Terrifying. Vicious. So much about them that is unknown. That’s what she’s been taught of ever since Jimin was able to slowly maneuver around the sea, her tail flapping slightly, clumsily, before she became more skilled and mature enough to swim without the guidance of her parents.

Human beings are bitter, is what they said; there is no mercy even for a mermaid like her.

Jimin has never actually seen a human before her eyes, not even once. Her mother once told her they looked just like them from the first half, but instead of having an extravagant, glossy tail like they did—they had these peculiar things called legs and feet. She always thought that was ridiculous and made up.

And the most important part, they weren’t kind like they were.

Humans are selfish, they are greedy and liked to believe they had control over the world. They were curious about what lied deep below, always sending divers to go down to explore, or even weird devices to take what looked like white flashes. The mermaids all knew they wanted to discover—discover them, her population, her home. They wanted to destroy them.

The mermaid only had the pleasure of swimming up from the water when it was really late at night, when she was certain there were no humans patrolling around or doing whatever it is that humans do.

It’s nighttime now, the sky above her pitch-black, sprinkled with what looks like tiny white spectacles, but they’re actually stars. Jimin could sit by the rock and breathe in and out the fresh air.

Being underwater all the time could be tiresome, and she always did prefer looking at the landscape up here. She wonders how it looks like up here when it’s bright out. Jimin’s only seen the sun when she would look up from below, and it would reflect itself towards the surface of the water.

Splash.

The trance she was in is rudely interrupted, Jimin gazes over to the source of the splash; it’s a human. The human is holding what looks like pebbles, and she is tossing it into the water. Sometimes it would make ripples, it looks like the pebbles are bouncing on top of the water, before sinking down below.

I should hide. That’s the first thing that comes to the dark-haired mermaid’s mind, her lips starting to quiver from fear. If the human were to see her, she knows she’ll never see another day again.

Jimin knows what happens when humans find them; they kill them. With no remorse, no compassion, they would savagely take their lives away by using weaponry. Jimin never knew what the word for those things were, but it created a booming sound that would go through her ears. It always made her scared.

It happened before, an abundance of times. The most recent case would be when her friend was spotted by a group of men trying to fish, standing on what she thinks was called a boat. Yerim was always too naïve, too trusting, thought the best of everyone—the perfect easy target. Jimin thinks she swam up to them; she never saw Yerim ever again.

However, the throwing of pebbles began to become more vehement, the human throwing with all her might. She let out what seemed like shrieks, but Jimin thinks it’s similar to a dying whale. She’s heard plenty of that before. And then, it reminded her of what happened to Yerim.

It’s uncomfortable, having to waddle with her tail on the sand. The strange texture coated all over herself, and she is already looking forward to dip back into the sea at this point. Jimin finally manages to reach behind the human, her tail keeping her up so she could be standing just like her.

Her right hand forms into a ball, she swings it up into the air a few times before it strikes the blonde’s head. The mermaid made sure to use just as much force as the human was using when she was throwing the pebbles into the water.

“Ouch!”

The person before her immediately turns around, a hand now pressed to the side of her head in hopes it’ll ease the pain. Jimin could only smile at that.

“Why did you do that?” the blonde human releases a loud grunt. “That wasn’t very nice.”

So, this is what a human is like?

She always thought they would have rotten yellow teeth, maybe even dry skin, or even have two heads at the same time or just one giant single eye. Jimin didn’t think they would actually look similar to her from up top. Or was she the only human like this? She was quite pleasing to the eyes.

“This is how it feels when I’m underwater, and a pebble suddenly lands on my head randomly,” the mermaid’s arms are now crossed. “At least it travels kind of slowly down there, so it’s not that painful. Still annoying though.”

One of the human’s hands is placed by the front of Jimin’s face, as if telling her to stop. “Underwater…?” The blonde’s eyes finally go south, now only seeing her bare chest, and then the shiny emerald tail that sparkled even under the dark sky.

“You! You’re—" the human’s words gets caught in , and she has to let out a few coughs before continuing, “Mermaid! A mer—”

Oh?

The odd human suddenly collapses, the strange material all over her body now covered with sand. Jimin can recall her father talking about this before, she thinks it was called cloths? Or was it clocks? Cakes? It’s something within those lines.

“Oh my sharks,” Jimin whispers softly to herself, staring over at the eyes now tightly shut, an indication she was no longer awake. “I killed her. I killed a human.”

How was that possible though? All she did was go up to the beautiful human, no, the not-so-beautiful-human and gave her a good whack. It couldn’t have killed her because Jimin has given way worse strikes to the head of other mermaids before, so much that a sound would echo from the impact. Were humans just not as strong as they were?

Or was there a different reason?

“Oh,” Jimin has now laid down onto the sand, her face near the human’s. “Maybe it was because of something else… oh my sharks, don’t tell me…”

-

The human eventually revives. It might be because of the seaweed Jimin gathered, the slimy thin layers wrapping around the girl’s body. It was a technique her mother would always use when Jimin wasn’t feeling well, she’s not sure if it actually had any medical benefits, but she trusted her mother anyway. 

She doesn’t know why she just didn’t let the blonde human just stay there, accept death. Let death creep onto her, taking her to where she belongs… wherever it is that humans go to when they die. It could’ve been a grand revenge; she could’ve shown humankind that mermaids had the power to fight back also. They are resilient. It would’ve been a great threat for them to leave them alone finally.

But she didn’t, she stayed by for some unknown reason. She couldn’t just leave this girl to suffer out in the dark here, if she was an old, sleazy looking man, Jimin wouldn’t even question if she should let him rot.

This human however, even in a state of being dead, she still looked beautiful.

“Where am I?” she could hear the blonde mumble to herself, brushing off all the sand on her with both of her hands.

The human looks up, only to see their noses threatening to tickle against each other, faces close. Jimin could see all the tiny details of her. The blonde swiftly sits herself up, making sure they are far enough away from each other. It only makes the mermaid confused.

“So that was not just my imagination?” the blonde looks flabbergasted, not able to hide at how she is blatantly looking at every part of Jimin’s body. “You’re a mermaid.”

 “I am,” Jimin simply replies, she’s surprised the human hasn’t done anything to her yet. “And you’re a human.”

“Oh my God,” the blonde’s pinching herself now, as if this situation she’s in could not possibly be real. It’s not every day a human and mermaid are face-to-face. “You can speak? And understand me?”

Of course she could. She tells the human how a long while back, way before Jimin was born and her parents and great-great-great… many greats… grandparents were born, there was a merman, and he met a human one day. That human taught him the basic ways to speak, teaching him syllable by syllable. They would then venture on to more difficult lessons, more complex sentence structures, then verb tenses and so much more.

The merman would then relay what he had learned to his kind when he would dive back down, excited to enrich them with more knowledge. It gradually became natural, and the preferred language to speak underwater. It hasn’t advanced to the other sea life though, only mermaids were capable enough of understanding and speaking it.

That doesn’t mean Jimin knows everything though, there’s so much about the human-world she has yet to learn. There’s words she doesn’t know yet or has forgotten, concepts she still can’t seem to understand.

Plus, that old merman didn’t survive long enough to teach them everything because humans are evil. That particular human gained his trust, only to eventually take his life away. Just thinking about that already makes Jimin want to regret for sharing too much.

So the mermaid shoots her a suspicious look, not masking how doubtful she is now. “Can I trust you to not share this around though?”

“Give me a brief second,” the human takes a sip of water from a foreign object Jimin has seen many times before. How? Reckless humans would throw their waste into the water all the time, not knowing how much of a disaster that would cause for them. “This is a lot to take in, but I can swear to you, I have no cruel intentions.”

“Fine,” the blonde doesn’t seem like a threat to her anyways, she looks like someone who wouldn’t even want to step on a seashell, thinking it would hurt it. “I guess that makes sense after all, you are intrigued by my beauty, aren’t you?”

A giant, boisterous chuckle erupts from the human’s mouth. Jimin thinks it’s unique, she’s never heard something so glorious before. When mermaids chuckle, it was sometimes too high-pitched. “What makes you think that?”

“Earlier… you died. The only cause for that has to be me,” the mermaid points towards herself. “Mother always told me to be careful at how stunning I am, I didn’t think she was serious when she said my beauty could kill someone… let alone a human.”

An awkward ten seconds of no sound, not even the sound of the wind passing by them could ease the painful silence between them. It makes Jimin feel tense, and she is about to open to say something, only for the blonde to erupt out into chuckles again.

Oh, she is now laughing, with her hands by her belly and head arched all the way, Jimin questions in her head how her neck isn’t broken yet.

Humans are a strange creature indeed.

“I didn’t die!” the blonde human manages to say in between her laughs. “I fainted from shock. And do all mermaids have their noses a mile all the way up in the air like you to think they’re all so pretty that it’s deadly?”

Jimin glances up to the sky, her nose in the air, confused at her random question. She thinks her nose is rather normal, and she was never one to raise it up for that long. Even if she did, why did it matter? “Human, what does my nose being up in the air have anything to do with this?”

“Right,” the blonde human shakes a hand dismissively. “You probably don’t understand that ‘having your nose up in the air’ means you think you’re better than everyone. And don’t call me ‘Human,” makes me seem like I’m someone superior; call me Minjeong.”

Minjeong, Jimin thinks that name is far better than calling her Human. If she knows her name now, that must mean there is some kind of connection between them, straying away from just a human-mermaid relationship. Friends?

Jimin introduces herself to her too, but the human—no, Minjeong, lets out a weird screeching sound once again. “Jimin? You have a regular Korean name?”

Well she is a Korean mermaid after all… It seemed like there was a lot for the human and mermaid to learn about each other, the two of them spend some time animatedly talking, not caring about how fast the time was flying.

Minjeong explains to her the strange materials on her body aren’t called cloths or clocks, they’re referred to as clothes. Because for some odd reason, humans liked to have an uncomfortable texture latching onto their skins. And the foreign object she was drinking from is called a water bottle, except it’s made from plastic.

Plastic could also have a double-meaning of being fake. Jimin wonders if this means human beings are plastic too. How could they seem so approachable and friendly at first, only to then literally stab your back the minute you turn around? At least, the mermaid doesn’t have to fear Minjeong would do that to her, or she hopes so.

Jimin describes to her what her life is like, she likes to have swimming races with her other mermaid friends. They would make rounds around, the dark-haired mermaid always placing first. It would have to be thanks to her tail, it always knew how to move on its own