Chapter 1
StarchildrenStarchildren
Jinki doesn’t say anything in the next couple of days. The doctors wonder whether or not his near-drowning experience has caused brain damage but Jinki knows better. It’s not because he cannot talk, he just doesn’t know what to say when they ask him. He doesn’t understand how he survived when he was supposed to die. He didn’t know the way to the surface but something pushed him in the right direction. The university awarded the professor for his courage to save a student but it wasn’t Jinki’s professor.
He can still feel the tickling touch at his leg, under his foot and he knows it’s something else. Sometimes he hears the whispers in his dreams like he’s underwater, drowning but not panicking, just savoring the feeling of being underwater. It makes so little sense to Jinki that he can’t possibly relay it to the doctors and ask them if they know what it possibly could be.
Junghee comes every day, begs for him to recognize her as if he suddenly has forgotten whom she is. So when he finally decides to break his silence and greet her, she starts crying with relief and wraps her arms around him in a tight hug. Jinki lightly pats her shoulder and jokes that Taemin is going to be jealous but they both know that Taemin doesn’t care.
Junghee has been Jinki’s best friend since they went kindergarten. She has been there for him when he fell and broke his arm at the age of 4, as he got bullied for being smart at the age of 13, as he figured out he was gay at the age of 14 and as he experienced his first heartbreak at the age of 16.
She, too, wants to know why he hasn’t spoken but Jinki still isn’t able to tell her. So he keeps the dreams, the fleeting touches and the whispers to himself.
Kibum doesn’t talk to Minjung in the next couple of days. He can’t forget the human in the lagoon, the only human he wasn’t supposed to get close to, the only human he wasn’t supposed to save. There isn’t supposed to be survivors in the lagoon. Nobody knows Kibum saved a human in the lagoon because both he and Minjung knows it’s against the law to save drowning humans. He can only imagine the distress it would cause his parents if they knew he saved a human in the lagoon.
So he doesn’t tell anyone and Minjung doesn’t tell anyone either. Still he keeps remembering the way the brown hair had flowed in the water when the human accepted to death. He keeps seeing the flailing limbs, panicked movements stirring up the water around the human.
Kibum shakes his head a little and continues counting seashells. He’s here to forget, here to remember that his purpose isn’t saving humans in the lagoon. Kibum hasn’t gone back to the lagoon either. His māmā had been horribly worried when he hadn’t been there for ahoroa ceremony but Kibum can’t return. Not as long as he remembers the human.
He sighs and looks up when a shadow flows above him. A kōhine is swimming above him, playing with a turtle and Kibum sighs deeply.
“Taeyeon?” he calls and the kōhine looks at him. Her tail is a mix of orchid purple and apricot and her hair is a beautiful silver. She bends at the waist so she can look at him.
“Kibum!” She swims towards him before she wraps her slim fingers around his wrist and tugs at him a little. “Let’s play!”
He sends her a gentle smile and releases his wrist from her grip.
“Not now, Tae. Would you mind getting Minjung for me?”
She blinks twice before she nods and hurries off towards their hapori to get Minjung.
Minjung has been with Kibum ever since they were small. He doesn’t really remember how he got to know her considering her māmā is worth a lot more than his own, but it doesn’t really matter how they met anyway.
Minjung has been with Kibum throughout his doubt, his hatred and his acceptance. She has been there when he got caught breaking the law and she has been there when he stubbornly wanted to run away.
She lets her fingers run through his vine green hair and laughs when she accidentally loosens the shell that holds his small braid in place so his fringe doesn’t fall into his eyes when he swims.
“I’m sorry,” she says when her laughter turns to giggles and then she starts braiding his fringe again. Kibum just sends her a small smile.
The dreams get more often and they get haunting.
Jinki wakes up a week later in his own bed, sweat dripping off of his forehead and his sheets all wet. It’s like he’s drowning once again but the water in his dreams is no longer comforting, safe. He doesn’t remember the voices that whisper around him when he wakes up but he knows they’re there when he dreams. He keeps reliving his own death but in his dreams there is no one to save him from the upset water.
There’s a nagging feeling in his chest that somehow keeps reminding him that he was supposed to die. He shouldn’t have survived. Whatever saved him wasn’t supposed to save him.
He sighs and closes his eyes when his alarm clock starts ringing. His father is worried, he knows even without him saying it out loud, and his mother has been calling Junghee over more often than usual to check up on him.
Jinki heard them discuss therapy an evening after he woke up after drowning in his dreams. He doesn’t tell them he heard them and they don’t bring the subject up to him. Still their lingering gazes tell him that they are worried he’s damaged after his experience. And maybe he is damaged. Nobody goes through a near-death experience without some sort of trauma. Jinki can’t fool himself to believe that the dreams are only that, however. He still doesn’t tell anyone.
His mother is cooking a quick breakfast when he finally emerges from his bedroom. She doesn’t say anything, only sends him a smile and then turns back to finish what she has started. Jinki barely eats in the morning. He never did but for some reason it has the worried lines on his mother’s forehead deepening. His father greets him with a soft squeeze to his shoulder before he sits down opposite of him.
Jinki rises from his chair and ignores both their protests. In his bedroom, he turns to stare out of the window, the hornbeam hedge that frames their property is swaying gently in the wind and the soft lime green leaves are standing proud against the columbia blue sky. There is a robin flying to and from an area in the hedge, building a nest for a family that is to come. On the ground is a worm fighting a losing battle against a blackbird.
Jinki sighs a little before he turns back to look at his room. His bed sheets are crumbled together on his bed, his clothes spread on the floor. His desk is filled with papers and books he hasn’t bothered to look in. The book shelves are filled with figurines and old legends and in the corner of his room sits his telescope.
Jinki hasn’t been looking at the stars ever since he almost drowned. He’s been far too concerned with the water than he has with the myths of the starchildren. The knock on his door has him looking up and towards it. Junghee peeks inside with a small smile.
"Jinki?” She smiles. Her nadeshiko pink hair falls over her shoulder and rests on her small chest. “Are you coming?”
He nods a little and gets up to grab his bag. She gently slips her arm around his elbow and pulls him with her.
Kibum shakes his head in frustration. He doesn’t understand it. There is absolutely no reason for him to still remember the human. There is no reason he keeps thinking about the same thing over and over again. It makes so little sense to him. He wants to tell someone about what he did, that he misused his powers to save a human in the lagoon, but his māmā would have to report him to the ariki tapairu if she knew what he had done.
He can’t be mad at Minjung either, the tapairu hadn’t wanted to get him in trouble and she certainly hadn’t predicted that Kibum would still be thinking about the human weeks later. He hits his fist against a rock and glares at the pufferfish that gets surprised. Kibum is tired of feeling guilty for remembering.
Minjung finds him seconds later and laughs when the pufferfish huffs at her too.
“It’s okay,” she says and pokes the pufferfish gently on its upper lip to get it to relax. Kibum envies her a little bit.
When she turns her attention to him, he ignores her.
“What’s wrong with you these days? Your māmā is so worried she even spoke to me.”
Kibum continues to ignore her until her long zaffre blue hair flows into his vision. Her face joins it a second later. He sighs deeply and then turns to look at the seabed, catching a glimpse of his seashell colored tail in the process and he sighs again.
“I can’t forget the human,” he says and Minjung gasps.
“Kibum!”
He can hear all the accusations and the fear but it’s not like that, it really isn’t. He’s not in love with the human, that would be stupid and he didn’t even know the human.
“Not like that Min,” he says and she relaxes her shoulders a little.
“Then what?”
She grabs his hand and pulls him towards the surface, towards the last rays of sunshine that warms the ocean. When they break the surface, she gently pulls her hair away from her face and looks at him.
“I shouldn’t have saved him,” Kibum says and blinks in order to remove the tears that is collecting in his eyes. She looks at him with surprise.
“But Kibum, you’re the only one of us who can save the humans…”
Her voice is a soft whisper but it makes him angry.
“I’m not supposed to. The law says that we cannot interact with humans. And I know we’ve done it before in the ocean and it was fun but the lagoon is sacred, Minjung. The lagoon is ours and ours only. The human should have died!”
His outburst leaves her frozen and she can only stare when he turns around and dips back into the sea and disappears. He’s mad when he returns to the hapori and he doesn’t mean to scold Taeyeon for playing with the turtle but he does so anyway before he leaves to find kelp he can braid.
Jinki is staring into the murky blue water in the lagoon. The vegetation around him creates an uncomfortable silence but he keeps still where he’s sitting. He shouldn’t be here to begin with but he hadn’t been able to stay home. There is a compelling power that keeps pulling him close and even as he’s here, looking into the water that should have killed him, he still doesn’t feel close enough.
Jinki isn’t stupid enough to jump back into the lagoon, however. He doesn’t have a death wish per se. There is just something more, something different, something he needs to learn from this and until he figures out what it is, he can’t just leave.
He hasn’t told anyone that he’s here. His parents believe he’s at the university, Junghee thinks that he’s at home and he even went as far as tell Taemin that he was at home as well. He can only hope that Junghee doesn’t seek him out after classes and learns that he’s been lying all along. But it’s not important as he stares at the dark water and wishes it could just tell him what he needs to learn. Jinki sighs a little as he lays back into the vegetation and stares into the tree tops and behind them the sky.
The sun is warming his tan skin, even through the trees and it isn’t long before he falls asleep between vegetation and bird song.
Kibum is staring at the green and brown cliff edges that leads into the lagoon. The water is silent but it makes him calm as much as the uncertainty of land makes him shiver with unknown anxiety. The water is welcome around him. Kibum has no business in the lagoon other than looking at the world he shouldn’t ever want to visit.
He’s not even sure why he’s observing the human ground. It’s a place he’ll never set foot and it’s a place that scares him. He knows that he could be seen if someone passed the lagoon, that he could spoil everything by having his torso above the water. His tail is hidden by the water but that would serve very little protection if someone really was to see him.
Yet Kibum is still here. There is something pulling him towards the lagoon, towards the land he can only observe from the water. It’s as if the green and brown that surrounds him is trying to tell him something, answer his questions but they stay silent.
Kibum cannot talk to vegetation or mud the way he can communicate with water. He wishes he could as he looks up and stares at the sky through the tree tops.
The heaven is grey, clouds heavy with water and it doesn’t take long before they become too heavy and the rain starts falling. Kibum doesn’t mind the water but the water from the sky doesn’t have the answers either and Kibum can only stare at the plants around him as he tries to figure out why he is here and why he saved the human he was not supposed to save.
It’s on purpose that Junghee follows Jinki to the lagoon. She observes him from afar as he stares into the blue water and her heart beats hard in her chest as she fears he’ll topple over and fall back into the water that nearly robbed her of her best friend. Jinki doesn’t fall into the water, but instead sits on the grass and sighs heavily.
Junghee leans onto a tree trunk and lets her head fall back against the heavy tree in relief. The thump sounds throughout the forest and Jinki turns around to see her. Junghee bites her lower lip when she gets eye contact with her best friend and Jinki turns away from her. He doesn’t say anything and it has Junghee even more worried.
She slowly emerges from her spot behind him and sits down beside him. The water is silent in the lagoon and so dark she feels a shiver down her spine.
“Jinki,” she tries but he ignores her. Junghee sighs and pulls her knees closer towards her chest and wraps her hands around them. They sit in silence.
It’s on purpose that Minjung follows Kibum to the lagoon. Kibum has been different from what he used to be and Minjung cannot get him to talk. It worries everyone but he still doesn’t talk. So Minjung sees no other way. It surprises her when she finds him in the lagoon, hair floating on the surface as he stares at the green and brown that surrounds the lagoon.
The more Minjung looks, the more it looks like he’s staring at the human world.
She’s below him, hiding in the kelp but she forgets that he can communicate with the water and it surprises her when he turns around and stares at her. She wants to say something, wants to apologize or excuse herself but she has no words and Kibum just turns around again and continues his staring at the human world.
Minjung swims a little closer but doesn’t say anything. Kibum ignores her existence and Minjung can feel the worry run down her spine.
There’s silent between them as they observe the human world above them.
Jinki yawns and puts his cheek against the cold wood in front of him. He hasn’t been in class in the past month, has been skipping classes even though he should have been back two weeks ago. But ever since Junghee found him he has been unable to rightfully skip to sit on the edge and stare into the blue lagoon. So now he’s here, trying not to fall asleep after yet another sleepless night.
Jinki doesn’t have nightmares of drowning anymore but the emptiness of his sleep is almost worse than the feeling of dying and he doesn’t appreciate it.
He closes his eyes and listens to the sounds around him, his professor talking and computer keys being tapped in a gentle rhythm as people take notes. There’s the sound of a pen on paper beside him as the boy next to him draws something in a notebook.
Jinki doesn’t react when the lecture room becomes quiet, when the tapping stops and the talking subsides. He doesn’t react when the professor calls his name and he doesn’t react when the boy next to him gently tries to shake him awake by his shoulders. He doesn’t react until someone from behind hits him with a text book and grins at him. Jinki glares at Junghee but she doesn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.
When the professor dismisses them, she hurries to catch him in the hall and gently pat the top of his head.
“You okay?” she asks and Jinki grunts at her and ignores her. She laughs and reaches out towards Taemin when he passes them in the hallway.
“See you, Jinks!” she calls after him as she follows Taemin in the other direction, their fingers interlaced, and Jinki doesn’t want to smile but he can’t help the way the corners of his lips curl up a little.
He hasn’t told her about the lagoon or why he’s there so often. He doesn’t know how to tell her about it all and even though he’s tired, getting back to his routine helps a little on his mood. He still spends a lot of time at the lagoon, trying to figure out what saved him that fateful day but his exhausted mind cannot find any logical answers.
Kibum yawns and puts his cheek against the cold stone in front of him. He’s observing the young nohinohis playing with the giant oceanic manta rays and he’s not supposed to fall asleep but it’s boring. The small ones are laughing as the rays transport them a few meters away from him and then back again. Kibum isn’t even sure why it’s his turn to look after them today when there are others who could’ve done it, but since he was ordered to do it, he’s not going to complain. He can’t change it anyway, so he might as well get the best out of it.
Kibum has been thinking about going back to the lagoon but ever since Minjung found him, she has been keeping an eye out for him. She doesn’t want him to return without telling her why he keeps going back, but she won’t understand why he keeps returning. She knows it’s because of the human but Kibum knows that she thinks it’s something else.
She wonders if he’s in love with the human world but Kibum isn’t. Kibum dislikes the human world. It doesn’t scare him any less after weeks of observing it. The human world is foreign and Kibum is so used to being in contact with the water that losing that ability and being on his own scares him.
He sighs when a manta ray passes him without a nohinohi and then someone pats his shoulder.
As he turns around he meets the brown eyes of Bora, another kōhine from their hapori. Her fins are floating in the soft water like tendrils from the sturdy jasmine purple tail and Kibum can’t help but envy her beauty.
“I’ll take over from now on,” she says and reaches out to grab a small nohinohi from the back of a manta ray. The child complains but Bora just puts it back in shallow waters so they can play with the clown fish that has started to gather. She nods back towards the hapori and sends him another soft smile.
Kibum nods gratefully before he flips his tails and lets the movement send him towards their hapori. His māmā is talking to the ariki tapairu when he returns and they both turn to look at him.
Their gazes have him bowing his head in fear of what they know.
Junghee means well when she tells Jinki’s parents about his trips to the lagoon. She wants him to be safe and she can’t do that alone. Although he has been coming to school and seems to be forgetting his traumatic experience, she just doesn’t trust him to be seated at the edge. Jinki’s parents are grateful she tells them. Jinki, however, is not very grateful.
She looks at Taemin and sighs again for the second time in less than 5 minutes. Taemin pats her shoulder and sends her a sad smile.
“You did it because you care for him,” he says but it feels hollow and Junghee just shakes her head.
“He hates me now.”
Taemin shakes his head and leans close to peck her cheek. Junghee can’t shake the fear that she has lost her best friend however. She knows that even if she hadn’t told his parents she would have lost him sooner or later to the murky water in the lagoon. Junghee wants to trust Jinki, she does, but it’s becoming increasingly harder when he doesn’t tell her anything.
She sighs another time and lets Taemin comfort her while she prays to Gods above that her best friend will forgive her.
Minjung looks at her māmā and then at Kibum’s. She wants to tell them that Kibum is acting up because he saved a human in the lagoon because she asked him to. But the words will only serve to outcast him from the hapori and she doesn’t want that. With the additional information her māmā has just gotten, he’ll be one of the only māitiiti left in the hapori and that is bad enough.
Kibum is silent as he listens to the two older wahine. Minjung is circling them a few meters away like a predator but she isn’t going to attack any time soon, she just wants to be there for her best friend when he hears the news.
She sighs as she stands still. If only she hadn’t told him to save the human, maybe they wouldn’t even be here. She wouldn’t worry about him as much as she does, his fascination with the human world scaring her.
When her māmā leaves the other wahine and her son, Minjung hurries towards them, only to stop when she feels the upset waters around them and hears the silent sobs.
He can still feel the tickling touch at his leg, under his foot and he knows it’s something else. Sometimes he hears the whispers in his dreams like he’s underwater, drowning but not panicking, just savoring the feeling of being underwater. It makes so little sense to Jinki that he can’t possibly relay it to the doctors and ask them if they know what it possibly could be.
Junghee comes every day, begs for him to recognize her as if he suddenly has forgotten whom she is. So when he finally decides to break his silence and greet her, she starts crying with relief and wraps her arms around him in a tight hug. Jinki lightly pats her shoulder and jokes that Taemin is going to be jealous but they both know that Taemin doesn’t care.
Junghee has been Jinki’s best friend since they went kindergarten. She has been there for him when he fell and broke his arm at the age of 4, as he got bullied for being smart at the age of 13, as he figured out he was gay at the age of 14 and as he experienced his first heartbreak at the age of 16.
She, too, wants to know why he hasn’t spoken but Jinki still isn’t able to tell her. So he keeps the dreams, the fleeting touches and the whispers to himself.
Kibum doesn’t talk to Minjung in the next couple of days. He can’t forget the human in the lagoon, the only human he wasn’t supposed to get close to, the only human he wasn’t supposed to save. There isn’t supposed to be survivors in the lagoon. Nobody knows Kibum saved a human in the lagoon because both he and Minjung knows it’s against the law to save drowning humans. He can only imagine the distress it would cause his parents if they knew he saved a human in the lagoon.
So he doesn’t tell anyone and Minjung doesn’t tell anyone either. Still he keeps remembering the way the brown hair had flowed in the water when the human accepted to death. He keeps seeing the flailing limbs, panicked movements stirring up the water around the human.
Kibum shakes his head a little and continues counting seashells. He’s here to forget, here to remember that his purpose isn’t saving humans in the lagoon. Kibum hasn’t gone back to the lagoon either. His māmā had been horribly worried when he hadn’t been there for ahoroa ceremony but Kibum can’t return. Not as long as he remembers the human.
He sighs and looks up when a shadow flows above him. A kōhine is swimming above him, playing with a turtle and Kibum sighs deeply.
“Taeyeon?” he calls and the kōhine looks at him. Her tail is a mix of orchid purple and apricot and her hair is a beautiful silver. She bends at the waist so she can look at him.
“Kibum!” She swims towards him before she wraps her slim fingers around his wrist and tugs at him a little. “Let’s play!”
He sends her a gentle smile and releases his wrist from her grip.
“Not now, Tae. Would you mind getting Minjung for me?”
She blinks twice before she nods and hurries off towards their hapori to get Minjung.
Minjung has been with Kibum ever since they were small. He doesn’t really remember how he got to know her considering her māmā is worth a lot more than his own, but it doesn’t really matter how they met anyway.
Minjung has been with Kibum throughout his doubt, his hatred and his acceptance. She has been there when he got caught breaking the law and she has been there when he stubbornly wanted to run away.
She lets her fingers run through his vine green hair and laughs when she accidentally loosens the shell that holds his small braid in place so his fringe doesn’t fall into his eyes when he swims.
“I’m sorry,” she says when her laughter turns to giggles and then she starts braiding his fringe again. Kibum just sends her a small smile.
The dreams get more often and they get haunting.
Jinki wakes up a week later in his own bed, sweat dripping off of his forehead and his sheets all wet. It’s like he’s drowning once again but the water in his dreams is no longer comforting, safe. He doesn’t remember the voices that whisper around him when he wakes up but he knows they’re there when he dreams. He keeps reliving his own death but in his dreams there is no one to save him from the upset water.
There’s a nagging feeling in his chest that somehow keeps reminding him that he was supposed to die. He shouldn’t have survived. Whatever saved him wasn’t supposed to save him.
He sighs and closes his eyes when his alarm clock starts ringing. His father is worried, he knows even without him saying it out loud, and his mother has been calling Junghee over more often than usual to check up on him.
Jinki heard them discuss therapy an evening after he woke up after drowning in his dreams. He doesn’t tell them he heard them and they don’t bring the subject up to him. Still their lingering gazes tell him that they are worried he’s damaged after his experience. And maybe he is damaged. Nobody goes through a near-death experience without some sort of trauma. Jinki can’t fool himself to believe that the dreams are only that, however. He still doesn’t tell anyone.
His mother is cooking a quick breakfast when he finally emerges from his bedroom. She doesn’t say anything, only sends him a smile and then turns back to finish what she has started. Jinki barely eats in the morning. He never did but for some reason it has the worried lines on his mother’s forehead deepening. His father greets him with a soft squeeze to his shoulder before he sits down opposite of him.
Jinki rises from his chair and ignores both their protests. In his bedroom, he turns to stare out of the window, the hornbeam hedge that frames their property is swaying gently in the wind and the soft lime green leaves are standing proud against the columbia blue sky. There is a robin flying to and from an area in the hedge, building a nest for a family that is to come. On the ground is a worm fighting a losing battle against a blackbird.
Jinki sighs a little before he turns back to look at his room. His bed sheets are crumbled together on his bed, his clothes spread on the floor. His desk is filled with papers and books he hasn’t bothered to look in. The book shelves are filled with figurines and old legends and in the corner of his room sits his telescope.
Jinki hasn’t been looking at the stars ever since he almost drowned. He’s been far too concerned with the water than he has with the myths of the starchildren. The knock on his door has him looking up and towards it. Junghee peeks inside with a small smile.
"Jinki?” She smiles. Her nadeshiko pink hair falls over her shoulder and rests on her small chest. “Are you coming?”
He nods a little and gets up to grab his bag. She gently slips her arm around his elbow and pulls him with her.
Kibum shakes his head in frustration. He doesn’t understand it. There is absolutely no reason for him to still remember the human. There is no reason he keeps thinking about the same thing over and over again. It makes so little sense to him. He wants to tell someone about what he did, that he misused his powers to save a human in the lagoon, but his māmā would have to report him to the ariki tapairu if she knew what he had done.
He can’t be mad at Minjung either, the tapairu hadn’t wanted to get him in trouble and she certainly hadn’t predicted that Kibum would still be thinking about the human weeks later. He hits his fist against a rock and glares at the pufferfish that gets surprised. Kibum is tired of feeling guilty for remembering.
Minjung finds him seconds later and laughs when the pufferfish huffs at her too.
“It’s okay,” she says and pokes the pufferfish gently on its upper lip to get it to relax. Kibum envies her a little bit.
When she turns her attention to him, he ignores her.
“What’s wrong with you these days? Your māmā is so worried she even spoke to me.”
Kibum continues to ignore her until her long zaffre blue hair flows into his vision. Her face joins it a second later. He sighs deeply and then turns to look at the seabed, catching a glimpse of his seashell colored tail in the process and he sighs again.
“I can’t forget the human,” he says and Minjung gasps.
“Kibum!”
He can hear all the accusations and the fear but it’s not like that, it really isn’t. He’s not in love with the human, that would be stupid and he didn’t even know the human.
“Not like that Min,” he says and she relaxes her shoulders a little.
“Then what?”
She grabs his hand and pulls him towards the surface, towards the last rays of sunshine that warms the ocean. When they break the surface, she gently pulls her hair away from her face and looks at him.
“I shouldn’t have saved him,” Kibum says and blinks in order to remove the tears that is collecting in his eyes. She looks at him with surprise.
“But Kibum, you’re the only one of us who can save the humans…”
Her voice is a soft whisper but it makes him angry.
“I’m not supposed to. The law says that we cannot interact with humans. And I know we’ve done it before in the ocean and it was fun but the lagoon is sacred, Minjung. The lagoon is ours and ours only. The human should have died!”
His outburst leaves her frozen and she can only stare when he turns around and dips back into the sea and disappears. He’s mad when he returns to the hapori and he doesn’t mean to scold Taeyeon for playing with the turtle but he does so anyway before he leaves to find kelp he can braid.
Jinki is staring into the murky blue water in the lagoon. The vegetation around him creates an uncomfortable silence but he keeps still where he’s sitting. He shouldn’t be here to begin with but he hadn’t been able to stay home. There is a compelling power that keeps pulling him close and even as he’s here, looking into the water that should have killed him, he still doesn’t feel close enough.
Jinki isn’t stupid enough to jump back into the lagoon, however. He doesn’t have a death wish per se. There is just something more, something different, something he needs to learn from this and until he figures out what it is, he can’t just leave.
He hasn’t told anyone that he’s here. His parents believe he’s at the university, Junghee thinks that he’s at home and he even went as far as tell Taemin that he was at home as well. He can only hope that Junghee doesn’t seek him out after classes and learns that he’s been lying all along. But it’s not important as he stares at the dark water and wishes it could just tell him what he needs to learn. Jinki sighs a little as he lays back into the vegetation and stares into the tree tops and behind them the sky.
The sun is warming his tan skin, even through the trees and it isn’t long before he falls asleep between vegetation and bird song.
Kibum is staring at the green and brown cliff edges that leads into the lagoon. The water is silent but it makes him calm as much as the uncertainty of land makes him shiver with unknown anxiety. The water is welcome around him. Kibum has no business in the lagoon other than looking at the world he shouldn’t ever want to visit.
He’s not even sure why he’s observing the human ground. It’s a place he’ll never set foot and it’s a place that scares him. He knows that he could be seen if someone passed the lagoon, that he could spoil everything by having his torso above the water. His tail is hidden by the water but that would serve very little protection if someone really was to see him.
Yet Kibum is still here. There is something pulling him towards the lagoon, towards the land he can only observe from the water. It’s as if the green and brown that surrounds him is trying to tell him something, answer his questions but they stay silent.
Kibum cannot talk to vegetation or mud the way he can communicate with water. He wishes he could as he looks up and stares at the sky through the tree tops.
The heaven is grey, clouds heavy with water and it doesn’t take long before they become too heavy and the rain starts falling. Kibum doesn’t mind the water but the water from the sky doesn’t have the answers either and Kibum can only stare at the plants around him as he tries to figure out why he is here and why he saved the human he was not supposed to save.
It’s on purpose that Junghee follows Jinki to the lagoon. She observes him from afar as he stares into the blue water and her heart beats hard in her chest as she fears he’ll topple over and fall back into the water that nearly robbed her of her best friend. Jinki doesn’t fall into the water, but instead sits on the grass and sighs heavily.
Junghee leans onto a tree trunk and lets her head fall back against the heavy tree in relief. The thump sounds throughout the forest and Jinki turns around to see her. Junghee bites her lower lip when she gets eye contact with her best friend and Jinki turns away from her. He doesn’t say anything and it has Junghee even more worried.
She slowly emerges from her spot behind him and sits down beside him. The water is silent in the lagoon and so dark she feels a shiver down her spine.
“Jinki,” she tries but he ignores her. Junghee sighs and pulls her knees closer towards her chest and wraps her hands around them. They sit in silence.
It’s on purpose that Minjung follows Kibum to the lagoon. Kibum has been different from what he used to be and Minjung cannot get him to talk. It worries everyone but he still doesn’t talk. So Minjung sees no other way. It surprises her when she finds him in the lagoon, hair floating on the surface as he stares at the green and brown that surrounds the lagoon.
The more Minjung looks, the more it looks like he’s staring at the human world.
She’s below him, hiding in the kelp but she forgets that he can communicate with the water and it surprises her when he turns around and stares at her. She wants to say something, wants to apologize or excuse herself but she has no words and Kibum just turns around again and continues his staring at the human world.
Minjung swims a little closer but doesn’t say anything. Kibum ignores her existence and Minjung can feel the worry run down her spine.
There’s silent between them as they observe the human world above them.
Jinki yawns and puts his cheek against the cold wood in front of him. He hasn’t been in class in the past month, has been skipping classes even though he should have been back two weeks ago. But ever since Junghee found him he has been unable to rightfully skip to sit on the edge and stare into the blue lagoon. So now he’s here, trying not to fall asleep after yet another sleepless night.
Jinki doesn’t have nightmares of drowning anymore but the emptiness of his sleep is almost worse than the feeling of dying and he doesn’t appreciate it.
He closes his eyes and listens to the sounds around him, his professor talking and computer keys being tapped in a gentle rhythm as people take notes. There’s the sound of a pen on paper beside him as the boy next to him draws something in a notebook.
Jinki doesn’t react when the lecture room becomes quiet, when the tapping stops and the talking subsides. He doesn’t react when the professor calls his name and he doesn’t react when the boy next to him gently tries to shake him awake by his shoulders. He doesn’t react until someone from behind hits him with a text book and grins at him. Jinki glares at Junghee but she doesn’t seem apologetic in the slightest.
When the professor dismisses them, she hurries to catch him in the hall and gently pat the top of his head.
“You okay?” she asks and Jinki grunts at her and ignores her. She laughs and reaches out towards Taemin when he passes them in the hallway.
“See you, Jinks!” she calls after him as she follows Taemin in the other direction, their fingers interlaced, and Jinki doesn’t want to smile but he can’t help the way the corners of his lips curl up a little.
He hasn’t told her about the lagoon or why he’s there so often. He doesn’t know how to tell her about it all and even though he’s tired, getting back to his routine helps a little on his mood. He still spends a lot of time at the lagoon, trying to figure out what saved him that fateful day but his exhausted mind cannot find any logical answers.
Kibum yawns and puts his cheek against the cold stone in front of him. He’s observing the young nohinohis playing with the giant oceanic manta rays and he’s not supposed to fall asleep but it’s boring. The small ones are laughing as the rays transport them a few meters away from him and then back again. Kibum isn’t even sure why it’s his turn to look after them today when there are others who could’ve done it, but since he was ordered to do it, he’s not going to complain. He can’t change it anyway, so he might as well get the best out of it.
Kibum has been thinking about going back to the lagoon but ever since Minjung found him, she has been keeping an eye out for him. She doesn’t want him to return without telling her why he keeps going back, but she won’t understand why he keeps returning. She knows it’s because of the human but Kibum knows that she thinks it’s something else.
She wonders if he’s in love with the human world but Kibum isn’t. Kibum dislikes the human world. It doesn’t scare him any less after weeks of observing it. The human world is foreign and Kibum is so used to being in contact with the water that losing that ability and being on his own scares him.
He sighs when a manta ray passes him without a nohinohi and then someone pats his shoulder.
As he turns around he meets the brown eyes of Bora, another kōhine from their hapori. Her fins are floating in the soft water like tendrils from the sturdy jasmine purple tail and Kibum can’t help but envy her beauty.
“I’ll take over from now on,” she says and reaches out to grab a small nohinohi from the back of a manta ray. The child complains but Bora just puts it back in shallow waters so they can play with the clown fish that has started to gather. She nods back towards the hapori and sends him another soft smile.
Kibum nods gratefully before he flips his tails and lets the movement send him towards their hapori. His māmā is talking to the ariki tapairu when he returns and they both turn to look at him.
Their gazes have him bowing his head in fear of what they know.
Junghee means well when she tells Jinki’s parents about his trips to the lagoon. She wants him to be safe and she can’t do that alone. Although he has been coming to school and seems to be forgetting his traumatic experience, she just doesn’t trust him to be seated at the edge. Jinki’s parents are grateful she tells them. Jinki, however, is not very grateful.
She looks at Taemin and sighs again for the second time in less than 5 minutes. Taemin pats her shoulder and sends her a sad smile.
“You did it because you care for him,” he says but it feels hollow and Junghee just shakes her head.
“He hates me now.”
Taemin shakes his head and leans close to peck her cheek. Junghee can’t shake the fear that she has lost her best friend however. She knows that even if she hadn’t told his parents she would have lost him sooner or later to the murky water in the lagoon. Junghee wants to trust Jinki, she does, but it’s becoming increasingly harder when he doesn’t tell her anything.
She sighs another time and lets Taemin comfort her while she prays to Gods above that her best friend will forgive her.
Minjung looks at her māmā and then at Kibum’s. She wants to tell them that Kibum is acting up because he saved a human in the lagoon because she asked him to. But the words will only serve to outcast him from the hapori and she doesn’t want that. With the additional information her māmā has just gotten, he’ll be one of the only māitiiti left in the hapori and that is bad enough.
Kibum is silent as he listens to the two older wahine. Minjung is circling them a few meters away like a predator but she isn’t going to attack any time soon, she just wants to be there for her best friend when he hears the news.
She sighs as she stands still. If only she hadn’t told him to save the human, maybe they wouldn’t even be here. She wouldn’t worry about him as much as she does, his fascination with the human world scaring her.
When her māmā leaves the other wahine and her son, Minjung hurries towards them, only to stop when she feels the upset waters around them and hears the silent sobs.
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