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“You knew you were forbidden to go!” the Sea King roars. “Why did you disobey me?” The nearby fish dash away in fear.

Chen averts his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “I won’t do it again.”

“You had better not!” His father swings his trident in the direction of the surface, steely-grey eyes flashing with ire. “What did you do when you were there?”

“Nothing,” Chen lies calmly, meeting the king’s gaze straight on. “I just watched the humans.”

“Do not lie to me! You must have had a better reason to go.”

“I didn’t leave the water. I didn’t talk to them. I just… I just wanted to see their world.”

“And what else? Rules were made to protect you, boy.”

Chen bows his head in submission and bears the rest of the Sea King’s tirade without another word, hoping to lull him into a false sense of receiving obedience.

“You will not let me catch you again, do you hear me?”

“Yes, father.”

“You may go.”

By the time the sun is at its highest on the next day, Chen has already returned to the upper world. He neurotically checks his surroundings as he glides through the cold water, head scanning left and right. His father appeared to have more eyes than the prince thought. He breaks the surface at his usual hiding spot behind the rocks.

The shore is empty; not a single soul in sight. Chen feels a stab of disappointment in his chest. He’d truly been looking forward to the warmth of Suho’s voice again. He counts seashells and idles about in the tide to pass the time, but Suho never comes. Eventually he loses track of how many hours he’s spent waiting.

He dives back under the surface, and comes face to face with the tines of his father’s trident.
“One day,” the Sea King growls. “You couldn’t listen to me for even one day?”

“Suho wasn’t even there,” Chen objects in the same tone of voice. The fins behind his ears suddenly flush a bright red and he claps a hand over his mouth to cover his mistake.

His father’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Who is Suho?” he demands. “Is he a– ”

“He doesn’t know anything! Don’t hurt him.”

They stare each other down, the tension thickening with each passing second. Finally the king speaks.

“You will go back to the palace immediately,” he orders briskly, “and there we will discuss a punishment appropriate for your actions.”

A few days later Chen accidentally swims straight into Sehun without even registering the identity of the merboy. He side-swims him and keeps going, not stopping until he hears an indignant voice yell out his nickname.

“Chenchen! That hurt!”

Chen whips around to find a pouting Sehun rubbing his sore shoulder. Luhan is behind him, a worried expression on his face.

“What’s going on?” the blond asks cautiously. “I haven’t seen you for a while. You look on the verge of turning to foam.”

Sehun’s still grumbling so Luhan shoos him off to annoy a passing school of herring before he takes the prince aside.

“Banned,” Chen mutters. “He banned me from ever going back.”

The water around them is quiet. Nobody asks who ‘he’ is.

“By the seven seas, why didn’t you tell me?” A shocked Luhan pulls Chen towards him. “You’re a fool,” he sighs into the prince’s chestnut hair, smoothing it down with a hand.

“He can’t stop me,” Chen mutters into the skin of Luhan’s shoulder. “I’ll find another way to go back.”

“Chen, no.” Luhan wraps his arms tighter around him. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I won’t… I just need to go.”

“Why? What is it up there that makes you keep going back? What will your father do if he finds out you went again?”

Chen pushes Luhan away. “Funny that,” he says icily, “coming from the one who told him where I was.”

The blond merboy goes cold all over. “It was for your own good!” he says defensively. “You had no idea how worried I was for you!”

Chen says nothing more. He just turns and storms off in a flash of blue scales.

Luhan buries his head in his hands and regrets everything.

Chen avidly refuses to talk to anybody, instead choosing to hole himself away in his quarters and only leaving when his presence is required for a performance. He pointedly looks away every time Luhan glances in his direction.

Loud pounding at his door one night disturbs him. As soon as he throws it open in annoyance Luhan’s hand shoots inside, grabs his wrist and wrenches him out of his chamber.

“You have a lot of nerve to handle me like that,” Chen comments, but he makes no move to retreat to his quarters.

“I know,” Luhan says, ignoring him, “the reason why you keep going back.”

Chen tries his shake his hand off to no avail. “I don’t believe you. Leave me alone.”

“Chen, please. Come with me,” Luhan insists, pulling at him. “I have somewhere I want to take you.”

“Why? Where would you possibly take me?”

The blond merboy lets go and their hands drop back to their respective owners. “Have we really grown that far apart?” he asks, his eyes pleading. “Aren’t we friends anymore?”

“It would’ve been nice if you'd thought of that before you turned me in to my father.”

“I know what that meant for you and I’m sorry for what I did. That’s why I want you to come with me.”

Chen heaves a sigh, but he extends his hand again. “Lead the way.”

Luhan takes him to the surface. This time they take a secret route (“your father has people posted to keep an eye out for you,” he says) that is mostly empty, save for the occasional whale that floats past. As soon as he sees rocks close to his tail Chen asks where they are.

“A river,” Luhan replies.

“A river?” the prince echoes, as they break the surface. He surveys their surroundings in the dark, faint shapes of trees and swathes of clipped grass around them. He stares at the large outline that looms over them when it dawns on him that he’s seen it before.

“This is the residence of the human prince, Suho. The one you come back for,” Luhan quietly informs him over the calm flow of the water. He observes Chen’s expression change from blank to wonder, surprise and happiness. “This river runs past the back of his castle. His quarters can be seen from here, and he often comes to this place. I… I just thought you’d like to know.”

There is a certain tightness to his voice that makes Chen turn his head in confusion but Luhan is already swimming away, the amber of his scales reflecting a dull brown in the moonlight.

Chen’s briefly stuck between chasing after Luhan or waiting for Suho, but in the end he decides to stay. The sun soon rises and he swims about, tail flicking side to side anxiously, but sure enough the human prince opens his doors and Chen is forced to hide behind ferns further downstream as Suho comes to wash clothes in the river.

His features are so much more striking up close; pearly white teeth, dark hair that looks silky soft to the touch. Suho’s brows draw together while he wrings out his undergarments and shakes them out, humming a happy tune and throwing them back into a basket at his side.

Chen cannot resist coming back again and again and watching Suho cycle through various activities each day. At noon he always disappears but Chen knows it’s to go to the beach and a small part of him inside sinks. However, the visits drop off with the days and become more and more infrequent.

Sometimes Suho plays with small humans and a little four-legged animal that woofs and wags its tail. Sometimes he and Xiumin poke at each other with long silver weapons and Lay has to patch up their scrapes afterwards. After one particularly strenuous session he drops his clothing in a pile and bathes in the river, all toned alabaster limbs and water dripping from wine-red hair.

Suho is so close and so far away. Untouchable. Chen feels as if he is stuck in a pre-pubescent body, with new scales itching from growth and being told strictly not to scratch them.

Suho is human, but Chen falls in love anyway.

“Ah, Luhan’s not here right now.” Luhan’s grandmother shakes her head. “He and Sehun went up to the surface quite a while ago.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I’ll come back later.” Chen bows quickly but she opens her door wider and insists that he come inside.

“They should be back any moment,” she adds, “so you’re more than welcome to stay and wait.” She smiles warmly at him and the prince accepts her offer to make her happy, if anything else.

Luhan’s grandmother is old, her wispy hair grey, fins mottled with spots and tail left with hardly a trace of colour. The people of the sea age, just as their land counterparts do, but the brilliance of their scales bleeds away and turn into the pure white of innocence.

“You’ve been going to the surface too, haven’t you?” she says. It is not a question. “Even though you know you are forbidden to?”

Chen swallows. “Did Luhan tell you?” 

“He is my grandson. There is nothing that I am not privy to. But you should know that humans and merpeople are from worlds that cannot exist as one.” She moves to straighten a collection of empty scallop shells. “You should leave your human before it is too late.”

“Why?” Chen asks, forcing his voice to remain calm. He releases his clenched fists. “What is there to keep us divided?”

“It was never fated to be. Humans possess a soul, an immortal one, that rises to join the realm in the sky after it leaves the land. The souls of the merpeople are inexplicably tied to the sea, and so we will always return to our brethren. You would never remain forever together.”

“Why don’t we have immortal souls? I would give up what I have here to be human for a day.”

Luhan’s grandmother fixes him with a strange look, a flash of almost-pity in her eyes that disappears as fast as it comes.

“I have lived a long life, and seen many an odd thing. You, though, are a novelty,” she remarks, peering at him. “Tell me, have you ever heard the tales of old, the legends that speak of immortal mer souls?”

Chen’s forehead crinkles in confused curiosity. “Immortal mer souls?” he repeats dumbly. “Is that possible?”

“I have witnessed enough summers to know, boy, that anything is possible. If a human were to love you more than his most prized possession, more than the mother who cradles him at night when he has nightmares, more than the father who teaches him how to be a man, only then can he split his immortal soul in such a way that each of you receives half. Thus, upon passing, you may ascend to the heavens and be infinitely reunited.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Chen says, awed. His chest fills with a strange sense of hope. “Is it really true?”

Luhan’s grandmother tilts her head and surveys him. “Why do you ask?” she inquires. “Why would you ever want to give up all that you have now to be human, for the immortal soul of one? Our worlds were not made to combine. You are mer, and he is human. You have a tail of insurmountable beauty, and he has mere legs. Do not wish, boy, for something you should never want.”

Luhan’s grandmother is a mystery, but before Chen can dwell on it any further his train of thought is interrupted by a knock on the door.

They both know it’s not Luhan, because Luhan never knocks on the door of his own house. Chen opens it and finds the king’s messenger boy waiting.

“Prince Chen.” Kyungsoo bows.

“In a moment,” Chen answers stiffly, turning to Luhan’s grandmother.

She makes a shooing motion at him with her wrinkly hands. “Go,” she says. “I’ll tell Luhan you came by. Is there anything you would like me to pass on to him?”

Chen pauses momentarily. “Tell him I said ‘thank you.’ That’s all.”

As soon as the two boys are outside, Kyungsoo starts to wilt under the prince’s dark gaze.

“What is it this time?” Chen snaps. The messenger has a knack for locating people with eerie accuracy.

“I’m s-sorry to be a disturbance. Your cousin Chanyeol is having birthday celebrations in a few days and would like to request you to perform on the night.”

There’s a thousand and one things Chen had expected Kyungsoo to have said, but this isn’t one of them. He hides his relief behind a carefully schooled expression.

“Tell him I’ll be there,” he confirms.

The festive atmosphere in the palace is strong. Merpeople dart about in myriads of colours, fish and dolphins scatter amongst everything else and even the king is present. Chanyeol, one of Chen’s closer cousins, grabs him in a flurry of deep red scales and long, awkward limbs.

“You came!” he booms in his deep voice. “I was starting to to think you forgot me.”

Chen laughs it off, shoving the bundle of big fins and grinning teeth away. “As if I would come and see you on my own will, Yeol.”

That night, Chen performs. Not Suho’s song, or even his own song that he co-wrote with Luhan, but just a nice simple song that carries little meaning to him. His voice is strong and built to sing, just as a shark is built sleek and powerful to hunt, and his resonating notes entrap those who listen. He steeps in his pride, glowing in satisfaction as the crowds applaud and cheer raucously for more.

He would, he thinks, give all this up for an immortal soul, and eternity with Suho.

When the night ends and the everyone has settled again, Chen steels his nerves and leaves the grandeur of the palace with not a soul on his heel. He swims a path that all know - but never dare to take - because it leads to the home of the only one who can grant a wish like his.

Until now, the leviathan Kai had always been someone Chen had never hoped to ever meet.

A/N: everybody here makes my day :D thanks to those who left comments and kangyoohwa, rainy-daes, cxxarpexxd and barbieocaralho for upvoting