Chapter Text
“Be careful, now.. come on..”
Hyuna nods to her coworkers as the three of them carefully lift the bleeding mer out of the spot in the ocean that’s been dyed red.
The mer was blonde, with golden scales that caught the sunlight and held it like it was sacred and crucial for its survival. By the looks of it, and by Hyuna’s knowledge of mer-variations, he was a betta fish. A golden one, obviously.. those scales were so pretty…
Oh, and then there was the large harpoon sticking into his side. That was causing him to spill more and more blood by the second, which Hyuna should probably pay more attention to instead of his pretty features.
Yeah. Yeah, let’s focus on the mer is dying before we go to why is the mer kinda fine .
Hyuna detaches herself from the mer, while Isaac and Dewey- her coworkers- hold him carefully and transfer him over to the nearest cot on their boat. Dewey looks like he’s ready to just pull the harpoon out straight away, but it takes Isaac scolding him for Dewey to hesitate. Which was enough room for Hyuna to do her work.
Carefully, she positions her hand at the top of the harpoon and the bottom of its handle, while her coworkers hold the mer down in case he starts to stir. Which is the usual for these poor, poor half-humans.
“One…”
Hyuna tightens her grip on the harpoon as she begins to count down.
“Two…”
Dewey and Isaac hold down the mer a little bit more.
“Three!”
Hyuna pulls the harpoon out of the mers side, and as expected, the blonde wakes up due to the sudden burst in pain. He thrashes and screeches, claws attempting to scratch at whatever had hurt him. Dewey and Isaac had the mer’s claws held down, but they were a bit stupid and forgot to hold down his tail. The mer notices this, and then starts waving his tail around aggressively, trying to hit something . Hyuna had to narrowly dodge this guy's tail several times so that she herself wouldn’t get a concussion- that wouldn’t benefit anybody, really.
She carefully stalks up to his side, needle in hand as she puts a hand on his neck.
“Heya, buddy. It’s okay, okay? We’re tryna help you here. Just take some deep breaths…”
Either the words she had said or the needle in her hand must have scared the mer even more, as the thrashing became even
more
violent.
“Hyuna, just inject the sedative, please?!” Dewey cries, as the mer nearly whacks him in the head with his tail. “He’s gonna injure ‘imself more if he keeps this shit up!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know how to do my fuckin’ job!” Hyuna repositions the hand not holding the needle to internally mark the point where she’ll be stabbing the needle in. Once she’s found an acceptable place, she gently and carefully pricks the mer’s neck with the needle, injecting the contents- the sedative- into his blood.
The drug works pretty much instantly- the mer stops thrashing, and his eyes blur the smallest bit. His tail lowers back down on the cot, and he glares at Hyuna with almost no fierceness.
Dewey and Isaac then detach from the mer too to go retrieve the bandages and whatnot to treat the still-bleeding wound. While they do that, Hyuna glances at some writing around the spot she injected the needle.
The word- or more likely, the name - “Luka” was tattooed on the mers neck in black.
There was.. also a number on there. “#1”. What could that possibly even…
Fuck it, no time to get into people’s origin stories. Luka was still fucking dying, and maybe instead of gawking, she should- well, we don’t know- stop him from doing so? Yeah! Yeah, that’s an excellent idea Hyuna.
Then came the whole debacle and process of cleaning the wound, stitching it up, and wrapping bandages around Luka’s waist. The mer was still the entire time- as expected, as that is the effects of sedatives..
By the time Luka was fully stitched up to the best of their ability, they had arrived back at the rehabilitation center, where Hyuna and her crew were able to pick up Luka again to bring him into one of the quarantine tanks. When Luka was dropped into the tank, he simply sank to the bottom without much comment, protest, or movement. It’s just the sedatives, Hyuna had to remind herself. Just the sedatives…
Once they were positive Luka hadn’t died , Hyuna was left to watching him alone whilst she filled out some stupid paperwork to actually register his existence into the system. This was the annoying part of work..
While she was filling out information, her mind kept jumping to topics that didn’t really need to be jumped to. For example..
Why did Luka look so goddamn familiar? And his name, too, if the name on his neck was his- there’d be no reason to have a name etched onto you that wasn’t yours.
She swears she’s seen him before.. hm.
“Ah, whatever.” Hyuna continues filling out the papers, then gets up to go bring them to her boss. There was no need to dwell on the impossible. There are probably a lot of blonde mers out there.. this one couldn’t be the one who killed.. him.
She has to go into this with no bias, anyways. She’s supposed to treat the ward no matter what- it’s stupid to try and avoid someone just because they look like someone who forever traumatized her.
By the time Hyuna returns from her bosses office, the mer had woken up, and was hanging over the edge of his pool with a zoned out expression.
When he saw Hyuna, though, he had the expression she was not expecting- his tail began to swish back and forth as if it were wagging, his eyes lit up (to the best of their ability.. they looked pretty dead), and he had put on a smile.
“Hyuna? Is that really you?” Luka moved himself a bit further in the pool to try and get closer to her. This unsettled her just a bit- how did this guy know her name when she didn’t even…
..Oh. Oh no.
“You are that Luka.” Hyuna says, walking up to the pool and glaring at his features. The latter she formerly found as pretty, but now they seemed vile to her memory.
But yeah, examining his face.. this was the same exact mer who killed her brother 20 years ago. The Luka.
“You didn’t recognize me?” Luka gives her a heartbroken look. She can’t tell if it’s genuine or not. “Well, it’s crabs under the rock now. I’m eternally grateful that I’m able to see you again, dear.”
“Don’t call me that, asshole.” Hyuna swats away Luka’s hand- well, claw- which had been trying to reach for her own hand. As if they were on friendly terms.
Luka looks hurt again, and he retracts himself into the pool a bit further, his expression of hurt deepening even more. But she could see it in his eyes- he was happy . Why could he be happy after what he did?
“I’m going to ask Ivan if I can switch wards with him. I don’t want to deal with your bullshit ever again.” Hyuna turns to go back to her desk.
“Wait- Hyuna!” Luka lifts himself back up far quicker than the stitches would allow, and that causes him to hiss in pain. That hiss is what makes Hyuna turn around- not him calling her. She will never answer his stupid calls again.
“Don’t overdo it. Those stitches are fresher than the strawberries this time of year- any movements too sudden will certainly cause them to burst. And that’d be. a problem for everyone .” Hyuna scolds, putting a hand on the stitches to make sure they didn’t show any signs of bursting. Luka looked far too giddy.
“I promise I won’t say anything. I’ll be nice and do whatever you say, no matter what- just please stay with me. Please? I’ll just hide at the bottom of the pool and never eat if you want me to.” Luka says, the frills on his ears twitching expectantly.
“..Are you going to eat if I leave you?”
“Most likely not.”
…She sighs. Patient over bias. Patient over bias.
No matter what happened in the past between them, and whether she liked it or not, Luka was under Hyuna’s care now. And besides, she doubts Ivan would actually want to swap wards. Not when the ward in question was Till.
“Fine. But one fuck up from you, and Ivan gets to be in here with you instead.”
Luka doesn’t know that it technically isn’t possible. So she can still use it as a threat.
“Of course! I’ll be the most obedient ward you’ve ever had de- Hyuna.” His smile widens and his tail twitches even more in presumed excitement.
Oh, boy. Hyuna thinks, watching his tail with a clouded expression. Just what kind of bullshit have I gotten myself into this time?