Work Text:
Once upon time, there was a little merman. He peaked at a young age, got the hang of hunting when he was almost twelve. He was the best hunter in his family, because he wasn’t afraid. He fit into the small, dark spaces most other merchildren were afraid of. Sometimes they said it made him reckless, but it was worth it when he arrived home with a large, bloody fish in tow and saw his mother’s pleased smile.
On evenings where he delivered his fill, his mother would braid sea flowers into his hair, arrowhead and lotus, and he would feel so beautiful he’d want to cry.
“Don’t show your father,” his mother always reminded him.
At first Beomgyu didn’t understand why he couldn’t show his father his pretty hair. He loved his father. When you love someone you want to show them pretty things. But his father was a kind and well-loved ruler, and as Beomgyu grew older, he learned what it meant to have a reputation.
Perhaps this is how he grew to like abandoned ships, empty submarines, even pieces of trash. He liked building things, and he liked tucking himself away from an unfair society inside of them. Once, he built an entire castle of water bottles and toothpaste tubes and cartons of milk. Merpeople didn’t drink milk, but they could read. Beomgyu figured milk contained a nutrient that humans needed to survive. Merpeople didn’t think much about nutrients either. All the nutrients they needed were contained in what they hunted.
Beomgyu’s older brother, Beomseok, was the prince of their kingdom and his father’s most trusted advisors. When their father was away on long-term hunts, he led the merpeople with grace and kindness. His father had chosen strong, masculine names for his sons, but as they aged their reputations separated at a fork in the road. Folks considered Beomseok the brains, while Beomgyu was all brawn, all trouble. Restless and airheaded. Too soft.
This reputation earned him popularity among the younger, more rebellious generation of merpeople. He and his best friend, Taeha, who elders said was too crass, had their own little grotto of human collections. Merpeople didn’t hate humans. In fact they were heavily influenced by their societies. The new generation of merpeople studied human society in school so they were no longer afraid of them. The council says the more you know about something, the less afraid you will be. So they were curious about them, about how their societies were changing. Most of the older generation were afraid to engage with that curiosity. Not Beomgyu and Taeha.
Taeha loved school, but Beomgyu loved exploring more. After years of friendship, Taeha grew to appreciate Beomgyu’s curiosity.
“Did you bring the mirror?” asked Taeha as she spread the sea vines to let Beomgyu into their grotto.
Merpeople don’t look at themselves very often. It was considered an egotistical practice to hoard mirrors. The first time Beomgyu saw himself was in the reflection of an old shipwrecked mirror. The mirror was intact, but it was covered in smudges and smears. At first he thought those smudges and smears were on his skin, but he quickly realized that when he moved, the marks didn’t move with him.
It was the first time he saw what he looked like with flowers in his hair. He had always known he was beautiful. It was the first time his beauty was confirmed.
🐚
It’s 9pm in Yongsan. The curtains are open so Beomgyu can see the glittering city and his own body. He tosses and turns, leg thrown over a human-sized pillow. He can hear Taehyun and Yeonjun chattering in the kitchen. They’re cooking something, a dish they’re trying for the first time. It makes Beomgyu feel lonely and restless.
Maybe it’s because he listened to IU’s Love Poem before going to sleep and the song requires his emotional energy. Maybe it’s because of what he said and how it lingers, even after the haircut and the colour change.
“If I was a girl and we met outside the company, you would date me.”
He hadn’t considered the implications of his words. He especially didn’t consider that any of the members would step out of their booths. But Kai had, and all Beomgyu had done, even his laughter, was wonder why, why, what could Kai possibly want with him.
Maybe it was the way it was phrased.
If I was a girl, the prefix assigned to heteronormativity. Necessary for the image of an idol boy group.
If I was a girl, Beomgyu thinks. In another life. If I was a girl in another life. If we met in another life.
What if I was a girl in another life?
What if I was a girl?
🐚
Selfishly, Beomgyu didn’t want to bring the mirror for Taeha to see. He discovered it on his own and he wanted to keep it for himself. It wasn’t easy to find. He put a lot of effort into cleaning it up.
But he thought of how disappointed Taeha would look when he showed up empty-handed, how her lips would get tight and her eyes would look smaller, so he’d lugged the mirror from his shipwreck to their grotto, pushing it on the seafloor in front of him as he swam. It was far too heavy for him to carry in his arms.
When he presented it to Taeha, her big eyes lit up. She spun, her tail flickering, and rushed to see her reflection.
With the way Beomgyu cleaned it, Taeha looked far clearer and more beautiful than Beomgyu had.
When he told her as much, she shrugged. She said the comparison was arbitrary and pulled Beomgyu in beside her to look at their reflections together.
“I want to braid my hair again,” Beomgyu frowned. It was pulled into a ponytail, exposing the angles of his face. This was the way his father says it must be, in order to look like an authoritative merman. Merman are nothing without the power to lead.
Taeha had shorter hair than Beomgyu. It was silvery and rested on her shoulders. She always wore it down. She didn’t like flowers though, said they were impractical for hunting, always falling out and floating away.
After they had their fill of each other’s images, Beomgyu sat on a stone and let Taeha get to work on his hair. She braided slower and messier than his mother, leaving a few strands to fall around Beomgyu’s face. The braids were lopsided, the left shorter than the right. She had nothing to tie them with so she directed Beomgyu to hold them while she sawed knotweed from the floor of the grotto with her sharp talons.
When Beomgyu checked the mirror again, his heart pounded. It didn’t take much. Beomgyu never, ever, asked for much.
“Why do you like that?” Taeha wondered. She was sitting on a rockbed, her purple tail swaying rhythmically.
Ever since they were merchildren, she has always been curious. She could accept any viewpoint and opinion once it was explained properly to her, even if she didn’t always agree.
But Beomgyu wasn’t sure how to explain, so he just said, “it’s pretty.”
He expected Taeha to scoff, or ask more questions. But she only smiled. “I’d rather be handsome,” she said.
🐚
The logical thing to do would be to occupy his brain with something else. So Beomgyu games with Soobin until the crack of dawn. He sleeps until four and then works hard whatever schedules come their way.
He doesn’t realize he’s wearing himself out, never does, until Taehyun hands him a glass of water one morning and looks like he’s about to give him terrible news.
“This is very bad, hyung,” he says solemnly. He reaches out and massages Beomgyu’s shoulders the way you do when you’re preparing an athlete for a big game.
Beomgyu feels like he’s about to be diagnosed with something fatal. “What’s very bad?”
“You need to take better care of your health or you’re going to collapse,” Taehyun warns him.
“I’ll sleep earlier,” Beomgyu concedes. He doesn’t have energy to fight. He leans his head on Taehyun’s shoulder and lets the younger boy’s steadiness wash over him.
And then Kai is in the kitchen too, hunting through the fridge. “Morning,” he hums.
Beomgyu downs all the water. He puts the empty glass in the sink. Maybe he shouldn’t have let them cut his hair. It’s still longer than the other members’, but Kai’s stares don’t linger like they used to. Whenever their eyes meet it’s always brief.
“Take it, will you?” Kai is saying. Unbeknownst to Beomgyu, Kai was trying to hand him a piece of sweet bread for the past few seconds. “Oppa wants to share.”
Beomgyu takes the bread. He catches Kai’s arm before he leaves the kitchen. “Thank you oppa,” Beomgyu says playfully. Inside, his heart is racing.
A little later, Taehyun slips into Beomgyu’s room. Beomgyu is sitting on the floor next to his bed and doesn’t bother getting up to put on pants over his boxers.
“What is it now?” Beomgyu sighs, “appa.”
Taehyun rolls his eyes at the joke. He sits on the bed and begins pulling Beomgyu’s hair into an apple stem at the top of his head. “Why don’t you talk to Kai about what’s going on with you?” he asks.
“What’s going on with me?” Beomgyu says. Playing dumb is his go-to stratergy for getting Taehyun off his back. Taehyun is impatient with dumb people.
Except when he’s worried about them.
“You’ve been acting strange,” Taehyun says, “and I think it has something to do with Kai and what happened when we were filming To Do. Maybe the noona thing too.”
Beomgyu says nothing. He lets Taehyun squeeze the apple stem in his fingers and then release it, the hair spilling back over Beomgyu’s forehead.
🐚
There was a sound outside the grotto. Beomgyu’s hair was still in braids, Taeha trying to fix the lopsidedness of them to little avail. They were singing the songs of the sea, lullabies that mother mermaids sing to their children. Beomgyu’s voice was too low-pitched for most of them, so he began to imagine that Taeha’s voice belonged to him instead. Taeha had such pretty high-notes.
When they heard the sound, Beomgyu stopped singing first. It broke the illusion. Taeha’s voice carried on without him, reminding him that it wasn’t his. A girl’s voice.
Taeha shot up from the rock bed and motioned Beomgyu behind her with a steady hand. She was always ready to protect them.
“Quiet oppa,” she directed in a whisper, “he doesn’t have to know you’re here.”
A shadow filled the sea floor outside their seaweed curtain. Beomgyu knew from the tall broad shape who it was. His heart sank. There wasn’t time to hide anything. The scene played in his head before it happened, the yelling, the hurt, the possibility of banishment. He had been warned since the day he could remember things. And even if he hadn’t, hunters have sharp foresight, good instincts.
His father had found them. Beomgyu knew the fun he had was over.
🐚
Of course “Hey Birthday Girl,” is the first thing Kai says to him when he returns from his birthday live.
Beomgyu laughs, warmth spreading to his toes. “Hey oppa,” he says.
“Oh so we’re still doing that,” Kai observes.
“You started it.”
“Are you pouting?”
They’re alone, so Kai reaches out to take Beomgyu’s hand, drawing him close.
“Are we going to kiss?” Beomgyu asks, because Kai hasn’t said anything. It’s only happened a few times before, but none of them have ever been spontaneous. Kai always asks permission first. Beomgyu thinks that’s charming, but unnecessary. Kai can have a kiss whenever he wants.
And maybe Kai doesn’t stare at him as much anymore, but his kisses are just as tender. He cups Beomgyu’s jaw and presses softly into his mouth, drawing a sigh from him.
“Happy birthday,” Kai says.
“You already wished me.”
Kai shakes his head. “It’s different with the birthday kiss. That’s how I wanted to wish you.”
Beomgyu tangles his hands behind his back. He’s trying to hide, but Kai won’t let him.
“Why?” Beomgyu asks.
🐚
Leaving home is never easy, but Beomgyu knew the day would come. He never thought Taeha would want to come with him.
“There’s nothing here for me,” Taeha said as she helped him collect sparse belongings. They couldn’t salvage most of the objects from their grotto, but they had shards of the mirror and a few waterlogged books.
Their eyes locked and Beomgyu accepted it. This was his best friend. Without him, without a family, there truly was nothing for her in the kingdom. Perhaps Beomgyu bore the weight of expectation, but Taeha bore a different weight. The weight of loneliness.
More than anything, neither of them wanted to be alone.
So they fled, swimming so quickly Beomgyu thought he would snap from his tail’s taut exertion. He felt like he was stretching his scales as far as they could go, his fins working overtime to get them to a safer part of the ocean.
One day he would see his mother again, but his worry now was more immediate than that. They must find a civilization of merpeople that would accept them into their hierarchy, to let Beomgyu hunt the way he was good at, and let Taeha teach the merchildren the way she knew how.
It took months of swimming and resting and hunting what they could without other merpeople becoming territorial and chasing them away.
Eventually, there was a spark. Quite literally. A flash of something in the distance. Beomgyu and Taeha followed the light.
At the end of their swim they came across a small grotto, similar to the one they used to share. This was smaller, overgrown, but they could tell someone was inside. A bloom of jellyfish were collected around the entrance.
“Are you guarding this place?” Taeha asked them.
They only gave her disapproving looks, no answers. Jellyfish could be mean if they didn’t know you.
So Taeha and Beomgyu waited. They hid behind a large rock covered in moss and waited until the jellyfish fell asleep, their bodies flipped upside down like tiny translucent bowls.
In the grotto they found a merperson. The merperson had blonde hair that seemed to shimmer. They were asleep on the ocean floor, their pink tail tucked around their body like a blanket.
“Runaways?” the merperson asks. Their eyes are still shut.
Beomgyu startles, gripping Taeha’s arm.
This wasn’t just any merperson. As Beomgyu’s eyes wandered around the grotto, he saw little balls of light in a variety of colours. Each ball was a different size, and floated aimlessly. There were some human trinkets scattered around, but they didn’t seem as important as the coloured balls.
In a daze, Beomgyu reached out and touched a green one.
“I WISH FOR HAPPINESS!” the ball screeched.
Taeha let out a yelp and shoved Beomgyu behind her protectively.
“Oh you’ve gone too far,” said the merperson on the seafloor. They rose, eyes fluttering open, and Beomgyu saw that their pupils were strange. Transparent and colourless. When they looked directly at them he felt dizzy.
“Please don’t touch the wishes,” said the merperson. For someone who’s supposed to be angry, they were strangely calm. They ran a hand over Beomgyu’s hair. It felt cold, like he was being touched by a ghost.
“Kai?” Taeha asked, “the witch of the East sea?
“Huh?” Beomgyu added helpfully.
“That’s me,” Kai said cheerfully.
“For a witch you’re awfully happy,” Beomgyu said, regretting his bluntness as he was met with a judgmental gaze. Perhaps that, like other pieces of his life, was a trait he’d have to lose.
“You shouldn’t be so quick to stereotype,” Kai the witch of the East sea said. “Of course I’m happy. I grant wishes. Anyone who gives people what they wish would be happy, don’t you think?” Kai laughed and it pierced Beomgyu’s ears with how sharp it was.
He felt his brain rattle around and then come to a rest. He brought his hands up to his ears and stared at her incredulously.
“So,” Kai said, “what is it you both want?”
Beomgyu exchanged a glance with Taeha.
“Just a place to stay,” Taeha said.
“Ah, of course you do, ” Kai agreed. They looked at Beomgyu from head to tail, their head bobbing.
“Misunderstanding father, strict family life, no opportunity to express yourself. Always second to your brother, but you have a heart of gold, don’t you? That’s rare. Most people would grow jealous and insolent.”
Beomgyu was about to say something, to protest even though he didn’t know which parts were worth protesting, when Kai pointed their tail in Taeha’s direction.
“His keeper,” Kai said, “protective spirit, a lot of fear inside. You’d end the world before you let your friend suffer. People say you’re the smart one, but you want to be a lot more like your friend, don’t you?”
“I don’t think I understand,” Taeha stuttered.
“That’s a lie,” Kai noticed, “you understand everything. All you have to do is acknowledge it.”
Kai hummed as they set places for the two to sleep. Beomgyu and Taeha were surprised at how easy it was, that the ever so infamous witch of the East sea had a place for them to stay. But Beomgyu knew that magic was rare, and once you had the propensity for it, you could either become generous or greedy. Not even his all-powerful king of a father could use magic.
He supposed Kai was the former, the generous kind of magic user. He’d never met a real witch, but Kai didn’t fit the general image of them. They were often thought of as dark and unfeeling creatures, most of them merwomen. Kai didn’t seem like a merwoman, nor did they seem like a merman.
The best word Beomgyu could think of to describe Kai was ethereal. Stil, it was hard to trust someone so beautiful.
“You don’t think Kai is trying to kidnap us, do you?” Beomgyu asked Taeha as they were tucked into a nook behind Kai’s biggest rock.
Taeha shook her head. “Kai has the best reputation of all the witches. They are kind to people in need. They say whatever you ask for, you get, as long as you’re not asking out of greed.”
“How would Kai know if what you’re wishing for is out of greed or not?”
“I have my ways,” Kai answered. They appeared from behind the rock, their head popping out comically, and Beomgyu suppressed a shout.
“Don’t worry,” Kai continued, “I don’t reach inside your thoughts or anything like that. I don’t believe in invasive methods, they’re old school. My method is to hear your heartbeat.”
Beomgyu touched his chest. “My heartbeat.”
“Your heart races for different reasons,” Kai explained, “I can tell whether it’s racing out of love, out of fear, out of greed, out of desperation. I can read your heart.”
“Can you read it right now?” Taeha wondered.
Kai nodded, their lovely hair spooling around their face. “Of course, but I’m not the type to breach my guests' privacy.” Kai's eyes met Beomgyu’s briefly, and Beomgyu felt his heart begin to patter. He wondered if Kai was doing it, or if he was only aware of it because of the conversation. His face felt warm under Kai’s gaze. He didn’t feel like he was being studied despite the staring. He felt comfortable.
🐚
“Why do I want to kiss you?”
Beomgyu nods.
“Because you’re pretty,” Kai says, “and pretty people should be kissed often. So, happy birthday, birthday girl.”
Their lips meet in another kiss. Beomgyu loses himself in this one, replaying the word over and over in his head. He’s barefoot, his feet press against the tile. At first they’re cold, but then they get so warm that he thinks his footprints will remain long after they break apart into their respective rooms.
Pretty, pretty, pretty. Boys can be pretty. Beomgyu wants it to mean something else entirely. He wants Kai to mean every word. He doesn't want it to be a joke.
🐚
Beomgyu woke in the middle of the night. His mind felt foggy, and at first he couldn't place where he was and why he wasn’t staring up at the ceiling of his shell-tiled bedroom. Once he remembered, it hit him in the chest, and he felt breathless with sadness. He missed his mother terribly, the way she taught him to sing, the way she did his hair. All the secrets she kept between them.
“You are like my daughter,” she had said once, and when Beomgyu took it as an insult because he didn’t understand her tone, she added, “I’ve always wanted a daughter like you. ”
Quietly, he let his tail swim him out of the grotto. He found Kai sitting outside, sorting flowers into different piles. There was a pile for lotus, a pile for arrowheads, another for lilies.
All sea witches were immortal, but Kai looked around the same age as Beomgyu and Taeha. Beomgyu wondered if this was a face they put on to make them feel comfortable.
He was too nervous to speak, so he sat in front of Kai and watched them sort the flowers with delicate hands and a half-smile. Surely Kai knew that Beomgyu was there, but they made no effort to strike up a conversation. Perhaps they knew how Beomgyu was feeling from the slowness of his heartbeat.
Beomgyu craved the flowers in his hair again. As soon as he thought it, his heart sped up, and Kai looked at him, feeling it.
“You have to be ready to wish for it,” Kai said, “come sit with your back to me.”
With nothing to lose, Beomgyu complied.
“Do you trust me that much already?” Kai asked from behind Beomgyu, “you’re putting yourself in a vulnerable position. You should be more careful. I don’t think they’re looking for you, but you didn’t know that.”
“You don’t know why I did that,” Beomgyu said, “you’re wrong. I’m careful. A hunter always is. It’s just that now I’m ready to wish.”
There was something he didn’t say. And that is that yes, he did trust Kai. Just as Kai’s magic allowed them to see the heart’s of others, Beomgyu’s hunter instinct allowed him to see that soft creature inside Kai’s smile. The creature lay down for Beomgyu and asked him to take. Beomgyu knew he could trust Kai like he knew which plants were poisonous for merpeople, like he knew the sun would rise in the East every morning, even if the ocean was dark and he couldn’t always see its light.
Kai touched Beomgyu’s hair with gentle hands. “In a little while,” Kai said, “think it over and be precise.”
Beomgyu nodded.
Kai began to braid with a smile on their face. Beomgyu could see it when he turned to the side.
“How can you be so happy all the time?” he asked.
Kai chuckled. “I simply can’t be sad. My powers are made to do what the merpeople need. And in these times, merpeople need someone they can smile with. Even if their smiles don’t last forever, mine do.”
🐚
After dance practice, Beomgyu stays lying on the hardwood. His body is tired from hours of perfecting its movements, heavy with a sudden bout homesickness, drained of colour and creative spark. Kai crawls over, lies on his side to stare. There’s no pity in his eyes, only understanding.
“Beomgyu hyung,” Kai says.
“Kai,” Beomgyu says. He feels a wide smile spread his face apart.
“Will you go out with me?”
“I go out with you everyday,” Beomgyu muses, purposely dense just to see how Kai will refute him, “to the convenience store, to the practice room, to the studio.”
Kai groans. “Will you date me? As my boyfriend.”
Beomgyu sits up. Everyone’s gone back to the dorms. It’s only them, with their messy hair and sore necks. Kai looks younger when he’s tired, like he did when Beomgyu took him to his home in Daegu and all he did was sleep on Beomgyu’s bed and eat dried fish snacks.
It’s a leap of faith, but the leap's not so big when it’s Kai. It's more of a hop.
“Can I be your girlfriend?” Beomgyu asks, “I mean. If I was a girl and we met just like this, would you date me?”
“Yes,” Kai says.
Kai sits up too, crawls close and wraps his arms around Beomgyu’s uncertain body. He rests his chin on Beomgyu’s shoulder and breathes in.
“Why?” Beomgyu asks, “I’m not so great. I’m not the best at anything, not even at knowing myself. I can’t give you anything.”
“What do I need?” Kai asks.
Beomgyu shrugs. “I don’t know, Pokémon bread?”
“You’ve never made me sad,” Kai says, “not even once.”
Beomgyu supposes that answers any iterations of the same silly question.
🐚
Kai popped the bubble. It landed over Beomgyu in a spectrum of white and pink hues, clinging to her skin before falling away to reveal a purple tail with scales that looked shiny and new.
Beomgyu made a beautiful mermaid, with hair that cascaded down to nearly graze the ocean floor.
“Ah,” Taeha said, “so this is what you wished for.”
Beomgyu looked over with a head shake. “Not directly. But Kai knows me well enough to understand.”
Taeha tilted forward, curious.
“I wished to be comfortable with myself,” Beomgyu explained in a new voice, a delicate, higher pitched voice.
Kai took Beomgyu’s hand. They spun in a celebratory circle, bubbles forming around them with the speed of it. When they were done, breathless and flushed as much as merpeople can be under cool water, Kai observed Beomgyu cheerfully.
“I’ve always wanted friends,” Kai said, which made Taeha embrace them cheerfully.
“You know,” Beomgyu said later, “you don’t have to always be happy in front of me. You’ve granted me the most important wish of my life. It’s only fair that you can be honest with me.”
They were sitting outside the grotto again, Taeha fast asleep inside after an evening feast of crab, cuttlefish, and oyster.
A pearl rolled around in Beomgyu’s hand, then dropped to the ocean floor for Kai to collect. Pearls were used to make the wishing bubbles for the merpeople who knew what they desired.
Kai shook their head. “If what you’re asking is for me to show you sadness,” they said, “it’s too hard. Because when I talk to you I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, even if I’m not smiling.”
Beomgyu always thought that a merperson had to have a talent to be useful to the larger ecosystem. Leadership was Beomseok’s talent, hunting was Beomgyu’s talent, educating was Taeha’s. But there seems to be something more important than that.
As Beomgyu grew into an adult mermaid away from his pod and her family, the focus of life seemed to shift.
Being the cause for someone’s happiness felt important at the moment, just as important as the things merpeople do to survive. Maybe finding happiness too, was something merpeople did to survive. Maybe happiness was essential, and Beomgyu’s father was the one who was wrong. At that moment, Beomgyu missed her mother. She hoped she was doing well. She understood how to make Beomgyu happy, much like Kai did.
“Do jellyfish feel emotions?” Beomgyu asked Kai who knew everything about emotions.
This was years later, when Beomgyu was settled into life with the Witch of the East Sea and Taeha was an educator, working for the merparents who left their children in Kai’s care. Kai and their pod had moved further East to avoid getting caught up in conflicts surrounding food sources. Beomgyu and Taeha traveled with them. It was even further from Beomgyu’s original home, but it was alright. They were happy.
“Jellyfish do feel emotions,” Kai replied, “but humans don’t think so, because they think emotions are something you can see. With facial expressions, gestures. Jellyfish always look the same except when they’re sleeping upside down. They don’t have hearts but I can feel it in the vibrations of their skin. It carries years of memories.”
“Their skin.”
Kai nodded.
“It must be a burden,” Beomgyu said, touching Kai’s arms. It shimmered under Beomgyu’s fingers. “It must be a burden to feel everything for every creature who feels.”
Kai looked at Beomgyu and smiled. “They’re not burdens anymore. There are stories of darkness and stories of light. I’m sharing them all with you, because you have taken them on with me, because you are good, because you are you.”
Beomgyu finally took Kai’s hand. They were quiet for a long time, watching schools of fish whisper and gossip about them. Have you heard? The Witch of East Sea has a companion, a mermaid who was once a merman. This is the longest that crazy witch Kai has gone without scaring a merperson away.
Though what they said was wrong and mean-spirited, Beomgyu could forgive them, could forgive anything alongside Kai’s gentle giving spirit. Because Kai’s heart was open, Beomgyu’s was open too, and they could read each other easily.
“It’s the greatest gift I could ever have,” Kai said, “it brings me new merpeople and sea friends everyday. It brought you to me, dear one. It kept you safe here. We must be grateful for these things.”
“I am grateful,” Beomgyu replied. Let the other sea creatures say what they wanted. This was home.
🐚
Beomgyu’s head is on Kai’s shoulder, watching Kai play “Falling Slowly” on the guitar. It’s a summer evening after a day of light schedules, and they’re both in their boxers with the AC humming in the corner of Beomgyu’s room.
Kai pauses halfway through the opening chord repetition and looks over at Beomgyu.
“Aren’t you going to sing, unnie?”
Beomgyu grins shyly, whispers, “okay.”
Kai and Beomgyu practiced this song in Daegu too, a mini-concert for Beomgyu’s parents who were more than happy to film them so their other relatives could see.
The memory of it lands softly in Beomgyu’s humming brain as the two of them try to remember the lyrics between chuckles and frustrations and light kisses that leave their lips damp. The chorus has always been Beomgyu’s favourite part.
Take this sinking boat
And point it home
We've still got time
Raise your hopeful voice
You have a choice
You've made it now
“My girlfriend has the prettiest voice,” Kai compliments.
Beomgyu knees are tucked up against Kai’s side. They’re scraped and red, courtesy of falling too many times in practice, mastering a difficult move in which the group has to fall to their knees and slide to their feet again. Kai presses Molang band-aids over them and kisses each one.
“Thank you for taking care of me,” Beomgyu says, unable to hide the pleased smile.
Kai kisses Beomgyu’s forehead next. “I’ll always take care of noona.”
“How cheesy,” Beomgyu grumbles, loving every word.
“And they lived happily ever after,” Kai croons, trying to make it worse.
To Beomgyu, it’s even better.
🐚
Once upon a time, there was a little mermaid. She lived in the prettiest grotto in all the sea, and all the merchildren loved her. She was a fierce hunter, and provided for her pod the best she new how.
"Beomgyu noona," said one merboy, one of Taeha's precocious younger students, "how do you make the flowers stay so neat?"
"Let me show you," Beomgyu smiled. She brought the merboy to her lap and took his long brown hair in her hands. It was then she remembered the hands of her mother, how the thin veins and cool skin always protected her, how the patterns she created had encouraged Beomgyu to dream.
And as she wove the fragrant sea flowers into the boy's hair, she closed her eyes and captured a song. A drawn out beating, the sound of a conch only heard through the ocean's powerful vibrations. Somewhere in the distance, across the great water, her mother was singing. A few feet behind her, Kai, who heard everything, hummed along. And it all came together like a school of rainbow fish. The noise from both sides rippled toward her like a band of shooting stars, and it was louder than anything she had ever heard, and she wasn't afraid. Beomgyu felt happy.