Grab some popcorn and settle in,  guys. Cause this is hella long~

My Tail Shines Brighter Than Yours

This world is full of mystery and there are many creatures in here. Whether it is the land or the water, millions of creatures roam around us everyday, some of which we don’t even know about.

There are things in this world that we cannot see or touch and things beyond our imagination, the unknown and the unseen creatures hide in places where humans can never reach. In this world, many unknown creatures hide in places where we humans can never find them.

Once upon a time, in a place just like that, in the deepest part of the sea, lived two mermen best friends.

They were complete idiots and they fought at the simplest things. This is a story about how those two first learned to love each other romantically and all the other goods that came with it.

“Deep, deep into the ocean where even the brightest sunrays can never reach and the wisest human can never know, there’s a dark cursed forest which is feared by all. The trees there are as black as a crow’s eye and full of thorns which are sharper and deadlier than the sharpest knives.

Unknown to the rest of the ocean, a dark cave stay hidden at the end of the dark forest. In that hidden cave, a rare sea-creature that is known to be the ugliest and the most vicious, lives alone while practicing dark magic.

Merfolks fear him and even sharks avoid disturbing him. Because he is one with wicked magic that can kill anyone with only a snap of his finger. He is known to be hideous – with a body which is half human and half not. He doesn’t have legs, doesn’t have a tail but what he does have are eight strong tentacles which are dark and black in color and contain powerful magic.

He lives in silence, without any contact with the outside world or the rest of the ocean.”

“But grandma, doesn’t he feel lonely?” the little blue-tailed merman scrunches his nose in thought as he imagines himself living all alone in a huge dark cave. It sounds too scary and he is sure he’ll start crying if his mommy isn’t with him there. “I’m sure he won’t harm a cute baby like me if I talk to him.”

The old mermaid smiles at the innocent question of the merchild. She leaves the big shiny seashell she has been sitting on all this while and approaches the child with a mysterious look in her eyes. It scares the blue merchild but he stands his ground bravely. Her beautiful emerald colored tail shines as she swims closer towards him.

“You are a brave one, child,” she coos at him, placing her hand on top of the little one’s head and caressing his hair affectionately. The rest of the merchildren watch with wide eyes, curious and slightly scared, but not brave enough to interrogate the old mermaid with their own questions.

She smiles slightly and then with a very serious voice, utters the words of warning, “The far away you stay from him, the safer you are. Remember, never cross the dark forest.”

The little merman glances around with wide wandering eyes. His little blue tail is swaying under the water as he turns his head around in awe. Donghae - the little merman with one of the prettiest blue tails in Mertown – often becomes curious about the littlest things around him. His mother told him to never swim above the water because if there’s any ship or any fish boat, he might get caught by humans.

It’s dangerous above the water where greedy humans live. Donghae’s mother tells him stories about them sometimes and through all those stories, Donghae knows that humans are bad people.

But it also makes him curious about humans. So, even though he knows it’s dangerous, he sometimes sneaks away from home to swim above the water. It’s a very long journey because they live much deeper into the sea and his little tail gets tired sometimes. But his curiosity wins before everything.

The little merman always gets amazed at how beautiful the sky looks. Donghae might be small in stature but his intelligence is no joke – or that’s what he thinks. He always makes sure to hide his tail under the water and only let his human part show above the water.

Till now, he has never seen a ship or a boat whenever he came up. Today is also the same so Donghae just decides to swim around and watch the sky for a while before going back home.

He dives back into the water after a while with a huge smile on his face. He always becomes happy after visiting the sky. Donghae swims deeper and deeper into the sea, sometimes humming a melody or dancing with his small arms.

He loves the underwater scenery of the sea even more. There are so many kinds of plants with so many different colors. Even all the fishes are so colorful and pretty. Donghae always finds himself gasping at every new type of plant or fish he sees because they’re always so different from one another by color or shape.

He often tries to talk with the smaller fishes but they never talk to him. Donghae’s mother told him that the fishes have a different language that merfolk cannot understand.

Donghae’s eyes widen slightly when he notices a starfish while swimming over a bunch of pretty sea plants and weeds. “Woah! So pretty!”

Curious and amazed, he swims closer to the starfish and waves at it, sweetly greeting it, “Hello, Mr. Can I know your name?”

The starfish doesn’t even budge and Donghae wonders if it’s dead. A cute frown appears on his face and he pokes the starfish with a finger.

“That’s a starfish and starfishes are lazy, idiot,” Donghae jumps in surprise as he hears another voice answering.

Turning around, he finds another little merman staring at him with judging eyes. Donghae is blinded by the brightness of the newcomer’s shiny silver tail for a moment but he quickly composes himself when he remembers what this merman child called him earlier.

“I’m not an idiot!” the blue-tailed merman huffs angrily, “I know that’s a starfish! Who are you anyway?”

The merchild with the silver tail snickers before he introduces himself with a voice that is dripping with pride, “I’m Lee Hyukjae, the only son of the respected elite Lee’s family.”

Donghae is just about to introduce himself when the stupid merchild lifts a hand as a gesture to stop him, “I know who you are. You are the stupid, overly curious, disobedient child from the other Lee family, Lee Donghae.”

Donghae widens his eyes in shock at how rude and full-of-himself­ this merchild is. Fuming in anger, he glares at the other merchild, “What do you even want from me?”

“I want you to become my friend and serve me, stupid merchild,” Hyukjae snickers as if it were obvious.

“Never!” Donghae huffs angrily and points a finger at the silver merchild because how dare he ask me to serve him when his tail is even shorter than me? I’m not a servant!

“I’m gonna tell my mommy that you disrespected me, stupid Lee Byukjae! Wait and see,” the blue merchild turns around with a look of determination on his face and is about to swim away when he hears another disrespectful snicker coming from the merchild behind him.

“Then I’m going to tell your mommy too that you’ve been going above the sea almost everyday.”

Donghae stops abruptly at the threat. The blue merchild’s heart is beating faster in fear as he turns around, looking at the other with wide eyes, “H-How do you know?”

The silver merchild smirks mischievously, “I just guessed. But now you confirmed it, stupid.”

Donghae pouts sulkily and cutely glares at the evil merchild, weighing his options. He doesn’t want to get scolded by his mother because she can be really annoying when she scolds him. I-I guess it won’t be that bad.

He eyes the other merchild’s silver tail and is blinded by its brightness yet again. How does even a tail shine that much? Donghae doesn’t know.

“Y-You are not going to tell my mommy if I become your friend?” Donghae asks timidly, though still angry with the evil merchild, he doesn’t want to listen to his mother’s scolding. So, he concludes that it’s a better option.

Byukjae – probably, Donghae doesn’t really remember his name – grins widely at him, revealing all his gums and even his smile is so shiny and bright that Donghae has to cover his eyes in fear of becoming blind. “I won’t!” the silver merchild beams, happy to have made a new friend whom he can use as the object of his experiment whenever he wants.

“O-Okay,” Donghae pouts and looks at him suspiciously but then covers his eyes again when the other smiles, “Stop grinning already, Byukjae! It’s too bright!”

“It’s Hyukjae,” the latter snickers, rolling his eyes moodily.

And that’s how the two most idiotic and stupidest mermen of Mertown become friends. With benefits.

Benefits of dumping their problems and taking it out onto each other.

“Hey, hey, hey! Stop poking my ears, you silver fish!” Donghae hisses at the elder merman.

“I’m not a fish!” Hyukjae hisses back, frowning in humiliation.

“You are! You have a tail,” Donghae points out the obvious, covering his eyes because Hyukjae’s tail is too bright for his eyes.

“Oh, so, what are you then?” Hyukjae rolls his eyes.

The passer-by merfolks are already used to these two grownup mermen fighting without any reason. It’s not a new sight for them so some of them just shake their heads in amusement, some of them sigh in annoyance while some only roll their eyes. They linger only for a couple of seconds to hear their argument just because it’s funny before they return to their own work.

Hyukjae and Donghae are the famous best friends of Mertown who are both equally stupid and weird. But still, everybody in Mertown loves them, not because of their stupidity but because they are entertaining.

Hyukjae and Donghae are their biggest source of entertainment and so nobody is really complaining.

“Why the hell would you poke that thing into my ear, you idiot? It freaking hurts!” Donghae fumes angrily, glaring at his best friend with all the hatred he can manage. He seriously dreads the day he accepted to become the silver merman’s friend because the only thing it has brought is misery for the blue merman’s ears. Hyukjae has this weird obsession with holes and the silver merman has this disgusting urge to examine how deep every hole is. Just for that sole reason, Donghae has to accompany him to the deepest parts of the sea because Hyukjae doesn’t want to go alone and Donghae is too kind to let his stupid best friend get himself in trouble.

Donghae doubts there is any hole in the sea left that they haven’t explored yet. One time, they almost got eaten by a hungry shark because of Hyukjae’s clumsiness.

“I was just trying to examine if this stick can come out of your other ear, you know. No big deal,” Hyukjae snickers, getting ready to explain his new theory of how if there are two holes placed in a line, the two holes are supposed to be connected.

Donghae widens his eyes in horror and smacks the silver merman’s head hard, making the latter wince in pain, “Are you trying to kill me, you fish?”

“I’m not!” Hyukjae retorts, “It’s called physics! And I’m not a fish!”

“You are!” Donghae yells.

“Then you are a fish too!” Hyukjae yells back.

And so they are back to square one.

How stupid! Taeyeon, the prettiest mermaid in the whole Mertown thinks as she passes-by the famous bickering idiots, I’m never going to let either of these two fertilize my eggs. I don’t need stupid children.

Donghae and Eunhyuk are too busy arguing and so they don’t notice the merman prince of Mertown, Siwon approaching them while riding on his royal dolphin.

“Hello, my dear subjects,” Prince Siwon greets the famous duo when he reaches them, with a handsome dimpled smile that can melt any mermaid’s heart.

Prince Siwon is royalty. So, the fact that he has a dazzling smile and a magnificent tail isn’t really surprising. His tail is a mixture of teal and aliceblue color, his scales shine beautifully and his tail fins are also lovely and royal like. He has the longest tail in Mertown so whenever he swims by, all the merfolks watch with awe and adoration in their eyes. Prince Siwon is every mermaid and some merman’s dream merprince and so all mermaids wish to be the merprincess he will choose as the mother to the heirs of the royal family, whereas his merman admirers only love him from distance because he is out of their reach.

As the current heir of the royal family, prince Siwon will only take a mermaid as his partner because mermen don’t have the ability to produce eggs but can only fertilize them.

“Your highness!” Donghae being the polite one out of the two, bows respectfully before their prince. He nudges Hyukjae with his tail when he notices his stupid best friend just standing there dumbly.

Hyukjae quickly bows his head too, following his friend’s gesture.

“You don’t have to bow, my friends. I have known you since childhood and you are nothing less than brothers to me,” prince Siwon shakes his head while smiling at the duo.

“You’re just being too kind, your highness,” Donghae mutters politely, smiling at the prince sweetly.

Prince Siwon laughs a little and then elegantly gestures a hand behind him towards his companion – another merman who works for the royal family, “I have an invitation for you.”

The other merman - Yesung - steps forward and hands out a couple of invitation cards to both Donghae and Hyukjae. They take the invitation cards and stare at the elegant design on top of the cards with awe.

“Please, make sure to attend, with your family,” Prince Siwon spares another kind smile at their direction before bidding them goodbye to look for other merfolks to invite them too. They both stare at the prince’s departing form as he elegantly rides his royal dolphin.

“Why does he need to use a dolphin when he has a tail?” Hyukjae suddenly murmurs and Donghae snaps his head at his best friend. The blue merman smacks the silver merman’s head hard before huffing angrily and swimming away.

“Ouch!” Hyukjae winces and rubs his head as it throbs in pain. Why in the ocean am I the one getting hit when he is the one who is supposed to serve me? I’m an elite, for Poseidon’s sake!

Well, Hyukjae really regrets befriending Donghae sometimes.

“Woah! So many food!” Hyukjae exclaims when he approaches the meal room in the palace that prince Siwon has arranged for his guests. Honestly, Hyukjae doesn’t even know what the occasion is or why they are invited in the first place. And to be honest, he doesn’t care. He is just happy seeing all the small fishes swimming in the meal room because he can easily hunt a couple of them and eat to his heart’s content.

Usually, mermen are the ones who hunt fishes and bring them home for their family. But hunting fishes are not that easy and Hyukjae is finally happy to be able to hunt without dwelling much even for one day.

Suddenly, someone pushes Hyukjae aside and slams the door to the meal room shut. “Close the freaking door, Hyukjae! Or the fishes will swim out!”

Oh, if it isn’t Lee Donghae, Hyukjae rolls his eyes. The silver merman is really happy to see him, honestly. Note the sarcasm. Please.

Hyukjae is about to come back with a funny remark but then He is suddenly pushed away again by the other merman who screams with wide eyes looking around in excitement.

“Food!” the merman with the blue tail screams and swims swiftly towards the middle of the room, instantly capturing a yellow colored fish and gritting his teeth at it like a beast.

Hyukjae winces as he watches Donghae devouring the fish like an evil hungry monster.

You would think that merfolks are supposed to be friends with all the sea-creatures including small pretty fishes and all. But one look at Lee Donghae and you’ll get a perfect example to the cruel reality. Hyukjae suddenly feels sad for the little fishes.

“Can you, please, be a little more gentle?” Hyukjae says as he winces again watching Donghae chewing a fish aggressively as if he hadn’t eaten anything for years. Hyukjae honestly feels sympathetic as he sees the other fishes trembling in fear while gathering in a far corner away from the beastly merman as much as possible.

Donghae just glares at Hyukjae for disturbing his happy meal time before going back to enjoying his feast again.

Slightly intimidated, Hyukjae decides that it’s better to mind his own business and looks around with the goal of searching for his first prey for lunch. It’s a secret so don’t tell anybody but Hyukjae prefers colorful fishes over plain ones. Like, you know, those pretty little fishes with various color shades decorating its skin? No? Okay, never mind.

So, after searching and swimming around for a while, Hyukjae finally finds his target and decides to go after it. But just as he bares his teeth at the fish, another merman snatches the colorful fish away in front of his widened eyes.

 “Man, what the heck?” Hyukjae fumes angrily at Kyuhyun – an younger merman who is the most disrespectful ever. Wait, what’s anyway? Hyukjae furrows his eyebrows suddenly in thought. Oh, it’s the liquid thingy he sees fishes letting out through their tail fins, he suddenly remembers. Anyways, back to the little disrespectful again.

Kyuhyun completely ignores him and begins to swim away with the struggling fish in his grip. The younger merman is just about to take his first bite when suddenly an angry blue-tailed merman snatches the fish away from his grip.

“Hey, give it back!” Kyuhyun screeches loudly, making Donghae cover his ears to save himself from sound pollution.

“No,” Donghae strongly denies, “Hyukjae set his eyes on it first. So, he has the right on this one. So, back off, Kyuhyun!”

Hyukjae suddenly feels so emotional seeing his best friend standing up for him. He wants to sob in happiness. “D-Donghae, you…..” Hyukjae feels emotions well up in his eyes before he can complete his sentence.

Kyuhyun snickers as he watches the two famous dumb mermen’s interaction, “I swear to Poseidon! You’re actually as stupid as people say.”

“What did you say?” Donghae and Hyukjae both yell in unison, scaring the out of Kyuhyun. But he won’t let them know that they managed to scare him so Kyuhyun pulls an evil smirk on his face and snickers again. “Everyone in Mertown knows you guys. The stupid best friend duo whom no mermaid will ever take to fertilize her egg,” the green tailed merman scoffs loudly, mocking the best friends.

Hyukjae’s masculinity is hurt at Kyuhyun’s statement and he swiftly swims forward to fight for his pride, “I have the brightest and shiniest tail in Mertown, kiddo. If no mermaid chooses me to be the father of their children, then it’s their loss, not mine. Come on, Donghae. Let’s go. There’s no point in talking to this kid.” Hyukjae snickers back at Kyuhyun and then turns around, pulling his best friend along with him.

Hyukjae has high self-esteem so he doesn’t really get bothered by this kind of comments.

But well, everybody doesn’t always react the same way and so Kyuhyun’s insult strikes some nerves in a certain blue-tailed merman’s mind.

Donghae is silent the whole way back to home.

Donghae looks around cautiously, checking his surroundings to be assured that nobody has seen him. The small bag in his hand contains all the necessities he might need in this journey and he has absolutely no plan to return unless he finds what he is going to look for.

A mermaid. A girlfriend to be exact. He’ll sweep a beautiful mermaid off her tail with his undeniable charm and then marry her and live happily ever after with her. That way, he can punch Kyuhyun in the face by proving that he is just as desirable to any mermaid as the rest, if not more.

Donghae secures the small bag around his waist and then begins to swim upwards. He swims and swims until he can see the silvery light of the moon reflecting in the water. The blue-tailed merman smiles and swims above the water, looking at the beautiful night sky littered with many starts as the moon shines beautifully in the middle. This is the first time he is seeing the night view of the sky and it’s absolutely breathtaking.

Suddenly, something tugs his tail, making him gasp as the force pulls him underwater. A little bit scared, Donghae turns around only to find his best friend looking at him with a scowl etched on his face.

“What are you doing here in the middle of the night?” Hyukjae asks the younger merman, a suspicious frown forming on his forehead.

Donghae’s eyes widen as the possibility of getting caught on his plan crosses his mind. He tries to wave the question off with a nervous laugh which makes Hyukjae’s frown deepen.

“I-I just wanted to s-see the sky, you know. L-Like old times hahaha….”

“Then what’s that on your waist?” Hyukjae quirks an eyebrow, making Donghae roll his eyes, here comes the spoilsport.

Hyukjae tries to grab the bag but Donghae quickly swims aside, glaring at his best friend.

“You’re going somewhere, aren’t you?” Hyukjae smirks suddenly, already sure of the answer.

“None of your business, idiot!” Donghae scoffs and sticks his tongue out at the silver merman. The younger begins swimming, wanting to get going quickly so Hyukjae will stop bothering him but to his dismay, Hyukjae catches his tail again and tugs on it, making him halt in his way. “Touch my tail again and I’m gonna cut your hands off!” Donghae glares at Hyukjae who quickly lets his tail go before smiling sheepishly.

“Then take me with you,” Hyukjae pouts, “I wanna go too.”

Donghae shakes his head immediately. He is going to search for a girlfriend and there’s a huge chance that all mermaids will fall for Hyukjae’s shiny silver tail if he allows him to come along. If that happens, then Donghae’s plan will go off to the wrong direction which he cannot allow at all. “Nope, you’re not allowed,” Donghae shakes his head firmly, crossing his arms against his chest. When did his tail become longer than mine anyway?

“Then I’m gonna tell your mom that you’ve been going above the water since you were little.”

“Urgh! Okay, fine! Follow me!” Donghae scowls angrily and begins to swim forward in a fast speed. Hyukjae quickly follows him, trying to keep up with the angry merman’s pace.

“Hey, Donghae,” Hyukjae tries to gain his sulking friend’s attention, “At least tell me where we’re going!”

“So, we’re on this tiresome journey because you want to have a girlfriend?” Hyukjae gapes at his best friend as he feels his jaw falling to the ground. They have been swimming for ten days and now he finally gets to know the reason why they’re travelling so far from home.

Rolling his eyes, Donghae chews on the small fish he has hunted earlier, “If it’s so tiresome, you can just stop following me. It’s not like I told you to come with me.”

“I thought you were looking for trouble,” Hyukjae says thoughtfully, still shocked about his discovery. If Donghae wants a girlfriend, he can just have one from Mertown, right? There are so many pretty mermaids in Mertown and Hyukjae thinks it’s absolutely ridiculous that Donghae is going on a journey out of their town and travelling further into the ocean just because he wants to faces with a pretty mermaid.

Hyukjae doesn’t really understand why having a girlfriend is so important. Back in their town, he often saw couples searching seashells together and eating each other’s faces in between. It looked so disgusting and when Hyukjae asked Taeyeon about it, the mermaid just scoffed at him exclaiming how dumb he was and swam away.

Later, Hyukjae found out from a wise mermaid that long, long ago, some curious merfolks had surrounded a sailing ship and peeked to see humans. They wanted to see the difference between humans and themselves because there were rumors that humans had two tails instead of one and those were called legs.

While peeking onto the sailing ship and its humans, they had witnessed a couple of guys standing by the railing and each other’s faces off. They had tried it out later with other merfolks and surprisingly, eating faces felt nice. So, that became a trend around the sea.

Merfolks experimented a lot and they eventually found out that while some mermen preferred to faces with mermaids, some mermen preferred to do it with fellow mermen. It was the same with mermaids too.

Hyukjae doesn’t know what’s so great about faces because he has never done that before. But now it seems like Donghae is curious about it too. That’s probably why his friend wanted a girlfriend.

“You could’ve asked me to tag along though. I knew you were planning something and I didn’t want to let you go alone because what if you get into trouble?” Hyukjae expresses his concern, slightly scolding Donghae.

Surprisingly, Donghae’s heart flutters at his best friend words but he doesn’t know why. Hyukjae sometimes acts really caring and it always makes the blue-tailed merman happy for some reason.

Donghae’s ears suddenly pick up a very faint sound and he gasps in surprise, “Can you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Hyukjae furrows his eyebrows, trying to figure out what the blue-tailed merman is talking about. He concentrates a bit more and finally catches a faint melody. It’s a bit sad and the two mermen find themselves following the music, the singing voice of a woman pouring out her sorrow into a melodic creation.

“Is that a siren?” Donghae gasps in surprise as his face blooms with excitement. “Hyukjae, let’s go and meet her! We’ve never met a siren before!”

It’s true that they have never come across a siren before and Hyukjae is quite surprised too. Sirens aren’t usually found in the seas. They live in the depth of the oceans where they can hardly be found out. If they’re meeting a siren now, it means that they have come quite far from their home. Hyukjae is a little freaked out though when he realizes that they are most probably in the ocean right now. Ocean means huge sharks and whales. Hyukjae shudders at the thought of those hungry monsters.

He is so distracted by his fearful thoughts that he doesn’t realize that the melody can be heard quite clearly now and when he does realize, from afar he gasps as he stares at a siren sitting there on a rock by some ocean plants.

“She is so beautiful!” Donghae gasps as he stares at the creature with wide eyes.

Hyukjae is no exception. The siren is truly beautiful and Hyukjae finally understands why merfolks say that a mermaid’s beauty can never be compared to a siren’s. The sorrowful melody of her song is resonating through the place and both mermen find themselves captivated by the heartbreaking lyrics of her song.

Even before they realize, Hyukjae and Donghae both have started crying like children while hugging each other, their tears turning into pearls as soon as they touch the ground.

“Why is she so sad?” Donghae wails and buries his face in his hands. When he gets no answer from his best friend, he huffs angrily and slaps the silver merman in the face with his tail.

“Ouch! What the hell?” Hyukjae grunts as he glares at his friend with tear filled eyes, still sad for the siren, “Why did you hit me with your monstrous tail?”

“Because you are an idi-”

A sudden shriek of a loud scary voice cuts him off and Donghae’s eyes go wide when he sees something coming in their direction in full speed. He only manages to make out something that looks like a weapon before quickly swimming aside to save himself. He huffs in relief but then he looks back and screams, seeing Hyukjae pinned to a rock by the siren they saw earlier. Her beautiful face has turned into a scary one as she grits her teeth at the silver merman while holding a whale’s bone near his chest, threatening to stab him with it.

“Whose tail did you call monstrous, you ugly merman? I’ve heard enough insults and I will tolerate no more!” The siren shrieks into Hyukjae’s ear and the merman feels his head hurt from the unbearable noise.

Hyukjae is scared as he stares at