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Seokjin knew Yoongi was just messing with them. He knew it.
Still, he couldn’t keep his heart rate down. He felt that the air inside him was getting more tense, loaded with something he couldn’t quite define.
On his arms the same feeling as when, in middle school, the professor had insisted that they do those experiments on electricity.
Like there was something thick that made him get all his body hair up.
He knew not to react in the best way with this kind of jokes, and even Yoongi, for his misfortune was exactly aware of it. Yet each time he followed him and got involved in his affairs.
Seokjin decided to break that crippling hood. It was clear that they would find nothing.
The sun was going to fall behind them. Soon it would be dark, and he had no intention of finding his way to the harbor groping through the woods.
It had already happened, but they had fallen too many times stumbling over the roots of the trees to be an experience to want to try again.
He was going to open his mouth and draw attention to himself when he felt his nape tingling. Someone was watching him. Or something.
No, he was playing along with Yoongi’s fantasies again.
Much more calmly, and above all with much more courage he thought he could muster, he decided to turn his head slightly and understand where the sudden discomfort came from.
It was... Hoseok-ssi? Yeah, that was the name of the young man.
He gave a small smile in his direction before averting his eyes, his cheeks darkening. Seokjin caught a slight flex of his hands, which he kept bent towards his abdomen.
Well, at least he wasn’t the only scaredy-cat of the situation.
The reason why he continued to follow them was unknown to him. Seokjin at least had as an excuse that he knew the two idiots he considered his closest friends for years, and this would not be the last of the non-sense and vaguely embarrassing things they did together. Also, Namjoon had been down for a few weeks, as his research was not giving great results.
Who knew, maybe their fantastic quest would at least cheer him up a little.
Seokjin would still have preferred if they had waited the next morning to do whatever this hunt was.
He had lost the thread of his thoughts, no longer remembering what he wanted to ask.
Namjoon beat him to it.
“Hyung, are you sure it’s this way?”
“Don’t tell me you already forgot?” Yoongi said. He was panting a bit. He had spent the last few months practically holed up between home and study, and Seokjin felt from his breath that his body had to get used again to move for more than his daily route. “It hasn’t been that long since the last time we’ve been here.”
Seokjin sighed.
Three years.
Lately, he was becoming out of shape himself. A bit cranky, even. And that day was the first time in what felt like forever that they had enough time to spend together without rushing for a reason or another. He had also the suspicion this was some sort of complicated plan for Yoongi to impress their new acquaintance. Not that he thought it was working that well, from the snappy movements he could see from the tail of his eye. But Seokjin supposed he could humor them for the rest of the evening.
“As if you would remember” he muttered, knowing the others could hear him all the same.
“Ohi” the one concerned gasped outraged, “I can’t believe you are the one to talk hyung ” he continued as it was an insult.
“I told you a million times” he defended himself, already knowing where this was headed to “it was a joke” he finished, dragging his sounds to let Yoongi know how exasperated he was.
“What a convenient joke that one was” was what he received in response.
After a good half an hour they had spent going straight into the thick woods, the trees were starting to get thinner. They were finally approaching the uphill path that would lead them to the other side of the promontory.
“Tell him Namjoonie, you know it was a joke” he fake pleaded.
“You two are impossible.”
He was going to protest for the little help he received when a little giggle made him remember Hoseok’s presence.
“You three are so funny,” he said, voice a bit breathy like he was trying to restrain his laughter, “would you mind explaining what you’re talking about?” he raised an eyebrow.
“Sure, why not” Seokjin already bearing for the counter-attack “this old man here,” Yoongi said pointing at his chest “forgot the day of my birthday, and has even the guts of calling himself one of my best friends”
“Oh, man! The betrayal”, Hoseok amused him with a scandalized expression, which well complimented the puppy-like pout on Yoongi’s face. The spell was broken when he noticed the smugness in Yoongi’s eyes, and the serious expression gave way to a peal of ill-concealed laughter.
“Yah! Don’t listen to him.” He drew Hoseok’s attention to himself with his hand, then proceeding to put it in front of his mouth in a conspiratorial way without being bothered to actually keep his tone low “He’s a drama queen let me tell you.”
“As if!” Yoongi exclaimed, swatting at his shoulder. He dodged it, and hide behind Hoseok.
“See, what did I tell you!”
Namjoon was watching them, snorting from time to time, and squinting his eyes as if to assess whether to intervene or not.
“Hoseok-ssi, I’m sorry for them. They are both awful and if you keep up enough with them I can’t guarantee you’ll be safe from their banters,” he finally decided to say.
“You can call me Hoseok,” he offered him a small smile “and thank you for warning me”
“Same, you can call me Namjoon”.
Yoongi and Seokjin snorted at the same time.
“Yeah, yeah warnings warning. Whatever.” Seokjin nudged Hosek’s shoulder “He’s fooling you with his big words”
“Agreed. He’ll make you believe he’s a nerd and then you’ll have to spend the entire travel of his graduation to search for his ID card in every motel and gas station you stopped by”
“They were 14, by the way”
“And his ID card was in his backpack”
“For the whole time”
He enjoyed watching Namjoon face becoming redder and redder as they were going along, and even more the rambling splutter of his friend. After a few blows, Namjoon managed to find most of his composure, as well as the words.
“Hyung!! Why are you dragging me? Weren’t we talking about how you are an old man who forgets his friends’ birthdays?”
“You had to think about that before being useless. And about that, how many times I have to repeat that I sent him the greetings the day before on purpose for you to believe me?”
He already explained to them it was because-
“Oh my” Hoseok interrupted his thoughts with his laughter “Was it because you would’ve been the first one to greet him?”
“Exactly! See, he understood it!”
Hoeseok doubled on his spot in a fit of giggles.
“Oh, hyung- I sensed you would be the type to do this kind of thing,” he said, drying the tears at the corner of his eyes with the back of his hand and walking past him to reach beside Yoongi, who was slowing down before them.
“Ehi! What do you mean?”
Yoongi stopped in his track and turned around, rolling his eyes.
“This way,” he extended an arm to his left, speaking mostly to Hoseok, “at least you know that one of us knows how to make his brain function”.
They were walking for twenty minutes when they stopped again. It had really been too long since they had been there. Seokjin no longer recognized the place, although if he concentrated long enough he could almost tell to himself that little had changed.
There was a time when they had spent hours and hours studying that creek until they had it memorized like the back of their hand.
The water was still crystal clear. And that place kept its charm of secret land and stolen adventures.
Those trees had seen them grow, those were the white rocks and shaped by the tide that had seen them climb and reveal their secrets, sometimes between tears, sometimes between laughter and accomplices. The air was still soaked with the smell of salt.
Without realizing what he was doing, Seokjin found himself taking a breath of that air at the top of his lungs. It did not matter how much time had passed, and how much time they spent at the port. Nothing could be compared to that smell.
In his mind, Seokjin had categorized it as the smell of nostalgia. Not just any nostalgia. It was like when he came home for the first time after finishing his internship in Stockholm, just before he moved into his new apartment, and his mother had prepared his favorite dish. It was strange, to be faced with something he knew so well and to have the feeling of seeing it for the first time.
While he was trying to memorize again all the details he could see, comparing them from time to time to the many memories that were resurfacing, he found himself dwelling on the expression of Hoseok. His eyes were wide open, his mouth slightly gaping.
Never had he found himself wanting to read someone’s thoughts that badly. He had a need, which at any other time he would recognize as childish, to know what the young man thought of the place.
He felt extremely vulnerable like someone had a spotlight on his emotions.
“So,” Hoseok whispered, now more guarded “what do we do now? Should we hide to- to see... them ?”
And it dawned on him again the reason they were there in the first place.
Hoseok was basically a stranger to them.
They had seen him often at the harbor, and they spoke sometimes, but never like that morning.
Seokjin had not even understood yet why and how, but now he was with them, in their secret place to try and find the very reason they never went back to that place in the first place.
Find the truth about the sirens. Not that Seokjin believed that kind of thing.
But after that night, that feeling that everything was about to collapse at any moment, the weight that seemed to crush them to the ground... tha t was real.
It wasn’t the same coming back to that place, after.
The sun had set long ago, but they had decided to stay a little longer. That week it had brought with it scorching heat, and the shade of the trees and the wind that crept into the backwash was too pleasant to let them already go.
They had waited and waited. But for some reason, it always seemed too early to leave.
And then Namjoon noticed the golden reflection, illuminated by the moon, between the ripples of the water.
They got close, they got curious. And then it all went downhill.
Those shrieking screams had filled their ears, their hearts. Everything had suddenly become too big and too scary. They started running before they could do anything else. They ran into the night, the flashlights forgotten, trying as much as they could not stumble into the ground and not collide. They only started talking again when they arrived at the port. Namjoon and Yoongi had sworn that they had seen sirens. With tails and claws. Seokjin only remembered the darkness, and from that moment on he had always categorized the event as a nightmare with open eyes. It had been too hot that week.
It was months before Yoongi and Namjoon stopped talking about it. Then the research began, and the "supernatural hunts". Seokjin suspected that they had more to do with the fact that they enjoyed it and that they enjoyed making fun of his little affinity with horror and the supernatural, than a genuine desire to understand what had happened.
They had never entered that part of the beach again, and Seokjin believed that they had left that part of their pasts behind.
And then that morning he found that golden flake, no longer than a finger.
Not that Seokjin believed anything was true, or that it was a coincidence that of all the people who were at the port, Yoongi had the good fortune to find that scale. But he couldn’t deny that coming back to that place gave him the creeps.
He felt he was being watched again, only this time he didn’t want to turn around.
It was probably Hoseok.
This reminded him that he had not paid attention to what Yoongi had answered his question.
He asked no further questions and followed the shadow of Hoseok behind the small shrubs on the right.
He was fixing his jacket so he could sit on it when he realized not everyone was hiding.
“Where is the idiot, anyway?” he said, his voice hoarse for not speaking in a while.
“I’m right here,” Yoongi said, scoffing.
“Surprisingly enough, I’m not talking about you,” he deadpanned, not missing a beat, “ where is Namjoon?”
“You never listen to me when I talk, do you? He’s hiding in the trees on the other side. We thought it would give us more opportunities to spot them.”
“Then wouldn’t it be better if we split up, too?”
“If you’d listened to me, you would have known that your place should be down there, behind those trees,” he said pointing at the pines in front of them.
“Couldn’t have you told me sooner?”
“Hurry up,” said Yoongi laughing, “the sun is going down.”
When Seokjin found himself alone, it was as if the wind had stopped blowing.
His clothes were heavy and stuck on him. He tried not to think about it.
All he had left was to wait.
Everything around him was motionless. There was no leaf moving in the wind, no insect flying over his head, no wave on the body of water he could see, not even some foam. Everything was waiting with him.
Little by little the sun had begun its descent, the orange tones had taken the place of the afternoon blue. The sky had become a bright red color, which did nothing to dampen the deaf anxiety that was growing inside. The water had become a sea of fire, even the trees were burning. His hands were surrounded by a reddish patina. When he looked up, what he could see through the leaves of Yoongi’s face was also painted the same color. In the air, he smelled something burning.
Seokjin closed his eyes. When he reopened them, the silver glows of the moon greeted him. Everything had returned motionless, and, apparently, serene. The air was fresh, sometimes too cold. And then the water started rippling on the surface again. Something told him there was something underneath that was making it move.
It looked like he didn’t have to wait for much longer.
The ripples had started to focus on points on the water. Two..., no three. There were three points where the current was concentrating. They started out as little streams, but they were growing more and more on the surface. After a few minutes, they had become like small vortexes ready to suck them up. Or ready to let something out.
Just at that moment, three bodies came out of the water.
He managed to initially only catch the golden glow of their scales. They were huge. If those were fish, Seokjin had never seen one this big. And anyway, he couldn’t figure out how they could get so close to the coast without anyone else noticing. He caught Namjoon’s amazed look, and he signaled him to stay in his place. They stood still, once again, waiting. This time the silence was broken by a gust of wind every now and then.
Then the creatures began to laugh.
Shivers ran all over Seokjin’s body at that sound. Fish didn’t laugh. He tried to remember all the animals that could make such a sound, but none of them was a huge fish with golden-reflected scales. And none of them could imitate the sound that well. Now he wouldn’t have been able to get out of his hiding even if he wanted to.
His friends, evidently, were not of the same opinion, if the figure of Namjoon who was slowly approaching on the ledge of the white rocks to look down towards the water was some sort of clue. Seokjin wanted to shout to him to be careful, to go back behind the shrubs, which was dangerous, that this joke had lasted too long. He wanted to shout so many rambunctious and conflicting things, but no less urgent, that in the end, he could not get out of his mouth even a gasp. He could only stand by and watch, with his heart pounding in his ears as he got closer and closer.
He saw him kneel down, lean from the rocks, and start talking to those creatures. He saw him bend in half and begin to tremble, only to realize that it was a laugh. He saw him nodding to them, still hidden, to get them to approach the creatures in turn.
He saw Yoongi coming out of his hiding place, nodding to Hoseok to join him. Not still sure that he could stand on his legs, Seokjin followed him.
He could not take many steps when he saw that spectacle that he had never thought possible before his eyes. The creatures, the sirens, were having fun showing Namjoon water games, while jumping and moving on each other. Their bodies were covered with those semi-transparent scales with golden reflections, they had long black claws that moved on the water to make it sound. Every time they laughed, they showed their sharp teeth. They were pale, they gave the impression that I could see inside them. Except for their eyes, black as the moonless nights. Those eyes that from time to time returned to him in his dreams. The creatures were magnificent.
Everything was so different from the last time.
Then all of a sudden that overwhelming feeling came back. Seokjin felt as if someone had wanted to open his head to know what he was thinking. It was unbearable. He felt breathless.
He turned around to find out what was going on.
And then he saw him. Hoseok. Or what he thought was Hoseok. It was him, he recognized him, but he was covered with an aura that he did not recognize. His eyes were half-closed, focused on something behind him. His posture was much more upright than he remembered. His face was what confounded him the most. He seemed to struggle, as if the thought of doing something was hurting him.
"Hoseok?..." he tried. Those eyes focused for the first time on his figure.
Seokjin realized he was mumbling something.
“What do you mean it wasn’t supposed to be like this? Hosek, what are you talking about? Hoseok?”
The boy kept looking at him without answering his questions, then closed his eyes.
Seokjin wanted to scream, to get away. He tried hard to do both, but he couldn’t do anything. A huge weight crushed his chest.
The void of the night fell on his thoughts.