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There are two unrepresentable things to every sailor: death and the feminine sex. That is; femininity is associated with the beautiful yet dangerous creatures that swim underneath ships only to wreck them, that drag young sailors over the edge of their ships to the depths of the ocean in a deadly kiss, that lure innocent souls to jump to their deaths in dark waters. At sea, women, so ethereal and exquisite and every seaman’s worst nightmare, mean death. Sirens are alluring and minacious, compelling and dangerous. Deadly.
Choi Chanhee is no exception.
Chanhee, who calls himself Choi to ridicule the dead captain that abducted and imprisoned him in a bathtub in the hull of the Witch’s Tongue, whom he later killed, as well as his crew. The Witch’s Tongue, legendary warship whose original crew was led to a mysterious death by overly ambitious Marine Fleet Admiral Kim Taeyeon and then taken over by Captain Choi’s crew, has been sailing adrift for weeks in a row.
When Captain Kim Younghoon and his crew take over the ship, the first thing they find on deck are dead bodies, rotting on the wooden floor under the sun for days, reeking of death and carrion. The only living soul in the Witch’s Tongue is the siren. Everyone else; the crew, the captain, the prisoners – they’re all dead.
Younghoon wonders how a creature this beautiful could’ve killed so many men. He doesn’t want to know how.
“Are you even real?” Younghoon asks in awe, as he slides his thumb across the siren’s cheek. The siren flinches away, digging its fingernails in the slippery edges of the bathtub, flapping its tail in fear as it tries to squirm out of Younghoon’s reach. He blinks; the siren is scared. Of him. “It’s okay. You can trust me. I’m not going to hurt you.”
The siren doesn’t answer, staring at Younghoon. Observing his every move.
“Do you have a name?” He tries. “My name is Younghoon.”
Younghoon reaches for his arm. The siren doesn’t move away this time. Its skin feels weirdly soft under his fingers, slimy and cold. Very cold. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. I’m not going to hurt you. I’d like to take care of you, if you’d let me.”
Silence.
“How did you get down here?” He asks again as he inspects the bathtub. The water is faintly pink, in contrast with the shiny white of the inner walls of the tub, and Younghoon hopes it isn’t the siren’s blood that turned the water pink. He rolls up his sleeves as he gets on his knees and inspects the siren carefully, studying its face in the search for any bruises or cuts in its milky skin. He finds it particularly hard to stay too close, intoxicated. The siren blinks at him curiously. “Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”
“They tried to cut off my tail so they could sell it to fisherman.” The siren speaks for the first time. Its voice sounds a lot different than what Younghoon expected it to sound like; it’s soft and airy, breathy. The siren leans forward, resting his arms on the curved edges of the tub, getting dangerously close to Younghoon now. It tilts its head, noses almost touching, its breath against Younghoon’s cheek. “So I killed them. The same way I should kill you, sailor.”
“Oh, no. Please don’t kill me.” Younghoon retorts, getting even closer. The siren smirks, staring deep into his soul through heavy eyelids, sliding his hand around Younghoon’s arm and holding onto his wrist. “You didn’t kill me when I dreamt of you the other night.”
“You dreamt about me?” A laugh. That only stirs Younghoon to move even closer. “Tell me about your dream. Tell me what you saw.”
“You saved me.” He continues. “You’re so beautiful. I still can’t believe you’re real.”
“Is that so, sailor?” The siren touches Younghoon’s neck, tilting its head. It presses its lips against the shell of Younghoon’s ear and whispers, “I’m here. I’m real.”
Younghoon stares in awe, fascinated by the way the scales gleam in many shades of purple and blue under the water. There’s something so compelling, so hypnotizing about the siren that makes it physically impossible for Younghoon to look away.
“Oye, captain! What do we have down here? Any prisoners?” Doctor Lee Jaehyun yells from the stairs, breaking the siren’s spell. Jaehyun covers his nose with the sleeve of his jacket, rushing to the corner where Younghoon is standing. He takes a peek over Younghoon’s shoulder, twists his nose in disgusts when he spots the siren in the bathtub and groans, “Toss it back to the sea before it bites you or something.”
“Doctor! You came just in time.” Younghoon greets, eyes still focused on the siren. “Get Sunwoo and Juyeon down here. I need help to get the tub on deck.”
“What for, captain? Juyeon can get rid of it with no problem.”
“Get Sunwoo and Juyeon down here.” Younghoon quirks an eyebrow at him. “Those are orders, doctor.”
Contrary to his crew’s protests, Younghoon decides to not only keep the siren on deck, in his cabin, more specifically, but to take care of it and nurse it back to health. Younghoon ignores the complaints, the looks of disappointment, and avoids all questions. He is a good person. He has a good heart. What he doesn’t have is, however, a reason for any of this when Sangyeon, his right hand, asks him why he’s so determined. Younghoon doesn’t know how to explain; it’s something in his gut, within him, that tells him he has to. He just knows he has to.
There’s something about the siren that makes it very hard for Younghoon to resist its presence, something so alluring and inviting Younghoon feels like he could and would drown if the siren did as little as ask him. He feels strangely tranquil. Like there’s nothing to be scared of, because the siren is there with him. To care for him.
“You haven’t told me your name yet.” Younghoon points out, as he undresses behind the screen splitting the room in two. He dampens a cloth and rubs the blood underneath his nails until his fingers ache. “Is it rude of me to assume sirens have names?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” Younghoon blinks in confusion. He dips the cloth back into the water and twists the excess water away.
“Helping me.”
“I want to.” Younghoon bends down, concentrated, as he tends to the siren’s wounds. The medical kit lays open in display on top of his bed, as he inspects the state of the ugly scars running around the siren’s waist and right above the tip of the tail. The wounds are mostly healed by now, but Younghoon still makes the effort to doublecheck for any other injuries.
“I could kill you.”
“You had plenty of opportunities to kill me. You could be killing me right now, even, but you’re not.” Younghoon teases with a grin, reaching for a roll of bandages and a bottle of saline to clean up the deep, tip of blade scratching against skin kind of scar on Chanhee’s cheek. The siren tilts its head. “If you wanted to kill me, you’d have done it already, but you didn’t. So now, in exchange for my kindness, will you please me tell your name, siren?”
“My name is New.”
“That’s not a name.”
“You’ll have to earn my real name, sailor.”
“You intrigue me quite a bit, you know? Having a siren in your cabin without even knowing my name, trusting me enough not to kill you in your sleep. You’re odd, Younghoon. Sailors are usually afraid of sirens. But you’re not.”
Younghoon swallows, throat suddenly gone dry, but still manages to laugh. “I’m not that interesting. Trust me, sweetheart, if there’s anyone who should be intrigued, it’s me. And you can bet I am.”
“What is it that you’re trying so hard to hide, captain?” Chanhee laughs, reading in between the lines of his choked laughter with ease, seeing right through his lies. What a fool he’s just made of himself, Younghoon notes, who is he to attempt and deceive the master of deception that sirens are? “You’re awfully soft for a man at sea. My sisters would love to devour a man like you.”
“A man like me.” Younghoon laughs, amused. The moon is bright and shining through the open window, gleaming on the dark sky, reflecting on the water inside the bath tub. The siren looks like its shining under the moonlight, ethereal and so beautiful, so painfully close to the point his fingertips ache for not being able to touch it. So close yet so far. “I like the sound of that.”
“A man like you.” Chanhee explains, distant, gaze lost somewhere in the wooden ceiling. “Soft. Good. You’re a good man. I don’t think I’ve met anyone quite like you, Younghoon.”
“You’re in luck, then. I don’t think I’ve met anyone quite like you either, fülemüle.”
“My name is Choi Chanhee, captain.” The siren says. Younghoon likes the sound of that name in his head, when his tongue rolls to mouth Choi Chanhee. “The Choi is just to taunt the man that captured me. But you can call me Chanhee.”
“It’s good to meet you, Chanhee. I’m Younghoon.”
“Do you believe in God?”
“I believe in what I can see. I believe in the gods of the sea, in my father and my sisters. Though I wouldn’t know who your God is. Tell me about Her.”
“My God is a man. Or that’s what I was taught, anyway. I don’t really believe in Him. I believe in the stars.” And you. I believe in you.
“God is a cheeky little bastard, then. That’s what all men are.”
“Am I a cheeky little bastard?” Younghoon grins.
“A very pretty one, yes.”
Chanhee’s mouth is dry when Younghoon first kisses him, yet it still feels like he’s drowning. Lips clash once more; Chanhee nibbles on his lower lip, licking into his mouth with hunger, demanding and urgent. Younghoon obliges, hungry and touch-starved, slipping into the tub until their bodies melt together into one in the cold water. Kissing Chanhee is like drowning; like he takes his breath away and crushes his lungs with the pressure underwater.
He, however, doesn’t pull away when Chanhee slides a hand underneath his shirt, now soaked wet and see through, or when he tugs at the hem of his shirt and strips him naked with hungry hands and eyes. Younghoon doesn’t pull away, nor does he want to.
“You know you cannot keep me here forever, don’t you?” Chanhee asks one day.
Younghoon’s chest tightens. He ignores the clump in the back of his throat, tending to Chanhee’s wounds to check the state of the scaring as per usual, rolling up his sleeves. Younghoon grew used to this, to this routine of caring for Chanhee and tending to his wounds every night, changing bandages and cleaning the wounds. Most of them have scarred at this point, but the one on his cheek still persists. He wants to kiss it away until the scar vanishes from his beautiful skin.
“You’re free to leave whenever you want. The sea is your home, after all.” Younghoon sighs, trying to speak through the knot forming in his throat. He knew this would eventually happen; he knew Chanhee would leave, or that he’d have to let him go. Younghoon is too attached to him. “Do you want to, though?”
“You got me.” Chanhee laughs, surrendering. He reaches for Younghoon’s hand and squeezes it tight. Younghoon’s heart breaks, but just a little. The urge to kiss him only grows bigger. “I don’t want to leave. I like sailing around the seven seas with you.”
An ‘I like you’ remains choked in Chanhee’s throat.
“Then you may stay for as long as you want.” Younghoon promises. He intertwines his fingers with Chanhee’s and wishes they could stay like this forever.
“I love you.”
“Why would you say something so selfish?”
“What can I say? One of us has to be selfish.” Younghoon mutters under his breath. He brushes Chanhee’s bangs away from his face, warm touch against the siren’s cold cheek. Chanhee wishes this could last forever, hot and combusting, hot enough to burn him alive. “Or are you going to keep pretending this is nothing?”
This isn’t love.
Hearts fluttering, a moan escapes his lips as he twists his fingers into Younghoon’s hair, tight grip on his naked bicep. Younghoon presses him against the edge of the tub and kisses him again.
“I don’t love you.” Chanhee says, as he drags Younghoon closer for yet another desperate kiss. He wraps his arms tighter around his torso, breath hitching and heart thumping loud inside his ribcage. This isn’t love, Chanhee tells himself, it can’t be love. “I will never love you.”
“For a second, I almost believed you. You’re a good liar. That’s how you killed many men like this, I bet.”
“Love is like flowers, darling. It grows ugly and dies quickly. You don’t want that.”
“All mortal things die. Why not for love?”
“Love isn’t worth dying for.”
“Oh, trust me. You are worth dying for, Chanhee.”
“Don’t be foolish, captain. No one is worth dying for.”
“I love you. Of course you are.”
“Tell me to stay.”
“No.”
“You don’t want me to?” Chanhee cocks an eyebrow at him.
“This isn’t about what I want. If you want to stay, stay.”
“But do you want me to?”
“Not because I asked you to.” Younghoon murmurs. “You’ll always be welcome in my ship. For as long as I’m sailing.”
“You’ll always be my home. For as long as I’m swimming.”
Chanhee knew this day would come.
“They’ve come for me.” Chanhee mutters under his breath. There’s something in the air, in the way the water is moving underneath them, that’s just different. Younghoon looks at him curiously, staring into the open sea through the window before he turns to Chanhee. “I knew they’d come.”
His sisters always did.
And then he hears the singing. Oh, the singing that has killed so many men, luring innocent sailors to their deaths in the deepest of waters, dragging them to the depths of the ocean and giving them one last kiss.
For the first time, Chanhee fears what that song might do to men. What it might do to Younghoon.
“What do you mean?”
“You need to forget about me.” Chanhee urges; Younghoon can hear his heart shattering into a thousand pieces. It hurts more than he could ever anticipate. “Stay here and don’t come after me. It’s the only way you’ll be safe. I don’t want them to-”
“I’m not going to forget you. I don’t want to forget you, Chanhee, and I won’t.”
“You’ll manage. Someday.” Chanhee cuts him off, as cold as he can be. “Now get out of the way or get me on deck.”
Younghoon swallows dry. He isn’t strong enough to pick the tub in his arms, or to drag it all the way to deck; it’s too time consuming and too much hard work for nothing. He bends down, picks up Chanhee in his arms and runs out the door.
The deck is pure chaos. Jaehyun has a shotgun pointed at the sirens, shooting aimlessly as they laugh as his failed attempts to kill, or at least hurt, one of them. Sunwoo is yelling around, running, trying to load and point the canons at as many sirens as possible. Juyeon and the rest of the men are nowhere to be seen; Younghoon automatically assumes everyone else in downstairs, in the kitchen or the pantry, but then he realizes one of his men could have jumped before he even got on deck.
Chanhee squirms his way out of his hold, wriggling his way to the edge and looking down to see his sisters, glowing and gleaming with their platinum hair and purple and blue tails in the water. He gulps. His sisters are here to kill. They’re here for blood; either his, or these innocent men’s. Younghoon’s. He can jump off board and everything will be over. Younghoon will be safe. That’s all he cares about.
“Chanhee!” His sisters greet him. “Come with us, brother. Let’s go home. Get away from these monsters.”
“Have they started singing yet?” Younghoon asks over his shoulder, looking down as well. “Oh, dear God, Chanhee. Are those… your sisters?”
“Go to your cabin. Now, Younghoon!”
“Oh. What a treat. Why don’t you come down here and ask us those questions yourself, sailor?” No, no, no, this can’t be happening. Younghoon fell under their spell. Chanhee tries and tugs at his hand, but that doesn’t do much. He’s still hypnotized. “Come with us. Let’s go for a swim, sailor. Just us and the ocean.”
“No!” Chanhee screams. “Do not dare, sisters. I will kill you if you even try to hurt him.”
“Oh, he’s far too gone. He’s fallen for a human. A sailor. How pathetic.” His sisters laugh, swimming around the Witch’s Tongue in circles, their mocking laughs echoing in Chanhee’s ears. The entire crew is on deck now, leaning over the edges to look at the haul of sirens surrounding the ship. “It’s a shame we must meet like this, Chanhee. We’ll tell our father you died on the hands of evil men of the sea, don’t worry. We’ll make your death look more glorious than you ever could. Falling for a sailor. You’re a disgrace to us.”
“Begone, sisters.” Chanhee warns, but it doesn’t seem to work. His sisters continue laughing and singing, luring and compelling. That gets someone to jump. Poor soul. “Swim away before I kill you.”
“Let us take care of you, Younghoon.” The sirens say, taunting. Younghoon feels this strange to jump over the edge of the ship and onto the water. They’ll take care of him. He’s going to be okay if he jumps, he knows, they’re there to take care of him. The same way he cared for Chanhee. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. You’ll be safe with us. Come with us. Come, sailor.”
Chanhee pulls him to his knees, cups his face with his hands, covering his ears. Younghoon’s eyes are fully concentrated on him now. Yes. This is what he needs. He needs his attention, so he won’t listen to the singing or to his sisters calling his name. “Don’t listen to them. Listen to me, Younghoon. I’m here. Don’t look at anyone else. Focus on me. I love you, Younghoon.”
“You what?”
“I love you, Younghoon. I love you, I love you, I love you.” And Chanhee pulls him closer and kisses him. The second their lips part he knows he needs more, gasping for air and diving in again for another lustful kiss. Younghoon rests on his cheek like second nature, because they’ve done this so many times and yet not even close of enough times for him to ever get enough of. His touch on his cheek feels so familiar, so comforting. Chanhee gasps for air. Younghoon still hasn’t taken his eyes off of him. “I love you so much, Younghoon, you have no idea. Please don’t forget me. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget you.”
Chanhee lets go. He falls in the water, surrounded by his sisters and the ocean, and it’s the closest to feeling home he’s felt in months. His sisters stop singing and swimming around the Witch’s Tongue, focusing their attention on him. Some of them tell him he’s made the right choice by jumping instead of protecting that sailor, some others tell him he’s lucky they didn’t kill him before he made that choice. Chanhee knows he’s lucky he isn’t dead, but it doesn’t matter now. Younghoon is safe.
And when they’re about to swim back home, to their father and their other sisters, Younghoon jumps off board.
I love you too.
Chanhee doesn’t care enough for himself to let his sisters kill Younghoon, or to simply watch him drown helplessly. He turns back and swims away to the closest beach, holding onto Younghoon for dear life as he swims the fastest he’s ever swam his entire life.
He doesn’t look back.
Not even once.
He knows that, if he looks, he’s absolutely done for.
His sisters don’t try coming after him. Chanhee trusts them to tell their father he’s died in the hands of a cruel sailor, just like they promised in the case he had stayed. He knows they will report their death as inevitable and a shame. No one will look for him.
Choi Chanhee now means death.
Quite literally.
And once they’re safe on land, Chanhee makes Younghoon sit up and cough all the water he’s swollen until his breathing is steady and he isn’t choking with the copious amounts of water in his lungs. He’s a bit shaken up and scared, trembling, so Chanhee just holds him tight until he isn’t shaking anymore. But when Younghoon asks him why he did that, why he risked his life to save his, why he turned his back on his family and everything and everyone he’s ever known for him, Chanhee can’t find the words to answer.
Younghoon knows why. He doesn’t need to say it.
(“I love you.”
I love you too.”)
Chanhee learns love is worth dying for, after all. Quite literally, because now both Choi Chanhee and Kim Younghoon mean death. They become the only unrepresentable thing to every sailor and every siren: love. Because at sea, love, ruthless and cruel and maddening, means death. Younghoon and Chanhee are no exception.