Chapter Text
March 7th had grown up in a mansion of glass.
Not literally—though sometimes, with the endless rows of glittering windows and display cases, it felt that way. Her father was a man who loved nothing more than to possess. He collected rare jewels, priceless art, ancient relics, even animals that should have never been caged. March had once watched him laugh as he purchased a pair of snow leopards from a trembling hunter, their wild eyes dulling day by day behind gilded bars.
To him, beauty existed only to be captured.
To March, it felt like suffocation.
She wandered the halls alone, her footsteps echoing against marble. She wore the dresses her father’s wealth bought, ate from golden plates, and smiled politely when visitors praised the “wondrous collection” that had made him infamous among the elites. But inside, she felt like one of the relics—polished, presented, and locked away.
It was on a storm-heavy night in late summer that her father unveiled his newest prize.
March had been reading in the library when she heard the commotion: servants rushing, boots slapping against stone, her father’s booming laughter echoing down the hall. Curiosity drew her out of her chair and into the grand foyer, where the smell of saltwater and brine filled the air.
There, in a tank of reinforced glass that gleamed under chandelier light, floated a figure that made her breath catch in her throat.
At first, she thought him a hallucination.
Long, dark hair fanned out around his shoulders like ink spilled in water. Scales shimmered faintly where the light caught them, an iridescent gradient of deep ocean green and midnight blue. His tail—sleek, powerful—moved with restrained grace even in the too-small confines of the tank. And his eyes…
When they opened, they were the color of stormclouds breaking over the horizon. Calm, ancient, and unbearably sad.
“A mermaid,” her father declared proudly, puffing out his chest as if he had reeled the creature in himself. “Or merman, if you prefer. Do you see, March? Do you see the rarity I’ve captured? Now this is beauty.”
March could only stare.
The man in the tank—no, not just a man, not just a creature—met her gaze through the glass. For a moment, she thought she saw disdain flicker in those eyes, a quiet fire that refused to bow even in captivity. But then his lashes lowered, and he drifted backward, sinking into the shadows of the tank as though he wished to vanish.
Her father laughed again, clapping his hands. “Dan Heng,” he said, gesturing grandly at the captive, “will be the crown jewel of my collection.”
Dan Heng.
March repeated the name silently, tasting it like forbidden fruit.
She didn’t sleep that night. Not because she was frightened of the merman in her father’s possession, but because she couldn’t stop thinking about him—about the way his eyes had looked, filled not with fear, but with weary defiance.
And somewhere deep in her chest, something dangerous began to stir.
The east wing became March’s sanctuary. Or maybe her sin.
Every time she descended the narrow stairwell, her pulse quickened with something she didn’t dare name. Guilt, maybe. Or defiance. Or the strange, magnetic pull toward the man trapped in her father’s newest “treasure.”
The chamber was always colder than the rest of the house, heavy with damp air and the faint sting of salt. The tank glowed faintly in the gloom, steel and glass cutting the water into a prison. Inside, he drifted. A shape of quiet shadows, his hair a dark ribbon in the currents, his tail shimmering faintly when the light caught it.
Dan Heng.
The first time she whispered his name, she thought he hadn’t heard. But the flick of his tail—barely perceptible—told her otherwise.
“...I brought you something,” March said on her third visit, holding up a bundle of pale moonlilies. “They glow at night. Like little stars. I thought… you’d like them.”
He didn’t move. Didn’t look. Only the faint ripple of water betrayed his breathing.
Her smile faltered, but she set the flowers on the floor next to the tank anyway. “I’ll just… leave them here.”
The silence pressed heavy on her chest.
It went on like that for nights, trying to help the poor merman.
March filled the silence with words—nervous rambling about the garden, complaints about her father, silly stories from the streets below the estate. She thought if she just kept talking, something in him might soften, But Dan Heng was an ocean frozen over. His gaze slid past her, never quite meeting hers. When he did speak, the words were blunt, carved sharp from stone.
“Why do you keep coming here?” he asked one night, his voice low and flat.
March startled. His first words in days. Her heart jumped painfully. “I… I don’t know. Maybe because I want to.”
He looked at her then, gray eyes cool and unreadable. “You shouldn’t.”
Her throat tightened. “Why not?”
His gaze lingered for a heartbeat longer, then he turned away, sinking deeper into the shadows. “Because nothing good will come of it.”
March pressed her palm against the cold glass, aching at the distance. “I-I.. that may be true, but it doesn’t matter!.”
He didn’t answer.
The nights blurred together.
March brought books and read aloud, her voice trembling in the cavernous quiet. She sat cross-legged against the glass until her legs ached, whispering questions he never answered. Sometimes, she swore she saw his eyes half-lidded, listening despite himself. But the moment she looked too closely, his expression shuttered again.
Still, she returned.
One night, she whispered, “I don’t think you’re a specimen. You’re not a prize. You’re… you.”
For the longest time, she thought he’d stay silent as always. But then his voice came, quiet as a ripple:
“You don’t know me.”
The words cut sharper than cruelty.
March’s fingers curled against the glass. “Then let me. Let me know you.”
He didn’t look at her. Didn’t blink. Only drifted slowly back into the depths, leaving her reflection on the glass to whisper into the stillness:
“Please.” She sighs as he doesn’t respond, but he’s still determined.
Because of this, March began to recognize the subtleties. The way his tail flicked faster when she pushed too far. The way he lingered near the surface on nights she came late. The way he sometimes stayed close enough that she could see the faint rise and fall of his chest as he breathed.
But his words, when they came, were always clipped. Cold.
“Don’t waste your time.”
.
“You’re only making it harder.”
.
“Go back upstairs.”
.
March would flinch, bite back tears, and sit stubbornly by the tank anyway. Because beneath the ice, she could feel it—that loneliness. That exhaustion. That fragile, unspoken thing that he buried under silence.
And though he would never say it, she began to understand:
His quiet was not indifference. It was survival.
And somehow, that hurt worse than hatred.
March lay awake at night, clutching the blanket to her chest, haunted by his eyes. Eyes that never softened, never warmed, but lingered just long enough to tell her what he couldn’t say.
And in the ache of that silence, she realized with a hollow dread—
She wasn’t improving.
Even though she couldn’t help him yet. Even when her father would never allow her to do something that would ruin his business, Even though Dan Heng would never let her close.
She tried her best.
March had always known her father noticed more than he let on. He was a collector, after all—obsessed with observation, detail, control. He measured beauty in the tilt of a chin, the luster of a scale, the rarity of a living thing that should never have been touched.
And lately, his eyes lingered on her too long.
“You spend too much time in the east wing,” he remarked one morning over breakfast. His voice was casual, but March froze mid-bite. “What is it you find so interesting there?”
Her fingers tightened on her fork. She forced a smile. “The old library. You know I like reading or drawing pictures there!.”
Her father hummed, unconvinced, but let it drop. For now.
March didn’t breathe until she was out of the dining hall.
That night,
her visits to the tank felt sharper, edged with dread. She sat cross-legged on the floor, knees pressed to her chest, and whispered her fears to the dark water.
“He’s suspicious,” she admitted. “If he finds out I’ve been coming here, I don’t know what he’ll do.”
Dan Heng drifted near the far end of the tank, his profile a cut of shadow against the faint glow. His voice was low, even, without pity.
“Then stop.”
March blinked, her chest tightening. “...Is that what you want?”
He didn’t answer. Only the faint movement of his tail broke the silence.
She pressed her palm to the glass, as though her touch could cross the barrier. “I can’t. I won’t.”
At last, his gaze slid to her, cool and unreadable. “You’re a fool.”
Her laugh was small, brittle. “Maybe. But I’d rather be a fool than leave you alone.”
Something flickered in his eyes then—so fleeting she wondered if she imagined it. A softening. A fracture in the wall he kept between them.
But just as quickly, it was gone.
Days blurred into weeks.
March grew clever in her defiance. She timed her visits around the guards’ patrols, slipped food from the kitchens—fruit, bread, sweets her father would have scolded her for. She smuggled them to the chamber, setting it down next on the ledge though she never saw him eat.
Sometimes, when she returned the next day, the food was gone.
And though he never thanked her, it was enough.
She began to talk less, listen more. His silence was a language of its own, and slowly, she learned to hear it. The stillness when he was tired. The way his eyes shifted when her words cut too close. The subtle drift toward her side of the tank, as though some part of him could not resist orbiting nearer.
Yet he never softened aloud.
One night, as rain battered the mansion’s high windows, March whispered, “Do you hate me? Because I’m his daughter?”
Dan Heng’s lashes lowered, his expression unreadable.
“You’re part of his world,” he said at last. His voice was quiet, but sharp as glass. “That’s enough.”
The words carved deep, but March swallowed the ache.
“Then I’ll change that,” she said, her voice trembling but resolute. “I’m not him. I won’t be him.”
For the first time, he looked at her long and hard. As if weighing her promise against the chains that bound them both.
But when she leaned closer, hoping for something—anything—he closed his eyes and turned away.
Her father’s suspicion grew. Guards started lingering near the east wing. Locks were checked twice over. And one night, when March stole down the hall, she found her path blocked entirely.
“Orders,” the knight said stiffly. “No entry without the master’s word.”
March’s heart plummeted.
Back in her chambers, she pressed her fists to her mouth, biting back a sob. She felt caged now too, the way Dan Heng had always been.
And when she finally broke past the guards again, days later, she found him floating deeper in the shadows of the tank, colder than ever.
“You shouldn’t come back,” he said, his voice almost a growl.
March stepped closer anyway. “I can’t stay away.”
His eyes narrowed, storm-grey and merciless. “Then you’ll be dragged down with me. Be punished. Hurt, or even worse.”
The chill in his words made her shiver. But even through the fear, she whispered, almost pleading:
“I-I don’t care. I rather help you than abandon a innocent creature.”
For a long time, the only sound was the water’s faint ripple.
And when his gaze finally flicked toward her, sharp and unreadable, March thought she saw it again—that crack in his armor. Brief, fragile, gone before she could name it.
But it was enough to keep her coming back.
.
.
In dan heng’s pov:
The water was supposed to be his shield.
It dulled sound, blurred light, turned everything beyond the glass into a hazy, unreachable world. He clung to that numbness because it was the only power left to him: distance.
Until her.
The girl who came to the tank night after night, against her father’s orders, against reason. At first, he thought she was simply curious, another spoiled child playing at compassion. He had seen it before—humans fascinated with what they had chained.
But she kept returning.
She talked. She laughed softly at her own jokes. She pressed her hands against the glass, as if pretending touch could pass through water and stone. Sometimes she simply sat in silence, curled up at the base of the tank as if she belonged there.
It unsettled him.
He told himself she was dangerous. Her father’s blood ran in her veins. She was part of the world that had stolen the sea from him, stripped him of freedom. He told her to leave. He wanted her to leave.
But when her visits were blocked for several days, the chamber fell into a silence heavier than any he’d endured before.
And when she finally returned, breathless from slipping past guards, relief stabbed through him so suddenly it felt like weakness.
She was there again tonight. Kneeling close, whispering like they shared a secret. Her words spilled against the glass, muffled by water, but he had learned the rhythm of her voice.
But he did missed the sea a-lot since In the sea, currents never slept. They pulled and pushed, carrying him through forests of kelp and across canyons of coral. He had swum with storms, raced with dolphins, followed the stars’ reflection on black waves. The ocean was never silent.
But here—here in this man’s cage—water pressed like a coffin around him. No current. No tide. Only glass walls and the echo of his own breath.
Dan Heng hated it.
Hated the way it made him remember.
He closed his eyes, trying to retreat into memory. The salt on his tongue, the sun burning through the surface, the endless blue stretching wider than thought itself. Home. His people’s laughter as they wove songs through the waves. The quiet peace of belonging.
But the memory cracked, always, on the same image: nets. Rough ropes tightening, dragging, choking. Harpoons slicing into water. His kin fleeing into the abyss while he thrashed, caught.
The roar of men. The shouts of victory. Chains.
He surfaced in the tank, dragging in air like it was poison. His hands curled into fists, nails digging into his palms. He would never forgive them. Humans. Thieves. Parasites who could not see beauty without wanting to own it.
He thought the girl was the same.
The first time she came close, he ignored her. The second, he warned her away. The third, he told her flatly he would never answer her questions. He expected her to grow bored, to vanish like all the others who had gawked at him.
But she stayed.
And that unsettled him more than the silence.
When she talked, he tried not to listen. When she smiled, he turned away. When she pressed her hand against the glass, he kept his tail coiled tight, forcing himself to remain still. She was her father’s daughter. That was enough reason to despise her.
And yet.
And yet—he caught himself watching her reflection on the surface of the water. Catching the tremor in her voice when she whispered that she hated this mansion, hated what her father did. He told himself it was a trick, that she wanted something from him, like all humans did.
But her eyes did not lie.
They burned with loneliness.
Loneliness he recognized.
Tonight, she returned again, rain dripping from her hair where she must have run in secret. She sank to the floor by the tank, wrapping her arms around her knees. She didn’t speak for a long time.
Dan Heng told himself not to care. That her silence was none of his concern. That he was grateful for the quiet.
But when he finally rasped, “Why do you keep coming back?” it startled him as much as it startled her.
March lifted her head, meeting his eyes through the glass. She looked fragile in the lamplight, but her voice was steady.
“Because when I leave,” she whispered, “I keep thinking of you in here. Alone. And I can’t stand it.”
Dan Heng’s jaw tightened. He wanted to mock her, to tell her she didn’t know the meaning of “alone.” But the words caught in his throat.
Because she did. He saw it in her gaze—the same emptiness, the same hollow ache he carried.
And for the first time, Dan Heng felt the tank shrinking not just around his body, but around his heart.
That night, when she finally left, he lingered at the glass long after her footsteps faded. He told himself it was nothing. That he would not let her break him.
But the sea inside him was shifting.
And he feared the tide she carried could change him and have himself betray his own kin.
Nights blurred together once again. Dan Heng had lost the rhythm of the tides, the pull of the moon. There was no dawn, no dusk, just artificial light above the tank and the muffled echo of footsteps in the mansion beyond. Time was measured not in hours, but in her visits.
March.
She came more often now. Sometimes she talked—about books she was reading, about how she sneaked past guards, and Other times she simply sat, leaning against the glass as though her presence alone could warm the water.
Dan Heng told himself he didn’t care.
He told himself this every time her voice softened when she spoke his name. Every time she pressed her palm to the barrier between them. Every time she looked at him as though he were not a prisoner, but… something else.
He repeated it like a mantra: I do not care. I cannot care.
And yet, he found himself watching.
When her father’s voice bellowed from the hall, Dan Heng noticed the way she flinched. When she slipped food out of her pocket, food clearly meant for her but quietly placed near his tank instead, he caught the faint smile tugging at her lips when she thought he wasn’t looking.
She wasn’t like the others.
But that didn’t mean he trusted her.
One night, she arrived carrying something strange—an old, battered book wrapped in cloth to keep it from the rain. She perched on the stool by the tank, brushing damp hair from her face, and cleared her throat awkwardly.
“I… thought maybe you’d want to hear a story.”
Dan Heng’s brows furrowed. “A story?”
Her cheeks flushed. “You don’t have to listen. But when I was little, I used to pretend the characters in books were my friends. It was the only way the house didn’t feel so big.”
He almost scoffed. But the words snagged somewhere deep inside him. That same loneliness again—echoing his own.
March flipped open the book and began to read. Her voice was low, careful at first, but as the pages turned, it grew steadier, warmer.
Dan Heng closed his eyes, pretending not to listen. But her words carried through the water, threading through the cracks in his armor.
When the story ended, silence settled. He opened his eyes to find her watching him, nervous, as if bracing for rejection.
Dan Heng said nothing. But for the first time, he did not look away.
Later, when it was pretty much night.. at least 12 am, he drifted to the place where she always sat by the glass. Slowly, almost without realizing, he pressed his palm against it.
The water was cold. The glass unyielding. But he imagined, for the briefest second, that her hand was still there, warm against his.
And he hated himself for it.
That night, sleep didn’t come. Not because of the silence of the tank, or the emptiness of captivity, but because March’s voice—soft and bright, stubborn and trembling—kept repeating in his mind.
And against all reason, Dan Heng realized with a quiet dread that the girl he had sworn to despise was becoming the only thing tethering him to hope.
A storm rolled in without warning.
Even through the thick stone walls of the mansion, Dan Heng could hear it: rain lashing against the windows, thunder cracking the sky open. He floated near the bottom of the tank, eyes half-closed, letting the low rumble echo in his chest.
Storms had never frightened him. In the ocean, they were simply another rhythm—violent, yes, but alive. He missed that violence. Missed the rush of waves breaking against his skin, the raw power of the sea at its wildest.
Here, storms meant nothing. Just noise outside a cage.
Until the door opened.
She stumbled in, dripping water across the marble floor, hair plastered to her cheeks.
March.
Her breaths came quick, her face pale in the flicker of lightning. “Father and some sellers were drinking downstairs,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “I slipped away before Father noticed. He… he gets worse when he’s drunk.”
Dan Heng’s jaw tightened. He said nothing, but his fingers curled around the edge of the tank.
She hugged her arms around herself and slid down the wall, sitting near the glass as always. The storm rattled outside, but her trembling wasn’t from the thunder.
For the first time, Dan Heng hated the barrier between them—not for his own sake, but because he could not reach her.
He wanted to tell her she was a fool. That she was still human, still part of the world that caged him. That caring about her was the surest way to drown.
But when the next thunderclap rattled the windows, she flinched violently, her hand instinctively lifting as though to shield herself.
And before he could stop himself, the words slipped out, low and rough mumble.
“He won’t touch you while I’m here.”
Her wide eyes snapped to him. She opened her mouth, but no words came.
Dan Heng’s heart lurched—then hardened. He had let too much show.
He sank back into the water, voice cooling to ice. “Do not mistake that for kindness. I still want nothing from you.”
The lie burned.
But he clung to it, because the truth was far more dangerous:
That every night she came back, the sea inside him shifted. That he was beginning to crave her voice, her gaze, the stubborn warmth she pressed against his coldness. That she was the one thing making this cage bearable.
And that terrified him more than being sold to some mad person or maybe even worse.