A young boy walked along the white sand of the clear shore only meters away from him. Arms spread at the side like the wings of a plane, he sped up while laughing at his own silliness. Soon, he reached the short stairway to a wooden walkway that went out to all the way to the deeper part of the shore.

 The stairs creaked under his weight, but that did not surprise him-- he's been through these very stairs since he was a young child. For Minseok, this beach had been his home for as long as he could remember, and it was all he'd ever known as he grew up into a beautiful teen. Having turned eighteen, Minseok was a sight to behold. Soft curls atop his head, a rosy blush on his cheeks, and a lovely, fair complexion; yes, he was truly a beauty in his own right.

 The walkway was slowly dwindling until Minseok stood at it's very end, and tens of meters in front of him was a floating hut. The hut was a simple but large structure and could hold up to ten people if well balanced. It had been built by Minseok's late dear uncle, so he went as much as he could to honor his uncle's memory. Right now, the hut was rocking back and forth due to the rough waves, but that did not deter Minseok as he jumped off the walkway and into the cold water of the sea. Quickly coming back up to the surface to take breath, Minseok shivered in the water from the sheer coolness before he started swimming leisurely towards the floating hut.

The hut was made of wood and polished bamboo, and though its state is not as good as it used to be, it's Minseok's most favorite place in the world. He climbed up the opening of the hut and lifted himself with great effort. This was the part he liked about the hut, how he could just lie there inside all day and be comforted by the motion of the ocean. With a large grin, Minseok got up and began going around. He loved looking beneath the tiny slits of the floor to look at the water and see how deep and how far the sea floor is from beneath him. After a few more hours of doing his daily routine on the hut, Minseok found himself tired and with a long yawn and a stretch of the arms, he plopped himself down on the floor and went to sleep.

 He had nothing to fear, after all the hut was tied to a rope attached to the wooden walkway-- it would never drift away into the open waters, so why did he feel as though something big was going to happen?

 Minseok awoke with a startle. It had been a particularly big wave that shook the the floating hut, and caused him to roll over and hit his head on the sparse wall. Groaning, he rubbed his sore scalp and took his time to clear up the ebbing drowsiness. A few flutter of his eyelids later, he peaked through one eye.

"So pretty," Minseok gushed quietly as he stared at the impending sunset before him.

 He's stunned at the fast lapse of time during his sleep. It had been near noon when he went to the hut, and he estimated that it was now around five o'clock judging from the sky. Now that he felt satisfied with his visit to the floating hut, he readied himself for the swim back to the shore but not before he took one last look at the sunset behind him. However, upon glancing back, something caught Minseok's eye. It was unmistakably a different glimmer in water. If the waves hadn't been so smooth and calm that time, he could have mistaken it as a trick of the light or perhaps a refraction of the sunset, but no, Minseok was absolutely certain that it wasn't. The glimmer appeared and disappeared in a blink of an eye yet Minseok leaned forward, hoping to catch it once again.

 Searching hard under what he could see in the clear water, he felt that whatever it had been was gone completely and he was about to give up the search when a strong impact from below stirred the whole hut. Strong enough to throw Minseok  out of balance and fall hard into the sea, the force powerful enough to push him nearly to the sea floor.

 Minseok had expected the sharp pinpricks on his skin, had expected the all too familiar saltiness to enter his nose, what he did not expect, however, was the hold of two hands grasping onto to him underwater that prevented his body from floating back to the top.

With his eyes closed shut, he could only feel what was happening around him. The creature or person (Minseok did not know) now had one hand gripping his shoulder, and the other caressing frightened Minseok’s face. The hands that were on him were strange: cold to the touch, slippery, a bit rough, and perhaps even a bit scaly. But the one thing that was even stranger was how human it still felt to Minseok, and so with curiosity and fear burning through his entire being, he opened his eyes.

Is it possible for something to take your breath away, when you’re already out of breath and under the sea? Well, for Minseok, it was.

Only inches away from his own eyes, was a pair of the most stunning, most vivid eyes that Minseok has ever seen and probably will ever see in his lifetime. Minseok gazed with awe, and at the moment, the very eyes that he was looking into stared back with just the same amount of wonderment albeit much more subtly.

The face holding the pair of green eyes could only be described as something divine. Skin as flawless and pale as marble, an aristocratic nose that could put any royal to shame, and the light blonde hair that floated around the man’s head like a halo.

For a second, Minseok forgot everything—forgot that he was still under the sea, forgot that the situation he was in was completely strange, and forgot that the man may not be trustworthy or even human. He was completely enthralled by the being in front of him. Minseok’s eyes trailed down the man’s collarbones, down to his stomach, and onto his le-

Minseok almost choked on seawater.

Where two human legs should have been, was a long fish tail. It swayed to and fro, keeping the man completely in place despite the currents. The man’s tail shined and scintillated and from what Minseok saw, had the color of the deepest midnight blue with just a hint of underlying silver.

“A merman,” Minseok thought before he all but slowly slipped from consciousness. He didn’t know if it was the shock from his new discovery or if it had been the deprivation of oxygen in his lungs that caused him to black out but one thing’s for sure.

Minseok just met a merman under a floating hut in the sea.

AN

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