The Mermaid Was Scarier Than a Full Cut
Whenever Baek Yuri saw one of Neoul’s strange habits over the past few days, his mind would leap straight into impossible territory.
Monsters from books and films, fantasy beasts, demons, aliens, psychics, all manner of unnatural beings—countless things had flashed through his head.
But those things belonged to novels and movies, fairy tales and legends. They were all fiction. So even while he suspected that Neoul might not be human, he kept telling himself that his own imagination was probably running too wild.
Then, at last, Neoul slipped out of the pension in suspicious secrecy.
Baek Yuri had been on the verge of getting into bed when the sound of the door closing behind Neoul jolted him fully awake.
Where is he going at this hour?
He couldn’t possibly be going to look for a weapon, could he?
Maybe while Yuri was asleep, he’d secretly cut open his stomach, find no liver, and say, "There was a liver after all? Why did you lie to me, Teacher Rabbit?" Then he’d tear it out by force.
In the end, Yuri couldn’t overcome his curiosity or his fear, and he followed Neoul as quietly as he could.
But when they reached the beach, Neoul took off his shoes and socks and strode straight into the sea, hugging what looked like a plush shark and a whale shark doll in his arms.
If he had only waded in up to his ankles and stopped, Yuri had intended to keep watching. Since suspicious Gal-Neoul was behaving suspiciously, perhaps his true identity would be revealed right now.
But when Neoul kept going deeper, Yuri could no longer stand by and do nothing.
The night sea was dangerous. What if he got swept away by the waves?
Yuri didn’t know what on earth Neoul was thinking, walking into the water in the middle of the night, but he had to stop him no matter what. Who would just stand there and watch a person drown in front of them?
He might not be a person, but what if he was?
Yuri kicked off his shoes and ran, catching Neoul by the arm. In the darkness, he saw Neoul turn around in surprise.
Fortunately, there was no trace of the bleakness, pain, or vacant expression of someone prepared to throw his life away.
Gal-Neoul merely looked at him with ingenuous eyes, as if wondering why Yuri was here. But Yuri was wondering the very same thing.
“What exactly are you doing here?”
The moment Neoul opened his mouth, the sea wind howled in hard and strong. The roar of the waves grew louder, drowning out his words.
Yuri realized that the seawater, which had been wetting his shins, was now surging up to his chest in an instant, pushing against him with enough force to knock a person over. It was a perilous, towering wave.
Yuri staggered, but Neoul stood firm like a utility pole sunk deep into the earth. It was as though the waves had no effect on him at all.
From the pitch-black darkness, a wave swollen huge came rushing toward them.
In the blink of an eye, Yuri was swept up by it. This time, Neoul was shoved and nearly lost his balance as well.
At that moment, the sharks Neoul had been hugging returned to their original forms. Fortunately, their broad bodies caught both Neoul and Yuri, keeping them from being dragged into the deep sea.
Blue light shimmered brightly through the darkness. Yuri clung to the rough body of the whale shark and pushed his upper body above the water.
Before another wave could crash over him, he saw a mermaid tail glowing with blue light and a white radiance like the Milky Way.
The instant he followed the light and looked up to see the mermaid’s face, a wave crashed down over his head.
Yuri hurriedly held his breath and grabbed the whale shark for support.
With his eyes clamped shut, someone seized his arm and dragged him back to shore. His feet and knees, lifted by the current, touched wet sand again, and his body was pulled along the ground. By the time he came to his senses, he was already beyond the reach of the waves.
It had happened in a blink.
Yuri gasped for breath, wiped the seawater from his face, and blinked against the stinging in his eyes.
Little by little, his vision returned. Ahead of him, Neoul was staring out at the sea with a worried look.
The glittering haze he’d seen a moment earlier had vanished like a mirage. There was nothing to be seen in the dark water.
What he’d just witnessed felt like a fleeting hallucination. But when he looked at himself, from head to toe ruined with saltwater and sand, there was no way it could have been a hallucination or a dream.
Sharks… There had been two sharks…?
“Those weren’t just ordinary plush dolls…?”
“Yes. They’re my friends.”
To Yuri’s dazed question, Neoul answered with complete composure. He didn’t seem to have any intention of hiding the truth. No—he hadn’t hidden it from the beginning. It was Yuri who had let himself be fooled.
“Earlier, that tail, the light, I—no, I, I—”
“……?”
“Ahem. Sorry. I got tongue-tied.”
Hell, this was insane. Calm down, Baek Yuri.
So shocked that he was practically malfunctioning like a broken robot, Yuri took a slow breath before trying again.
“Mr. Gal-Neoul, are you a mermaid?”
“Yes.”
“Really the Dragon King’s son? Then you’re like a mermaid prince, or something like that?”
Neoul withdrew his gaze from the sea and turned to Yuri with a puzzled expression.
“...What? Did you not believe what I said?”
“……!”
It was true.
Yuri’s long eyelashes trembled. He almost blurted out that he was human, not a rabbit.
But what if I tell him the truth and he turns on me for deceiving him?
What if, saying I’d been rescued anyway, he just shoved me back into the sea?
Pull yourself together, Baek Yuri. They say even if you walk into a tiger’s den, you can survive as long as you keep your wits about you. But this is still land, not a tiger’s den, and anyway it would be more like a tiger sticking its snout into a rabbit hole, so the survival odds are a little better—wait. Isn’t that even worse?
His face paled, then recovered, then paled again. All the while, the seawater on his lips tasted sharply of salt.
Then Neoul spoke first.
“Is it because I am not a dragon?”
“Pardon?”
“I have no way to prove it, but... I truly am the Dragon King’s second son. Though I was not born of his blood, I grew up no different from a true son. My filial devotion to my father is no less sincere than that of any blood-born child.”
Ah.
Baek Yuri realized this in a daze. Neoul was the Dragon King’s son, so of course he’d be more likely to wonder why he wasn’t a dragon than to think anything else. He simply hadn’t considered it.
When the animated film The Little Mermaid was brought to Korea, the sea god who carried a trident and had a fish tail like a mermaid had been translated as the Dragon King.
The Western sea god and the Korean Dragon King were, strictly speaking, entirely different beings.
No, but whether he’s a blood son or an adopted son isn’t the important part right now...
Was this really happening?
He really wasn’t human? Mermaids, Dragon Kings—those things actually existed? On Earth?
This isn’t some hidden camera prank, right?
Of course it wasn’t. A shark plush small enough to fit in one arm had turned into a giant shark. There was no way.
As he answered his own question in his head, Yuri looked around. On the pitch-dark beach, there wasn’t a single camera in sight, let alone another person.
It was amazing, but terrifying. Terrifying, but fascinating.
Now that he knew what Neoul was, an old tale surfaced in his mind: the legend of the mermaid spirit, Shinjikki, from Geomundo. Shinjikki, said to have white skin and long black hair. A being who sensed disasters at sea in advance and threw rocks from the cliff to keep sailors from going out.
Gal-Neoul had skin as pale as Shinjikki’s and hair as black as midnight. He just wasn’t interested in warning anyone about natural disasters; he was more concerned with other people’s internal organs.
Whether Yuri’s head was noisy or not, Neoul calmly brushed the sand off the soles of his feet and put his socks back on. Then, flexing the foot now inside the sock as though inspecting it, he slipped on his sneakers and said,
“Oh, and please keep this secret from humans. Lady Sea Witch instructed me so. She said that even if I told humans I was a mermaid prince, they wouldn’t believe me anyway, so I could go around saying it if I liked, but I must never let them discover my tail. I suppose she meant I must not let my identity be exposed?”
He already knows!
Yuri shakily got to his feet, his entire body heavy and trembling.
If he really did tell people he was human, wouldn’t they drown him on the spot? Now that I’ve seen his true form, I suppose I must die. Then they’d toss him back into the sea.
His friends looked hungry anyway, so maybe they’d say this worked out and throw him to the great white shark for food.
The giant whale shark was shocking and magnificent and terrifying, but the thought of a great white shark being right beside him in those waves made the hair on his arms stand up.
Somehow, I escaped becoming shark food.
It was all thanks to Neoul dragging him out and saving him. He was deeply grateful, but... knowing that Neoul was also eyeing his liver with hungry intent made Yuri even more wary.
After brushing the sand from his clothes and calming himself a little, Yuri asked in a measured voice, “You wouldn’t even have an application form if you don’t have an ID. How did you fill it out?”
“Lady Sea Witch came and helped me.”
“Who is the Sea Witch?”
“The Sea Witch is the Sea Witch. That is the name by which she has been called since before I was born.”
“…….”
What are you even saying?
It didn’t seem as though he had any intention of explaining further. For now, Yuri replied in the only way he could, just to stay alive.
“I’ll keep it secret.”
“Thank you, Teacher Rabbit.”
Gah.
Could he do something about that title, Teacher Rabbit? Every time he heard it, he couldn’t help picturing a rabbit having its organs extracted by a turtle, and it made him shudder.
“But, Teacher Rabbit. Could I have the liver first and debut afterward? My father’s illness is quite severe, and I’m terribly worried I may be too late.”
“…….”
Yuri silently vowed that when he got back to the lodging, he would take his phone for a little while and search how much a rabbit’s liver sold for.
Would half a kilogram be enough? He wasn’t sure if it would even be deliverable to Jeju Island.
“Like I said before, the liver is at home. Home is across the sea, so I’d have to take a plane to get there, and I can’t go until filming in Jeju Island is over. I’ll ask my family whether they can send it by courier.”
Baek Yuri didn’t like lying very much. But when it came to improvising for survival, he was excellent, and the words came pouring out of him like he was a con artist.
He should head back to the lodging now. Yuri wrung the water from the hem of his clothes, found his shoes rolling around in the sand, and put them back on.
Neoul watched everything Yuri did with keen interest, then awkwardly wrung the water from his own clothes. Seeing that helpless little display, Yuri couldn’t quite tell whether Neoul was truly a dangerous being worth fearing or not.
“By the way, Neoul.”
“Yes?”
“You put your pants on backward.”
“...Ah?”
His legs had transformed into a tail, and his pants had slipped down; he’d managed to hold them up for a while, but the moment he came out of the water, he’d just shoved them on in haste. It seemed he’d gotten them on wrong. Neoul was just about to fix them without a thought.
“Ack! No! We’re outside! Just leave them and change at the lodging!”
What if someone took a photo?
Yuri stopped him in a panic, and somehow felt exhaustion settle abruptly over him.
* * *
The next day, Baek Yuri briefly got back the smartphone he had submitted and ordered the rabbit’s liver. Just in case, he asked for a generous amount—one kilogram.
Fortunately, it could be delivered to Jeju Island as long as he paid a little extra shipping. There was a note warning that delivery might be delayed because of the typhoon, but...
Neoul seemed to believe that the liver was at home. Until then, nothing would happen, right?
What am I supposed to tell the production team when the package arrives?
That was deeply troubling.
Still, the important thing is for a person to stay alive first.
When he placed the order, he’d written in the special requests that it should be listed as “medicine” instead of “rabbit liver.” It seemed less suspicious that way.
Returning his phone and heading back to the practice room, Yuri thought,
But if a mermaid takes the rabbit liver and goes back to the sea... what happens to filming?
Would Gal-Neoul just quit on the spot?
If the package arrived, Yuri had already decided he would hand it over to Neoul still inside the cooler without even opening it. He’d tell him that debut had just been something said in passing, so there was no need to do it, and wave both hands to send him on his way.
Then he wouldn’t need to expose the fact that he’d deceived an entire species(?) by accident.
But...
From the production team’s perspective, this would be nothing short of a nightmare.
He’d suddenly joined, then suddenly left again. And he’d vanish into the sea where no one could find him.
Then they’d have no choice but to cut him out completely, wouldn’t they?
If only out of spite, they’d probably edit him out of everything.
In both the first shoot on the beach and the dorm scenes, a great deal of the footage had him and Gal-Neoul together on camera.
Maybe even the parts that had once been considered as candidates for the signal song would be erased so thoroughly it would be as though they had never existed at all.