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Hyunjin being a Pisces is sort of funny, really.
A water sign that always found comfort in water. How cliché of him.
He remembers his roommates banging on the bathroom door, screaming about how he would definitely pay the entire water bill that year, because he took excruciatingly long showers. Remembers how they did not care that Hyunjin needed the heat to melt his intrusive thoughts and the steam to blur out his nightmares.
It was fine, though. They… couldn’t have known.
His mother knew. She was there for him when he cried. There for him, when Hyunjin laid in his bath, unmoving, crimson pouring out of his wrists and painting the bathwater red. She took him to the hospital. He lived.
Hyunjin couldn’t describe his relationship with water. He just knew that it accepted him, always, at his lowest and at his highest, no matter what. Be it their family trips to the beach in the summer, or the freezing cold showers to sober him up and wash out his vomit when he went overboard with alcohol.
Like he always did.
Hyunjin wriggles his toes out of the cold, damp sand. He drops his shoes beside him and looks up.
The world is spinning. Hard. It’s blurry but he can still make out the line where the night sky meets the waves. The ocean is eerily calm, tonight. Perhaps it wants to feel inviting. Maybe, just maybe, it’s telling him that it’s okay. That he can let go. Come in. Let the water take him.
Hyunjin’s heart is thrumming in his chest but he feels void, as if he’s been ripped off of a heart a long time ago.
Hyunjin tears his necklace off and stares down at the pendant. He clicks it open and meets his mother’s eyes. He smiles. She was beautiful.
She was all he had left.
Hyunjin places the necklace down in the sand. He removes his black tie and shrugs off his black suit jacket, leaving him in slacks and a white shirt.
As he lets his hair down, he hopes the tide won’t rise before morning. Before someone finds what he left behind. He might have been a tad optimistic, placing them so close to water.
But well. Does it matter?
The early spring sun hasn’t done enough to heat up the water enough for it to stay warm at night. Hyunjin’s lower lip quivers as he swims, his muscles tensing as cold seizes every fiber of his body.
The horizon lied. The ocean isn’t calm tonight. The more he swims, the more waves crash around him. It’s agitated, angry, ruthless.
Perhaps it’s what Hyunjin needs it to be. Ruthless.
Hyunjin’s eyes watch, emotionless, as a wave crashes over him and propels him down, his body tumbling far enough from the surface that he doesn’t know which way to swim to go back up. He struggles, whatever remnant of instinct reminding him that he needs to breathe, needs to live, and it’s ironically what pushes his body further down.
The drugs kick in. He stops struggling. His body grows heavy. His eyelids close.
As his consciousness slips away, Hyunjin could swear that he feels the water hug him. Once again, it welcomes him without judgment.
He lets go.
***
“…ke… up…”
There’s a distant voice echoing in the air. It pierces through the incessant ringing in Hyunjin’s eardrums, unbearably loud.
“Wa… t…ck up…”
Hyunjin’s throat burns. His nose stings and he feels like everything just hurts. He’s numb, cold, exhausted. It gets worse.
Especially when something collides with the side of his face, pain flaring all over his skin.
“Jesus, wake the fuck up !” the voice growls as Hyunjin’s eyes fly open.
He gasps, bringing his hand to his throbbing cheek, his mouth wide open in disbelief.
“Did you just fucking—” Hyunjin cuts himself off to look up at whoever just slapped him across the face and his anger evaporates.
The first thing he sees is the eerie eyes. Pearly white, with thick, jet black vertical stripes in the middle and round, large pupils staring right at him.
Then it’s the hair.
Fiery red at the roots, blonde at the tips, drenched and cascading down to the creature’s chest. A chest full of scars and bruises, much like the rest of the creature’s body.
The hands are what surprises him the most. Small, but they end in sharp red claws, with thin layers of skin connecting the fingers that weirdly look like fins.
Perhaps because they are fins, he finds himself thinking as his gaze falls on the thin openings just under the ribs and what the fuck, are those… closed gills?
Is that a tail?
“Oh god,” Hyunjin grunts, “how high am I?”
“Very,” the… thing, says as it flops its red and orange striped tail on the surface, pulling itself up to sit near Hyunjin. “But I must be higher for being dumb enough to save some human instead of staying hidden like a good fucking citizen.”
Hyunjin shifts uncomfortably, wincing in pain as he feels a hard, rocky surface dig into his back in a way that’ll certainly bruise. He looks around him, seeing nothing but ocean and sharp rocks.
“My back hurts, fucking hell,” Hyunjin complains, and the… mermaid? merman? merperson? Whatever the fuck that is, it scoffs.
“Oh, I’m sorry, did you want me to take you back to shore and lay you down on the sand where everyone and their mothers could see me and call their local fishermen?” they snark, but Hyunjin doesn’t listen, staring at the freckles on their nose. “I’m not fuckin’ Ariel.”
Hyunjin blinks. “You know what Ariel is?”
“Sorry to break it to you, you’re not the only educated species, sweetheart,” they spit, and point towards something behind Hyunjin. “If you climb up the rocks there, you’ll get to a road. Walk south, and you’ll be back at the beach.”
The creature starts backing away. “Don’t forget that you’re high as fuck and that you definitely hallucinated this, right?”
But before they can throw themselves back into the ocean, Hyunjin grabs their wrist and holds them back. “Wait!”
They yank their hand out of his hold and flash him a bitter smile. “If I were you, I really would think twice before touching an unknown fish’s body without knowing what’s on their fins.”
“But you’re hurt.”
Hyunjin gazes at the fishing hook stabbing into their shoulder, and the thin plastic string wrapped tightly around their bruised throat. The creature flinches when Hyunjin hesitantly reaches for their neck.
He pauses. “Let me help. Please.”
The sound of the waves rings in Hyunjin’s ears as the seconds pass in silence. After a bit, the frown on their face melts away and they bare their neck with a sigh.
Hyunjin tries to be gentle, but there‘s no way to do it painlessly. The creature’s claws dig into his arm as he pulls on the string enough to hook his teeth underneath it, and the sharp tug he gives to cut the string off inevitably opens a thin wound on their skin.
But they’re free. They’re free, and the deep breath the creature takes when the string finally comes off tells Hyunjin that they have been struggling far more than they let on.
Glistening eyes stare at Hyunjin, and the beautiful being pulls their blonde hair out of their wounded shoulder.
“Can you do anything about this?”
“I can probably pull it out,” Hyunjin says, albeit a little wary. “But it’ll hurt.”
“Do it,” they respond without an ounce of hesitation in their voice and dip into the water to turn around slowly. “Careful with the fins on my back. Don’t touch them.”
Hyunjin hops to a lower rock, careful not to trip. “What happens if I do?”
“You die,” the creature deadpans.
Hyunjin blinks. “Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. Now, I know it’s probably what you wanted, but don’t make it my fault, I didn’t do all of this shit to end up—“
The siren erupts in a scream of agony as the hook is torn out of the skin in one swift motion. Hyunjin slaps his palm on both sides of their shoulder to stop the bleeding, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on the flesh.
“You could’ve warned me!” the hybrid cries out.
“Hurts less if I don’t,” Hyunjin explains, “Sorry. Are you okay?”
They turn around and place a hand on top of Hyunjin’s larger one to gently push it off. They don’t let go, though.
“I’m fine,” they affirm, pursing their lips. Then, in a softer tone with a light squeeze on Hyunjin’s palm, “Are you?”
Hyunjin looks away, fleeing eye contact. “I will be.”
The grip on his hand grows slightly tighter. “I’ve… read about what drowning does to humans. How your lungs fill up and implode, how painful it is, how terrifying, why would you wanna die like that, why—” the creature trails off, leaning in. “Why would you wanna die at all?”
Their voice is soft, gravelly and low. It rumbles in their throat and feels like a caress in Hyunjin’s ears. It was so rough, so full of spite and disdain earlier. Hyunjin is taken aback by the sudden change of heart. Makes it easier to speak.
“There’s nothing left for me back there.”
“And you thought there would be something for you in the fucking ocean?” they bark and it’s rougher, but Hyunjin knows it’s not the same anger as earlier.
He smiles. “Apparently, there was.”
He probably hallucinates the light pink that dusts the siren’s cheeks. He’s probably hallucinating all of this, anyways.
Now that he’s less out of it, a bit more conscious, Hyunjin comes to terms with the fact that he’ll have to go back to his pathetic excuse of a life once this dream is over. In the meantime, he might as well enjoy whatever insanity this is.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
Bizarre eyes look him up and down, his question hanging in the air for a moment.
“Felix.”
Hyunjin hums. He stares at the colorful tail. It’s huge, stretching at least seven feet long, much bigger than they’re usually depicted. “Are you… are you a…”
“Merman? Yeah. That’s a stupid word, by the way.” Man. Okay. “Are you gonna tell me your name, or?”
“Hyunjin,” the human responds, a tad too fast, “it’s Hyunjin.”
Felix smiles, his eyes crinkling up at the corners ever so slightly. “Well, Hyunjin,” the merman says and pats Hyunjin’s shoulder. “Thanks.”
And just like that, Felix sinks a little further into the water. Hyunjin reaches forward, mouth open to say something, but the words won’t come out. Instead, he watches as the merman swims away, until Felix stops out of his own accord and looks back over his shoulder.
There’s an expression on his face that Hyunjin has trouble deciphering, but it’s so soft that it feels… familiar?
“Maybe, uh, don’t kill yourself, or whatever,” Felix mumbles. His tail flops nervously on the surface, splashing glimmering droplets in the air. “Fuck your entire species, but… fuck you a little less, I guess.”
Hyunjin lowers himself down a bit again, until his bare feet are padding uncomfortably in shallow water on a slightly immersed rock.
“Do I… Do I know you?” he finds himself asking before he can think it over.
Felix’s eyes widen slightly. His tail stops splashing around, lips stretching into a bittersweet smile. He exhales, head hung low, a fond look in his eyes.
“You were just another one of those dumb little boys who said they’d come back later to marry me but never ventured as far into the sea again.” Felix beamed a little brighter. “Take care of yourself, Hyunjin.”
Before Hyunjin can say anything, the beautiful merman dives underwater, his enormous, colorful tail being the last thing Hyunjin sees sinking under the surface. His vocal chords ache for a scream, his limbs shake with the need to dive in and follow the creature, but he’s so, so tired.
So he goes home.
And his successful walk back makes him realize that he isn’t nearly as high as he thought he was, and that the memory of the mystical being was still clear as day in his mind. Too clear to be a dream or a hallucination.
***
Hyunjin goes back to the beach every day.
Morning, afternoon, evening, in the middle of the night. He tries multiple times of day, multiple places. He swims as far as possible from the beach before lifeguards scold him, climbs down the road to sit down and wait on the sharp rocks, observes the surface from the port.
The sea becomes his best friend. It becomes his reason to live, his purpose. Every time he sees something disrupt the surface, he feels his heart thrum in his chest, his lungs tighten, his stomach churn — he feels alive.
Fifteen years later, Hyunjin doesn’t stop coming. He brings his kid along to watch the sea with him every week.
He tells him about how he fell in love with a merman on the night of his mother’s funeral, tells him about the deadly yet gorgeous creature that hated everything about mankind but still saved a man’s life by giving him purpose.
“Why did the merman never come back?” his little boy asks one night, sparkly eyes staring up at his father in awe.
Hyunjin smiles. His heart leaps in his chest when he sees the surface move in the distance.
“So I’d never stop having a purpose.”