Mi-young anxiously watched Lay pace back and forth across the white tile bathroom floor, awaiting what the startled boy would say next. He paused for a moment, eyeing her mermaid tail with wide eyes, before shaking his head and slapping himself hard in the cheek. Slightly dazed from the force of his own blow, he reeled for a moment before blinking rapidly as he slowly regained his composure. He glanced back down at her tail again and was alarmed to find that it was still there.

“So, this is real?” he stammered quietly. “I haven’t just fallen asleep on a bench somewhere?”

“I’m afraid not,” Mi-young frowned up at him. With a slight frown, Lay crouched down in front of her and hesitantly reached out a hand. The mermaid allowed him to gently the glittering scales of her tail and prod at the wispy fins on her sides, and she was relieved to see a small smile finally creeping onto his lips.

“Whoa. That feels kinda weird,” he mused as he flopped down into a sitting position in front of her. “Sorry I kinda freaked out. It’s just that I’ve never seen a mermaid before,” he apologized shyly. Mi-young smiled in forgiveness back at him, overcome with relief that he was beginning to calm down. In fact, he was becoming animated with enthusiasm, and was talking much more than she had ever seen. “So, who else knows?” he inquired.

“Baekhyun,” she replied instantly. “He’s the one that found me.”

“So, you don’t have amnesia?” he clarified with narrowed eyes.

“No,” she sighed guiltily. “Baekhyun thought it would be a good cover, so I went with it. I felt really guilty lying to you all, but Baekhyun said that the fewer people know, the less likely that it would get out, and the less likely I would get locked up in a, um, what was it called…?” she trailed off as she searched for the strange word.

“An aquarium?” Lay finished sadly. Mi-young nodded miserably and shuddered at the thought of being displayed in a giant glass tank, forced into captivity forever.

“Chanyeol knows, too. He stumbled across me in the bathroom… That’s what all that commotion was about,” she explained further. Lay nodded in understanding and leaned back slightly as he rubbed his chin. Anticipating what he was about to ask next, she finished, “Baekhyun said I need to stay here until the fishing season is over. He said it was too dangerous for me to go home with all the nets and fishing lines.”

“That makes sense. How long are you going to stay like this? I mean, we can’t hide out in a bathroom forever,” he frowned. Mi-young glanced down at her shirt, damp with water from the defective water fountain. Suddenly understanding her predicament, he hopped to his feet and gestured for her to remove her shirt. “Come on, take it off,” he demanded urgently. Mi-young squeaked and wrapped her arms around her middle, shaking her head emphatically.

“What? No way! I can’t do that!” she cried. Her cheeks reddened considerably. In the short time she had stayed at the boys’ house, she had become aware of what was socially acceptable and unacceptable in terms of human clothing, and she was fairly certain that removing her shirt in front of Lay was definitely not acceptable.

“Mi-young, I won’t look,” he reassured with a slight chuckle. He pointed to a silver machine mounted on the wall. “You see that? I can use it to dry your shirt for you in no time. I promise, I’ll turn my back.” To emphasize, he turned his back to her, facing the blandly painted walls. Nervously, Mi-young slowly gripped the hem of her shirt in her hands and pulled, tugging it over her head until she held the loose fabric in her hands. With a grunt, she tossed the article onto Lay’s shoulder; true to his word, he grabbed the shirt and walked over to the strange machine without giving her a parting glance.

Mi-young cried out in fright as the small machine began whirring loudly, and she clamped her hands over her ears at the deafening gusts of wind bursting from the machine. Lay, seemingly oblivious to the cacophony, hummed as he quickly ran the damp spot back and forth underneath the stream of air. After a minute or two, he held up the shirt for inspection, nodding in satisfaction before holding it behind his back for Mi-young to grab. By this time, Mi-young’s skin had dried off as well, and as she pulled the warm shirt back over her head, her mermaid tail glowed with light before splitting apart into her human legs.

“Wow, that worked!” she beamed as she held up one of her smooth legs and wiggled her toes. Thankfully, she still had on her bottoms and her shoes, as they had somehow been worked into the strange back-and-forth magic. She rose unsteadily to her feet and turned to examine herself in the square bathroom mirror. “I look human again! Thanks, Lay!” she beamed and threw her arms around him in a hug. Blushing and mumbling incomprehensibly, the boy merely patted her back. They both jumped nearly a foot in the air as there came a loud banging on the bathroom door.

“Open up in there!” whined a deep voice from beyond the bathroom door.

“Oh no! What are we going to do?” Lay hissed. “I can’t walk out with you like this!”

“Why not?” Mi-young inquired. Lay pulled at his hair in exasperation.

“Mi-young, girls and guys aren’t supposed to be in the same bathrooms, especially in public! They’ll think we’re doing… naughty things!” he shuddered. The clueless mermaid blinked in confusion.

“Naughty things…?” she echoed.

“Ugh, I don’t have time to explain right now! I have to call Baekhyun! He’ll bail us out!” he cried as he whipped out his cell phone and pressed a series of numbered buttons on the screen. Mi-young watched, fascinated and not the least bit as concerned about their situation as Lay was. “Come on, man, pick up!” Lay whined desperately as the banging came a bit louder this time.

Baekhyun jerked into action as his cell phone abruptly began ringing, and he squirmed around desperately as he struggled to remove the tiny computer from his pocket. When he finally managed to drag it out of his back pocket, he hurriedly swiped the “answer” button without even bothering to see who had been calling. Chanyeol leaned over to listen in on the conversation.

“Hello?” he gasped.

“Baekhyun! It’s Lay! I found Mi-young!” Lay cried on the other side of the line. He sounded panicked, but Baekhyun was too elated at the news that his lost charge had finally been found.

“You found her? Where are you?” he demanded and hopped to his feet, poised to take off in any direction.

“In the guy’s bathroom on the other side of the mall…” came the sheepish reply. “Mi-young had an, ah, accident… I had to do something fast before anyone could see.” Baekhyun felt his blood turn to ice. “She’s all better now, but there’s this guy banging on the bathroom door. Can you get rid of him?”

“Yeah, I’m on my way,” Baekhyun nodded before ending the call. He released a groan, pinching the bridge of his nose as the splitting headache that had been coming and going over the last few days began creeping back into his head, like a tiny man with a hammer banging away at his skull. Oh, Mi-young! Can’t you stay out of trouble for more than twenty-four hours? He moped as he repeated the conversation to Chanyeol. The redhead nodded, and they set off for the other side of the mall.

When they arrived, the irritated man was still there, banging away at the bathroom door with an angry red face.

“Come on, are you dying in there or something? Get out before I call security!” he yelled as he continued to pound away at the wooden door. Baekhyun faltered for a moment, not eager to take on the wrath of the extremely annoyed man; then he thought of Mi-young, who would definitely be on the receiving side of the man’s exploding anger if Lay brought her out now. All right, I’m coming, Mi-young, he thought in resignation and slowly approached the small hallway, hatching a scheme in his mind all the while. When he approached, the man whipped around to face him, so angry that steam was practically blowing from his nose and ears. “Damn! I thought you were security,” he huffed as he crossed his arms. “This jerk has been in here for almost fifteen minutes! When he gets out here, I’m gonna give him a piece of my mind, that’s for sure…”

“Uh, actually, sir, that ‘jerk’ happens to be my friend,” Baekhyun retorted. As the man whipped around to glare at him, he stammered, “You see, he had a burrito from a shady Mexican place on the way here and he’s not doing too well… Called me for help, you see…” Lay was obviously listening from the other side of the door, and let out an agonized groan that caused the man to glance uneasily at the door.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” Chanyeol added with a shake of the head. “It’s probably really ugly. I don’t want to go in there, frankly, but you know, a bro’s gotta do what a bro’s gotta do!” After another well-timed wail of pain, the man grunted and edged away from the door.

“Whatever. I didn’t have to go that bad anyway,” he mumbled before stomping off. Baekhyun and Chanyeol released simultaneous sighs of relief, and watched the man walk around the corner before knocking lightly on the bathroom door.

“All right. It’s all clear,” Baekhyun called. The lock on the door clicked, and Lay sidled out of the bathroom with relief clear on his face.

“Man, that was close. I was beginning to think that me and Mi-young would have to make an escape through the air vents,” he grinned sheepishly up at Baekhyun. The dark-haired boy ignored him, brushing past him as a very guilty-looking Mi-young edged past the door and averted her eyes from Baekhyun’s gaze.

“Baekhyun…” she started anxiously, but flinched when he raised a hand for silence.

“Mi-young, what were you thinking?” he scolded angrily. He hadn’t intended to go off on the mermaid at all, but all the anxiety that had been building up inside of him for the last hour had caused him to explode in rage. Chanyeol and Lay stared, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, as he stood quaking in anger in front of the frightened girl. “I told you to stick close to me, and what do you do? The exact opposite! Do you know how worried I was about you? And why would you wander off on your own? I mean, the more sensible thing to do would be to stay put if you’re lost! Me and the guys have been trawling this mall for the past hour looking for you! And then, on top of that, you go and get yourself all wet and change! What if Lay hadn’t been here? You would probably be locked up in some glass cage somewhere, and you know what? I wouldn’t come looking for you, because it would have been all your fault!”

As soon as he said it, he regretted it. He way regretted it. He watched in horror as Mi-young’s face turned deathly pale, and he could see her heart breaking just by the look in her eyes. She wasn’t even shaking; she was so stunned that he had said something so awful, so horrible, that all she did was stare up at him with astounded blue eyes. Then she began to cry; no, not just cry, bawl, ugly sobs that shook her entire body. As Baekhyun stared emptily out into space, his entire ungodly rant replaying in his mind, Chanyeol glared at him and gently took Mi-young hand to lead her away.

“Dude,” Lay frowned at him as he wrapped an arm around the crying mermaid’s shoulders. He just shook his head as they guided the mermaid away, while Chanyeol pulled out his phone to alert the other guys that Mi-young had been successfully located. Baekhyun followed them numbly to the car, unable to say or do anything to comfort the girl, because he just had no idea what he could say that could amend what a positively savage thing he had done.

He opted to walk home.

He couldn’t sit in the car with her, sobbing uncontrollably; it was driving him insane enough already. He walked down to the beach close by, which was deserted now that the sun just vanishing beneath the horizon. He walked down to the shore, slipping out of his shoes and standing barefoot in the surf with his hands in his pockets, before he suddenly released the scream that had been threatening to spill out of him and kicked the rolling blue waves angrily. He lost his footing and plopped down in the surf, earning him a splash in the face with white foam. He crawled back to the safety of the beach, coughing and spluttering, before flopping onto his back in the sand.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid!” he yelled and threw sand angrily into the wind. “I’m the stupidest goddamn idiot in the entire world!” he raged, but there was no one to console him, just the breeze blowing relentlessly over him. His arms flopped miserably into the sand, and he stared sadly up at the starry night sky. They glittered coldly down at him, reminding him of his own coldness. “I didn’t mean it,” he whimpered as tears formed in the corners of his eyes. The problem was, in that moment, he had. He had been so angry with himself for losing her, but too afraid to face his own failure; so, he had projected it onto the hopeless girl, twisting his own failure to make it in his own mind that she was to blame instead. When he had said it, he had meant it. That was the worst part.

He wasn’t sure how long he just laid there in the fine white sand, moping and wallowing in his own stupidity, before he heard the tires rolling on the asphalt beyond the boardwalk. Unmoving, he barely heard the car door open and shut and the crunch of footsteps approaching. They came to a halt beside him, and a red-haired head appeared in his line of sight. Chanyeol stood bent over him, his hands on his hips as he stared with pursed lips down at his moping best friend.

“So, this is where you’ve been hiding,” he huffed and held out a hand for Baekhyun to take. The boy hesitated before slowly reaching up to take the offered hand, allowing Chanyeol to pull him to his feet. “Man, and I thought Mi-young was a mess,” he sighed as he brushed sand off his friend’s back. Baekhyun flinched at the remark.

“… How is she?” he asked hoarsely.

“Oh, you did a number on her, man. Shut herself up in your room and won’t come out,” he explained with a heavy sigh. “The boys are just itchin’ to kill you, but they’ll probably let you go with a severe beating because killing you would probably make it worse.” He knew that Chanyeol was trying to cheer him up, in his own way, but it just made Baekhyun all the more miserable. As he made to flop back into the sand, Chanyeol caught him deftly and began dragging him back to the car. “Oh, no. You’re not just gonna sit out here and mope. You gotta apologize.”

“I can’t,” he muttered. “I’ve done something an apology can’t just fix.” Chanyeol dragged him to the passenger side, and Baekhyun begrudgingly climbed in and buckled himself into the seat. His best friend said nothing as he drove them home.

When Baekhyun entered the house, it was a lot more silent than he had expected. All the guys were clustered in the living room, shooting him glares as he walked slowly down the hallway to his bedroom. He stopped in front of the door, hearing Mi-young gently sobbing inside; then, with a resigned sigh, he slowly turned away from the wooden door, walking all the way down the empty hallway to Chanyeol’s room. He closed the door behind him, flipping the lock before sliding down the door into a sitting position.

What can I say? Nothing I do can ever fix this… Nothing.