Somewhere in the deep, dark, vastly undiscoverable depths of the ocean, a raven-haired sea creature swam by himself. With the torso of a human male and the scaled tail of a fish, this creature was what any human would deem to call a merman if they were to see him. But he was yet to be called as such because no living human had seen this particular merman yet.
The tales were correct though.
This merman, and many of the rest of his species, were beautiful.
His torso and arms were made up of sinewy muscle. Muscle that developed naturally due to the constant strain of being pressed under tons and tons of crushing water ever since birth. For the merspecies lived deep, deep down in some of the furthest reaches of the ocean. So far down that any normal human would be crushed if they somehow managed to get that far – which was impossible without the humans' more advanced submarine technology. No one had ever managed to go as far down as the Land of the Mer yet.
His eyes, which were designed to see in the dark, were large. His nose was slightly large but handsomely so, and his mouth was small – his lips perfectly bow-shaped. They hid a nice row of teeth – the same as any humans except for the slightly sharper canines used to tear into the raw flesh of smaller fish.
The raven-haired specimen swished his tail lazily as he swam along slowly. He had camouflaged his skin to blend in with the darkness of his surroundings, and he kept his eyes scanning as he made his way along. One could never be too careful in the sea. It was a merciless and shark-eat-shark world.
There were no rules except the ones you made for yourself.
As if to carry home that fact, the raven-haired merman felt a blow against his shoulder that left him careening through the murky depths of the cold water. He quickly righted himself and looked around to find his attacker. He didn't have to look far because something was speeding towards him with enough force to break his ribs if he didn't move at that exact moment! He gracefully maneuvered out of the way just as the other being torpedoed past him. The blowback from the being's attack attempt left the raven-haired merman hurtling again, but he easily righted himself again and sped away with a large smile on his face.
He wasn't afraid.
This was a friend. A fellow merman.
The greeting may seem strange to a human or anyone who hadn't grown up in the wilds of the seas but this was fairly normal for merpeople. Sometimes friends roughhoused to the point of near death but they would always come back together for a snack of seaweed or a meal of eel.
It wasn't everyday that the raven-haired merman got to see even a single one of his friends since everyone was doing their own thing and just swimming around the ever-stretching sea, so he always enjoyed a nice friendly battle every now and then.
He felt the slightest change in the water behind him, so he smiled mischievously and twirled on the spot, slapping his strong tail against his friend and sending him careening into a nearby rock wall. He knew that would do nothing but slow his friend so he hurried along, searching out a place that he could hide and ambush him before the other could regain his senses.
The two merpeople played like that until they had battered and tired themselves out. They then swam to an area where more of their kind were swimming about. All beautiful, all disconnected.
This area where merpeople liked to congregate was a large cliff of rock where the merpeople had carved out various holes for themselves – or rooms if you will. It was what one might call an underwater apartment complex. Some rooms fancier and more impressive than others. It depended on the merperson that carved themselves a resting place there. Some cared more about the décor than others and some desired spaciousness while others were content to just have a hole to curl up in.
The merman with raven hair had carved himself a room here. It was large and empty. He had dragged a large ocean rock inside for a place to lie upon and a slightly smaller one for a place to curl his tail and sit.
What made this area even more fun was that one of those wrecked human contraptions that they used to sail across the merpeople's homeland in was crashed nearby. All of the different compartments inside offered a nice play area for some of the smaller merfolk. Sometimes the raven-haired merman liked to watch them play. Sometimes he wondered if any of them had come from his sperm.
For you see, the way merpeople reproduced was quite strange. Or it would seem that way from a human perspective.
There was no sexual desire in merpeople, no physical copulation. When merfolk reached a certain age, they would simply begin to release sperm or eggs into the water at certain times – usually when they were feeling the emotion of happiness. And if some sperm and eggs were to mix and take to each other, they would become offspring. Living, breathing offspring. It would happen involuntarily until some would learn to control their secretions as they matured. Some didn't bother to control it, not caring when they released sperm or eggs into the water. The raven-haired merman had learned to control his secretions a few years ago. There was just something about coming across an egg sac with a maturing offspring inside that made the merman feel melancholy.
Merpeople didn't belong to anyone. They came into the world alone and most went out the same way.
They didn't have parents or family in the human sense of the word. Offspring were just that. The offspring of a sperm and an egg that mixed together in the water and managed to survive to birth.
The raven-haired merman didn't like the thought of offspring that possibly came from him swimming alone in the murky waters. So he had learned to control his secretions.
It didn't take a lot of effort. The sperm of a merperson was released from two small slits on either side of their shining tails, right below their gills – which were also on their tails.
The merman with raven hair laid, content, on his bed of rock while his friend rested on the floor. His friend had long hair that went all the way down past his torso, never one to maintain his tresses as some other merpeople did. The raven haired merman always made sure to cut his hair with the use of rocks sharpened exactly for that task. He didn't like having long hair. It was a weakness, liable to snag on things and collect floating seaweed, or worse, get caught on the teeth of some large predator.
In the mostly nonverbal way of merpeople, the raven-haired merman communicated to his friend that he was happy.
He was happy because his friend had come to visit and it had been a while since he had seen him.
The friend responded that he was happy to see the raven-haired merman as well.
The communication soon became deep. Through the use of movement and high-pitched chitters, the raven-haired merman wondered aloud whether his friend shared the same thoughts as he did sometimes. About why they existed.
There had to be more to life than swimming on through to forever. Alone. Eating, sleeping, fighting for survival. His thoughts traveled to the school of fish he sometimes snacked on and the humans he saw way back when he used to travel to the surface for human language lessons with a friend that he hadn't seen in a while. There was something about the humans that stayed in the back of his mind all this time even though he hadn't actively thought of the surface land in years. As he thought on these things, he communicated to his friend an idea.
He suggested that they stick together. That they find the merpeople they had talked to and played with as they grew up and they should all stick together. They should form a community. A family. And they should be loyal to each other no matter what.
His friend stared at him like he had two heads. And then he laughed and swatted the raven-haired merman roughly with his tail before he disappeared from the other's home and swam off into the darkness of the sea, leaving the raven-haired merman alone once again.
The hope fell from the merman's face.
* * *
In an elite private school in Seoul, Min Yoongi, a short and stoic senior with catlike features approached a table of sophomores. Their cheerful chatter faded as the senior drew near. He zeroed in on one of them, a handsome square-jawed boy with jet black hair. “Hey,” he said. “You.”
The sophomore looked around.
“I'm talking to you,” Yoongi clarified.
The sophomore faced him again and stood up hesitantly while his friends looked on warily. “Yes?” he asked.
“Heard you're trying to raise money to buy yourself a car.”
“Uhh...yeah?” the sophomore said, confused. It wasn't everyday that a senior came to talk to him. Especially not this senior.
“Well, that's gonna take a while,” Yoongi said. “I've seen you working at the chicken place on the corner. They can't be paying you that much. It'll take you, what...a few years to earn enough to get the car you want?”
The sophomore stared at Yoongi, unsure where he was going with his line of questioning. “Sure...I guess...”
“Well...Lucky you,” Yoongi said, clamping his hand on the younger student's shoulder and causing him to jump, startled and slightly afraid. “Jimin wants you. Be good and you can get that car in a few days.”
The sophomore was then led in front of Park Jimin, the son of one of the richest chaebol families in Korea. He was beautiful. His hair was dyed a loud and rebellious shade of blonde, his plump lips were a hue of natural pink, and his gaze was both sultry and dangerous. He would look cute if it wasn't for the fact that arrogance was emanating from him in waves.
He sat with his arm around a female junior with long black hair and his two other best friends besides Min Yoongi – Jung Hoseok and Kim Taehyung.
Jimin, Yoongi, Hoseok, and Taehyung made up the Expensive Clique as everyone liked to call them. They all came from rich families and they flaunted it by blatantly disobeying the school's rules with dyed hair and by wearing whatever they wanted instead of the school uniforms set by the school. They knew they could get away with it. Because their families were more powerful than the school. They also invested large sums of money into the school, and the school didn't want to risk losing their backing. So they looked the other way no matter what the Expensive Clique did.
And they definitely took advantage. Especially Park Jimin.
Park Jimin was the wealthiest of the four, so he was leader of the clique.
Everyone in the school knew of Park Jimin. If he wanted something, he would take it. Even if that something turned out to be a human being.
The sophomore, Kim Minho, stood in front of Park Jimin and his clique. “Uh...Yes?” the sophomore asked, trying not to tremble in his dress shoes.
Park Jimin regarded him slowly, his eyes traveling up and down Minho's body. The sophomore had the urge to step away from the intense gaze, but he knew he shouldn't. Jimin's stare commanded him to stay still even as he wanted to flee. When Jimin's eyes landed on Minho's once again, seemingly satisfied, he smirked. “Want to be my friend?” he asked.
“Uhh...” The sophomore wasn't sure how to respond to that. But apparently, he didn't need to. Jimin was already turning to the girl next to him and taking a diamond bracelet from her wrist.
“I'll be taking this back now, Miyeon-ah,” Jimin said, syrupy sweet. “Thank you for the past week. It's been fun.”
“What?” Miyeon shrieked. Her face fell into a frown. “I- we...”
With a nod from Jimin, Yoongi and Hoseok moved in to take the protesting girl away. Sometimes they had to be removed by force. Jimin sighed as the screaming girl was dragged away and then he held out the bracelet to Minho. “Here,” he said. “Put this on. You're mine now.”
* * *
Thoughts of the surface land and its inhabitants kept playing in the raven-haired merman's mind. When he was young, he would swim up there with a friend on a few occasions to experience his land transition.
For it was during the spring and summer seasons when a merperson exposed themselves to dry land and the sun for a few hours, their tails would shed from their bodies and reveal a pair of legs just like the humans possessed. A lot of merpeople would travel to the surface sometime during their life to experience this biological trait of theirs, but few held the desire to continue to use their land legs past their initial stages of curiosity. Whether it was due to fear, disinterest, or distaste, most merpeople didn't have the desire to partake in experiencing any part of the surface land.
In the raven-haired merman's case, he had been embarrassed.
When he got his legs for the first time, he didn't know how to use them. And the sun had hurt his eyes which were used to the darkness of the sea; the heat had burned his skin. He hated it.
But he and his friend had continued to come to the surface simply to swim in the water near the beach and study the humans they saw on land sometimes. They had found the language the humans used fascinating. And due to their talent of mimicry, they picked up what they heard of the language pretty quickly.
But what had fascinated the raven-haired merman the most hadn't been the language. It had been the way humans stuck together. In packs. Bigger ones taking care of smaller ones. And every time he came back up, he would see the same packs still taking care of each other. All the time. He learned that these packs were called families. That the smaller ones belonged to the bigger ones and they were happy to belong.
It was fascinating.
With those thoughts in mind, the raven-haired merman began his ascent back up to the surface. Maybe it was time for him to visit again.
Maybe there was something he could learn from these humans.
He could learn how to create companionship.
* * *
Jimin stared at the printed out pages in his hand. Pages detailing his and his friends' activities in a not very positive light. A title lined the top: “The Corrupt Privilege Afforded to Jowon Academy's 1%”. The author, Kim Minho.
Apparently, the kid was an aspiring journalist and he had decided that Park Jimin would be the subject he built his career on.
“Do you want us to do anything about this?” Yoongi asked. He and the rest of the clique were standing outside the school building, skipping their morning classes.
Jimin smirked. “No,” he said. “Let him write what he wants. He'll owe me in the future for all of the clicks he gets on his pathetic little blog.” Jimin noticed that there were pieces Minho left out of the story. Mostly the pieces involving himself and the things he had done since putting on Jimin's diamond bracelet. That meant there was information Minho didn't want to share. And as long as Jimin knew information Minho didn't want to share, he was still in control of the situation.
Besides that, the rest of the information was true so how could he be upset? He was actually quite excited. He wanted to see how his father would react to his son being in the school news.
But his excitement was short-lived.
The only thing he got from his father was a voicemail message that he opened when he got out of school.
“Jimin, your school contacted me telling me you've gotten yourself into trouble again. I've taken care of it. Just go to the beach house for a couple of weeks until things die down.” There was a pause as if his father was contemplating broaching his next topic but then he continued. “And son, you know I don't care how much you play around but keep it to the girls, okay? We have a reputation to maintain. Bye.” And just like that the call ended.
The only words that resonated in that message to Jimin were the words, “You know I don't care...”
He went to the beach house the next day, knowing it didn't matter that he was going to miss school for the next couple of weeks. Knowing he could skip the college entrance exams entirely and still get into the most prestigious Korean university.
His life had already been paved for him. Laid neatly. All of the everyday events were just a sham, a meaningless stream of activities that didn't amount to anything. He knew where he would end up, working at his father's company and married to some woman who was the daughter of one of his father's business partners. It was all so...pointless.
Which is why his thoughts lingered a little long on how it would feel to sink below the calm, frothing waves of the ocean as he visited his favorite spot on the beach the next morning. It was a spot separate from the rest of the expansive sand. A little closed off by rocks and grass. Like a private little cave all to himself.
Except he wasn't by himself that morning.
Pulled from his morbid thoughts, Jimin's eyes drifted over to the pair of wide eyes blinking back at him. Jimin narrowed his eyes curiously before slowly reaching into the top pocket of his fancy night shirt – he hadn't bothered to dress for the beach – and pulled out a pack of cigarettes from which he pulled one of the sticks and placed it between his lips.
He stared at the man (or boy rather) that was still staring at him from behind a large rock planted in the sand just at the shore of the sea. He didn't shy away from the gaze; he never did. Especially when it was coming from someone as handsome as this boy with raven hair. His eyes moved down what he could see of the other male's body. His arms were carded with muscles. Jimin's eyebrow lifted in interest.
“It's a little cold out to be shirtless, don't you think?” Jimin asked, finally breaking the silence between the two.
He watched the other man's brows furrow and his head tilt as if he was trying to decipher Jimin's exact meaning. “Shirt...less?” the other man asked back, his voice smooth and beautiful.
Jimin wondered absently why he was acting like he had never heard of a shirt before, but he didn't pay it much mind. He simply lit his cigarette and moved on to his next line of questioning. “It's a little early to be out here by yourself, isn't it? Are you working out or something?”
“Early...” the man repeated faintly before he seemed to recall something. “No,” he said. “I live here.”
“Live here?” Jimin's brow furrowed. He didn't know of anyone as handsome as the man in the water living on the beachfront. He would have taken notice before. He spent a lot of time here, after all. It's always where his father banished him to keep him out of trouble. “You must be new then.”
“No. I was here first,” the man said, his brow furrowed, almost as if he was challenging Jimin with that statement.
Jimin chuckled. He was cute. “Okay,” he conceded. “What do your parents do?”
“Parents?”
Jimin sighed. He was sure if the other man weren't so handsome, he would have cursed him out and marched back home by now in irritation. Having a conversation with him was like pulling teeth. “You know...your mom and dad? The people that gave birth to you.”
“Oh...” The other man was silent for a moment. “I don't have parents.”
The small, confident smirk on Jimin's face fell. “Oh...” He wasn't sure what to say to that, but he didn't want to pry any further. It was none of his business. Whether the kid had shitty parents or dead ones, they weren't there for him. He could relate. He tipped his carton of cigarettes toward the boy. “You want one?”
His eyes widened with innocent curiosity. “What is it?”
Jimin blinked at him slowly as if he had two heads. “Cigarettes. What do you think it is?”
The other boy shrugged. “I don't know.” He was staring at the carton of cigarettes warily as if it was an explosive bomb that was rigged to go off any minute. Jimin rolled his eyes and stood up, walking towards the boy. He shifted as if he was going to swim away, but Jimin slowed his approach down so as not to startle the skittish kid any further. When he got closer, he noticed two things. One, the boy was even more handsome up close, and two, there was an aura about the boy he hadn't noticed before. A certain maturity that could easily be hidden behind the boy's initial wariness. He knelt down and pulled a cigarette from the packet. “Open up,” he instructed.
The boy continued to frown at him curiously as if he still wasn't sure if he wanted to be this close to Jimin or not.
“Ah,” Jimin prompted, parting his mouth for a little demonstration as to what he wanted the boy to do.
After a couple of more seconds of hesitation, the other man finally followed his lead and parted his lips.
Jimin smiled and felt a little twinge of attraction. He always did like compliance. He slowly placed the cigarette in between the other man's lips, making sure to brush his fingers against the pink of them. His eyes flicked up from the man's mouth to his eyes just in case it wasn't clear that he was interested. To his satisfaction, the other man didn't turn away from him. He held his gaze. Jimin couldn't read his expression, but he wasn't being pushed away so that was a good sign.
When he closed his lips around the cigarette, Jimin pulled out his lighter and struck it.
It was then that everything Jimin thought he knew about his world changed in an instant.
The other man pulled away from him quickly and the next thing he saw was what looked like a tail submerging beneath the water, and then he was gone.
Jimin stared out at the calm waters in utter confusion, not sure what he had just seen. Everything was still. It was almost as if a person besides himself hadn't been there at all.
“Hello?” he called, his lighter still held out uselessly in front of him.
He thought the other man was gone for good when things stayed still for a while more but then he saw a ripple and a pair of wide eyes peeked out of the water once again.
Jimin stared in confusion for a moment, trying to process everything. And then he asked the question that was foremost on his mind. “Uhh...Do you have a tail?”
The man simply stared at him for a moment longer, but then he moved. And the end of his tail came up from beneath the water. Finned, shimmering green and black, and...powerful. He could tell from the way the man began to push through the water with his tail that it held a lot of strength. He watched as the man began to swim daintily, swishing his tail from side to side as he went far out in the ocean and then dived beneath the surface only to come back up and swim close again.
He was showing off.
For a reason Jimin couldn't explain, his heart pounded in his chest. It wasn't fear. No, he felt something else watching the man glide through the water easily. The interest he felt from earlier only grew stronger.
He could tell from the way his muscles rippled and the way he moved among the waves as if they were a part of him that he was witnessing more than just a well-trained swimmer, but he had to ask... “Did...Did you buy that off of Ebay? Amazon or something?”
The other man swam close to the shore once again and stared at him with that same curious expression. “Ebay? Amazon?”
Jimin's heart pounded stronger. He wasn't the type of man to believe in fairy tales or fantastical things but...he knew otherworldly when he saw it. “You're a mermaid.”
The merman didn't deign to grace him with a response. Probably because he didn't know what Jimin had just called him – he didn't know what humans referred to his species as. He simply did a fancy twirl in the water, amused by the look of awe upon the human's face.
He submerged himself beneath the shallow waves once more and when he came back up, he was face-to-face with the human once more. He was surprised to find himself so close to the human, who had knelt upon the sand, but he didn't move away. There was something about the man that captivated him.
“I want you,” Jimin breathed.
The merman felt the breath on his lips and saw the spark of determination in the human's eyes. He didn't know exactly what his phrase meant but, for the first time in his life, he felt as if he might have just been claimed by someone.
Involuntarily, his skin began to grow a bit more luminous. It was a side effect of happiness for the mer species. Sometimes they could control it; sometimes it came on unawares, like now. The merman didn't notice he was glowing until Jimin blinked at him curiously, his eyes scanning his body. “What's happening?”
The merman looked down to see his predicament and hurriedly suppressed his outward glow. “Nothing.”
Though happy, the mer species was a prideful race. So the merman pushed away from the shore. Away from the human with the beautiful face and glowing eyes. He wouldn't allow himself to belong to a human. He wanted to learn their ways, not get claimed by one. “You can't have me,” he said, before diving down beneath the surface of the waters and disappearing from sight.
Jimin's heart continued to pound in his chest. He felt the same as he felt that one time he had tried cocaine. High. “We'll see about that,” he murmured, looking over the expansive waters.
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