Chapter Three: Capture

“I swear to god, Seungri, if you don’t shut the hell up now, I will shove my foot so far up your –” Seunghyun spat at the maknae, only to be interrupted by Teddy.

“Now, now, boys, enough of that,” the head-scientist frowned at the two. “Seungri – please do us all a favor and shut your trap. Seunghyun – just ignore whatever the maknae has to say. We’re all tired here, guys, not just the two of you.”

They’d been traveling on an enormous fishing vessel for a week now, following Seungri’s reported location of his sound-capturing device. The entire team hadn’t had a choice when both Seunghyun and their captain were adamant that they had to personally investigate what had caused Seungri’s precious device to mysteriously disappear.

And as much as the older Seunghyun loved having a maknae around to bully, he was downright irritated by Seungri’s talkativeness.

“Oppa,” Lee Chaerin, one of the few female scientists on board their expedition, called out to Teddy as she opened the door leading to the cabin.

Seunghyun couldn’t help but snicker at Seungri, who immediately straightened up and puffed his chest out, preening like a vain peacock would.

It was no secret that Seungri admired the blonde bombshell that was Chaerin; she had both brains and looks. The first time Seungri met her, he completely despised her.

The blonde woman hadn’t given him the time of day when he went to greet her, flirtatious smile in place. She had nodded professionally at him, rejecting his offered hand, and flipped her hair arrogantly when she turned to strut confidently away from him.

Seunghyun was there to witness it all – the awed look his dongsaeng gave the indifferent scientist, his outstretched hand unwilling to move from its place, and most importantly, the expression on Seungri’s face that clearly screamed, ‘I want her!’

“HI, CHAERIN!” Seungri yelled, brisk-walking towards her.

She frowned at him before turning to Teddy. “Oppa, the radar doesn’t seem to be working again.”

“Oh, really?” Teddy sighed, his hands rushing to push back his disheveled locks. “Well, maknae-ah, do you think you can fix it up?” He turned to the waiting, overly-hyper boy who all but nodded excitedly at his request.

“Of course, of course!” Seungri chirped. “I’m not a technological prodigy for nothing!”

Seunghyun bit back a laugh from the maknae’s boasting, watching as he followed Chaerin into the cabin. He sighed once again before turning back to the railing where he had been trying to find some semblance of peace away from the pressurizing work that awaited him in his cabin room.

He stared out onto the boundless water of the Pacific Ocean, squinting against the glare of the sun.

“We’re gonna find it, you know,” Teddy said, claiming the spot next to Seunghyun as the two lead scientists stared stoically at the ocean. “Even if we have to scour the entire damn world, we’ll find it.”

OoOoOo

“Princess, could you sing us a song, please?” The little mermaid begged Bom, her big brown eyes pleading with her as Bom sat atop a shipwreck that housed orphaned merchildren.

Her guards were busy playing with the little mermen, playing a game of tag that never seemed to end as the guards hilariously got caught by their tiny counterparts.

Bom grinned at the sight, feeling a surge of warmth spread throughout her chest.

It had been weeks since she last visited the orphanage. Her father was the first merman to have introduced this place to her, citing that even though they were of royal blood, they still needed to remain humble and grounded, loving their people just as much as they would love their own family members.  

It went beyond a doubt that she missed her father dearly.

The sea god had yet to speak to Bom, and although they still spent their nightly tradition of eating supper together, the ornate table had become a silent one.

“Princess,” Hayi, the youngest mermaid of all the merchildren, tugged on Bom’s hands, effectively pulling her away from her pensive thoughts. “Could you sing for us?”

And who was Bom to deny such a sweet little thing? “Of course, sweetling.”

Bom wrapped an arm around the young mermaid, clearing as she readied herself to sing.

The lullaby she loved to sing about was one that her sister taught her, saying that her mother used to sing this song to her every night. Go Eun, in contrast to the ever calm Bom, had always been a fussy baby.

She would only become quiet whenever her mother sang a song.

The guardsmen, alongside their playmates, stopped their activities as soon as Bom began singing. Like the late queen, Bom’s ability to entrance an audience was so strong it riveted whoever listened to her melody.

“That’s our princess, alright,” Seungyoon smiled, shaking his head slowly in disbelief.

While the others had been busy fixating their attention on the singing princess, Taehyun had busied himself with the dreaded perimeter duty. As much as he wanted to stay and listen to Bom’s performance, he wasn’t one of the kingdom’s most trusted guards for nothing.

He swam further up, away from the shipwreck orphanage that Bom often visited, either with her sister or father. His eyes scavenged every inch of water, his staff held tightly in his hands as he swam higher up towards the surface, where he could feel the warmth of the sun radiating on his body.

It was then that Taehyun noticed a peculiar object navigating itself in the waters, wandering aimlessly.

“Hey, Taehyun, wait for me!” He heard Mino call out from below him. He halted his swimming, and continued to stare warily at the strange, unidentifiable thing that swam around in no particular direction.

“What is it?” Mino asked, upon reaching his frozen guard.

He turned to face what Taehyun had been staring at curiously, and immediately created a vigorous current that shattered the object into mere pieces. “What did you do that, for?!” Taehyun cried, reaching out to touch the remaining metallic pieces of the object.

“That, my young subordinate,” Mino swatted at Taehyun’s seeking hands, “is a human’s filthy doing. Seungyoon and I came across one not too long ago. We observed it for a certain length of time, and noticed how it would attempt to get closer to our princess’s location. It is a danger to our kind, much like the humans are.”

“You are being dramatic, Mino.” Taehyun scoffed, turning away from his fellow guard and swimming down.

Mino didn’t follow, choosing instead to eye the device with resentment evident in his dark eyes. He gripped his staff harder, taking a deep breath before sending another formidable current to further obliterate the despicable item.

OoOoOo

“Dammit, this is the third time!” Seungri shouted, throwing his hands up in the air in defeat as he frowned furiously at the sudden loss of signal from his latest machinery. “I don’t understand how my tech keeps disappearing like this! There’s no signal, no indication of life surrounding it. I’ve triple-checked every single damn fibre of my device and yet – ”

“Calm down, maknae,” Seunghyun sighed at the frustrated boy. “It just means we’re getting closer.”

“I don’t give a flying rat’s if we’re getting closer,” Seungri growled, his panda-like eyes twinkling with manic and desperation. “I will catch it, whatever the hell it is.”

“That’s the spirit!” Teddy laughed, ruffling the boy’s hair.

OoOoOo

It was late into the night when Seungri discovered a breakthrough in his data.

The poor, overworked boy – though he would certainly protest and yell furiously about his existence as a self-proclaimed man – had been relentlessly going through the amount of recordings he had culminated over the past few weeks, listening intently on the pitch of the voice, noting the various locations his devices had picked it up.

He noticed how one very particular audio clip he had had a slight pause before breaking off.

Seungri leaned in closer, replaying the audio once more and raising the volume louder.

It sounded garbled, and Seungri couldn’t quite catch whatever was said in those few moments. He eyed the pitch recorder, watching as it rose slightly, indicating that something was indeed creating a sound loud enough for his precious device to catch it.

After the audio ended, Seungri was still left in a lurch, unsure of what to do next.

He sighed, cracking his neck before reaching for his set of tools specially set aside for his use. “Come on, Lee Seunghyun,” he murmured to himself, “you can do this! Don’t give up now; you’re so close to the truth!”

Unbeknownst to him, a couple feet from where Seungri had dementedly begun working on a new device he pledged would last longer than his others, Lee Chaerin watched in secret admiration.

OoOoOo

Go Eun stared softly at her sister combing her long locks in the early afternoon. “Going out again?”

“Yes,” Bom smiled, turning to face her beloved sister. “I’m going to see the orphans once more. Would you like to come?”

She watched as her elder sister smiled and shook her head, gently refusing her offer. “I have to train the new staff in the palace today. Father was supposed to, but he had a sudden meeting with the lords and ladies of the court.”

“How . . .” Bom bit her lip. “How is he?” She yearned to apologize to her father, to speak to him and to tell him she would never, under any circumstances, hurt him the way she had before.

Go Eun sighed, swimming closer to Bom and pulling out her comb to straighten her sister’s beautiful hair herself. “He’s still getting around it. I can tell he misses you; he asks about you often.”

“Really?”

“Yes, my love,” Go Eun grinned, hugging her sister closer to her body. “Our father is not as cold as you think he is. He wants to talk to you badly but time forbids him to. With his multiple meetings and our people to attend to, he barely has enough time to even sleep.”

Bom pitied her father then, wondering how burdened he must feel under the weight of his kingdom’s troubles.

“Well, enough about that,” Go Eun continued, pulling away from Bom. “Have a brilliant day, alright? The guards are already at the door, ready for you to boss them around.”

Bom giggled. “Oh, shush, you.”

OoOoOo

“This,” she gasped, many hours later, “is too much!”

The princess had agreed to play the game of tag with the merchildren. Initially, she thought she would play fair and swim slower to match the children’s pace, yet they mercilessly chased after her.

Bom had never been so exhausted her entire life, swimming away from them as the guards sat aside and teasingly mocked her.

They had been laughing, and all had been well, when Bom suddenly felt uneasiness squeezing her heart. She paused in her movements, causing the little mermaids and mermen to bump into her, crying out in victory. She looked around her surroundings, feeling her heart pound erratically.

“My lady,” Seungyoon asked, coming closer to the startled princess. “What is wrong?”

The guards surrounded her, each of them immediately searching for any sign of harm that might befall the princess.

The merchildren, sensing the sudden change in the once joyous atmosphere, began huddling closer to each other in fright.

Hanbin, one of the young mermen, began frantically looking for his dear friend. Tears sprung into his eyes when he realized that she was missing, and he cried, “Where’s Hayi?!”

The adults began searching as well, with Seungyoon ordering Jinwoo and Taehyun to the merchildren back to the orphanage. Mino and Seunghoon accompanied their leader alongside Bom, who was in a state of deranged panic once she pinpointed out the reason why she had felt so worried before.

They had been spread out, calling endlessly for the missing little mermaid, when Bom heard a sickening scream of help several miles above her.

OoOoOo

“We got it, we got it!” Seungri cried with renewed enthusiasm. “Look at the radar, there’s something in the net!”

Seunghyun’s smile had never been as wide as it was now. The whole team had huddled closer to Seungri’s table, watching as the maknae bounced happily in his seat. “Good job, Seungri!”

He’d been shocked to his bones this morning when he woke up and found Seungri sinking multiple devices into the ocean. When asked, Seungri only shrugged and said it was his test run for his upgraded new tech, one that included both a detector and a metallic net fifty feet wide.

Seunghyun wasn’t sure where Seungri managed to get his hands on the net but he conceded eventually.

Now here they were, literally minutes away from where they could see the product of their painstaking hard work. Seunghyun had never felt prouder of his maknae, and he was sure the rest of the team felt that way as well.

“Get ready, guys,” Teddy exclaimed. “We’re about to become legends!”

OoOoOo

Bom reached Hayi, crying out in earnest as the young mermaid clawed desperately at the net that held her captive. A school of fishes had been captured as well, pushing against the poor mermaid who reached her hand out to the princess.

“Don’t worry, Hayi, we will get you out of this,” Bom held tightly onto Hayi’s little hand, almost crushing it.

Bom could see that they were so close to the surface.

The sun was overshadowed by a huge vessel, one that Bom had never seen before – one that actually remained afloat. Bom could see the outline of its underside, and she finally felt an emotion she had never experienced before.

Fear.

The guards had been attempting to cut the net, swimming alongside it as it began pulling upwards with no signs of stopping.

Hayi began crying, and Bom had never felt so useless.

Please, Bom begged in her mind, not her!

Just as the net was about to break onto the surface, Seungyoon’s final surge of power managed to cut through the metallic cross-wires. The fishes, as well as Hayi and Bom, tumbled down straight onto the ocean floor.

Bom’s grip on Hayi slipped as the weight of the net became too immense for her to hold onto the child’s small hand, and Bom screamed as she watched the net sink lower into the ocean.

Mino and Seunghoon, having seen this, swam as fast as they could to where Hayi remained trapped underneath the fishes, in danger of being crushed under their weight. With a strong current released by Mino’s staff, the area where Hayi had been entangled in broke loose, allowing the frightened little mermaid to swim into a waiting Seunghoon’s arms.

Bom felt relief flooding her entire being.

Before she could even make a move, she felt cold steel suddenly wrapping around her body. “Seungyoon!” She screamed, realizing that in Hayi’s place, she was now in danger of being imprisoned herself.

Her fear gripped her, and Bom thrashed about in the net, screaming in agony when it bit into her tail.

Seungyoon watched in horror as the princess became encased in the same net that had trapped Hayi. He raised his staff, prepared to use the final ounces of whatever strength he had left to free the princess. Mino and Seunghoon had joined him, ready to rescue Bom.

Just as he gathered his strength, he felt an indescribable, sharp pain on the right side of his body.

His vision dimmed, and all Seungyoon could do was to take one last look at his befallen guards who sank deeper into the bloodied water.

OoOoOo

Three shots resonated alarmingly in the air, forcing the scientists to abruptly end their excited chatter as they stared fearfully at the captain of the ship. For a brief moment, they stared dumbly at the captain who held his aim at specific spots in the water.

“You didn’t have to do that!” Seunghyun screamed at him, watching as the blue waters turned blood red.

The captain merely grunted. “It seemed like it was a big fish; figured I’d take this chance and get it.” He casually leaned his rifle on his shoulder, whistling happily as he eyed the waters with delight, presumably thinking of a catch that would help him later on with his sales.

Seunghyun wanted so badly to punch the guy – he’d been nothing but an to the team the entire time they were onboard. Now that they were so close to uncovering what might possibly be the world’s groundbreaking discovery to a new marine species, Seunghyun couldn’t help but worry that the captain might have shot their one chance goodbye.

“Thank god for Seungri’s bots,” Teddy laughed hysterically. “It almost got away.”

Seungri smirked, his inflated ego causing him to puff his chest out more with pride. “What can I say, I’m the best!”

Seunghyun ignored the chatter around him, focusing on the net that had finally broken through the surface.

What they saw then didn’t just shock them to their very core.

It didn’t just alter the world as they knew it altogether.

The image of what Seunghyun saw would forever haunt him in his befuddled state.

For there, in a crippled form with tears running down her mesmerizing face, laid a mermaid.

Author's Note: I literally cannot express my gratitude to you guys; I can't even begin to! The response has been so amazing, and I'm really glad people enjoy reading my story. :) This was the longest chapter I've written so far, and I hope this will begin to bring more insight into the two worlds clashing. Thank you for reading!