Collector of Voices [1/3]

[wintercelestial]

Title: Collector of Voices [1/3]
Rating: pg-13
Genre: angst, tragedy, romance
Pairing: suchen, onesided!luchen
Summary: A prince of the land and a prince of the sea, made for each other but never meant to be. LittleMermaid!AU


PART I, BLUE SEA

Luhan’s first encounter with the sea prince takes place during a time of sorrow. The bitter oceans echo with bleak songs of whales and the empty chirp of dolphins. The waters run as cold as the stormiest winters.

The merpeople mourn their queen.

Luhan is just a young merboy, a scrawny wee thing with blond hair and twinkling amber scales, playing by himself outside the splendour that is the Sea King's palace. He dives into the fronds of seaweed, twirling in and out carelessly as a boy of his delicate ten summers is wont to do, and shimmies away through to a secret route only he knows.

Luhan’s personal haven is a small cave hidden between several large rocks, the entrance almost completely shrouded by anemone. He always comes by himself. He is a lonely boy.

He reaches out to push aside a curtain of weeds and realizes he’s not alone.

Melancholy notes drift out from inside the cave, a song Luhan recognizes. It’s a haunting combination of loss and love twisted into the words of each line, sung by the merpeople once every summer to pay homage to those who have passed on - the ones who have returned to the sea as foam.

The mer are the voice of the sea; the ones who sing it to life, and the ones who sing their people home. The words are easy enough, but too complex for a mere child to understand, and so it is rule that only the elder merpeople may let such a tune flow from their lips.

Every soul of the ocean knows the song, in the same way they all know the voice that pours out the lilting harmony before Luhan’s eyes.
The singing stops as soon as he swims out from his hiding place. The two of them lock eyes and stare.

Sitting in his cave is a young merboy with a head of dark russet brown hair and a tail of glimmering sapphire scales, his expression taken aback and his mouth in an 'o' of surprise.

“H-hello,” Luhan stutters, his ear fins turning pink, “U-um, I heard you singing so I - uh, sorry, um…”

Luhan has no idea how to properly address the prince before him, the son of the Sea King. He is just a poor merboy who plays in the coral reefs; what were his chances of ever brushing scales with royalty? He casts his gaze down and fiddles with his fingers.

The other boy, much to Luhan’s relief, speaks. “I’m Chen,” he says, “but you already know who I am, right?”

Luhan looks back up to see the other boy give him a bow-lipped smile, and nods.

“Do you come here all the time?” Chen asks, glancing around the cave. There’s a few tidbits here and there, some pebbles and conch shells lying around, but it’s mostly bare. He sees the still-silent Luhan and swims towards him. “Sorry. I didn’t know. I found this place today and I really like it.”

He reaches out and tugs on Luhan’s arm. “What’s your name?” he says, and Luhan stumbles over his words again.

“L-Luhan.” He lets Chen gently pull him into the cave, and frowns at the brunet. “Why were you singing that song?”

Chen blinks. “Why? Because Mama is gone,” he answers slowly, his smile vanishing. “Papa says I have to sing for her tonight.”

Luhan gasps in shock. “But you can’t!” he exclaims. “You're too young to sing it!”

“Mama’s voice lives in me. That’s what Papa said.” Chen’s lips tremble and he presses them together tightly. He doesn’t cry. He can’t cry. “I wish she was still here.”

Luhan’s only ever seen the Sea Queen a few times in his short life. While she was a pretty mermaid, her voice could sing the stars to life. Sometimes when Luhan's grandmother is too occupied for him, Luhan falls asleep to the queen's soothing lullabies, borne on the arms of the currents to resonate throughout the oceans.

It was only fitting that the kingdom had looked on in awe, entranced, when her child had opened his mouth and sang his first sweet note.

It is a bitter song that should never be sung, Luhan’s grandmother had once told Luhan. Despite the envious beauty of our world we are fated to be sorrowful people, and so we understand there is loss in everything that exists.

But Luhan is one child who does understand the song of the merpeople, and he quickly envelops the other merboy in a tight hug. “It’s okay. I… I’ve sung it too,” he confesses in a whisper.

“You do? How?” Chen asks, his voice partially muffled in Luhan's shoulder. “Why?”

“My grandmother taught me.” Luhan doesn’t let go, suddenly feeling the need to be comforted as well. “We sing for my parents every summer. Mama and Papa died when I was three.”

“…Oh.” It is strangely soothing to a child to find somebody else who hurts the same way he does, someone who understands. The two of them sit in each other’s silence for a long time, connected at the hands.

Luhan sneaks out and returns to his cave the next night, and Chen is there again.

The loneliness becomes easier to bear.

For people who cherish song, a beautiful voice is the greatest gift that can be bestowed. Chen discovers that Luhan is in possession of such a voice, smooth and mellow and as sweet as honey. They take to singing together in their hidden cave, sometimes one leading and sometimes the other, playing amongst the weeds, chasing fish. They fit together like two pieces of a broken conch shell.

“Don’t you have friends at the palace?” Luhan asks one day.

Chen shrugs and looks down at his tail, pretending to pick at a non-existent scratch on one of the blue scales.

“They’re jealous because I can sing better than them,” he says. “They’re not friends.”

The moons become seasons, and seasons become summers.

The tides rise and recede, and kinship ties bloom like the tropical flowers of the warm waters.

They slip away from baby fat and chubby cheeks and into manhood; into lean, toned limbs and thick tails armoured with vibrant scales.
Chen is almost an embodiment of royal seduction, rippling sapphire blue scales and chestnut hair that sweeps down across dark, expressive eyes. His face melts into strong, angular cheekbones but the bow lips reminiscent of his childhood features are still there, curving upwards into charming smiles that set fins aflutter.

Luhan, thankfully, fills out his scrawny figure and grows to be a work of delicate exquisiteness. Large, shiny eyes and soft pink lips make him a popular presence amongst the mermaids, who jump at every opportunity to coo over him. His shy countenance was worn away by Chen to reveal a loyal, strong character underneath.

The two of them are always seen in each other's presence. Chen offers Luhan a home inside the palace but the latter turns it down in favour of remaining with his grandmother instead, and Chen understands.

Between them, they still sing. Chen’s voice is very much now legendary across the seven seas, deepened with manhood and edged with a timbre that Luhan’s own melodic voice doesn’t have. The prince performs during festivities, concerts and balls, Luhan’s voice backing his, and they don’t have it any other way.

Ever since his eighteenth summer Chen has led the merpeople in their song to honour those who have turned to foam, filling the oceans with thier sorrow as his father looks on in unabashed pride.

On the nights when he sings alone for his long-gone mother and slips into a lonely mindset afterwards - when he thinks nobody is looking, Luhan is there to comfort him with hushed words and his protective embrace. To each one of them, the other is perfect.

More moons become seasons, and as more seasons become summers, Luhan falls in love.

PART II, OTHER WORLD

Since the beginning of time this world has been divided into the three realms of sky, sea and land. They are each a world of their own, with their people and ways. They are different branches of the same tree, intertwining but never to become the same branch.

Chen has never seen the world above the sea, the place merpeople call land. Sometimes he sees pieces of it in the form of sunken ships and human possessions lost overboard but they show nothing of where they came from.

It had started with a tiny circular gold band, glimmering in the sand when Chen spied it on one of his earliest explorations with Luhan. He’d picked it up and turned it over in his hands, admiring the way the diamond set in it sparkled, and eagerly called over Luhan to look.

A flick of an amber-scaled tail and the other merboy was by his side.

“It’s a ring,” Luhan said. “It comes from the surface people. I’ve seen one before. Grandmother has some that she found.”

“It’s wonderful,” Chen exclaimed, bright-eyed and tail waving side to side in excitement. “Why don’t we have things like this here? I want to see the land. Imagine all the things they have that we haven’t seen yet!”

Shipwrecks became his interest, and sometimes they took precedence over people and responsibilities. On many an occasion he'd dragged a reluctant Luhan out to find more human ornaments to add to the collection in their cave.

To go to the upper world, for Chen, he must wait.

And so he turns to his cousins, pestering them for stories, and wheedles tales from Luhan’s grandmother.

Do they have cities like us? Great palaces and castles of beauty? Do their people sing and dance like we do?

Indeed they do, they had replied. They have castles that resemble ours, beasts that walk on four legs and boats to traverse the seas. Where we have water they have plants, greenery that cover the land until it stretches beyond the hills.

They sing, but their talent falls short of ours; you should be blessed to be from this world, with mastery of a voice like yours, and not from theirs.

“When you are of twenty-five summers, with enough wisdom of your own,” his father tells him, “only then may you ascend to the surface.”

So Chen waits, still waits, spending many moons staring longingly upwards.

And Luhan waits too, for a heart that already belongs to another world.

Sometimes, Chen is jealous of Luhan. As long as it is deemed acceptable by his grandmother Luhan is free to do as he wishes, and this includes going to the surface while Chen remains at the bottom of the sea.

“It’s exactly as your cousins describe it,” Luhan always says consolingly when the prince confides in him. “There’s sand at the shore, and a castle in the distance. Humans, who walk around on two stubs of flesh instead of a tail.”

Chen sighs every time.

“You’re twenty-one summers. Twenty-five is not far away,” Luhan reminds him. “But your home here is grand, and your voice is even more so. Humans don’t understand the beauty in scales like yours. They don’t know what it means to sing our songs. Why would you ever want to be part of their world?”

Sometimes Luhan wonders if the reason why Chen doesn’t return his feelings is because they don't share this love for a realm beyond theirs.

Luhan is not the only one fascinated with the surface world. He’s visiting the palace today, with a little merboy with emerald green scales in tow.

His name is Sehun, and it’s the only thing he’s ever been able to call his own.

Chen and Luhan had found him swimming about idly outside the latter’s home about five summers back, with nowhere to go, no guardians and not a soul to look after him.

Sehun has been abandoned for as long as he can remember. Even his age is unknown to him, and so Luhan calls him ten.

Luhan had taken the boy under his fin without further ado. If there was anyone who knew what loneliness meant, it was him.

Sehun is a sleepy-looking boy who is absolutely adorable during the rare times he smiles. Shyer than the sea flowers that curl up at a touch, he perpetually clings to one of two people - the first choice being Luhan and the second Chen - and hides his face behind their back until only his wayward tufts of brown hair can be seen. His playful side shows when it’s just the three of them. Luhan endlessly dotes on him and calls him his treasure, and the boy loves to lap up the attention. The two of them often go up to the surface together as a result of Sehun’s insistent begging, but even then the little merboy nowhere as obsessed with human things as much as the sea prince.

Chen swims out from the palace to greet them and Sehun does an excited corkscrew in the water before grabbing him in a big hug, all smiles and gangly limbs. Luhan rolls his eyes and Chen chuckles, patting the tiny merboy on the head.

“Where do you want to play today?” he asks, assuming the pair had come by for the usual reasons.

“We went to the surface,” Luhan sighs, because he knows exactly what kind of conversation this is going to turn into.

Chen’s smile falters slightly but Sehun is too busy digging around in a small pouch tied to his waist to notice.

“Ah! I found it!” He pulls out a thin silver chain and holds it out. “For you!”

Upon closer inspection it’s a pendant, with something metal dangling off it that looks like -

“Is this a scorpi- ”

“It’s a lobster!” Sehun chirps. “Because lobsters remind me of Chenchen.”

Luhan muffles his laughter behind the fins on his forearm. Sehun spins around to hit him.

“Oh,” is all Chen says. It’s become a more and more common occurrence lately, Sehun bringing assorted human trinkets to show him. It makes his heart twist to touch things from the world he pines for so dearly, and even though Sehun knows the prince can’t go to the surface world until he’s twenty-five, nobody has the heart to say no to the tiny boy.

“Do you like it?” Sehun asks nervously.

“Huh? Of course I do…” Chen trails off, biting his lip.

Much to his relief Luhan intervenes and tugs Sehun away. “Look, Sehunnie, a squid!” he says, pointing at a big cephalopod jetting along some ways away.

A flash of green scales later and the youngest is gone.

Chen loops the chain twice around his wrist where it sits snugly. He watches Sehun play with the squid, poking it and pulling at its tentacles until it squirts him with a jet of ink.

“I’m going up,” he says slowly. “I don't want to wait anymore.”

Luhan’s eyes widen. “If this is about Sehun bringing you things again I’ll tell him to stop-”

“It’s not about Sehun.” Chen cuts him off. “It’s my choice.”

“What about your father? He will find out easily.”

“Good, because then I hope he changes this stupid rule.”

Luhan hesitates. “No,” he pleads, wringing his hands. “Please, don’t.”

“I’m not going to stay there. I just want to see. Then I’ll come back and I won’t go again until my twenty-fifth summer.” Chen’s eyes brim with fierce determination, daring the other to challenge him.

Luhan knows a meaningless fight when he sees one.

“Fine. Do what you want,” he says, defeated, “but please, be careful. I can’t bear to lose you.”

Chen doesn’t reply. For a moment Luhan wants to believe the prince has changed his mind and backed down, but luck is clearly not in his favour tonight. He exhales and swims off to pluck Sehun away from the poor squid, where he’s all tangled up and stuck amongst its mass of tentacles.

Every time Luhan thinks back to this moment in time, he wishes he had never let Chen go. He wishes he’d tried harder, and taken away the metaphorical straw that had broken the camel’s back.

PART III, LIVING STORM

alea iacta est - the die is cast

Chen wonders if the stormy sea is some sort of punishment for his venture to the surface.

He leaves the palace before dawn, swimming alone. He battles the rough currents fighting him back as he weaves through the water, navy blue scales shining dully in the dark.

Please, don't. I can't bear to lose you.

Luhan doesn’t understand. He can freely go between worlds as he wants, but Chen can’t.

He flicks his tail harder as the undertow almost throws him aside. As soon as he can see the stars, the twinkling pinpricks of light that belong to a world even higher than that of the land, he breaks the surface of the water and takes a deep breath.

They aren’t stars, but flashes of lightning.

The drumbeat of thunder resonates in the distance as the water roils and the waves churn angrily, tossing up seaspray and foam while the winds howl like a love-scorned mermaid.

It’s so alive.

Chen floats in the waves, enraptured. A large shadow looms over him and his ears pick up the sound of distressed voices.

A big sailing ship lurches from side to side on the stormy ocean. A gaping hole in the hull slowly sucks in water and the wood creaks threateningly. He gasps as he sees humans on the deck all running about on their two legs, some heaving gallons of water over the side and others fighting with giant sheets of material that are flapping about uselessly in the raging wind.

“The sails - secure the sails!” one of them yells over a clap of lightning. They all scramble to follow orders.

“Captain Yunho, let me handle things here. You should take care of things deck,” a smaller male shouts, and Chen has to do a double-take as he watches him swiftly scale the mast of the ship.

He’s dark-haired and short, but not delicately-built, wet skin smooth and glistening pale under the moonlight. Although he clamps his thighs around the mast and fiddles expertly with ropes and hooks and pegs Chen gets the strange impression that this man is out of his environment. He has an air of command; perhaps it is the way his brow is set as he works and directs commands, or perhaps the way he holds his head up and proud, like a king. The man yells something down at the members on the deck but his voice is lost in the wind.

Suddenly the crest of a wave crashes into the hull with a deafening noise, shattering the wood and sending pieces of it flying. Chen hastily ducks under the water to avoid a jagged plank hurled his way and resurfaces in time to see the ship pounded by another particularly violent wave. The entire vessel pitches sideways and the man at the mast is thrown off with a startled cry, his body slamming against the walls of the captain’s cabin and rolling limply off the bow as the ship jerks once again.

Chen watches in interest as humans on the deck skitter around in panic and curse at each other at the top of their lungs.

“Prince Suho’s overboard!”

Prince Suho.

“Onew, you fool, get off the railing. We can’t even see properly in this blasted darkness! How do you propose we find him- ”

“Are you saying that we just leave- ”

“We’re losing the stern, everybody move- ”

“Get below and fetch the captain!”

“We have to get Suho back first or the king will have our heads- ”

“There won’t be a head to have if you don’t shut your trap!”

Chen follows the direction the last man is pointing in and sure enough, he can make out some faint outline that is probably where these humans have come from. He squints and searches the dark water for the man they call Suho but he is nowhere to be seen.

Chen dives under and spots the sinking figure below him, his white tunic stark against the water. He darts down and grabs a hold of his surprisingly light frame.

Suho doesn’t respond when Chen shakes him so he wraps an arm around his waist and swims back up, breaching the surface at a certain distance from the ruined ship. The last of the hull splinters with a sickening crack and the entire mess of sails and wood crumbles into the water. The crew members jump overboard and begin to swim for their lives.

Chen looks down at the prince and back at those flailing in the sea. He thinks of Luhan’s own loyalty to his prince and the devotion of his people, and he looks at these men who would forfeit their prince to save themselves instead, and immediately heads for land.

Only one human will touch the shore tonight.

It’s just on the cusp of dawn when Chen gets Suho safely ashore on the rocky beach.

The surface world is indeed just like how his elder cousins had described it. He can see the castle behind the houses and buildings of the city and-

Suho stirs, and Chen tenses until the prince stops moving.

They’re both still partially submerged in water and sand in the event that Chen has to make a quick escape. He runs his fingers along the milky skin of Suho’s face and admires his simple beauty, continuing his path with his hands until he reaches his waist, from which then splits to become two legs dressed in soaked woollen breeches.

He looks down at his own tail, all blue fins and scales up to his hips where they melt away into his human half, and marvels at the striking difference. He cradles the prince’s cold face in his hands and waits for him to awaken.

He remains with him until the sun fully rises and Suho’s hair shines a dark red like the scales of Chen’s over-friendly cousin Chanyeol. The storm clouds have made way for clear skies and gulls circle overhead in the blue expanse. Were it not for his sensitive hearing and some odd thumping noises he’d never heard before, Chen would have fallen asleep under the warmth of the sun.

“I think I can see something! On the shore!”

“I can’t see anything past these bushes, Lay.”

“Wait until we get down. It might be a survivor.”

Alarm floods Chen’s nerves and he turns tail, wriggling slightly to get into the deeper water and zips away to safety behind a rocky outcrop where he can watch without being noticed.

Two humans, each astride a brown four-legged beast and leading two more behind them, gallop onto the beach.

“Good lord, it’s Suho!” the brown-haired one cries. They slow to a stop beside the prince’s body and the other stockier male presses his hand over his heart in relief before dismounting his steed.

“Out of all people we could have found,” he shakes his head, crouching down. He shakes Suho urgently, patting his cheeks. “Prince Suho? My lord, wake up, it’s Xiumin! Dammit, Lay, he’s not responding…”

“We need to get him out of the water first.”

The two of them move Suho a bit further up on the sand and he finally comes to consciousness when they set him back down.

“L-Lay? Is that- ” Suho coughs and spits out a lungful of water. “Ugh. Where am I? How did I end up all the way- ”

Lay shushes him. “We’ve got you. You can talk once we get you back alive.”

Xiumin hands him a thick towel from one of the saddlebags and Lay starts rubbing Suho dry. “We thought we were never going to see you again after we got news of last night’s storm.”

Suho gingerly touches a bump on his head and winces. “It was bad. Where’s the rest of the crew?” he asks. His teeth chatter non-stop and Xiumin fetches him a water skin and some dried meats to nibble on.

“Suho, you were the only one who washed ashore,” Lay says gently. He dabs at a cut on the prince’s arm with ointment and tuts at a large bruise. “Xiumin and I just checked the other side of the bay.”

“But surely at least Yunho must have made it back? The man’s tougher than old leather- ”

“He didn’t,” Xiumin informs him. “Or we haven’t found him yet, anyway. Lay and I were surprised that you made it back, considering how far out at sea you were. You can’t have swum all this way.”

Suho chews his food in thought. “I didn’t,” he says finally. “I was on the mast because one of the sails ripped in the wind. I was thrown off and…” He pauses, confused. “That’s all I remember.”

“Well, Lady Fortune is certainly fond of you,” Lay grins. “But we’re just glad to have you back. I’m sure this is going to be a story that will never die down.”

Suho laughs weakly. “I’m just glad to have two friends like you. Mother will scold me for hours."

“As if she didn’t when you were a whippersnapper of a child,” Xiumin chuckles, dusting the sand off his hands. “Right, we’d better head back to the castle, my lord.”

He and Lay each take one of Suho’s arms, hoist him up and help him onto one of the horses.

“You know,” Suho begins, taking the reins, “I really think it was more than a stroke of luck to have ended up here.”

“You think so?” Xiumin steps one foot into his stirrup and swings a leg over his mare’s back. “Maybe you weren’t as far out as you thought? There wasn’t a soul here when we found you.”

“Somebody saved me,” the prince insists, looking searchingly at the ocean. “I know it. Otherwise I’d be dead by now.”

Chen smiles, his tail slapping happily against the waves.

“I think you need a good rest,” Lay laughs, nudging his horse into a trot. “Let’s go.”

PART IV, HIDDEN EXISTENCE

“I saved him, Luhan, I saved him,” Chen shouts repeatedly.

Luhan’s brows come together in a frown. “What are you talking about?” he asks anxiously. “What did you do when you went to the surface?”

Chen grabs his hand and pulls him along. “There was a storm,” he rattles off, “and a ship sunk. I took one of the humans back to the shore and saved him, and he knows it was me.”

Luhan’s face becomes stricken with horror. “He knows it was you?” he echoes. “How much does he know about us? Chen, you said you wouldn’t- ”

Chen pats him on the arm. “I didn’t talk to him,” he reassures the blond merboy. “He was unconscious the whole time. But he knows it was me.”

“You’re not even making sense. I hope you won’t go again, like you promised.”

Chen doesn’t say anything, and Luhan sighs out bubbles.

“You’re going to go back, aren’t you?” he says, and Chen’s silence is all the answers he needs.

“I want to see more of their world,” Chen finally says. He takes Luhan in a hug. “I’m sorry, Luhan. Are you angry at me?”

Yes, Luhan wants to shout. Yes, I am.

Instead he says, “I could never be angry at you” because if anything at all, it’s the truth. “But why did you save him? You could have just left him to drown.”

“He was a handsome prince,” Chen murmurs somewhat guiltily into Luhan’s shoulder. “I think I would have tried to court him, had he been one of our people.”

Luhan’s voice catches in his throat. “…Handsome?”

“Pale as pearl, a smile brighter than the gold of your scales.”

The amber-scaled merboy prises him off, hiding his concern behind laughter. “Are you telling me you fell in love with a human overnight?”
“N-no! Luhan!"

Who does Chenchen like?” a streak of green suddenly darting around them asks.

Luhan grabs a hyper Sehun around the waist and reels him in. “About time you got back, you! Stop harassing the palace’s sea life.”

“I’m not!” the little merboy protests. “The clownfish like me.”

“That’s because they think it’s funny when you get stung by anemone,” Chen chortles, mussing up Sehun’s mop of brown hair. “Don’t the two of you have somewhere to be today?”

Luhan nods. “Grandmother requested that we get some oysters for her. Sehun just wanted to drop by on the way.”

“Oh. You’d better get going, then.” Chen waves fondly at Sehun as the pair swim off.

Luhan’s heart starts to weigh heavy.

Chen returns to the surface at the next dawn in the hopes of seeing the human prince again, nearly getting the shock of his life when Suho also turns up on a horse later at midday.

He walks up and down the beach and trails footprints in the sand, gazing pensively out at the sea. He looks considerably less paler than he did when Chen had first seen him.

Chen watches him sit on the shore and feed his animal with little nibbles and the nearby seagulls with pieces of bread.

Is he looking for me?

He bobs up and down in the water, watching as Suho takes out parchment, quills and ink from one of the bags strapped to the horse’s back. He draws his bottom lip between his teeth and scribbles something down, stopping here and there, and then writes some more.

It’s almost as if he is composing, Chen thinks, his bow lips curving upwards.

Finally Suho holds up the parchment with a satisfied air, takes a breath and sings.

Chen stares for a long, long time, slack-jawed and eyes wide in wonder.

Suho’s voice is beautifully soft for a human, serene and compassionate. It brings Chen memories of the sweet lullabies his mother used to sing before she returned to the sea. Such a voice that belongs to the people of the sky world, surely.

“Prince Suho! My lord, why are you down here?”

It’s Lay, one of the accompanying males Chen recognizes from the previous day. The other one is absent this time.

Lay’s white mare gallops across the sand until he reaches the lone figure sitting on the shore.

Suho laughs and scratches the back of his head. “I’m fine,” he says cheerfully. Chen doesn’t miss his dazzling smile. His fins feel warm and if his scales could melt off, they would have done so by now. “I just felt a bit too cooped up in the hospital wing.”

Lay lets out a breath he’d been holding in and smiles back, a little dimple forming in his cheek. “I see,” he grins. “Did you come to look for your mysterious saviour too?”

Suho goes pink. “Absolutely not!” he lies, flushing even more. “I like it here. It’s relaxing.”

“If you say so, my lord. If you have time Jaejoong would like to see you about Captain Yunho.”

“Oh dear. We’d better get going, then.”

It’s almost a voice that rivals his own, Chen marvels as he listens to the prince sing again on the following noon. Suho keeps glancing around and Chen knows he’s looking for the one who brought him ashore in the vain hopes they will maybe come. It makes him ache inside because he knows he must keep his distance. Suho is always on the beach at noon and stays for about an hour until either Lay or Xiumin come to take him back.

By day Chen is entranced by everything that is Suho. By night he channels his admiration into his own songs. Sometimes at performances he sings of his entrapment in the sea, his yearning for another world, and the crowd all think he’s simply weaving wild tales for their entertainment. He never approaches Suho, instead hiding safely behind the smattering of rocks that poke out of the waves.

Luhan's heart continues to weigh heavier as the days pass.

The air is bright and warm, the sun overhead drying Chen’s hair as he peeks at the human prince from afar.

Suho wanders through the water of the shoreline, breeches rolled up to the knees and boots sitting out of the reach of the tide. The piece he’d been composing was finished days ago and today he sings it again, the cool wind carrying the dulcet notes easily over the water.

Part of Chen wants to throw his arms around Suho, tell him that he can stop coming back each day because the one who brought him to shore is the one embracing him, and another part of him screams no. He longs to be near, to see Suho’s human beauty up close, inhale his scent, touch his skin.

Chen’s heard him sing enough times to know the next verse, and follows Suho’s lead into the chorus. The beautiful harmony drifts through the air, sweet and comforting to the soul.

On the shore Suho halts mid-step. His voice trails off and his eyes rake his surroundings. Where was that voice coming from?

“Who are you?” he calls out uncertainly. “I... I think I know you’re there. Won’t you show yourself to me?”

Chen dives back into the water, his heart warm and free because Suho knows he exists.

“Prince Chen!” A voice calls his name just as he enters the palace. “Wait!”

“Hm?” Chen turns around to see one of his father’s younger advisors, Kyungsoo, catch up to him in a flicker of light peach scales.

The two of them had interacted once or twice when they were young, but had grown apart over the summers. While Kyungsoo’s intentions were in the right place and Chen found him good company from time to time, Kyungsoo's loyalty to the Sea King stood strong.

“Oh. Hello,” Chen smiles.

“Ah, Prince Chen- ”

“Please don’t call me that,” Chen groans.

Kyungsoo blinks his big eyes and bows hastily. “My apologies, Prince Chen. I’m sorry to disturb you but your father requests your presence immediately.”

PART V, IMMORTAL SOUL

“You knew you were forbidden to go!” the Sea King roars. “Why did you disobey me?” The nearby fish dash away in fear.

Chen averts his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, because he doesn’t know what else to say. “I won’t do it again.”

“You had better not!” His father swings his trident in the direction of the surface, steely-grey eyes flashing with ire. “What did you do when you were there?”

“Nothing,” Chen lies calmly, meeting the king’s gaze straight on. “I just watched the humans.”

“Do not lie to me! You must have had a better reason to go.”

“I didn’t leave the water. I didn’t talk to them. I just… I just wanted to see their world.”

“And what else? Rules were made to protect you, boy.”

Chen bows his head in submission and bears the rest of the Sea King’s tirade without another word, hoping to lull him into a false sense of receiving obedience.

“You will not let me catch you again, do you hear me?”

“Yes, father.”

“You may go.”

By the time the sun is at its highest on the next day, Chen has already returned to the upper world. He neurotically checks his surroundings as he glides through the cold water, head scanning left and right. His father appeared to have more eyes than the prince thought. He breaks the surface at his usual hiding spot behind the rocks.

The shore is empty; not a single soul in sight. Chen feels a stab of disappointment in his chest. He’d truly been looking forward to the warmth of Suho’s voice again. He counts seashells and idles about in the tide to pass the time, but Suho never comes. Eventually he loses track of how many hours he’s spent waiting.

He dives back under the surface, and comes face to face with the tines of his father’s trident.

“One day,” the Sea King growls. “You couldn’t listen to me for even one day?”

“Suho wasn’t even there,” Chen objects in the same tone of voice. The fins behind his ears suddenly flush a bright red and he claps a hand over his mouth to cover his mistake.

His father’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Who is Suho?” he demands. “Is he a- ”

“He doesn’t know anything! Don’t hurt him.”

They stare each other down, the tension thickening with each passing second. Finally the king speaks.

“You will go back to the palace immediately,” he orders briskly, “and there we will discuss a punishment appropriate for your actions.”

A few days later Chen accidentally swims straight into Sehun without even registering the identity of the merboy. He side-swims him and keeps going, not stopping until he hears an indignant voice yell out his nickname.

“Chenchen! That hurt!”

Chen whips around to find a pouting Sehun rubbing his sore shoulder. Luhan is behind him, a worried expression on his face.

“What’s going on?” the blond asks cautiously. “I haven’t seen you for a while. You look on the verge of turning to foam.”

Sehun’s still grumbling so Luhan shoos him off to annoy a passing school of herring before he takes the prince aside.

“Banned,” Chen mutters. “He banned me from ever going back.”

The water around them is quiet. Nobody asks who ‘he’ is.

“By the seven seas, why didn’t you tell me?” A shocked Luhan pulls Chen towards him. “You’re a fool,” he sighs into the prince’s chestnut hair, smoothing it down with a hand.

“He can’t stop me,” Chen mutters into the skin of Luhan’s shoulder. “I’ll find another way to go back.”

“Chen, no.” Luhan wraps his arms tighter around him. “I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I won’t… I just need to go.”

“Why? What is it up there that makes you keep going back? What will your father do if he finds out you went again?”

Chen pushes Luhan away. “Funny that,” he says icily, “coming from the one who told him where I was.”

The blond merboy goes cold all over. “It was for your own good!” he says defensively. “You had no idea how worried I was for you!”

Chen says nothing more. He just turns and storms off in a flash of blue scales.

Luhan buries his head in his hands and regrets everything.

Chen avidly refuses to talk to anybody, instead choosing to hole himself away in his quarters and only leaving when his presence is required for a performance. He pointedly looks away every time Luhan glances in his direction.

Loud pounding at his door one night disturbs him. As soon as he throws it open in annoyance Luhan’s hand shoots inside, grabs his wrist and wrenches him out of his chamber.

“You have a lot of nerve to handle me like that,” Chen comments, but he makes no move to retreat to his quarters.

“I know,” Luhan says, ignoring him, “the reason why you keep going back.”

Chen tries his shake his hand off to no avail. “I don’t believe you. Leave me alone.”

“Chen, please. Come with me,” Luhan insists, pulling at him. “I have somewhere I want to take you.”

“Why? Where would you possibly take me?”

The blond merboy lets go and their hands drop back to their respective owners. “Have we really grown that far apart?” he asks, his eyes pleading. “Aren’t we friends anymore?”

“It would’ve been nice if you'd thought of that before you turned me in to my father.”

“I know what that meant for you and I’m sorry for what I did. That’s why I want you to come with me.”

Chen heaves a sigh, but he extends his hand again. “Lead the way.”

Luhan takes him to the surface. This time they take a secret route (“your father has people posted to keep an eye out for you,” he says) that is mostly empty, save for the occasional whale that floats past. As soon as he sees rocks close to his tail Chen asks where they are.

“A river,” Luhan replies.

“A river?” the prince echoes, as they break the surface. He surveys their surroundings in the dark, faint shapes of trees and swathes of clipped grass around them. He stares at the large outline that looms over them when it dawns on him that he’s seen it before.

“This is the residence of the human prince, Suho. The one you come back for,” Luhan quietly informs him over the calm flow of the water. He observes Chen’s expression change from blank to wonder, surprise and happiness. “This river runs past the back of his castle. His quarters can be seen from here, and he often comes to this place. I… I just thought you’d like to know.”

There is a certain tightness to his voice that makes Chen turn his head in confusion but Luhan is already swimming away, the amber of his scales reflecting a dull brown in the moonlight.

Chen’s briefly stuck between chasing after Luhan or waiting for Suho, but in the end he decides to stay. The sun soon rises and he swims about, tail flicking side to side anxiously, but sure enough the human prince opens his doors and Chen is forced to hide behind ferns further downstream as Suho comes to wash clothes in the river.

His features are so much more striking up close; pearly white teeth, dark hair that looks silky soft to the touch. Suho’s brows draw together while he wrings out his undergarments and shakes them out, humming a happy tune and throwing them back into a basket at his side.

Chen cannot resist coming back again and again and watching Suho cycle through various activities each day. At noon he always disappears but Chen knows it’s to go to the beach and a small part of him inside sinks. However, the visits drop off with the days and become more and more infrequent.

Sometimes Suho plays with small humans and a little four-legged animal that woofs and wags its tail. Sometimes he and Xiumin poke at each other with long silver weapons and Lay has to patch up their scrapes afterwards. After one particularly strenuous session he drops his clothing in a pile and bathes in the river, all toned alabaster limbs and water dripping from wine-red hair.

Suho is so close and so far away. Untouchable. Chen feels as if he is stuck in a pre-pubescent body, with new scales itching from growth and being told strictly not to scratch them.

Suho is human, but Chen falls in love anyway.

“Ah, Luhan’s not here right now.” Luhan’s grandmother shakes her head. “He and Sehun went up to the surface quite a while ago.”

“Oh, that’s fine. I’ll come back later.” Chen bows quickly but she opens her door wider and insists that he come inside.

“They should be back any moment,” she adds, “so you’re more than welcome to stay and wait.” She smiles warmly at him and the prince accepts her offer to make her happy, if anything else.

Luhan’s grandmother is old, her wispy hair grey, fins mottled with spots and tail left with hardly a trace of colour. The people of the sea age, just as their land counterparts do, but the brilliance of their scales bleeds away and turn into the pure white of innocence.

“You’ve been going to the surface too, haven’t you?” she says. It is not a question. “Even though you know you are forbidden to?”

Chen swallows. “Did Luhan tell you?”

“He is my grandson. There is nothing that I am not privy to. But you should know that humans and merpeople are from worlds that cannot exist as one.” She moves to straighten a collection of empty scallop shells. “You should leave your human before it is too late.”

“Why?” Chen asks, forcing his voice to remain calm. He releases his clenched fists. “What is there to keep us divided?”

“It was never fated to be. Humans possess a soul, an immortal one, that rises to join the realm in the sky after it leaves the land. The souls of the merpeople are inexplicably tied to the sea, and so we will always return to our brethren. You would never remain forever together.”

“Why don’t we have immortal souls? I would give up what I have here to be human for a day.”

Luhan’s grandmother fixes him with a strange look, a flash of almost-pity in her eyes that disappears as fast as it comes.

“I have lived a long life, and seen many an odd thing. You, though, are a novelty,” she remarks, peering at him. “Tell me, have you ever heard the tales of old, the legends that speak of immortal mer souls?”

Chen’s forehead crinkles in confused curiosity. “Immortal mer souls?” he repeats dumbly. “Is that possible?”

“I have witnessed enough summers to know, boy, that anything is possible. If a human were to love you more than his most prized possession, more than the mother who cradles him at night when he has nightmares, more than the father who teaches him how to be a man, only then can he split his immortal soul in such a way that each of you receives half. Thus, upon passing, you may ascend to the heavens and be infinitely reunited.”

“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Chen says, awed. His chest fills with a strange sense of hope. “Is it really true?”

Luhan’s grandmother tilts her head and surveys him. “Why do you ask?” she inquires. “Why would you ever want to give up all that you have now to be human, for the immortal soul of one? Our worlds were not made to combine. You are mer, and he is human. You have a tail of insurmountable beauty, and he has mere legs. Do not wish, boy, for something you should never want.”

Luhan’s grandmother is a mystery, but before Chen can dwell on it any further his train of thought is interrupted by a knock on the door.

They both know it’s not Luhan, because Luhan never knocks on the door of his own house. Chen opens it and finds the king’s messenger boy waiting.

“Prince Chen.” Kyungsoo bows.

“In a moment,” Chen answers stiffly, turning to Luhan’s grandmother.

She makes a shooing motion at him with her wrinkly hands. “Go,” she says. “I’ll tell Luhan you came by. Is there anything you would like me to pass on to him?”

Chen pauses momentarily. “Tell him I said thank you. That’s all.”

As soon as the two boys are outside, Kyungsoo starts to wilt under the prince’s dark gaze.

“What is it this time?” Chen snaps. The messenger has a knack for locating people with eerie accuracy.

“I’m s-sorry to be a disturbance. Your cousin Chanyeol is having birthday celebrations in a few days and would like to request you to perform on the night.”

There’s a thousand and one things Chen had expected Kyungsoo to have said, but this isn’t one of them. He hides his relief behind a carefully schooled expression.

“Tell him I’ll be there,” he confirms.

The festive atmosphere in the palace is strong. Merpeople dart about in myriads of colours, fish and dolphins scatter amongst everything else and even the king is present. Chanyeol, one of Chen’s closer cousins, grabs him in a flurry of deep red scales and long, awkward limbs.

“You came!” he booms in his deep voice. “I was starting to to think you forgot me.”

Chen laughs it off, shoving the bundle of big fins and grinning teeth away. “As if I would come and see you on my own will, Yeol.”

That night, Chen performs. Not Suho’s song, or even his own song that he co-wrote with Luhan, but just a nice simple song that carries little meaning to him. His voice is strong and built to sing, just as a shark is built sleek and powerful to hunt, and his resonating notes entrap those who listen. He steeps in his pride, glowing in satisfaction as the crowds applaud and cheer raucously for more.

He would, he thinks, give all this up for an immortal soul, and eternity with Suho.

When the night ends and the everyone has settled again, Chen steels his nerves and leaves the grandeur of the palace with not a soul on his heel. He swims a path that all know - but never dare to take - because it leads to the home of the only one who can grant a wish like his.

Until now, the leviathan Kai had always been someone Chen had never hoped to ever meet.

PART VI, BLACK LEVIATHAN

“But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.”
-  Hans Christian Anderson, The Little Mermaid

Chen can hardly see.

The water is dark and murky and almost everything around him is obscured by unfamiliar shapes. His fins brush past the thick weeds, his tail sweeping past piles of bones of both fish and humans. There is nearly no life here, desolate and empty save for the scum of the sea floor.

He jerks in fright when an ocean eel of sickly green colours slips by his back. Its slimy surface sends chills down his spine. He feels dirty just being in the dank water. He's squinting ahead at the bleary outline of the leviathan’s cave when something bumps against his shoulder and draws away sharply with a gasp. A human skull stares back at him, leering all the way until it sinks into the sand. It must have fallen from above.

The abode of the sea’s vilest creature looms like the shadow of a ship on the water’s surface, all jagged edges and fearsome spires.
Chen steadies himself, inhaling and exhaling water deeply, and his fins twitch in apprehension as calls out.

The long, stringy weeds at the entrance come to life instantly, rapidly wrapping themselves around each of the prince’s limbs and throat with killer intent. Several more secure his tail tightly but Chen doesn’t fight back. Resistance, along with life, are futile in the domain of the leviathan.

“Let him in,” a voice says, gravelly and greasy, pitched in all the wrong ways. Chen suppresses the need to shudder vehemently at the repulsive sound. It pains him like the wail of a mother dolphin who has lost her child to the sharks.

The weeds obediently unravel away and he swims deeper into the cave with only a few ugly angler fish with bulbous eyes and gaping jaws to light his way. The end is eerily illuminated when he finally reaches it.

Chen’s eyes drink in the sight before him.

All those who have encountered the leviathan of the seven seas tell of a monstrous being whose claws pierce flesh and scales that leak a filthy, putrid poison.

Kai is not the raging thirty-foot leviathan of legends but half a human, tall and lightly tanned, with a head of dark locks and smoky eyes that scream sin to lure victims to their downfall. His lithe torso melts into that of the fabled sea serpents, lined with spikes and interspersed with fins and armoured by shining scales of the deepest obsidian black. He is the very image of seduction, save for the hideous voice he possesses.

The corner of his mouth quirks upwards into a half-smile.

“I didn’t expect to you see you so soon, dear prince,” he drawls, shifting closer from where his form is tightly coiled up. “You’re not as patient as I thought you were.”

Chen clenches his fingers until his nails dig into his palms. “I didn’t come to argue with you- ” he starts.

“Of course not. I know just what you came for.” Kai rises and slithers his way over to the merboy at the entrance. “You fell in love with a human, didn’t you?” he simpers.

Chen says nothing.

“And you want him to fall in love with you,” Kai continues, circling his long body loosely around the prince’s own, “so that you may gain an immortal soul, and be with him in life and in death. You want to give up your fish tail for human legs.”

Chen’s slight trembling hardly goes unnoticed. His scales feel slightly itchy and only then does he realize the water around him is being infiltrated with toxins from the black scales around him.

He lifts his eyes and to meet Kai’s own endless pools of black. “Y-yes,” he answers with determination. “That’s what I want.”

The quietness of the cave is shattered by the disgusting screeching noise of the leviathan’s laughter.

“You are a stupid prince,” he sneers. “Why do you choose a path riddled with so much sorrow? Your people are already harbingers of sadness.”

“Please. You don’t understand,” Chen says, trying not to seem as if he were begging, “I must be with him.” He resists clapping his hands over his ears as Kai laughs in his face.

“Very well.” The creature slithers away into the corner of his lair. “I will help you.”

The black serpentine coils block his vision so Chen can’t see what Kai does after that.

“Listen. I will only say this once,” Kai murmurs. “Take this potion and head for the shore. You must swallow every last drop before the dawn. As the sun rises, your fins will recede and your tail will split. Your legs will have a price; each step will feel as if you are walking astride shards of glass.”

“…Glass?”

“Your balance shall be twofold, your grace threefold, and your delicate form will be the envy of humans everywhere. Are you, foolish prince, still willing to make this exchange?”

Chen swallows nervously. He thinks of how far he’d come already, and Suho in his castle. To turn back would be effort wasted. “I have to do this,” he says bravely.

Kai hums in content. “Do not forget that the change is irreversible,” he adds. “Your life here will cease to exist. Your kingdom, your father, your friends. The sea will never welcome you home again.”

“My father and I aren’t on speaking terms as of now,” the prince shrugs. “His trident would be better off in the hands of someone else.” His elder cousin Taeyeon is a charming mermaid; the eldest of her eight sisters, smart and level-headed. If Chen were to leave his royal ranks to anybody he would choose her.

Kai glances at him over his broad shoulder, his black eyes gleaming. “I see. And your friends?”

Sehun is just a little boy. Time will heal the hole Chen leaves behind. But Luhan…

I’ll tell him, Chen decides, a sinking feeling in his stomach. Luhan will understand.

“Wait,” he says abruptly. “What if Suho never falls in love with me?”

“Then why are you here, trying to obtain the heart of a human if you think he will never love you back?” Kai asks, his eyebrow raised. His serpent half undulates slowly as he anticipates the answer.

“Because he still waits for me,” Chen says firmly. Hope flares inside his chest. “He goes to the shore every day. He knows I was there. I saw the way he reacted when I sang back to him.”

If his voice could ensnare the merpeople, beings whose very souls had song engraved into them, then surely he could capture Suho’s human heart.

Kai turns back around. “Is that so? You should know that if he refuses to give himself to you, his immortal soul will simply never split,” he casually adds, as if the situation amuses him greatly. “On the first dawn after your human pledges his love to another, your own heart will split in the place of his soul. You shall return to the sea as foam, with nothing to guide your ascent to the realm of the sky.”

“I’ll do it. Just hurry, before I change my mind,” Chen grits out. His heart thumps loudly in its cage of bones and blood pounds in his head.
Smiling in satisfaction, Kai snakes along on the sea floor and curls himself around Chen, his own torso finishing up snugly against the prince’s back.

“Well, if you are so willing,” he purrs, his grating voice sickly sweet, “shall we talk about the payment?”

Chen stills. His fins prickle uncomfortably and he doesn’t dare turn his head for fear of what he will see. “What do you want?” he asks quietly. The greatest test is yet to come.

“What do I want?” the leviathan repeats. The currents from his breath brush chillingly against Chen’s neck. “What do you think I should take, prince?”

“Take? I-I don’t know…”

“Oh? Tell me, then, what you consider to be your most treasured possession.” Kai looks strangely curious.

The answer is mundane.

If there is anything that Chen needs for the sake of his quest for his immortal soul, the one thing that would allow Suho to recognize him, it would be-

“My voice,” he suddenly chokes out, his insides roiling in unrestrained horror. “You want my voice.”

The black claws of the leviathan skitter up the column of his throat, coming to rest possessively over his trembling vocal chords. He struggles to break free but the dark coils wrap tight to render him immobile.

“Indeed,” Kai smirks, cold, smug and calculating. “The sweetest voice in the oceans belongs to none other than you. Why should I not take it?”

Chen shakes his head fervently. “No! Not that,” he pleads in fear. “Take something else, anything else- ”

“Listen to my own voice,” Kai coos softly in his ear. “Does it not disgust you? Does the mere sound of it not turn your insides, and make you want to turn away? I hunger for a pretty voice like yours, but since I cannot have it I will simply have to own it. I go by many a name, prince, but ‘collector of voices’ may perhaps be the most famous of them all.”

“Y-you can’t- ” Chen stammers.

“Did you think before you chose to dabble with me? You are forsaking everything the sea has given you, in order to satisfy your own selfish wants. You will have nothing left. What more is giving up a little more?”

The prince twists about restlessly, his skin irritated from the poison seeping out of charcoal scales. “Suho,” he cries, and Kai cocks his head, “he - he’ll never figure out who I am without my voice…”

“Use your mind, foolish prince, and your body,” the latter says. “Use your expressive eyes, your beauty, the grace your feet will bestow upon you; and your human will be powerless to resist.”

Chen swallows the lump in his throat. His mind is in a jumble, his emotions even more so, as he fights to decide his fate.

The tip of the leviathan’s tail caresses his cheek.

“Has your courage fled now?” Kai taunts him. He strokes his claws up and down the throat of the prince.

Chen takes a deep, steadied breath. He closes his eyes and slumps in defeat.

“I’ll play your game,” he finally spits out. “Take my voice, if that’s what you want.”

Kai’s claws disappear and he slips away, his body unravelling itself. He muses in the dark corner of his cave for a few more moments before returning with a small silver blade. The twinkling jewels set in the hilt is the last Chen sees of it before Kai snatches his chin in one hand and forces his head upwards.

“Open wide,” he croons.

Chen leaves Kai’s cave, potion grasped in one hand, and a painfully empty mouth.

The last of the night has bled into the earliest hours of the morning and Chen is running short on time. In his quarters he quickly sorts through the chest containing his favourite human ornaments until he finds what he’s looking for.

The tiny gold band with the diamond is at the bottom. He tucks it into a little clamshell and places it by the door to Kyungsoo’s quarters several corridors away; the messenger boy will hand it to the king for sure.

The ring is Chen’s first and most precious human treasure, his first link to the surface world. He can rest assured that his father will know exactly what it means.

He quickly inscribes a letter with a sharpened turret shell onto a thin piece of seaweed, folds it up and sneaks out of the palace. He pushes it under the door to Luhan’s home with shaking fingers.

With the leviathan’s potion is secure in his grip, Chen casts a sweeping glance over the royal palace and tries not to dwell on the things he will surely come to miss. He swims for the river, a blue blur in a blue sea.

“Luhan, Luhan, look what I found!” Sehun squeals excitedly. He waves something in his hand, zooming around the blond merboy.

Luhan chuckles good-naturedly. “Slow down, Sehunnie. Here, let me see." Sehun corkscrews to a stop beside him to pass it over. It’s a piece of seaweed for writing, with only a name scribbled on the back to indicate the addressee. Luhan flips it open and reads the contents.

The colour drains from his face. He stares at it and reads it again, hoping that maybe he’d made a mistake somewhere.

“Lu?” Sehun prompts him.

Luhan screws it up and hurls it away with an anguished scream.

“You fool!” he shrieks, his hands tearing at his hair, “you stupid, stupid boy! What have you done?”

Sehun visibly shrinks away. “W-what does it say?” he asks in a small voice.

Composure lost, Luhan crumples to the floor and breaks down in miserable sobs, his face obscured by his hands. It is a pity the mer cannot cry.

“Lu?” Sehun tentatively tries again. He scoots closer and pulls on his arm. “What- ”

“He’s gone,” Luhan howls, shaking him away.

“Who's gone? I don’t get it!” Sehun's lower lip trembles in distress and he wails pathetically. “What’s wrong, Luhan, what’s wrong?”

[2]