Chapter Text
Seokmin finds the long human when he's nearly dead.
He is no stranger to the way shipwrecks appear, large hunks of wood and iron sinking down from the Surface like hailstones. A wreck is a huge thing, leaving in its wake a trail of glittering objects and bloated, soft bodies. Some merfolk like to search the wrecks for food or weapons; Seokmin likes to look for small, mysterious things that he, Seungkwan, and Soonyoung can examine together.
There is no wreck accompanying this one. The human looks injured, a trail of blood spiraling from a gash on his head. Bubbles of air escape his mouth in a steady stream. He's shedding a lot of blood, and his body is a slow arrow sinking downwards.
Seokmin swims quickly to the human, shouting at him to see if he responds. Seokmin has never met a human being from the Surface; all the ones he's ever seen are the bones of them, or the eerily frozen, newly-dead ones. Sometimes, they chatter and drop things from the little black shadows they call boats.
While Seokmin is not the strongest merman in his family (that honor goes to his brother, Jihoon, who is by far the most muscular Crown Prince on this side of the ocean), he's no slouch, either. Seokmin takes the human in his arms and moves as fast as he can towards land. The coastal waters are clear today, but he's swimming with what feels like a sack full of rocks. He ignores the way his muscles are starting to ache, the currents pushing them ever closer to shore.
This one is incredibly, unbelievably, warm—possibly still alive. Seokmin makes landfall with the human still unconscious in his arms, depositing them both on the sand. He's out of breath, too. Seokmin puts an ear to the long human's chest to check if he still has a heartbeat, his head wound slowly coloring the sand a deep, brown red. There's a faint sound there, a shallow thumping that makes him panic a little. He hasn't thought this far ahead.
Scowling, Seokmin curses the human's prone form. He's running out of options, but they might still make it; he wants them to have made it. He doesn't know how else he'll explain his prolonged absence to his family, and Seungkwan probably won't help him hide a body.
Seokmin only has one way to find out. He takes a deep breath (or two) and sings the water out of the human's lungs, his hands on the long human's chest above his sluggish heart.
☆ 🌊 ☆
Mingyu will not remember the way someone saves his life.
Later in the retelling—and with two stitches to show for it—Mingyu will point at the A-frame of the starboard awning of his favorite yacht and accuse it of attempting murder. It's not his fault, he'll say, his bottom lip sticking out in a small pout. The sheer difference in his muscle-to-fat ratio will ensure he sinks like a stone. The ocean will ruin his clothes and his phone will be unusable.
Distantly, Mingyu wonders if his family will know that this is how he dies. If he himself will ever know the security of firm ground again, or warmth in his body. The freeze invades his bones, water plugging up his ears and his heart in his throat. It's unfortunate, he says to himself, because what he can see underwater is beautiful.
It's the last thing he thinks before he blacks out.
☆ 🌊 ☆
Seokmin sings because it's the most natural thing in the world. It's like breathing underwater, or fitting a new arrow to a favorite bow. Calling the water forth helps him recover faster, strengthening the magic in his voice in a swift, endless cycle. He gathers enough strength to put the long human's head on his lap, tail curled under him to help. Seokmin sings to the rhythm of the shallows, coaxing the ocean back to him. He sings for what feels like ages, until the sky turns everything a warm, blazing orange.
He is in fact so attuned to his music that he doesn't realize the human is stirring awake. He scrunches up his face like he's in pain, and Seokmin doesn't know any songs for that. He technically shouldn't be doing this for him anyway, half-drowned or otherwise, and only stops when the human emits a low groan.
"Why'd you stop?" He blinks, bleary-eyed and totally unaware of the tail he's laying on. Seokmin yelps and, using his own hands, covers his eyes. "Ow!"
He might have gotten some sand in there. Seokmin takes the chance and pushes the human off him, darting forth into the deeper waves. He ignores the way the human shouts at him, hoping that the water will disguise his form as he swims back home.
☆ 🌊 ☆
Mingyu wakes up on a familiar shore, surrounded by shallow waves lapping at his face. He's an impossible distance away from his boat. His whole body hurts. There's sand in his eyes. He can see someone moving, and calls out for him with a rasp in his throat.
He thinks he might have seen something glitter in the waves. It might have been the setting sun reflected by the water.
☆ 🌊 ☆
Seokmin feels better as soon as he comes home, entering the waters of his family's territory with a sigh of relief. While concealment is a general rule rather than a firm law, the Surface dwellers never seem to approach waterfolk in peace. There are always horror stories of humans taking a mermaid's tail to sell in illegal markets, or kidnapping them into tiny tanks for who-knows-what. Seokmin hopes he doesn't end up in one of those stories.
He's done a good job, he tells himself. The long human is alive, and probably didn't even see him. There is no body for him to bury, nothing for Seungkwan to cover up, and no rules broken whatsoever. He's only feeling nervous because he was gone for so long—that's it.
"Seok!" A familiar voice yells out, and Seokmin answers the call with a wave of his hand. Soonyoung bolts toward him, his tail a silver-gold flash in the water. He looks agitated.
Seokmin greets his old friend with a nervous smile. "Soon…?"
"Boo Seungkwan is looking for you!" Soonyoung blurts out, and takes Seokmin by the hand to drag him toward the royal quarters. The palace (so-called, since the dwelling was hardly a sumptuous one) gates open immediately for them, the guards saluting as soon as Soonyoung propels Seokmin across the threshold. "Hoonie had a feeling, y'know, the ones where he's totally quiet and then he'll say something out of nowhere? He said," Soonyoung tries to imitate his brother's dry deadpan, "I haven't seen Lee Seokmin all day. And I realized that I hadn't either, and neither did anyone else, and I think Seungkwan is about to mobilize a search party—"
"I was out," Seokmin defends weakly. "I was … visiting Jeonghan. Yeah."
Soonyoung stops trying to rocket Seokmin toward inevitable doom. "Hannie-hyung?" Soonyoung laughs, a high giggle that makes Seokmin smile out of reflexive habit. "God, Seok, even after all these years you're still bad at it."
At what? he wants to ask, but Soonyoung is already waving at the familiar, blue-green tinted fins of Boo Seungkwan in an absolute tizzy. "At lying," Soonyoung continues, laughing at the expression on Seokmin's face. "Seungkwan asked Hannie-hyung where you were two hours ago."
"Oh." Seokmin should have thought of that. He opens his mouth to try another one. "I, uh. I was trying to help someone? I meant that I was on the way to Jeonghan-hyung, and um. Met a human. I sort of went to the Surface."
The lattermost phrase is, of course, the only one Seungkwan hears. Seokmin can hear the deep intake of breath before the dulcet tones of his closest advisor rings in his ears.
"You did what?!"
☆ 🌊 ☆
"I don't understand why we have to do this here," Seokmin grumbles.
After successfully keeping Seungkwan from committing regicide, Soonyoung drags them both to what he'd cheerfully called 'neutral ground'.
"You're the one who brought me into this," Jeonghan says, and points to the small cup in Seokmin's hands. Yoon Jeonghan's house is a fair swim away from where Seokmin's family resides, molluscs naturally shying away from living in larger groups. Seungkwan had complained about the time he had taken to look for him and lie to his brother about it the whole way there. "Finish that."
Seokmin drinks it down, grimacing at the bitter, herbal aftertaste. A thought occurs to him. "Hyung, is this some kind of truth-telling potion?"
Jeonghan crosses a few of his appendages together, two over two. "I don't need a potion to know if you're being honest." He pats Seokmin on the arm with a patronizing smile. "Now," he says genially, "Tell me all about it."
☆ 🌊 ☆
Mingyu gets his yacht back after a long walk back home, a trip to the hospital, and the purchase of a new phone. He usually runs warm, but these days he's been feeling a strange chill. It's a summer cold, he says to his friends, and hopes it's true. He hasn't been sleeping well.
Choi Seungcheol, the oldest of his friends and his most consistent gym buddy, is the only one to call him out. "I don't think it's weird to feel bad after an experience like that," he says between reps. Mingyu hands him his water bottle. "Besides," Seungcheol adds, "If you're working out with me while you're sick, Hansol is going to murder you."
"I'm not scared of him," Mingyu scoffs. He's seen Choi Seungcheol's little cousin since he was an infant and, while he's sprouted like a weed since then, Mingyu can take him. Probably.
"Even when he does the big sad eyes?" Seungcheol raises a thick eyebrow. It's unfortunate that the men in the Choi family have, to Mingyu's knowledge, not only one of the biggest reserves of generational wealth in the country but also a set of genes that lend themselves to a potent and dangerously effective (as Jeon Wonwoo calls it) Whiner Face.
Seungcheol pulls an approximation of it now, his eyebrows turning down and mouth pushed out into an impressive pout. His eyes glitter with what look like tears—of disappointment or mirth, Mingyu doesn't know—and he looks so upset that it makes Mingyu feel a real twinge of remorse. "Oh, wow." Seungcheol even lowers his voice to mimic his cousin's voice. "You know, that isn't good for you."
He looks so stupid doing that among the kettlebells in Mingyu's home gym. Mingyu hates that it works. "Get out of my house," he says instead of crumbling to fake-Hansol (and very real Seungcheol, who is at best a sore loser and at his worst, a smug winner). "It's my turn on the bells."
Seungcheol laughs at him, but relinquishes the equipment to Mingyu nonetheless. And keeps pace with Mingyu for another half hour before they finish the usual steps for arm day.
☆ 🌊 ☆
The plan they (or rather, Jeonghan and Seungkwan) settle on is weird and unnecessarily complicated. Soonyoung dutifully writes it all down as such:
Step one: Inform the royal family that Seokmin will be going to the Surface for a little while. Step two: Make sure that the human has no memory of who (or rather what) saved him. If he's still not dead, also very cool. Step third: If the human does remember, then lure the human into the sea. Step four: ----
"What exactly is that?" Seungkwan squints at the clay tablet in Soonyoung's hands, jabbing a thin finger at the last item.
"Oh, well, you know," Jeonghan replies airily. "It's magic. I'm afraid I can't divulge the specifics."
"Hyuung," Seokmin whines, "That's not fair."
While it is true that Jeonghan is of a separate type of water-dweller than the others in their realm (and even then, they had different species of fish: Seungkwan had the colors and fins of a betta, Soonyoung the distinctive teeth and stripes of a tigerfish), there is nothing in his blood that makes him inherently more magical than anyone else. Even Seokmin, with the watersong in his blood that grants him the unlikely title Protector of the Realm, knows that. But there's something about Jeonghan that makes Seokmin want to believe him—maybe the spark in his eyes when he promises something, and Jeonghan rarely fails to deliver—and, with the impressive store of potions and charms Jeonghan hoards and Seungkwan's paranoia, he agrees to the plan.
"I just …" Seokmin trails off, staring at the list again. "I don't know how I'm gonna say anything to my brother."
"Ah." Jeonghan holds up a thin, suction-cupped appendage with a delighted glint in his eyes. It gives Seokmin a strange, twisting foreboding in his stomach. "I have just the thing for that."
☆ 🌊 ☆
Sometimes Mingyu dreams about it. He's cold, and it's strangely bright above his head and dark everywhere else around him. He wants to call out for help, but there isn't enough air to make a sound. On several nights, Mingyu wakes up in a sweat, taking deep gulps of oxygen just to reassure himself he can. He stays up for hours, unwilling to go back to the dark but also begrudging the idea of him sleeping with a nightlight like a toddler. He picks up and puts back down a book he'd promised his father he'd read, watches videos of famous chefs in cooking tournaments, and scrolls Instagram for hours.
Only when the dawn breaks, the sun's golden-pink light lancing through the night sky to signal the passage of time, does Mingyu fall back asleep.
☆ 🌊 ☆
"You want to go to the Surface."
It's not a question. Crown Prince Lee Jihoon is a mer with straightforward tendencies, a deadpan voice and a dry sense of humor to match. His compact body is perpetually at odds with the reputation he holds, along with the massive broadsword he prefers to use while keeping patrol at the outskirts of their territory. In strength and power, physical or magical, Seokmin has yet to best him in anything except the length of their tails. Their youngest brother might be quicker and defter in his reflexes, in some part due to his youth, and Seokmin himself can sing a song about anything, but Jihoon's strength is deep and consistent, the boundary current of their family that keeps them all together. Every day, Seokmin is relieved that it's his big brother who bears the weight of leadership, the least likely of them to buckle under the strain and wear it with grace.
He's feeling less thankful about it now, since Jihoon's stare is about to bore a hole straight through Seokmin's skull. "I'm going with him," Seungkwan pipes up, visibly bristling at the idea of letting Seokmin go to the humans alone. Jihoon looks minutely appeased.
"And I'll disguise him." Jeonghan wiggles his fingers along with a few appendages, and the crease between Jihoon's eyebrows reappears in an instant. "Don't give me that face. I'm just changing his tail for some legs."
"Two legs."
"Yes, two legs. And two feet, one per leg." Jeonghan gives Jihoon a cherubic smile. He deflects it by brusquely changing the subject.
"Where's the other one?" Jihoon gestures to the empty space between Seungkwan and Seokmin. "I don't often see you three together."
Seokmin opens his mouth. We thought he'd crack up too much and then we'd fail to sell you a lie, he wants to say, but nothing happens. "Soon's having a staring contest with the flounder again," he says instead, aghast at what comes out of his own mouth. "He thinks that they cheat because they close one of their eyes and keep the other side open."
"And we're just here for moral support." Jeonghan links arms with Seungkwan, who nods grimly. Seokmin thinks Seungkwan is trying to look serious, but he looks like he has a stomachache.
"...okay," Jihoon sighs. "Forget I asked." Seokmin clamps his mouth shut and tries to signal to Jeonghan a telepathic Hello?? What Is Happening??? that he ignores with aplomb. Jihoon's gaze flits from Jeonghan to Seungkwan to Seokmin, settling finally on his younger brother like an iron weight. "Fine," he grumbles, gesturing at Seokmin and Seungkwan. "I know you won't want a full guard, but you can't go alone. You'll take Seungkwan and Kwon Soonyoung with you tomorrow."
"Really?" Seungkwan sounds more than a little shocked, like he's surprised that Jihoon is even buying it. Seokmin barrels into his brother and wraps his tail around him like a hatchling.
"A full day," Jihoon confirms, and doesn't shove Seokmin off him. "But that's all you get."
☆ 🌊 ☆
Mingyu's house (or, to be precise, one of his houses) is a summer villa he thinks he inherited through a great-aunt.
The entire compound is situated on a prime area of a little bay on the Western coast, with a main house, a guesthouse, a sprawling garden, and access to a private beach with a little marina. It's a cozy and comfortable place that Mingyu likes to relax at, especially after a harrowing, life-changing experience wherein he tries to pretend like everything is business as usual. His childhood friends, Seungcheol and Wonwoo, both have summer houses close enough that they simply sleep over. It almost makes Mingyu feel like he's back at boarding school, if one could be wistful about it—the three of them playing games long into the night.
Even now, Wonwoo has a bad energy drink habit, whereas Mingyu himself is plagued by strange dreams about being frozen in the dark. He used to be more energetic at night, sometimes even indulging in a few creative activities, but as of late he just doomscrolls and winces when there's an underwater photoshoot on his Instagram feed. It helps to know there are people close by.
Today he's working on his tan, tuning Seungcheol out when he starts whining about a parcel of land he didn't manage to get. "It's good real estate," he sulks. "It's right next to my house. I was gonna buy it for Hansol's birthday."
Wonwoo doesn't even bother looking up from his portable gaming console. "That's rough, buddy." Seungcheol sniffs, shooting Wonwoo a glare that he doesn't see.
"Who bought it, then?" Mingyu asks. He can ignore the fact that Hansol's birthday is in February.
"That's the thing!" Seungcheol gives Mingyu the Big Sad Eyes. Its total effect is cut down by his pouting frown and Mingyu mentally commends the real estate agent who was no doubt on the other side of its full force this morning. "It's signed for by a Yoon, but I dunno anyone in that family who needs a beach house."
Mingyu is about to reply with something like Maybe they need an extra beach house, or You'll get 'em next time, when the doorbell rings. His phone lights up with a notification and the security system gives him a grainy feed of two figures: one of them is holding a covered dish in his hands, and the other waving at the camera lens. "Hyung," Mingyu says, and gestures at the video feed. "I think we're gonna find out."
☆ 🌊 ☆
Cooking, Seokmin discovers, on the Surface is insane. There are a lot more elements to it, more textures and ingredients that he's never heard of, and worst/best of all, there's something called a 'flame' that makes food incredible.
He also finds out that too much of it can reduce the potential food into what Jeonghan calls 'ashes', which don't taste good at all. He uses his newfound legs to run toward the sink and spit out the black-grey lump in his mouth. This is terrible, he wants to cry, but what he says instead is, "I'm gonna feed that to Soon if he doesn't turn off that documentary." Soonyoung has been playing on repeat the same moving image of a large orange and black furred creature, rapt with attention and awe. That's me, he had said, but Seokmin honestly can't see the resemblance.
The spell (not a curse, as Jeonghan is so insistent on saying) that enables him to lie to other people is finicky and weird. If Seokmin gets nervous about lying, he'll clam up until the magic twists his words around. The more stress he feels, the stronger the spell's effects. It's a shame that Seokmin is, as Channie's tutor puts it, an unusually anxious person, prone to picking at the edges of his scales or twitching with nervous energy. Xu Minghao had invited him over to learn how to meditate, but Seokmin was already too spooked by the way he'd had seen into his brain.
"How many attempts has this been?" Seungkwan asks, pointing to the round mass of rice flour and water in Seokmin's hands. He's gotten to the stage where it's no longer sticking to anything else but itself, and Seokmin hopes it's as chewy as it is underwater. He can't risk cooking anything with an open flame when their little scheme hinges on the humans accepting their gift.
"Five," Seokmin replies, but holds up three fingers to indicate otherwise. The spell can't stop him from singing or miming things, which is kind of good unless Soonyoung decides to be playful and turns everything into a game of charades. "But I think this is it," he sings, making up a tune as he goes along. He draws out the notes in time with the rice cake dough, relishing the way it stretches.
"I hope so," Seungkwan sings with him, his huskier voice adding an interesting texture to their sound.
Seokmin is coming to learn that the way sound travels on the Surface is much different from how it is at home, and feels a little guilty about preferring the quality of it now. You're the tide, his baby brother had said once, his golden tail growing out the last of his fins. Seokmin has always been in the middle, his scales somewhere in between Chan's yellow gold and Jihoon's glittering red. The Crown Prince has no interest in the Surface's affairs, and while Chan is curious about it and the humans living there, they were a strange abstract just the same as other merfolk living in other parts of the sea. Only Seokmin searches the wrecks for little treasures, waiting until the last human remains disintegrate so he can avoid any likelihood of ghosts. He's scared of new things, and everything about the Surface is new, but he can't seem to help himself, caught between the coastline and the sea. Hyung's the current, and I'm the wave, and you're the tide. He'd preened after saying it, fifteen-year-old Lee Chan a little too satisfied with his own insight, and looked so adorably smug about it that Seokmin had pinched his cheeks.
Seungkwan steams the little cakes to perfection while Seokmin washes his hands. He misses some parts of the water, like the movement of the waves rolling overhead and the way sunlight dances through the shallows. How the ocean is always moving, thrumming around him like one giant organism holding him in its embrace. Sleeping in a dry bed is very strange.
"I'm pouring it!" Seungkwan calls out, and Seokmin rushes back to help him, plating everything in a deep blue earthenware dish that hopefully humans will not find offensive. Jeonghan had given them a small bottle formed of volcanic glass for the deed. Be careful not to breathe it in, he'd said, a rare sternness settling on his features. Seungkwan, who has attended the same magical theory classes that Seokmin and Soonyoung did (but always took it more seriously), pinches the dropper cap of the bottle with steady fingers.
He deposits two drops on each little rice cake, formed into lightly flattened spheres by Seokmin's own hands. One for suggestibility, and another to ensure the suggestion takes. They hold their breath, Seokmin and Seungkwan counting each drop until the last rice cake glistens with the trace remnants of the potion. Seokmin covers the dish with thin, transparent film, and then a tea towel above that. "I guess that's it," Seungkwan sighs, and Seokmin takes a deep breath.
"Yeah," he warbles, a little off-key from nerves, and gestures toward the door. "Let's carry it over."
☆ 🌊 ☆
Despite being a scion of one of the wealthiest, most well-established families in the country, with an expensive global education and a network of family friends in every echelon of higher society, Mingyu can admit that he has flaws. He was and is still a bit flighty, a little vain, and very forgetful. He's clumsy, and prefers to keep things light in a way Seungcheol had described once as 'irritatingly positive'.
Unrelenting optimism is a strange attitude to have for a chaebol heir, but Mingyu likes to think he's allowed to have it the way an elder relative might indulge a child. He knows and has always known that he would never be CEO of Anyang Heavy Industries—that unfortunate burden going to one of his older cousins—so after Mingyu graduates with his business degree he settles comfortably into the life of a lesser C-suite executive. He picks up all sorts of hobbies, first art, then fashion, then food. His short attention span proves fatal to the longevity of his creative projects, although Mingyu still likes to dabble here and there (and most recently started modeling after covering Forbes Korea last year), but he loves too much the feeling of infatuation, the exhilarating energy he gets when he falls in love with a new thing.
A new thing, or a new person. He's always been a little easy, a bit too quick to swoon. Put simply, a romantic: a sentimental person who likes big gestures and movie clichés. He loves meeting new people. He loves love.
The new people at his front door (the actual real one at the front of the house, a heavy set of oak panels decorated with blackened bronze that Mingyu has never actually seen anyone use since everyone else comes in through the side door) seem nice. They're tall, although neither are taller than him, a blue-haired young man in athletic shorts and a navy blue tee and the other a slim, narrow-faced man with ginger-orange hair carrying a covered dish with an embarrassed smile. He looks familiar, which is odd. If Seungcheol ever finds out that Mingyu knows the real estate snatchers and didn't tell him, there would be hell to pay.
"I'm Boo Seungkwan," the round-cheeked one says, and gestures to his companion. "That's Lee Dokyeom. We're your new neighbors!"
Mingyu is acutely aware that he has tanning oil dripping on the floor of the marble foyer. "Hi," he says, and hopes that his lisp is cute enough to make up for it.
"We brought you these." Dokyeom thrusts a ceramic dish at Mingyu's bare chest. Mingyu takes it with both hands, because he is a gentleman. It smells like tteok, fresh rice cakes traditionally given by new people recently introduced to the neighborhood. It's an old-fashioned gesture that makes Mingyu wish he'd put on a shirt.
"Thank you. Are they poisoned?" he jokes, and Dokyeom makes what can only be identified as a squawking sound. "I'm kidding, I'm sorry. Hi," Mingyu sticks out his right hand, holding the dish on the flat of his left palm like he's a waiter. "I'm Kim Mingyu." Dokyeom mouths it to himself, seemingly unaware that Mingyu can see him, while Seungkwan takes his proffered hand and shakes it. He pumps his arm up and down eagerly before letting go.
"D'you want to come in?" Mingyu pulls the door open a little further, but Seungkwan merely shakes his head.
"We're just dropping this off," Dokyeom says faintly, and Mingyu is at once taken aback and a little charmed at how awkward he is. He really does look familiar.
"I will. Um. Thanks."
Seungkwan loops an arm around Dokyeom's shoulders, pulling him away and saving Mingyu from having to discuss anything further with the shyer orange-haired boy. "It was nice to meet you!" Seungkwan calls over his shoulder, already halfway down the stairs toward the long driveway, dragging Dokyeom with him. Dokyeom points at the dish that Mingyu is holding, and then opens his mouth and points at it as if to mime eating.
Mingyu nods, and waves to them goodbye before closing the door. "Weird," he mumbles, and lifts up the tea towel to spot freshly honeyed rice cakes. He peels off the cling film and pops one into his mouth, chewing and considering the taste. Its sweet flavor helps color the strangeness of his new friends into something a little less sharp. "These are good, though," he muses to himself, and puts the rest in the kitchen for later.