, strong and free, but she knew she could never be so again if she failed her mission.

“It’s perfect!” Kyungsoo said, dropping the tote bag of costumes on the bit of sidewalk near other street vendors. “Yixing! Set up the booth, I’ll give you a hand.”

Yixing and Kyungsoo got to work setting up a small booth with a window for a person to look out of. When it was finished, Mei brought the small stool that she’d been instructed to carry. Kyungsoo took it and set it down behind the window part of the booth. Then, he proudly rolled out the sign he’d made the day before:

“Psychic Readings?” Yixing asked, reading the sign aloud. “Jinyu’s not even psychic.” He then turned to Jinyu with a curious expression, as though to make sure she really wasn’t psychic or keeping any other psychic sorts of secrets. Jinyu shrugged in reply.

“No, but,” Kyungsoo said, fishing a long yellow Chinese robe and a rainbow head-wrap from the tote bag. “With her ability to communicate with people through touch, it’d be really easy to trick people into thinking that she is.”

Kyungsoo handed the over-sized silk robe to Jinyu and asked her to put it on. Jinyu slipped her arms through the flowy sleeves and pulled it over her beach clothing. It was light and cool on her skin. There were green parrots embroidered around the hemming of the robe and the sleeves. After sitting her down on the stool and tying the head-wrap on her, Kyungsoo began to explain his plan to her.

“This I can’t wait to see,” Yixing said to Mei with an amused smirk. Kyungsoo’s plans for making money rarely ever turned up any real profit, or at least not in the most desirable of ways. But the thought of Jinyu posing as a psychic was rather funny to him. It’d been a month since the Sea World incident, and he didn’t think Kyungsoo was ever going to try anything again after that failure.

Kyungsoo explained to Jinyu what he wanted her to do:

“When the customers come up to you and they want a reading,” he said, looking her in the eye. “I’m going to ask questions about what they want to know, first of all. And then just answer their questions in any way you want, but grab onto their wrists so they hear it in their heads, okay? And then we’ll just tell them that the voice they hear is their spirit talking back to them or their dead loved ones or whatever. Got it?”

Jinyu nodded. “Yes,” she said. Mei and Yixing snickered on the side at Kyungsoo’s seriousness.

“And make it crazy!” Kyungsoo said, grabbing the sign with the prices on it. “Not like Whoopi Goldberg, Ghost sort of crazy but… act psychic. ‘Nawm sayin’?”

“Uh, yes?” Jinyu answered, although she didn’t know exactly what he meant by “acting psychic.”

Kyungsoo put the board with the prices against the outer part of the booth. Then, they waited patiently while Kyungsoo solicited customers by calling their attention. Yixing and Mei stood to the side with their arms crossed, both wondering just how much of a success Kyungsoo’s fake psychic business would be. Just when it seemed that no one was interested, a white-haired old woman approached the board, reading the prices through squinted eyes.

“Psychic… readings?” she asked herself aloud. Kyungsoo approached her and gently laid a hand on her should.

“Halmoni,” he said with a low bow. “Is there something we could help you with?”

“Oh, I’m just reading the prices here,” she said sweetly. “What kinds of readings do you do?”

“Oh no, not me,” Kyungsoo said, and then swept his arm out to gesture to Jinyu. “But the Venerable Madame Jin is very insightful. She can tell you anything! The past, present, your future – ”

“Do you think,” the old woman asked, appearing to be choking back some tears. “She could talk to my dear departed husband for me?”

Kyungsoo widened his smile, knowing that he just had his first customer. “Of course, ma’am,” he said. “And for you, I’ll offer a discounted price! Senior citizens get discounts on Thursdays!”

The old woman sighed happily as Kyungsoo led her over to the booth and offered her a stool to sit on. Jinyu smiled nervously at the old woman before Kyungsoo snapped his fingers at her, and she reverberated back to trying to be “mysterious”. Kyungsoo leaned against the side of the booth.

“I’m afraid the Venerable Madame Jin is a mute, Halmoni,” Kyungsoo said, and Yixing snorted behind the booth at how seriously he was taking this.

“So I’ll be acting as her communicator. Now, tell me, what was your husband’s name?”

The woman’s face drooped sadly. Jinyu’s heart ached seeing her. “His name was Tae Won,” she whispered, trying not to burst out into tears. “We were childhood friends, you know? He was four years older than I was and we were neighbors. He used to be such a bully to me, always promising to buy me things like candy or ice cream from the ice cream store, and then he’d refuse to do it later. I didn’t realize I was in love with him until I was a young woman and he was working abroad by then. But he came back, and our feelings hadn’t changed. We married a year after he came home.”

“That’s a beautiful love story,” Kyungsoo commented. “How did he die? And when?”

“Oh, I don’t know for sure,” she said, wiping her eyes. “He was working one day when he fell off the scaffold and hit his head. He seemed fine after that. But the next morning, he never woke up from his sleep. This was some ten years ago. And as for me, I would give anything, anything, just to hear his voice one more time.”

“How tragic,” Kyungsoo said, reaching out and taking the woman’s hand. “And your name, Halmoni?”

“Oh dear me, I should have mentioned that first!” she said through her tears. “My name is Kim Bo Hee.” 

“Miss Bo Hee,” Kyungsoo said with his most charming smile. By now, a small crowd of people had gathered around the booth. Seeing the crying woman, they wanted to know what all the commotion was about. “What would you like to ask Madame Jin?”

Miss Bo Hee looked Jinyu directly in the eyes and Jinyu waited patiently for her. Jinyu could see how much love the woman had for her departed husband in her eyes, and it pained her that she could only pretend to comfort her. Taking Kyungsoo’s direction, Jinyu slowly reached out to her. The old woman held Jinyu around the wrists so tight that her skin turned pale.

Kyungsoo widened his eyes at Jinyu, urging her to say or do something. Bo Hee, shaking and hopeful, tearing dripping from her chin, stared into Jinyu’s eyes: “Tae Won?” she whispered Jinyu gulped and began to transfer her voice through the woman’s touch. Unsure of what to do, she uttered a single name:

Bo Hee?

In the very next second, the woman had jumped up, wailing and laughing at the same time, caught in tearful hysterics. She launched herself at Jinyu, throwing her arms around the girl and locking her into a bear hug. The booth tilted backwards with the woman’s weight and Jinyu instantly was buried in the woman’s arms, struggling to breathe and not knowing what in the world was going on.

“OH, TAE WON, IT REALLY IS YOU!” Suddenly, the woman pressed her face to Jinyu’s and captured the girl’s lips in a kiss. Kyungsoo’s jaw dropped and his eyes widened at the horrific sight of an old woman kissing a younger girl on the lips. The crowd gasped as well. Yixing was equally stunned if not more so.

Jinyu’s eyes grew twice their size. She hadn’t imagined her first kiss would be from a wrinkly old woman. Bo Hee’s tears ended up on her face as well, and tasted like the oil from the spill. But after a full four or five seconds, the woman let go of her and sat herself down again, still hyperventilating; Kyungsoo wondered if the labored breath was because of her excitement or from the lip-lock. Jinyu sat stunned in her seat. Kyungsoo turned to her, mouthing the words you ok? to her. She only nodded in astonishment.

Suddenly, the woman took out her purse and wallet and began piling large bills onto the counter.

“I am just so satisfied by this experience!” she said desperately. “Never did I think I’d ever hear my husband say my name again! And then… I just held her hands and I heard it! Thank you, my dear! You’ve made an old woman very happy! Oh dear, look at me, I’m a blubbering me. Oh, please! Take the money! You deserve it! I can’t thank you enough. Madame Jin, you are a legend, my dear!”

With the contents of her wallet entirely spilled onto the wooden counter, the woman got up and trotted away, leaving behind her a stunned Madame Jin and a few more eager customers. Yixing walked over to Kyungsoo.

“I did not see that one coming,” Yixing said.

“Me, too,” Kyungsoo said, his face still blank. He suddenly looked down at the money the woman had left, and a wide smile grew on his face. “But damn, she was loaded! Look at this! Yixing, this is awesome! Jinyu’s brilliant! Let’s do it, again! But this time, let’s enforce a no-kissing rule; that was just weird. Next customer, please!”

Just like that, Kyungsoo’s business turned into a success. The line of people waiting for reading measured about ten or twelve people. There was a grand variety of customers: from sorority girls who wanted romantic advice to grandpas who wished to talk to dead soldiers from their platoons and even a few skeptics-turned-believers. The sudden hugs were actually quite frequent. But thankfully, there were no more kissing customers. Although there was one surfer whose naughty hands sunk a little too low for anyone’s taste during a hug. Kyungsoo and Yixing cut that hug short as soon as they could.

As for Jinyu, the clients were all different, which meant that she sometimes enjoyed it and sometimes she didn’t. The sorority girls were hard to please since she wasn’t sure what they wanted to hear. Kyungsoo, on the other hand, took the opportunity to subtly flirt. The grandpa veterans were scary; they often took to yelling or slamming their fists against the counter when they thought they were hearing their fallen comrades’ voices from the netherworld. Skeptics, as Jinyu found, were actually relatively easy to convince.

Victoria and Nickhun showed up a little later after receiving Yixing’s call, dressed in beach clothing as well. They, too, couldn’t believe Kyungsoo’s success.

Kyungsoo smiled as he collected the money, often flashing smirks at Yixing. His friend would laugh along, still unable to believe that the fake psychic plan was actually working. After watching a while, Mei tugged on her brother’s sleeve.

“Can we go to the beach now?” she asked. “You promised you would take me.”

“Yeah, I did promise that,” he said. He turned to Kyungsoo then, placing him in charge of Jinyu for the time being, and Yixing walked toward the beach with Mei. Nickhun and Victoria followed the siblings after another minute or so.

Seeing the business flourishing, Kyungsoo took the board with the prices and tried to see if he could push them up a little to make even more. In the meantime, Jinyu looked across the beach at Victoria and Nickhun. They were seated side-by-side on a beach towel and they seemed to be looking at something together. Victoria reached out and playfully slapped his shoulder, and in the next second, Nickhun had scooped her up into his arms and was running straight toward the water.

Jinyu smiled seeing their closeness. Victoria was so often uptight and strict; it was different seeing her loosen up with Nickhun. Jinyu didn’t know she could be swept off her feet like that.

Nickhun dropped Victoria in the shallow end of the water, and she began to scramble as if trying to avoid getting wet. Nickhun laughed, and when Victoria was finally up, she ran toward Nickhun, who ran away to avoid her. Jinyu laughed lightly.

As Victoria and her boyfriend continued running, disappearing from Jinyu’s line of sight, she turned her attention then to Mei, who was wading in the water, only up to her ankles. The young girl was hugging herself, and Jinyu guessed that the water must have been very cold. But suddenly, her brother jumped into the picture, having shed his shirt, and threw himself into the deeper end altogether. He tried to persuade Mei to get in the water, but when she refused, he began to splash it at her. And Mei retaliated by splashing him in return.

Jinyu watched Yixing play with his sister for a while, occasionally grabbing her and tossing her into the water. And sometime Mei tackled him or jumped on his back, blowing air onto his neck to make him cave in and give up. Jinyu felt that she could lose herself in that moment that she spent watching the siblings interact. But her focus was cut short when Kyungsoo walked across her.

“Jinyu, you ready?” he asked, and she nodded. “It’s showtime.”

Jinyu did two more customers: a little girl who wanted to know where her pet rabbit had run off to and a middle aged man who wanted to know whether or not to invest his money or save it for something else. They were relatively short visits and Jinyu was growing bored of her job. Kyungsoo did what he could to keep her entertained. While he looked around for a water bottle to give her, another customer sat down, and he narrowed his eyes at Jinyu.

“You’re quite familiar,” the man said, and the voice struck a chord in Jinyu. It was the man who asked her about the dolphins at the facility. “You’re that girl from the Zhang’s facility, aren’t you? I knew it. Although I must, say I did not expect to see you here.”

Jinyu stood still, not sure what to do. Kyungsoo finally arrived and sat by the booth, as well.

“Welcome, sir!” Kyungsoo said. “Madame Jin will answer any questions you like, but first she’ll need to know a bit about you as well.”

Sunghwan looked at Kyungsoo as though asking him if he really looked like the type of person who would come to see a psychic. In truth, he’d only come to put his suspicions to rest that this was in fact the girl from the Zhang’s facility. But the scientist decided to push the matter away and humor the young boy.

“What is your name, sir?” Kyungsoo asked.

“Lee Sunghwan.”

“And your occupation?”

“Marine researcher and biologist.”

“You must come by a lot of interesting people in your line of work,” Kyungsoo commented, gesturing for Jinyu to go ahead and take the man’s hands in preparation for the fake reading. Jinyu hesitated a bit.

“Yes,” the man answered.

“So what type of research do you do?” Kyungsoo asked, hoping to get some information they could use.

Sunghwan sighed. “Sirenian theories,” he said. “I’ve come to the beach to investigate, actually.”

“Oh, have you?” Kyungsoo asked. “Found anything interesting yet?”

Sunghwan looked between him and Jinyu. “This is by far the most interesting.”

“I see,” Kyungsoo said, getting bored with the man’s answers. He urged Jinyu to get ready for the reading. “Where did you say you studied Senteniel Theories, again?”

“Sirenian,” Sunghwan corrected.

“Whatever,” Kyungsoo said. “Where?”

Sunghwan sighed once more. “At the Institute of Science. I study the possible existence of sirenian mammals.”

“Which are?”

“Mermaids.”

Kyungsoo widened his eyes. He’d never heard of Sirenian theories before, but now that he put it in more understandable terms, the risks were suddenly obvious. Kyungsoo grabbed Jinyu’s wrists and pulled her hands away from the scientist.

“Oh, I am so sorry, sir!” Kyungsoo said, making Jinyu stand up and placing himself between her and the man. “You know what, it’s actually time for her break! Sorry, man. I don’t make the rules, it’s just the law. She needs an hour lunch break. Come back tomorrow and tell us all about your Serpentine theories research, but not today.”

In one physics-defying move, Kyungsoo had gathered the booth, stools, money, and costumes intone arm while holding Jinyu with the other. And without looking back at the man, he dragged everything to the beach, toward Nickhun and Victoria’s beach towel.

“Don’t look back, he’ll follow us if you do,” Kyungsoo whispered to Jinyu. After making it halfway down the beach, Kyungsoo stopped and looked to see if Lee Sunghwan was still there. The investigative scientist had disappeared, and Kyungsoo sighed with relief.

“Thank God we lost him,” Kyungsoo said. “You okay?”

“I am fine,” Jinyu answered. “But why did you – ?” Something Yixing said to her once came back: he’s a bad man, Yixing had said. He was a man who take her away from them and lock her up and use her to further his studies without an ounce of respect. She was glad Kyungsoo had acted as such.

“Don’t worry about that creep,” Kyungsoo. “I mean, at least he didn’t try to kiss you.” He dug into his pockets then and fished out the wad of cash, their earnings from their fake psychic booth. He counted out their earnings and split it in half, tucking her share into her hands.

“That’s for you,” he said with a smile. “Use it to buy clothes that actually fit you for a change. Doesn’t Yixing ever take you shopping?”

Jinyu smiled at Kyungsoo. It actually did feel good to have actually earned something; it was a refreshing change from receiving everything so freely the way Yixing had taken to dealing with her. She put the money into the pocket of her shorts and thanked Kyungsoo.

“No problem,” he said. “And thanks for your help! I’m gunna get all this stuff here and take it back to the car. Just sit there and wait for Victoria or Yixing or something. I’ll called Chanyeol and some other friends, too, so they might be coming by as well. I’ll see you later.”

Kyungsoo stooped over to grab their supplies and headed off toward their parking space. Meanwhile, Jinyu shed the yellow Chinese robe Kyungsoo had made her wear and laid it against the sand to sit on. Even though it was hot and humid, the ocean breeze brought the temperature down to a more bearable coolness. She closed her eyes and inhaled the salty scent of the air. A part of her ached to be back in the ocean. For now, all she could do was sit and watch the humans play in the shallows. Seeing how happy and cheerful they were, she almost couldn’t believe that mermaids had such silly horror stories about them.

“Hey,” said a friendly voice, and when Jinyu turned toward it, Luhan sat himself next to her. “Where’s Kyungsoo?” he asked.

“He is putting away his things,” Jinyu answered. “What are you doing here?”

Luhan smirked. “What? Not happy to see me? Well, Kyungsoo called me over here. I was supposed to get a ride with Chanyeol, but he said he had errands to run. What about you?”

Jinyu smiled. “Kyungsoo asked me to come, as well.”

“Did he, now?” Luhan said. “Typical. He calls me down here and he’s not even here to greet me. What about Yixing?”

Jinyu pointed at the water, where Yixing and Mei were still play-fighting. Luhan smiled at the sight as well. “He’s good to her,” he said. “To Mei, I mean.”

Jinyu nodded. “Yes, he is.”

Jinyu wondered how Luhan could just appear at the most precise of times. Just a few months ago, she thought he would be hard to find. But now it seemed as though he were the one seeking her out. The thought made her blush. As for Luhan, he knew that he didn’t know Jinyu as well as he knew other girls. But still, a part of him was simply fascinated by her presence, and he took it as a unique form of friendship. Sure she was a bit odd, but everyone is a little bit odd; what made her oddness different was that he felt that their oddness was strangely compatible.

“So, any reason you’re here instead of the water?” he asked. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those girls who’re afraid to ruin their hair in the salt water.”

Jinyu laughed. “No, I love the salt water,” she said truthfully.

“So, why aren’t you swimming in it?”

Jinyu would have liked to say that it was because her legs would turn into a tail again if she went into the water, but she bit her tongue back. “I… cannot.”

Luhan looked at her, waiting patiently for an explanation. “Are you… afraid, or?”

Jinyu looked at him and shrugged, pressing her lips together. “Well?” she said. Luhan sighed and then nodded.

“That makes two of us, then,” he said.

“What?” Jinyu asked. “Are you afraid of the ocean?” Luhan blushed as he nodded.

“That’s a little embarrassing to admit,” he said laughing. Jinyu liked the way his whole face smiled along with him; it wasn’t just his mouth that curved upward, but his eyes smiled, too.

“Why are you afraid?” Jinyu asked, genuinely concerned by his fear of her home.

“It’s a long story,” Luhan said. Jinyu shrugged.

“I have time to listen,” she said. Luhan looked at her face and realized the truth in that statement. And it appeared that neither of them were getting into the water anyway, so he may as well tell a story to keep them both occupied.

“Alright,” he said. “It involves Yixing, too.”

“How so?”

“You’ll see,” he said. “Remember I told you that I was born in the capital and then I moved here. That was when I was about eleven or so. There’s a prestigious middle school here called St. Mark’s Academy. That’s where I went to school when I first moved here. In my old school, I had a lot of friends. And since I had to leave them, I was stuck in this angry phase. Basically, that first year I moved here, I made no friends whatsoever.”

Luhan spoke fluidly of that first year, but Jinyu could still see the sadness in his eyes.

“I tried to run away a couple of times. I never made it past the train station because they don’t sell trans-state train tickets to eleven-years old. And I had to find that out the hard way. My parents brought me back home and I kept thinking about how much happier I’d be if I were with my friends then. At school, I was treated differently because everyone knew who my parents were. Even the teachers gave me special treatment. But even though everyone revered me, there was no one I could be close with. Followers aren’t the same as friends.

“One day, my parents arranged this trip for my family. Dad had an old college buddy who wanted to take us camping. I mean, I was excited since I’d never been camping and I could go somewhere with my parents. But at the last minute, they pulled out and made me go with Dad’s college buddy on my own. Yixing was their son. Mei was only about three or four back then. Anyway, we drove over to the Northern Shore. That’s where the camp grounds were. We set up camp and his parents were trying to make me feel comfortable. Yixing and I weren’t immediately pals, yet. In fact, we spent a lot of time avoiding each other back then, I’d just turned twelve and he was ten, going on eleven.

“Our camp grounds were near the ocean like this,” Luhan continued. “Just picture the beach but with more trees and stuff. It’s like that. Anyway, this one time, Yixing and I found a canoe. It was an old canoe that was just lying there, and we decided to take it out over the water ourselves since his Dad wouldn’t let us. So we rowed out and before we knew it, we were way past the shallows. But the water was clear and you could the coral and the fish and stuff.”

Jinyu knew the Northern Shore, well. It was almost a day’s swim away from her current waters, but the Northern Shore was where she was born. She knew well the clear waters of that beach, and the colorful life that lived there. Luhan continued:

“But then suddenly the boat us and we were both in the water. The canoe floated away and we couldn’t grab onto it or anything else. I knew how to swim, but Yixing didn’t. He kept panicking and crying and stuff. And I didn’t know what to do, but I kept thinking that we couldn’t die and we had to try something so that we’d live. So, I swam under him and tried to hold him up so he could breathe. But by then were both panicking and crying and I couldn’t swim properly. I was under the water for a long time, trying to make sure he still had air to breathe. I could literally feel myself passing out. I thought we were both going to die there.

“But finally some lifeguard heard Yixing screaming, and we were both rescued. They took us to the hospital and for the most part were safe, although we’d swallowed a lot of water.  What I remember from the hospital visit is that they put us, me and Yixing, on two different beds but we were side by side. We were took panicked to talk much, but I remember looking over at him and thinking that I’d saved someone’s life. Pretty much, we were friends ever since that.”

Jinyu sat quietly for a long time, processing Luhan’s tale.

“Yixing never told me that,” Jinyu said, and Luhan chuckled.

“No, he wouldn’t have,” Luhan said. “He’s probably embarrassed that I had to save him. But anyway, that’s where my fear of the ocean came from. If you’re curious, it’s called thalassophobia. It’s a mouthful; I usually just say ocean-o-phobia.”

Jinyu laughed a little. When she first spied Luhan on his balcony, she hadn’t really thought about what type of a boy he was. But talking to him now, she felt as though she were falling for him more rapidly than before. Her heart was beating fast, and the more she found out about him, the more she wanted to know. When she was with Luhan, she could forget that there was ever a spell to worry about, she could forget the dangers she was braving. She felt she could endure anything as long as he was there for her.

“So,” Luhan said, stretching his arms a bit. “You’re a marine biology intern, you fed kids from Africa… you didn’t tell me you were a psychic, too.”