Mer AU Chapter 2
The next evening, true to his word, Hak waited down by the cove just after sunset. He was eager to see Yona, his childhood mermaid friend again.
Needed to prove to himself that yesterday did in fact happen and that it wasn't all some crazy dream or hallucination.
He'd even worn swim shorts and sandals so that he could meet her further out into the water where he knew she was more comfortable in case anyone else came and she needed to swim off quickly without being seen.
So, he waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
But hours later and long since after the sun had set, Hak knew he'd have to face facts.
She wasn't coming and yesterday was just some dream he managed to mistake for a memory.
Disappointed and maybe even a little heartbroken –though he would never admit it –he started the long walk back up the beach towards home. There was no point in hanging around in the cove this late at night with nothing to do, so he figured he might as well grab a drink at home where he could sulk the rest of the night away.
He'd only gotten about halfway up the road however when his phone went off in his pocket. Pulling it out he saw that it was a text from Jae-ha (probably wanted to go out for drinks again), and low and behold when he read the message, he was right.
He scoffed to himself.
Ever the life of the party, Jae-ha asked if he wanted to join him out at the local bar again that night for drinks and to scope out some chicks. And while his first instinct was to turn his friend down as he wasn't in the mood, after a moments thought he decided that going out to drink with a friend might not be so bad after all.
At the very least it would distract him from the hollow feeling of disappointment that seemed to weigh down in his chest.
{*****}
He managed to catch up to Jae-ha at their local pub by around 10:00pm finding the flamboyant man already with a girl at his side as they ordered more drinks at the bar.
"Hak my man! You made it after all," Jae-ha called out to him when he noticed him coming in through the door.
"Sure did. And if I recall rightly, you owe me a drink." He replied back with the best lighthearted smirk he could muster.
"Ah, never one to let a man break his word, are you? Fair enough, what do ya want?"
"Just a pint of the house beer to start with and we'll see how we go for from there." He replied, as he found himself a bar stool.
As Jae-ha got him his beer, Hak pulled out his necklace. He took his time running his thumb over the smooth scale and tilting it back and fourth in the light to reveal all the shades of crimson it hid within it.
A memory? Or a dream?
Surely, he wasn't that crazy.
But then again, if she had been real, hadn't he always promised he'd give the scale back to her? And yet here it still lay in his hand, no less bright than the day he'd found it.
He needed a drink.
Low and behold, not a moment too soon, Jae-ha returned and handed him his bear just as he tucked the memento back into the front of his shirt.
"What was that necklace you were looking at just then? A gift from a girl perhaps?" he teased with a grin as Hak took a long sip of his drink.
"It's nothing, just an old fish scale I found as kid that I ended up keeping." He replied sullenly.
"A fish scale? Why on earth would you wear that around your neck? Lemme see! It must be terribly beautiful if you thought it worth making it into jewelry!" Jae-ha continued, and before Hak could tell him to forget about it, he'd already pulled the long cord up by the back of his neck and was admiring it in the dim light of the bar.
"Holy shit, I was right! It really is something pretty isn't it! What kind of fish did you get it from anyway?" he asked enthusiastically, all thoughts of his female friend gone as he was entranced by its colour and beauty.
Hak sighed and just rested his head on his fist and muttered, "Got it from a mermaid."
He had expected for his friend to just laugh at him and ask if he was already drunk without even being halfway through his drink, but instead he was surprised when Jae-ha looked him dead in the eye and asked him in a serious tone, "Did you really?"
"What? You actually believe in mermaids or something?" he half-mocked.
"Well, I haven't seen one myself but my great aunt Gi-gan used to sail the seas as a young woman and swears to this day that she saw one once. And while she drinks, he own fair share, I've never know her to make up or exaggerate stories." Jae-ha admitted, his serious face still in place even as excitement and curiosity light his eyes before continuing.
"Well, if you really did get this from a mermaid, you're one lucky guy! You know they say that if a mermaid gives you a kiss you'll have to meet each other again?"
"What are you going on about now?" Hak moaned, as he took another swig of his drink while wishing this whole discussion about mermaids would just come to an end.
"Yup. They say you have no choice about it. Something about a compulsion being laid within the kiss so when she wants to see you again, you'll have to go to wherever she is."
"You're a lunatic you know that?" Hak said, slamming his now empty glass down.
"Ah, but I'm the lunatic who'll buy you drinks so you have to like me." He replied with a wink before grabbing another round for Hak and himself.
{*****}
It was around one in the morning by the time Hak and Jae-ha shared a cab home. They both lived relatively near by and close to each other, but it still seemed like a better idea than walking uphill the whole way home.
He was relatively tipsy at this point and more than ready to collapse into bed as soon as he got home. Jae-ha on the other hand, with no surprise, was flat out drunk, so he'd have to make sure he got back ok first, but it was only a block further than he'd have had to go on his own.
Fifteen minutes later he'd gotten Jae-ha into his own house and to drink a glass of water and sending him to bed. He'd only just left the house and was about to start walking back to his own when he felt a sudden stabbing, aching pain in his chest.
He pulled the neck of his shirt away thinking it was probably just his necklace poking him for some reason only to realise that the feeling was more internal than external.
When he tried to really think about it, it felt more like something was pulling on his heart from some invisible strings, yanking and pulling at him from within.
Maybe he was having a heart attack?
No, he'd done first aid and wasn't having any of the other symptoms. Yet still this tugging, near painful feeling in his chest insistently pulled him towards the road that lead back down to the beach.
Like something was begging him to find them.
Still a bit drunk and in the mindset that he was likely already on the path to losing his mind he decided to roll with it and followed the pulling feeling step by step, tug by tug, all the way down to the cove.
Why the hell had it dragged him down here? was he closer to losing his mind than he thought? were his delusions to become a regular thing now?
He was shaken from his thoughts however when the pulling turned to a sharp stabbing pain deep in his heart as he looked out towards the sea.
Red. He could see red just sitting within the kelp forest not a mile offshore.
The pulling and pain seemed to point him in that direction.
He was insane, he had to be. That, or he was much more drunk than he'd first thought.
But, in that moment he decided to hell with it.
So, without a second thought he commandeered a nearby old row boat that someone had left sitting on the shore unattended and, rowing hard to get passed the waves pushing him back into shore, headed straight for the red thing that was floating out in the sea.
Between the stark splash of red that cut up from the waves before him and the cold spray of the sea, he was alarmingly sober and awake by now as he continued to paddle hard for the shelf of kelp.
It had to be her. The red so recognisable he couldn't have mistaken it for anything else. She had come after all.
He was mad. He was insane. But he knew it was her. She wasn't some dream, but a real memory.
But something was wrong. Why was she way out there? They had agreed to meet in the cove. She also hadn't moved from that spot the whole time he had been rowing and he felt his stomach drop as he finally came close enough to make out her face.
It seemed like she had been crying, her face flushed against the water's chill. Upon further inspection he also noticed a streak a red, not from her hair, that ran long and straight across her cheek. Like someone had lashed out at her with a knife. she was nearly passed out lying in the kelp bed, having used its seed pods and buoyant leaves to help keep her close enough to the surface.
He called out to her, hoping she could be roused and that she was not dead. That he was not too late.
It took a few attempts before she seemed to register the sound of her name as she managed to look over at him.
"Hak?" she asked faintly as he finally managed to reach her.
"What happened?!" he asked her, distraught to notice more, recent, cuts across her small lithe body.
"I'll tell you later. first, I need your help getting to shore. I'm too exhausted, I can't go any further."
He nodded reaching down over the side to help pull her up and into the small boat before beginning to row back to shore, this time finding it much easier as the tide helped pull him in.
{*****}
Eventually, Hak somehow managed to make it back to shore, return the small row boat and using his shirt to wrap and hide her tail, carry Yona all the way back to his apartment.
A herculean task in its own right, as her long tail and their water-logged clothing did not make her very light.
But, never-the-less, he managed and immediately carried her to his bath tub and started to run the water.
Not the best solution he'd admit, but it was the only thing he could think of in the moment and given the circumstances.
Once the bath was full, he told her to wait a second while he went a grabbed a first aid kit. He didn't hear a reply though, Yona seemingly entranced by everything around her.
He guessed that made sense considering she'd probably never been in a bathroom before.
When he returned with the first aid kit in hand, he almost laughed to see her investigating his shampoo, smelling it and trying to decipher the words on it.
"Here, best not let any of that into the water. I'm not sure if it'll be too good for you." He said plucking the bottle from her hand and putting it away under the sink.
"Now, you'll have to start from the beginning. What on earth happened? How did you get so beat up?" he asked, gently reaching for her face and tilting it so that he could clean and bandage the cut that ran along her cheek.
And so, as he did his best to fix her up, she told her tale.
She explained how, despite his teasing name he'd thought of her, she was in fact, a princess. When she'd returned home that night to her quarters, she found her cousin waiting for her. As it turned out he had had guards keep tabs on her whereabouts and that had followed her to the cove that day. Though they had lost track of her for a bit, when they saw that she had become entangled in the net they had intended to go and help her.
That was, before Hak had come along first. It was a rule of her kind that they not allow themselves to be seen by humans and to come to her aid would have meant breaking that rule. So instead, that had simply left her to his mercy.
The damning event however was their recognition of each other when they had made it to shore. The guards took note of this and brought word back to her cousin.
Apparently, he had been seeking to usurp the throne from her for a while and found this the perfect excuse to do so. The kingdom would believe she had been killed by a human and should she return the truth of her crime would be revealed, damning her either way.
He cousin even had the gall to laugh when he noted the blue bead Hak had given her, where she had woven it into her hair on the way back. He'd said she only had herself to blame.
And so, he had sent those mutinous guards to after her. That is how she'd been injured and why she had been wrapped up in the self of kelp. She explained that mermaids live low in the water to keep away from human sight and the guards would not dare stray so close to it after a human had recently learned the truth of their existence, lest they be found as well. So, she had hidden from her pursuers by swimming close to the surface and near shore at the risk that if anyone other Hak found her, she'd be dead.
"I knew that I needed help, so I called for using the kiss I gave you the day before."
"So, a mermaid's kiss really does hold a compulsion in it?" he asked, flabbergasted.
"Yes, though I'm curious as to how you are familiar with it." She replied whilst tilting her head in curiosity at him.
"Just a story I heard from an idiot recently, that's all." He waved off.
"Yes, well, either way I apologise for having dragged you out so late at night and for using the compulsion. I've heard it can be rather painful to those who have received it when it is used, but I'm afraid I didn't know what else I could do at the time."
She teared up as the reality of her situation began to dawn on her. Neither of them knew what to do from there. In fact, all they really could do was wait until morning and try to see if there was anyway out of this mess.
He was shocked however, when she began to laugh slightly and look up at him again.
"Just to add to any bizarre stories you've heard about my people I feel it's only fair to mention that mermaids cry fresh water tears you know. The opposite of what I've heard of you humans." she explained with a weak smile.
Wiping another tear from her cheek and licking his finger he found she was right; her tears were not salty like a persons' but like fresh ice water straight from a glacier and he found that he could only smirk in response.
"Well, I'll be damned if that's the strangest thing I've learned all day." He said and they both managed to laugh at this.
{*****}
Sup guys. So, it's been a lifetime and a half since I wrote the first chapter of this but having recently done a pirate themed escape room with two really good friends, I found the inspiration to try and write a second chapter. I'm not sure how far this story will go but here's hoping that listening to a few sea shanties will help with the inspiration process. 😉
Hope you enjoyed this and reviews are always welcome. 3