Chapter 4
StarchildrenStarchildren
Junghee’s memories are invading her thoughts at night. She’s supposed to be sleeping but for some reason, she keeps thinking about the woman in the lagoon that asked her to leave, to forget her. The legends of creatures of the sea in Jinki’s book spoke of creatures who lured sailors to the sharp rocks, just to help them out of danger again.
Junghee has seen plenty of old legends like that, sirens, mermaids, water nymphs. It doesn’t really matter what name she puts on them and what stories she reads; she can’t forget the woman. It bothers her because logically speaking mermaids don’t exist. Mermaids shouldn’t exist. But Junghee swears she saw the end of a tail and she swears that the woman dived into the water instead of jumping out of it.
She shakes her head a little and buries into her pillow. This is stupid. So little of the ocean has been discovered and with so many legends of these creatures, maybe it isn’t impossible? But that would mean that Junghee has seen a mermaid and how is she supposed to forget that?
She whines and buries deeper into her pillow. Screw everything, she has to go back to the lagoon.
Her memories are invading her thoughts at night. Minjung is supposed to be looking for akaika’s but she can’t focus. Around her, the cephalopods are trying to hide between stones and rocks. Minjung is likely going to sleep hungry tonight if she manages to sleep at all.
Her māmā sends her a concerned gaze when she swims past but Minjung just sends her a smile. She keeps remembering the human and her kind brown eyes. There was something in them, something that didn’t look like fear or greed and it has Minjung curious. She remembers a story her māmā once told her about a stupid merperson who got spotted by the humans and ended up caught in their large, terrifying glass boxes resembling the ocean.
The more she remembers the human, however, the more difficult it becomes to imagine humans as such mean creatures. Minjung has been warned about humans all her life but maybe they aren’t that bad. It’s stupid, really. She really is an idiot. She shouldn’t even have this kind of thought but she can’t stop herself.
Minjung shakes her head and watches as the ocean slowly turns lighter as the moon is replaced with the sun. So much for sleep and so much for dinner. The thoughts of the human girl are still occupying her mind, curiosity clouding her judgment.
Jinki feels a weight on his back and automatically assumes it’s Junghee. It isn’t, however. It’s Taemin that sends him a large grin and lets go of his shoulders. Jinki sends him a questioning gaze.
“What?” he asks and Taemin keeps grinning like he’s the happiest he has ever been. Jinki doubts that’s the case, however.
When Taemin and Junghee started dating, they were both glowing like they were the luckiest people alive. Jinki is pretty convinced he is unable to make them glow that way considering he’s not dating either of them. Not that Jinki wants to; he can’t imagine anything worse than falling in love with his best friend’s boyfriend and Junghee doesn’t stand a chance. Jinki likes to tell her that she wouldn’t have stood a chance, even if he had been straight.
“Thanks,” Taemin says. Jinki raises an eyebrow.
“For what?” he asks, even more confused now than he had been when Taemin latched onto his back.
“For bringing Junghee back.”
Jinki watches the smaller girl hurry towards them and jump onto Taemin’s back, Taemin just laughing.
“You guys are plotting something against me and that’s not cool so now I’m stealing my boyfriend back. I can’t hang out later, though, Jinki. I’m really sorry but Sodam wanted to go to the theater and it’s been a while since I’ve seen her. I hope it’s okay!”
Jinki sends her a smile.
“Of course! Say hi from me!”
Junghee laughs and nods.
“I will.”
With those words, Jinki watches Junghee pull Taemin with her the other way, back towards the library.
Kibum spins around, creating smaller whirlpools under his tail as he listens to the ocean. There are fishermen in the area and he has warned the hapori of their whispers and their wetsuits, but nobody seems to care much about their own safety for now. They haven’t seen the boats yet, Kibum only knows because he can feel and hear the motors in the waters.
Earlier he would have been upset by the knowledge that nobody heeds his warnings, especially if it is going to mean that someone is getting hurt but he trusts Minjung’s māmā this time around. He has other things to think about. Someone lets their fingers through his hair and pulls softly and Kibum turns around, expecting to find Minjung, but stares at Taeyeon’s silver hair and lavender grey eyes instead.
“Oh,” he says and Taeyeon lets go of his hair.
“I just wanted to…” she says before she gets interrupted by Minjung and Bora.
“Taeyeon!” Bora says and pulls at her wrist. Taeyeon looks at Kibum with a grateful smile. Kibum doesn’t understand anything. “Come on.”
“I was talking to Taeyeon,” he says and frowns and Minjung laughs a little before she circles around him a couple of times.
“But we were going to have a kōhine-only talk and you’re obviously not a kōhine so you can’t join,” she says in a light manner and tickles Kibum’s waist. Kibum squirms away from her and pokes Minjung’s shoulder.
“Then what are you doing there? You’re not a kōhine either,” he says and Minjung frowns a little. Bora rolls her eyes.
“Tānes,” she says and Kibum is confused, even when they drag Taeyeon away from him, towards the smaller caves close to the entrance to the lagoon. He figures Taeyeon didn’t want to say anything important.
The days get shorter and the nights longer as the temperature starts to drop when fall starts to sweep over the country. Jinki works through his classes and studies the night sky when there aren’t too many clouds but he starts to feel isolated. His nights are filled with dreams he can’t quite understand and despite everything seeming normal, there is something that keeps him from other people.
Jinki has never been extraordinarily social. He was shy as a child and has only ever had a small but tight friend circle. It never bothered him, but now he barely meets people outside of classes and it leaves him depressed. Jinki feels smaller than he wants to and he almost loses interest in it all. Junghee knows something is wrong with him but Jinki can’t really explain.
He sighs and looks at his books. He’s working on an essay that’s due in two days but he can’t quite focus. There are something pulling at him, something he hasn’t felt in a long time. It’s something Jinki thought he had put behind months ago but now, in the silent night, it’s there and it’s begging for him to go.
Jinki ignores the pull, though, and forces himself to focus on the essay. He doesn’t want to return to the lagoon ever again. It only brings him misery.
The waters slowly turn colder as the moon stays on the sky longer and Kibum is starting to get restless. There is something in the waters that has him annoyed and he can’t put a finger on it. It’s like smaller waves washing over him, irritating him like wrasse trying to clean his neck. He ignores the call from the hapori as he swims towards the open ocean.
Kibum gets angry quicker these days and it hurts the merpeople around him. He knows he has hurt his māmā and that Minjung is getting wary of him. There is nothing he can do to change it, though. He wishes his pāpā was there to teach him how to ignore the waters but there is nothing he can do but listen.
Kibum has always had a temper and he’s always been rebellious, but these days, it’s getting worse than it has ever been. Kibum sometimes wishes he could stop it, could go back to normal but despite everything seeming normal, there is something that’s off.
At first, he assumed it had to do with Minjung’s spotting but nothing has happened since then. The fishermen stay away from them and nobody has been coming to catch them. The lagoon is still sacred and no humans have been jumping into it. The only thing Kibum knows is that he won’t be there to save them, because he doesn’t want to return to the lagoon.
With a flick of his tail he swims forward and towards the edge and the deeper ocean.
Junghee shouldn’t be near the lagoon. It’s getting colder and she’s dressed in a warm sweater as she sits on the ground before the water and stares at it. She had promised the woman to forget her, but that has proved impossible and even though Junghee knows better than to keep returning, she’s still here, still hoping.
The sky is cloudy and it makes everything darker, the lagoon a less pleasant place during fall and winter. The guided tours have stopped and Junghee can’t hear the birds singing.
The weather forecast had said rain but so far, the ground is still dry and Junghee is still waiting for the water from the sky. She pulls her knees against her chest, hoping to keep a little warm, when she closes her eyes and lets the silence lull her to sleep.
Minjung shouldn’t be in the lagoon. It’s a dangerous place and she has tried everything she can to avoid it, but there is something pulling her towards it. She thinks she understands why Kibum was here after he saved the drowning human, because for some reason, it calls out to her, begs her to stay and watch the brown edge.
She sighs, blowing bubbles in the process, before she closes her eyes and lets the water calm her. The water is never upset in the lagoon, always silent, always calm. The vegetation on the bottom sways gently as usual, the undersea cave that connects the lagoon with the ocean slowly replacing the water in the lagoon with fresher waters. The water in the lagoon is warmer than the water in the open ocean, but Minjung doesn’t care much for the heat.
She shakes her head when she opens her eyes and breaches the surface, only to find the pink-haired girl on the edge again. She’s dressed in what looks like warmer clothes, sitting further back which is why Minjung hasn’t been able to see her from below. Her eyes are closed and even though Minjung has the chance to run away, she stays over the surface, observing the human.
“I’m worried about you, Jinki,” his mother says and Jinki looks up from his book. He’s sitting on their porch, dressed in a large sweater and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders to fend off the cold.
“You don’t have to be,” he says and returns to his book. His mother sits down beside him, making it impossible for him to focus on it and he sighs.
“You’re never with anyone anymore. I haven’t seen Junghee in months and you never talk to anybody. All you do is sit and read and observe the night sky.”
Jinki bites his cheek and lets her words sink in. They’re not untrue. Jinki hasn’t been hanging out with anyone in the past months. He sighs a little and turns to her, a small smile on his lips.
“It’s okay, mom. It’s just because I’ve been busy with school.”
She pats his shoulder a little before she stands again.
“At least get inside. You’ll catch a cold.”
Jinki nods when she walks back into the house. He doesn’t want to go inside, however. Inside feels stuffy and wrong and Jinki can’t explain it so he doesn’t.
“Kibum, you can’t just ignore your duties,” his māmā says. Kibum rolls his eyes in annoyance and swims away from her. It only has her calling out to him, a firm grip on his wrist preventing him from moving further away.
“Let me go,” he hisses and she lets go surprised.
“Kibum…” she says and Kibum glares at her. The water around him is tense and the waves above them are higher, angrier. “Calm down.”
He knows he shouldn’t be angry with her. Her demands are reasonable and he really has been neglecting his duties. He didn’t go find food and he doesn’t watch the nohinohi’s like everybody else. The only thing he does is swim far away and hoping to get rid of the anger he doesn’t know.
“Stop bothering me!” he says and she looks at him, hurt. “You’re all just annoying me! Stop with the ridiculous chores, I’m not a slave! I don’t want to be here and this is ridiculous. You think you know best but do you even know anything? You don’t know me! Let me go!”
He backs away from her and hears her calling his name again when he turns around and swims away towards the shipwrecks.
Junghee is stupid. It’s raining heavily, she’s soaked to the bone, her hair clinging to her back and it’s 3 AM but she needs some clarification. Not only is her best friend isolating himself again, she also can’t stop dreaming about tails and the legends of mermaids are haunting her. She needs just one last good look, just one last denial. One last, she tells herself. That’s why she has snuck out of the house a night in mid October.
She’s making her way through mudded paths until she stands at the edge of the lagoon and stares at the dark water. In a brief moment of insanity she almost wants to jump down, to truly make sure that what she saw that time was a hallucination but even though she can swim, there’s no way she can find her way back to the edge if she jumps, so she stays, watching the rain disappearing into the calm water.
Please, she begs silently. Let there be a reason to her dreams, to the way the lagoon keeps pulling her towards it. Let there be some way to confirm one way or another so she can leave, go back, focus on Jinki and Taemin and everything can go back to what it once was. Junghee is exhaling deeply while the water continues to fall around her.
A thunder roars far away and the trees sway dangerously above her in the wind. Yet Junghee stays. She almost doesn’t catch the bubble that surfaces in between the ripples created by rain but it’s there, she’s absolutely positive. Another bubble follows the first and then another and another. Junghee worries her lower lip between her teeth as she almost pleads to some higher ups that the woman will appear again, that Junghee won’t scare her away.
The woman almost blinds Junghee in the night when she finally does breach. She’s beautiful, more than Junghee remembers her. Her zaffre blue hair stands out against the dark of the water and the muddy brown of the sides but she’s gorgeous. Junghee almost stumbles and loses her balances, but she manages to stay on the edge. Her gasp is heard over the rain, though, because the woman in the water tenses.
“Wait!” Junghee shouts, her hand reaching towards the water. “Don’t go. Please.”
She can hear the sobs that colors her voice at the thought of losing sight of the woman and once again be left alone to dreams and thoughts that will haunt her and have her question her sanity.
“Wait!”
Minjung freezes and stares at the wall in front of her, vegetation clinging to the brown mud as if they were one.
“Don’t go. Please.”
She knows the human is there; she recognizes her voice. She hasn’t dared turn around and face her yet, though. Minjung isn’t instantly scared of the human and that’s wrong. She should dip into the ocean, swim far away, hide with the hapori, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because she has heard the human before, has talked to her, even if it was only a warning.
She has seen the sincerity in the human’s eyes and it doesn’t scare her anymore. The humans she was once so afraid of has been replaced with the one human she’s curious about – the human with the nadeshiko pink hair.
She slowly turns around in the water and looks up and meets the eyes of the human. They stare at each other.
“I’m … I’m not going to hurt you,” the human says and sinks down on her knees. Minjung observes her in silence. She wants to talk but she doesn’t know what to say. “Are you …”
The human doesn’t continue and Minjung blinks a little confused. Is she what? She lets a hand run through her hair and dips her shoulder below the water so only her head can be seen. It feels a little safer than having her entire torso out of water.
“Am I?” she asks when a minute has passed by and the human has said nothing. The rain is slowly starting to fade, the touch of the raindrops soft like velvet. The human widens her eyes in surprise.
“I … I mean…”
Minjung smiles a little at the human’s confusion.
“What do they call you?” she asks.
“Call me?” the human asks and Minjung nods. “Oh, uhm, my name is Junghee. Kim Junghee.”
There’s silence between them while Minjung mumbles the name to herself. It sounds pretty. Not at all scary, just soft and nice. It suits the color of her hair, Minjung decides.
“They call me Minjung,” she says after a while, caution thrown to the wind. Junghee makes an ‘oh’ sound before she repeats the name and smiles a little.
“It’s pretty,” Junghee says and Minjung is about to tell Junghee the same about her name when Junghee sneezes into her hands. The wind is cold but Minjung barely feels it with her body dipped into the lagoon. Junghee just giggles a little.
“Can I… come back? Will I see you again?”
The question is loaded with possibilities and despite the danger of meeting up with a human repeatedly she nods and tells Junghee that they can meet again in the lagoon if she shows up. Junghee sends her a last smile and a wave before she gets up and leaves the lagoon with a ‘see you’. Minjung’s heart beats faster than normally when she dips back under the water and she twirls around kelp in anxious curiosity. She’s stupid.
The sand is hard beneath his feet. The sun is shining from a blue sky after the rainstorm yesterday night. Taemin is staring at the ocean, two swans sailing the waves that at the sand, sometimes getting a little too close to his feet.
He’s focused on walking forward in a straight line, the scent of the salt water calming him down for some reason. It has taken him an hour to drive to the beach but he doesn’t regret it. There’s something different out here, a calm that doesn’t exist in the city and a pull he doesn’t find elsewhere.
When he stops, he turns around and looks at the ocean, he blinks a couple of times in the sun. It’s windier out here, but not so cold that it bothers him in his jacket. Kelp is washed ashore in big bulks, black contrasting the white sand beautifully. If he was here with friends they would have complained, but Taemin is left to the wind and his own thoughts.
The waves are getting bigger and he has to retreat further up the beach to the softer sand where he sits down. The swans are now further away and Taemin closes his eyes with a deep breath. The scent of the sea still calms him down and the melody the waves create makes him yawn.
For some reason, he is less lonely when he’s at the ocean. Taemin doesn’t understand it, but he is grateful anyway. If an hour in car is all it takes for him to relax, to forget, then it’s an hour he’s willing to spend over and over.
There are starfish and starry flounders spread across the sandy bottom of the ocean as she glides through the water in slow movements. Taeyeon lets her hand down and she grabs a chunk of sand that slowly slides through her fingers and colors the water a murky beige before it settles on the floor again. She avoids a crab that gets a little too close to her fluke and continues her way through the water near the shore.
It’s dangerous for her to be here, dangerous to even come this close to anything human but Taeyeon likes it near the shore. There is a different calm near the shore that doesn’t exist in the ocean. She knows it’s easier for her to beach when she’s this close, but she’ll be careful. She’s small and lithe anyway and her flukes are so small it’ll be easier for her to manage small movements. She’s not like any of the other merpeople in the hapori and she knows that. Being closer to the shore is more comfortable, though.
There is something in the ocean bed when she gets close. It’s like it whispers to her, tells her tales of the humans that walk the Earth. Humans she should fear and humans she does fear, when she’s honest.
But she likes watching the beach anyway, likes the creatures that live closer to the shore. They have different stories to tell. And besides, Taeyeon has learned that despite the fear of humans, as long as it isn’t summer, there won’t be a lot of humans walking the sandy beach as the weather will be far too cold for them. She won’t be in any danger.
She flicks her tail, lifts her hips just slightly and her dorsal fin cuts through the waters before it dips below again.
Jinki forces himself through the group of people and into the classroom.
November is slowly approaching and with November comes midterms. This means, that Jinki has been forced out of his isolation if he doesn’t want to fall behind in class and while he still doesn’t talk a lot to many of his classmates because they’re as busy as he is, it does help a little with his worried parents.
The colder weather is also making it less desirable to stay outside on the porch, watching stars, and Jinki has, much to his own disappointment, started to focus on the lagoon again. Mostly he considers it Junghee’s fault. Her sudden interest in creatures of the sea has spurred on old thoughts and dreams Jinki thought he had long forgotten. It could be a result of his isolation as well, but Jinki dislikes the thought. It’s easier to blame it on Junghee.
He sits down at the table and finds his books, only to look up and blink when someone bumps into him from beside. He looks over and finds a girl he has never seen before, sends her a small smile before he focuses back on his books. He can hear the silent tapping against her phone when she texts her friends, can feel her looking at him and it makes him uncomfortable.
Jinki is determined not to talk to her, however. He’s too much of a mess to deal with other people.
Kibum follows the common bottlenose dolphin pod in an attempt to control his own temper. The dolphins are swimming fast, weaving in and out between one another as they jump above the surface in a playful game. Kibum is letting his fluke drive him through the water, the sun shining on the surface, letting his seashell colored tail shine like pearl.
He knows the dolphins don’t care about his company, can feel the mood in the water as they swim further and further from the hapori. He’s here mostly because his temper is starting to get the best of him and it brings all kinds of trouble with it.
Kibum has been trying to blame everything but himself in the past couple of weeks but has come up unsuccessful. He knows there is only one to blame and that one is him. He needs to talk to someone about it, but he’s a little afraid of admitting that the human world and the saving of that one human boy in the lagoon is starting to mess with him again. He doesn’t like admitting that maybe he was wrong when he chose to ignore it all in favor of forgetting because forgetting is impossible these days and it clouds everything he does and everything he says.
A dolphin bumps into him in clumsy movements as it tries to jump above water and Kibum is thrown off-balance and left behind the pod as they continue forward.
He’s in a part of the ocean where he rarely gets, far off the coast, far away from the hapori and left to the bare ocean bed that stretches far below him in the darkness. Fish and cephalopods occupy the waters around him and he closes his eyes and lets out an elegant ‘ah’ in the hopes of echolocation helping him find his way back home.
“Minjung?” Junghee calls out towards the blue lagoon. The surface is silent. “Minjung?” she tries again, hoping for something to start stirring.
It’s November and the temperature has dropped below 10 degrees Celsius. She’s bundled up in big sweaters and her padded jacket. Junghee had spent the last two weeks with Taemin, cramming before midterms and panicking over exams she was sure she was going to fail, but now that it is all over, she has sought out the lagoon again, waiting for confirmation that there really is a mermaid living in the lagoon. A beautiful mermaid that Junghee shouldn’t dream of but does anyway and a mermaid that seems to attract the most primal of Junghee’s desires.
The water ripples on the surface for a second or two before Minjung breaches and pulls her hair out of her eyes. She smiles, her eyes crinkling in a way that both hides the azure blue color of her eyes and makes them absolutely enchanting. Junghee doesn’t even notice she’s smiling until her muscles start to hurt in the cold.
“Junghee!” the mermaid says and dips below water so only her head is showing. Junghee sits down on the edge of the lagoon, wishing to be closer but not knowing how to. “I was catching crayfish.”
Junghee has no idea what a crayfish is but she just nods, entranced by the woman in the water. Now that they’re finally face to face without the fear and the disbelief, Junghee finds herself unable to ask all the questions she has had in the past weeks. Minjung continues to dismantle the crayfish, it seems, as she brings up what looks like a lobster tail and starts on it.
They stare at each other curiously in the silent November evening and Junghee bites her lower lip a little.
“So,” Minjung says and at the crayfish tail to get the last meat out of it. It also helps her arrange all the millions of questions she has about the human world so she can ask them all without offending the human. The dangers are long forgotten now that she’s actually looking at the human again. Junghee really doesn’t look that dangerous. “What do humans do?”
The question doesn’t at all sound like she wanted it to, but Junghee blinks and smiles so Minjung guesses it isn’t as offensive as it could have been.
“Do?” Junghee asks and tilts her head in a cute way that shows confusion. Minjung scolds herself for thinking the human is cute, but nods her head anyway, hoping to get her curiosity fulfilled.
“Yes! Besides destroying the oceans and sitting here, what do humans do?”
Minjung frowns a little when she finishes her sentence but Junghee just snorts.
“I’m sorry about the ocean-thing I guess. I go to university, though,” she says and Minjung lets go of the crayfish and lets it drop towards the bottom of the lagoon.
“What’s university?” she asks curiously and Junghee giggles, the sound almost as beautiful as whale song.
“An educational institution,” she says and Minjung frowns, getting confused.
“What?” Minjung deadpans and Junghee laughs out loud, her giggles turning to laughter and that Minjung must admit is more beautiful than anything she has ever heard.
“Humans go to school so to become smarter. We teach each other things like language and science.”
Minjung isn’t entirely sure what science is, but she gets the teaching each other language so she assumes she knows what university is as well. It can’t be that different from how they teach their young ones to survive, right?
“Ooooooh,” she says. Junghee nods a little when her laughter stops and she swings her legs against the edge, shoes hitting the muddy wall and the browning vegetation.
“What about you? What do you do?”
Minjung lets a hand through her hair before she bites her lower lip.
“Eat? And watch the nohinohi’s and play around.”
Junghee looks awfully confused at that.
“Nohinohi’s?” she asks and Minjung nods.
“Yeah, uh, you know?” she tries but Junghee shakes her head.
“I have no idea,” she admits and Minjugn bites her cheek and tries to find an explanation.
“Like little ones? Our calves?” She grimaces when she realizes that doesn’t sound right at all. “You know?”
Junghee frowns a little.
“Your babies?” she asks, unsure of herself, and Minjung frowns as well.
“Babies?”
Junghee laughs again.
“Oh my god, we have less in common than I thought we’d have,” she says and Minjung thinks it sounds offensive but she’s way too curious to really take offense. Junghee sends her a smile so soft that Minjung thinks it’s okay, even if they have nothing in common because Junghee may the best human to ever exist.
Junghee has seen plenty of old legends like that, sirens, mermaids, water nymphs. It doesn’t really matter what name she puts on them and what stories she reads; she can’t forget the woman. It bothers her because logically speaking mermaids don’t exist. Mermaids shouldn’t exist. But Junghee swears she saw the end of a tail and she swears that the woman dived into the water instead of jumping out of it.
She shakes her head a little and buries into her pillow. This is stupid. So little of the ocean has been discovered and with so many legends of these creatures, maybe it isn’t impossible? But that would mean that Junghee has seen a mermaid and how is she supposed to forget that?
She whines and buries deeper into her pillow. Screw everything, she has to go back to the lagoon.
Her memories are invading her thoughts at night. Minjung is supposed to be looking for akaika’s but she can’t focus. Around her, the cephalopods are trying to hide between stones and rocks. Minjung is likely going to sleep hungry tonight if she manages to sleep at all.
Her māmā sends her a concerned gaze when she swims past but Minjung just sends her a smile. She keeps remembering the human and her kind brown eyes. There was something in them, something that didn’t look like fear or greed and it has Minjung curious. She remembers a story her māmā once told her about a stupid merperson who got spotted by the humans and ended up caught in their large, terrifying glass boxes resembling the ocean.
The more she remembers the human, however, the more difficult it becomes to imagine humans as such mean creatures. Minjung has been warned about humans all her life but maybe they aren’t that bad. It’s stupid, really. She really is an idiot. She shouldn’t even have this kind of thought but she can’t stop herself.
Minjung shakes her head and watches as the ocean slowly turns lighter as the moon is replaced with the sun. So much for sleep and so much for dinner. The thoughts of the human girl are still occupying her mind, curiosity clouding her judgment.
Jinki feels a weight on his back and automatically assumes it’s Junghee. It isn’t, however. It’s Taemin that sends him a large grin and lets go of his shoulders. Jinki sends him a questioning gaze.
“What?” he asks and Taemin keeps grinning like he’s the happiest he has ever been. Jinki doubts that’s the case, however.
When Taemin and Junghee started dating, they were both glowing like they were the luckiest people alive. Jinki is pretty convinced he is unable to make them glow that way considering he’s not dating either of them. Not that Jinki wants to; he can’t imagine anything worse than falling in love with his best friend’s boyfriend and Junghee doesn’t stand a chance. Jinki likes to tell her that she wouldn’t have stood a chance, even if he had been straight.
“Thanks,” Taemin says. Jinki raises an eyebrow.
“For what?” he asks, even more confused now than he had been when Taemin latched onto his back.
“For bringing Junghee back.”
Jinki watches the smaller girl hurry towards them and jump onto Taemin’s back, Taemin just laughing.
“You guys are plotting something against me and that’s not cool so now I’m stealing my boyfriend back. I can’t hang out later, though, Jinki. I’m really sorry but Sodam wanted to go to the theater and it’s been a while since I’ve seen her. I hope it’s okay!”
Jinki sends her a smile.
“Of course! Say hi from me!”
Junghee laughs and nods.
“I will.”
With those words, Jinki watches Junghee pull Taemin with her the other way, back towards the library.
Kibum spins around, creating smaller whirlpools under his tail as he listens to the ocean. There are fishermen in the area and he has warned the hapori of their whispers and their wetsuits, but nobody seems to care much about their own safety for now. They haven’t seen the boats yet, Kibum only knows because he can feel and hear the motors in the waters.
Earlier he would have been upset by the knowledge that nobody heeds his warnings, especially if it is going to mean that someone is getting hurt but he trusts Minjung’s māmā this time around. He has other things to think about. Someone lets their fingers through his hair and pulls softly and Kibum turns around, expecting to find Minjung, but stares at Taeyeon’s silver hair and lavender grey eyes instead.
“Oh,” he says and Taeyeon lets go of his hair.
“I just wanted to…” she says before she gets interrupted by Minjung and Bora.
“Taeyeon!” Bora says and pulls at her wrist. Taeyeon looks at Kibum with a grateful smile. Kibum doesn’t understand anything. “Come on.”
“I was talking to Taeyeon,” he says and frowns and Minjung laughs a little before she circles around him a couple of times.
“But we were going to have a kōhine-only talk and you’re obviously not a kōhine so you can’t join,” she says in a light manner and tickles Kibum’s waist. Kibum squirms away from her and pokes Minjung’s shoulder.
“Then what are you doing there? You’re not a kōhine either,” he says and Minjung frowns a little. Bora rolls her eyes.
“Tānes,” she says and Kibum is confused, even when they drag Taeyeon away from him, towards the smaller caves close to the entrance to the lagoon. He figures Taeyeon didn’t want to say anything important.
The days get shorter and the nights longer as the temperature starts to drop when fall starts to sweep over the country. Jinki works through his classes and studies the night sky when there aren’t too many clouds but he starts to feel isolated. His nights are filled with dreams he can’t quite understand and despite everything seeming normal, there is something that keeps him from other people.
Jinki has never been extraordinarily social. He was shy as a child and has only ever had a small but tight friend circle. It never bothered him, but now he barely meets people outside of classes and it leaves him depressed. Jinki feels smaller than he wants to and he almost loses interest in it all. Junghee knows something is wrong with him but Jinki can’t really explain.
He sighs and looks at his books. He’s working on an essay that’s due in two days but he can’t quite focus. There are something pulling at him, something he hasn’t felt in a long time. It’s something Jinki thought he had put behind months ago but now, in the silent night, it’s there and it’s begging for him to go.
Jinki ignores the pull, though, and forces himself to focus on the essay. He doesn’t want to return to the lagoon ever again. It only brings him misery.
The waters slowly turn colder as the moon stays on the sky longer and Kibum is starting to get restless. There is something in the waters that has him annoyed and he can’t put a finger on it. It’s like smaller waves washing over him, irritating him like wrasse trying to clean his neck. He ignores the call from the hapori as he swims towards the open ocean.
Kibum gets angry quicker these days and it hurts the merpeople around him. He knows he has hurt his māmā and that Minjung is getting wary of him. There is nothing he can do to change it, though. He wishes his pāpā was there to teach him how to ignore the waters but there is nothing he can do but listen.
Kibum has always had a temper and he’s always been rebellious, but these days, it’s getting worse than it has ever been. Kibum sometimes wishes he could stop it, could go back to normal but despite everything seeming normal, there is something that’s off.
At first, he assumed it had to do with Minjung’s spotting but nothing has happened since then. The fishermen stay away from them and nobody has been coming to catch them. The lagoon is still sacred and no humans have been jumping into it. The only thing Kibum knows is that he won’t be there to save them, because he doesn’t want to return to the lagoon.
With a flick of his tail he swims forward and towards the edge and the deeper ocean.
Junghee shouldn’t be near the lagoon. It’s getting colder and she’s dressed in a warm sweater as she sits on the ground before the water and stares at it. She had promised the woman to forget her, but that has proved impossible and even though Junghee knows better than to keep returning, she’s still here, still hoping.
The sky is cloudy and it makes everything darker, the lagoon a less pleasant place during fall and winter. The guided tours have stopped and Junghee can’t hear the birds singing.
The weather forecast had said rain but so far, the ground is still dry and Junghee is still waiting for the water from the sky. She pulls her knees against her chest, hoping to keep a little warm, when she closes her eyes and lets the silence lull her to sleep.
Minjung shouldn’t be in the lagoon. It’s a dangerous place and she has tried everything she can to avoid it, but there is something pulling her towards it. She thinks she understands why Kibum was here after he saved the drowning human, because for some reason, it calls out to her, begs her to stay and watch the brown edge.
She sighs, blowing bubbles in the process, before she closes her eyes and lets the water calm her. The water is never upset in the lagoon, always silent, always calm. The vegetation on the bottom sways gently as usual, the undersea cave that connects the lagoon with the ocean slowly replacing the water in the lagoon with fresher waters. The water in the lagoon is warmer than the water in the open ocean, but Minjung doesn’t care much for the heat.
She shakes her head when she opens her eyes and breaches the surface, only to find the pink-haired girl on the edge again. She’s dressed in what looks like warmer clothes, sitting further back which is why Minjung hasn’t been able to see her from below. Her eyes are closed and even though Minjung has the chance to run away, she stays over the surface, observing the human.
“I’m worried about you, Jinki,” his mother says and Jinki looks up from his book. He’s sitting on their porch, dressed in a large sweater and a blanket wrapped around his shoulders to fend off the cold.
“You don’t have to be,” he says and returns to his book. His mother sits down beside him, making it impossible for him to focus on it and he sighs.
“You’re never with anyone anymore. I haven’t seen Junghee in months and you never talk to anybody. All you do is sit and read and observe the night sky.”
Jinki bites his cheek and lets her words sink in. They’re not untrue. Jinki hasn’t been hanging out with anyone in the past months. He sighs a little and turns to her, a small smile on his lips.
“It’s okay, mom. It’s just because I’ve been busy with school.”
She pats his shoulder a little before she stands again.
“At least get inside. You’ll catch a cold.”
Jinki nods when she walks back into the house. He doesn’t want to go inside, however. Inside feels stuffy and wrong and Jinki can’t explain it so he doesn’t.
“Kibum, you can’t just ignore your duties,” his māmā says. Kibum rolls his eyes in annoyance and swims away from her. It only has her calling out to him, a firm grip on his wrist preventing him from moving further away.
“Let me go,” he hisses and she lets go surprised.
“Kibum…” she says and Kibum glares at her. The water around him is tense and the waves above them are higher, angrier. “Calm down.”
He knows he shouldn’t be angry with her. Her demands are reasonable and he really has been neglecting his duties. He didn’t go find food and he doesn’t watch the nohinohi’s like everybody else. The only thing he does is swim far away and hoping to get rid of the anger he doesn’t know.
“Stop bothering me!” he says and she looks at him, hurt. “You’re all just annoying me! Stop with the ridiculous chores, I’m not a slave! I don’t want to be here and this is ridiculous. You think you know best but do you even know anything? You don’t know me! Let me go!”
He backs away from her and hears her calling his name again when he turns around and swims away towards the shipwrecks.
Junghee is stupid. It’s raining heavily, she’s soaked to the bone, her hair clinging to her back and it’s 3 AM but she needs some clarification. Not only is her best friend isolating himself again, she also can’t stop dreaming about tails and the legends of mermaids are haunting her. She needs just one last good look, just one last denial. One last, she tells herself. That’s why she has snuck out of the house a night in mid October.
She’s making her way through mudded paths until she stands at the edge of the lagoon and stares at the dark water. In a brief moment of insanity she almost wants to jump down, to truly make sure that what she saw that time was a hallucination but even though she can swim, there’s no way she can find her way back to the edge if she jumps, so she stays, watching the rain disappearing into the calm water.
Please, she begs silently. Let there be a reason to her dreams, to the way the lagoon keeps pulling her towards it. Let there be some way to confirm one way or another so she can leave, go back, focus on Jinki and Taemin and everything can go back to what it once was. Junghee is exhaling deeply while the water continues to fall around her.
A thunder roars far away and the trees sway dangerously above her in the wind. Yet Junghee stays. She almost doesn’t catch the bubble that surfaces in between the ripples created by rain but it’s there, she’s absolutely positive. Another bubble follows the first and then another and another. Junghee worries her lower lip between her teeth as she almost pleads to some higher ups that the woman will appear again, that Junghee won’t scare her away.
The woman almost blinds Junghee in the night when she finally does breach. She’s beautiful, more than Junghee remembers her. Her zaffre blue hair stands out against the dark of the water and the muddy brown of the sides but she’s gorgeous. Junghee almost stumbles and loses her balances, but she manages to stay on the edge. Her gasp is heard over the rain, though, because the woman in the water tenses.
“Wait!” Junghee shouts, her hand reaching towards the water. “Don’t go. Please.”
She can hear the sobs that colors her voice at the thought of losing sight of the woman and once again be left alone to dreams and thoughts that will haunt her and have her question her sanity.
“Wait!”
Minjung freezes and stares at the wall in front of her, vegetation clinging to the brown mud as if they were one.
“Don’t go. Please.”
She knows the human is there; she recognizes her voice. She hasn’t dared turn around and face her yet, though. Minjung isn’t instantly scared of the human and that’s wrong. She should dip into the ocean, swim far away, hide with the hapori, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t because she has heard the human before, has talked to her, even if it was only a warning.
She has seen the sincerity in the human’s eyes and it doesn’t scare her anymore. The humans she was once so afraid of has been replaced with the one human she’s curious about – the human with the nadeshiko pink hair.
She slowly turns around in the water and looks up and meets the eyes of the human. They stare at each other.
“I’m … I’m not going to hurt you,” the human says and sinks down on her knees. Minjung observes her in silence. She wants to talk but she doesn’t know what to say. “Are you …”
The human doesn’t continue and Minjung blinks a little confused. Is she what? She lets a hand run through her hair and dips her shoulder below the water so only her head can be seen. It feels a little safer than having her entire torso out of water.
“Am I?” she asks when a minute has passed by and the human has said nothing. The rain is slowly starting to fade, the touch of the raindrops soft like velvet. The human widens her eyes in surprise.
“I … I mean…”
Minjung smiles a little at the human’s confusion.
“What do they call you?” she asks.
“Call me?” the human asks and Minjung nods. “Oh, uhm, my name is Junghee. Kim Junghee.”
There’s silence between them while Minjung mumbles the name to herself. It sounds pretty. Not at all scary, just soft and nice. It suits the color of her hair, Minjung decides.
“They call me Minjung,” she says after a while, caution thrown to the wind. Junghee makes an ‘oh’ sound before she repeats the name and smiles a little.
“It’s pretty,” Junghee says and Minjung is about to tell Junghee the same about her name when Junghee sneezes into her hands. The wind is cold but Minjung barely feels it with her body dipped into the lagoon. Junghee just giggles a little.
“Can I… come back? Will I see you again?”
The question is loaded with possibilities and despite the danger of meeting up with a human repeatedly she nods and tells Junghee that they can meet again in the lagoon if she shows up. Junghee sends her a last smile and a wave before she gets up and leaves the lagoon with a ‘see you’. Minjung’s heart beats faster than normally when she dips back under the water and she twirls around kelp in anxious curiosity. She’s stupid.
The sand is hard beneath his feet. The sun is shining from a blue sky after the rainstorm yesterday night. Taemin is staring at the ocean, two swans sailing the waves that at the sand, sometimes getting a little too close to his feet.
He’s focused on walking forward in a straight line, the scent of the salt water calming him down for some reason. It has taken him an hour to drive to the beach but he doesn’t regret it. There’s something different out here, a calm that doesn’t exist in the city and a pull he doesn’t find elsewhere.
When he stops, he turns around and looks at the ocean, he blinks a couple of times in the sun. It’s windier out here, but not so cold that it bothers him in his jacket. Kelp is washed ashore in big bulks, black contrasting the white sand beautifully. If he was here with friends they would have complained, but Taemin is left to the wind and his own thoughts.
The waves are getting bigger and he has to retreat further up the beach to the softer sand where he sits down. The swans are now further away and Taemin closes his eyes with a deep breath. The scent of the sea still calms him down and the melody the waves create makes him yawn.
For some reason, he is less lonely when he’s at the ocean. Taemin doesn’t understand it, but he is grateful anyway. If an hour in car is all it takes for him to relax, to forget, then it’s an hour he’s willing to spend over and over.
There are starfish and starry flounders spread across the sandy bottom of the ocean as she glides through the water in slow movements. Taeyeon lets her hand down and she grabs a chunk of sand that slowly slides through her fingers and colors the water a murky beige before it settles on the floor again. She avoids a crab that gets a little too close to her fluke and continues her way through the water near the shore.
It’s dangerous for her to be here, dangerous to even come this close to anything human but Taeyeon likes it near the shore. There is a different calm near the shore that doesn’t exist in the ocean. She knows it’s easier for her to beach when she’s this close, but she’ll be careful. She’s small and lithe anyway and her flukes are so small it’ll be easier for her to manage small movements. She’s not like any of the other merpeople in the hapori and she knows that. Being closer to the shore is more comfortable, though.
There is something in the ocean bed when she gets close. It’s like it whispers to her, tells her tales of the humans that walk the Earth. Humans she should fear and humans she does fear, when she’s honest.
But she likes watching the beach anyway, likes the creatures that live closer to the shore. They have different stories to tell. And besides, Taeyeon has learned that despite the fear of humans, as long as it isn’t summer, there won’t be a lot of humans walking the sandy beach as the weather will be far too cold for them. She won’t be in any danger.
She flicks her tail, lifts her hips just slightly and her dorsal fin cuts through the waters before it dips below again.
Jinki forces himself through the group of people and into the classroom.
November is slowly approaching and with November comes midterms. This means, that Jinki has been forced out of his isolation if he doesn’t want to fall behind in class and while he still doesn’t talk a lot to many of his classmates because they’re as busy as he is, it does help a little with his worried parents.
The colder weather is also making it less desirable to stay outside on the porch, watching stars, and Jinki has, much to his own disappointment, started to focus on the lagoon again. Mostly he considers it Junghee’s fault. Her sudden interest in creatures of the sea has spurred on old thoughts and dreams Jinki thought he had long forgotten. It could be a result of his isolation as well, but Jinki dislikes the thought. It’s easier to blame it on Junghee.
He sits down at the table and finds his books, only to look up and blink when someone bumps into him from beside. He looks over and finds a girl he has never seen before, sends her a small smile before he focuses back on his books. He can hear the silent tapping against her phone when she texts her friends, can feel her looking at him and it makes him uncomfortable.
Jinki is determined not to talk to her, however. He’s too much of a mess to deal with other people.
Kibum follows the common bottlenose dolphin pod in an attempt to control his own temper. The dolphins are swimming fast, weaving in and out between one another as they jump above the surface in a playful game. Kibum is letting his fluke drive him through the water, the sun shining on the surface, letting his seashell colored tail shine like pearl.
He knows the dolphins don’t care about his company, can feel the mood in the water as they swim further and further from the hapori. He’s here mostly because his temper is starting to get the best of him and it brings all kinds of trouble with it.
Kibum has been trying to blame everything but himself in the past couple of weeks but has come up unsuccessful. He knows there is only one to blame and that one is him. He needs to talk to someone about it, but he’s a little afraid of admitting that the human world and the saving of that one human boy in the lagoon is starting to mess with him again. He doesn’t like admitting that maybe he was wrong when he chose to ignore it all in favor of forgetting because forgetting is impossible these days and it clouds everything he does and everything he says.
A dolphin bumps into him in clumsy movements as it tries to jump above water and Kibum is thrown off-balance and left behind the pod as they continue forward.
He’s in a part of the ocean where he rarely gets, far off the coast, far away from the hapori and left to the bare ocean bed that stretches far below him in the darkness. Fish and cephalopods occupy the waters around him and he closes his eyes and lets out an elegant ‘ah’ in the hopes of echolocation helping him find his way back home.
“Minjung?” Junghee calls out towards the blue lagoon. The surface is silent. “Minjung?” she tries again, hoping for something to start stirring.
It’s November and the temperature has dropped below 10 degrees Celsius. She’s bundled up in big sweaters and her padded jacket. Junghee had spent the last two weeks with Taemin, cramming before midterms and panicking over exams she was sure she was going to fail, but now that it is all over, she has sought out the lagoon again, waiting for confirmation that there really is a mermaid living in the lagoon. A beautiful mermaid that Junghee shouldn’t dream of but does anyway and a mermaid that seems to attract the most primal of Junghee’s desires.
The water ripples on the surface for a second or two before Minjung breaches and pulls her hair out of her eyes. She smiles, her eyes crinkling in a way that both hides the azure blue color of her eyes and makes them absolutely enchanting. Junghee doesn’t even notice she’s smiling until her muscles start to hurt in the cold.
“Junghee!” the mermaid says and dips below water so only her head is showing. Junghee sits down on the edge of the lagoon, wishing to be closer but not knowing how to. “I was catching crayfish.”
Junghee has no idea what a crayfish is but she just nods, entranced by the woman in the water. Now that they’re finally face to face without the fear and the disbelief, Junghee finds herself unable to ask all the questions she has had in the past weeks. Minjung continues to dismantle the crayfish, it seems, as she brings up what looks like a lobster tail and starts on it.
They stare at each other curiously in the silent November evening and Junghee bites her lower lip a little.
“So,” Minjung says and at the crayfish tail to get the last meat out of it. It also helps her arrange all the millions of questions she has about the human world so she can ask them all without offending the human. The dangers are long forgotten now that she’s actually looking at the human again. Junghee really doesn’t look that dangerous. “What do humans do?”
The question doesn’t at all sound like she wanted it to, but Junghee blinks and smiles so Minjung guesses it isn’t as offensive as it could have been.
“Do?” Junghee asks and tilts her head in a cute way that shows confusion. Minjung scolds herself for thinking the human is cute, but nods her head anyway, hoping to get her curiosity fulfilled.
“Yes! Besides destroying the oceans and sitting here, what do humans do?”
Minjung frowns a little when she finishes her sentence but Junghee just snorts.
“I’m sorry about the ocean-thing I guess. I go to university, though,” she says and Minjung lets go of the crayfish and lets it drop towards the bottom of the lagoon.
“What’s university?” she asks curiously and Junghee giggles, the sound almost as beautiful as whale song.
“An educational institution,” she says and Minjung frowns, getting confused.
“What?” Minjung deadpans and Junghee laughs out loud, her giggles turning to laughter and that Minjung must admit is more beautiful than anything she has ever heard.
“Humans go to school so to become smarter. We teach each other things like language and science.”
Minjung isn’t entirely sure what science is, but she gets the teaching each other language so she assumes she knows what university is as well. It can’t be that different from how they teach their young ones to survive, right?
“Ooooooh,” she says. Junghee nods a little when her laughter stops and she swings her legs against the edge, shoes hitting the muddy wall and the browning vegetation.
“What about you? What do you do?”
Minjung lets a hand through her hair before she bites her lower lip.
“Eat? And watch the nohinohi’s and play around.”
Junghee looks awfully confused at that.
“Nohinohi’s?” she asks and Minjung nods.
“Yeah, uh, you know?” she tries but Junghee shakes her head.
“I have no idea,” she admits and Minjugn bites her cheek and tries to find an explanation.
“Like little ones? Our calves?” She grimaces when she realizes that doesn’t sound right at all. “You know?”
Junghee frowns a little.
“Your babies?” she asks, unsure of herself, and Minjung frowns as well.
“Babies?”
Junghee laughs again.
“Oh my god, we have less in common than I thought we’d have,” she says and Minjung thinks it sounds offensive but she’s way too curious to really take offense. Junghee sends her a smile so soft that Minjung thinks it’s okay, even if they have nothing in common because Junghee may the best human to ever exist.
Explanations Wrasse - a large family of fish, in this case only thought of as cleaning fish (cleaner wrasse).
Akaika - also called neon flying squid. A species of - well, squids.
Cephalopods - squids, octopi or nautilus.
Akaika - also called neon flying squid. A species of - well, squids.
Cephalopods - squids, octopi or nautilus.
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