Bright light filled Minseok's vision.

“Errhhgg,” he groaned before shutting his eyes tightly then covering his head with his arms.

 Where was he? His mind was still a bit foggy from having just woken up. Oh, that’s right… the last thing he remembered was darkness. It was a perfectly normal day: he was out on the beach, swimming to the hut like he usually did, and then he fell—

“The merman!” Minseok exclaimed in remembrance, with his eyes wide.

 It was then that Mineok just noticed that he was back in his own cozy room in the house he shared with his roommate, but how was he here? How was he even still alive? He thought he would have drowned from what happened earlier. All these questions were going around his head when the door suddenly opened, and in came a tall boy who looked Minseok’s age.

 The tall blonde ran lightning speed to Minseok’s side and gave him a bear hug that nearly broke the smaller boy’s ribs.

“Minnie, thank god, you’re awake,” the blonde mumbled incoherently. The taller boy had yet to release his hold on the adorable boy, and even started nuzzling into his neck. As fond as Minseok was of his roommate and childhood friend, he had to break this hug because if the drowning didn’t kill him then this surely would.

“Kris, …you’re squeezing… tight!” Minseok wheezed.

 Immediately when the words were uttered, Kris let go of the poor boy and muttered quiet words of apology. He stepped back and grinned sheepishly before rubbing the back of his head in embarrassment. Kris let out a short chuckle before proceeding to sit on the bed, just a bit further from Minseok to give the boy a bit of space.

“Sorry again for that, Minnie, but I was just really worried; you’ve been knocked out since last night,” Kris explained.

Looking at the two boys in the bed, they looked like complete opposites. Kris was tall, reaching to about 6’2 in height, his features were sharp and gave him a cold, calculating image to others who didn’t know him. Minseok, on the other hand, was a rather petite and rosy boy whose face reminded everyone of a cherub. And yet, these two boys were the very best of friends.

Minsoek stuck his tongue out playfully to Kris. Kris responded by swatting him on the arm, and both ended up laughing at their own childishness. The atmosphere turned rather somber and serious though when Kris’s face lost the happy glow from a few seconds ago, and took on a rather pensive look.

“Minnie, just what happened to you out there? Did you know that I found you on the sand? When I saw you just lying there I thought the worst. God, I thought that you, you—“  Overwhelmed with the memory, Kris choked up. Minseok was a skilled swimmer, but when Kris found him limp, sickly pale, and barely breathing at all, there hadn’t been any other thought in his mind except that Minseok had drowned and was washed ashore. To his great relief, the boy managed to pull through and Kris brought him back to their shared home.

“I, I think I can explain, but you’re going to think I’m crazy,” Minseok confessed.

“No, I wouldn’t. Just try me,” Kris insisted firmly.

“Alright… well, here it goes.” Minseok took a deep breath. “Kris, I fell off the hut and met a merman under the ocean.”

“… a merman?” Was Kris’s incredulous question. It started with a snicker, then a chortle, and before Minseok could say anything else, Kris was full out laughing.

“But, Kris, it’s true!” The smaller boy huffed indignantly.

“Are you sure, Min? Maybe you’ve been watching too much Little Mermaid,” Kris suggested jokingly, wiping the tears that had formed in the corner of his eyes. Meeting a merman hadn’t even been on Kris’s list of the possible things that had happened to Minseok, and here the boy was claiming it had.

Minseok was got even more upset. Kris was just disregarding what he said, and so what if he had been watching Little Mermaid a lot lately? It has an amazing soundtrack…

“If you won’t take me seriously, I might as well not have told you.” The adorable boy pouted and made action to get out of the bed and storm out of the room.

Before he could, though, Kris grabbed him and offered a rueful smile.

“I’m sorry, Minnie. I’m just finding this a little hard to believe. Mermaids—“

“It was a merman, Kris!” Minseok interrupted.

“Mermaids, mermen… they’re myths, not real, something made up for the sake of it. I know you’re bent on your explanation but maybe you were imagining things. It could have been the impact of the fall or something else. Until I see it for myself, I just can’t get on with your story. I hope you can understand,” Kris told Minseok calmly as if he were speaking to a child.

Minseok couldn’t find it in him to be upset at Kris anymore. After all, he knew the impossibility of what he was saying, and he doesn’t expect his friend to believe what happened so easily. So Minseok flashes him a small smile.

“It’s alright, Kris, maybe you’re right too…”

Kris returned the smile, and gently kissed the boy on his forehead before leaning back and getting off the bed.

“I’m going to prepare dinner for us since you’re still out of it. I’ll call when it’s ready,” He said.

Minseok heard the door close, and sunk back on the headboard of the bed.

What Kris said had made sense. Merfolk were only legends, after all, a figment of man’s imagination. And yet… why had it felt so real? Those green eyes burned into his very soul, and Minseok could remember every detail of the merman as though he were right in front of him. He had things he needed to know, and he would. Tomorrow. But for now, it was time to sleep.

 Down deep below the surface of the sea, a merman stirred the water, cutting through the currents with effortless agility and speed. The sun had already disappeared over the horizon, and what came in its place was the luminescent moon, filling the sky with a soft glow. Although it was dark as dark could be, Luhan navigated easily above the sea floor. He was a merman, and the ocean was a part of him as much as he was a part of it, and it’s the same for every other merman or mermaid brought into the world.

 Luhan swam swiftly and gracefully, avoiding the coral beds and scaring off the groups of marine creatures that dare get in his way. His face was as apathetic and cold as a piece of slate, but his swimming told another story. Even though his movements were smooth and sharp by human standards, any other mer could tell that he was a bit- if not slightly- disoriented. It was all in the way his tail hitched at certain turns, the barely perceptible sloppiness in his , and the way that his body didn’t quite blend with the water as much as it should have.

If it wasn’t in his nature be cunning and deceptive, then Luhan may have concurred with that assumption, but he was a prideful creature so it goes without saying that every fiber within him refused to allow him to stoop to anything less than perfect. Luhan refused to admit to such a fault, to something that was so human.

Human.

He winced at the word. Memories of what he had done appear in his mind, and only fueled the tempest going on within Luhan’s inner being. It was a preposterous act and was entirely below Luhan. Saving a human, after all, was one of the worst mistakes a child of the ocean could do, but he had done just that.

 It was a strange affair really. Luhan was not unfamiliar in human deaths (if the human skeletons in the sand had anything to go by). In his long lifetime, he had watched and witnessed many humans from all walks of life get taken by the sea and succumb to their end. So what made that boy any different?

As he went about his way in the darkness, he couldn’t help but recount what had happened.

 He only meant to take a short swim around the new area that he and his brothers had newly reached, and saw an interesting structure. It was nothing he hadn’t