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When Mingyu fell into the lake near his grandparents’ cottage, he hadn’t expected to find an underground paradise.
He had only been exploring in the forest and, sure, his grandmother had warned him that going too far into it would have bad consequences (“Even though the faerie are less active at this time of the year, don’t wander too far in. And keep your eyes open.”) but that doesn’t mean he hadn’t been paying attention. It just means he wasn’t paying attention to this specific thing, which happened to be a large lake in the middle of the clearing.
Ok, so maybe he hadn’t been paying that much attention.
The lake was cold, shockingly so. It was enough that Mingyu, ever the strong swimmer, fell into shock almost immediately, splashing around before sinking below the surface as his will gave out, the cold water sinking all the way into his bones.
As his eyes closed and the surface got further and further away from him, Mingyu thought he saw a panicked face appear in front of his, thought he felt wrinkly fingers grip onto his face.
“Pretty,” he mumbled weakly as his vision and senses disappeared, the water in his lungs overwhelming everything else.
When Mingyu woke up, his skin was still ice cold. It felt like he had been sitting in a freezer for a few hours, and he struggled with forcing his eyes open. Not only was this a feat because of how numb his body felt, but because of the sheer pressure being forced onto his body.
He could see his clothing around him (thank god) as he shoved his eyes open, immediately feeling the cold wash over them as well. His vision took a while to adjust to the low light (wherever he was, it was dark as hell) and when it finally did he sniffed a little bit (felt weird) and tried to move his arm around a little bit, feeling it being pulled back a little bit by the water surrounding his entire body.
Wait.
Mingyu’s eyes flew open wide and he started flailing around again, his limbs flying everywhere as he realized that he was fucking underwater. And breathing. And most likely literally dead.
“Hey. Hey! Calm down!” Someone cried, and Mingyu curled himself into a ball, feeling himself drift a little bit due to the inherent buoyancy of the human body.
“Chill out would you?” The person said, and Mingyu peeked out to the side, half curious as to who the hell was talking to him, and half curious as to why he could hear so well under water.
What he saw took his (seemingly non-existent) breath away.
He had never believed his grandmother when she had regaled him with stories of the magical woods around his grandparents’ cottage as a kid, had only laughed along with them to not seem rude. Sure, they had been interesting, but what kid would believe stories about faeries and dryads and mermaids forever.
Now, Mingyu wished he had believed more.
This mermaid (merman? Merperson?) in front of him is the most beautiful entity he had ever had the pleasure of laying his eyes on. He was stunning, his light brown hair floating slightly under the water and his silver-finned tail reflecting the little light in what seemed to be a cave around the walls, creating a disco ball effect.
Mingyu, for a split second, looked down at his shorts and flip flops and frowned, brain seemingly confused about the fact that he didn’t have a tail before it caught up with itself and remembered that he was underwater and humans can’t breathe there , subsequently starting a complete and total breakdown, Mingyu breathing in sharply and then choking on the water currently surrounding him.
“Wait, hold on, don’t do that. My spell only works when you’re not freaking out so calm down ok? I don’t want a dead human on my hands!”
The merman swims closer to him, making frantic circles and stirring up the water, his hands flying around Mingyu’s body—not actually making contact, more worried than anything, Mingyu appreciated the gesture—until Mingyu’s brain realized that he wasn’t in imminent danger of drowning and his throat opened back up, leaving him back in his state of not-breathing-but-living.
“Sorry,” Mingyu mumbled, coughing lightly even though the water had miraculously disappeared from his lungs.
“It’s ok,” the merman stopped his frantic swimming but his hands were still twitching.
“I’m…uh…Mingyu. Did you save me from drowning?” Mingyu asks. In his head he can hear his mother’s voice berating him for having absolutely no tact. It’s barely enough to slightly distract him from the beautiful merman’s face flushing a pretty pink, his brown hair seemingly shining in the low light. He ran his hands over his scales.
“Yeah—yeah. I did. I’m uh…I don’t really have a human name,” the man said, and Mingyu smiled, kicking his feet a little bit, his flip flops flopping slowly through the water.
“Oh, ok, thank you for saving me, uh, dude?” Mingyu said, and the merman giggled.
Mingyu literally swore that sounded like angels, that little tinkling laugh that was a bit distorted due to the way sound travelled through the water.
“Oh…I guess you want to go home then?” The merman asked, and Mingyu hummed a little bit.
“Kind of…you’re really nice though, so I might stay a bit longer.”
The merman smiled, and Mingyu felt his chest heat up, like his heart was exploding.
“I’ll swim you to the surface. Come on, follow me, I know the way,” the merman said, and with a flap of his tail he swam away, Mingyu pulling off his flip flops to swim slowly after him. The merman laughs softly at him.
“You’re slow, human,” the merman says, and Mingyu smiles sheepishly. The merman reaches out his hand and Mingyu grabs it and they start swimming again.
The light gets brighter as they get closer to the surface, and they shine onto the swimming pair, the merman’s silver scales lighting up along with his hair. The strands shone golden-brown and Mingyu stopped swimming, once again mesmerized by the stunning beauty of the merman.
“You stopped swimming,” the merman says, and Mingyu smiles guiltily, scratching the back of his neck.”We’re close to the surface anyway, we can stop here.”
“Thank you for saving me,” Mingyu reinstated, and the merman smiled softly.
“It was my pleasure, Mingyu.”
“Can you try and say your name, so I can thank you properly?” The merman laughs before making a series of clicking and shrieking noises that Mingyu blanched at.
“Nevermind,” Mingyu said.
The merman laughs happily, face lighting up and eyes crinkling, floating strands of gold around his face and reflected silver all around them.
“Come back to visit me, ok?”
“Of course,” Mingyu says, letting go of the merman’s hand and swimming towards the surface, keeping his eyes on the flecks of silver until the moment when he breached the water and swam to the edge of the lake and pulled himself out.
The bright silver had disappeared and Mingyu panicked, sticking his face back into the water to see the silver glinting in the sunlight again.
He smiled softly and went back into the woods, walking back to his grandparents’ house.
“Where have you been all day?” His mother asked him when he came back, “and why are you all wet?”
Mingyu smiled widely, running a hand through his wet hair.
“I fell into a lake!”
“You what ?”