The waved washed over the town just forty-five minutes after the quake. It was 7.0 that rippled across the ocean to their shores from 198 miles away. The tsunami itself was almost 30 feet tall, and it left the town devastated. Cars, boats, and even trains were lifted from the ground, plucked from their docks and rails. Buildings collapsed, highways were severed, and fires broke out all over the city. The loss of life was overwhelming. The casualty numbers continued to shoot upward.

But Luhan was lucky to not have been counted in those numbers. The young prince’s body had washed up onto a flat rock, safe from the weaker waves, and was actually just below the balcony of his own bedroom.

The little mermaid awoke early the next morning, relieved to see that the unconscious boy was still sound asleep beside her on the rock. Taking precautions, she slid back into the water and swam back to his side. She leaned over him and placed her ear next to his mouth. His breathing was weak, but it felt warm against her skin. She sighed in relief: he was alive.

The joints in his arm were swollen however; same with the joint around the end of one of his long leggy appendages. She had done what she could to help the swelling in his arm, but she was still a little too spooked to go near his legs. She thought of unfastening the orange vest from him, thinking it might make his sleep more comfortable. But she didn’t know how to do so. She used her tail to support his head and neck during the night.

His forehead was bruised and beaten as well. There was a cut on his lip and eyebrow. The blood had coagulated already. Other than that, Luhan was perfectly safe, and very much still alive. The mermaid had even slept next to him to assure that his body temperature wouldn’t drop. The water was freezing cold even in the springtime. His skin seemed thinner than hers. He wouldn’t be able to brave the cold as well as she did.

There was a flutter in her chest as she leaned over him. Finally after all these months of watching from afar, she could see him up close. Even with his face slightly bruised, he was a beautiful boy. Sleeping that way, he looked peaceful. His chest heaved up and down as he breathed the air. She laughed, thinking about how fragile humans were. She reached out, and after hesitating only once, she touched his face.

She brushed the sand from his hair and face, pulling debris from his hair and clothes.

She wondered what his life was like and whether or not he could love a girl like her the same way she loved him. She sloshed her tail around in the water, feeling giddy at her own thoughts. Feeling a song bubbling up in , she started to sing. It was a whispered song at first, slow and sweet like the chimes on a sleigh. And then it gushed out of her like an ocean wave.

Her voice was what called Luhan out of his sleep. It was enchanting, and even in his sleep, he had to know what it was. Stirring slowly at first, he flexed his fingers and then moved his arm. His hand fell onto hers.

Stunned, the mermaid gasped and halted her singing. She stared down at the human boy’s hand clapped over hers, and her heart began pumping with panic. Luhan’s eyes were crusted with sand, and it took a while for him to finally open them. But when he did, his vision was filled with the sight of a girl, and a beautiful one at that. Her skin was like marble and her eyes were as blue as the sea and as bright as the moon. Her black hair created a stunning contrast.

He only stared at her at first, not sure what to make of the strange girl. She seemed scared, though he couldn’t understand why. He dug deep down for his voice, and it came out sounding brash and unclear: “Who are you?”

The next second, the girl turned away from him and dove into the water. His eyes widened, and the very last thing he saw before she disappeared completely was one large, bright orange fin rising and twisting above the surface before completely submerging. His breath stolen once again, Luhan pushed himself to sit up with his good arm and looked down into the water.

“Wait!” he tried to yell, his voice still hoarse. “Come back!”

He reached into the water with one arm, but she was gone. He blinked to himself, wincing at the pain in his arm and ankle. Was he alive? Was he losing his mind because of all the sea water he’d drank? Or was that really what he thought it could be? Leaning against the wall of rock, Luhan held onto his broken arm. He found himself beneath his family’s mansion. Over his head was the balcony of his sea-view bedroom. It was not without damage (the wall near his room was crumbling) but thankfully, it had been spared by the wave.

He was too weak to climb. Luhan stared out over the sea, wondering if that was really a mermaid he saw or a figment of his imagination. Or was it just a beautiful girl with a beautiful voice who had saved him from certain death? What had really happened?

He thought for sure that after saving Margarita girl that he would die. Yet here he was, witnessing the dawn of the aftermath of the tsunami, alive and whole, albeit a little beat up. All that was left for him to do was to wait for rescue, which found him not ten minutes later in the form of his reflective-vest wearing best friend, Yixing, and a group of volunteers.

“You lucky bastard,” Yixing said to his friend as the rescue volunteers finally lifted him out of the rocky inlet. Luhan wanted to go back to teasing his friend, but he could see just how relieved Yixing was to see him alive. Yixing placed himself under Luhan’s arm and helped him to limp toward the rescue truck.

Luhan debated whether or not to tell Yixing about the girl.

The little mermaid swam straight down the depths of the ocean, feeling nothing but sheer ecstasy at having seen the prince boy up close. He’d spoken to her, looked her in the eye, and even held her hand. Her spirit was soaring now, and all she wanted to do was swim until her fin ached. Such was the extent of her happiness. She had to find a way to see him again.

Diving further down, she finally came to a crack in the reef wall. The mermaid reached her hand into the crack and took out one of her greatest treasures: the flat, black device that the boy had dropped.

Her reflection smiled back at her as she cradled it in her palm. Then she swam back toward her home in the most secret part of the ocean, where only myths lived.

If anyone else knew where she had been last night, she would be cast out. Humans were supposed to be myths, warnings and horror stories told to merchildren to keep them away from the shores, to make them obedient. They were not to be meddled with. No one was to approach them. No one was to go to the surface. Certainly, no one was to rescue one. And even more absolutely, no one was supposed to be seen.

Surely one of her sisters would know a way to unite her with her beloved. The trick was to be discreet, and to find a sister that she trusted completely.

She stopped swimming, finding her idea becoming more and more dangerous the more she thought about it. She looked over the reef, over the open ocean, and then down at her own fin. This was the only life she had ever known. Her sisters were the only family she had. Swimming, for the longest time, had been the only thing that had ever given her joy and peace and purpose. These were things that were absolute, things that could never be replaced. To take them away would kill her.

A distance away, she could hear her sisters’ songs. They were celebrating her homecoming, sensing her even from far away. But she thought about the human prince again.

She thought about the way she felt panicked and happy at the same time when his skin touched hers. She thought of the way his eyes rested on her and how he spoke to her. She thought about how his body felt against hers when she rescued him, and she remembered how relieved she had been to see him alive.

Perhaps this ocean was everything she knew, but something changed about that when she first saw the human boy in the moonlight that night when she was stranded in the inlet. She remembered how magical the event was. Oh, if she could just be with him, she thought, she’d be happier than she could ever be under the sea. Oh, if only he were a merman or she a human.

Hearing her sisters calling, she opened and let out a song of her own.

All mermaids sang songs, but a siren’s call was even more extraordinary; it could lead a man to his death, or it could call him back to life. And the little mermaid was the only siren in her family’s part of the ocean. But to her sisters, their songs were forms of communication. They were greetings and farewells, compliments and insults, and everything else in-between. They were magic; they were beautiful and they were dangerous, too.

Finally arriving at her deep sea home, her sisters swarmed around her in welcome, flooding her with questions about the previous night. She answered their songs only half-heartedly, thinking about what she could do to help herself. Seeing her worried, her sisters smoothed out the wrinkles on her forehead and playfully pulled her hair. All the while, the little mermaid was thinking about what she had to do to see her beloved once more.

What was it like to be human? Surely it couldn’t be that bad, since many times she saw humans smiling and laughing, having a good time. Surely legs weren’t as disgusting and awkward as they looked. Surely walking and running were as easy as swimming. She looked at her sisters, wondering what they would do without her, how they would survive without her protective magic. Surely she could leave her home in pursuit of love. If only for a little while.

The solution she came up was forbidden, but to her, she felt it absolutely necessary. Tonight, she would pay a visit to the sea witch.

“Turn off the TV,” Yixing said to his little sister as he pulled a shirt over his chest. “Do your homework. Mom and Dad and I will be back later. Don’t open the door for anyone.”

“I don’t think the teachers are that concerned about homework at this point,” Mei called out, ignoring her brother’s command to turn off the television. Yixing scoffed at her as he pulled out half of a sandwich from the refrigerator. It was the 24^th day of the aftermath of the tsunami. The town was still rebuilding itself from the ground up. The entire work force had to be mobilized, and the people were still healing. By now, the death toll was at 203 people, and more were being counted each day.

Yixing, for the past three weeks, had immersed himself in volunteering with the relief force. When he discovered that Luhan had gone missing on the day that the wave hit, he’d been a nervous, distraught mess. The fact that his friend was alive was an utter miracle, and Yixing was hell-bent on finding more miraculous survival stories.

Today, however, he and his friends, and his parents, oceanography researchers, were reacting to another natural disaster: the oil spill.

Luhan’s father owned an oil company in town, and the earthquake had devastated the oil platform by the eastern shore. Almost 150 tons of oil had spilled into the surrounding ocean, risking hundreds of shore side species and livelihoods of many more people.

After stuffing the sandwich into his mouth, Yixing dressed in his hazmat suit. Kyungsoo and Chanyeol, members of their relief team showed up at the house minutes later. After them, Victoria, a researcher who worked with his parents, arrived with relief plans typed out and ready for them. Soon, everyone was packed in the car and ready to help the environment.

When the team – consisting of Yixing, Kyungsoo, Chanyeol, Victoria, the Zhang couple, and about two hundred other volunteers – arrived at the shore, they found the beach completely black. The stench was unbearable, and the volunteers all took this opportunity to put their face masks on, although it wasn’t much help in purifying the air.

“Looks like we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Yixing’s father said. Looking out in the distance, he saw a few cars that were already parked near the water. A small team of scientists in hazmat suits were already working near the coastline. The older man crinkled his eyebrows at the group. He didn’t recall ever sending for such help. Yixing’s father walked forward to speak with them. Yixing watched silent words being exchanged. The leader of the hazmat group looked toward them. Seeing the relief efforts, the leader nodded, shook his father’s hand, and the hazmat group quickly finished and fled back into their cars. They seemed to be government workers judging by the seal on their car doors. Yixing wondered what on earth they had to do here, but as soon as they were out of the way, Mr. Zhang got down to business.

Putting his own face mask on, he walked out in front of the crowd, and began to bark orders at everyone. He divided everyone into teams with different responsibilities such as the boom team which was in charge of laying out the booms that would help contain spill. Others were part of the skimming team, the broom-and-mop team, the bucket team, the dumping team, and others were in charge of locating and saving at-risk wildlife.

Yixing looked out over the black damage and sighed. He’d been assigned to the broom-and-mop team which was in charge of skimming away the oil that had washed onto the shore. The day was looking bleak, and the black sea only made it seem far more miserable. The beach had once been the pride of the town, and now, covered in black muck, it just became another symbol of the town’s dying morale and blackened hopes.

Yixing’s father suddenly called out to him: “Son!” he yelled from a distance away. Yixing stopped sweeping for a moment and approached his father.

“Did you see the other hazmat workers?” Yixing asked, and his father nodded.

“They were probably just responding to the oil spill, as we are,” he answered. Yixing shrugged.

“It just seemed a little weird to me.”

“Forget them for now. There are more pressing matters. Get Chanyeol and Kyungsoo and the car! Scout the southern end of the beach and come back with a damage report.”

“Got it!” Yixing answered, dropping the broom and running off to find Chanyeol and Kyungsoo, both of whom had been assigned to the animal rescue team. They were at the edge of the water, helping affected pelicans. Receiving their orders, the three of them got into the open-topped jeep and sped down toward the southern end of the beach, close to the Lu family’s mansion.

“Funny thing to me,” Chanyeol said as the he drove the jeep over the blackened sand. “Is that this whole oil spill happened as a result of the Lu family’s oil company, but none of them are here to clean up after their own mess.”

“Luhan’s in the hospital,” Yixing said, nudging Chanyeol. “He couldn’t come out here and scoop oil even if he wanted to. Plus I’d say it’s more of the earthquake’s fault than his.”

“Yeah,” Chanyeol said. “But what about his old man?”

“He donates money from behind his oil-free desk,” Kyungsoo said with a laugh, and Yixing scoffed, relieved that his two friends could find something to joke about even amidst this disaster. At least their spirits hadn’t been dampened. In the first section of the Southern beach, Kyungsoo had been dropped off, and Chanyeol and Yixing sped away towards the second location. Upon reaching it, Chanyeol jumped out and Yixing followed.

“You sure you don’t want a ride to your location” Chanyeol asked, turning off the car’s ignition. Yixing shook his head and waved his walkie-talkie in the air.

“I can walk the rest of the way,” Yixing said, turning and walking towards the rocky inlet near the Lu Estate. “Besides,” he called over his shoulder. “It’s a beautiful day for a stroll by the beach, don’t you think?”

Chanyeol laughed and proceeded with his damage report. Yixing walked the rest of the way to the rocky inlet by Luhan’s house.

He and Luhan used to play there when they were young boys, or at least they did until Luhan’s nanny tattled on them and their mothers declared the inlet off-limits, a dangerous place for them to play. How dangerous could it be? His friend had been found alive and well just weeks ago in that very place.

When he reached the inlet, he took a deep breath. The first earthquake had saved the house from much damage, but the road surrounding the inlet had been wrecked. The aftershock quakes caused a section of the cliff road to fall into the inlet, making it wider. The ten bicycle racks that lined the road had fallen in as well, filling the inlet with bikes and oil and lots of pollution.

It was a mess.

A buzz from the walkie-talkie prompted Yixing for his report, and he spoke into the mouth piece: “It’s a landfill over here,” he said. “I’m by that inlet under Luhan’s house. The road cracked and fell into the water. The bicycle racks fell in, and it’s just oil and mud everywhere. We’re going to need a lot more volunteers.”

Yixing waited for his father’s confirmation over the walkie-talkie, and then heard Kyungsoo and Chanyeol on the other end talking as well. Smirking at their ridiculous conversation, Yixing looked once more over the damage. The inlet had once been a beautiful reminder of the ocean’s strength. Now it was reduced to a giant garbage dump. There used to be a family of starfish here. Yixing doubted anything could survive there for a long time.

He was about to turn and leave when some movement caught his eye. He thought it might be an octopus or something with thin, long appendages, but when he looked closer, what he saw instead horrified him even more: fingers.

Yixing grabbed his walkie-talkie and switched it on, yelling into the mouthpiece.

“Chanyeol!” he yelled into it. “Get Kyungsoo and bring the car over here fast, I found someone! And bring wire-cutters!” Then, leaving the walkie-talking someplace dry and safe, Yixing latched onto the edge of the sloping inlet cliffs and slowly climbed down to the bottom of it. His heart started beating faster and adrenaline shot through his veins. Whoever this person was, they were buried deep in the thick oil, and trapped under the bicycles. Yixing jumped down, landing knee-deep in the black oil. It splashed onto his face, but all he was thinking about was the poor victim caught in the gunk.

He grunted as he pushed the bicycles off the person. “Hold on!” he yelled. “Just stay with me! I’m gonna get you out!” Yixing wrestled with the bicycles some more, sinking deeper into the oil as he did. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo finally arrived at the top of the cliff. The two boys called down to Yixing.

“What have you got there?” Kyungsoo asked, and he and Chanyeol jumped into action, climbing down the cliff themselves. Chanyeol wielded the wire-cutters. They finally arrived at Yixing’s side.

“I think his leg is caught on something, I can’t pull him out!” Yixing said. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo rushed over to where he stood, both of them also knee-deep in the oil.

“Hold this!” Yixing said, and the two boys pulled the bicycles out from over the victim, tossing them aside. Chanyeol held one bicycle up while Yixing and Kyungsoo grabbed a hold of the person’s arms. On the count of three, they pulled the person out as far as they could.

“It’s a girl!” Kyungsoo yelled, catching sight of long, oil-pasted hair and the curves of her chest.

“Chanyeol, her leg is caught on that bike next to your foot,” Yixing said, and Chanyeol got to work. He tossed the bicycle aside and looked down at the bike Yixing meant. He put the wire-cutters in one hand, and lifted the bicycle with the other. But instead of a leg or pants caught on the bike, the three boys found one long, slimy, black fish tail, caught completely in the spokes of the bike-tire. All three were speechless.

“What the hell is that--?” Kyungsoo said.

“She’s alive,” Yixing said. “Her chest is moving, she’s breathing. She’s still alive. Chanyeol, hurry, cut her lose.”

Chanyeol threw him a confused expression and looked back down at the large fin connected to the girl’s hips. Whatever this girl was, she certainly was not like any creature he’d ever cleaned at an oil spill relief camp. “We don’t even know what it is!” Chanyeol said.

“Don’t have to,” Yixing said, taking the cutters from Chanyeol. “She needs help, so we’re going to help her.” He positioned the jaws of the wire-cutters over the spokes and used all of his strength to cut through them. Finally loose, Kyungsoo pulled on the girl one last time. The tail came loose with a few tears here and there. Bright red mixed in with the black as blood spilled from the fin.

“Pull her out!” Chanyeol said, and Kyungsoo pulled the girl further out of the oily mess.

“She’s out!” Kyungsoo said. “What do we do now?” The shorter boy looked over the strange girl, feeling his breath catch as his eyes skimmed over the tail which replaced her lower body. “She’s a fish!” Kyungsoo yelled.

Chanyeol and Yixing climbed out from the oily muck and the pile of bikes. Their hazmat suits were stained black from the waist down.

“Let’s get her in the car,” Yixing said. “We’ll drive back to our facility.”

“To our facility?” Kyungsoo asked. “There’s no one there! How are we going to help her with just the three of us? None of us are doctors! We don’t even know what she is. How do we know she’s not dangerous?”

Yixing shrugged, but positioned himself to carry the strange girl back to the jeep. “Does she look dangerous to you?” he asked. “She’s knocked out. She can’t hurt us. She needs to get cleaned up. Come on, help me.”

Kyungsoo sighed and relented, positioning himself under her arms to help lift her up. Chanyeol sighed. “Well, can she sit in the trunk, then?” Chanyeol asked, lifting the tail and helping them carry her to the car. “She’s gonna track oil all over the leather seats.”

Author's Commentary: May or may not change this chapter entirely. Idk, I'm just not super fond of the writing here. Sorry for cheesiness, lol.