“No, no, you use the walker to support your weight!” Kyungsoo said. The three boys had driven over, along with Victoria, to the nearby relief center where Victoria was assigned to the medical station as a volunteer nurse. They had picked up Mei along the way, as well.

Victoria gave the three boys the explicit order to teach Jinyu how to walk. They had led her over to a spacious area underneath some trees where there was a low brick wall she could use to support herself. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo helped her to stand while Yixing brought the grandma walker closer to her.

Jinyu stretched her arms out to grip the sides of the walker. With it, she could stand on her own and take a few tentative steps. Teaching her to move the walker forward and walk at the same time was a little trickier. Moving two limbs at the same time was hard enough without having to worry about pushing the strange contraption forward each time she took a step. Jinyu ended up on the ground more than once or twice. She let out a low gasp when her knee fell against a stone. Yixing winced seeing the blood staining the knee of her jeans.

Chanyeol and Kyungsoo tried more times to get her to walk with the walker. But it soon became apparent that its awkwardness was due to the fact that Chanyeol’s grandmother had been a much shorter woman. The boys knelt down to see if they could adjust the height of the walker, but when half an hour passed by without any success at all, Chanyeol pushed his hair back in frustration.

“You know what? this,” he said, grabbing the walker and hurling it over the brick wall and down to a ravine. “Thanks for nothing, Grandma!”

They resorted to supporting her under her arms while she took baby steps forward. Yixing draped one arm over his shoulders while Kyungsoo took the other side; Chanyeol decided to lead at the front, seeing as Yixing and Kyungsoo were closer to each other’s height.

Jinyu blushed a little at the contact, but only because she felt embarrassed at being such a high-maintenance person. It was obvious that these humans had so many other things to do, but her helplessness was keeping them from their work. She tried as best as she could to learn quickly. Walking was not only awkward, but slightly painful as well. Each step felt like a whale being dropped on her legs; she was not used to carrying weight like this. She watched the boys’ examples during breaks when they would walk back and forth in front of her.

“You have to bring your knees out, first,” Yixing explained while doing a slow-motioned walk for her observation. He pointed at his knee cap, showing how it came forward first. “Then you swing the rest of that leg out, and you should hit the ground with your heel. At the same time, you push forward with the ball of your foot that’s in the back. And repeat. Got it? It’s kind of a push-and-pull, leaning forward type of motion.”

Chanyeol had just started to explain the mechanics of running when Mei walked over to where they sat.

“They’re trying to unload the truck of food by the entrance,” she said. “They need some help unloading.”

“Oh,” Kyungsoo said, slowly getting up from his seat. “Tell them we’ll be there.” Chanyeol and Kyungsoo got up and began to follow Mei toward the truck that needed unloading. Yixing stayed behind and instructed Jinyu not to go anywhere. But before he could leave, he couldn’t help but notice the blood stain on the jeans. With a sigh, he knelt before her and took out his wallet.

“You know, Jinyu,” he said, and she turned her attention to him, hearing her name. He took a band-aid from his wallet and held it up for her to see with a smirk. “I have a feeling that this is going to become a habit of yours.”

Yixing looked up at her, seemingly to ask permission to roll up her pants leg, but Jinyu did it herself. He unwrapped the band-aid and placed it over the cut. “Getting scratched up and me waiting around with band-aids, I mean,” he continued and laughed to himself.

The boy’s smile made Jinyu feel a little bit better. Yixing poked a purple patch on her skin, which made her flinch a bit.

“Looks like you have a bruise, now, too,” he said. She’d never felt as awkward or useless under the sea, but learning how to walk made her feel like an incompetent child who needed to be watched 24/7. It was comforting to know that this boy didn’t seem to blame her for anything. Once the band-aid was perfectly secure, Jinyu rolled the pant legs down again and Yixing stood up. Looking down at her, he could tell that there would be many more tiring walking lessons like today.

“Can I ask you a question?” he said, and Jinyu looked at him again. “Where did you get that cell phone?”

Jinyu squinted her eyes at first, not knowing what he meant by cell phone. But once Yixing saw her struggling to understand, he took his own cell phone from his pocket and held it up to her as example and then pointed to the one in her hands.

“Cell phone?” he said. “It seems a little weird that you would have one even though you’re – ” he stopped to make sure no one else was listening. “…a mermaid. Where did it come from? Just picked it up somewhere?”

Jinyu held her breath and stiffened her gaze. Friendly or not, she couldn’t be sure if she could trust the boy with the terms of her spell just yet.

“And what about the weird numbers?” Yixing asked. Jinyu wrapped her fingers more firmly around the little black device. Yixing sighed.

“Okay, fine,” he said. “Don’t tell. We’ll get to that later. Now tell this: how come I can hear your voice even though you don’t talk?”

Jinyu remained still for a very long time, and Yixing began to lose hope that she’d ever answer any of his questions. But before he could turn and walk away, she held up an open palm to him.

“Yes?” he prompted, but she only held up her hand to him some more. Curious, Yixing leaned forward and tentatively pressed his pal against hers.

This is how we communicate, she said, and Yixing raised his eyebrows at her, feeling amazed.

“To each other?” he asked, and she titled her head.

Yes, she responded. But mostly to creatures who do not sing. Like whales. Or humans.

Yixing drew his hand from her and just stared, feeling spellbound by the new information. So the voice he could hear in his head when she touched was indeed her voice.

“So, if you do have a voice,” he said. “How come you don’t use it? Can you speak at all?”

Jinyu stared at first, but eventually nodded slowly. Yixing shrugged. “Well?”

She let out a breath and then extended her hand to him again. Seeing that she wanted to tell him something, Yixing reached out and took her hand as though for a handshake. Once more, other sounds muffled until he could hear only her voice.

I do not know how, ye, or at least not very well, she said. I haven’t had practice. Under the sea, I never had a chance to speak. Song is more effective for communication with my sisters.

“But what’s the difference?” Yixing asked. “Singing is just like talking only with more octaves.”

Jinyu shook her head. That is not how our singing is. That is definitely not how my singing was.

Yixing’s jaw twitched a little. He could see that it would take a lot of coaxing to get her to speak up. But in a way, he felt proud of himself for being able to get this information from her. Not Chanyeol and Kyungsoo, not even Victoria, had this much luck with her.

“But you understand us, don’t you?” he asked. “Just mimic what we say. It’s a lot easier than this touch-speaking thing we’re doing. What if you get in trouble and we can’t hold hands? What then?”

Jinyu stiffened. I am not going to get into trouble. Yixing looked down at the bloody jeans and just laughed.

“I bet you will, someday,” he said. “Just try it once: speak up.”

Jinyu took her hand back from him and sat back. She looked away from, still not quite ready to take on the challenge of learning human language and communication. She hadn’t even mastered human movement, yet. Yixing looked like he was about to press the matter further, but before he had the chance the voices of Chanyeol and Kyungsoo called him over to help with the unloading.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, standing up and walking towards the other boys and the truck. Jinyu let out a long sigh, glad to finally be away from his pressing questions. The humans were kind to her, but mermaid things, like the mechanics of a mermaid song, were not something she was quite comfortable sharing with them yet. Mermaid songs weren’t anything like talking at all; they weren’t made by the voice, they were made by the heart. And being the only siren in the swarm, her song was made of magic… or at least it used to be when she was still a siren.

Jinyu turned around and looked at the beach. It was still slightly black with oil, but it was better than previous days. She wondered how her sisters were holding up without their protector, without their siren to sing the dangers away, to lure passing boats away from their home. Her heart ached thinking about them. She remembered how scared she had been her first night on land without her sisters sleeping beside her. She felt cold, alone, and vulnerable. She imagined that without her, they must be feeling the same way. Sometimes at night, she could hear them very faintly over the sea.

But love was a noble cause, was it not? Jinyu hugged her legs to her chest again. This was a topic that plagued her often: what if she couldn’t get the boy she saved to love her? Her own soul wasn’t the only thing at risk; her family’s safety was being jeopardized, too. She felt confident about her ability to get the boy to love her, but without her siren magic, she was less confident. The first few days on land caused her assurance to dwindle as well. This would be a lot harder than she thought. For one thing, she had no idea where to find him.

She had to find a human she could trust here on land. That was the only way she would be able to find the prince and find out what his name was and eventually get him to be as in love with her and she was with him. Jinyu wondered where he was right now, and whether or not he was safe. Her heart fluttered whenever she thought about how his hand felt over hers that day she rescued him from the wave. He looked so beautiful, then, his breathing was even and his face was peaceful. She remembered the way he looked when she first spotted him above the cliffs on that moonlit night. She wished that she could be with him soon.

A half hour passed and none of the male humans had returned. Jinyu was growing bored. But she did spy the younger girl human a distance away. It was Yixing’s sister, whose name she couldn’t recall at the moment. The little girl was walking past some of the ruined buildings, handing out candy to younger kids.

Jinyu watched Mei intently, taking note of the way she walked, too. Unlike Victoria, whose manner of walking conveyed a more feminine undertone, Mei walked in much the same manner as her brother. Mei and her brother seemed like the more complicated characters among the family of humans who had taken her in; Jinyu sensed that she was lonely, somehow.

Nearby, some men were working on reconstructing the ruined homes, or at least salvaging the ones that were worth fixing. Others were completely destroyed and would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. Jinyu’s eyes locked on a single wooden beam suspended high on the rooftop of a crumbling house. It was unsteady and loose, and anytime now, it was going to fall to the ground. Jinyu traced the beam’s path should it fall. Her face paled realizing it would land on Yixing’s sister if it did.

Like a psychic prediction, the men working on that particular house struck the beam too hard, and it came loose on one end. They began to yell downward to the kids, telling them to run. But Mei was too startled to really register anything that was being yelled. Jinyu, grabbed onto the top of the brick wall and pulled herself to stand up. And even though she could barely walk just minutes ago, she sprinted toward the girl, just as the beam began to crumble down.

Hearing the rapid footsteps, Mei turned around in time to see Jinyu racing towards her. The other kids had already left. She furrowed her brow and prepared to ask Jinyu what she wanted and how she was able to run all of a sudden when the mermaid tackled her. A split second after that, the heavy crash and thud of a 200-pound wooden beam falling to the ground rippled out, sending gusts of dust blowing upward and Mei let out a shrill scream that prompted every volunteer’s attention. Everyone came running.

“What happened?”

“I heard someone scream?”

“What’s going on?”

“Oh my goodness! What happened to this house?”

“Are you alright down there?”

The ash and dust that billowed upward from the beam’s fall stuck onto Mei and Jinyu’s clothing who both had collapsed to the floor next to the heavy beam. A few startled children had started to cry. Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, and Yixing came running as well.

“Holy . What happened here?” Kyungsoo said, widening his eyes. Yixing jumped into action, running over the beam and over to where Mei had fallen to the ground.

“Mei, you okay?” Yixing asked, extending his arms and helping her to stand. After ensuring that aside from a few cuts and bruises that his sister was unhurt, he started to raise his voice at her. “What the hell were you doing? I told you not to mess with the construction sites! What did I say?”

“I wasn’t messing with construction sites; I was entertaining the little kids!” Mei complained. “Jinyu pushed me out of the way.”

At the mention of Jinyu, Yixing looked down at her. Kyungsoo rushed over to help her stand up. Chanyeol whistled in amazement as he traced the path from the fallen beam back to the brick wall where they left her.

“I guess she figured out this walking thing on her own,” Chanyeol said and then he smiled at Jinyu. Kyungsoo helped Jinyu to sit down on a ledge where he inspected the band-aid covering the cut which opened up again. Mr. and Mrs. Zhang then came running. At the sight of the fallen beam, Yixing’s mother nearly went hysterical, running over to Mei and patting her down to make sure she was perfectly fine. The construction workers began apologizing to Yixing’s father, who then told them to stop and take a break for now.

“Are you hurt, baby?” Mrs. Zhang asked Mei, squeezing her cheeks.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Mei answered.

“Yixing, what happened? I told you to watch over her!” their mother said.

“I was helping them unload the truck – ” he explained. “I mean its fine. Jinyu pushed her out of the way, she’s not hurt.”

“It most definitely is not fine, Yixing,” their mother said. She continued on, talking about how responsibility should be a bigger concern to him as the older brother. Once she was finished yelling at him and the commotion began to die down, Mrs. Zhang turned to Jinyu.

“And you!” she said, causing the mermaid to tighten, thinking that she was going to get similar treatment. But instead, the kindly woman knelt down in front of her, taking her hands into her own with teary eyes.

“Thank you, Jinyu!” she said. “I can’t even imagine what would have happened if you hadn’t been there. Thank you so much for saving Mei. From now on, you are always welcome in our home. It’s the least we can do until you find yourself a place to stay. I know most of the apartments were totaled in the earthquake, so you go right ahead and make yourself at home at our place. We’d be so glad to have you. And again, thank you so much!”

Jinyu stared at the woman and her animated facial features. But she seemed like a kind, warm woman. Her hands were soft and her love for her children was quite evident in her tired eyes. Jinyu looked back at Yixing who just gave her a nervous grin in response. Jinyu just cleared .

After relating her thanks, Mrs. Zhang went back to work in assisting with the other relief efforts. Mei shyly thanked Jinyu as well. Chanyeol and Kyungsoo congratulated Jinyu on learning to walk before going back to lifting as well. Yixing stood in front of her a moment before taking out his wallet again. He dug into it and produced another band-aid.

“Thanks for saving her,” he said as he stuck it back over her knee. “And nice running. Stay here for now.” Then with a dimpled smile, he joined Chanyeol and Kyungsoo at work.

Jinyu looked at the band-aid, petting it in order to flatten it across her skin. Then, rolling the pants back down she decided to try walking again. It was easier now, although it still felt somewhat awkward. Mei was just a few steps ahead. She was the second human Jinyu saved now.

It was only when the group got home later that afternoon that Mrs. Zhang announced her grand idea of having a small party to celebrate Jinyu's arrival and to thank her once more for the slick rescue of her young daughter. She recruited the help of Victoria since she was under the impression that she and Jinyu were cousins, after all. Yixing was initially uncomfortable with the idea. With so many people in the house, at least one person was bound to notice that Jinyu was a little different; he doubted that anyone would have the sense to report her to the Institute, but the thought of having to explain everything was exhausting to him.

A few days later, on a Thursday, guests started arriving at their home. Yixing greeted them at the door; old aunts and uncles, friends from the relief team, co-workers, cousins, acquaintances from his father’s marine biology internship days, and maybe even a complete stranger or two. Yixing had sent one or two text messages to Luhan as per his mother’s request to invite him and his parents to the gathering. Luhan hadn’t responded, and Yixing didn’t feel the least bit disappointed: one less person to worry about. Though he did suppose that he ought to introduce Luhan to Jinyu one of these days. After he finished collecting coats and re-remembering long lost relatives, Yixing excused him.

Jinyu sat still on the couch beside Victoria, who had let the mermaid borrow a sun dress for the occasion. There was still the matter of buying properly-fitted clothes for Jinyu, but they would worry about that later. Chanyeol had insisted on letting Jinyu wear a pair of high-heels to match her dress, but Kyungsoo protested, seeing as she could barely walk barefoot. So the mermaid wore a pair of flat, semi-soft boards on her soles, connected to her feet by thin, leather thongs. They called them “sandals”.

Jinyu wore a blank expression on her face. The gathering of humans reminded her slightly of a swarm, the way her sisters would all swim past each other rapidly in order to generate some kind of warmth whenever the water temperature fell. Only this human gathering felt much more social and cheery and Jinyu had no idea where her place in the gathering was. Victoria eventually stood up to talk to another handsome male human, abandoning Jinyu to stare at the guests in equal parts of awe and wariness.

Once in a while, a guest would rush up to her to introduce his or herself and talk animated for a while. Jinyu never knew how to react when that happened. It soon dawned on her that the gathering was supposed to be held in her honor. Jinyu didn’t know what to make of that information. On one hand, she was flattered, yet at the same time, she felt muffled and trapped like a message in a bottle, adrift in the sea with nothing to do and yet unable to fulfill its mission.

Jinyu stood and started to wander the house. She knew she would be kept here for a while, until she could begin her proper search for the prince. The other guests didn’t bother to stop her from leaving the living room; they were content to just stare after the odd, mute girl with the pretty eyes. She really was a weird one and they marveled that such a social girl like Victoria could have such a quiet cousin.

As Jinyu walked – slowly, as to assuage the slight pains in her feet – down the hallway, the noise from the main part of the house quieted down. She longed for a place to be alone with her thoughts, a place where she could figure out just what she planned on doing. When she finally reached the end of the hallway, she came to stand in front of a door. And without any other idea what to do with the door, she twisted the doorknob, as Kyungsoo had taught her to do, and stepped inside.

This room was about the same size as the room with the couch, only much emptier. Aside from a few box-shaped objects pushed against one wall and square, wooden frames with images of the human family set down on the floor, the only thing that occupied the space was a strangely-shaped, very large, shiny black… thing.

It was about as tall as her ribcage and hard to the touch. But its surface was cool and smooth. Jinyu approached in and ran a finger over the edge. It was curved on one side and straight on the other; she noticed this as she took a short turn around the object. There were hundreds of thin, gold strings on the inside of it, and a black wing-like flap was raised on a stick that leaned over the opening. There were black and white panels on one end, as well.

It looked like the biggest and weirdest stingray she’d ever seen.

 Jinyu used a finger to touch one of the white panels, wondering if the object was alive or not. But she drew her hand away with a gasp when she heard, upon touching the white panels, a single feathery note, as high and light as a dolphin’s call. Stunned and slightly more curious, Jinyu reached out and poked another white panel. This time, the sound was deep and rumbling like the crash of waves against the cliffs.

She looked into the opening and noticed the strings and a little wooden hammer moving up and down as she pushed the panels. She pushed even more and wondered how it was making that sound and how white panels that all looked the same could produce different sounds. Jinyu pushed one panel and reached over to touch the little wooden hammer that rose as she pushed it. She tried again with the others, utterly fascinated by the black stingray object and its endless collection of sounds.

She later figured out that she could combine different sounds to make new ones, and that the sounds became louder or softer depending on how hard she pushed the panels. She was almost lost in the sounds she could make when a pair of hands stopped her from reaching into the opening.

“Don’t play with the inside!” Yixing said, pulling her hand away from the pinblock and soundboard. Jinyu was so stunned by the sudden intrusion that she jumped back from the stingray object, knocking over the little black bench behind her. The cushion came loose and stacks of music paper flooded the tiled floor. Yixing looked between her the mess she made, deciding how to react. Instead, he shrugged and with a nervous laugh, he bent down to pick up the piano bench and the papers.

Jinyu watched him picking up the papers and putting them back into the piano bench compartment. “I really should get a new one,” Yixing said, putting the rickety piano bench back where it was. Then, with a sigh, he started to put the top board, hiding the wonderful complications of the frame and soundboard from Jinyu. “Can’t have you messing with the inside,” he said in a friendly tone. “The pinblock is already a little loose. It needs to be tuned again next month. If it breaks, I don’t have enough for a new one.”

Jinyu stood still, not sure what to do now that she’d been disallowed to touch the stingray object. Yixing was about to ask her why she wasn’t enjoying her party, but he guessed that she wasn’t used to so much human interaction yet. Her wish to get away from the crowd was understandable. He often turned to his piano when he felt overwhelmed, too. But he wasn’t sure what to say to start a conversation.

“So… I see you’ve discovered the piano,” he said. “Can you play?”

Jinyu looked around before looking back at him. Play what? What game was there to play? Seeing her blank expression, Yixing sighed and slunk onto the piano bench. Choosing to ignore her for a little while, he lifted his hands and brushed the dust away from the keys. If he could move the piano to a location with less dust, he would. But there simply wasn’t enough room for it anywhere else; this storage room was the only room where it would fit.

He watched Jinyu circle the piano, keeping silent and looking sorry as though she’d been caught stealing. Yixing shrugged to himself, lifted his right hand, and started to play a simple tune. Something light and merry and easy to play. Something that would last him until the end of the party. He thought back to the unfinished compositions that lay in the piano bench compartment. It was his dream to write and produce a song, but it’d been almost a year since he wrote and finished anything at all. There just wasn’t enough time and not enough motivation on his part.

Jinyu, suddenly enthralled by the sound echoing from the black instrument, stopped wandering the room and walked slowly to the end of the piano. Her sea-glass eyes widened as she gently set her hands on the smooth surface, felt the vibrations, and realized with surprised happiness:

“It’s music,” she said, and Yixing immediately stopped playing. He stared at her with raised brows and wide eyes but said nothing in reply. Jinyu’s smile dissipated seeing his stunned reaction. Oh dear, she thought. She must have disturbed him somehow.

“You just spoke,” Yixing said, explaining his astonishment. Jinyu’s face remained blank. Was she wrong to speak aloud just then? Yixing suddenly smiled. “And all this time, I thought you were mute or something.”

Jinyu didn’t answer or reply in any way. After a while, she ran her hand over the top board of the piano again, and Yixing, confused by her silence, went back to playing the song. After a while, he added in the left-hand accompaniment. His fingers knew instinctively what to do, where to touch the keys to produce the right notes. Soon, he himself was so lost in the music that he didn’t notice Jinyu walking closer and looking down at his hands. He watched her eyes dart across the keys as he played, and just like with the car ride to Victoria’s house, he was drawn in by the all the wonder she could see in something so simple.

“How?” she whispered, and Yixing looked up without stopping the music. He almost forgot that she wouldn’t have had any contact with pianos under the sea. He paused a moment and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Umm,” he said. “It’s a bit difficult to explain.” He stood up from the bench and lifted the top board again, exposing the piano’s mechanisms, the various strings and hammers. Then, he played a single note and they both watched a hammer rise and strike a string.

“When you push a key, one of the padded hammers strikes the strings and it vibrates,” he explained. “The strings have different frequencies, so that’s why the keys sound different.” To illustrate further, he played three more notes while Jinyu watched the felt hammers striking different strings. Jinyu smiled at the sound, and Yixing felt content.

“Do you want to try it?” he suddenly asked. Yixing got up from the bench and moved aside to give her room to sit. Jinyu hesitated only a moment, but, thrilled at the opportunity, she quickly sat down and pushed random keys.

Yixing laughed lightly. He had no idea where to start teaching someone to play piano. He figured he’d just let her try out random keys and getting a feel for the different sounds before he attempted teaching her anything. She could barely walk as it was, so perhaps her coordination wasn’t exactly the best right now. Jinyu kept a keen ear, paying attention to every little intonation and nuance between one key to the next. She determined that the pitch was higher on one end and lower on the other. After pushing every single key once, she noticed a pattern. Some sounds sounded the same… but were lower or higher depending on where they were on the board.

Yixing watched her fingers dance chaotically over the keyboard, playing no song in particular. It reminded him of himself when he was a little boy learning how to play. He would sit at the piano and push random keys, just as Jinyu was doing now. But while he watched her play, Yixing was starting to notice something about the keys she was pushing. The notes were forming a song. And – albeit only the right hand portion and terribly out of tempo – it was the same song he was playing earlier.

A sudden pause in her playing told him that she’d forgotten the rest of it. But that didn’t matter; he was highly impressed either way. For a girl who could barely walk and speak and was brand new to anything that had to do with being human, she was learning to play music remarkably fast.

“Hey,” he said, tapping her should. “Stand up for a minute.” Following his instructions, she stood up. Yixing bent down and lifted the piano bench cushion, digging around for the music sheet to the song she was playing. Finally finding it, he spread it over the music rack and then sat down on her left side.

“This is a song I wrote,” he explained, feeling a little embarrassed at showing a half-written song. He began arranging the sheets on the rack. “Start playing again.”

Jinyu was slightly confused, but she was growing exceptionally fond of the black stingray instrument, so she sat back down and started the song over again. So far, it was the only song she could play on the instrument, and only a small bit of it. So she put her fingers on the keys and started again.

As soon as her right hand took to playing, Yixing lifted his left and began playing the left-hand accompaniment. Seeing his movements, Jinyu froze.

“No no, keep going,” Yixing coaxed. “This song has right hand and left hand parts. So you do the right and I’ll do the left. It sounds better that way.”

Jinyu looked at his face for a long time, but she was curious as to what he was trying to accomplish. So she started the song again, trying not to get confused by the sudden intrusion of his left-hand accompaniment. She concentrated, looking and listening intently to the keys, forcing herself to remember where a certain note was and then trying, awkwardly to reach it with her fingers. It was like learning how to swim again.

“Use your pinky to cross over to the other keys,” Yixing said, not even pausing his piano-playing. “There you go,” he praised, seeing her follow his directions. Once they were through half the song, he stopped playing and called for her to start over. So Jinyu picked the song up from the beginning once more, but this time Yixing wanted to try something else.

“Pure, like an innocent child who doesn’t know better,” he started to sing. Jinyu, surprised at the sudden singing, looked up at Yixing without stopping the song. She was astonished at first, but soon, she started to notice the way his singing complimented the music of the instrument. This wasn’t anything like mermaid singing and yet she felt it could probably rival her sisters’ songs. They had only voices to sing with, whereas this boy had a musical stingray.

“Eyes, opening and closing, afraid that this might be a dream
Not wanting to let go, I stand before you in honesty, hoping for your love
You’re the one I want to be with, to walk side by side with,
Just once is enough.”

Yixing stopped singing and stopped playing at the end of the verse. He stared vacantly at the blank spaces on the music sheets. Those empty places would haunt him for a very long time. Jinyu watched his empty staring and he started to laugh nervously. “It’s a work in progress,” he said, gathering the music sheets up again. “I haven’t written anything in a year. Everything is a work in progress.”

Jinyu ran her fingers delicately over the ivory keys once more. Finding the right words and the courage to say them, she spoke up again.

“Did you make this?” she asked. Yixing looked back at her. Her voice was nothing like he’d heard before. It sounded light, like wind over water or glimmers of light during the sunrise. And yet, there was depth to it as well. It reminded him, faintly, of Christmas, for some reason. Christmas and harps.

“Uh,” he said, remembering her question. “No, I got this from a piano warehouse when I was, like, twelve. Actually, my parents bought it; I was too poor back then. I was still on allowance.”

Jinyu looked at him feeling puzzled, and he had to remind himself that she didn’t know things about warehouses or allowances. “No,” she said. “I mean the song.”

“Oh,” he said. “Yeah, I wrote it a few months back. Or at least I started writing it a few months back.”

Jinyu nodded, processing his words. Yixing still had to get used to communicating with her through speech. But this was progress, he thought. He couldn’t wait to tell Victoria about what he discovered.

“Why… why did you end it?” Jinyu asked, and he paused a moment. He held onto the side of the piano and heaved in a sigh.

“Because,” he said softly. “Because she ended it.”

Yixing dreadfully half-expected Jinyu to ask who she was, but Jinyu wasn’t like other girls; she didn’t match up with his expectations. Rather than become curious about his reasons, Jinyu was more interested in the song itself. She stared, awestruck, at the ink blotchings on the lined paper. These marking must have corresponded to the sounds that the instrument could make. And that was how humans recorded their music.

Such genius, she thought with a smile. If only there was such an instrument underwater. Her sisters would have loved the darling stingray piano. But there was something else she was curious about.

“Can human singing kill other humans?” she asked, and Yixing burst out laughing.

“What?” he asked. Why would she ask such a thing? “Of course not, it’s just singing. Why? Does mermaid singing kills other mermaids or humans?”

Jinyu shrugged. “No,” she answered honestly. “But my singing can.”

Yixing pushed a key on the piano. He couldn’t tell if she was being serious or not. He thought back to all the stories he’d ever heard about mermaids. Folktales and legends always portrayed them as mystical beings whose songs lured sailors to their watery graves. Was she that type of a mermaid?

“My mother was a siren, too,” Jinyu said softly after a while, and Yixing listened keenly. “That’s why my sisters made me the protector.”

“Protector?” Yixing asked, leaning in. “So what do you do? Sing and lead people to their deaths?”

Jinyu turned to him and nodded. He smiled nervously at his discovery of her abilities. He cleared his throat. “But you’re not going to do that to any of us, are you?” he asked. It was a necessary precaution. He knew now how dangerous she could be to them. What if she decided to turn on him or his family and sing them all over the cliff and into the thrashing sea? She had the power to make them whatever she wanted. He had to make sure she wouldn’t. But Jinyu bit the inside of her cheek, and Yixing could see that he’d upset her somehow.

“Jinyu,” he said sternly. “I have to know that you won’t try to kill any of us.”

Jinyu shook her head. “I can’t anymore,” she said.

“Anymore?” Yixing asked. “You’ve killed people in the past?”

She shook her head. “Not people,” she answered. “Predators. Like sharks and other harmful fish. My family’s never come into contact with humans before. So I never had to.”

Yixing nodded in understanding. It was starting to make sense now, and he ran through this new knowledge in his head: Jinyu was no ordinary mermaid. She was a siren, and according to her sirens differed from mermaids because their songs were different. Their songs were the magical kind that could manipulate and hypnotize people and other animals, potentially leading them to death. Hence, she protected her family with that power.

“But why can’t you do it anymore?” he asked. “Because you’re human now?”

“I lost my song,” she answered softly after a while. This caught Yixing’s attention, and he leaned into her.

“What do you mean you lost it?” he asked. “How can you get it back?”

How to get it back? Jinyu stiffened against his question. The answer to that would mean having to reveal the things that she was trying hard to guard: the terms of her spell, of her pact with the sea witch, and the binding contract she had signed. And she wasn’t sure yet whether to trust him or not, whether that was against the rules or not. But there were some rules that were sticking out to her, and they were the rules of what she could and could not do. Perhaps she could withhold information from him, but she admitted painfully that she also could not do anything on her own.

Yixing smiled, sensing her discomfort. “You can trust me,” he said.