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The first time Megan notices something is wrong is after a brutal 12-hour dance practice session, so she thinks she must be seeing things. Sohey had clapped his hands and dismissed everyone, and in an instant everyone’s knees simultaneously buckled. We’re still in sync, Megan had thought. Nikky would be so proud. And then Lara shot up like a missile and made a beeline for the door, Dani hot on her heels, and they did this weird sort of wrestling against the door frame in an attempt to escape and hit the showers. Yoonchae followed, a little apprehensively, hands already held out in front of her in case she needed to, like, force them apart.
Sophia looked much too tired to stop it, arms drooping as she packed up her things, neatly. Always in the same order. First she peeled her sweaty shirt off, and Manon would do a miserable job of pretending like she wasn’t watching. Then she pulled on a hoodie, even if it was like, a hundred degrees outside. Then she folded her shirt and put it in her bag, and she would gather all the snacks the members had strewn about, and put those in her bag too. And then she’d take a long sip from her water bottle, head tilted back and jaw and throat exposed, and Megan would watch Manon drool over that, too. She has not ever brought this up to the eldest. She thinks she might get punched.
So Sophia leaves, and then it’s just Megan and Manon. Megan’s by the couch, slowly packing up her stuff, blinking sleep out her eyes. Her very bones feel all achy, and she cannot wait to go home and bury her face in her pillow and pass out.
Bye, Manon, she opens her mouth to say, but she stops when she glances in the mirror. Manon’s still all collapsed on the floor, limbs all splayed out, but. There are light blue scales that delicately line the skin of her legs and arms and neck, and they are shimmering in the harsh light of the practice room. And there’s also a golden snake curled around her torso, tongue flicking towards her face in what looks like a familial manner, and her ears are definitely pointier than normal.
Megan blinks, and stares at Manon, actual Manon, not the reflection. Her eyes are closed and she’s box breathing, and she is most certainly not human. But then Megan blinks again, and it all disappears.
“You good?” Manon asks, looking at her all strange like she wasn’t just some weird magical fish snake lady.
Megan decides she must be hallucinating. “Fine,” she replies, shaking her head. She has to take a beat in the hallway, and there’s a feeling in her stomach and throat she can’t shake, so she kind of presses her face against the door, but Manon just sounds like she’s packing up and getting ready to go, so Megan skedaddles on out of there.
In her car, she looks into the rearview mirror, in case she’s like, grown fuzzy ears or something. Her own, very bloodshot but otherwise normal eyes stare back. She shoves her knuckles into them hard enough to see spots.
//
Contrary to popular belief, Megan notices a whole lot. Like how Dani’s speech patterns change subtly depending on which one of them she’s talking to. How Sophia runs her hands through her hair at a rate of a million times a minute when she’s nervous, and how every time a strand comes out she plucks it off her clothes within the second. How Yoonchae huffs out her nose whenever English is being particularly bothersome, whether it be through Duolingo or the members talking in stan twitter speak. The way Lara talks when she’s trying to pass as sober to Sophia after she takes an edible, and how she totally thinks she’s nailing it even though Sophia is not, like, stupid. Megan would say she is a D-1 Noticer, right up there with Sophia, which is why she does not totally believe herself when she chalks the Manon thing up to delirium.
They have the day off today, blessed be, so Megan is lying in her bed in her boxers and bra because she simply could not be bothered. She’s thumbing through her phone, switching between TikTok and Instagram and Block Blast probably too often to be considered productive, if any of that is productive in the first place. She keeps thinking about it, though – the scales were literally glinting in the light. And the snake, it all looked so real.
She opens Google, types in mermaid, because maybe she will start with the scales. But there are like one billion different kinds of mermaids from all over the world, so she duplicates the tab and types swiss mermaid in one and ghanaian mermaid in the other. All she gets from the first search is this sports competition for people who, like, cosplay as mermaids, and Megan does not think Manon has ever done that, so.
Before she can switch to the second tab, an abrupt knock on her door startles her so bad she drops her phone off the edge of the bed. And then Dani’s coming in, while Megan is half dangling off the bed, one arm blindly waving around and the other uncomfortably bent under her body.
“What are you doing,” Dani blinks, and before Megan can answer with something stupid, she barrels through. “Can I borrow that black top, the crocheted one?” She starts digging through Megan’s dresser without an answer.
“Mmph,” Megan affirms, fingers finally brushing her phone. It had somehow managed to slide under her bed.
Dani turns around, facing her, the shirt bunched in her hands. She squints at Megan, who is clutching her phone to her chest and who is still in her underwear.
“Are you watching porn?”
“No,” Megan squeaks, and she feels her body flush, so like, Dani will believe whatever she wants to.
“Okay,” Dani says, drawing out the O. “Well. Have fun not watching porn!”
She turns on her heel and leaves, pointedly closing the door behind her. Megan exhales, turning her phone back on, but the interaction she just had has made her feel extremely stupid about this whole thing so she closes the tab and goes back onto TikTok. The first thing she sees is a thirst edit of Sophia looking all pogi. The caption is, vamphia… save me vamphia…, with approximately twenty hashtags that are all along the lines of #lesbian, and #wlw.
Megan thinks maybe today she should take a nap.
//
HYBE decides that the team should do a bonding thing, in pairs, of duos who don’t interact as much on camera. They pair Yoonchae with Daniela and Sophia with Lara and her with Manon, and they send them on this scavenger hunt across the Hollywood Hills to gather cooking supplies at different stores to, like, make a big grand meal at the end of the day or something. The whole thing is recorded for content, obviously, and Megan does not miss the memo to play up the fanservice, so she isn’t totally buying into the team bonding aspect of the activity. Nevertheless, she opens her car door for Manon like a true gentleman, and drives to the address of the first grocery store.
The issue is that Megan is great pals with Manon, given that she lives with her and all, and also there’s this underlying comradery between the two of them and Lara because they’re the ones who are most obviously queer, or whatever. But now Megan has to pretend to not be as close with Manon for the sake of content, and she isn’t quite sure how to do that.
They pull up to the store after making small talk on the drive, and Megan can tell that they’re both trying their darndest not to burst out into obnoxious laughter. Megan’s trailing behind the Manon as they go up and down all the aisles. Their first mission is the spices, which is a loaded task considering Sophia and Lara might flay them alive if they don’t get the right ones. Megan thinks it’s kind of unfair that they put the two actual good cooks on the same team.
Manon’s yapping about who knows what, something the Eyekons said on the Casa Danon twitter community or maybe the topic has changed to their upcoming festival set. Megan is half-listening, half squinting at all the labels on the spice rack, because Lara really does not play. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she sees it. The golden snake. It’s wrapped around Manon’s waist, a half inch or so above her waist beads. It seems to register Megan looking at it, because it stares straight at her and even tilts its head, curiously regarding her with red beaded eyes.
“Manon,” Megan says. Manon turns around.
“What,” she says, and Megan points at her waist.
“What is that?”
Manon glances down, then back up, puzzled. “What is what?”
Megan looks, and there’s nothing there.
“Nevermind,” she mumbles, but she knows it was the same snake. She’s not insane, probably.
When they get home, she excuses herself to the bathroom, and opens Google again. Types in ghanaian mermaid with snakes.
Mami Wata, Google informs her. A prominent water spirit in African and Afro-Caribbean mythology, often depicted as a beautiful woman with the upper body of a human and the lower body of a fish or snake.
//
Later, after she’s stuffed full of Lara and Sophia’s delicious cooking (and Yoonchae and Daniela’s earnest attempt at dessert), she lies on Yoonchae’s bed. The youngest is all sprawled out on top of her, and Megan is absentmindedly stroking her hair. And maybe it’s because Yoonchae probably won’t tell on her for being clinically crazy, or maybe because she thinks Yoonchae might be asleep right now, that she decides to whisper, “I think Manon is a water spirit.”
Yoonchae lifts her head up from the space between Megan’s neck and collarbone, so. Not asleep. She kind of expects Yoonchae to laugh, and like, condescendingly say okay granny, let’s get you to bed, even though Megan is less than two years older.
She does not expect Yoonchae to say, “You know what, I could see that,” in a thoughtful, non-sarcastic tone, and bury her nose right back into Megan’s neck.
Megan wraps her arms around Yoonchae, heaving a deep sigh. What is even my life right now, she thinks.
“Stop thinking so loudly,” Yoonchae whines, so Megan makes a point to breathe as lightly as possible so the maknae can get her precious beauty sleep.
Megan should get an award for being the best member ever.
//
Everything comes to a head a week and a half after that first night in the practice room. Daniela and Lara are out; Dani on a date and Lara at an afterparty for some producer. Yoonchae’s also not home, because her sister had flown out to see her.
Megan’s trying to decide what mind-numbing TV show to put on in the background while she plays Pokémon, because she can’t do anything normally ever, when she hears what sounds like aggressive splashing coming from the bathroom.
Warily, she puts her slippers on and pads into the hallway. She thinks there’s a muffled voice somewhere in there, but she can’t tell underneath all the other noise.
She really hopes whoever is in there is not, like, drowning, because Megan has not ever done CPR on a real person and she also got certified eight years ago for babysitting and she does not think those credentials still hold.
She puts her hand on the handle and pushes in, holding her breath.
Sophia’s back is to her, bent over the bathtub. She is giggling, and Megan’s first thought is that she has finally gone crazy and is playing with rubber ducks in there, or something. But no. Manon is in the tub, and she has a full-on mermaid tail: scales, fins and all. Her hands are braced against the rim of the tub, clear webbing between her fingers, and her ears also have fins. Scales line her cheekbones, and her gold snake – Megan knew she wasn’t tripping – is weaving itself contentedly through Sophia’s hair.
And then Sophia is leaning in and they are kissing, so Megan decides she really should not be here right now. But in the process of hurrying out, her elbow clumsily knocks into the lightswitch, and suddenly they are all bathed in darkness before Megan instinctively switches it back on, which obviously makes her presence known.
“Hi,” she says, awkwardly, because what else is she supposed to do?
They are both kind of gawking at her. Sophia’s lipgloss is smudged all around her lips and it has gotten on Manon’s mouth too, making the area around her lips as shiny as her tail. They’re both flushed, Megan has never seen Sophia this pink, and Megan is so desperately trying to be nonchalant right now but Manon is like, not wearing any clothes, and this is just a really strange situation.
“I thought you were out with Lara,” Sophia finally manages to sputter.
“No,” Megan says. Her palms are sweating. She backs away, slowly, hand behind her, searching for the doorknob.
“Wait,” Manon says before Megan can set herself free. “It’s not– it’s not what it looks like.”
“No, I already know,” Megan says. “You’re a Mami Wata, right?” She winces as she most definitely butchers that pronunciation. “Or like, some other water spirit?”
Manon gapes even more, if that’s possible. “How long have you known?”
“Like, a bit over a week.”
Sophia, still flushed red, is opening her mouth and then closing it. Ironically, she’s the one who looks like a fish. And Manon is sitting there in the tub, with the most perplexed expression drawn on her face, and a literal tail where her legs should be, and the whole thing is just so ridiculous that the laugh comes spilling out of Megan before she can stop it.
She wrenches the bathroom door open, sprinting down the hallway.
“Don’t tell anyone!” Sophia yells after her.
When Megan gets to her room, she pauses. Were Sophia’s canines always that long?