No — not an act, it’s the truth.
Haeshin’s lips fell open weakly. He hadn’t anticipated this situation in the slightest. Suppressing the surge of indignation rising in his chest so as not to get flustered, he asked slowly. A gentle smile hung at the corner of his mouth, like that of a famous child psychologist.
“Why do you think it’s an act?”
Hwichan’s answer came without hesitation.
“I saw you take your shoes off before you went into the water yesterday, hyung. You hid them nice and snug between the rocks.”
“Well, it was raining yesterday. Wouldn’t I need to put them somewhere safe so I don’t lose them?”
That question kicked off a back-and-forth between them like a vollied debate.
“Good point. Who in their right mind gets into the water without a wetsuit in the rain? On top of that, it was barely three degrees above zero yesterday. You’d freeze to death going in.”
“Th-that’s, I just — I run hot.”
In truth, he was actually quite sensitive to the cold.
“More than anything — who dives under for that long? I waited quite a while and you weren’t coming back up, so I panicked and jumped in.”
“Actually, I also have really good lung capacity.”
Objectively speaking, his lung capacity was nothing special. He couldn’t run for more than five minutes without giving out.
“With lungs that good, why didn’t you become a competitive swimmer?”
Well — he still could, if he put his mind to it. Breaking world records probably wouldn’t be out of the question either.
“What’s your reason for getting into the ocean at ten at night? Go ahead, I’m listening.”
“I — I was diving for seafood?”
“Who do you take for a fool. Did someone install flashlights in your eyes?”
“……I like the sea. That’s the only reason I went in. Time of day doesn’t factor into it.”
Even as he answered, Haeshin let out a pained groan, as if he himself found the situation awkward.
At first he’d found Hwichan’s reaction inwardly absurd — but quietly putting himself in the other’s shoes, he realized it was more than enough to be misunderstood.
A rainy night. A person who strips off only his shoes and outer clothing — no wetsuit — gets into the ocean and stays submerged for ten-odd minutes. He’d probably looked exactly like someone who had steeled themselves to drown.
Only then did Haeshin grasp his own mistake and press a hand to his forehead. The village elders would have their lights out and be asleep by nine at night. He’d simply assumed Hwichan would be the same — but thinking about it now, there was no reason someone alone in an unfamiliar place, with no family and nothing to hold onto, would drift easily off to sleep.
At this rate, Hwichan would come to believe he was someone who habitually attempted to take his own life. That, at least, he wanted to avoid. It wasn’t just the embarrassment of being misunderstood — he genuinely didn’t want to pile that kind of unbearable weight onto Hwichan, who was already wound so tight.
The question was: protagonist of a fantasy fairy tale, or someone with a recurring pattern of self-destruction?
In the end, after much deliberation, he made a decisive choice.
“I can’t stand people like you, hyung. Acting fine on the outside while secretly wondering when to just end it all, and then eventually——”
“Hwichan. I’m actually a merman.”
He would come clean about his true identity.
Being a fantastical non-human creature straight out of a fantasy film was better than becoming a ticking time bomb associated with chasing death.
At least the latter had some romance to it. Romance strips away a person’s sense of reality — but in equal measure, it breathes life into them. Hwichan needs vitality more than he needs reality right now, Haeshin thought privately.
“I’m actually a merman. That’s why I went into the water.”
Haeshin murmured with the gravity of someone divulging a heavenly secret.
“This has to stay between us — don’t go telling other people. I mean it. I’m only saying this because you don’t seem like the type to have a bad heart……”
A long silence stretched between their two gazes.
Right on cue, a cheerful song drifted out from the television — someone named Yujin had started singing along. It was a Korean cover of a famous song from The Little Mermaid.
[Under the sea~ under the sea~.]
“Under the sea~.”
Hwichan, who had completely zoned out, looked back and forth between the red lobster onscreen cheerfully banging his clam shells as he sang, and the half-eaten steamed crayfish that the elders had pushed to the side of the table. Then he turned his gaze crookedly toward Lee Haeshin sitting across from him wearing a dead-serious expression.
Hwichan closed his hand into a fist, and the blue veins across his large, pale hand rose faintly. It looked almost like a blue waterway carved through white sand.
Haeshin opened his lightly-pigmented eyes softly and waited for the next reaction. His chest was tight with nervous anticipation — like waiting for lottery results to be announced.
“Wow, now you’re saying you’re a princess? This guy’s completely off his rocker, isn’t he? Impressive, really.”
Once again, Hwichan’s reaction exceeded all of Haeshin’s expectations.
“He’s going to be the death of me……”
Perhaps hoping to win the lottery was too delinquent an attitude to begin with.
“Funniest thing I’ve heard all year. You’ve got more of a sense of humor than you look. Why not go all the way and say you’re waiting for a prince to come kiss you?”
Haeshin opened and closed his mouth. Not that having a prince to kiss him would be unwelcome — but he wasn’t exactly the type to stake his life on waiting for one.
Was it Hwichan’s persistently contrary attitude? Out of character for him, irritation flared up like a child’s. Drama characters always grabbed the back of their necks when they got angry. Now he understood what it meant when people said their blood pressure was going to make their head explode. The pressure climbing up the back of his skull felt genuinely like something was about to burst.
He cleared his throat once and continued slowly.
“I swear I’m not lying. I’m serious, okay? Just try believing me for once.”
“If you want me to believe you, give me proof.”
Round two of the debate.
“I’m a merman, so I can stay underwater for a long time.”
“Hearing the merman claim again — still refreshing.”
“My great-great-grandfather is the Sea Dragon King.”
“First time meeting someone with a Sea Dragon King for an ancestor. I’m honored.”
“You saw it yourself — I don’t freeze to death in the sea.”
“Didn’t you just say you run hot, hyung.”
“And I’m an incredible swimmer.”
“Right, of course. Someone who’s lived on an island for ages and dives for seafood themselves — that’s just natural.”
No matter how much he explained, nothing changed. Haeshin’s head was starting to ache.
Strangely, proving he was a merman turned out to be harder than proving he wasn’t one. Even though he himself was the merman in question.
Proving what I am is harder than denying what I am. It was so absurd that the whole situation was starting to feel almost philosophical.
As Haeshin stumbled over his words in bewilderment, Hwichan watched him and let out a sharp, undisguised laugh as he continued.
“So if you’re a merman — that makes you a merman prince?”
This time, Haeshin lost his composure entirely and fired back indignantly.
“What era are you living in with that princess-prince nonsense! Merfolk these days don’t bother with titles like that! Even underwater it’s an equal society — democracy all the way!”
“Is that so. Good to know. So the Sea Dragon King is like a president? Not hereditary succession but an election system, then.”
And out of the other’s mouth came something Haeshin hadn’t remotely anticipated. The maddening part was that it was kind of accurate — which made it all the harder to refute.
They say that to build healthy relationships with others, you should start by having a conversation. The importance of communication, and all that. Haeshin had been faithfully following that principle — and yet somehow, rather than clearing things up, the misunderstanding seemed to be getting more and more tangled.
Haeshin answered desperately, doing everything he could to smooth the situation over. By now, Hwichan’s lips were brimming with poorly-concealed amusement.
“Why not just say you can enchant people with your singing too?”
That’s a siren, not a merman — with regrets. Similar ocean habitat, yes, but different nationality and place of residence. Like a brown bear and a polar bear.
“Can you talk to sea creatures?”
