“Do you really know magic? Can you grant wishes? What’s your name?”

“You could say that I grant wishes, and my name is Joonmyun.”

“You’re not nearly so scary as people say.”

His companion is silent.

“They say you’re an ugly witch. I mean—your scales aren’t as gorgeous as mine, but I’ve seen worse.”

“How kind.”

Chanyeol shivers. Looking up, he can barely see the light. “Well, since you’re the witch, what I was hoping was something that would help me find out about the surface. Humans. What’s there, what it’s like to be there, who people are. It’s just so mysterious, and I—”

“We’re here.”

“Oh, wow! A real sunken ship!” Jongin’s sisters were right. “This is a treasure hunt, isn’t it?” Humans like to carry important things on their ships and are upset when they’re lost. They're often pretty, shiny things. Sometimes weird material that tangles around their fins or disintegrates entirely, leaving a shell behind. Chanyeol’s good at finding things.

“In a sense.” Joonmyun slips beside Chanyeol, into an open space that immediately widens into a wide, tall cavern covered in barnacles with kelp growing from the sand that’s spilled inside. “This ship is my home. And I can help you, but you have to pass my challenge.”

Chanyeol shrugs, surreptitiously looking around for treasure for a head start. “Sure.”

Joonmyun smiles wide. His teeth are sharp and multi-rowed. He pulls bottles and shells from an old chest and shelves, dropping them into a sort of coral basin. They don’t act as they should, being underwater, instead dropping instantly and breaking apart with thunder and lightning.

Smoke billows from the basin’s opening, moving with purpose towards Chanyeol. Scared and curious, he doesn’t swim away but cries out when his tail is covered by the turbid water. He feels it beneath his scales, within his very flesh.

Then it’s gone, recoiling with a single scale lifted from his tail. It settles on the witch’s waiting palm.

“This is a game?”

He closes his fist around the scale. “You want to visit the surface. A fish belongs in the water. Humans belong on land. Nature is nothing to play with, but once every scale is gone, you’ll have legs to walk on land with. No guarantee about their quality; no refunds or takebacks.

“If you do decide you change your mind,” he shrugs amicably, “you simply need true love’s kiss.”