Title : Big Fish
Prompt-# : 57
For : Anonymous
Pairing : Onew/Taemin
Author : Anonymous until reveals
Word count : 2,360
Rating : PG
Warnings : mentions of blood
Summary : Jinki catches the largest fish he's ever caught before, but he'd feel bad, if he ate it.

Growing up, Jinki lived in a clearing that, he was told, used to be a part of the forest surrounding the kingdom. Coming from a family of carpenters, materials had to come from somewhere, and the trees and bamboo in that area were some of the best in the region. He learned from his father how to work with wood, who learned from his father and so on, but his uncle is a respected fisherman. 

His uncle never followed the river from their village into the forest. Everyone said evil spirits and bad luck thrive in the forest and that there were creatures always trying to lure away humans and kill them.

No one specifically tells anyone to not follow the river. It's implied but not a rule, and most summers found Jinki on and in the river more often than picking or painting wood.

In all the years he's explored the forest and river, the weirdest thing Jinki's ever seen has been a three-legged frog. It hopped just fine, but its landings needed work.

An early fall morning, Jinki closes his shop and walks down the deer path he's helped wear down until he hears the bubbling of the river. He has a usual spot where he likes to fish, where it widens and increases its pace as it begins to race towards the sea. He drops his tackle and pack and strips off his outer clothes to stand in his underthings for a moment, debating whether or not he just take everything off. 

Tossing his clothes over a rock, he reaches for his toes until his spine pops and stretches out in the sun on his back. Jinki only knows of this river because he played in it as a little boy. It was his escape from the taunts of the older boys who teased.

He wishes he had more time to just lie down like this, but there's no end to his woodworking, particularly since the royal family commissioned everyone to design new furniture for the princess. So while he's grateful for the work, the crops are poor, and so much of the game the people would hunt has left that the money made can only go to buying food from the occasional merchant that passes through, and their prices just seem to increase with each visit. 

Knowing he wouldn't have another chance to fish with the royal family's commissions, to design and build, he unloads his rod and shakes its line free from the net-like head. It's not even as long as his arm and is made of springy bamboo, with a handle wearing smooth and shiny from being handled. The end has a subtle helix curve to it and is unbroken, he's glad to find. He's proud of this fishing rod. His uncle, a fisherman, taught him how to make them and how to fish, and would be just as proud over its sturdy construction. 

The sun reflects off of the water, sparkling like precious gems, and Jinki moves a way upriver to where the forest grows closer to the river and covers everything with a cool shadow. It's not a very deep river, rising to his neck at its deepest, but almost completely clear and filled with many water-smoothed rocks that fish could hide in and rest from the current.

He wades in just over knee deep, relishing the soothing current massaging his legs and feet. He's kneeling a lot as he works, and even though he's still a young man, he's noticing his joints already starting to complain.

After tossing some handfuls of crushed sesame seed into the water, he almost immediately snags a couple fish about as long as his hand with his hook and stores them in the basket hanging from his waist. If he can get a couple dozen like them, he can sell them, although he'll probably just give them to his friends and neighbours.

A large shadow passes in front of him, towards the center of the river, and his heart pounds in his ears. It's something huge, easily his height in length. Maybe a great eel. He drools a little at the thought and watches it swim upstream, turn around, and ride the current down. Shuffling forward a little, toeing ahead before stepping over the slippery rocks, he holds his rod out a little farther and drops some more sesame seed.

After a couple passes, Jinki thinks it's just playing, swimming up and down for fun. He didn't know fish had fun, but there's no reason they shouldn't, and he almost feels bad when he feels his hook catch.

The fish writhes, kicking up water and wetting the rocky bank as well as soaking Jinki. It's stronger than he expects. Even with muscles toned and trained with years of woodworking, Jinki struggles to hold onto the rod and prays that the bamboo holds out.

He'll hold on until it tires, then pull it in.

It's many minutes, however, and the fish is still fighting. Against his better judgement, Jinki wades farther, thinking he may have a better chance if he can pull it close enough to simply grab with his hands. Some local fisherman drunkenly boast about the fish they catch bare-handed; it can't be too hard.

With how churned the river is from its struggling, the water is murky, and he can't see well with his hair and silt in his eyes. Working on literal blind instinct, he drags the fish closer, walking towards it as well until he's nearly knee-deep in water. He feels stronger tugs more than pulls, now, so his catch is close.

Sending a prayer into the wind, he gives the gives one final jerk and leaps at the responding splash.

He is completely soaked and can't see, hearing only frantic splashing and smelling the unmistakable scent of wet, but his arms are firmly around a smooth, muscular tail. The fin slaps him over the head repeatedly, but he's taken worse beatings. He thinks snake and hooks his ankles around it, as well, squirming up the river bank and slowly bringing it, too.

Maybe he's swallowed too much water in this fight, though, because he swears he feels hands grasping at his feet and ankles, trying to pries him off. He releases on his own but keeps up the bear hug and pushes against the silt with his heels to get to shore.

Finally, the fight seems to be over. Jinki flips his hair out of his face and rubs his eyes with the heel of his palm, feeling giddy elation swell in his chest. This has got to be the biggest fish in the entire river. It's definitely the largest he's ever caught. It could feed people for a solid week—

He slips on something when he tries to stand. Something small, smooth, and perfectly round. The ground is littered with them. He picks one up and lets it roll over his palm. It looks like a tiny pearl.

But his fish is even more remarkable, as it sits upright and reaches with human arms for the hook still embedded in its long tail. Half fish, but half human.

A mermaid.

If Jinki wasn't such a conscientious person, he'd probably have fainted, but seeing the blatant pain on their face—and the tears, which welled in their round eyes and glittered like the light-dappled river but dropped as fine pearls to their lap and rolled onto the bank—he scrambles for his tackle and grabs a knife as well as his tunic. He's never treated anyone before, except himself, but his clumsiness usually awarded him with colourful bruises, rarely external bleeding of any sort, and this was a lot of blood. Bright red poured from around the barbed hook, and the poor thing's struggles to remove it only gouged a larger hole in its tail.

"Just...Just wait. I'll help you," Jinki says, trying to be quick as well as soothing, but he's neither while multi-tasking, and the fishman obviously doesn't trust him. They swipe at him with its hands, fingers curled, and Jinki barely catches sight of the translucent finger nails that appear sharp like claws, but he certainly feels them as they scratch over his arms. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry; I'm just trying to help!"

A fist flies out of nowhere, knocking Jinki upside the head, and the boy shrieks. The entire canopy of birds seems to spook and take to the sky at once. Jinki struggles to right himself, although his vision swims with shapeless colours. He feels a wood splinter in his shoulder.

Pearls the size of marbles fall like rain, and the boy shoves Jinki off of him, but he manages to encircle the great tail with his arms and hold it still enough to bend the hook in half back and forth against the knife until the hook snaps.

He picks out both halves and holds them up to see, pressing his short against the wound with his other hand.

His head has stopped ringing, and he tosses the broken hook into his tackle along with his knife. Beneath his hand, he finally notices the unusual tail. It's smooth; the scales run down away from the boy's head in colours Jinki's only seen on royal robes made of silk. They're dry, and he realises that is probably not good, considering half of the creature is fish, and fish need water to live.

He gets no real response when he stands and grabs under the creature's arms, walking backwards to the water and dragging them along. They're much heavier than Jinki expects and seems to be purposely dragging their tail. Jinki rests every few steps, sweat running along his face, but he feels the wet sand under his feet and lowers the boy onto his back. The water takes their long hair, throwing it with the current, and caresses their hairline. It's enough incentive for them to push himself onto his elbows and roll over, dragging themselves into the water.

The effect is immediate. It's a strength that flourishes in the water that propels them beneath the surface, but it's a weakness caused by a human that drives them back to shore, clouds of brown slithering from the wound like smoke. They lift their tail despondently just to let it drop with a dull splash.

Lying still, Jinki notices that they're probably male, at least flat-chested, and younger than Jinki as well as rather pretty. Their hair hangs below their shoulders, which are smooth and aren't all that broad—lending to his youthful appearance—and hangs around their pearl-pale face like seaweed. They've stopped crying and blink rapidly, instead, staring at Jinki and the water and their tail and finally back to Jinki again. He sees the change in their eyes when their head tilts to the side, eyes looking worried. They rise up on an elbow and reach toward him; he leans back. His arms sting from the scratches, which seem to be what the ineo is looking at.

Jinki holds up a hand in a gesture he hopes is understood—Wait.—heads into the woods. The trees growing along the river are willow; its bark can help with pain, when chewed or brewed into tea. It tastes awful, but it works. He peels pieces for himself and the ineo, who watches everything with blatant curiosity and stares at his legs with open wonder.

He returns and sits right at the river edge, offering the bark on his open palm. The boy sniffs it, grimaces, and shakes his head, pushing it back to Jinki. 

"It's not as bad as it smells!" Not that it smells like anything other than tree to him. "Or looks," he lies. It is very dry. Keeping his face neutral as he tosses a bit of bark into his mouth takes all his self-control and will, because the bark is bitter. If it didn't actually work, he'd rather suffer pain than suffer the taste. It takes so much tea to wash away the taste.

The ineo doesn't last more than a couple curious bites before physically convulsing spitting it right onto the ground and diving for Jinki's basket of fish, still around his waist. They grab a fish and tear a chunk out of its belly, seeming to almost melt when the blood coats their tongue.

It's rather disgusting, but it's also the happiest he's seen the kid since impaling their with a fish hook. Anything that can make such a repulsed expression can't be as bad as the villagers lead him to believe.

He realises he's staring when the ineo stops chewing and their lips. They look at their fish, partly devoured and more bone than fish, and offer it to Jinki.

"Oh, no. No, thank you." The ineo pushes it closer to his face, expression earnest, and he can't deny them graciously, so he takes the fish and bites a little piece from its remains.

Willow bark tastes awful on its own, but willow bark and fish blood is a mix of flavours Jinki never wanted to experience. He manages to smile and offer the fish back, which is eagerly devoured. Jinki spits out the raw fish over his shoulder.

The water is clear again, and while the wound doesn't look like it's bleeding, it is still open, painful, and obviously hindering the ineo's swimming.

If they can't swim, they can't catch food. Jinki uses a fishing rod; the merfolk use their speed in the water.

The sun sits high in the sky; he needs to get home to work.

The ineo s head is on their arms, eyes closing for moments at a time and fighting sleep. They rise up onto their hands when Jinki stands and retrieves his clothes.

"I'll come back," he says. He dresses and picks up his pack and tackle. "It's my fault you can't swim well. I'll help you catch fish until you're well enough to catch them yourself. I promise." 

From the smile on the ineo's face, Jinki wonders if they actually understand human speech.