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He is nine years old.
It’s nearing sunset. The sky is streaked with pink and splashed with orange, and he’s searching for knick-knacks and thingamabobs by the shore with nothing but screeching seagulls and the whistling wind to keep him company. He’s already picked up about a dozen seashells, a soggy dog collar, something that vaguely resembles a wallet, and lots of colorful coral bits. He plans on giving the particularly vibrant ones to Mom once he returns, and he’s never felt more content.
His friends say that he’s strange for living near the sea, but he’s been here all his life, so he can’t really understand why they think so. Maybe it’s too windy, or too wet, or too cold for them.
After a while of walking, he decides to sit down, letting the waves tickle his toes. Mom rarely ever comes with him to the beach, which is weird once he really thinks about it. Perhaps she doesn’t like it when sand gets into her shoes. He can understand that. Sand in your shoes is never comfortable.
One day, she told him that she also didn’t like it when he played on the beach, but when he asked why, she became quiet before asking what sauce he wanted to go with his prawns for dinner. He replied with black bean sauce, and she nodded, and the conversation died down. He didn’t bother asking about it again because he had more pressing matters to fuss about, like which toy he wanted to bring to school the next morning, and whether or not Miss Gao would get mad at him for not doing his homework.
He sits for some time, he can’t tell how much, but he opts to get up once the sky starts to turn a little more purple than golden. However, something in the distance makes him double back and squint.
Someone is in the water. At first, he thinks that she might be drowning since she’s so far away from the shore, but she stays still. Unmoving. Her hair is long and dark, obscuring her face, yet for some reason, he just knows that she’s looking right at him.
He calls out, “Auntie, what are you doing? Night will fall soon, and the water will be too cold!”
She does not answer, and he blinks, and then she’s gone.
He recounts the story to Mom as soon as he gets home. She listens to him with an impassive face, but he thinks that her skin gets paler with every word that leaves his mouth, and once he finishes, she surges forward to engulf him in her arms.
“My boy,” she whispers, and he wants to say that she’s holding him too tight, his chest kind of hurts, and then he notices that she’s shaking, so he decides not to. “I’m going to teach you a song, okay?”
A song? He pulls away slightly, grinning. He likes songs, especially when Mom sings them. Her voice reminds him of cotton candy. “Okay, Mommy. I’ll sing along with you.”
She smiles and pinches his cheek. “Good, because I want you to remember this for the rest of your life.”
“Lovely and hungry, under the water
Do you see? Do you see?
Don’t make a sound, don’t be a bother
Don’t come closer, you should know better.”
He claps delightedly when Mom closes her mouth, cheering, “I like that song! I like it!” Then, he remembers about the corals. He pulls away and digs into his pockets and pulls out all the little colorful pieces, smiling. “Oh, Mommy, look what I found! Aren’t they pretty? They’re for you.”
She looks down at the gift in his hands and laughs, nuzzling her nose against his. “Thank you, my dear.”
The song is stuck in his head for the rest of the night, but it’s forgotten all the same when morning comes.
✥ ✥ ✥
He is twelve years old.
He just fought with his best friend, Junhui, and he can’t even remember what they were arguing about, but he does know that whatever Junhui said hurt him so, so much, like shards of sea rocks piercing his heart.
He cannot think straight. He is running, running, running. Where, he does not know. He runs until the tiles of his house turn into damp grass, until the grass turns into the rocky slope leading down to the beach, until the slope turns into soft sand.
He can hear Junhui behind him, screaming, “Minghao! Minghao! I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it!” but he doesn’t care. He plows on until he finds a boat.
It’s an old, rickety thing. He thinks that it may have belonged to his father sometime in the past, before he went lost at sea. It’s tied to a rotting wooden post, and his mind is a blur as he loosens the knot, pushes the boat further into the water, and climbs on.
The oars are thin and short. However, the sea is calm today, so he paddles with minimal difficulty. He still can’t think, his head stuffed with cotton, but by the time he’s finally come to his senses, the shoreline is a considerable distance away. He can see Junhui, a black dot on the beach, and he can hear him, still screaming, though he can’t make out the words.
Admitedly, rowing so far out was kind of a dumb thing to do, but he doesn’t want to go home. Not yet. He’ll stay for a little while. The seagulls can keep him company. They won’t hurt him like Junhui did. It’s quiet. He likes the silence. Instead of giving him room to think, it just fills up his mind with empty space.
Suddenly, he shivers, even though he’s not cold. Goosebumps arise on every inch of his skin, even though there’s no wind. He turns around.
There is someone in the water.
Something sparks in him. A memory. He’s seen this person before, he’s sure of it.
They stare at each other for a long time, and he doesn’t dare breathe. He wants to say something, maybe ask her about her day, about why she’s so far out into sea, why she’s looking at him like that, but there’s a shadow behind her gaze that clogs up his throat.
It’s not a woman, he realizes after a few heartbeats. They may have long hair, but the lines of their face are strong, and then their lips are curling oh-so-slowly into a spine-chilling smile, and he thinks, fleetingly, that they’re not a person at all.
“Hello, little one,” they say softly. Their voice is neither high nor low, but it isn’t middle-ranged, either. He’s never heard anything like it before. “What are you doing here?”
It takes a few seconds, but he eventually finds the words. “U-um. I don’t know. My friend made me feel sad, so I just . . . ran, I guess.”
They pout. Their lips are very pink. Pretty pink. “Oh, poor you. How did they make you feel sad, if I may ask?”
“I – I don’t want to talk about it.”
“That’s fair.”
Silence falls, and he takes the chance to observe them. At first glance, they seem like an ordinary person, save for the fact that he still can’t tell whether they’re a man or a woman. However, there’s a sort of tinge around them . . . an oddness that separates them from the kind of people he’s familiar with. Their skin is pale, damp with water, and their eyes are a deep, murky green. He’s never met anyone with irises that aren’t brown before. He knows that people with green or blue eyes are usually foreigners, but they look like any other face you’d see walking down the streets of Dashan.
“Where do you live?” he asks, because their gaze is starting to feel unbearable. It’s like they’re trying to peer into his soul. “I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Are you a traveler from one of the big cities? My great aunt was from Guangzhou, and her skin was as fair as yours.”
They laugh, and the sound tickles his ears. For a second, it’s pleasant, until he notices that there are rows upon rows of tiny, needle-like teeth hiding in their mouth. Cotton fills his head once more.
“I live far, far away from here. What about you, little one? That tiny house on the cliff, is it yours?” They’re inching forward as they speak, and he tries not to think about the way they move, how it looks like they’re walking through the water instead of swimming.
“Yes, it is. I live there with my mom,” he answers.
“Neat. I haven’t seen my mother in a long time.” They finally reach his boat, and they fold their arms on top of the edge, resting their head in the crook of an elbow. Up close, they look like a sculpture. It’s both fascinating and unsettling.
He hums, sighs, looks to the side, tries to relax. He’s starting to get thirsty, he notices, but he doesn’t want to row back just yet. Oddly enough, this inhuman stranger’s presence is making him feel a little better. He can’t quite explain it. Serenity seems to radiate off of them in waves.
He finally gathers the courage to ask at least one of the questions that’s been floating around in his mind. “What’s your name?”
They smile, and he’s glad they do so with their mouth closed. “I don’t think you can pronounce it properly. The language of my people is very complicated to the human tongue. If it makes you feel any better, you can just call me Jeonghan.”
There. They just said it explicitly, that they’re not of his world, but he still can’t find it in himself to be spooked. “Okay, Jeonghan. I’m Xu Minghao. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Minghao. Are you still sad?” The question comes out of the blue, and he isn’t sure on how to respond.
“I don’t know,” he says, playing with the hem of his shirt. “I don’t feel as bad as before, but there’s still something weird in my heart. Like a weight. It’s hanging on a very thin string, and I think if I see Junhui again – he’s my friend, by the way – it’ll snap, and I’ll feel sad all over again.”
He doesn’t know why he’s saying this. They’ve only just met, and Mom’s always warned him about strangers. “Oh, Hao Hao. That’s tough,” Jeonghan says, frowning in symphathy. The nickname rolls off their tongue easily. He decides that he likes it. “Y’know, I can take you to a place where you won’t feel sad anymore. Would you like to come with me?”
His lungs inflate. One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds, five seconds, they’re still looking at him expectantly, and for half a heartbeat, he considers their offer.
A place without sadness. It sounds like paradise. He asks, “Can Mom come with me?” because he’s never gone somewhere without Mom knowing.
They shake their head, but their smile doesn’t fade. “No. You’ll have to come alone.”
His lungs deflate. He doesn’t know how long he held his breath for. “Oh. In that case, I’ll pass. I want to stay with Mom.”
They hum and nod in understanding. “That’s okay, Hao Hao. Maybe one day you’ll change your mind. Now, go home, okay? You’ve been here a long time, and your mother is probably worried to death. ”
He opens his mouth to agree, and he blinks, and then they’re gone, the sea rippling where they just were.
Junhui apologizes profusely and repeatedly once he steps onto shore, and he forgives him. As expected, Mom fusses over him, asking where he was, what did he think he was doing, for God’s sake, Xu Minghao!
He doesn’t tell Mom about Jeonghan. The next day, he rows out once more, his heart light and bright, but Jeonghan is no where to be seen.
✥ ✥ ✥
He is fifteen years old.
He can’t face Mom, not with his report card marked with so much red, not after his dance crew faced the most devastating defeat they’ve ever endured.
It’s like the universe is mocking him. He can’t even be good at the one goddamn thing he’s passionate about, and it’s selfish and stupid of him to put the blame on some invisible force he doesn’t even fully believe in, but he’s cracking and he feels like he’ll shatter and he wants it all to stop.
He doesn’t bother going home. He dumps his bike at the side of the road and runs, runs, runs. Where, he does not know, until he finds his legs moving on their own accord. They carry him past his house, onto damp grass, down the rocky slope that leads to the beach, onto soft sand.
He isn’t sure of what’s happening. He can feel his fingers loosening a frayed knot. He can feel the palms of his hands pushing against rough wood. He can feel his bare feet being licked at by cold water. He can feel his eyelids squinting as icy night air whips at them. He can feel his forearms aching as they flex, unflex, carrying him farther and farther away from the shore.
After what feels like years of rowing, he collapses, chest heaving, and he welcomes the numbness that’s slowly enveloping his body. It distracts from the mental pain, at least.
He lays there for a very long time, until there’s a bump on the side of the boat, and suddenly, green eyes are looking into his.
“My, my, Minghao. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Jeonghan asks conversationally, smiling.
He sighs, not even bothering to sit up. “Three years is quite some time,” he says. It’s hard to make out their features underneath the moonlight, but from the looks of it, they haven’t aged a day.
“Yes, that’s true.” They nod. He already feels better, his heartbeat calming significantly. Maybe he should ask if they secrete morphine, or something.
“You’ve grown so much,” Jeonghan says, and there’s a hint of glee in their soft, soft voice. “You’re very handsome now. Do you have a girlfriend?”
He snorts. “You really think any sane girl would wanna get with this?” he asks, raising an eyebrow, though he feels his cheeks heating up. This is the first time anyone (besides Mom) has ever complimented him on his looks, and he’d be lying if he says it doesn’t feel nice.
“I can’t change your mind, but personally, I think you’re rather cute,” they reply, and he wants them to be truthful so badly, but even then, he’s not sure whether he would believe them. “Now, what’s got you so down in the dumps, Hao Hao?”
He stays silent for a few moments. It all comes back to him like a tidalwave: the indifferent look on his teacher’s face as she handed him his report card like she didn’t expect any more from him, the boos of the crowd when he screwed up his somersault in the middle of the song, his friends’ tight faces afterwards . . .
“Long story short, we got our report cards back today, and ‘crap’ doesn’t even begin to describe my grades. Then, after school, I had a dance competition with my team, and I thought we had it in the bag, you know? We had a solid choreography, we practiced tirelessly for weeks . . . if I was utter garbage at academic stuff, I had to be good at something, right? But, as it turns out, I’m just not good at anything.” His chest feels heavier with every syllable that leaves him, but he plows on, not stopping until he realizes that there are tears running down his cheeks.
Jeonghan doesn’t say anything. They look sympathetic, but there’s something else behind their eyes, something like contemplation. Calculation. Finally, they open their mouth, and their words make him close his eyes. “Hao Hao, please reconsider my offer. You won’t ever have to feel like this again.”
He’s tempted. So, so tempted. But then he remembers Mom, and her black bean sauce prawns, and her gentle smile, and he can’t imagine what she’ll say to him once she sees his grades, but he knows that he doesn’t want to leave her. “Maybe next time,” he says.
Jeonghan nods, like they expected him to say that, and he blinks, and then they’re gone, water splashing onto his face as they plunge into the sea.
Mom doesn’t yell or get angry once he returns home. She sits him down on the couch and hugs him until his tear ducts empty, and she strokes his hair as she says, “My boy, you just have to try harder, okay?” and he cries some more and she hugs him again and strokes his hair until he falls asleep.
✥ ✥ ✥
He is seventeen years old.
He’s been seeing Jeonghan an awful lot lately. Mom thinks he has a secret girlfriend, which couldn’t be farther from the truth, but he’s obviously not going to tell her that.
He’s also been keeping a lot of things from her. The fact that he doesn’t even feel guilty about it eats him alive.
“Back so soon, Hao Hao?” Jeonghan asks. They aren’t smiling, but their voice is as gentle as ever, washing over him like a rising tide.
Perhaps this is why he always finds himself coming back to them. They don’t try to cheer him up, or give him all that, “Keep smiling, stay positive!” garbage his guidance councillor shoves continuously down his throat. They let him be sad, but even then, they always keep him company, a constant anchor in his wallowing.
He notices that there are purple seashells in Jeonghan’s hair, and that bits of seaweed are braided into the dark waves. It makes them look more girlish, but no less inhuman. He still thinks they look pretty, though.
“I’m sorry if I’m burdening you.” The words leave his mouth before his brain can stop them, and his vision gets blurrier and blurrier as he keeps talking. “I treat you like some sort of outlet for all my crappy, self-depreciating thoughts but I never ask how you’re feeling. I’m such a selfish, depressing prick, yet you still put up with me.” He laughs, but it’s bitter and watery.
Jeonghan cocks their head, and he suddenly feels subconscious, like they’re assessing him. He tries to blink back his tears, but soft, damp fingers wipe them away before he can do so.
“Ask me, then,” Jeonghan whispers. They’re looking at him like that again, the unknown glint in their eyes making his heart skip one, two, three beats. Out of fear or admiration, he does not know. “Ask me how I’m feeling.”
His throat feels sticky. It’s a miracle that he manages to croak out, “How are you?” Jeonghan’s responding giggle sends shivers down his spine.
“I’m just grand, Hao Hao,” they say. Their fingers are still hovering over his cheeks, a ghost of a touch. He does not remove them. “What about you?”
“I don’t know what to do,” he says. “I’m so tired, Jeonghan. So, so tired.”
“What brought this on, if I may ask?”
“Everything. Junhui and his gang just won’t quit. They tossed my bag into the river yesterday and gave me this -” He gestures to a large, blue bruise on his left cheekbone. “- when I tried to fight back. Oh, and I got an F on my political science paper for the sole reason of handing it in five minutes late.” It’s unsettling, how easily he says his next words. “But it’s mostly the fact that my mother just got diagnosed with a rare form of incurable cancer. She’s got two years, tops.”
It started off small. Light coughing fits in the morning, tolerable joint pains, mild headaches, until all those seemingly minuscule symptoms escalated into the loss of her appetite, blood vomit and fainting spells. Mom insisted she was fine, she always was, you don’t need to worry about little old me, my boy. But then she cleared her throat, and thick red liquid dribbled down her chin, and he didn’t even have the time to scream before she collapsed to the ground.
He hauled her body to the hospital on foot since his bicycle wasn’t a viable option. He almost, almost gave into fatigue once, twice, but the sound of Mom’s raspy breathing in his ear pushed him on.
The doctors took her to a separate room as soon as he stepped inside the ER. They must have been quite a sight; a scrawny teenage boy supporting the weight of a frail middle-aged woman, the fronts of their clothes soaked with blood. He can’t remember much of what happened after, but the doctor’s solemn diagnosis still rings in his mind, clear as day.
“We can’t do much, Mr. Xu. I’m sorry. The available treatment options can only lessen her pain. They won’t cure the ailment nor prolong her life.”
He still feels like this is a dream, like nothing is real. He wants this to be a dream. He hopes that he’ll wake up tomorrow morning with Mom kissing his forehead, her clothes smelling of breakfast. She would pat his cheek like always and grin and say, “Rise and shine, Xiao Hao,” and everything would be okay.
The knowledge that this will probably never happen again puts a hole in his heart.
Jeonghan’s doe eyes widen. “I don’t know what ‘cancer’ is, but it can’t be good.”
He snorts. “You think?”
Their conversation ceases after this, but he doesn’t mind. The ocean is calm tonight. For a second, he forgets that he’s insignificant, that he’s broken, that he’s just a speck of dust amongst so many others that are actually of use to society, that he’s starting a journey towards losing the most precious person in his life. All he can feel is Jeonghan’s presence, as well as the constant rocking of his little boat, lulling him.
He tries very, very hard not to think about Mom, and what he’ll do once she’s gone, because he doesn’t have an answer to that question.
“Hao Hao,” Jeonghan says, sweet and small. “Would you like to take me up on my offer?”
Two years. He has two years, at the very most. He will make use of those two years. “Not yet,” he says.
Jeonghan hums in acknowledgement, and he blinks, and then they’re gone.
He comes home to the sound of heavy, hacking coughs, and he aches with every harsh sound Mom emits, and when she tries to smile at him, he doesn’t smile back.
✥ ✥ ✥
He cannot remember how old he is.
He cannot remember anything, cannot think of anything. The only thing he’s aware of is water filling his lungs, and the vicelike coldness of the sea around him, tossing him about and ripping him apart.
They say drowning is the worst way to die, and that thought echoed in his head as he cycled from the funeral home, made his way down to the beach, untied the knot on his little boat, rowed out, and waited for the forecasted storm to hit. He doesn’t know whether he was tossed off, or if he jumped off, but it doesn’t matter now.
He involuntarily struggles, thrashes, fights against the blackness that’s slowly splotching his vision, and he hates himself for it.
You wanted this, you worthless piece of shit. The least you can do now is accept death with open arms and not die a goddamn coward.
His mind is empty, but before the darkness claims him, he suddenly thinks of Mom and her pale, sunken face as she breathed her last breaths.
The hospital room was white and void, silent, save for the whirs of all the life support equipment around her. He couldn’t understand why the machines were still so noisy. It wasn’t like they worked, anyway.
She beckoned him closer with a breathy, “Minghao,” barely audible over the pounding of blood in his ears, and when he held her hand, felt her cold, clammy skin, she lifted their entwined fingers to her lips and kissed his knuckles.
He can’t think of what happens next, but for one final moment, he feels genuine happiness.
✥ ✥ ✥
There is a hot breath fanning against his cheeks.
Someone is calling his name, but the words are wispy and sound like they’re coming from far, far away. His eyelids feel like they were sewn shut, and opening them takes up more energy than he can afford. There’s a pressure against his torso. It’s faint, barely there, until it’s not, and he realizes that a pair of hands are banging down on his chest.
With a horrific wheeze, he jolts awake, gasping for air.
“Minghao, Minghao, are you okay?” a familiar voice asks, though they don’t sound as alarmed as they probably should be, and it takes a good few minutes of coughing out the water in his system before he can even gather his senses and construct a coherent sentence.
“Jeonghan?” he croaks. His lungs burn, and he feels like he just got punched in the face. “Am I . . . am I dead?”
Jeonghan’s laugh is loud and sharp and a lot more than what his ears can handle at the moment, but he doesn’t voice his complaint. “You aren’t dead, silly. I found you floating around near the reefs and put you back in your boat.”
The new information sends his brain reeling. “Why -” Another cough. “Why would you do that?”
The boat’s wooden bench is pressing harshly against his back. Every inch of his body is aching, pulsing with pain, and oh, what he would give to not be alive right now, but Jeonghan is pushing his wet hair away from his eyes, and they’re leaning so far into the boat that he catches a glimpse of the lower half of their body.
He doesn’t know what he expected to see, exactly, but he knows that glistening green scales are very low on the list. He doesn’t bother asking, though. He can’t bother to do anything right now.
“Oh, Hao Hao. Poor, poor Hao Hao.” Jeonghan’s voice is low, saccharine sweet. “It’s because you haven’t said yes to my offer yet. Though, I have to ask, what made you do this? What happened, Minghao, that made you want to end it all?”
The memory hits him, though it isn’t sudden, impactful like a freight train. It’s sluggish, gradual, dragging over his very being until he can’t think of anything else except for Mom’s last words.
“Whatever you do, I will always be proud of you, Minghao.”
“My mother just died.” Jeonghan’s eyes widen, probably due to his bluntness. “That’s what happened.”
Silence falls upon them.
It’s a beautiful day, he thinks. The air still smells of rain, probably from the storm, while the sky is a vibrant blue, a magnificent background for an abundance of swirling white clouds, and then he looks at Jeonghan, and he thinks that they’re beautiful, too.
He has nothing left. Nothing left to fight for, cry for, love for, live for. He has no purpose here.
“Is it too late to take you up on your offer?” he asks.
Jeonghan’s pretty pink lips curl at the corners, and that something, that unknown glint in their eyes, the one he still can’t put his finger on even after all these years, magnifies by tenfold. “I thought you’d never ask.” They inch towards him, and he moves, too, slowly, slowly, slowly, and every passing second feels like an eternity, until they’re within arm’s reach of each other.
Jeonghan’s entire torso is out of the water, and he can see that they have no legs, a large, scaly tail the color of emerald that shines underneath the glaring sunlight where a pair of limbs should be. He isn’t surprised. “I promise it won’t hurt,” they whisper.
“Wait,” he murmurs. “One more thing.”
Their face is so close to his that he can feel their every breath. “Yes?”
“Kiss me. Please.”
He closes his eyes when he feels a pillowy softness against his lips, a soft hand cradling his jaw. For a moment, everything ceases to exist except for the two of them; a sad, lonely boy with no will, and an ethereal creature, a child of the sea.
Carefully, Jeonghan pulls away, their mouth red, glistening, enticing, and he wants to taste them again so he leans forward, but they grin mirthfully, and just before their lips touch, Jeonghan sings. Quiet. Melodious. Teasing.
“Lovely and hungry, under the water
Do you see? Do you see?
Don’t make a sound, don’t be a bother
Don’t step closer, you should know better.”
Still kissing, Jeonghan wraps their arms around his shoulders, and he doesn’t struggle, doesn’t thrash, doesn’t fight as they slowly, slowly, slowly pull him over the edge of his boat, into the water, and underneath the waves.