Chapter Text
full moon
The wet sand seeps into his shoes as he makes his way down the coastline.
Taesan has been at this job for long enough to know not to fight it anymore. The sand always gets everywhere, even on the streets further away from the beach. It wasn’t anything that bothered him now, nor was it anything that bothered anybody living here, really. The only people it sometimes bothered were tourists, which has undoubtedly increased incrementally for the past few years. That was a good thing, by the way. Tourism was usually a good thing.
Unlike them, however, Taesan had lived in the nook of the town for as long as he could remember, and had worked this job since…also for as long as he could remember. He specifically had told his supervisor to put him on the night shift, which was met with a sideways glance but obvious acceptance, because they needed someone for the night shift anyways. Despite it being nice and quiet here during the day, with as much chaos and life that balanced the calming lapping of the shore, nighttime was truly the most serene.
But of course, that was too long an explanation, and the older man wouldn’t want to hear it. So Taesan, back then, had shrugged and said he slept better in the morning. Which was true, because Taesan sleeps very late into the night either way.
It is a full moon tonight. It is the second night the moon is full, meaning the phase will last for one or two more days. The moonlight sprinkles over the grains of sand like a draped curtain. The water refracts the light in calm ripples that sweep towards the shore. It’s bright enough outside that Taesan didn’t even need his flashlight, but he turned it on anyway. Force of habit, probably.
This is the last round of checks for tonight. After that, he will return to his apartment and go home.
Taesan walks to the lighthouse first, as usual. The old lighthouse sits at the far end of the patrol route, dark and covered with mosses and vines that peel the red paint off its body slowly. Nobody goes in anymore. The light inside probably doesn’t work– Taesan wouldn’t know anyway. He’s only ever seen the lighthouse working once in his life, and that was when he was four. And now, the building is nothing more than a mere aesthetic.
As he approaches, he gives the doorlock a customary tug. It doesn’t budge– it’s locked. So he moves on.
He visits the shrine next. It’s still and quiet, the offerings left by visitors during the day still sitting on the tray. The tall bronze mermaid statue sits in the very middle– a brilliant luster tracing the grand figure. Taesan would have to thank the mermen and the mermaids for the amount of tourism recently. It was, after all, what their town was known for. Despite the last mermaid sighting dating back almost a thousand years, tale after tale has been passed down. Taesan had grown up with the local legend, and so would generations after him.
He looks over it briefly, and his glance is more out of respect than procedure. The mermaid’s face is shrouded by shadow, but remains tall.
The walk back is his favorite part of the whole night, and it will always be. Nothing usually happens, and that’s exactly why he likes it. The sound of waves and distant seagulls fills his mind as the dock in front of him gets closer and closer until he can even see the faint outline of his bags leaning against the fishing pole and the faint outline of…
Hold on.
Something else. He sees the faint outline of something else, too.
Taesan’s heart catches inexplicably in his throat. Through his past, what, seven years of patrolling here, he has only ever needed to actually do something once, and that involved a drunkard who only needed to be ushered home.
And this…figure is nothing like that.
The first thought that drifts into Taesan’s mind is driftwood. The second thought is a seal. Both are reasonable, and both could wash up during a full-moon night like this. But it doesn’t quite resemble either.
So he gets closer.
And closer.
And closer still, because it’s starting to look a lot like something else. The top of the figure, almost a rounded shape, comes into view, and it almost looks like…
He stops walking.
His flashlight swings still by his side.
Because from the waist up, the creature was undoubtedly a person.
From the waist down, the creature was absolutely not.
Fuck. Dammit. Why do things like this always have to happen to me?
Taesan crouches down slowly to the merman. It’s a merman, by the way. A real-life mer-man. His brain can’t process it yet. He keeps trying to file the…merman into a category. The lower body of a fish as big as a seal, and the upper body of someone who looks like he could be Taesan’s distant friend. Mermen were only a local legend. The last reported sighting was more than a thousand years ago, and everybody knew that “sighting” was probably fake. Essentially, this should not be possible.
But oh boy it is.
The tail is what catches Taesan’s attention first (well duh). It’s captivating to look at, really. Each individual scale reflects with a wet shimmer, splitting into hues of blues and oranges and purples, similar to a fish’s scales but luminescent and different. The colors slowly transition into one another as the tail stretches out, and they shift depending on the angle Taesan looks from. At the very end of the tail is a flipper. A real-life, merman’s flipper, stained and tainted with vibrant color that sparkles in the little light that is shone upon it.
The face of the merman is a lot younger than Taesan expected, and a lot more human-like too. As a kid, Taesan had always imagined mermaids as more fish-like than human-like, but the creature in front of him definitely looked human. He has pale, smooth skin, dark eyebrows, and soft lips. He has blond hair and calmly closed eyes, and his chest rises up and down like he’s just…sleeping.
The final thing Taesan sees that shocks him more than the situation itself, however, is the blue mark on the merman’s chest.
It’s big. It stretches from his upper chest to his lower abdomen, like a large gash from a sea creature. The color itself is light, but it’s exactly what catches his eye– the light, dull blue color of his scar.
But this scar was far too big to be caused by…anything really. And he has never, in any version of the folklore, heard about a scar like this.
So mermen bleed blue? He thinks, which is not a useful thought but is the one he is having.
After staring for a long second, watching the merman sleep peacefully on the rocks, Taesan pockets the phone at his pocket. Should he go tell somebody? He probably should. Mermaids in real life were certainly not the same as in the storybooks, and Taesan wasn’t sure if they would pose any danger to him. In fact, they most likely would.
But, he finds himself captivated. And he can’t really do anything just yet. Not yet.
Until the merman opens his eyes.
The merman has round eyes. Round, brown eyes that remind Taesan of chocolate. They’re alert, of course, but not disoriented nor confused. They look up at the stranger looming over him.
For a while, they stare at each other.
The merman is slow moving and doesn’t have a quick reaction time, because it takes a good second to clock in what’s going on. And when it finally hit him, the only outward reaction he shows is sitting upright, looking at the considerable distance of rocks in front of him, then looking back at Taesan.
At least he’s not frantically trying to escape, Taesan thinks. Are all mermen as slow as this? He’s not sure if he can make the generalization yet.
The merman whispers something under his breath that Taesan definitely doesn’t understand, maybe a local dialect? Taesan, here, starts wondering how the two of them would communicate. Communication, by now, was inevitable between the two. Taesan can’t just leave like this, and the merman still looks like he probably should return. How did it even get here anyway?
But his thoughts are diminished when the merman turns towards him, and finally speaks.
“Hello.”
The merman speaks in Korean. A weirdly accented type, maybe like some outside dialect that sounds mildly familiar, but it’s something Taesan can understand.
Taesan says brilliantly: “Hi.”
The merman nods slowly, and thoughtfully. He scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, and Taesan is yet again shocked by the human-ness of the merman’s habits. If this creature was ever disguised as a man, Taesan wouldn’t notice a thing.
“I…think I miscalculated the tide,” the merman says simply.
Taesan stares at him.
The merman stares back, and there’s something about his gaze that puts him at ease. Taesan would’ve expected the latter to be the more disoriented one, maybe even the more fearful one, but that role has fallen on himself. The merman isn’t like that at all, but rather seems…just curious. Watching Taesan the same way someone would observe a mermaid, like himself. Patiently observing, like Taesan’s the interesting one here. Like Taesan’s the one here straying from normal.
Which is definitely weird to him. Taesan is a coastal warden with sand in his shoes. Taesan is a normal person.
He has several problems on his mind now. The first is obvious: should he call someone in or not? Whatever this is, or whoever this is— the second it goes on the radio, the news of a merman sighting will spread rapidly. Hell, Taesan’s not even sure there has been a merman sighting, ever. The only reported sea-beings ever seen has only been mermaids, and most regular people were already skeptical about it. And Taesan was sure that the entirety of South Korea would start swarming this creatur–no, this person, which would probably ruin his life. Taesan doesn’t want that for him. He’s surprised at how much he doesn’t want that.
He also…can’t exactly leave. From what he knows, the mermaid is probably hurt in some way. A merman is on the rocks, and the tide has pulled back far. The creature clearly can’t navigate itself back into the ocean, and Taesan would feel too guilty just leaving him there.
And thirdly, the merman was still looking at him and clearly waiting for anything to come out of Taesan’s mouth.
So, Taesan does the only thing that makes sense to him.
“Are you hurt?”
The merman blinks like he expected Taesan to say something like “what the fuck are you” or like, run away or something. His expression softens, then he smiles a cute, lopsided smile.
Taesan is so unprepared for that smile. He feels warmth immediately travel through his bloodstream and up his neck. He curses the brightness of the moon. Why must it be so bright?
The merman’s eyes drop briefly to the scar on his own chest, and Taesan realizes he is looking at it too.
“Not badly,” the merman murmurs.
Which is a no, probably. Taesan looks at the strange scar again, the color of a serene shade of blue, and approximately fourty follow up questions surface to his mind. He decides not to ask any of them, because although he is curious, he also kind of just wants to resolve the situation once and for all.
“How…far do you need to get?” Taesan asks hesitantly, looking at the rocks in front of him instead of the merman himself.
“Far enough so the current can sweep me in.” There’s a pause, then, “You’re not going to tell anybody right?”
Taesan had already predecided he wouldn’t, but now, any traces that would’ve motivated him to radio this in have dissipated completely.
“No,” Taesan says.
A new problem arises now that’s comparatively larger than the other three. It’s twenty meters, give or take, from the place the two were right now to the water. The tide is pulled back, the rocks are slick and uneven, and on top of all of that, it's nighttime. But Taesan knows the shoreline well enough to navigate those rocks. But the merman…
The merman looks at him while Taesan ponders over the question, and with the curious attention directed to him, Taesan thinks a little less efficiently than usual.
“Can you…walk? I could bring you a towel or something?” Taesan blurts out.
“I have a tail. So no.”
The latter laughs as he answers the question, and Taesan’s face burns in embarrassment.
“Right. Of course, Taesan looks at the tail, then back at the man. The idea of talking to a real-life merman is still hard for him to believe.
“I guess…I’ll just help you across? Uh…I don’t know, can I–” Taesan stutters, and finally regains his composure and asks: “Can I carry you?”
The merman raises his eyebrows, amused.
“You’re already helping me,” he says, “Thank you. You don’t have to ask for permission.”
He holds out his hand, and Taesan grabs it. The merman’s skin feels so normal, like he’s holding a regular person’s hand. Everything about him feels normal, and that’s what makes it weird. Nonetheless, Taesan rolls up his pant legs and slips off his shoes, helps him up, and they begin their slow crossing.
The creature is heavier than expected: significantly heavier, actually. Taesan is not a small person, and he’s carried heavy things before, but there’s a density to the tail that he wasn’t quite prepared for. Taesan’s arms wrap around the merman’s bare back and the tail itself, and feeling both textures at the same time is definitely peculiar. The tail especially, with long and smooth scales that rest on his arm, and it feels disconcertingly like he’s holding a very large fish, which is technically true.
The merman, for the most part, seems unbothered about being princess-carried across the rocks. He looks around with curiosity as if he’s never been in this position before, his head swiveling around at the rocks and at the buildings behind them with wide eyed wonder.
“Hey, what’s that building?” he points.
“Which one?”
“The tall one. With the lights still on.”
“That’s an apartment building.” (My apartment building, actually, Taesan thinks) “It’s where people sleep.”
“Mmm,” the creature nods in understanding, then looks at the sky. “The moon has moved.”
Taesan glances up. The moon has moved, actually. Now, it sits a lot further west in the sky than when he last checked. He checks the time in his head and winces to himself. A lot of time has passed. He’s been out here longer than he’s realized.
They keep going. Taesan moves one foot down at a time, slowing down so that he can keep balance. Leehan holds onto Taesan’s neck with a surprisingly light grip, and the reality of the situation kind of dawns on him here. Taesan, a regular watchman, just met a real-life merman and is now carrying him in a slightly intimate position down to the water below. Not something he would do on a daily basis, definitely.
“Do you come here every night?” the merman asks.
“Most nights. I patrol along the coast.”
“Alone?”
“Usually. Not tonight though.”
The creature considers this with interest. A few more steps later, he brings up another question.
“Do you know the lighthouse?” he asks, and the question is so specific that it startles Taesan.
Taesan glances back at it over his shoulder– the building he had just checked. Nothing has changed since thirty-minutes ago. It’s still dark, covered with vines, and locked.
“Not much. Nobody really goes in anymore.”
He pauses. “I think the light doesn’t work.”
They eventually do reach the ocean. Taesan wades in the shallow end until the water rises up to his ankles and lowers the merman carefully towards the surface. The moment the water takes him, the creature slips from his hands and disappears somewhere under the surface.
Taesan stares at the water, rippling outwards from the landing point.
Then, a few feet out, Taesan sees the merman resurfacing, looking back at him from just above the waterline. His hair is wet again, and his eyes glimmer in the moonlight the same way his scales did.
“Thank you,” the merman says.
“Y-You’re welcome.”
Taesan has nothing else to say to that, but the merman doesn’t immediately leave him. In reality, he has so many things to say, so many questions to ask. For instance: who are you, why are you here, are you real or am i just hallucinating?
But none of them arise in his mouth.
“You should probably go,” Taesan says meekly, “You have…family probably? Down there.”
“Not really,” The other says simply.
“Oh.”
“Are you going to ask why?” The merman replies, “Don’t you have questions?”
Taesan exhales. “Of course. I have about a thousand questions.”
“Then come back tomorrow. I’ll come back, because I have questions too. Then we can answer them together.”
Taesan’s words catch in his mouth.
“You just said you miscalculated the tide though,” Taesan responds uneasily, “Isn’t that how you ended up here? How will you know where to go?”
“I know my way,” The merman states simply. “Trust me.”
Then, before he dives in again, he asks: “What’s your name?”
“Taesan. Han Taesan.”
The merman looks at him with alert eyes, probably storing the name carefully in his brain.
“My name is Leehan,” he says.
And just like that, Leehan is gone.
__________________________________________
Taesan has friends in the town, of course. Decently smart friends, at that. Park Sungho worked as the town librarian, only a little older than him yet probably the most knowledgeable person Taesan knew. So in an out-of-the-ordinary situation like this, where he encounters a merman and has no idea what’s going on, Sungho is a reliable figure to consult.
Obviously, Taesan is the kind of person to keep promises, and he had promised Leehan yesterday that he wouldn’t tell anybody about their encounter. So when he eventually does end up asking Sungho, he rewrites his situation in a very insuspicious way.
“Hey Sungho,” Taesan asks, “Do you have any books about mermaids?”
Sungho raises his eyebrows, leaning across the counter.
“Where the hell did that come from?”
Sungho could usually be found in the library, on his phone or something. And that was exactly how Taesan found him today. Early the morning after talking with a merman for thirty minutes, Taesan had gone straight to him to hopefully find out more. After all, his conversation with the merman– Leehan, would probably be limited. If he had any stupid questions that could easily be answered, may as well answer them now.
“I dunno,” Taesan shrugs. “Just curious.”
“You’ve lived here your whole life and you’re just now curious about this whole mermaid thing?”
“Interests change.”
“You’re a twenty-two year old grown man, Taesan.”
“And you’re a twenty-three year old grown man. Just do your job.”
Sungho looks at him with a mildly annoyed look, then pushes himself off the counter and jerks his head for Taesan to follow.
They end up not walking for long. The mermaid section of the library is plastered in the very front: mermaids are, after all, what the town was known for anyway. The folklore section in general, however, was small, and only a quarter of those books were actually about mermaids. But Sungho pulls a title off the shelf from behind the folklore section and hands it over to Taesan.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” he says.
Taesan pauses.
“Aren’t you supposed to take one from the mermaid section though?” Taesan protests, pointing back at the brightly colored, cartoonish mermaid books at the very front.
Sungho reaches past Taesan and taps the row of shelves behind the one they were currently standing in front of, the one Sungho took the books from. “If you want to actually learn something, look at the science research section. Not folklore.”
He gives Taesan a look and a shrug, then promptly returns back to his counter to go scroll on his phone a little more.
Typical.
Taesan looks down at the books in his hands. The cover of the first one looks…old. A little worn out on the sides, the pages yellowing too. There’s faint lineart of a traditional looking mermaid on the cover: all dull greens and long hair, framed by water splashing up from behind it. Looking at the drawing now, after seeing a real mermaid just yesterday, feels strange.
Taesan pulls out a chair and starts reading.
__________________________________________
The first book is thin and densely written, published not in the town but rather by an underground research company from Seoul. Skimming through the first few lines, Taesan could already tell that this was serious research from the vocabulary used, and Taesan respected that. Trying to make sense of something with little to no evidence, only using logic and biology, was something respectable.
Mermaids could be a separate branch of evolutionary species. Descent with modification: maybe one of the further-away branches that descended from the same ancestor as humans, something similar to what Darwin had proposed.
Maybe that would describe the average mermaid’s features that showed adaptations to land environments. The lungs alongside the gill-like structures, as well as their outer appearance. And yet some adaptations would subsequently come from their water environment as well, such as their bone density, which was significantly higher than a human’s. This detail caught Taesan’s attention– their heavier bones were better built for the depth of the water and the weight above, which would, then, make mermaids a lot heavier.
Taesan thinks back about carrying Leehan across the rocks, and the unexpected weight. The feeling of his tail underneath his arm.
He turns the page.
__________________________________________
The second book, the one right beneath it, was much older than the first. It was written by an author that Taesan briefly recognized- someone they had studied multiple times in school. It has an indistinguishable cover bound with leather, engraved with the simple words that stood for mermaids.
The contents of the book, unlike the previous one, wasn’t scientific but rather historical. It described a time, roughly two thousand years ago, where mermaid populations would appear commonly on the shoreline. The creatures learned the language from those interactions with fishermen– an older form of Korean, which spread into the populous back under the water. Many of their habits have been picked up from land and had spread underneath. Something roughly similar to cultural diffusion, probably.
And yet, the land changed, and as more and more people came, the shore became less safe for the creatures. Mermaids are innately curious, so they simply turned that curiosity away from human civilization and focused it further on exploring the sea where nobody could follow, and human contact thinned and thinned until it became all a speck of nothing, and the nothing became a myth, and the myth became the storytelling that Taesan and decades of other kids have grown up with.
The end of the book details some exact entries from sailors throughout time who had encounters with mermaids before. Taesan scans through most of them, until he reaches to one dated a hundred-fourty years ago, the very last time ever since…well, today, that someone had seen one in real life.
The entry is from a fisherman, and it’s not very long. He describes a night not different from last night: full moon, low tide, and a half-human half-fish figure sprawled across the rocks. It details their conversation, how the creature seemed curious rather than afraid, and some of the questions the mermaid had asked him.
She asked me about the lighthouse, and told me she had traveled by its light.
Taesan goes still at that.
Yesterday, Leehan had asked almost the exact question. And now, Taesan was left wondering what the lighthouse really had to do with the whole thing. Had Leehan miscalculated because the lighthouse didn’t run anymore? Was he related, in any way, to the mermaid on paper?
Taesan spends another twenty minutes searching, this time on the blue scar. About any mention of markings, or colors, or anything on a mermaid’s skin that isn’t scales. He goes through every glossary, every index, but he finds nothing.
Sighing, Taesan pushes the books back up to the shelves and leaves the library.
__________________________________________
Taesan is finishing up his last round of checks again when he sees Leehan on the rocks.
Taesan had half-thought Leehan wouldn’t show up at all today. He checked multiple times during his shift and even before, but there was no trace of the merman before. Instead, apparently Leehan had come later than he’d expected, just as Taesan’s shift was about to end. Sitting on the rocks, exactly where he had been yesterday, looking out into the distance at his home in front of him.
But that doesn’t make sense, Taesan thinks. Yesterday, the only way Leehan had been on the rocks was because he was washed up. How had he…somehow moved to the same place now?
As he makes his way down, it’s only when he gets close enough and looks down that he finally understands why.
Legs.
Leehan has legs.
Two legs, human legs. They’re pale in the moonlight, with a faint impression of scales ghosting across his skin. They aren’t full scales, unlike the tail he had just yesterday, but rather like faint imprints or a colored tattoo against the skin, hard to spot far away but incredibly noticeable up close. And his scar is visible too, still etched across his chest, just like yesterday.
He is also, notably, not wearing anything.
Taesan sighs. What did he expect anyway?
Hearing the faint sound of footsteps, Leehan turns around and looks at Taesan with a warm, delighted smile, waving at him. Hurriedly, Taesan rushes over so that he can start asking the first question that he’s been dying to know since five seconds ago.
“You have legs?” Taesan says, still a little bit in awe.
Leehan looks down, then back up. “Yeah.”
“Last night,” Taesan reminds very nicely, “I had to carry you across twenty meters of rocks because you couldn’t walk. I didn’t know you had legs.”
“Haven’t you heard the folktales?” Leehan asks with genuine curiosity.
“Well yeah but–Wait, how do you know about the folktales?”
“I dunno,” Leehan shrugs, “I thought this was a mermaid town. I overheard some stories. You guys were the ones saying that mermaids could change into legs when they’re dry, and change back into tail-form when-”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Taesan says, rubbing his head. His research last night did not cover any of that, but he knew of the story. Very well, actually. “But that’s usually the story we tell to… little kids.”
“So the primary education given to children is accurate, then.”
“But that’s not the point. You said you couldn’t walk because you had a tail,” Taesan counters.
“I did have a tail. At that time.”
“And then I had to carry you. You’re pretty heavy, you know?”
“It’s bone density,” Leehan says helpfully, “Our heavier bones are better built for the depth of the water-”
“That’s not the point. You literally could’ve walked.”
Leehan opens his mouth, about to say something, but closes it. Instead, his expression turns slightly sheepish, and he rubs the back of his neck again.
“Well,” he says.
Taesan waits for a response.
“I also kind of just wanted you to carry me,” Leehan shrugs. “So.”
Taesan stares at him dumbly as he feels his heart pounding louder and louder. He feels familiar heat rise up to his face, and he desperately hopes Leehan can’t see it. Again, why must the moon be so bright these couple of days?
It takes a good moment to collect himself. When that happens, he slowly sits down on a rock beside Leehan and brings up his second question.
“Do you want a jacket or something?”
“I’m good,” Leehan says, “I’m not cold. Mermaids have colder blood, so.”
“Well, not completely because of that,” Taesan says, feeling a little awkward that he has to explain this to Leehan. “It’s just…humans usually don’t go out without clothes.”
“I know,” Leehan says simply. “But it’s largely okay…right?”
“If someone sees us like this, they’ll…” Taesan begins, but resorts to a simple explanation after he thinks it through.
“It’s a crime. You’ll get arrested.”
“Oh.”
After Taesan shrugs off his jacket and flings it towards Leehan, a comfortable silence fills the space between them. They stare at the lapping waves in front of him, watching how each ripple disappears into the next.
“Have you seen mermaids before?” Leehan asks.
“No,” Taesan says. “I grew up with stories just like everyone else here.” He pauses. “You’re the first I’ve ever seen.”
He finds himself asking before he can stop himself. “Have you seen humans before?”
“Once,” Leehan responds, looking up at the sky wistfully. “A fisherman on a boat, but he rowed away when he saw me.”
“How old were you back then?”
Leehan thinks. “Maybe six?”
“And how old are you now?”
Taesan asks this question carefully. During his research earlier today, the books he read were vague on lifespan. He honestly isn’t sure what answer he’s bracing for, because he’s half-imagined things about creatures from the sea, and Leehan could potentially be centuries old. He could, for all Taesan knew, be ancient, and due to magic or whatnot, the twenty-something-year-old face could’ve seen generations of humans come and go.
“Twenty-one,” Leehan says.
“Oh.”
Taesan blinks.
“Wait, really?”
“Yes,” Leehan responds, amused. “How old did you think I was?”
“I thought–” Taesan stops, trying to formulate his thoughts into words. “I thought you were like…vampires or something. Living until three hundred. I thought you would be much older.”
Leehan looks at him really closely. His once lively eyes have shifted into a different kind of shine, just a little bit, and he looks like he’s battling something on the inside. It’s not necessarily sad, but more so…rumination? He stays like that for a while, looking into Taesan’s eyes, and now Taesan isn’t sure what he will respond with.
“No,” he says finally. “We only live until twenty-two.”
Taesan does the math in his head without meaning to. Leehan is twenty-one. Taesan is twenty two. He turns twenty three in–
“So, you have one more year,” Taesan says quietly.
Looking back, it probably wasn’t a smart idea to remind Leehan of his impending death. Nobody wants to be reminded of something like this.
But Leehan, surprisingly, shakes his head at Taesan’s observation.
“More like…one lunar cycle.” He pauses. “I turn twenty-two in around twenty-nine days.”
The sea moves beneath them. The rock Taesan is sitting on feels solid and cool. Somewhere further down the coastline of the shore, something plings into the water and the tide shifts, reaching a little further up the coarse sand and pulling back subsequently, the way it always does.
shhhh….shhh…..shh…
Taesan doesn’t say anything at first.
Twenty-nine days. One lunar cycle. Throughout his years of living in this town, he’s heard about how the lunar cycle and the moon has a spiritual connection to the mermaids living in the water. And now, he was sitting on the same rock, next to someone who only had one cycle of them left.
“So you came here,” he says, slowly, “with twenty-nine days left. Why?”
Leehan shrugs. It’s a considered shrug. “Everyone dies sooner or later, and I’ve always wanted to see how humans lived. From a distance, I mean, because I was supposed to stay out there and watch. I wasn’t supposed to end up on the rocks, but here I am, I guess.”
He chews on the inner part of his lip in thought. “Either way, if I were to die without seeing this part, well.” He looks out at the town lights, reflecting on the water in distorted yellow images, “How sad would that be.”
Taesan looks back at Leehan, at the jacket across his lap and at the faint scale-imprints that trace down his legs. Everything about his posture seems indifferent to the fact that his life is about to end. His days are numbered to twenty nine, but the merman in front of him doesn’t seem to care at all. Taesan can’t help but ask.
“And…you’re not scared?”
Leehan actually thinks about the question genuinely. He turns back towards Taesan then at the sea in front of him, like he’s trying to gesture at a feeling or something too grand and inexplicable for a human like Taesan to understand.
“No,” he says finally. “Twenty-two years is a complete life for us. I’ve seen everything I was supposed to have seen. I just haven’t seen this part of life yet.”
A slow silence dawns on them, and Taesan’s eyes drop to Leehan’s chest. To the scar, and to the question that he’s been pondering over since yesterday, still visible above the edge of Taesan’s jacket.
“Is the scar related to this?” Taesan asks tentatively.
Leehan looks down at it as well, and out of every possible reaction he could have, a smile blooms on his face.
“You catch on quickly,” he praises, but it doesn’t really feel like a praise, especially not with a topic like this. “The scar is something that appears when you’re close to the end. It gets deeper as the days go by.”
“Right now it’s–”
“--Pretty light,” Leehan confirms. “It’s still pretty light.”
“So…” Taesan winds up asking, now that that’s confirmed. “You said you wanted to observe from a distance…but…now…”
Leehan dips his head softly. “Well that was the original plan anyways, but it obviously got foiled.”
“And what now, then?” Taesan inquires truthfully. “Now that plan A is over, and you have…twenty-nine days. Leehan, what do you really want?”
There’s a beat of silence, and what Leehan says next is filled with something newfound.
“Everything,” Leehan says truthfully, his eyes sparkling with something Taesan’s never seen before. Despite Leehan being at the very end of his life, he has something about him that reminds Taesan of childlike naivety, wonder and curiosity and the purest form of fascination about things still foreign to him, yet. “I want to see everything, Taesan.”
“Everything I’ve seen in the water, but on land. I want to walk with gravity keeping me down, and eat real human food grown from the dirt. I want to ride on those vehicles with wheels, and listen to the sound strings make when they vibrate against wood, and experience feelings only humans feel.”
“I know I’ve already experienced so much that you haven’t before,” Leehan continues, a little quieter now. “And it really is beautiful, living my entire life under the sea. So maybe it’s selfish to want the other side of it too. But I just want to know what it’s like…”
Leehan looks up at Taesan without urgency nor desperation, but with the awe and admiration of someone who has so much left to live, so much ahead of him. Taesan looks right back.
“I want to know what it’s like to live like you.”
Leehan sighs pensively. He looks down at the rock beneath him, at his bare legs and at his scarred chest.
“I have one lunar cycle left, which should be…enough. I’d like to not spend them on these rocks.”
A wave synchronized with the waves below him hits Taesan in the chest, and all of a sudden, he feels something close to sympathy, or something adjacent to it. A feeling of being in someone’s shoes and knowing their reality so distinctively well despite them being, well, them, and despite not knowing them well enough to say things like this. He looks at Leehan, a person he met approximately twenty-four hours ago, sitting with an ocean of memories behind him and twenty-nine days left in front of him and a scar on his chest keeping count of both. The emotions stir in his chest.
He doesn’t know this person, and that’s what makes the whole situation strange. The two of them are not even of the same species, but his confession and feelings poured out on the ground hit so genuinely. Leehan’s feelings are so human despite himself, that Taesan feels it in his heart too.
Taesan wonders absurdly if mermen, especially ones tagged with expiration dates, have the power to cast spells on others that make them feel things.
But when he looks back at Leehan’s open eyes, still stuck somewhere in a dream, he knows that’s not the case.
“Well,” Taesan begins, picking his words as carefully as possible, “Comparatively, it isn’t selfish to say that.”
Taesan pauses. “Life is inherently selfish. Everything we do is selfish. We only do things when we want them for ourselves,” Taesan says, “Wanting to see how humans live before you die, wanting to eat human food and ride cars and hear music, that’s not more selfish than anything else.”
Leehan nods, considering and weighing the new perspective in his head.
And with that, Taesan stands up from the rock, brushes his hands on his pants, and offers a hand out to Leehan.
He sucks in his breath.
“You wanted to see everything?” Taesan offers. “Why not? I have a double bed anyway. I can show you around.”
Leehan’s eyes immediately brighten as Taesan looks down at the merman. The offer was completely spontaneous, and Taesan definitely did not think it through. But now that he has some time to reflect on the extension he couldn’t take back, it wasn’t something completely horrible either. Taesan could use a change in his life. Showing a merman around human culture, no matter how uninteresting or boring it was, could make his life a lot more interesting.
“Do you need anything from…” Taesan hesitates, “The water? Before you go?”
“No,” Leehan decides. “And thank you.”
“Okay,” Taesan responds, “Let’s go, then.”
He keeps his hand out as Leehan grasps it and stands up. For all Taesan would know, maybe it’s Leehan’s first time standing up.
Taesan holds on until he’s steady.
__________________________________________
Sneaking Leehan into Taesan’s apartment wasn’t an easy feat.
For one, although it wasn’t Leehan’s first time…walking, it was still hard for a sea-creature mostly used to gliding through the water. His weight didn’t help at all, but thankfully, Leehan was a quick learner. As they eventually made their way off the beach and into the streets, Taesan tried not to hover over the latter too much.
Standing up now, it was hard to distinguish anything abnormal from Leehan as they walked. Except for the fact that Leehan wasn’t wearing clothes, of course, and apart from the slight limp in his walk, the two of them looked like regular people traversing the streets at night.
The walk wasn’t too far away. Along the way, Leehan stares at everything– all the buildings beside him, at every light that catches his eye. Taesan has to make sure the merman is by him at all times— otherwise, Leehan would probably wander off somewhere else again. A cat sitting at a doorway had stopped Leehan for a full minute, and Taesan practically had to pry the animal out of Leehan’s fascinated hands. The Seven-Eleven around the corner had caught his attention for much longer, and all Taesan could do was promise him he would take him there later.
The town is quiet at this hour, and thankfully, there are no people around. The two of them reach Taesan’s apartment without any further problems.
“Taesan, what is this?”
Taesan looks back at Leehan. Taesan stands in the elevator, waiting patiently for Leehan to step in with him.
“It’s an elevator,” Taesan says. “It’s a machine that lets you go up.”
Leehan reluctantly steps inside, and the doors close automatically, and as the elevator begins its slow climb to the fifteenth floor, he goes completely still. Every brain cell seems to be attending to this new experience, and his hand comes up to graze against the buttons on the wall.
“Do these exist in every building?” Leehan asks.
Taesan has to stifle laughter at Leehan’s cute reaction.
“Most buildings,” Taesan says, covering his face to hide his smile.
__________________________________________
Inside the apartment, Leehan takes in all the furniture of the small, contained space. There’s a single kitchen, a small table with two chairs, and then a narrow hallway leading further into the bedroom. He immediately moves towards the window at the very back and finds the sea there, staring out of it towards the black line at the edge of everything like he’s in a trance.
Taesan looks towards the bedroom door, then back at Leehan.
“Can you…shower?” Taesan asks awkwardly, still trying to figure out the logistics of everything. “Or, do you need–I mean, can you go under water?”
“I can shower,” Leehan says.
“Have you done it before?”
A pause. “No.”
“Right.” Taesan thinks about it for a moment. About the specific, absolute nightmare of a scenario where a mermaid reverts to its original form through a shower in the bathroom. “Maybe I’ll run you a bath instead.”
Taesan ends up running a bath for Leehan, picking out a few clothes from his own closet that might fit the latter, then tells Leehan to clean himself using a soap dispenser (which Leehan seems to know how to use). Then, he shuts the bathroom door and goes to take his own shower.
He tried not to think too hard about the fact that he was showering three feet away from a mermaid in his bathtub.
When he came out, Leehan was standing in the hallway wearing Taesan’s shirt and sweatpants, his hair damp, and staring at something on the wall.
The mirror. He always had the mirror angled outside the bathroom door, and now Leehan was just staring at himself, completely still once again. Taesan’s shirt is slightly too big, slipping off one shoulder, and the sweatpants pool slightly at his feet. He stares at his own face with the same expression he had given the cat, the convenience store, and the elevator.
Leehan turns back towards Taesan with a pure, astonished look.
“I’ve never seen my face so clearly before,” Leehan says quietly as the biggest smile spreads across his face. “Do I really look like this?”
“Yeah,” Taesan replies, “You do.”
After staring at himself for a bit longer, Leehan finally follows Taesan into the bedroom. The bed was a double, and it fit both of them, which Taesan was fairly relieved to confirm.
Leehan sits on the left side, presses the mattress with his hand, and slowly lowers himself down. Taesan lies down too, feeling his body sink into his bed as he leans over to turn off the lights.
Suddenly, the room is enveloped in darkness and silence. Only the distant sound of the tide can be heard.
shhhh….shhh…..shh…
Leehan turns his body towards Taesan and looks at him intently. Taesan could feel his gaze and his warm breath against his own face, even in the dark. Leehan’s hair is spread across the pillow, slightly damp, and his face is soft in the cascading light of the full moon. His shirt has shifted, and Taesan can still barely see the scar on his chest.
“So,” Leehan whispers, his voice full of excitement, “What’s tomorrow?”
Taesan thinks hard. He thinks about all the things they walked past today that seemed so ordinary to him, but were objects so foreign and so wondrous to the merman. He thinks about the twenty-nine days left, and the scar on his chest, and every action that has to fit in between that timeframe. He thinks about the moon, hanging in the air, and hopes that it can complete its next cycle more slowly.
“I’ll take you to the seven-eleven first,” Taesan promises.
In the dark, he can feel Leehan smile.
“Okay,” he says.
And that is the last thing he says before he falls soundly asleep.