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The shore was quiet the morning they met.
A strange quiet—the kind that hums in your bones, that makes the gulls forget to scream. Prince Euijoo crouched beside the seafoam, one hand resting on a jagged rock, the other curled tightly around the hilt of a sword he didn’t know how to use.
He should’ve left when the storm broke. But something had pulled him here. A feeling. A dream. A song, maybe.
Then he saw him.
Sprawled on the wet sand like the sea had coughed him up and changed its mind, the boy’s hair clung to his cheeks in dark, tangled ropes. His skin shimmered faintly blue, like moonlight on water. And his tail—
Euijoo swallowed.
His tail gleamed like the belly of a fish, but prettier, more fluid—something between muscle and magic. Iridescent. Alive.
The boy blinked. Slowly. Then again, faster, coughing saltwater onto the sand. His eyes locked onto Euijoo’s. Wary. Wide. And impossibly bright.
He said something.
A bubbling, guttural phrase that Euijoo didn’t recognize. The prince froze, stunned by the sound of it—like wind in a conch shell. Like something the sea had forgotten to teach humans.
“I… I don’t understand you,” Euijoo murmured, uselessly.
The boy’s gaze didn’t waver. Instead, he opened his mouth again, letting out a bubbling, strange sound that rolled like waves but held no meaning Euijoo could grasp.
Euijoo swallowed hard. No words. No language. Just the sea’s wild music in his ears and the steady thrum of his own heart.
Euijoo took a step forward. Slowly. Carefully. He lowered his sword, dropping it entirely in the sand.
He reached out a hand—slow, careful—palms open and empty, a universal sign of peace.
“No harm,” he said, tapping his chest. “No harm.”
The boy blinked again. Then, tentatively, he mirrored the gesture.
His fingers trembling as if afraid to break the fragile bridge between them.
A moment stretched between them, thick with uncertainty and unspoken questions.
Then the boy smiled. A crooked, nervous smile that lit Euijoo’s chest on fire.
It was the beginning of something.
It started with a look.
The morning after the storm, Euijoo returned to the shore, unsure if the strange boy would still be there. He wasn’t.
For a brief, breathless moment, Euijoo just stood there, clutching the notebook he’d brought as an offering, fingers numb.
Then—ripples in the water.
The merman emerged slowly, cautiously, seaweed trailing from his shoulders like a crown. His eyes flicked to Euijoo and widened, then softened.
He smiled. Small. Tired. Real.
Euijoo laughed out of pure relief, hand pressed to his chest like it might fly away. “You came back,” he whispered, knowing he couldn’t understand, but hoping he’d feel it anyway.
That day, sitting thigh-to-thigh on the warm rocks, Euijoo tapped his own chest. “Euijoo.”
The boy blinked. Then grinned, slow and wide. He tapped his own chest. “Yixiang.”
Euijoo repeated it, careful with the syllables. “Yixiang.”
Yixiang mimicked: “Euju?”
Euijoo laughed. “Close enough.”
From then on, they met in the same cove at the same hour. Morning, just after sunrise.
They never said it aloud—because they couldn’t—but it became routine, sacred. A ritual built out of sand and salt.
When one of them arrived first, they waited. Always. Even if it meant sitting in the cold with the wind in their teeth. The worry came anyway: What if he doesn’t come today? What if it was a one-time thing?
But then the other would appear—climbing out of the sea or down from the cliffs—and every time, their faces lit up like lanterns.
The joy of seeing each other was physical—palpable in their limbs, in the way their feet moved faster, the way their hands waved wildly like they could say everything they needed through motion alone.
Euijoo sat cross-legged on the shore, the early sun casting pale gold over the sand. Yixiang was beside him, tail curled awkwardly where the waves barely reached.
The first days after the storm had been a whirlwind—they sat together every morning, but spoke little. Words felt useless between them, floating in different worlds.
Instead, they communicated like children: gestures, shared looks, and clumsy attempts at sounds.
Euijoo pointed to the sun, saying softly, “Sun.” Yixiang repeated, “Suhn.” His accent thick, but the effort honest.
He pointed to the water. “Sea.” Yixiang nodded, mouth humming something like “Sii.”
Neither expected fluency. They traded simple words like treasures, building a private language of smiles and patience.
Sometimes, Yixiang would reach out and brush wet hair from Euijoo’s forehead. The touch lingered—electric, impossible to name.
Euijoo found himself stealing glances, heart thrumming in a new rhythm.
He handed Yixiang the small notebook. The pages were blank but waiting.
“I... write,” Euijoo said, smiling shyly.
Yixiang’s eyes sparkled, and he nodded fiercely.
“Happy,” he said, writing the word and sketching a tiny smiley face beside it.
“Ha-pi,” Yixiang repeated, grinning so wide his cheeks dimpled.
Euijoo beamed. “Perfect.”
Then came “friend.” “laugh.” “Sky.” “sleep.” And when Yixiang laid his head on Euijoo’s shoulder to demonstrate the last one, Euijoo forgot how to breathe entirely.
Yixiang picked up the notebook, tapped it, then pointed to Euijoo with a questioning tilt of his head.
Euijoo blinked. “You want... another word?”
Yixiang nodded. Earnest.
Euijoo hesitated. Then, slowly, he wrote it.
“Pretty.”
He froze for a moment, staring at the page. What was he doing?
Yixiang leaned in, looking at the word written in foreign letters and then up at Euijoo’s eyes, waiting for the explanation that usually came after every new word he was learning.
“Pretty,” Euijoo whispered.
He pressed his index to Yixiang’s chest. “Pretty.”
Yixiang tilted his head, watching Euijoo’s hand over his heart. Then, gently, he mimicked the motion. Tapped Euijoo’s chest back.
“Pret-ti” he repeated, looking into Euijoo’s eyes softly.
Euijoo didn’t know how to explain it. He felt too shy to even try to. He just pulled his hand away from the merman, a blush creeping up his neck as he fumbled with his hands while trying to write another word down and pretend nothing happened.
Yixiang just smiled at him. He tought he understood that one.
Over days, the notebook filled: words, drawings, little notes. Their silent friendship blossomed with each page, every look, every hesitant word.
They kept the notebook dry by hiding it in a small cave in the rocks. It became a shared journal. A diary. A language bridge. A secret.
Euijoo had never known that not speaking could feel so full.
They shared dried fruits from Euijoo’s pocket. Shiny pebbles and shells from Yixiang’s underwater scavenging. Once, Yixiang brought a piece of coral shaped like a heart. Euijoo stared at it for five full minutes before tucking it into his sleeve like a secret.
Some evenings, they didn’t do anything at all. Just sat. Watched the sun stretch across the sea. Let the silence pool around them like comfort.
And in that silence, something unspoken grew. Not just trust. Not just affection.
Something heavier. Brighter. Dangerous.
But neither of them had the words yet.
So they kept coming back. Morning after morning. Smile after smile.
As if they were waiting for a language that could catch up to their hearts.
Yixiang began to notice the way Euijoo looked at him.
Not like he was strange. Or dangerous. Or a mystery to unravel.
He looked at him like he was familiar.
Even when Euijoo furrowed his brows trying to understand Yixiang’s gestures—or burst into laughter when Yixiang mimed “crab” and accidentally scuttled straight into a tide pool—he watched him like... like he mattered.
And it made Yixiang’s chest feel tight. Like the waves had crept in and filled him with something warm and terrifying.
He didn’t have words for it.
All he knew was that he hated goodbyes. Every time Euijoo stood to leave, Yixiang’s tail would twitch anxiously, and Euijoo would pause, hesitate, and then sit back down. Just for five more minutes.
It wasn’t enough. But it was something.
There was something sacred about their mornings.
Euijoo would sneak out with the stars still blinking in the sky, slipping past sleepy guards and silent corridors. He’d learned how to walk without making a sound. How to breathe quieter when he reached the edge of the cliffs. How to run once the ocean came into view.
Yixiang was almost always already there, perched on a rock like he was carved for it. He’d wave both hands when he saw Euijoo, grin crookedly, and then—every time—say his name like a spell:
“Euijoo.”
Like it was the only word in the world that mattered.
Sometimes they played games. Yixiang would dive down and reappear somewhere completely unexpected—behind Euijoo, beside a boulder, on a ledge high above—and Euijoo would pretend to be annoyed, though the laughter always gave him away.
Other times, they simply sat side by side. No talking. No gesturing. Just soft warmth and the sound of waves, the air crackling quietly with something that felt like peace.
Yixiang braided seaweed into Euijoo’s hair once. Tied little shells at the ends and tapped his chin proudly when he was done.
Euijoo wore it all day, even when a noblewoman at the palace commented with thinly veiled amusement. He didn’t care. He kept reaching up to touch the shells absentmindedly, like they anchored him to something real.
One afternoon, Euijoo showed Yixiang how to make a fire. They huddled close, wind biting at their fingers as Euijoo struck flint until the spark caught. Yixiang yelped in surprise, then clapped like it was magic.
They roasted chestnuts over the flame. Yixiang tried to eat one whole, shell and all. Euijoo nearly choked laughing.
That night, Yixiang drew a wonky little fire in their notebook and Euijoo wrote beneath it: WARM.
Once, on a morning like any other, Euijoo found Yixiang already waiting by the rocks.
The sun had barely risen, the sea still glassy and pink with early light.
Yixiang was floating lazily in the shallows, eyes half-closed, hair drifting like ink around him.
He looked up as Euijoo approached, and smiled. Sleepy. Soft.
“Morning,” he said, voice light like the tide.
“Morning,” Euijoo echoed, grinning, already kicking off his shoes.
He sat by the edge, toes brushing the water, and Yixiang swam closer. Close enough to rest his chin on Euijoo’s knee.
“Dream?” Yixiang asked.
Euijoo blinked. “Huh?”
Yixiang tapped his own temple. “You dream?”
Euijoo thought about it.
“Maybe,” he said eventually. “I think… I dreamed of this.”
He looked down at him.
“You. The sea. Morning light.”
He hesitated. “You laughed.”
Yixiang’s eyes softened. “Good.”
“You always laugh in it,” Euijoo added, half-teasing. “Even when I fall in.”
Yixiang laughed right then—bright and surprised and perfect.
So Euijoo fell in. On purpose this time.
They swam.
Badly, in Euijoo’s case. Yixiang had to hold him up by the waist half the time, snorting water through his nose from how much he was laughing.
But it didn’t matter.
Not the splashing. Not the soaked clothes.
Not even the ache in Euijoo’s chest when Yixiang gently fixed his hair, said his name like it was sacred, and then whispered something in his own language that Euijoo couldn’t understand—
But somehow did.
Later, dripping and breathless on the sand, Euijoo asked,
“What did you say?”
Yixiang just smiled, tapped his lips, and said, “Secret.”
Euijoo made a face. “Not fair.”
Yixiang only leaned over, bumped their foreheads together, and said,
“Later, you know.”
And somewhere, gently, like the tide pulling back, things began to shift.
Euijoo started dreaming of the sea. Of fingers brushing his cheek. Of a laugh echoing like music underwater.
Yixiang started staying a little longer each morning. Even when the sun climbed high and the tide threatened to pull him back. Even when his tail dried and cracked slightly from the wind.
They didn’t talk about it. Couldn’t. But they felt it. In the silences. In the way their eyes lingered longer. In the way Euijoo’s fingers brushed Yixiang’s when handing him the notebook, and neither of them pulled away.
They were falling.
God, they were falling.
And still neither of them had the word for what it was.
Until that morning.
The tide came in. The sun climbed high.
Yixiang waited.
He floated just offshore, eyes fixed on the trail Euijoo usually took down to the beach. Every gust of wind, every rustle in the brush made his head snap up.
But nothing. No Euijoo.
The sun began to dip, staining the clouds in soft oranges and bruised pinks. Still, Yixiang stayed. He perched on their rock, curling his tail around it for warmth, watching the shadows stretch longer.
He told himself it was fine. Euijoo would come.
He always came.
But the wind got colder, and the stars blinked awake, and still—nothing.
Yixiang’s chest ached with a strange, heavy hollowness. Not like hunger. Not like fear. Something lonelier.
For a moment, he considered slipping beneath the waves. Just a little. Just to rest.
But he didn’t.
He stayed.
Because what if Euijoo came right after?
So he waited, even as the salt made his skin sting, even as his tail began to tremble from the cold.
And then—finally—footsteps. Frantic, crashing ones. A voice calling out hoarse and breathless:
“Yixiang! Yixiang—!”
Yixiang looked up so fast his neck cracked.
Euijoo nearly stumbled down the slope, panting, hair wild, his coat half-buttoned and askew. When he saw Yixiang still on the rock, his face crumpled into something halfway between disbelief and relief.
“You—You’re still here!” he said, dropping to his knees in the sand. “God, you waited?”
Yixiang blinked at him, dazed, weak from the hours in the wind. He nodded once.
Euijoo let out a sound—somewhere between a sob and a laugh—and crawled closer, reaching out to touch Yixiang’s arm. “I’m so sorry,” he said, over and over, like a prayer. “Something happened at the castle. There was a whole emergency drill and I couldn’t sneak out—I tried—God, I tried—”
Yixiang watched him quietly. His fingers twitched.
He raised a hand and gently placed it against Euijoo’s cheek.
Warm.
Real.
Here.
The ache in his chest finally cracked open, and in its place came a flood of something quiet and devastating.
He’d waited.
And it had hurt. So much more than he expected it to. The cold, the stillness, the fear that Euijoo wouldn’t come—it had twisted in his stomach like a knife.
But now Euijoo was here.
And Yixiang never wanted to feel that emptiness again.
Not because of him.
He leaned in, rested his forehead against Euijoo’s. Closed his eyes.
Euijoo froze.
Then, slowly, breath catching, he leaned forward too.
Their foreheads pressed together. Their breathing matched. Nothing else moved.
And for the first time, Yixiang let himself think it:
I don’t want to go back. Not if it means losing this.
He didn’t have a word for it.
But he had this.
And it was enough.
The sea was never silent.
Even at its stillest, it whispered. It tugged at your ankles. It hummed through your bones.
But that night—after Euijoo’s delayed return, after Yixiang had curled up beneath the waves with his fingers still remembering the heat of his cheek—the ocean felt louder.
Do you love him?
The current asked it without words.
Yixiang didn’t answer. But he swam deeper.
Past the coral towers. Past the kelp forests. Past the shimmering canyons where light no longer reached.
He went where he’d always been told not to go.
To the deep trench.
To the witch.
She wasn’t what the stories said. No tentacles. No cackling. No blood in her smile.
She looked like stillness. Like the kind of darkness you don’t notice until it’s swallowed you whole.
“You seek a trade,” she said, her voice vibrating through the water. “How quaint.”
Yixiang nodded once, eyes steady.
“I want legs,” he said, motioning with his hands and flick of his tail.
The witch smiled. “Oh, I know what you want, sweetheart. I’ve seen you. All your little visits to the shore. Your sad, fluttery heart.”
He stiffened.
Her fingers drifted up, curling like smoke. “It’s always the same. Boy meets prince. Prince teaches him about his world. Boy gets ideas.”
Yixiang’s hands curled into fists.
The witch’s smile widened. “Very well. You shall have your legs.”
Hope flared in his chest.
“But,” she added, “you know the price.”
Yixiang nodded.
He’d expected this. He couldn’t bring the ocean with him.
“I give up my tail,” he gestured. “My gills. My home.”
“Forever,” the witch said, voice like a tolling bell.
“Forever,” Yixiang agreed.
She studied him for a long moment. “There’s more.”
He hesitated.
“You have three days,” she said, circling him now. “Three days on land. Three sunrises, three sunsets. At the end of the third day, your prince must say he loves you.”
Yixiang frowned.
“He does, I know he does” he tried to say, uncertain.
The witch raised an eyebrow. “Ah. But does he know?”
Yixiang hesitated.
He opened his mouth—paused.
“And if he doesn’t?” he asked.
The witch’s smile returned.
“You return to the sea,” she said sweetly. “But not as you are now. No tail. No voice. No soul.”
Yixiang froze.
Just another ripple on the waves.
Gone.
Forever.
His fingers trembled.
But when he thought of Euijoo—Euijoo running breathless through the dark, saying you waited? like it mattered more than anything else—he knew.
He nodded.
“I’ll do it.”
The witch grinned. “Knew you would.”
And then the water surged. Swallowed him whole. Wrapped him in light and pressure and heat.
Pain exploded through him as his tail cracked, split, reformed—bones shifting, skin burning—
And then—
Darkness.
Euijoo hadn’t meant to run. He really hadn’t.
But the second the sun crested over the horizon, painting the sea gold, something pulled at him.
Like gravity. Like memory. Like a promise.
So he ran. Down the garden path, over the cliffs, past the morning guards still half-asleep. He nearly twisted his ankle on a rock, but he didn’t care.
The wind was wild, tugging at his coat. The sea below glistened like it was holding a secret.
And there—there on the beach, curled in on himself in the surf—
Someone was lying on the sand.
Euijoo skidded to a stop, breath catching.
A man.
No—a boy, half-buried in the wet sand, clothes nonexistent, red hair plastered to his face. He lay still as driftwood, skin pale under the rising sun.
Euijoo skidded to a stop.
“…What the hell—”
The boy stirred.
Groaned.
And spoke.
“Ah…”
It was breathy, cracked, but—there. Sound. Words. Foreign, clumsy, spoken like his mouth wasn’t used to shaping them. But still, his voice.
Euijoo’s heart stopped.
“…Yixiang?” he breathed.
The boy blinked, dazed. Then, as if the name pulled him to consciousness, he pushed himself up onto trembling arms.
His legs—legs!—were shaking.
His eyes glassy.
But his lips pulled into a soft, pained smile.
“Euijoo,” he said, voice hoarse but unmistakable.
Euijoo dropped to his knees.
“What—what are you doing here? How are you—human? You—legs?!! Are you okay?!” His words tumbled out like waves crashing over each other.
Yixiang laughed.
It was faint. Barely there. But real.
“I… came,” he said slowly, fingers digging into the sand for balance. “See you.”
Euijoo stared at him like he might vanish again if he blinked.
“You… You came to see me,” he repeated, dumbfounded.
Yixiang nodded.
Tried to stand.
Failed spectacularly.
Euijoo leapt up with a panicked “Wait, wait, wait!!” and caught him before he faceplanted into the shoreline.
Yixiang sagged against him, boneless and shivering. His bare skin was freezing. His knees buckled like a newborn deer. His entire existence looked like it hurt.
“I’m taking you back,” Euijoo murmured, arm already curling around his back. “We’ll get you clothes. Food. A bed. I—I can’t believe you’re here.”
Yixiang didn’t answer. Just leaned his head against Euijoo’s shoulder and whispered, “Missed.”
Euijoo swallowed thickly.
“I missed you too,” he said.
And he meant it more than anything he’d ever said in his life.
Euijoo had never smuggled a person before.
Fruit? Yes. Frogs? Once. That one time he helped his friend sneak a baby deer into the kitchen for "scientific observation"? Sure. But an entire human man—barely dressed, barely walking, and very much not from this world?
New territory.
Yixiang, for his part, was silent the whole way up the cliff path. His legs barely held him up, and his body shivered violently every few steps. So Euijoo wrapped his cloak around him and carried most of his weight, arm locked tight around his waist.
He snuck him in through the garden entrance. Thank every star in the sky for the lazy morning guards. Thank the hungover staff, the overwatered hedges, the confusing layout of the west wing. And thank the gods Euijoo’s room had a private bathroom and a lock.
By the time he shut the door behind them, he was shaking.
Not from nerves.
From adrenaline.
He turned. Yixiang was standing in the middle of the room, barefoot on polished stone, looking around with wide, stunned eyes.
He touched the velvet curtains. The carved wood of the bedpost. The glass window.
Then—
“Home?” he asked, slowly, carefully, with an accent that made Euijoo want to bite his own hand in cute aggression.
Euijoo cleared his throat and nodded. “Yeah. Kinda hard to explain. But. Uh. Welcome?”
Yixiang smiled. Lit up, really. “Warm,” he said.
“It is,” Euijoo agreed, already unbuttoning the spare shirt he’d yanked from his wardrobe. “Also—clothes. You need them. Here.”
He held the shirt out. Yixiang tilted his head.
“…What?”
“You—put it on.”
Yixiang blinked. Then—
“Show me?”
Euijoo’s brain did a hard reboot.
“Uhhh—I—sure? Yeah. Okay. So. You do this—” He pulled his own overcoat off in demonstration, trying not to combust. “Arms through here. This hole is for your head. I swear it’s easier than it looks.”
Yixiang tried. Failed. Got lost in the sleeves. Emerged like a very handsome, very confused turtle.
Euijoo laughed so hard he nearly cried.
Eventually, they figured it out.
Later, after Yixiang had eaten half a loaf of bread and every piece of fruit Euijoo had stashed away (plus tried to bite a fork), the two of them collapsed onto the bed—Euijoo sitting cross-legged, Yixiang laying on his back like the bed was made of clouds.
“Home is…” Yixiang began, staring up at the ceiling. “Strange.”
“You haven’t even seen the weird parts yet,” Euijoo said. “Wait ‘til I show you indoor plumbing.”
Yixiang blinked. “Plum?”
“No—plumb-ing. It’s—it’s how we get water to come out of walls. It’s a whole thing. You’re gonna lose your mind.”
Yixiang laughed. It was quiet, breathy, and ended with his cheek smooshed into a pillow.
Then he murmured, “Thank you...”
Euijoo looked at him—soft hair, soft voice, sleepy eyes—and felt something in his chest snap.
“Of course,” he whispered. “…always.”
Yixiang’s gaze flicked up.
Their eyes met.
And stayed.
The silence between them bloomed like flowers in spring.
Not awkward. Not uncertain.
Just full of things neither of them could say yet.
Euijoo woke up to Yixiang sleeping in his bed, curled up like a cat, wearing one of his shirts, hair a wild halo of red waves. His first thought?
I’m going to die. I’m actually going to die. This is too cute. I am but a mortal man.
His second thought?
Wait until he sees indoor plumbing.
“Okay!” Euijoo clapped his hands as Yixiang sat on the edge of a porcelain tub like it was a mystical artifact. “This is called a bathtub. You can put hot water in it. Hot. Not lukewarm. Not ‘mild.’ I’m talking warm ocean in July. Absolute heaven.”
Yixiang looked skeptical. “Ocean… inside?”
“Yes. Sort of. Magic ocean. Watch this—” And then Euijoo turned the knob, nearly blinded by Yixiang’s face lighting up when water started pouring in.
He gasped. He clapped. He stuck his hand in.
“Warm!” he shouted, absolutely thrilled.
Euijoo grinned like a maniac.
Ten minutes later, Yixiang was submerged to the neck and giggling like an overjoyed seal. He splashed. He made wave noises. He kicked his legs and sloshed water onto the floor. Euijoo sat on a stool and watched him with the world’s dumbest smile on his face.
The castle staff noticed, of course.
You can’t have a secret magical boy-friend in the palace without someone catching on.
Especially when the prince insisted on bringing him to dinner.
“My lady,” Euijoo said, bowing dramatically to his mother, the Queen, “this is my—uh. Very close friend. From… overseas.”
Yixiang bowed too. It was way too low, and he nearly faceplanted into the table.
The Queen raised one elegant eyebrow.
“Overseas?”
“Way overseas,” Euijoo said, gesturing vaguely like it would help. “Like. So over. Very sea.”
Yixiang smiled nervously and whispered to him, “Good?”
Euijoo melted. “Perfect. You’re amazing.”
The Queen watched this interaction with the expression of a woman mentally preparing for either a wedding or a diplomatic incident.
In the hours that followed, the whispers began.
“The prince has a lover.”
“He’s a foreign noble.”
“He’s mute.”
“No, he’s not, I heard him singing in the gardens—”
“They sleep in the same room.”
“They speak in riddles.”
“I swear I saw him talking to a fish once.”
The nobles braced themselves. Advisors tried to bring it up politely.
“Your Highness, about your guest—”
“He’s learning the word ‘window’ today!” Euijoo interrupted. “He called it a ‘wind-hole.’ Can you believe? Adorable.”
“…Yes. Quite.”
Meanwhile, Euijoo was a walking heart-eyes emoji. Every new word Yixiang learned? He celebrated like they’d won a war. Every time Yixiang smiled at him, he forgot how to breathe.
And every time Yixiang looked at him with that quiet, open-eyed awe, that softness that said I trust you, I’m learning this whole world for you, Euijoo had to physically stop himself from proposing on the spot.
Because—sure. Maybe they didn’t talk much.
Maybe Yixiang still struggled with sentences, with syntax, with all the little inflections that meant “romantic” versus “platonic.”
But Euijoo didn’t need words to know.
It was love.
Just—maybe not in time.
Not in three days.
Not in the way the spell demanded.
But gods help him, Euijoo would find a way.
The next morning, Euijoo woke up first.
Yixiang was still asleep beside him, curled up under the blankets like he belonged there. His breathing was slow and even, lips slightly parted, lashes resting against his cheeks. And Euijoo just—watched him.
He’d never seen anyone sleep so peacefully before.
Like he trusted this place. Like he trusted him.
Euijoo’s heart ached.
I should say it.
The words hovered on the edge of his tongue, bitter and sweet.
He didn’t say it.
They spent the day roaming the gardens. Euijoo pointing at everything with too much enthusiasm, Yixiang laughing whenever he got a word right. He’d repeat it softly—“tree,” “flower,” “cloud”—his voice low, reverent, like naming spells.
Euijoo brought him a flower—yellow and small.
Yixiang’s cheeks pinked. He tucked it behind his ear and shyly brushed their fingers together.
I should say it.
Euijoo didn’t.
Instead he asked, “Do you like it here?”
“It’s good…” Yixiang nodded, looking up at the clouds. “…with you.”
That shouldn’t have made Euijoo want to cry.
But it did.
That night, the silence between them was heavier. Not cold. Not awkward. Just… weighted. Like the air around them knew something they didn’t.
Yixiang watched Euijoo like he was memorizing him. Every smile. Every wrinkle in his brow. Every time he looked away and didn’t say what he wanted to.
He wanted to ask—Why haven’t you said it yet?
But he couldn’t.
The rules of the spell were clear. If he asked, it wouldn’t count. It had to be given. Freely.
So he waited.
Waited for something he already knew Euijoo felt.
And Euijoo? He sat beside him on the bed, fingers drumming nervously on his thigh, every now and then stealing glances at Yixiang like he was afraid he’d vanish.
“Can I tell you something?” Euijoo whispered finally.
Yixiang nodded.
Euijoo hesitated. Then laughed softly, self-deprecating.
“…Never mind. It’s stupid.”
Tell him.
Say it.
Just say it.
“I’m just… glad you’re here.”
Yixiang smiled. Small. Sad.
So was he.
That night, Yixiang dreamed of the ocean.
Of waves pulling him home. Of a voice he’d never heard before whispering, Soon.
And when he woke, the sky outside the window had gone gray.
One day left.
The sun came up like a secret that morning.
Soft. Pale. Almost shy.
Yixiang was already awake, sitting by the window, knees pulled to his chest. His hair fell in waves down his neck, and the light kissed the curve of his cheek like it was trying to comfort him.
He didn’t turn when Euijoo stirred.
Didn’t need to. He felt him. Like always.
Euijoo rubbed the sleep from his eyes, blinking groggily.
“Morning.”
Yixiang hummed. A small sound. Half-hearted.
Euijoo sat beside him. Their knees touched.
“You’re quiet.”
Yixiang looked at him finally. And smiled. That soft, unreadable smile he always wore when he didn’t want to worry him.
“Thinking.”
Euijoo nudged him. “About what?”
Yixiang shook his head. “Things.”
But mostly you.
Mostly now.
Mostly how I don’t know if I’ll see another sunrise like this with you.
They spent the day together. Of course they did.
Every minute a little too precious. Every smile a little too tender.
Euijoo took him to the stables—Yixiang laughed so hard when he saw a goat he nearly cried. They fed ducks. Tried honey for the first time. Ran from bees. Sat under a tree for hours just… existing. Leaning into each other like they were gravity itself.
And still—
Still—
He didn’t say it.
Euijoo looked at him like he hung the stars, like every breath was a gift from the gods, like he was his—
But he didn’t say it.
He didn’t know how.
Didn’t know if he was allowed.
Didn’t know if “I love you” would be too much, too fast, too—
Final.
That night, the castle was silent.
Yixiang stood by the shoreline. Barefoot. Eyes on the horizon. The water called to him. Whispered in the language of salt and foam and loss.
The stars blinked.
The moon wept.
Now or never.
Euijoo ran to him.
“Yixiang—”
Yixiang turned, fast. Hope flaring in his chest.
“I—I need to say something,” Euijoo stammered. “I’ve been thinking about it all day and all week and maybe even since I first met you, I don’t even know. But I—”
Yixiang’s hands were trembling.
Euijoo reached for them.
“I love you.”
Silence.
A wave crashed in the distance.
Yixiang blinked.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t react.
Because—he didn’t understand.
The words.
The sentence.
He didn’t know what they meant.
Euijoo waited, heart in his throat.
“…Yixiang?”
And then—
The tide rose.
Yixiang gasped as his knees buckled, his body flickering at the edges like light through water. His skin shimmered.
“No—no, wait—” Euijoo cried, catching him as he started to collapse, but Yixiang was already slipping through his fingers, body dissolving into seafoam, voice lost to the wind.
“No—NO—please—”
Gone.
Just like that.
The ocean took him back.
And Euijoo dropped to the sand, screaming into the tide, the words still echoing in the air between them.
I love you.
And no one left to hear them.
At first, they told him it was a dream.
That the “strange foreign friend” he’d brought home had simply vanished. That people come and go. That heartbreak happens. That he should move on.
But how do you move on from a ghost you touched?
From a smile that felt like sunlight and an “almost” that became everything?
The staff whispered.
The kingdom speculated.
The prince has gone mad.
They weren’t entirely wrong.
Euijoo stopped smiling.
Stopped sleeping, too.
He spent hours by the shore, day after day, barefoot and wild-haired, scrawling symbols into the sand with trembling fingers. Words he remembered Yixiang saying. Sounds he didn’t understand. Patterns. Shapes. The cadence of a language that never fully touched his ears but lived somewhere in his bones now.
He started studying. Asking questions. Begging sailors and scholars alike for texts, for tales, for myths.
He hoarded books. Learned how to read ocean currents and trace underwater paths. He found cave systems. Dove too deep. Got dragged out once, unconscious and shivering.
Did it again the next day.
His parents begged him to stop. The court pressured him to marry. "Let him go," they said.
But how could he?
Yixiang hadn’t known what he said.
He hadn’t understood.
So it didn’t count.
Which meant there had to be a way.
Years passed.
He stopped counting how many.
He forgot birthdays. Forgot to eat sometimes. Forgot to care what anyone thought. He learned to communicate with fishermen, with coastal folk who swore they'd seen things in the water. Who drew maps on parchment and pressed charms into his palms and said, "Be careful, your highness. The sea remembers."
He remembered, too.
Every laugh. Every clumsy word. Every time Yixiang said his name.
He spoke it now like a prayer.
“Yixiang. Yixiang. Yixiang.”
One night, years too late, when the moon hung low and angry in the sky, Euijoo walked into the sea.
No armor. No fanfare. No hope, even.
Just longing.
The cold bit into his skin, but he kept going.
Deeper. Deeper. Salt in his mouth. Water in his lungs.
The ocean accepted him like a mother.
He closed his eyes. Let himself sink.
And with his final breath, broken and bubbling through the water, he whispered in a language that was both too foreign for him and too close to his heart now—
“I love you…”
He didn’t expect to wake.
But he did.
Lying on the sand, soaked to the bone, blinking against the morning sun.
A hand cupped his face.
A sob above him.
And there—
Was Yixiang.
Real.
Warm.
Crying.
“Euijoo,” he whispered, voice cracking, after years.
Euijoo reached up with a shaking hand. Touched his cheek. Still not sure if this was a dream.
“…You heard me.”
Yixiang nodded.
“I did.”
Euijoo laughed—wet and breathless and a little hysterical, like something cracked open inside him.
He surged up, throwing his arms around Yixiang, burying his face in his shoulder.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Again.
“I love you.”
He pulled back just enough to look at him. “I love you.”
Pressed a kiss to his cheek. “I love you.”
To his temple. “I love you.”
To the tip of his nose. “I love you.”
And then, in a voice shaking with joy and disbelief, he said it again—
But this time, in Yixiang’s language.
Careful syllables. Gentle sounds.
He said it like a promise. Like a prayer. Like he’d been waiting his whole life to mean it this much.
Yixiang’s eyes went wide.
And then he laughed—laughed, bright and tearful and overwhelmed.
“I know,” he gasped, cupping Euijoo’s face in both hands, thumb brushing under his eye. “I know—I love you too.”
Euijoo blinked at him.
And grinned.
And kissed him.
Slow. Deep. Homecoming.
Like salt and sunshine and everything he never got to say.
And when they finally pulled apart, Yixiang pressed their foreheads together and whispered,
“…Say again.”
Euijoo did.
Of course he did.
Forever.