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Yoosung knows he shouldn’t be here.
He knows, but it had been way too easy to snag Rika’s access card and hitch a ride down the elevator where all the confidential specimens are kept. He feels like a super spy for pulling it off, but it’s probably more like Rika was tired and she never keeps a close eye on him anyway, like she does with all the other interns at the marine research institute. Usually he whines about the favoritism—how is anyone going to take him seriously when she keeps coddling him like he never left high school?—but today…
Today he has to know where the singing is coming from.
He always hears it when he stays late, in that little archive room where he goes through the boxes and boxes of old hardcopy files, shoved slapdash in and forgotten about, left to rot. Yoosung organizes and sorts and puts them away in hardier, plastic containers, and then before he knows it he’s staring blankly at the manila envelopes in his hands, absolutely frozen in place by the beautiful voice floating up through the air vents.
He figures it has to be someone who works down there. Right? And maybe they won’t be happy to see him and he’ll get in trouble, but it’s been a whole month since he’s started hearing this voice and he thinks he’s going to go crazy if he hears it one more time without seeing who it’s coming from.
When he exits the elevator he almost expects an alarm to go off, like the moment his foot hits the tile everyone’s going to know and a whole squadron of scary security guys’ll come charging at him. But nothing happens, and Yoosung wanders the quiet halls with his spine straight up, doing his best to pretend like he belongs there, in this harshly lit underground level he’s only ever heard rumors about.
No one he passes even looks twice at him. Yoosung, though, avidly inspects each face, probably failing to even be subtle about it. Which one’s the singer? If they’re anything like their voice then they’ve got to be gorgeous. Maybe a woman with really long hair…or a guy with piercing eyes… Yoosung doesn’t have a plan for how to identify them, other than that he has a vague idea of where the other side of the vent could lead to...northeast-ish maybe?…but he just feels like he’ll know.
Maybe that’s stupid. Actually now that he’s thinking about it it’s definitely stupid, but he can’t seem to convince the rest of him of that. His heart won’t stop pounding with excitement, like it’s saying almost there, almost there, almost there, the beat of it pulling him more forcefully than any person’s hand ever could.
But this maze of corridors is steadily chipping away at his confidence. Minutes fade into half an hour, and Yoosung’s a hair away from convincing himself to turn back when he rounds a corner and nearly smacks face-first into a set of double doors. They’re huge and imposing and gray, made of sturdy metal with tiny slits at eye level for windows, filled with reinforced glass. They’re also locked, proven by Yoosung’s tentative jiggling of the handle. But there’s a card-reader right next to them and Yoosung has a feeling… The door lock clicks open effortlessly with just one swipe of Rika’s card. Yes! He hurriedly nudges one of the doors open and slips inside, letting it close behind him softly. Once again he has to wonder how high up Rika is at this place. She’s never told him, but if this card can unlock any door, then…
It’s dark in here. The main lights are off, leaving just a couple tiny service ones scattered across the cavernous room, which means Yoosung can see where he’s walking, but everything else is draped in dark shadows, the occasional red indicator light blinking from unseen consoles along the distant walls. Yoosung shivers. There’s a sort of dampness in the air that really makes it feel like an underground cavern. Well. The lights being out means no one else should be in here, right? He should leave—
Water splashes softly.
Yoosung yelps and fumbles for a light switch. “H-Hello?”
“Hm? What, someone’s here again today?” a voice echoes from the back. “Didn’t get enough of me huh. Don’t you jerks ever go to sleep?”
Yoosung startles again, not expecting anyone to actually answer, but no, this is good! This could be the person! Or maybe at least someone who could help him out.
“What do you mean, jerk?! I just stay late sometimes to help out,” Yoosung explains, making himself relax. He’s still looking for the lights but less frantically now, hands running blindly up and down along the smooth, featureless walls. “What...What about you, huh?” he challenges. “You’re here after hours too. Don’t you sleep?”
“Huh?? What are you—” A long, long moment of silence passes. “Mmmm~ Sure I do, but I think I need less of it than all of you.”
A man’s voice. Yoosung’s heart skips a beat. He hasn’t even seen his face yet, but the more the guy talks the more he’s sure. It has to be him. This guy has to be the singer. Yoosung redoubles his efforts to find the light switch. “You shouldn’t let yourself get sleep deprived though. It’s bad for you! I mean, I would know.” He laughs self-consciously.
“Yeah…? Haha, that’s not good. Maybe I should sing you a lullaby~” Yoosung hears another splash. This guy must be pretty brave to be messing around with a specimen tank in the dark like that. “Ah, no. Nevermind. I probably shouldn’t.”
The chance to hear that singing from up close has Yoosung tripping over himself. “W-Why not?!”
“Well, I try not to when you guys are around. I really wanna get out of here, but not bad enough yet to do something like…”
Yoosung waits for the guy to finish the sentence so it can start making some sense, but he doesn’t. “What are you talking about? What’s so bad about singing when people are around? Don’t tell me you’re embarrassed.” Someone with a voice like that should be proud of it! Yoosung doesn’t doubt he could do it professionally if he wanted to. After another second, Yoosung’s fingers finally find the plate on the wall. “And if you want to leave for the night what’s stopping y—”
The switch flips and the lights blaze to life.
Yoosung screams.
The monster screams too.
“W-What the hell?!” The…the…the… sea creature that Yoosung’s been talking to this whole time covers the places on either side of his head where his ears should be, if he’d had any. “Ow…You’re really gonna hurt my feelings if you scream at me like that, you know. I’m more beautiful than I am scary, right~?”
Yoosung shakes from his new home on the floor, speechless, but the worst part is that the monster is right . Yoosung’s eyes should be lingering on the needle-like teeth, the spindly clawed hands, and the blood-bright eyes. Instead they trace the curve of that shimmering white tail and the gossamer fins, the long silky hair sticking like threads of moonlight against a chest that could almost pass for human.
The monster catches him staring and grins, muscled arms resting on the lip of the tank and tail twisting in a self-satisfied rhythm. Seeing all of those teeth bared at once should send Yoosung into cardiac arrest, but for some reason it…doesn’t.
“Are you real?” Yoosung whispers.
The monster sputters and laughs. “Am I real?! How am I supposed to answer that?!” He pinches his own perfectly pale skin. “Well, looks like I’m not dreaming. What about you?”
Yoosung pinches himself in turn. It stings. Oh god.
He braces a hand against the wall and slowly rises from the floor, his feet shuffling forward like they have a mind of their own. Wow… The closer he gets the bigger the monster looks. The human-ish half seems like a regular size give or take, but the tail is huge, much longer than any legs would be.
“Getting closer already?” The monster says, amused. “I haven’t even done anything. Are you just that enchanted by my good looks?”
“Sh-shut up,” Yoosung grumbles weakly, pink-cheeked. “What do you mean, do something?”
“Sing,” the monster answers with a wink. “You could say it’s what I was born to do~”
Even just the mention of it has Yoosung’s heart galloping again. “Yeah. Yeah I heard you.”
“You…you have?!” The monster exclaims, smug expression sliding right off.
“From upstairs. I could just barely hear it, but…”
Yoosung’s finally close enough to touch the glass. It’s cold against his palm. The tail is right in front of his face; he can see each individual scale catch the light, throwing rainbows against the skin of Yoosung’s hand. When he cranes his neck up the monster is looking down at him with a surprisingly melancholy face. Yoosung wants to ask what’s wrong, ask him why he’s so sad all of a sudden, but instead what comes out is: “What’s your name?”
“M-My name??” The monster stares at him, baffled. Has no one ever asked before? “Uh…” He scratches at the back of his head, looks up at the ceiling as he ponders. “Hm. I dunno. How about Zen? That’s close enough.”
“Zen,” Yoosung repeats, softer than he means to. He finds himself smiling up at wide, red eyes. The predator-like eyes that had seemed so scary at first just seem beautiful to him now. “Hey, I really want to hear you sing again.”
The monster, Zen, keeps staring at him for a long second, mouth slack, before burying his face in his arms. His tail curls upwards, like he’s trying to make himself smaller. “What, no. You don’t want that. If I knew you could hear me this whole time I never woulda done it.”
“Why?! Why not?” The thought of never having heard that singing suddenly seems like the worst tragedy in the world. Yoosung cranes high up on his tiptoes, like he can magically close the distance between them that way. “Come on…please…?”
One red eye peeks at him.
Sensing an opening, Yoosung keeps pushing it. “Please? If you do, I’ll do anything.”
“Anything…” Zen’s head lifts and he quirks a rueful smile. “Are you sure about that? What if my song’s the last thing you ever hear, huh?”
A prickle of fear finally pokes through, but it does nothing to dislodge the yearning in Yoosung’s heart. “That would be sad...I’d rather hear it forever.”
Zen turns his head and laughs. “That’s not fair. That’s not fair at all. Who taught you how to talk like that?” Another, shakier laugh echoes around the room, and Zen’s voice drops into a barely audible murmur, his hungry red eyes looking Yoosung up and down. “Well...If you’re lucky maybe you won’t be able to make it up here.”
Zen takes a breath. Another. And then…
He sings.
It’s like a fist around his heart. Yoosung staggers, the glass of the tank in front of him the only thing holding him up. He wants to sob, but he’s so...he’s so happy. Is he crying right now? He can feel himself shaking through the haze in his head, but power surges through every limb. He feels like he can do anything. Anything at all as long as it’s…it’s… Yoosung looks back up, at Zen, at the singer of a song so beautiful it hurts. As long as it’s reaching him. Yoosung needs…he needs him. He needs to get closer. He’ll do anything, anything!
Time stretches and skips without rhyme or reason, patches of hyper-clarity mixing with blacked-out minutes. He’s clawing at the glass, he’s circling it, he’s reaching upwards, he’s running to a control panel and frantically pushing at the buttons. Something, something, something has to get him up there somehow. Please, please, please, plea—
Click.
That one last button press and the entire tank hisses, spins, and lowers, sinking into the floor. Yoosung watches, panting with happiness, and runs back over the instant it’s done. This time when he reaches up, his hands catch on the ledge and he pulls himself up, hooks a knee over, then stands on it.
But the moment he’s upright the song cuts off, and suddenly Yoosung’s unmoored, wavering unbalanced on a ledge too small for his feet. Wait. What’s happening? How did he get here?
“Hey, you weren’t supposed to know how to do that,” The monster says quietly. He’s already pushed himself away from the ledge when Yoosung wasn’t paying attention, and he treads water effortlessly in the middle of the tank. “You don’t even work down here. Guess you’re a smart one though, huh….haha…”
“Zen…” Yoosung’s voice wobbles. He’s scared.
“Go. Get out of here.”
Yoosung doesn’t want to.
“What are you doing?! Go!”
Zen’s yell is terrifying, an animalistic shriek, but still Yoosung’s feet won’t move. “I c-can’t…” Instead Yoosung can feel himself gradually tilting forward. Like the lure never truly stopped, just faded, just sunk under his skin until it got wound up in all his insides and became a part of him.
A wet hand presses up against his stomach and keeps him upright, claws catching into fabric. Despite himself, Yoosung touches it, touches down the length of that forearm. It’s cold like ice, almost slimy. Yoosung starts shivering and can’t stop. “P-Please…” He doesn’t even know what he’s begging for anymore. He loses his balance, slips, but he’s caught and tugged and soon enough finds himself sitting on the ledge instead of tipping over the side. Another wet hand cards through his hair, petting him.
Yoosung’s eyes are closed tight now, but he can feel swampy breath against his shoulder. He pictures those big needle teeth piercing right through an artery.
“You’re a good one,” Zen says, voice strained. “You’re not supposed to be down here, are you? I really don’t want…”
A frigid tongue licks up his neck and Yoosung whines.
“I really don’t want to…”
“Zen,” Yoosung pleads, desperate.
He feels the sting of claws against his stomach and his scalp, Zen’s grip painful on him, and then suddenly with a violent push he falls backward. He hits the ground outside the tank with a hard slap, ears ringing.
“Go!”
Yoosung scrambles back, kicking his feet, and then finally gets the strength to stagger up and run. He runs, and runs, and runs, out of the room, down the halls, into the elevator. He can’t stop crying. His heart hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts so much.
It isn’t until he’s curled up in the passenger seat of his car nearly choking on his sobs that he realizes something.
Rika’s keycard.
It’s gone.