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When I came to, the first sound I registered was the gentle lapping of water. The salty scent of the water tickled my nose as it washed up against it. Gritty sand clung to my body. I opened my eyes; everything looked blurry. They stung, probably because of the saltwater. I blinked a few times, trying to clear up my vision, and stared directly in front of me. I was lying on my front on a beach and the sun was just peeking up over the horizon. I picked myself up a little bit. My body felt weak.
I tried to think back to what had happened. My head felt fuzzy. We’d been on a little boat going out a ways between some islands to search for dolphins. There’d been several of us on the boat, but I didn’t see anyone here. A storm came through, and I remembered getting tossed into the water. After that, everything was missing. I was here now, with no idea where I was and no way to know where the others were. I groaned, then dropped back onto the sand. For a moment, I lay there, staring into the sunrise, but after a while, I forced myself to roll onto my back. And then my heart stopped.
Staring down at me curiously from above was a man with flaxen hair, sea green eyes, and well-defined muscles. And he was completely topless. He tilted his head at me, seeming concerned. He reached over to cautiously poke my cheek. I pulled my hand up to stop him, but I think I was too tired to beat him to it. His finger was a bit cold. I winced. He retracted his hand and his mouth fell open into a surprised ‘oh!’ shape.
“Y-you’re alive,” he stammered.
I blinked a few times. Of course, I was alive. What dead person flipped over? I gave him a funny look. His face didn’t look familiar at all. He hadn’t been one of the people on the boat. I presumed he must have been a beach-goer, having a nice day on an empty private beach when some strange guy washed up on the shore. I frowned at him.
“Is this…your vacation island?” I asked.
He tilted his head.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
It seemed like an obvious thing to ask in this situation, but he appeared to be genuinely confused by the question. I shifted a little bit, wondering how to answer him.
“Like…you’re here and there’s no one else,” I said. “You didn’t pay for that privacy?”
For a moment, his eyebrows knit together, suggesting he was even more confused than before, but then his expression relaxed again and he shook his head.
“No…no…I didn’t pay to be here,” he said. “It’s a free beach, but I don’t think many humans come here because it doesn’t have anything but a small forest.”
I frowned.
“Are you suggesting you’re here bird-watching or something?” I said.
He shook his head again.
“No, there aren’t really any birds around at the moment,” he said. “I’m here because you were drowning. I wanted to make sure you were okay, so I swam over to the beach and got you onto dry land.”
Now he was sounding even more bizarre. He wasn’t from my boat, but he’d gone out of his way to swim to me and save me by getting me to the nearest island? That story meant that he’d have had to have been around on another wrecked boat. It wasn’t necessarily impossible. I looked to my right, trying to glance around him to see if I could identify any debris on the shore.
“Were our boats that close together?” I asked.
The man frowned.
“I only recall there being one boat,” he said. “Though I think the others made it to safety. You were the only one I saw fall overboard.”
I gave him a funny look.
“Were you just…out for a swim?” I asked.
Smiling at me, he nodded, as if that were the most normal thing to be doing out in the middle of nowhere in the ocean.
“Just a late evening swim,” he said, sounding so matter-of-fact. “It was a bit stormy, though, so I was thinking of turning back and swimming home. Then, I saw a boat up on the surface tossing about. I wasn’t going to bother; humans don’t usually like being helped, but you fell into the water and started struggling. By the time I got to you, you’d already fainted.”
There he went again, using the word “humans” like an alien speaking about Earth residents. I wanted to take it as a peculiarity of his speech, but things weren’t adding up. He’d been underwater when I’d fallen in and swam over to help me. I might have guessed a scuba diver, but nothing on the beach suggested he had a wetsuit anywhere. I blinked at him a few more times.
“You keep…saying human…” I mumbled.
I pushed myself up into a sitting position. He sat back, giving me some space. I grasped my head with one hand and stared down at my knees. I’d only just noticed my head was throbbing. But then, as I stared down at the space where my feet were being splashed by the incoming waves, I saw it. In place of the normal human legs I’d been expecting…
“You’re…a mermaid?” I mumbled.
No, no, no, that can’t be right. I must have hit my head really hard.
“How rude!” he said. “I saved your life and you can’t even use the proper word?”
I turned to look at him and frowned.
“I must be dreaming,” I muttered. “Mermaids aren’t real.”
He huffed.
“There you go again!” he said. “We’re all perfectly fine with starting with a neutral ‘mer-folk’ if you really aren’t sure whether we’re male or female!”
I blinked at him a few times, trying to correct my vision or something. I was hearing things and seeing things. This wasn’t possible. I looked downwards again. The scale-covered tail was still there. It shone a brilliant, icy blue that glinted in the sunlight. I rubbed my eyes. What a crazy dream I was having. I looked back at him and sighed.
“I must be really lonely if I’m dreaming up pretty mermen…” I said, sighing.
He opened his mouth as if to protest again, but then it snapped shut. His face flushed red with embarrassment. He nervously looked back at me and his eyes flitted up and down for a moment before he let out a gasp and reached over to me. I leaned back, surprised by the sudden closeness of a hot, topless guy. He touched a spot on my shirt.
“You’re injured!” he cried. “Here, let me help you with that!”
Before I could even think to protest, the merman had me pull my wet, sand-filled shirt off and pulled me a little ways into the water where a few rocks were jutting out of it. He sat me up on one of the flatter ones and swam off to get some things to clean me off with. They were materials I would have never thought to use, like salt water to wash and seaweed used as a bandage. After he’d rinsed me off, which stung quite a bit from the sea water, he sat up on the rock extremely close to me and started to apply some ointment to the wound.
“This will probably sting a little, too,” he said softly. “I hope it works on humans.”
I wasn’t sure what to say to that. He dipped his fingers into the ointment and carefully started applying it to the gash across my chest. It did sting sharply for a moment, but after a few seconds, it felt cool and soothing. I winced a little when it was applied. He hummed and went about carefully placing it on the wound.
“So, uh…my name’s Kirito,” I said.
What was I even doing? This was the worst time to try and make idle chatter. But he looked up from his work and smiled at me warmly.
“Nice to meet you, Kirito,” he said. “My name’s Eugeo.”
I worked my jaw a little bit before trying out his name.
“Eugeo…”
He nodded.
“I hope it’s not too difficult to say,” he said.
I shook my head.
“No, no,” I said. “I like it.”
His cheeks tinged pink. Had I said something embarrassing? I placed my hand over my mouth, unsure of what to say to him. Now that I thought about it, I was alone with a cute guy. This was the perfect setup for a chance to flirt with him and see if we were compatible at all. Then again, could I just freely do that with a merman? We weren’t even the same species. He couldn’t go on land and I couldn’t breathe underwater.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to sound so forward.”
Eugeo bit his lip and ran his fingers through his hair.
“It’s alright,” he said. “I don’t mind.”
His admittance was unexpected. I felt my own face heating up. Did he think I was cute, too? Perhaps I was getting my hopes up. This felt like the perfect fantasy daydream. I glanced over at Eugeo. He was awkwardly rubbing his arm. I shifted towards him a little bit. He looked up at me, his eyes flitting up and down as if observing me.
“So…what now?” I asked.
The awkwardness between us was one thing, but I needed to get around that in order to figure out what my next steps were. There was nothing around for miles other than the island Eugeo had brought me to in order to keep me from drowning. I’d need things to eat and at some point, I’d need to get back to civilization. I watched Eugeo as he placed his hand on his chin and thought about it. He knew the area better than me; I was sure of that.
But in the end, he seemed to be just as stuck as me. He wasn’t sure how close the nearest human city or port was, so it would take him a while to figure out where to take me. He’d also, he said, have to make out a route for us to follow where I could rest above the water, since this island was an isolated one formed from an underwater volcanic eruption.
Eugeo spent the next few days scoping out a route for us. I felt bad for not being able to help, especially when he was also collecting things for me to eat in the process so that I didn’t starve in the meantime. I told him it was okay—humans could go for about three weeks without anything to eat. He insisted that this was a horrible notion. No matter what I said or did, he’d always show up with something for me to eat—be it some underwater plant that he insisted was delicious or a fish or other sea creature that I could cook and eat.
“What sorts of things can merfolk eat?” I asked him one day.
He laughed.
“Well, lots of fish and ocean plants, just like what I’ve been feeding you,” he said. “Our dietary needs aren’t really all that different from a human being’s. The difference is just the types of things we eat.”
I glanced at the fish I had just finished roasting over a little fire over on the dryer part of the beach.
“Can you eat this raw, then?” I asked.
Another laugh escaped from his throat. He had an absolutely wonderful laugh. It was the sort of laugh that made you feel warm and happy just because you could hear the happiness inside of his heart. Anytime I got a chance to make him laugh, I found myself grinning ear to ear as he chuckled.
“No, silly,” he said. “We have ways of cooking, too. Close to places with a lot of volcanic activity, there are these hydrothermal vents that spout really hot water. We build our kitchens around places like that. If we get you back to the mainland, perhaps we could find a way for you to get some gear to come and see one of our homes one day.”
I smiled at him.
“I’d definitely like to pay you a visit,” I said.
His cheeks turned their usual shade of red when he picked up on me flirting with him. A gentle smile spread across his face and his eyes sparkled.
“I’d like that very much,” he said.
That was how things usually went. For those days that he would disappear for several hours and then return to keep me company until I needed to go up onto the dryer shore to sleep, he’d smile if I flirted with him a bit. Only occasionally would he return the sentiment, perhaps because he seemed shy about it. I felt like all of this alone time gave us plenty of time to get to know one another. It was day seven when he subconsciously reached over to hold my hand as we spoke.
I think we both were internally aflame when we realized we were holding hands. Neither one of us pulled away, though. I enjoyed being able to do something so simple as this with him. I wondered if he felt the same. After a few minutes, we attempted to try conversing normally with one another for a bit. It took a while, but we eventually were having a conversation as usual. That day’s topic was family. As I was telling him about my parents and my sister, he stared down at the water lapping against the rocks and tightly squeezed my hand. I frowned and looked at him.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
For a moment, he was silent.
“I’ve figured out the best route to take to get you back to the human world,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
He swished his tail back and forth in the water slowly. His face looked downcast.
“Is it wrong to not want you to go?” he murmured.
We sat in silence. We both knew that I couldn’t survive here forever just living off of his charity. I needed to eat foods that better supported my human body. Fish wasn’t bad, but I needed vegetables—and not ones that were just seaweed and other weird sea plants. I also had my family back on the mainland, and they were likely very worried about me by now. It would be unfair for him to ask me to stay, especially when it meant that I would eventually be in poor health.
Still, I didn’t want to answer him with a ‘yes.’ In these few short days, I’d grown very attached to him. There was something about him that made me secretly want to stay here with him forever. I needed him to know that. Swallowing, I reached over and gently grasped his chin, turning his head to face me. He blinked at me, confused for a moment. I leaned forward and slipped my lips into his. When I pulled away, his face was redder than usual.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I whispered. “But…”
Neither of us needed to say it. Finally, Eugeo just nodded.
“Then let me just have this before you go,” he said.
I lifted my eyebrows. He reached over to me this time, pulling me in to kiss me again. This kiss was far more passionate than my gentle peck. I felt my chest about to burst. As we exchanged kisses, my heart started to ache. I couldn’t just leave him like this. There had to be a way. I didn’t want to move on with my life. I wanted to be a part of his life as much as was possible between two people from such different worlds could.
Yet, I said nothing. And neither did he. We just shared one last night of embracing, admitting our sudden, inexplicable attraction to one another by giving the other everything we could in that moment. We didn’t discuss the inevitable heartbreak. After the sun set, we numbly told one another we’d see each other in the morning and then shared one last, painful kiss before we parted for the night. I curled up under my makeshift blankets for the night, trying not to think about the fact that tomorrow would be the beginning of a trip to say good-bye.
We did not speak much in the morning. Eugeo did show up with a small boat. I internally wondered if he’d stolen it from someone by the coastline. He insisted that this would make the journey much faster and easier on me, since I probably couldn’t swim for as long as he could. I thanked him for his consideration. The boat had a single paddle on it, so it was slow going at first, but Eugeo swam ahead just a little ways, making sure he kept me in his sights as he showed me where to go.
The entire trip, I couldn’t help but feel a knot in my stomach. I hoped that he wasn’t feeling this much agony over parting, but a small part of me knew this was just as hard for him as it was for me. The closer we got to the mainland, the more pain I felt in my chest. Everything burst when I first sighted the shore. But I couldn’t cry here. I had to be strong, so that Eugeo could be strong, too. I pulled up to a dock, stepped out of the boat, and turned around to look down at the water. Eugeo swam up to the edge and held up one shaky hand to me. I grasped it and forced a smile, despite wanting to cry.
“I’m glad I got to meet you,” I said. “Thank you.”
His eyes shone with tears.
“Thank you for saving me, Eugeo,” I said.
I bent down and allowed myself one last kiss with him.
His taste lingered on my lips as I made my way awkwardly home. I stumbled into shops, looking around for a phone I didn’t have to pay for. At some point, I finally got in contact with my mom. She came to pick me up and drove me back home, a couple of hours inland. I barely registered the people celebrating that I hadn’t died at sea. I just felt a deep longing in my chest to return to the shoreline and see that bright, shining face of his, welcoming me into his arms.
A few weeks went by. I tried to forget about it. It was all just a fantasy made up by my mind to help me cope with being stranded out in the ocean. There were no merfolk. There was no Eugeo. I had to move on and go about my life normally, as if I’d never fallen overboard in the first place. People continued to give me pats on the back, telling me they were so very glad I’d survived. Teachers, peers, family. It was the same thing, over and over for weeks. But my ears only heard his voice and the sound of the waves. My heart ached.
I felt like a part of me was buried deep beneath the waves.
A month had passed. In the middle of the night, just as the weeks of separation officially turned into that month marker, I heard something that sounded like sweet, alluring music fill my ears. I glanced at my alarm clock. It was late, but hopefully my mother would forgive me if I followed that sound. I couldn’t explain what drew me to it. I just slipped on a pair of shoes and left the house.
I couldn’t identify where it was coming from. I ended up hopping on buses and trains as I tracked the sound, ignoring the passage of time deep into the night. I didn’t check my phone to see if my mother had noticed I’d snuck out. I just followed my ears. That sweet, pleasant melody called to me, tugging at the strings of my longing heart. The closer I got to the source, the more I trembled. My feet led me straight to that shore, where I’d arrived mysteriously in a stolen boat a month prior.
“Could it be…?” I whispered.
My feet picked up their pace. The melody sounded as if it came from the rocky area away from the public beach. I glanced at a fence that warned civilians not to climb in this dangerous, rocky area and vaulted over it. I apologized to whoever put the fence there, but this longing in my heart refused to let me stand there and give up. I struggled to climb up over the rocks until I finally reached the top. I gazed down at the shore below and scanned the area.
“Please be here…please be here…”
Sitting along atop a rock that was sitting just a few feet out into the ocean was a long figure, holding his hands over his breast. His flaxen hair shone brightly in the light of the full moon. The seawater gave it a brilliant sheen. His mouth was open, slowly moving in time with the song filling my ears. My heart fluttered with excitement. This was something he’d never done with me. A whole week of knowing this merman and he hadn’t once sung his siren song to me.
For a moment, I sat and I listened, taking in his beautiful acapella with a lovestruck sigh. I was reassured by his song; meeting him had been real. I hadn’t imagined anything. There he was, singing a sad song all alone, waiting for me to return. I finally drew up the courage to climb down the rocky hillside. It was tricky and slippery from the water splashing up on the sides. I took the trip as slowly as I could, but my heart screamed for me to hurry. In my panic, my foot slipped on one of the less solid footholds I’d found, and I fell off of the cliff.
My body hit the water. The impact took the breath out of me, so whatever air I’d desperately tried to pull in before hitting the surface was gone in a flash. I flailed my arms. I knew how to swim. Why was I panicking? My body felt as heavy as a boulder. I didn’t want to sink. I wanted to be on the surface, reaching out to Eugeo and asking him to be mine. But my body refused to listen to me. My arms pushed through the water and went nowhere.
I’m sorry…Eugeo. I’m sorry I left you.
I stopped trying to fight it. My eyes slipped closed.
I love you.
I felt warmth press against my lips. Suddenly, air was forced into my lungs. My eyes snapped open. Before them, Eugeo’s eyes were closed. His hair flowed around him. My heart started to race. He looked just as splendid underwater as he did above it. He wrapped his arms around my waist and carefully pulled me out of the water. Once again, he pulled me up as far as he could go onto a beach. I stared at him, wondering how I’d gotten in this predicament again.
“You sure…do have a habit of falling in water and almost drowning,” Eugeo said. “Don’t you, Kirito?”
I smiled sheepishly at him.
“Maybe I just really want your attention,” I said, laughing.
Eugeo shook his head. He held himself up over me and gave me a soft smile. He didn’t seem mad at me at all. He pressed one hand against my cheek. I thought he might cry.
“I thought you were gone for good,” he said. “I thought…I thought you’d forgotten.”
Smiling, I shook my head. I reached up and grasped his cheek in my palm.
“No, I could never forget you,” I said.
His sea green eyes sparkled.
“Kiss me again?” I asked.
He nodded.
“So long as you promise not to leave again,” he said.
I sat up and wrapped my arms around his neck.
“I promise.”
Our lips slipped together. And once again, I felt bliss.