As Chaeyoung refused to tell her what she had done, Dahyun had to go get her phone, which she had left earlier in the bathroom, when Sana was taking her bath. She almost regretted it the moment she had her phone in her hand. The notifications for Dahyun's usual favorite chat were going crazy – more and more messages kept being sent, so quickly that Dahyun didn’t have time to read the previews on her lock screen. Whatever Chaeyoung had done, it had brought forth the apocalypse. Not wanting to leave her friend alone with Sana for too long, Dahyun was out of the bathroom before she had enough time to unlock her phone.

 Sana and Chaeyoung had found enough time to make their way back to the living room. Chaeyoung was hugging a pillow, chin resting on it. Sana seemed to like sitting on the floor, legs crossed at the ankle, back resting against the couch, not too far from Chaeyoung. SpongeBob was apparently as good a distraction for mermaids as it was for kids and bored college students.

 Maybe Dahyun shouldn't have worried about leaving them on their own. She went to settle on the couch, on the other side of Sana, and, to her surprise, Sana moved so that she could lean back against Dahyun's legs.

 "Looks like you've been adopted by a mermaid."

 "Notifications are blowing up my phone because of you. I'm not talking to you."

 Dahyun opened the group chat, bracing herself, ready to be called a liar and a lunatic for believing mermaids were real as she scrolled up the conversation to find the first messages she had missed.

TIGER CUB CHAENG 🐯
[ video attachment ]
sweet dahyun unnie is doing well 👀

 The thumbnail of the twelve second video showed her feeding Sana. For a second, Dahyun considered throwing her phone away and running to the beach to swim until she could find another mermaid. And probably never come back to civilization.

NO JAM UNNIE
And we all thought Nabong was the flirt...

BUNNY UNNIE 🐰
im a seductive woman not a flirt
dahyunie clearly is a flirt tho
congrats @dubu ur new friend is hot!

NO JAM UNNIE
Friend.... sure, "friend".... ㅋㅋ

TIGER CUB CHAENG 🐯
i mean
they ARE friends
but they're still all 😍 and it's cute

 Dahyun groaned and glared at Chaeyoung. She couldn't believe her best friend would betray her like that. The others would never let her live now. Dahyun knew she would be teased mercilessly by all their friends from now on.

 "We don't look at each other with heart eyes! You look at fried chicken with heart eyes!"

 Chaeyoung laughed at her attempt to protest.

 "You won't manage to convince me. I've seen it firsthand." Chaeyoung gave a shrug. "And if they think Sana is just a pretty girl, they probably won't question where she's from or why you're taking care of her."

 Dahyun would have hated to admit out loud that Chaeyoung had a point. It would be better for everyone if Sana was just like any other pretty girl. But would the others really not question the presence of a complete stranger in Dahyun's life just because she was pretty? Unlike her parents, they had never seen her as the perfect little church girl – the image her friends had of her was more "weirdo who is really attracted to girls" than "good Christian girl".

 Sana could be just a pretty girl. Having to tell one more person that mermaids were real was currently lower than the bottom of Dahyun's list of things not to do ever, lower even than bungee jumping.

 A new message notification popped up on Dahyun's screen, so she scrolled all the way down, ignoring all the other messages – which just looked like Nayeon and Jeongyeon arguing (as usual) for the most part.

THOMAS 🚂
Dahyun! Introduce your girlfriend to us at the party! I swear, if you break up with her before the weekend, we're gonna need to have a serious talk.

DUBU
I don't have a girlfriend.
Please don't make it weird.
And why would I want to introduce anyone to you? Y'all scary!

 "Chaeng, I don't think it'd be safe to have Sana at the party," Dahyun said, now worried about the prospect of having so many people around the mermaid at the same time. 

 "I'm sure we could teach Sana enough things for her to blend in just fine!"

 "It's in four days and we can't even dress her properly."

 "We have some grocery shopping to do tomorrow, we'll just take her with us and stop at some clothing stores," Chaeyoung suggested, all too casually for Dahyun's taste, "and my aunt has a huge pile of clothes she wants to donate."

 Dahyun wasn't sure she wanted to see Sana in Chaeyoung's aunt's old clothes, but if they could at least find a few things in the aunt's donation pile, it would be a lot less costly for them to take care of Sana. They would need to figure something out to make sure that Sana didn't only wear Dahyun's unflattering oversized sweatpants – though Dahyun obviously did not care about the way Sana looked. It was merely about Sana looking as human as possible for a mermaid.

 Without thinking, Dahyun started to run a hand through Sana's hair. It was still wet from the bath, but wet hair was better than introducing a mermaid to an old hair dryer that sounded like it could explode at any moment. 

 How would they manage to keep their friends from getting suspicious about Sana? Four days to teach a mermaid to do the most basic human things as if she was a child. It was impossible. Either they would think she's from a different planet, or they'd assume she is completely clueless and dumb beyond repair.

 Sana moved a little, mumbling sleepily, and rested her head on Dahyun's knees.

 "Looks like it's exhausting to be human." Dahyun smiled as she moved Sana's hair out of her face, tucking it behind her ear. "I'm sleeping with you tonight, Chaeng. Sana will take my bed."

 "You don't want to sleep with Sana?" 

 Even if the mischievous little smile on Chaeyoung's lips indicated that she was teasing, Dahyun still blushed. She did not want to sleep with Sana- to share a bed with her. She had a feeling that it wouldn't end well for anyone. 

 And Dahyun was still too much of a good Christian girl to share a bed with a stranger – no matter how cute said stranger was, or how harmless she could seem. (Dahyun knew that Sana wasn't in any way harmless.)

 "Sana," she whispered softly, "let's get up now. Chaeng, you're coming with, too?"

 "Well, yeah. You're gonna need me for Japanese. And I need to make sure you don't trip and fall on top of Sana again."

 "It really was an accident!"

 It wasn't a surprise to realize that Sana was bothered by the notion of sleeping on a bed. It had taken Chaeyoung a while to explain that humans could not sleep in water because it wasn't good for their bodies. Sana had tried to argue sleeping in the bathtub until she sat down on Dahyun's bed – and found it surprisingly comfortable.

 So, Sana was sitting on her bed, watching as Dahyun attempted to tidy up the clothes that seemed to have burst out of her suitcase. It really wasn't all that