It was in the middle of a cold afternoon rain shower when the distress signal came. Jinyu tightened her grip on the side of the van when there was a sudden change of terrain as Mr. Zhang drove the car directly onto the beach. There was a small crowd of people already gathered, and a flock of volunteers rushed back and forth across the sand. 

Beside her, Mei zipped up her jacket and pulled the hood over her hair. The stronger rain had stopped, but there was still a light drizzle and cold wind. Jinyu watched the outside intently, knitting her brows together as she tried to understand what was happening. In her bones, she could sense that something was terribly wrong that day. But no one had said anything clearly since the call for help came.

The van stopped when they were closer to the water, and everyone threw the doors open and jumped onto the sand. Unwilling to be left alone, Jinyu removed her own seat belt and followed Yixing out. She zipped up her own jacket as she ran behind him. Jinyu looked around the beach; the wind screeched like static on the television while the ocean rumbled, angrily. Frozen shoots of anxiety shot up her spine as she drank in the scene. When she finally faced the water, her heart seized up to discover what waited on the sand: whales, whole pods of them, lined up side-by-side.

Jinyu couldn’t feel the bite of the wind through her jacket anymore. Neither did she feel the way the raindrops bullied her as she walked toward the water. Her mind was reeling and her insides seizing up. A striking disillusionment washed over her. 

Yixing stopped running a moment to turn and face her. He his chapped lips before raising his voice to speak over the wind.

“Stay here!” he yelled, and Jinyu’s eyes darted away from the whales to his face. Her terror was still apparent. “You can’t go near the water or it’s all over! Just wait by the car!”

Jinyu watched his mouth move, but didn’t understand a word he said. In fact, she understood almost nothing at that exact moment. But her eyes grazed over the pods of whales on the beach, and it seemed at that moment that it was already over. Everything was ending soon; everything would collapse in on itself and disappear. The velvet black of the whales signaled the impending end that she was about to face very soon. 

She started to hyperventilate suddenly. She knew these whales. She’d swam with them in the ocean not long ago. She knew them from seasonal migrations; she knew their songs, their shapes, she knew them. How could this have happened? How could such powerful, majestic creatures become so helpless suddenly? She took quiet steps forward, her heartbeat and the sound of the ocean pulling her forward slowly. Jinyu stretched her arm out and when she was finally close enough, she pressed her palm flat against the tail fluke of one whale.

The sounds that were passed to her through its skin were unbearable. It was the grinding sound of agony and suffering, of horrendous pain. It was a sharp, desperate cry for help. It was savage and cruel and heart-wrenching. Soreness settled into her hands upon hearing their pain. Jinyu’s throat squeezed up and she couldn’t breathe. These creatures were in so much pain, she could cry for them. 

Rushes of color dashed past her on either side. Volunteers were digging out trenches around the animals, keeping their skin dampened with saltwater. Still more waded in the water, supporting one or two that could be rescued. Jinyu kept her watch on the whale under her palms. If it had a voice, it would be screaming out like a tortured victim. Jinyu wanted to do something or say anything she could to save all of these creatures. But her legs refused to move; she was petrified. 

“Jinyu!” Yixing grabbed her sleeve and pulled her aside. “I told you to wait further on the beach!”

Jinyu’s blank eyes looked at him but didn’t hear what he said. Yixing furrowed his brows at her.

“Jinyu!” he yelled again, louder this time, and Jinyu gasped in reply, finally knocked out of her trance.

“I have to help them!” she yelled.

“No, not you,” Yixing answered. “Stay on the beach; we’ll help them.”

“No!” she yelled, grabbing onto him before he could leave her. “They’re all dying here! I have to do something!”

“Jinyu, please – ”

“I cannot stand here and just let them all die!” Jinyu’s voice cracked in the middle of her sentence, and Yixing’s heart clenched up at the sound. But he forced himself to be firm.

“Wait by the van,” he said again. Jinyu swallowed and her face turned into a determined stare.

“No,” she said. Jinyu turned and made a move to run toward the squad and lend her help, but Yixing caught her around the waist and pushed her backwards. Jinyu stumbled a bit, but once she regained her balance, she tried once more to struggle against him. Yixing held her back, apologizing as he did.

“Let me go!” Jinyu said. “I must do something!”

Jinyu broke away from his grip in a darting movement and tried to run toward the water. Yixing’s frantic voice called her back, however.

“If you go into the ocean,” Yixing yelled, “You’re going to change back into what you were!”

Jinyu stopped just before the toes of her galoshes could touch the water as a wave washed upon the sound. The groaning of the whales could still be heard amongst the screech of the wind, and Yixing’s words hung there, too. Jinyu clenched her eyes shut. Even in her first few days as a human, she had never felt more helpless or pathetic. She’d never felt the heavy hand of fate crushing her the way it was now. She heard Yixing’s footsteps crossing the sand toward her. 

He raised a hand, intending to place it on her shoulder. But before the movement could be completed, Jinyu turned and fled back to the van as she’d been told. Yixing watched her retreating form with a heavy heart before looking down at the black whale she’d been . It was bleeding from the ears, and it was dead. 

It was close to evening by the time the rescue task was finished. One whale carcass was loaded onto a pick-up truck and delivered to the Zhangs’ facility for further study. 

“Bleeding from the ears,” Yixing’s father said aloud when he examined the dead whale’s body, noting the crimson river flowing from the sides of its head. “Some noise must have echoed through the water and ruptured their ear drums, scared them into the shallows.” 

“Like what?” Yixing asked. In the back of his mind, he was thinking about Jinyu’s sisters. Sirens were supposed to have deadly songs, but could they have done something like this? 

“Like… a sonar,” his father answered, “But there isn’t a military base in a 100 kilometers of here. It’s suspicious. We’re going to report our findings to the Institute; there’ll be explanations there about this.”

Yixing nodded. “What about the other whales? The ones on the beach?”

“An official came to the beach to settle the matter,” his mother answered, tucking away a pair of surgical scissors. “I’m sure the Institute wants to study them as well.”

The couple asked for a few minutes alone to conduct their own investigations, and Yixing nodded as he left their laboratory. Even though the rain stopped about an hour ago, the air and the earth still retained the scent of petrichor.  He crossed the courtyard and pushed open the back door that led into his house.

Mei was watching TV while doing homework as per usual. She was wearing a warm sweater, too; autumn always brought colder weather in this part of the country. Yixing rummaged around the fridge in search of something to eat, and he smiled seeing a familiar little box on the second shelf. His name was printed on it it and there was still a delivery receipt stuck to it. It came around 9 AM, while he and his family were out saving whales. Tradition had to be put aside this year, he guessed. Still, he was happy that his family hadn’t forgotten despite the drama of the day.

Yixing reached out and took the little box into his hand and closed the fridge. With everyone else occupied, he guessed he’d have to enjoy the little dessert by himself. But then he wondered where Jinyu had run off to. 

Following his instincts, Yixing shed his shoes and walked onto the carpeted floor of the hallway that led to the piano room. He pushed the door open slowly, and sure enough, Jinyu sat on edge of the piano bench, resting her elbow against the side of the instrument. 

Yixing swung the door open and let it creak a bit to signal his arrival. Jinyu didn’t move from her spot, so he took the liberty of sitting down beside her, placing his phone on the music rack next to hers and the little box beside that. Jinyu was staring at the numbers on her screen, which read 2-4-6 now. Did 119 days pass by already? 

“So,” he said. Jinyu didn’t look up at him. He cleared his throat. “What… What’s up?”

Jinyu turned her head slightly to look at him blankly. Yixing in his cheeks. 

“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry about yelling at you earlier. But you get why I had to, right? I couldn’t let you go into the ocean because you’d turn back into a mermaid and there were too many people around and – ”

“What’s going to happen?” Jinyu asked in a whisper. Yixing raised his brows at her.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said. Jinyu’s eyes were turned to him, but they seemed to be looking at something further away from him. She sighed.

“I have just been thinking about… about whales, and humans, and about mermaids, too. And about myself and you and everyone else that I have come to know.”

Yixing nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said. “What have you been thinking, then?”

Jinyu straightened up and bit her bottom lip. “People try so hard,” she said, “And try to do so many things and be so many things thinking that their lives will be better if they do so. But in the end, we just disappear. We just die, and everything we did in our lives doesn’t matter to us anymore. It came to me when I was connecting with the whale on the beach. I knew that whale, and he was so powerful and so beautiful, but in its last moments…”

Jinyu paused a moment and touched the keys without pushing them. “Well, there was nothing powerful or beautiful about it.”

Yixing listened quietly, and Jinyu continued. 

“So, that made me think of myself and all the things that I’ve risked to come here. And if it ends badly, I’ll just die and everything I risked just stops mattering and… well, what is the point?”

She turned to him, and Yixing wondered if she was going to cry again. But this time, she just stared at him like she wanted a real answer, one that was going to make everything make sense again. But he wasn’t sure what answer that might be.

“Because we are born, we also have to die,” Jinyu said, “But if the only reason to start something is to end it, then why start it all?”

She suddenly looked again at the blinking numbers on the phone screen. Two-hundred and forty-six days seems like a long time, but 119 had already rushed by like a passing night and the end was already in sight. Not taking on this mission would not have saved her from death, of course; but her mistake in making this deal surely speeded things up. 

“Having existentialist thoughts, are you?” Yixing asked. He the piano keys as well. “I have them sometimes, too. And what you said is true. But, Jinyu, if you think that the only reason to live is to die, then you’re wrong. If you’re thinking about that whale, even if there wasn’t anything powerful about its death, it was powerful while it was alive, and it’s that part that matters anyway.”

He swallowed and stretched his fingers a bit. “There are still plenty of ways to make even just 246 days a worthwhile piece of time. And you do that by… forgetting that you’ve got 246 days until you leave and thinking about it like 246 days to stay.”

Yixing stopped a moment and watched her expression change. She straightened up on the piano bench and stared at the scribbles on the paper on the music rack. Yixing let out a sigh.

“Even if you think you made a mistake by becoming human,” he said to her, “There are still plenty of people who are happy you’re here. People who are happy you were born.”

Jinyu looked over at him and gave a gentle smile. There was always just something about his voice that was soothing. She supposed that deep in her heart, she was hoping he’d coming into the piano room to comfort her, even if she hadn’t planned on saying anything at the time. Yixing gave her a wide smile in return, and then he looked at the music rack, noticing his unfinished song and the little box from the fridge. 

“Um,” he said, reaching forward and grabbing the box. “When is your birthday?”

“My birthday?” she repeated. He nodded.

“Yeah, like, what day of the year were you born?”

Jinyu pressed her lips together. “I… I don’t know,” he said and he laughed.

“You don’t know your own birthday?” he asked. 

“Well… I had no way to keep track of the days.”

Yixing in his cheeks again. “Oh,” he said, and he smacked himself, thinking that the answer should have been more obvious to him. Jinyu winced a little, and she felt a tad bit stupid to not know the day of her own birth. She racked her brain for an answer.

“It must have been in the winter, though,” she answered. “I remember the water was colder and the nights were longer. I was born in the Northern Sea. The waves are stronger there, too.”

“By the Northern Sea?” Yixing said. “I used to go camping there as a kid. With Luhan, actually. That’s kind of a funny coincidence. Nichkhun is from there, too. So, winter baby, huh? I guess that means yours is coming up in a few months. But, um… do you know what today is?”

Jinyu looked confused. She knew that it was October 7^th, but no one had told her that anything special was occurring today. She slowly shook her head. Yixing smirked and brought up the little box from the fridge. He opened it slowly and handed it to her to see.

“Today is my birthday,” he said. 

Jinyu looked down into the box and found herself looking at a small, white cake with strawberries around the edge of it. The words Happy 22^nd Birthday Yixing were written in red icing across the surface. Jinyu smiled. 

Despite not knowing her own birthday, she hoped that something like this would happen for her someday, too. She foolishly began to think that maybe the whole point of life is to collect birthdays just so one could receive cakes with their names on it. Like a little child, she thought that if it were that way, she wouldn’t mind at all. 

Although the day had been littered with death for much of its time, Jinyu thought about how appropriate it was that Yixing should have been born on this day 22 years ago. She couldn’t read very well yet, but she could recognize the way his name was written. And she looked fondly at the letters that spelled his name on the cake and thought about how happy she was that he’d been born as well. If not for him, she might not be here as well. 

“Usually, my family would watch me eat this in the morning while they sing,” he explained, “But it’s kind of late now, and everyone is busy. That’s okay, though. I think I’m getting too old for it anyway.”

Yixing smiled. “I was going to eat it on my own in my room but… you can have it.”

“Me?” Jinyu asked. “But today’s not my – ”

“Yeah, well,” he said, “Think of it as a teaser. Something to look forward to when your birthday comes around. Bet they don’t have stuff like this ocean, do they?”

Jinyu laughed. “No, we don’t,” she answered. “Thank you.”

Yixing turned back to the piano and began positioning his fingers on the keyboard. “Normally, people sing ‘happy birthday’ on people’s birthdays. But personally, I think that song is kind of awkward. And besides, I want to play something else for you.”

“Like what?” she asked.

Without answering, Yixing began to rearrange the papers on the music rack. When they were laid out neatly, he cleared his throat and began to play the song he’d been writing. Jinyu listened intently. It started out as a simple tune on a minor key, but when the verse and the chorus came, it swelled out like the waters on the night of a high moon. About three-quarters of the way in, Yixing stopped, reaching the end of the page.

“It’s not completely finished yet,” he said. “And I have to write lyrics, still.”

“It sounds like a sad song,” Jinyu answered. “But it sounds happy, too. Does that make sense?”

Yixing smiled. “Music can be like that sometimes,” he answered. “I guess life, in general, can be like that, too.”

Jinyu looked at the scribbles and notes on the music sheet. She followed the ink and the bars down to the last set of notes that he had scribbled toward the bottom of the page. Such a beautiful song deserved a resolution, just as any wanderer on a journey desires to reach their home. She hoped her story had an ending.