Baekhyun’s shoulders were slumped as he trudged out of the classroom, looking the picture of an exhausted college student; however, it was not the class that affected his mood so, but his issues with a certain beautiful mermaid. He hadn't spoken to her in two days now, and though that would seem like a small amount of time to some people, it was nothing short of an eternity for him. He had only slept fitfully the night before, after he had stolen into the bedroom and nearly kissed the sleeping girl, for she haunted him. Every time he closed his eyes, she danced in the darkness; he even saw her in his waking moments, flitting on the edges of his vision and through the crowds streaming across campus. Every time, he would whip around and run forward, chasing after the phantasm, before he would realize that it was only a figment of his imagination. It was exhausting.

“Hey! Baek- Holy , you look like a zombie!” Baekhyun wearily lifted his head to find Xiumin standing at the entrance of the stairs. He regarded Baekhyun with a concerned expression as he shuffled over. “Man, why don't you just cut your losses and talk to her?”

“I've already explained it,” he muttered. He was tired of arguing about it. It was hard enough to keep himself convinced; he didn't need the other boys in the household throwing doubts at the ramshackle hovel that was his willpower. With every stone they cast, his resolve seemed more ready to crumble, an empty shell of a building ready to collapse in upon itself. Xiumin blinked at him, seeming as if he were going to continue arguing, so Baekhyun indicated that he was done with conversation by tromping down the steps. He heard the boy scurry after him, but thankfully he did not press the issue further.

When he saw Chanyeol standing at the entrance of the science building, he almost made to turn around and march right back up the steps. Chanyeol could be there for one reason and one reason only. Before he could follow through, however, Xiumin grabbed him by the shoulder of his jacket and forcibly dragged him over to the talk boy, grinning. “Hey, Chanyeol! Are you here to talk some sense into this loser?”

“Not me. Her.” The corner of Chanyeol's mouth was tugged upward into a smirk as he stood there with his arms crossed and his eyes boring into Baekhyun’s quaking soul. It felt like an earthquake had struck him, and the shaky structure that was his will trembled violently. No. No. I can’t. He could see her, that beautiful black hair of hers dancing in the breeze, those sea-blue eyes swimming with love that he wanted so badly but could not have.

“No,” he croaked and tried to jerk out of Xiumin’s hold, but the boy held firm. Chanyeol narrowed his eyes at him. Honestly, he wasn’t sure what hurt worse- the idea of facing the girl he loved, or the fact that Chanyeol had betrayed his trust by bringing her here. His averse fear was abruptly replaced with the hot rush of anger, and he whirled on the man he thought was his best friend. “Why did you bring her here? Chanyeol, goddammit, you know how hard it is for me!” he snapped hotly. Chanyeol's mouth turned into a thin, hard line, and he immediately flushed with cold shame.

“Have you ever considered how hard it is for her?” he growled. In that moment, Baekhyun shrunk small in the face of his friend's irritation, which was no doubt deserved. He was once again reminded of how impossibly selfish he was. “You've got it in your head that you're doing what's best for her, but you’re going about it in a pretty way. Do you really want to end it like this? Not talking to her and absolutely miserable? For 's sake, at least hear her out!” He knew Chanyeol was pissed at him, because he never cursed like that. Baekhyun just took the verbal beating, head hung and hunkered down beside Xiumin, his lips slightly pursed in a mixture of self-pity and guilt. It was true. Even though it was hard, avoiding her was still easier than facing all the emotions of the miserable situation.

“Okay,” he muttered after a tense silence. He was right, as begrudged as he was to admit it. A small smile formed on his friend's lips and he reached out to clap him reassuringly on the back and moved to stand beside him. He kept his grip on his shoulder, and Xiumin kept his hand on his other, likely thinking that he would attempt to run away. Baekhyun couldn’t blame them. The thought certainly flew through his mind. Wedged between the two boys, Baekhyun walked out of the building into total chaos.

“What the hell?” Xiumin cried, stumbling back as a small crowd of students shoved past him to jump into the throng that was currently surrounding the fountain placed in the pavilion in front of the building. The raucous was deafening, hoots and hollers and whistles mingling in with shacked gasps and shouts, and in the middle of it all, the sound of a woman crying. The young adults shoved about with their cellphones above their heads, and the bright flashes of cameras were nearly blinding. Baekhyun’s blood froze solid in his veins at that moment, because he knew what they were filming.

It had finally happened.

“Mi-young!” he shouted and surged forward before either of his two stunned companions could even react, and Baekhyun dove into the crowd. Irritated shouts and cries echoed around him as he elbowed his way through the scores of people, but he didn't care; all he could hear was her, scared, crying, calling his name. When he finally made it to the front of the crowd, he did not hesitate as the cameras him; he jumped over the concrete edge of the fountain and landed with a splash in the cool water, sliding unsteadily on the slick coins that littered the bottom. “Mi-young!” he gasped as he fumbled over to her. She was sitting there in the water, her long, finned blue tail glittering among the discarded change, the end of her black hair swirling in the waves generated by his frantic shuffling through the chlorinated liquid, her face wet with desperate, scared tears. She fixed those magnificent blue eyes on him, and he had never seen so much fear them. It made him sick, because he knew he had done this, he had forced her here, and now everything was over.

“Baekhyun!” she wailed as he landed on his hands and knees beside her, and whatever she was going to say next was muffled by his shirt as he embraced her tightly. As he hugged her, she dissolved into ugly, miserable sobs, and he felt her fingers digging into his back and heard her distorted wails as she cried, her face buried into his chest. “I'm so sorry! I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed through gasps of breaths and sobs and hiccups; he just shushed her, rubbing her back soothingly as he squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his cheek into the top of her head. He wasn’t even angry about it; he was frightened, but that was overshadowed by the bitter taste of regret. Every stupid, selfish action he had committed had led up to this, and now it didn't matter what either he or Mi-young wanted. Their fates had been sealed.

With a grunt, he suddenly let go to slide one arm under her back, and another beneath the middle of her massive tail, and then somehow lifted her out of the fountain. Her thick tail added a considerable amount of weight to her otherwise small body, but perhaps the adrenaline coursing through his veins gave him superhuman strength. While she wrapped her arms around him and buried her face into his neck, he stepped up onto the concrete blocks of the fountain. He jumped when someone hopped up beside him, and tensed, expected a crazed onlooker, but it was only Xiumin.

“Ta-daaaaaaa~” he grinned and bowed dramatically. “Thank you all for being the unwitting participants in my magic trick! You can see more Saturday at my magic show! Here's my card!” he cried and procured a fistful of business cards from his jacket pocket, which he threw into the air so that they rained down on the crowd. It was so fluid, and so unbelievably convenient, that for a moment even Baekhyun himself questioned if it had all been planned. “Chanyeol has the car waiting; let’s go,” Xiumin missed under his breath as the crowd clamored in confusion, and Baekhyun took advantage of a small gap in the crowd to make his escape. He jumped down from the fountain and took off running, Xiumin right behind him and angrily fending off any attempts by the surrounding people to harass or molest the terrified mermaid.

As the young boy had said, Chanyeol had pulled up the van on the curb and thrown the side door wide open; as the crowd recovered from the shock of Xiumin's dramatic play and scrambled after them, Baekhyum dove into the back of the van and landed roughly across the back seats, while Xiumin vaulted himself onto the floor below. The side door was still in the process of sliding closed as Chanyeol stomped on the accelerator and the van went screaming down the road, nearly turning on two wheels as he whipped around the corner and left the curious crowd behind. A sudden silence descended, shattered only by Mi-young's soft weeping. She lay on top of him, her head cradled in his chest, and he rhythmically ran his fingers through her dripping wet hair in some attempt at a comfort. He knew that there was no comfort he could provide the mermaid now. Her heart was breaking, just like his own.

There was no way they could be together now.

He laid his head back against the plush car seat as he continued gently caressing the mermaid, listening to her muffled crying. He was surprisingly numb. Maybe it was shock; maybe it was some form of twisted catharsis. He couldn't cry himself, and he couldn't feel any sadness- he couldn't even feel that overwhelming guilt anymore. It just felt like a black hole was where his heart should have been, in the waves of emotion he should have been feeling, leaving nothing but that cold, indifferent emptiness. He didn't know anymore what he had wanted, what he should have done differently; all he knew now is what needed to be done.

Mi-young has to leave. The videos and pictures would go viral within hours, and within days he would have news reporters and crazed mermaid fanatics and, hell, maybe even the government knocking on his doorstep. They had very little time. The fishing season was winding down, and would be over within days; they didn't have days, though. The number of fishing boats had significantly diminished over the course of the last week, and the girl could likely return to the sea without encountering so much as a fishhook. The most obvious choice was for her to leave that night, under the cover of dark before the craze had grown out of control.

Frightened by that prospect, he tightened his grip around the crying girl. The part of him that did not want to let her go was beginning to overpower the part of him that knew he had to.

Halfway through the ride home, Mi-young dried off enough to revert back to her human form, but she hardly noticed. Exhausted from the stressful situation and crying profusely, she had drifted off to sleep in Baekhyun's arms. He could feel her gentle breaths across his neck, and the rise and fall of her chest as she cuddled into him. Baekhyun bitterly realized that this would likely be the only and last time he would hold her like that, and so he savored every moment; he savored the scent of her luscious hair, strawberry shampoo with a hint of sea salt, he savored the feeling of her curvy body pressed against his own, and he savored the faint touch of her lips as her face lay resting in the crook of his neck. He committed it to his memory, alongside all the others that he would hold in his heart for the rest of time.

I love her, and I always will. He had been running away from that feeling since the beginning he realized it was there, afraid it would prevent him from doing what he needed to do for the girl. In reality, it had been that fear that had led to all that trouble. In hindsight, Baekhyun had been pretty stupid, and put the girl through an unimaginable amount of pain. Yet, she still had come looking for him, begging him to take the heart that she was offering, the heart that he really didn't deserve. Through it all, she had loved him unconditionally. I should have said it.

The screech of the tires as Chanyeol whipped the van into the driveway seemed louder than usual. Baekhyun slowly sat up as the side door slid open and Xiumin wriggled his way out from his uncomfortable position on the floor. Mi-young squirmed slightly but did not wake, and he carefully maneuvered his way out of the car with the sleeping girl in his arms. Chanyeol and Xiumin had headed into the house before him, and left the door open, so he was able to carry her into the house without much trouble. He quietly shut the door behind him and proceeded to carry Mi-young down the hallway, the hushed, shocked gasps echoing behind him as Chanyeol and Xiumin related the news. He was sure the guys had a lot of questions, but honestly, he wasn't in the mood for interrogations.

He just wanted to be with her, for all the time they had left.

Ironically, she woke just as he was pulling the comforter of his bed over her. Her long lashes fluttered a moment before her eyes flickered open, and he froze in place just as he was straightening up. As before, he felt that insane urge to flee, but he quashed it firmly. No. I can't run away from her anymore. Her eyes were deep pools of sorrow, and for the first time he noticed that they were not simply blue, but filled with rich hues of aquamarine and sea green flaring amongst the royal blue bands. In a rich irony, they were the color of the rich water of the tide pools he had first found her in, a shifting mass of color that could only be described as the sea. “I’m sorry.” Her voice cracked with emotion and from the strain of intense crying.

“No. I’m the one who's sorry. It never should have come to this,” he sighed as he sat down on the edge of the bed beside her. She gazed sadly up at him as he swept a strand of her midnight hair from her pale face; her skin was as smooth as silk as his fingertips brushed across her cheek.

“What are we going to do?” That question made the words dry up in his throat, but as much as he wanted to look away, he kept his gaze locked in those oceanic eyes of hers.

“We do what always needed to be done,” he whispered finally.