Chapter Two: Imminent

The next morning greeted Seunghyun in all its intensity. He struggled to remove the encasing arms wrapped tightly around his waist, as well as the legs that winded around his longer ones.

“Where are you going, babe?” The unidentified woman groaned, her eyes spiltting open to reveal a disgusted looking Choi Seunghyun.

“Last night was fun,” Seunghyun coughed, finally released from her trap. “But I need to go.” Who was he kidding; he couldn’t even remember half of last night’s events. All he remembered was Jiyong interrupting his search for the unknown voice with a shot of tequila, and the rest was history.

Damn that Kwon Jiyong.

He rushed to shower, knowing he needed to be back at the lab within two hours lest he be reprimanded by his superior. Dressed in a long-sleeved button-up and jeans, Seunghyun ignored the girl whining on his bed and grabbed his briefcase thoughtfully packed by one of the family maids.

He didn’t even bother saying goodbye to his father, sitting idly in the dining room. Nor did he bid farewell to his mother who merely nodded as she listened to someone’s rant over the phone. Seunghyun knew she’d use that for gossip later on – after all, his mother never failed to impress.

OoOoOo

“You’re lucky you made it on time, you son of a ,” Teddy, the head scientist, punched Seunghyun jokingly on his arm. Seunghyun scowled at him, rubbing his arm gingerly as he sat in front of his work station. “Now I don’t have the excuse to order you to clean the test-tubes.”

“You’d still make me do it, anyway.” Seunghyun smirked, knowing his leader all too well.

“Damn right I would.” Teddy laughed. “Any new leads on your latest research?”

It was a shock to the entire world when the son of the President of South Korea became a scientist. They’d all expected him to be a general, much like how his father used to be, since Seunghyun joined the military initially.

But, of course, Seunghyun wasn’t one to conform to society’s portrayal of him. He hated that he was forced to follow in his father’s glorious footsteps. He loathed that he would forever be known as the president’s son. He resented the fact that people would not see him for who he wanted to be.

And after his tour of duty was done, Seunghyun dropped out of the army, going back to university.

Somewhere along the way – he wasn’t sure exactly when – he fell in love with sciences, with marine life and all its complexity. He loved the mysteriousness of the ocean, the diversity of all sea life that had yet to be discovered. Yeah, he sounded like a , but Seunghyun finally found something worth spending sleepless nights over.

He sighed, shaking his head to answer Teddy’s question. “Not even close.” He was part of the team that was looking for a new species of whale, something that was a myth even to this day. Teddy, being the head scientist, led his team with fervent passion. Seunghyun was doing all he could to contribute, yet none of his research led to any concrete conclusions.

“But I’m getting closer,” Seunghyun smiled at his computer screen. “I know it.”

OoOoOo

If Bom thought the security around her had been tight before, she was completely proven wrong now.

Wherever she went, the five guards followed her, refusing to leave her side. Bom knew they were only following orders, and that it was her fault for condemning them to such a duty.

She had overheard her father berating them, and for that itself, guilt overrode Bom’s irritation more than anything. Due to her recklessness, she was getting other innocent parties into punishments they did not deserve.

Her father had yet to even talk to her; they hadn’t been in the same room since.

That was what bothered Bom the most.

The fact that her father refused to communicate with her, to even look at her, made her realize that she had hurt him so deeply. Her father wasn’t known for being a coward – he was the brave, courageous, mighty sea god that everyone adored and glorified . . . yet in front of his daughter, he shunned himself away from her.

Bom had never felt so disgraced her entire life.

Sitting atop a boulder half buried in the underwater sand, Bom sighed as she watched her guardsmen swimming anxiously in front of her. Mino and Jinwoo yielded their staffs against each other, practising battle movements, as Taehyun and Seungyoon faced each other off. Seunghoon remained by Bom’s side as the designated personal guard for the hour.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, noticing how they all halted their activities as soon as they heard her voice. “I’m a burden to you all.”

“Well, it is our fault as well.” Seungyoon shrugged, his lanky arms fiddling with his staff as he swam closer to her. “We should have been keeping a closer eye on you.”

“The leader’s right,” Taehyun nodded. “It is our fault why we got you in this position.”

“Stop it!” Bom screamed then, surprising the five mermen. “Stop patronizing me! Stop acting like none of this was my fault when you know damn well that it is!” Tears began springing in her eyes, and she refused to let them spill.

The mermen were nervously flicking their tails as she ranted, and Bom felt herself sink into an even lower level of humiliation. “It’s just . . . I know you have better things to do rather than to babysit a wayward princess.”

“We don’t mind,” Mino laughed uneasily. “Besides, Seunghoon has been whining for a vacation for weeks now.”

Seunghoon scowled at his friend. “You are dead to me.”

Bom smiled slightly at their exchange, watching as Seungyoon got between the two mermen to prevent any feuds from happening. Jinwoo and Taehyun chose that moment to sit beside her, with Taehyun stating, “Don’t worry, princess. The king will come around soon enough, and we’ll be back to our normal duties.”

She stared hard at the youngest member of the royal guardsmen, biting her lip as she said, “I hope so.”

OoOoOo

Kwon Jiyong was known for his irrationality, his brash attitude towards life and how he took no from other people. He enjoyed living his life to the fullest, without any regrets. He may be a cold-hearted CEO of the largest entertainment company in Korea, but beyond his business demeanor, Jiyong was actually just a buffoon.

Of course, his wife Dara would confidently attest to that fact.

He’d been strolling with her alongside the beach beside Seunghyun’s villa, enjoying the night breeze. After successfully getting the latter a girl for the night, the couple decided to break away for some alone time.

 They’d been talking about their plans for their future; children, to be exact. She wanted two, he wanted four.

As they reached the cove both Jiyong and Seunghyun had discovered back in their childhood days, Jiyong noticed that the haunting lullaby he’d been hearing wasn’t coming from the party.

In fact, the closer he got to the cove, the louder the singing became.

And god help him.

Jiyong had never been so entranced his entire life. Something about the voice pulled him towards it, something so undeniable with its force and power that it literally swept him off his feet.

He didn’t even have to drag Dara along with him – she, too, was fully immersed in the melodious, ridiculously addictive voice that incited the need for them to come closer to it.

As they reached the opening of the cove, Jiyong had to bite back a jolt.

There, just right in front of him, with her long, dark hair splayed about her figure as her ethethral, beautific face stared up at the moon, sat a mermaid.

The events that followed after happened way too fast for him to recover from his shock.

He watched as the mermaid got dragged underwater by other mermen armed with long, spear-like things that seemed medieval yet powerful all the same. He watched as a broad merman with power emanating all around his majestic form began raising the tide with his hands, hiding all evidences of the mermaid’s presence on the coastline.

He and Dara had been hiding behind a bush, desperately evading the seeking eyes of the frightful merman.

Once he seemed satisfied, the merman turned and swam into deeper waters, bringing along the tide with him.

It had been days since that encounter, and Jiyong dismissed that night as one of drunken hallucinations. Dara agreed as well; perhaps the champagne took a toll on them, so much so that they became delusional.

After all, there was no way mermaids could exist.

No way.

OoOoOo

“EVERYBODY MOVE ASIDE, THE KING HAS ARRIVED!” An enthused, boisterous and extremely loud voice erupted from the lab’s entrance, forcing its occupants to turn their limited attention to the newcomer.

Lee Seunghyun – or Seungri, as he liked to call himself – burst into the complicated and bustling laboratory as if he had every right to. He grinned smugly at the females, waggling his eyebrows at them and smirking when they fawned over his handsome self.

The older Seunghyun merely bowed his head in resignation, cradling it with his right hand as he struggled to maintain his composure.

Seungri approached his older brother, running up to him and tackling him right where he sat in front of his computer, sending mountains of paperwork flying. “Hyung!”

“Goddammit, Seungri, I spent days working on that !” Seunghyun smacked Seungri in irritation, swatting away the universal maknae’s pouting face.

“It’s not my fault they were there,” Seungri laughed joyously, his smile never fading. “Anyway, do you want to hear the good news or not?”

While Seungri may very well seem like a complete idiot, he was actually one of the smartest engineers to have ever lived. At his young age, he’d already established himself as a real-life Tony Stark, creating gadgets so incredible that company heads and government officials alike fawned over him.

It was for this reason why Seunghyun even bothered keeping the annoying, attention seeking maknae around.

That, and maybe because the damn idiot was too loveable for his own good.

“Go on, Seungri, get it over with.” Seunghyun sighed, bending down to pick up the scattered papers filled with data he’d been studying.

Seungri fiddled with his phone, tapping away. Once he was done, he nudged an exhausted Seunghyun. “I think you’ll like this, hyung.”

With that, a projection shone out from the boy’s self-designed, specially-crafted-for-himself phone. He grinned widely when the other scientists gathered around where the two sat, enraptured by the technology Seungri held with his hands.

The maknae began touching the projection, ignoring the awed gasps as the images shown on screen began moving as if he was controlling a touch-screen smartphone. “Cool, isn’t it? I made it!” Seungri snickered happily, his droopy eyes lighting up with delight.

Seunghyun ruffled the boy’s hair. “I swear, Seungri, if you came here just to show us your new invention, I am going to –”

Before Seunghyun could even finish his sentence, Seungri tapped a folder on the projection. Inside, there were several sound-clips.

Seungri double tapped one of the sound-clips, effectively shutting Seunghyun up as everyone listened carefully.

It was a voice.

But it wasn’t like any other voice; it was something so mesmerizing that you had no choice but to be enraptured. It was a voice so pure, so awe-inspiring, that it left you breathless. There were no words sung, yet the melody of the voice was there.

“What on earth is this?” Seunghyun wondered, dazed.

Seungri shrugged. “Well, remember the device you told me to make? The underwater, sound-capturing device?” The younger eyed his friend warily as the latter nodded. “This is the result of it. I have no idea where the voice came from, seeing as it’s twenty-thousand feet under the ocean, but all I know is that it just appeared out of nowhere.”

“This is impossible,” Teddy exclaimed, pulling a chair to sit closer to the two pondering men. “How can a voice be underwater? Yah, maknae-ah, are you pranking us again?”

“No!” Seungri shoke his head vigorously. There was no denying his sincere, panda-like eyes that proved his innocence once and for all. “When I heard this, I was shocked as well. I thought maybe my device had gone wrong but we all know I don’t make mistakes when it comes to my tech. There’s something there, hyung, something big. I don’t know what it is but this voice . . . it may be a hint to the whale things you’re looking for.”

“Where did you get this audio from?”

“That’s the strangest thing, hyung,” Seungri leaned in closer, his sleepy eyes growing wider. “Right after I detected the audio and tried to trace it, my device became damaged.”

“But you never make mistakes.” Teddy shook his head in disbelief.

“That’s what makes it even more alarming, hyung,” Seunghyun frowned at his leader. “Seungri never makes mistakes. If his device can be so easily destroyed . . . it can only mean one thing.”

Teddy eyed his fellow scientist, the slight glint of excitement lighting up in their tired eyes.

“Yah, nae maknae-ah, where did you say you planted your device?” 

Author's Note: I am so grateful for the amount of subrscribers and upvotes that my story has received! Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'll keep this short, since I know not many people read the author's note at the end of every chapter, so I'd just like to say that updates will come once (or if I'm able to squeeze in enough time), twice a week. Thank you for all the motivation you've given me - I cannot explain how grateful I am. :)