Yixing unlocked the fence door and pushed open with a swift, quiet motion. The automatic patio lights as soon as he set foot in his parents’ rehabilitation pool deck. In the semi-darkness, he could see the dolphins they rescued swimming in their pool; they were due to be released in a week’s time. Jinyu followed him inside the fenced area, and he pressed a finger to his lips to warn her to try to be quiet.

“It’s really late,” Yixing whispered. “I don’t want to disturb them. We’ll go in the research lab for now; we have to talk.”

Jinyu nodded slowly. Yixing walked her over to the back of the rehabilitation area and produced a ring of keys. He used one of them to open the big, metal door that led to his parents’ research lab. After flicking on the lights, he closed the door behind Jinyu and let out a sigh. He turned to her.

“Wait here a minute,” he said. Then, he disappeared into a corner of the lab, grabbing some equipment. He pushed aside the table with the splicing tools and set a medium-sized bench in the middle of the room and told her to sit on it. Jinyu watched as he then brought over a small, circular tub and set that beneath the bench. He whistled a little as he turned the faucet on the large sink next to the observation tanks. When the water was warm enough, he hooked a hose to it and used that to put water in the tub. Once that was finished, he pulled out a small brown container.

Yixing stretched his back out before walking over to where Jinyu sat. Just as he expected, her brand new human legs didn’t exactly respond well to running and being scraped against the asphalt. He opened the brown container and dumped a little of the white bath salts into the warm water. 

“Soak your feet in that,” he said, and Jinyu followed. 

Yixing had loaned her his jacket on the way back to the house, and she held onto the sleeves of it, wrapping it more tightly around her shoulders. Jinyu gripped the edge of the bench and looked down at her feet. Her ankle still wasn’t completely recovered from the fall she took as Casablanca’s. She wondered if she had injured it again when she was running, or perhaps when she dancing. Her entire body felt heavy and hey eyes stung. She couldn’t bear to lift her head up or look at anyone in the face. She felt very childish at that moment; more so than when she first set foot on land. 

Yixing moved somewhere behind her. But her mind was in a stupor and she wasn’t sure what he was doing. Jinyu could only replay memories in her mind; she thought about the moment when Luhan kissed another girl. And she thought about the time she rescued him and how she, too, had thought about kissing him then and there. 

The warm water should have been relaxing; the Epsom bath salts should have soothed her sore feet and drawn out the toxins through her skin. But only numbness came to her. It was the type of numbness that made her feel frozen, her heart unable to even properly break. Her numb eyes couldn’t cry.

Yixing suddenly took a seat next to her on the bench, facing the opposite direction. He had a first aid kit on his lap, and he was using it to apply a very large Band-aid over the gash on his forearm. When he finished, he let out and sigh and handed the kit over to Jinyu.

“Here,” he said. “Your shins.”

Jinyu looked at him with a puzzled expression, and he tried his best to smile gently. “That’s the front of your legs,” he explained. Nodding, Jinyu slowly took the kit from him, but without making any move to heal herself, she sat there quietly. Yixing drummed his fingers against the bench.

“So,” he said. “Mind telling me why you decided to run a marathon in the middle of the Summer’s End Turn-Up?”

Jinyu stared off into space. “A what?” she asked.

Yixing cleared his throat. “Why’d you take off running?” he said in simpler terms. When Jinyu didn’t answer for the longest time, he nudged her with his elbow lightly. “Jinyu,” he said. “Tell me what happened at the party. You can tell me.”

Jinyu hugged herself some more, still staring at the water in the tub and her feet. She imagined that the tub was the ocean, and her legs had merged together and become a tail again. She would have given anything to feel the joy of swimming in the ocean again. But the worse this situation became, the further that dream drifted away along with the idea of Luhan. This is the end, she thought to herself, recalling the numbers on the flat device. How much time had she wasted? How many lives had she endangered because of her whimsical, childish dream? 

Yixing never pushed her to answer. Jinyu felt pity toward him. He’d been so kind to her. She supposed that if she were to tell anyone about her spell, it would be him. So she sighed and whispered:

“I saw Luhan,” she said. 

Yixing swallowed hearing his friend’s name. He knew that Jinyu had a little crush on him. But with the way she was reacting to just having seen him… Yixing began to think that there was much more than a simple crush going on here. What had Luhan to do with it? He had no clue.

“And?” he said, gently urging her on. 

“And another girl,” Jinyu said. She had tried to say the statement as numbly as she could. But Yixing could recognize the bitterness in her tone. Yixing’s face fell.

“Oh …” he said simply. 

Yixing wasn’t aware that Luhan had a girlfriend or was close to any girls in that way. He had shown interest in Jinyu before. But the silence was thickening. Every second they went without talking, Yixing could feel her retreating further and further into herself. Soon, it would be too late to get her to come back out.

“So… you got jealous or?”

No answer.

“Did they say something to you?”

Silence.

Yixing sighed, wishing that she would say something, anything at all. He looked at her carefully, noting the blankness in her eyes, as though she were sitting right beside him and yet was traveling somewhere very far away. He wanted to bring her back here to this moment. 

“Jinyu, look,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Unrequited love does , but… don’t be offended, but you only knew him a couple of weeks. I know that right now it probably doesn’t seem like you’re ever going to get over your crush on him, but you’ll see. My guess is that you’ll be here for a long time so – ”

“No I will not,” she interrupted. Yixing widened his eyes at her.

“Won’t what?” he asked.

“I will not be here for a long time,” Jinyu said, still not looking at him. “I have wasted so much time already.”

Yixing bowed his head a little, trying to understand her. “How long are we talking about?” he asked.

Jinyu sighed, tilting her chin up and staring straight ahead at the tanks of fish. “Two hundred and seventy-two days,” she answered bitterly. “That is how many days I have left.”

Yixing winced a little. She was becoming more and more distressed. It was worrying him. “Until what?” he asked. “Until you turn back into a mermaid? Is that what the numbers mean, then?”

Jinyu was silent once again, but she let out a very long sigh, a breath that she did not know she had been holding in until now. Yixing wanted to reach out and place his hand on her shoulder. But something about her seemed very fragile; it felt like she’d disappear faster if he tried to hold onto her. 

“What are those numbers, Jinyu?” he whispered. “ You have to tell me what’s wrong or else I can’t help you.”

In truth, Jinyu was still a little hesitant to reveal the full terms of her spell to anyone. But for what seemed like the first time since the conversation started, Jinyu lifted her chin, turned her head, and her eyes met his. And he was just as distressed as she was, which, for some strange reason, comforted her. She could sense a kind of shared vulnerability between them, as though he, too, was a complete outsider braving the scary new world right along with her. 

Jinyu let go off her death grip on the bench. She released her breath slowly.

“There is a spell,” she said.

Yixing nodded. To be honest, he had expected that much.

“What spell?” he asked. Jinyu looked him square in the eye and began to explain. 

She told him about how she knew about Luhan; she told him about how she saved him from the wave; Jinyu told him about how her love for him grew ever since then and he desperate she became to be with him; she told him about her visit to the sea witch, the role the numbers on the device played, how she had to stay away from the ocean and seawater to remain this way, the nefarious deal she made with that woman, how she’d taken her magic, endangered her family, stranded herself on an alien land; all of this just for the chance to see Luhan again. And then she told him about the catch; how she had one year to make Luhan love her completely and freely, as much as was humanly possible in order to turn her fragile mermaid soul into an immortal human one. 

Yixing listened patiently, taking in the information and turning it over in his head. He couldn’t believe how things were playing out. For a split second, he wondered if he regretted ever getting involved in her business. But with the both of them feeling unsteady as it was, there was no room for doubts on either of their parts. 

When she finished explaining, he took a deep breath. 

“You should have told me sooner,” he said, trying to smile to lighten the mood. Jinyu tilted her head down in shame once again.

“I am sorry,” she whispered, her voice breaking slightly.

“No, it’s okay,” Yixing answered. He stretched out his back again. “So, basically, if Luhan doesn’t fall in love with you in time, you’ll die. This is pretty heavy stuff.” 

“There is no use. He will never love me,” Jinyu said. The lack of emotion in her face was what scared Yixing. He scratched his head.

“Well, not with that attitude,” he said, trying for a laugh or a smile.

“I have already seen him with another girl,” Jinyu replied.

“But Luhan’s not like that,” Yixing said. “I know him; he’s not the type of guy to rush into something like that. Even if he was flirting with a girl, he’d never settle for just anyone. He’s… he’s a lot like you, actually. He wants the right girl.”

Jinyu stared at her feet, the tears in her eyes becoming more and more serious. “Then maybe I am not the right girl.”

Yixing stared at her, clenching his jaw.

“Jinyu, stop it,” he said sternly. His voice dipped an octave or two, and Jinyu looked at him with red eyes.

“Stop what?” she asked gently.

“We’ll never get anywhere if you keep on giving up,” Yixing said. “I’m not giving up. Are you?”

Jinyu shrugged. “I suppose not.”

“Okay,” Yixing said. “We’ll get through this together, alright? You’ve got me. I know Luhan; I can get him to fall in love with you if that’s what you want.”

He paused a moment, preparing for the next question he was to ask. He suddenly had memories from a few weeks ago when Jinyu fall asleep on his floor. 

“That is what you want, isn’t it?” he asked. 

Jinyu wrinkled her brows at him a bit. Of course it was what she wanted. Why had he felt the need to ask? She considered the question for some time. She believed herself absolutely sure of her desires. Luhan was the one she wanted, was he not? She nodded her head slowly.

“Yes,” she whispered. 

Yixing nodded.

“Okay,” he said. 

Another moment or two of silence followed. Yixing spoke up.

“You were the one who saved him, then?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you are the one he’s been looking for. Why not just tell him about your spell? He’d help you, I’m sure.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” Yixing looked at her expectantly. Jinyu lifted her feet from the now-cold tub water and rested her feet on the tiles.

“I can’t tell him because he has to choose me on his own,” she explained. “Not because he’s under any obligation. It has to be true love, you see?”

Yixing pursed his lips, marveling at the fact that she could throw the word “love” around so easily in terms of Luhan. She’d probably spoken to him only three or four times now. What could the two of them possibly have talked about to induce so much intimacy that Jinyu was considering such a serious bond this early in the game? But there was hope in her eyes, along with the great mounds of despair and loss. He felt once more that he wanted to do anything he could to help.

“Fine,” he answered. “I’ll help you. But you have to let me tell Chanyeol, and Kyungsoo and Victoria, too. They can help you as well.”

Jinyu nodded, more resolutely this time. She turned away from his to examine her feet once more. They no longer throbbed with pain every time she applied pressure.  Yixing watched her drag her toes across one tile, and he never felt more sure or determined in his entire life. Whatever it was he felt determined about, he couldn’t exactly say. He made  fist and pressed it against the bench as he looked straight ahead.

“You’ll never turn into sea foam,” he whispered, and she froze. “Not on my watch or anyone else’s.”

For the first time since the disaster at the party, Jinyu smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered back.

The jacket Yixing loaned her was still draped across her shoulders, and the sleeves hung down so that the bottom slightly grazed his knuckles. Yixing in a breath of air every time the fabric of that jacket touched his skin. The way they were sitting, their two forms were still completely separated. Yet even just the touch of the hem of that sleeve sent tiny electric shocks up his arm. He wondered if Jinyu was aware of what was happening.

“I am just frightened, you know?” she confessed, pulling on the jacket in such a way that the sleeves touching his hands were taken away. Yixing grimaced, but she continued.

“I never really understood what I was risking; I did not understand the possibility that I could fail. I came here looking for true love, but now I know that I have no idea what I am looking for. And now my family is in danger. And I am stranded here.  I am truly pathetic, really.”

“No, you’re not,” Yixing said, fiddling with his fingers. Jinyu laughed a little. The sound of it lightened the mood.

“Are you going to disagree with everything I say?” she said. Yixing smirked a bit.

“I know someone who’s more pathetic,” he answered.

“Who?” she asked, genuinely curious. The playful mood was soon coming to an end however. Yixing frowned a bit.

“Me,” he said. Jinyu looked to him, wondering if he was joking or not. He was completely serious.

“You?” she asked. “How?”

“I could tell you,” he said, pursing his lips once more. “But I’d be telling you something that no one else in the world knows about me.”

The idea excited Jinyu at first. Her sisters gossiped all the time and the thought of knowing something that others didn’t as very appealing to her. But something told her that this secret he may or may not tell her was something very close to him, something that he had locked away, never meant to be exposed again.

“Will you tell me?” she asked. Yixing straightened up in the bench. 

“Okay,” he said, unsure of just why he decided to tell her. “When I was in high school – about a year or two ago, I had a huge crush on this girl. A crush means that you like someone in a romantic way. So, anyway, I had a huge, embarrassing crush on this girl in my school. I was the co-president of the music club, and she was a member of that club. She played the piano. God, she was so good. I remember that I felt really intimidated by her when she first joined the club, because I thought that someone was going to kick me out of my position as president. She was way better than me and it was so obvious. 

“She used to play in the music room while I studied, and I just started falling in love with her. I… really thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world whenever I sat in that room and just listened to her play.”

Yixing paused a moment to gather himself. Her face was a clear image in his mind once more and he had to remind himself again just what she did to him. 

“Her name was Sa Rang,” he said. He continued:

“Pretty soon, she was all I could think about. I wanted to see her all the time, talk to her all the time, listen to her all the time, I was writing songs about her left and right. We became friends after a while, but of course I was unhappy being just a friend. So one day, I took a risk, and I told her about my feelings. I was so nervous that day, because I just liked her so much and she was so pretty. And she accepted me and my feelings… we started going out shortly after that. 

“We went everywhere together, and I told her all about my hopes and dreams, my goals, things that I worried about. She just made me so happy. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, and I just wanted to be with her all the time. Then I noticed her growing distant and I got worried. When we started dating, she made me promise to keep it a secret from everyone because she wanted to reveal our relationship at the right time. I thought it was weird, but I went along because I convinced myself that if I loved her, I would do it. 

He was fidgeting with his fingers again, and avoiding Jinyu’s eyes.

“And one day she told me the truth,” he continued. “The truth was that… she didn’t even like me at all. She went out with me because she knew I was close to Luhan, and she was madly in love with him. And she asked me to keep it a secret so she could get close to Luhan and she asked me to keep ‘going out’ with her so she could see him more often. So basically, she’d be my girlfriend, but she wanted to keep seeing Luhan, too. That’s what she asked from me. And guess what I said.”

Jinyu widened her eyes. 

“No?” she guessed. Yixing smirked.

“I said ‘yes’,” he said, and Jinyu nearly gasped. “My girlfriend asked me to help her hook up with another guy, and I said ‘yes’. That’s why I’m pathetic.”

Yixing stopped talking. He hadn’t thought about Sa Rang in the longest time, not until that time she showed up at the Sea World. He was still slightly torn. He was incredibly angry with her for lying to him and for all the she put him through. But when he looked back on the time he spent with her, he couldn’t deny that he’d been happy with her once. In fact, some of the happiest times he spent in high school were times that he’d spent with her. He still hated her, absolutely. He hated himself more for being weak.

It was his fatal flaw, his generosity, his eagerness to see the good in people. The problem was that he loved Sa Rang too much, and she loved him not enough. And when all was said and done, there was not enough love left for himself. He could never, ever tell when he was being cheated. Jinyu tapped his shoulder suddenly, and he turned to her.

“What happened then?” Jinyu asked. “Did Luhan ever love her back?”

Yixing shook his head.

“No,” he said. “He was too focused on other things at the time. So when she confessed to him, he rejected her. And she thought that I had told him something about her, so she broke up with me.”

“Broke up?” Jinyu asked. Yixing took a deep breath.

“’Break up’ means that the person you love doesn’t want you anymore” he explained. “So they decide to push you away to get rid of you.” 

The explanation saddened her. She turned away again, thinking about how horrible being unwanted was. That was exactly how she felt when she saw Luhan with that other girl. Unwanted, thrown away. Her heart started to beat loudly; she felt like crying when she thought about Yixing; kind, sweet Yixing having to go through something like what that horrible girl put him through. No one deserved to feel like that, and Yixing least of all. She’d seen the way he treated others. 

He followed his parents dutifully; he smiled and joked around with his friends, treated his sister with respect; and as for Jinyu, he had nothing but kind to her. He was patient when he explained human things to her; he tended to her wounds, brought her closer to Luhan, let her sleep in his room, and he had promised to help her get out of her spell.

“It just doesn’t make sense,” she said, more to herself than to anyone else. Yixing raised one brow at her.

“What doesn’t make sense?” he asked.

Jinyu shrugged and continued to stare out into the middle-distance.

“But… why would someone not want you?”

Yixing scratched at his chest when his ears drank in her words. They had been spoken with genuinely curious, innocent intentions, but the honesty behind them was what struck him. Could she really not see what was wrong with him? The playful smile on his face disappeared, and he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to get up and walk away from her or continue to sit there and just stare silently at her. Did she really mean it? 

Yixing swallowed hard as he forced himself to turn in her direction. Jinyu had succumbed to sloshing the salts around in the tub with her feet. The urge to touch her shoulder or her hand suddenly returned, stronger this time. He smacked his lips together once. 

Could he possibly like this girl? In more than a platonic manner? Sure, he had liked other girls after Sa Rang, but there something different about it this time around. Here they sat, both of them flayed and vulnerable and imperfect and still, neither of them could see what was wrong with the other. Yixing wondered if he should take a chance.

“Jinyu, I – ” he started, but there was suddenly a loud ringing noise and a vibration in his back pocket that surprised him and made him jump up from the bench. He cursed his ringtone and looked at his phone screen.

“It’s Chanyeol,” he said to her. Doubtless, his friend had picked up on the fact that Jinyu had disappeared. Yixing answered the call, and sure enough, Chanyeol was frantic and apologetic.

“She’s fine,” Yixing assured him on the phone. “Yeah, I know… she’s back at the house now, calm down… yeah, okay… just come to the house tomorrow then… not now, it’s like 1 in the morning, man… okay, I’ll see you then… I know… bye.” 

“Chanyeol,” Jinyu said and buried her face in her hands. “I completely forgot about him! Is he angry with me?”

“Just a little,” Yixing answered. “You can apologize to him tomorrow morning. It’s almost 2 in the morning. Umm, we should probably be getting back to the house now.”

“Yes,” Jinyu agreed, standing up. Yixing put the bench and tub away before turning off the lights and leading them back out onto the rehab deck. They made their way across the courtyard and let themselves into the house through the back door. Jinyu was tired, and she didn’t bother changing into more comfortable clothes. She sunk down on her designated spot on the couch and fell asleep. 

Yixing returned to his room, but after tossing and turning for another twenty minutes, he gave up and quietly slipped off to the piano room. 

Once again, he found himself contemplating the heavy questions in the middle of the night whilst sitting at the piano, drumming his fingers against the music rack. He’d almost forgotten what it was he was about to say back in the lab before Chanyeol’s call interrupted him. There were other matters to consider, however.

Like just how in the name of Sam Heck he expected to get Luhan to fall for Jinyu. He was never really into the match-making business, but it seemed like for the two-hundred and something days, he was going to have to make it his profession. He thought back on his relationship with Luhan. What types of girls did he like? What sort of things would he do on a date? What did he find attractive in the other gender? He scratched his head. Maybe Victoria would have more ideas on that.

Yixing ran his fingers through his hair. His body was tired, but his mind wouldn’t rest. He threw up the wooden panel covering the piano keys and ran his fingers over the ivories. Playing music always had a soothing effect on him. He closed his eyes and began to play around with various melodies when suddenly a few notes made him open his eyes wide.

He retraced his steps and played the last couples of notes again. And again. And again, adding onto it this time around. Yixing stared at his own fingers and held his breath. 

There was a song there. After months of writer’s block… did his ears deceive him or was there a song being born tonight? Suddenly seized with new zeal, he grabbed a blank sheet of music paper and a pencil. He replayed the melody, adding more onto it as he went along. Eventually he had 4 bars of music written.

Yixing smiled, remembering and enjoying once again the joy of composing. He played out the parts of the song that he had recorded, his fingers finding their spots instinctively. His body swayed with the motion and at some point he did feel incredibly silly. But the longer he played, the more peaceful he felt. He heard Jinyu’s words in his head, replaying their conversation several more times to himself. Soon, it wasn’t just the piano carrying these sounds; Yixing’s body and heart, too, became the hollow that kept these feelings safe.

By the time an hour and a half passed, he had a melody for one verse and a chorus. And a title: “Don’t Cry.” 

Author's Commentary: Alright, that's all for now. I will post the remaining chapters another time.