“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.” 

-  Hans Christian Anderson, The Little Mermaid

Chen can hardly see.

The water is dark and murky and almost everything around him is obscured by unfamiliar shapes. His fins brush past the thick weeds, his tail sweeping past piles of bones of both fish and humans. There is nearly no life here, desolate and empty save for the scum of the sea floor.

He jerks in fright when an ocean eel of sickly green colours slips by his back. Its slimy surface sends chills down his spine. He feels dirty just being in the dank water. He's squinting ahead at the bleary outline of the leviathan’s cave when something bumps against his shoulder and draws away sharply with a gasp. A human skull stares back at him, leering all the way until it sinks into the sand. It must have fallen from above.

The abode of the sea’s vilest creature looms like the shadow of a ship on the water’s surface, all jagged edges and fearsome spires.

Chen steadies himself, inhaling and exhaling water deeply, and his fins twitch in apprehension as calls out.

The long, stringy weeds at the entrance come to life instantly, rapidly wrapping themselves around each of the prince’s limbs and throat with killer intent. Several more secure his tail tightly but Chen doesn’t fight back. Resistance, along with life, are futile in the domain of the leviathan.

“Let him in,” a voice says, gravelly and greasy, pitched in all the wrong ways. Chen suppresses the need to shudder vehemently at the repulsive sound. It pains him like the wail of a mother dolphin who has lost her child to the sharks.

The weeds obediently unravel away and he swims deeper into the cave with only a few ugly angler fish with bulbous eyes and gaping jaws to light his way. The end is eerily illuminated when he finally reaches it.

Chen’s eyes drink in the sight before him.

All those who have encountered the leviathan of the seven seas tell of a monstrous being whose claws pierce flesh and scales that leak a filthy, putrid poison.

Kai is not the raging thirty-foot leviathan of legends but half a human, tall and lightly tanned, with a head of dark locks and smoky eyes that scream sin to lure victims to their downfall. His lithe torso melts into that of the fabled sea serpents, lined with spikes and interspersed with fins and armoured by shining scales of the deepest obsidian black. He is the very image of seduction, save for the hideous voice he possesses.

The corner of his mouth quirks upwards into a half-smile.

“I didn’t expect to you see you so soon, dear prince,” he drawls, shifting closer from where his form is tightly coiled up. “You’re not as patient as I thought you were.”

Chen clenches his fingers until his nails dig into his palms. “I didn’t come to argue with you– ” he starts.

“Of course not. I know just what you came for.” Kai rises and slithers his way over to the merboy at the entrance. “You fell in love with a human, didn’t you?” he simpers.

Chen says nothing.

“And You want him to fall in love with you,” Kai continues, circling his long body loosely around the prince’s own, “so that you may gain an immortal soul, and be with him in life and in death. You want to give up your fish tail for human legs.”

Chen’s slight trembling hardly goes unnoticed. His scales feel slightly itchy and only then does he realize the water around him is being infiltrated with toxins from the black scales around him.

He lifts his eyes and to meet Kai’s own endless pools of black. “Y-yes,” he answers with determination. “That’s what I want.”

The quietness of the cave is shattered by the disgusting screeching noise of the leviathan’s laughter.

“You are a stupid prince,” he sneers. “Why do you choose a path riddled with so much sorrow? Your people are already harbingers of sadness.”

“Please. You don’t understand,” Chen says, trying not to seem as if he were begging, “I must be with him.” He resists clapping his hands over his ears as Kai laughs in his face.

“Very well.” The creature slithers away into the corner of his lair. “I will help you.”

The black serpentine coils block his vision so Chen can’t see what Kai does after that. 

“Listen. I will only say this once,” Kai murmurs. “Take this potion and head for the shore. You must swallow every last drop before the dawn. As the sun rises, your fins will recede and your tail will split. Your legs will have a price; each step will feel as if you are walking astride shards of glass.”

“…Glass?”

“Your balance shall be twofold, your grace threefold, and your delicate form will be the envy of humans everywhere. Are you, foolish prince, still willing to make this exchange?”

Chen swallows nervously. He thinks of how far he’d come already, and Suho in his castle. To turn back would be effort wasted. “I have to do this,” he says bravely.

Kai hums in content. “Do not forget that the change is irreversible,” he adds. “Your life here will cease to exist. Your kingdom, your father, your friends. The sea will never welcome you home again.”

“My father and I aren’t on speaking terms as of now,” the prince shrugs. “His trident would be better off in the hands of someone else.” His elder cousin Taeyeon is a charming mermaid; the eldest of her eight sisters, smart and level-headed. If Chen were to leave his royal ranks to anybody he would choose her.

Kai glances at him over his broad shoulder, his black eyes gleaming. “I see. And your friends?”

Sehun is just a little boy. Time will heal the hole Chen leaves behind. But Luhan…

I’ll tell him, Chen decides, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Luhan will understand.

“Wait,” he says abruptly. “What if Suho never falls in love with me?”

“Then why are you here, trying to obtain the heart of a human if you think he will never love you back?” Kai asks, his eyebrow raised. His serpent half undulates slowly as he anticipates the answer.

“Because he still waits for me,” Chen says firmly. Hope flares inside his chest. “He goes to the shore every day. He knows I was there. I saw the way he reacted when I sang back to him.”

If his voice could ensnare the merpeople, beings whose very souls had song engraved into them, then surely he could capture Suho’s human heart.

Kai turns back around. “Is that so? You should know that if he refuses to give himself to you, his immortal soul will simply never split,” he casually adds, as if the situation amuses him greatly. “On the first dawn after your human pledges his love to another, your own heart will split in the place of his soul. You shall return to the sea as foam, with nothing to guide your ascent to the realm of the sky.”

“I’ll do it. Just hurry, before I change my mind,” Chen grits out. His heart thumps loudly in its cage of bones and blood pounds in his head.

Smiling in satisfaction, Kai snakes along on the sea floor and curls himself around Chen, his own torso finishing up snugly against the prince’s back.

“Well, if you are so willing,” he purrs, his grating voice sickly sweet, “shall we talk about the payment?”

Chen stills. His fins prickle uncomfortably and he doesn’t dare turn his head for fear of what he will see. “What do you want?” he asks quietly. The greatest test is yet to come.

“What do I want?” the leviathan repeats. The currents from his breath brush chillingly against Chen’s neck. “What do you think I should take, prince?”

“Take? I-I don’t know…”

“Oh? Tell me, then, what you consider to be your most treasured possession.” Kai looks strangely curious.

The answer is mundane.

If there is anything that Chen needs for the sake of his quest for his immortal soul, the one thing that would allow Suho to recognize him, it would be– 

“My voice,” he suddenly chokes out, his insides roiling in unrestrained horror. “You want my voice.”

The black claws of the leviathan skitter up the column of his throat, coming to rest possessively over his trembling vocal chords. He struggles to break free but the dark coils wrap tight to render him immobile.

“Indeed,” Kai smirks, cold, smug and calculating. “The sweetest voice in the oceans belongs to none other than you. Why should I not take it?”

Chen shakes his head fervently. “No! Not that,” he pleads in fear. “Take something else, anything else– ”

“Listen to my own voice,” Kai coos softly in his ear. “Does it not disgust you? Does the mere sound of it not turn your insides, and make you want to turn away? I hunger for a pretty voice like yours, but since I cannot have it I will simply have to own it. I go by many a name, prince, but ‘collector of voices’ may perhaps be the most famous of them all.”

“Y-you can’t– ” Chen stammers. 

“Did you think before you chose to dabble with me? You are forsaking everything the sea has given you, in order to satisfy your own selfish wants. You will have nothing left. What more is giving up a little more?”

The prince twists about restlessly, his skin irritated from the poison seeping out of charcoal scales. “Suho,” he cries, and Kai his head, “he – he’ll never figure out who I am without my voice…”

“Use your mind, foolish prince, and your body,” the latter says. “Use your expressive eyes, your beauty, the grace your feet will bestow upon you; and your human will be powerless to resist.”

Chen swallows the lump in his throat. His mind is in a jumble, his emotions even more so, as he fights to decide his fate.

The tip of the leviathan’s tail caresses his cheek.

“Has your courage fled now?” Kai taunts him. He his claws up and down the throat of the prince.

Chen takes a deep, steadied breath. He closes his eyes and slumps in defeat.

“I’ll play your game,” he finally spits out. “Take my voice, if that’s what you want.”

Kai’s claws disappear and he slips away, his body unravelling itself. He muses in the dark corner of his cave for a few more moments before returning with a small silver blade. The twinkling jewels set in the hilt is the last Chen sees of it before Kai snatches his chin in one hand and forces his head upwards.

“Open wide,” he croons.

Chen leaves Kai’s cave, potion grasped in one hand, and a painfully empty mouth.

The last of the night has bled into the earliest hours of the morning and Chen is running short on time. In his quarters he quickly sorts through the chest containing his favourite human ornaments until he finds what he’s looking for.

The tiny gold band with the diamond is at the bottom. He tucks it into a little clamshell and places it by the door to Kyungsoo’s quarters several corridors away; the messenger boy will hand it to the king for sure.

The ring is Chen’s first and most precious human treasure, his first link to the surface world. He can rest assured that his father will know exactly what it means.

He quickly inscribes a letter with a sharpened turret shell onto a thin piece of seaweed, folds it up and sneaks out of the palace. He pushes it under the door to Luhan’s home with shaking fingers.

With the leviathan’s potion is secure in his grip, Chen casts a sweeping glance over the royal palace and tries not to dwell on the things he will surely come to miss. He swims for the river, a blue blur in a blue sea.

“Luhan, Luhan, look what I found!” Sehun squeals excitedly. He waves something in his hand, zooming around the blond merboy.

Luhan chuckles good-naturedly. “Slow down, Sehunnie. Here, let me see." Sehun corkscrews to a stop beside him to pass it over. It’s a piece of seaweed for writing, with only a name scribbled on the back to indicate the addressee. Luhan flips it open and reads the contents.

The colour drains from his face. He stares at it and reads it again, hoping that maybe he’d made a mistake somewhere.

“Lu?” Sehun prompts him.

Luhan screws it up and hurls it away with an anguished scream.

“You fool!” he shrieks, his hands tearing at his hair, “you stupid, stupid boy! What have you done?”

Sehun visibly shrinks away. “W-what does it say?” he asks in a small voice.

Composure lost, Luhan crumples to the floor and breaks down in miserable sobs, his face obscured by his hands. It is a pity the mer cannot cry.

“Lu?” Sehun tentatively tries again. He scoots closer and pulls on his arm. “What– ”

“He’s gone,” Luhan howls, shaking him away.

“Who's gone? I don’t get it!” Sehun's lower lip trembles in distress and he wails pathetically. “What’s wrong, Luhan, what’s wrong?”

A/N: hi new subbies and currrent subbies i love you all

thanks to 0yuc33 and oldriane for upvoting! (: