One — His hesitation meant nothing. The other person’s face made it clear he had no intention of even acknowledging Haeshin with so much as a glance, let alone a greeting. The irritation seeping into the corners of his eyes was blatant.
“Hey. Isn’t it a nuisance to set up something like this in a place where people walk? Move it.”
“Why, you little—!”
The artificial pine scent grew sharper. A smell so harsh it stung the nose. Haeshin immediately withdrew the hand he’d been using to sort through the dried pollack and raised his gaze a little higher.
The owner of that scent was unmistakably a mainlander. And a city one at that.
Permed, curly hair. Polished clothing of the kind you’d only find in upscale shops. That aggressive cologne. Above all else, the cynical look he directed at an island local made it perfectly clear he was an outsider.
“Didn’t you hear me? Move.”
“Ah, this path isn’t actually meant for people to walk through——”
Haeshin hesitated, stumbling through an excuse, and stepped aside. He thought about explaining properly — that this was a path only locals knew about, a spot where they quietly set up their drying racks, and people rarely passed through — but it didn’t seem like the kind of thing the other person would bother listening to.
And sure enough, the young man called Hwichan didn’t wait for that hesitation to pass. He shoved Haeshin’s shoulder irritably and walked on.
Shortly after, a middle-aged man who appeared to be his father approached Haeshin and offered repeated apologies — but the one who actually owed the apology just snapped his head around, shot a glare back, and heaved a sigh.
“Shin Hwichan! Stop right there!”
So his name was Shin Hwichan. Haeshin had no idea how long it had been since they’d last had a young visitor like this. Unfamiliar faces around his own age who weren’t fishermen were an even rarer sight — which was why, rather than feeling offended by Hwichan’s sharp attitude, Haeshin found himself more curious than anything else.
He looks young. How old is he?
He didn’t seem to be here for fishing. His outfit would score rock bottom in both practicality and any reasonable standard for outdoor wear.
Haeshin squinted against the brightening morning sun and raised his palm above his brow to shade his eyes. Beyond the retreating figure of Hwichan striding away, sunlight fell like a golden halo.
Why his face was turning red out of nowhere — well, the winter sun had been unusually warm today. That had to be it.
Sensing Haeshin’s gaze, Hwichan glanced back and snapped sharply, What are you looking at? — as if firing a warning shot against some hostility that might be creeping up on him at any moment.
What am I looking at — you, obviously. What else is there to look at out here besides you? Should I stare at the pollack’s eyes instead?
He refused to let himself feel small for no reason. Haeshin grumbled internally and held the gaze — and the other seemed equally unwilling to back down, because he stopped in his tracks, eyes narrowed and sharp, and didn’t move.
A well-timed gust of wind swept Hwichan’s tumbling bangs back from his face.
He didn’t want to admit it, but the guy was genuinely pretty. The build of a door, but the face of a boy.
If the Sea Dragon King had a son with two legs, he’d probably look exactly like this. Difficult to approach, and yet — beautiful. Haeshin figured he must be feeling more sentimental than usual from lack of sleep.
Lee Haeshin, who had been quietly watching him, let out an audible sound of wonder.
“Wow, what the……”
But Hwichan seemed to take that single utterance as a provocation. His face crumpled, and he muttered something cutting under his breath.
It was probably a blessing that the crashing of waves was loud enough to drown out most of what he said.
Haeshin watched Hwichan’s retreating figure until it shrank to a speck in the distance. Then he murmured absently to himself, a faint flush spreading softly across both his cheeks.
“In winter…… I guess men from the mainland are also in season.”
It was a thoroughly unguarded slip of the tongue. Haeshin startled at his own words and quickly spun around to check if anyone had heard. Fortunately, not a soul was nearby — only a seagull that had been eyeing the fish from atop a rocky shore let out a sharp cry.
The seagull cackled as if mocking him and took flight along the same path Hwichan had disappeared down. The sun was still far from setting, yet the image of the night sea was already flickering at the edges of his mind.
“Ah…… This is bad. This is really bad.”
The moment he finished lamenting, dark clouds rolled in abruptly over what had been a clear sky above Samsam Island. With a low, rolling rumble, a sudden shower began to pour down.
As the rain came down hard, the elderly villagers who had been packing up further down the path rushed to haul their kimchi crocks inside first.
“Oh my, the sky was so clear just a moment ago — what’s this?”
“Tsk, tsk. The weather’s acting strange.”
Haeshin glanced over at the elderly villagers bustling about in the distance, then turned his gaze back toward the path where Hwichan and the seagull had both disappeared.
Had he made it back alright? Had the sudden shower soaked his hair? He’d been wearing a white shirt — if it got wet, wouldn’t his skin show through? The body beneath that clothing must surely be——
He kept his spot until Hwichan had shrunk to a speck and melted into the sand. Idle, shameless fantasies about a stranger he’d never even spoken to unfurled endlessly in his mind, utterly indifferent to the passing of time.
The pollack he’d carefully been drying was gradually getting soaked. Fortunately, one of the island’s elderly villagers spotted him just in time and called out.
“Haeshin! The pollack’s getting wet! Get the tarp!”
“Ah, right, the pollack!”
Lee Haeshin — a young man who loves Samsam Island.
Lee Haeshin — the only one on Samsam Island who is not human.
Wherever his heart stirred, a storm always followed.
***
Samsam Island holds a charming legend.
Long, long ago. When the Sea Dragon King was young, he fell one-sidedly in love with a human woman. But unfortunately, she was already promised in marriage. The Sea Dragon King took one last look at the woman he loved — dressed in her wedding robes — and resolved that he would never love a human again.
This island was a garden he had shaped in order to forget her. Even the island’s name, Samsam, was said to come from the phrase “her face lingers so vividly before me that I cannot sleep.”
As time passed, people began to settle on Samsam Island. Those who had been driven out and abandoned from the mainland stumbled onto it by chance.
The first human visitor was a woman. This time, fortunately, she had no one waiting to marry her.
The Sea Dragon King was, in his own way, a civil servant of the heavens — but when it came to love, he was the type to shamelessly squander power and authority without a second thought. He carried the finest and most beautiful things from the mainland in on the sea breeze, and began tending his long-neglected garden together with her.
As the years passed, Samsam Island became a lush island embraced by beautiful mountains and sea alike. The diligent and guileless woman was moved by the Sea Dragon King’s heart — one that didn’t hesitate to abuse his authority — and she opened her own heart in return. In the end, she married him, and they lived together happily ever after. The end.
At first glance it sounds like a tale grandmothers cobbled together out of thin air, but it’s actually a folk legend listed on the county office’s official website.
If it ended there, it would be a truly lovely and beautiful story……
But every legend has an epilogue. Even a princess who thought she’d meet her prince and live in endless happiness finds that once the end credits roll and she becomes the head of a multi-person household, she stops thinking about her own happiness and focuses entirely on feeding her children.
Samsam Island’s legend has an epilogue in much the same vein.
And Lee Haeshin knows this epilogue — the one that isn’t quite so heartwarming.
Because Lee Haeshin himself is a direct descendant of the Sea Dragon King and the woman from that very legend.
Lee Haeshin’s great-great-grandfather. That is to say, the Sea Dragon King of the Eastern Sea and the woman from Samsam Island lived happily together in a way that was almost sickening to witness.
As time passed and the woman lived out her human lifespan and died, the Sea Dragon King became deeply, obsessively attached to their children. And the reason for that obsession was rather tragic.
The children of the Sea Dragon King and his wife — the merfolk — were, without exception, utterly unlucky in love. Devastatingly so.
Why? No one knows. Does fate need a reason? Perhaps it was something etched deep into the genes of those born from the water.
If one were to pin down a reason, the merfolk were all extreme aesthetes to an almost extreme degree. Perhaps because of that, every single one of them managed to fall for nothing but uniquely terrible people.
Put simply, they were born-and-bred face-chasers and collectors of doomed love. Married men and women, con artists, gangsters, people with bad credit, alcoholics, gamblers…… It would have been difficult to manage such a streak even intentionally. The Sea Dragon King’s sons-in-law and daughters-in-law filled prisons more than they filled the island.
Haeshin’s father — who had hurled curses and drowned himself in drink and died before his precious son had even reached his first birthday — had also been a notorious womanizer, a drunk, and a scoundrel well known throughout the village.
The image of his mother, sighing in something that wasn’t quite a lament — how on earth did such a trashy man father such a beautiful son — was still vivid before Haeshin’s eyes.
Perhaps it was an instinct inherited from the Sea Dragon King’s first love. Always loving those who would never love you back. Even the Little Mermaid from those Western stories wasn’t so different, was she?
A landlocked man with a pretty face and no swimming ability to speak of — she saved his life, bore every hardship alone, and in the end helped a stranger get married.
