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Jisung had been at sea long enough now that he no longer thought of land as anything but an interruption.
The ocean had worked its way into him, the crash of waves and the low, familiar groan of timber beneath his boots as familiar to him as his own skin. Salt lived in his lungs now, in the seams of his clothes, in the taste that never quite left his tongue. Even when the water lay calm as glass, there was always movement beneath it, a slow, breathing vastness that made the world feel alive in a way solid ground never could.
On land, everything felt… Still. Stiff.
At sea, there was always movement.
He liked that.
It was why, when they finally docked after weeks on open water, Jisung lasted all of half a day before the press of bodies, the stink of ale, and the unmoving streets started to itch beneath his skin.
By evening, he’d retreated to the nearest port inn with the rest of the crew, more out of habit than enjoyment. The place was dim, thick with pipe smoke and louder than it needed to be, exactly the kind of environment he despised.
Jisung slouched back in his chair, idly turning his drink between his fingers as his crewmates talked over one another.
“Next stretch’ll be the worst of it,” one of them was saying.
“The Ilinalta Pass is always a challenge,” another added, lowering his voice just enough to make it sound important.
A chair scraped somewhere to Jisung’s left.
“Then you’d best pray your ears stay your own.”
The voice was rough, the kind weathered by too many years of cheap pipe tobacco. Jisung glanced up to find an older sailor lingering beside their table, tankard in hand, eyes sharp as he looked at them.
One of Jisung’s crewmates snorted. “Here we go.”
The man ignored him, gaze fixed squarely on Jisung, as if he’d already decided who among them was worth the trouble.
“The Illinalta Pass stretches long,” he said. “Long enough for the sea to grow bored of silence. That’s when they start singing.”
Jisung huffed a laugh, tipping his head back against the wall. “Sirens?” he guessed, amusement curling easy in his chest. “Thought those were for scaring greenhands and children.”
“Aye,” the man said, not rising to the bait. “Most think that. Same as you.”
Something in his tone might have unsettled someone else.
Jisung only grinned wider. “Well, I’ve been sailing a few years now. Haven’t heard anything yet. Surely if they were real, I’d have caught a tune or two by now.”
A couple of the crew chuckled, the tension breaking instantly.
The older sailor didn’t join them.
“That’s the trick of it,” he said quietly. “They don’t sing for everyone.”
Jisung rolled his eyes, taking a long swallow of his drink. “Convenient.”
“Only their chosen hear it,” the man went on, voice low enough now that it slipped beneath the noise of the room. “And when they do…” He paused, studying Jisung’s face in a way that felt uncomfortably focused. “It doesn’t sound like danger. Sounds like something you’ve been waiting your whole life for.”
For a moment, the words lingered, strange and out of place.
Then Jisung barked a laugh, loud enough to drown them entirely.
“Right,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “And I suppose they drag you under with a kiss too?”
A flicker crossed the man’s expression.
“Aye,” he said. “Something like that.”
Jisung waved him off with an easy, careless motion, already turning back to his crew. “I’ll take my chances,” he said, voice light. “If something out there’s got a voice worth hearing, I’d be a fool to ignore it.”
That, at least, earned a proper laugh from the table.
The sailor lingered a second longer, as if weighing whether to say more. In the end, he only shook his head, muttering something under his breath as he turned away.
Jisung didn’t catch it.
He’d already moved on, the warning slipping from his mind, leaving nothing behind but the faintest trace of amusement.
﹏﹏﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
It had been so long since the night at the port inn, that whatever weight the old sailor’s words might have held had long since sunk beneath the lull of days at sea. Work, sleep, eat, repeat. The endless horizon had a way of sanding things down until only what mattered remained, and superstition had never made that cut.
The rest of the crew didn’t seem troubled either.
Well… Most of them.
There was one who had taken to stuffing his ears with little wads of cotton every night, muttering something about ‘not taking chances’ as he settled into his hammock. Jisung had laughed the first time he saw it, had laughed again the second, and by the third had stopped commenting altogether. If the man wanted to sleep like a poorly corked bottle, that was his business.
No one else followed suit.
So when Jisung first caught the faint lilt of humming drifting across the deck, he barely spared it a second thought.
It was light, almost absentminded. Musical in a way that didn’t demand attention. The kind of sound someone might make without realising, filling the quiet while their hands worked through a familiar task.
Jisung didn’t even look up at first.
He was coiling rope, fingers moving on instinct, the motion so ingrained he could have done it blind. The hum slipped between the creak of wood and the hush of water against the hull, easy to lose in the rest of it.
Someone bored, he assumed. Someone passing the time.
Still, after a moment, he found himself frowning slightly.
It didn’t quite match anyone he knew.
Most of the crew were terrible at carrying a tune, loud and off-key when they bothered at all. This was… Different. Softer. Each note seemed to land exactly where it should, an almost romantic melody.
Jisung glanced up, scanning the deck.
A couple of men were hauling a net near the bow. One leaned against the mast, sharpening a blade. Another crossed the deck with a crate balanced on his shoulder.
None of them were humming.
The sound didn’t falter. If anything, it seemed closer now.
Jisung straightened, rope forgotten in his hands, and turned slowly in place.
“Oi,” he called, casual, more curious than anything. “Which one of you’s making that noise?”
A few heads turned his way.
“What noise?” someone shot back.
Jisung opened his mouth, then paused.
The humming seeped through the air again, clearer this time.
“You don’t hear that?” he asked, brows pulling together.
A beat.
Then a scoff. “Hear you talking, that’s about it.”
A couple of the others snorted, already losing interest.
Jisung huffed under his breath, shaking his head. “Right. Must have been the wind.”
He dropped his gaze back to the rope, forcing his hands to pick up where they’d left off.
For a while, that was that.
The hum faded, or maybe it slipped so neatly into the background that he stopped noticing it. By the time the sun dipped lower and the sky began to bruise into evening, the moment had already started to blur.
An idle mind, he told himself.
Too much of the same horizon. Not enough to look at. It wasn’t surprising his thoughts had started dressing up the silence just to give him something new to chew on.
He didn’t mention it again.
Didn’t think of the inn, or the old sailor, or the way he’d said it doesn’t sound like danger.
Not then.
Not even later, when night settled in, and the world narrowed to the glow of dim lanterns and the endless dark stretch of water beyond… And the humming came back.
Softer this time.
Closer.
Not drifting across the deck this time, but nestled right inside his ear.
Jisung lay in his hammock, staring up at the low ceiling, listening despite himself.
It was… Beautiful.
Not in any way he could easily describe. There were no words, no melody he could follow or repeat. Just sound, rising and falling in a pattern that felt less like music and more like breathing.
For a moment, he considered sitting up. Asking again.
But the memory of earlier, of blank looks and easy dismissal, kept him still.
“Just your head,” he muttered under his breath, turning onto his side. “Nothing more.”
The humming lingered.
Jisung squeezed his eyes shut, dragging the thin blanket higher over his shoulder to block it out.
After a while, exhaustion won, pulling him under in slow, heavy waves.
Even as he drifted, though, the sound didn’t fade.
It slipped into his dreams instead, threading through them patiently, reshaping them into something softer, something that wrapped around him like a warm current.
﹏﹏﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
By the third night, a strange feeling had settled in behind his ribs.
Not sharp enough to alarm, not strong enough to stop him working, but very much there… A dull, persistent pull that tightened and eased in uneven rhythms. It was worst at night, when the ship fell silent and there was nothing left to drown it out.
Jisung lay in his hammock, staring into the dark, trying to outthink it.
He counted dolphins the way he’d seen them crest and dive alongside the ship, neat little arcs replayed over and over until they blurred together. When that failed, he ran through inventory lists in his head, item by item, forcing his mind into something structured and monotonous.
Rope. Barrels. Salted fish. Spare sails.
Anything but the sound.
Once, in a fit of stubborn irritation, he’d tried drowning it out himself, humming something deliberately off-key, jagged and graceless, a tune with no shape or mercy.
It had lasted all of thirty seconds.
“Shut the fuck up, Jisung,” someone had snarled from across the dark, and a stale biscuit had struck him square in the temple.
The humming hadn’t stopped.
By the seventh night, he gave up on sleep altogether.
He took to the deck instead, long after most of the crew had turned in, pacing slow, restless lines from bow to stern. The ship creaked beneath him, familiar as ever, but it no longer settled him the way it used to. The vast stretch of sea beyond felt different now.
Too quiet.
Too expectant.
The sound followed him there, of course.
It didn’t behave like any sound he understood. There was no direction to it, no clear source. One moment it seemed distant, the next it brushed close enough to feel like it might be just over his shoulder.
He’d stop sometimes, holding his breath, turning slowly as if he could catch it off guard.
Nothing.
Just the endless dark, the faint sheen of moonlight rippling across the surface of the sea.
Jisung leaned against the railing, fingers curling tight around the worn wood as he stared out into it, jaw set.
“Alright,” he muttered under his breath, voice low and rough. “Very funny.”
The humming carried through the silence in response.
Closer now.
Always closer.
He swallowed, something uneasy twisting low in his stomach. For a fleeting second, the memory of the port inn surfaced. The old sailor’s voice.
Only their chosen hear it
Jisung scoffed, sharper than necessary, shoving the thought away as quickly as it came.
“Yeah, right.”
He pushed off from the railing, dragging a hand through his hair, pacing again with more force than before as if he could outrun the feeling gnawing at his chest.
It didn’t work.
Nothing did.
Night after night, the pull grew.
Subtle, but undeniable. A tide turning far out at sea, invisible at first, then stronger with each passing hour. It settled into his muscles, into the rhythm of his breathing, until he couldn’t quite tell where it ended and he began.
And still… No source.
No figure beneath the waves. No distant shape breaking the horizon. Nothing to anchor it to reality.
Just that romantic voice.
Jisung stopped again at the railing, hands braced against it as he leaned forward, peering down into the dark water below. The surface shifted and shimmered, reflecting the moon in fractured pieces, but offered nothing back.
His chest tightened, fiercer this time.
His fingers flexed against the wood.
For a moment, just a moment, the thought slipped through him.
If I could just get closer…
Jisung sucked in a breath, pushing himself back hard enough that he stumbled from the railing.
“Get a grip,” he muttered, more forcefully now.
﹏﹏﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
It was on the ninth night, deep in the narrow throat of the Ilinalta Pass, that the sound changed.
Until then it had been nothing but a drifting melody, shapeless and elusive, something he could almost convince himself wasn’t real if he tried hard enough. A trick of the mind. A seam in the silence splitting open just enough to let something strange leak through.
Now it had form.
Now it had language.
Jisung froze where he stood, halfway through a slow turn of the deck, the breath catching in his throat as the sound rose around him, clearer than it had ever been.
Words.
He didn’t recognise them. Not a single syllable. They belonged to no port he’d docked at, no tongue he’d ever heard across a crowded tavern. And yet…
He understood.
Not the meaning, not in any way he could translate or repeat. But the feeling of it sank into him all the same. Wistful. Aching. A kind of longing so vast it made his chest feel too small to hold it.
The sound wasn’t just reaching him now.
It was asking something of him.
Inviting.
Urging.
Jisung swallowed hard, fingers tightening against the damp wood of the railing as he stared out into the dark stretch of water. The Pass loomed around them, jagged silhouettes cutting into the horizon, the sea unnaturally still between them.
Behind him, the ship carried on as it always did.
Men moved. Ropes creaked. Someone laughed, sharp and brief, before the sound was swallowed whole by the night.
None of them reacted.
None of them heard it.
Of course they didn’t.
They’d stopped trying to drag him back to bed nights ago. The first few times, there had been grumbling, half-hearted attempts to shove him toward his hammock, muttered complaints about him pacing like a caged thing. Now, they barely spared him a glance.
Only the boatswain bothered anymore, and even that was out of obligation more than concern.
“For God’s sake boy, make yourself useful,” he’d snapped earlier that day, catching Jisung lingering at the railing yet again. “Staring into the water won’t make it stare back.”
Jisung had laughed it off then.
Now, the memory pressed against him with uncomfortable weight.
Because the water was staring back.
He could feel it.
There was an itch across his skin, a prickling at the back of his neck, a tug at his joints.
His chest still ached.
Not the dull, distant pull of the previous nights. This was deeper. More insistent. It felt like something inside him was being tugged toward the surface of the water, every cell in his body begging him to relent.
Jisung leaned forward before he realised he was moving, his body answering before his mind had the chance to object. His hands braced against the railing, knuckles pale, as he peered down into the black water below.
“Alright…” he murmured, voice rough, unsteady in a way that had nothing to do with the ship beneath his feet. “I hear you.”
The song shifted.
It was a subtle change, like something adjusting its course now that it knew it had his attention.
Approval.
The air suddenly felt thinner, his pulse loud in his ears as he stared into the shifting dark.
There was nothing there.
The voice rose again, those strange, impossible words spilling out in a cadence that felt almost like a promise.
Or a plea.
Or both.
He didn’t understand it.
But he wanted to.
God, he wanted to.
His foot shifted, heel lifting slightly from the deck before he caught himself, the motion sending a sharp jolt of awareness through him. He staggered back a step, dragging a hand down his face.
“This is ridiculous,” he muttered, though the conviction had worn thin.
The song softened.
Patient again.
As if it knew he would come around eventually.
As if it had all the time in the world.
Jisung stood there for a long moment, chest rising and falling unevenly, eyes fixed on the dark water.
﹏﹏﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
Two nights later found him crouched beside one of the smaller rowboats, fingers tracing along its edge.
They were rarely used. Emergency only. Shore runs, if needed. Otherwise, they sat where they were tethered, rocking gently with the ship, half-forgotten.
Jisung pressed his palm flat against the wood, feeling the faint, damp chill seep into his skin.
He’d told himself he was just checking it.
For damage. For weak points. For anything that might cause trouble later.
A responsible sailor’s task.
He didn’t believe it.
Didn’t even try to.
He couldn’t remember when he’d stopped pretending.
All he knew was that the pull inside him had escalated into something unbearable, no longer a quiet insistence but a constant, gnawing demand. It sat beneath his ribs, hooked deep, tugging in slow, relentless increments toward the water below.
Closer.
It wanted him closer.
The words from before, those soft, impossible syllables, still echoed somewhere in the back of his mind, snaking through his thoughts even in silence. He didn’t understand them.
But he felt them.
Felt the way they wrapped around something inside him and pulled.
It was waiting.
He could feel that too.
Not in any way he could explain. Not sight, not sound. Just a certainty that settled into his bones.
Waiting.
For him.
The rope securing the boat creaked softly as he shifted closer.
His hand moved to it without instruction.
“Oi, Jisung.”
He flinched, blinking hard as the world lurched back into place around him. The deck. The ship. The weight of his own body.
The pull didn’t vanish.
It recoiled slightly, but it remained, waiting, ready to surge again the moment it was allowed.
Jisung turned his head slowly.
One of the crew stood a short distance away, watching him with a crease in his brow, arms folded loosely across his chest.
“Dinner’s ready in the galley.”
“Oh.”
The word left him empty and flat.
Hunger felt like a distant concept. Something abstract, belonging to a version of himself he couldn’t quite reach anymore.
“Come on,” the man pressed, stepping a little closer. “I swear nobody’s seen you eat in at least three days now.”
Three days.
The number snagged on something in Jisung’s mind.
He tried to grasp it, to turn back through his memory and find proof of it being wrong… But everything felt… Smudged. Th ink of his life blurred beyond recognition.
When had he last eaten?
Yesterday?
The day before?
He couldn’t-
“I’m fine,” Jisung said quickly, the answer automatic, even as it rang hollow in his own ears.
The man didn’t look convinced.
Jisung didn’t blame him.
For a moment, neither of them moved. The air between them stretched thin and uneasy.
Then the man clicked his tongue, shaking his head as he turned away. “Suit yourself,” he muttered, already walking off. “You’ll drop before the week’s out at this rate.”
His footsteps faded into the low hum of the ship.
Jisung stood there, unmoving.
Behind him, the rowboat shifted gently against its bindings.
Below, the sea waited.
The murmuring started again almost immediately, slipping into the space the man’s voice had left behind. Not loud enough to make out, not clear enough to grasp, merely a suggestion of sound, brushing against the edges of his awareness.
His hand found the rope again, fingers curling slowly, almost reverently, around the coarse fibres.
The pull surged in response, sharp enough this time to steal the breath from his lungs.
Yes.
That’s right.
Closer.
He swallowed, throat tight, pulse stuttering as the world seemed to narrow to this single point, him, the boat, the dark water just beyond reach.
Dinner.
Sleep.
The ship.
All of it felt… Distant. Unimportant.
Another murmur drifted up to meet him, softer now.
Pleased.
Jisung exhaled shakily, his grip tightening on the rope as his other hand came up to steady himself against the side of the boat.
“Just…” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure who he was speaking to anymore. “Just a little closer.”
The words felt less like a decision and more like surrender.
Above him, the lanterns swayed gently with the movement of the ship, casting thin, wavering light across the deck.
Below, the sea stretched out in endless dark, patient as ever.
Waiting for him to come down.
﹏﹏﹏𓊝﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
That night, the crew all but wrestled him into his hammock.
Hands firm on his shoulders, voices sharper than usual, stripped of their usual humour.
“Eat,” someone insisted, shoving a strip of dried beef into his hand. “Drink, too. You look like you’re on death’s doorstep for Christ’s sake.”
Jisung didn’t argue.
Not because he agreed, but because it didn’t seem worth the effort.
The jerky sat heavy between his fingers, alien somehow. He brought it to his mouth, chewing mechanically, each bite stretching too long, refusing to break down properly. It felt wrong, like trying to swallow rope.
The water was worse.
He tipped the cup back, forcing it down, but it clung to his throat, thick and stubborn, as though his body didn’t quite recognise it anymore. As though it knew… This isn’t what you need.
He swallowed anyway.
Again. Again.
Each gulp an effort.
Each swallow a chore.
It was unimportant.
Food didn’t matter.
Water didn’t matter.
Not this water.
Not the stale, collected rain that sat lifeless in barrels and cups.
The water he needed was vast. Moving. Alive.
Salted and endless.
By the time the others were satisfied, by the time they’d muttered their way into uneasy sleep, reassured only by the fact that something had passed his lips, Jisung lay still in his hammock, eyes wide open in the dark.
The moment the last breath in the room deepened into sleep, he moved.
The hammock swayed faintly as he slipped from it, bare feet meeting the wood without a sound. He didn’t pause, didn’t look back, didn’t let himself think about what he was doing.
Thinking had become… Difficult, anyway.
The pull guided him better than thought ever could.
Up onto the deck.
The night air wrapped around him, cool and familiar, but it didn’t soothe him the way it once had. It only sharpened everything else, the tightness in his chest, the restless energy thrumming beneath his skin.
And the voice.
It was clearer now than it had ever been.
No longer distant. No longer something he had to strain to hear.
It greeted him.
Expectant.
Jisung’s feltsomething almost like relief flooding through him at the sound of it. His shoulders loosened without his permission, tension bleeding away in its presence.
“I’m here,” he murmured, barely louder than the shifting of the sea itself.
No answer.
Not in words.
But the song swelled, embracing him with something unmistakably like delight.
He moved quickly after that.
There was only one man on watch tonight, slumped somewhere near the stern. Jisung caught a glimpse of him as he passed, head tipped back, body loose, the faint, sour-sweet scent of rum hanging thick in the air.
Asleep.
Or close enough.
Jisung didn’t slow.
The rowboat waited exactly where he’d left it.
Everything else might have blurred and slipped from his grasp these past days, but this had remained clear.
He reached for the rope with steady hands.
Untied it.
Lowered the boat carefully, inch by inch, every movement heavily controlled. The wood kissed the water with barely a sound, a faint ripple spinning outward into the dark.
The moment it touched-
The song bloomed.
There was no other word for it.
It surged, bright and full, no longer restrained, no longer patient. Joy spilled through it, sharp and radiant, seeking straight into his chest and tightening the already unbearable pull into something exquisite.
Jisung gasped softly, hand flying to his sternum.
It was too much.
It was perfect.
“Yes,” he breathed, the word breaking from him without thought, without hesitation. “Yes-”
He climbed down into the boat.
Didn’t look back.
Didn’t consider what he was leaving behind.
The ship loomed behind him, solid yet suddenly distant in a way it had never been before. It felt… Irrelevant. Something from a different life, one that had already begun to slip away.
This- this was what mattered.
The oars dipped into the water.
Each stroke pulled him further from the ship, further into the open stretch of sea, and with every inch of distance, the pressure in his chest pulsed, a second heartbeat to match his own.
Closer.
So close now.
The song wrapped around him completely, no longer brushing the edges of his awareness but filling it entirely, leaving no room for anything else.
His thoughts thinned.
Faded.
There was only the water.
Only the voice.
Only the aching, desperate certainty that if he just went a little further, just a little-
He would finally, finally be free of the unbearable tension winding through him.
Jisung pulled again, harder this time, breath uneven, arms straining with a strength he didn’t quite recognise as his own.
The ship was little more than a shadow now.
Ahead of him, the sea stretched wide and dark and endless.
His whole body seemed to vibrate with it.
Not just hearing the voice now, but feeling it. Each note creeping through him until his bones felt hollowed out and repurposed. Gooseflesh rippled along his arms as he twisted this way and that, chasing it, breath coming shallow and uneven.
It was louder than ever.
Closer than ever.
And still-
Nothing.
With a shaky exhale, he let the oars fall slack, the wood knocking softly against the side of the boat as he leaned forward, drawn by a hook set somewhere deep behind his ribs.
The water below was a perfect mirror.
Inky black, broken only by the scatter of stars above, each one reflected so clearly it felt like the sky had been pulled down and laid flat beneath him. The surface didn’t so much as ripple. No current. No disturbance.
Just endless, silent depth.
Jisung strained his eyes, searching for anything, a flicker, a shadow, a shape moving beneath the surface.
Nothing.
His reflection stared back at him, warped and wavering, eyes too wide, face drawn thin by sleepless nights.
He shifted, and leaned over the other side.
The same.
Stars. Darkness. Himself.
The song didn’t stop.
It constricted around him, insistent now, almost eager, and yet there was no source, no body that owned it, nothing to justify the way it filled him up and scraped him out all at once.
A crack of something sharp and unfamiliar split through the haze.
Disappointment.
It landed heavy, sinking straight through his chest, dragging something colder with it. Doubt, maybe. Or something that felt very close.
Had he-
Had he imagined it?
The thought came slow and clumsy, his stagnant mind struggling to form it.
Days without sleep. No food. Barely any water.
Of course he’d start hearing things.
Of course his mind would-
The song faltered.
Just for a heartbeat.
And in that small, awful gap, something like abandonment rushed in to fill the space it left behind.
Jisung’s breath stuttered. “No, please!”
A ripple broke the surface behind him.
It was soft. Barely more than a whisper of movement.
But after days of stillness, it might as well have been a shout.
Jisung froze.
Then, slowly, so slowly it felt like the world had thickened around him like molasses, he turned.
His hands trembled as they found the edge of the boat again, fingers curling tight enough to ache as he leaned over the side, drawn by that same relentless pull.
There.
Just beneath the surface.
A shimmer.
Faint at first, like a trick of the light, something his mind might twist into nothing if he blinked too hard. It shifted, subtle and fluid, catching the starlight in glittering pieces.
Jisung didn’t breathe.
The shimmer grew clearer.
Closer.
Something moved within it.
A shape forming where there had been none.
And then-
A face.
His breath left him in a broken rush.
It was just beneath the surface, distorted by the thin veil of water, features wavering in the reflection of the stars. Pale against the dark, framed by something that drifted and curled like ink spilled into the sea.
Hair.
The eyes-
Even through the distortion, he could feel them.
Fixed on him.
Watching.
The surface broke.
Slowly, the figure rose, water sliding from skin that caught the starlight in a way that felt wrong, too smooth, too luminous for anything human. Dark hair clung in wet strands, trailing over sharp cheekbones, over shoulders that emerged inch by inch from the sea.
The song was no longer distant.
No longer surrounding.
It came from him.
Each note shaped by lips Jisung could now see, moving in a language he still didn’t understand, but didn’t need to.
Up.
Closer.
Until slender fingers breached the surface, pale and impossibly steady as they reached for the side of the boat.
Jisung didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
Every instinct that had ever kept him alive should have been screaming now, run, pull back, leave-
But they were silent.
Drowned out completely.
All he could see was him.
And the moment his eyes met Jisung’s-
The world stilled.
Black, deep eyes, until the moonlight struck them just right, turning them into something brighter.
Something that seemed to glow silver from within.
Jisung’s grip on the boat slackened.
He leaned forward without realising, drawn in slow, helpless increments, breath shallow, lips parting as if he might answer the song with something of his own.
The hand on the boat tightened.
The other rose.
Cold fingers brushed his throat-
And closed.
The fingers at his throat were cold, but not unpleasant.
Not jarring, not enough to break the spell wound tight around his mind. Just a chill that seeped into his skin, trailing downward as water slipped from the Siren’s wrist, soaking into his shirt. Jisung shivered, but he didn’t pull away.
The song continued, softer now, no longer something that wrapped around him, but something shared between them, given life in the small space separating their bodies.
The Siren leaned in.
Jisung followed.
Drawn forward inch by inch, until all that existed was the span of space between them, until the only thing anchoring him to the boat at all was that hand at his throat, the final tether keeping him from tipping over the edge entirely.
Not that he wanted to resist it.
Not anymore.
Those eyes-
Up close, they were worse. Better. Impossible.
Dark at first glance, but alive with that strange, silvery glow beneath the surface, too deep to escape. They watched him with an intensity that pinned him in place more effectively than any grip ever could.
Jisung couldn’t look away.
Didn’t even try.
His lips parted without permission, a quiet, shaky breath slipping out as the Siren drew closer still, close enough now that he could feel the cold of him, could see the fine details of his face, water beading on his skin and lashes, the shimmering scales on his cheekbones, mouth shaping the last notes of that strange, aching song.
And then-
Silence.
It fell between them all at once, abrupt and heavy, like the sea itself had stilled to listen.
For a single heartbeat, neither of them moved.
Then the Siren closed the distance.
Cold, damp lips pressed to Jisung’s.
For a fraction of a second, no longer than a blink, everything lit.
A rush of something bright and overwhelming tore through him, piercing enough to feel like pain and yet unmistakably something else entirely. It flooded his chest, drowned out every stray thought, every lingering doubt, until there was nothing left but that contact, that connection.
And then the world itself tipped.
The boat vanished.
Water surged up around him in a violent, consuming rush, dragging him down before he could even think to gasp. The shock should have hit him, should have snapped him back to himself, but the Siren didn’t let him go.
The hand at his throat held firm.
The other arm wrapped tight around his waist, unyielding, pulling him closer, anchoring him in a way that felt strangely… Secure.
Something coiled around his leg.
Strong, smooth and inescapable.
Jisung’s eyes flew open, the dark sea swallowing what little light remained, but it didn’t matter.
He could still see him.
Still feel him.
Still taste him.
And he kissed him back.
Instinctively. Desperately.
Some distant, fractured part of his mind screamed- wrong, wrong, you need air, you need to breathe- but it sounded faint. Far away. A voice carried from above the surface, already losing shape before it reached him.
It didn’t matter.
Air didn’t matter.
Not here.
His lungs burned as water forced its way in, but even that felt distant compared to everything else. Compared to the press of the Siren’s mouth against his, the unrelenting hold of his body, the way that strange, impossible pull in his chest had finally, finally-
Eased.
Relief flooded in to take its place.
Yes.
That was it.
That was what he’d been chasing.
What he’d needed.
Jisung’s fingers curled weakly against the Siren’s shoulder, not to push away, but to hold on.
As if letting go now would be the real death.
As if the only thing that could save him… Was sinking deeper.
And as the depths swallowed him whole, locked in the Siren’s grasp, Jisung mistook the quieting of his soul for peace.