Fish (1)
[But mermaids and humans don’t seem all that fundamentally different, do they? The upper body’s similar, and only the lower half is different. Well, I suppose the internal organs are a little different too.]
“So it seems.”
[I once read a theory that humans were actually creatures that lived in the water and evolved after coming up onto land. If you think about it that way, wouldn’t humans and mermaids share the same ancestors?]
“So it seems.”
[Then shouldn’t possession be possible between us, too? You know, like how ghosts sometimes possess cats or other animals! Why on earth did that glasses ghost freak out and get flung out like that?]
“So it seems.”
[……You’re annoyed at having to answer, aren’t you?]
“So it seems.”
[Hey!]
Baek Namu shouted, but Neoul merely curled up his long body and hid beneath the blanket.
“Ugh… I’m so tired.”
Did he really need to know why the ghost had been thrown out? It had come out on its own; wasn’t that enough?
His body felt heavy, and an unexplained chill made him shiver all over. He had no strength, and even his limbs felt damp and sluggish. Because of that, Neoul did not much want to think about a problem that had already been solved.
[Oh-ho! It must be because a vengeful spirit kept coming and going, and that’s what made you sick! You’ll be fine after a good sleep! Hurry and rest! Sleep well! Quickly!]
Clicking her tongue, Baek Namu patted the blanket repeatedly, thwacking it with both hands. Now that Neoul had fully returned to his flesh-and-blood body, Baek Namu’s hands passed straight through him.
[I’m going now!]
“Ah, wait.”
Neoul, cocooned in the blanket and curled up like a giant woodlouse, poked only his face out and called her back. He had watched a splendid performance; no matter how ill he felt, he ought to offer at least one comment.
“You said you would show me exactly what an idol is, did you not?”
Baek Namu, who had been about to leave, turned at the question and grinned with arrogant satisfaction.
[Thaaat’s right. So? After seeing it, what do you think? Any idea yet?]
“To be honest, I still don’t quite understand.”
[What was that?]
“The word ‘idol’ does not translate into the language of the sea. Perhaps that is because it is not a word that exists there at all. But….”
Neoul recalled the blazing heat and emotion he had felt in the concert hall. Baek Namu and the grim reapers moving people’s hearts with dance and song. The rapturous cheers, the tears, the laughter. Every single thing he had etched into his eyes and chest.
“I may not understand it with my head, but I think I understand it faintly with my heart. I have learned a great deal, truly.”
[You really understand? For real?]
Baek Namu looked skeptical.
[An idol is also a singer who does music, but if you translate the word literally, it means ‘an object of worship.’]
“What is an object of worship?”
[Something people both love and revere, I guess?]
“Ah. So, something like a king, then. My father too receives both the love and reverence of his people and retainers.”
[No…? Ah, n-no? I think that’s a little different…? Why are you wording it like that?]
Baek Namu scratched her head, as if something about this was deeply off.
Neoul paid her confusion no mind and smiled contentedly. Overcome by a tide of exhaustion, he closed his eyes and murmured,
“This is good. I do not wish to become a king, but I did wish to become something kinglike.”
[Huh?]
“If I keep asking and learning, there will come a day when I understand completely. I shall devote myself to it.”
[Well, do what you like.]
Baek Namu answered halfheartedly and shook her head at the sight of Neoul, who had fallen asleep in his woodlouse state.
* * *
After the competition ended, after he tore into fried chicken, after he stayed up until dawn watching the Hanpuri Concert, and after that tiny moment when a ghost briefly took his body.
With fatigue piled high, Neoul slept soundly well into the next day. He did not open his eyes until around four in the afternoon.
“Hey, Galneoul, no matter how much we tried to wake you, you just wouldn’t get up. Someone’s been looking for you outside and has been waiting since earlier.”
“Who?”
“Well….”
Two hours earlier.
Baek Gi-yeom had charged his own smartphone and, while he was at it, also plugged in Baek Yuri’s and Neoul’s phone, which had run out of battery.
The moment Neoul’s phone powered on, it rang loudly. Baek Gi-yeom saw the screen label that read Guardian and answered in his place.
― Hello, Neoul’s guardian. I’m Neoul’s friend, Baek Gi-yeom. Neoul hasn’t woken up yet, so I answered for him. Would you like me to wake him?
― …….
The other person was silent for a moment, then said not to wake him and abruptly hung up.
Then, thirty minutes later, the intercom rang.
― I was sent by Mr. Galneoul’s guardian. I’ve come to fetch him!
Neither Baek Yuri nor Baek Gi-yeom had given out their address, so when a stranger suddenly showed up, they panicked and did not open the door.
― Neoul is still asleep, though?
When they said that, the reply was that they would wait in front of the apartment’s main entrance downstairs until he woke up.
And sure enough, for a full hour and a half, the woman had stood there like a stone, waiting.
The person outside was a woman with dark skin that carried a faint reddish tint, like a Latin American, and she wore a crisp black suit that made her look like a bodyguard. A microphone and radio were clipped to her.
Her long black hair had been tied up high into a ponytail, and she seemed rather short.
― Doesn’t she seem a little suspicious? Shouldn’t we call the police?
― I think it’d be better to wake Neoul first.
― Neoul! Neoul! Wake up!
Baek Gi-yeom and Baek Yuri shook Neoul’s shoulders, played a loud alarm that began with “Bba-bba-bba, bba-bba-bba-bba-bba-bba!”, sprayed water at him with a mist bottle, pinched his cheeks, and even tickled the soles of his feet with a feather.
― What the heck, Baek Gi-yeom. Where did you suddenly get a feather? That white feather looks oddly familiar…?
― That’s your bookmark.
― Ah! My bookmark! Hey, hey! Where do you think you’re going! Give it back!
There was a small commotion in the middle, but in any case they kept trying together to wake Neoul.
― Ooh~ he still won’t wake up no matter what? Maybe he fainted?!
― He practiced all night while preparing for the stage… It wouldn’t be strange if he fainted. Maybe all the tension he’d been holding in finally let go, and he just collapsed into a deep sleep.
― He’s talking in his sleep too. Neoul, what? Killer whale? A killer whale is scary?
In the end, they gave up on waking him and decided to wait until he opened his eyes on his own.
At the news that someone outside was waiting for him, Neoul rubbed his dry eyes and got up, asking, “What was the name?”
“No idea. They said they were sent by your guardian.”
“My guardian?”
“Yuri! Ask them what their name is!”
At Baek Gi-yeom’s shout from the room, Baek Yuri asked the person’s name through the intercom.
“They said it’s Mun Dong-dong.”
“Mun Dong-dong? Does that name ring a bell?”
Neoul shook his head, saying he did not know.
He tried to go outside at once, but Baek Yuri stopped him. He turned on the intercom screen and showed it to him.
“Check their face first. You might recognize them once you see them.”
Neoul peered at the screen and widened his eyes.
She looked somewhat familiar, though not like someone he had ever paid close attention to.
“I think I may have seen her being scolded by the gyeomsabok….”
“Gyeomsabok? You saw her in a drama? Is she a historical series actress?”
Baek Yuri seemed to understand something and opened his mouth, but Baek Gi-yeom only looked baffled, not getting it at all.
“I must go out and see!”
Convinced she must be someone sent from the Dragon Palace, Neoul hurried downstairs. Maybe it was news sent by the Sea Witch after she had arrived at the Dragon Palace.
Baek Yuri and Baek Gi-yeom naturally tried to follow him out.
Neoul stopped them as they reached for their shoes.
“Do not come out.”
If she had come from the Dragon Palace, they would surely speak of his father, the Sea Witch, or the palace itself. Baek Yuri already knew Neoul’s identity, so that did not matter, but Baek Gi-yeom still knew nothing.
There was no need to increase the number of people who knew the secret.
“I shall go alone!”
Neoul rode the elevator down by himself. From the entrance, Baek Yuri and Baek Gi-yeom stretched their necks to watch and see if he could manage the descent on his own.
“Uh… Which button am I supposed to press to go down?”
In the end, Baek Yuri held down the open-door button, reached in with just one arm, pressed the first floor, and withdrew.
“Be careful. If it’s someone suspicious, come right back up. Or call us.”
“Yes!”
The doors closed, and the elevator began to descend. Watching the shrinking numbers, Baek Gi-yeom asked,
“But did Neoul take his phone with him?”
When they turned their heads back toward the apartment, they saw Neoul’s smartphone still plugged into the charger.
“It’s here?!”
“……!”
What was that? Why answer so confidently when you didn’t even bring your phone?
“Yuri. But come to think of it, we never exchanged numbers with Neoul yesterday. Even if he took the phone down, he still wouldn’t be able to call us.”
“Ah.”
* * *
Neoul waited for the doors to open, watching the letters on the display change shape as if of their own accord. Perhaps because he had been left alone, the descent felt slower than the ascent.
Standing inside that square box, feet fixed to the floor while his body felt as if it might float upward, he waited until at last the doors opened.
The moment Neoul stepped outside, the woman waiting for him lit up with joy.
“Prince!”
Overcome with emotion, she even burst into tears.
“Is your name Mun Dong-dong?”
“This humble one is Dong-dong of the gyeomsabok, a blue-ringed octopus sent by the orders of the gyeomsabok to escort the prince here! My original name is Dong-dong, while Mun Dong-dong is merely an assumed identity. Do you remember me?”
“Your face seems familiar.”
“To be remembered by you is more than I deserve! I truly thought I would be unable to find the prince forever, trapped helplessly because of that wicked Sea Witch!”
“…The Sea Witch interfered with you, Dong-dong of the gyeomsabok?”
“Yes! I followed after the prince, only to be blocked by the shore and unable to go any farther, when the Sea Witch kidnapped me! I lost consciousness, and when I came to, she had handed me over to some mudskipper-looking wretch and disappeared!”
“Ah….”
So she had followed after me. Because the gyeomsabok ordered it. And after that, she’d been on land all this time?
So it wasn’t a message sent from the Dragon Palace.
Disappointment brushed the corners of Neoul’s lips as he had been waiting only for contact from the Sea Witch.
Blue-Ringed Octopus Dong-dong, unaware of the faint shift in his expression, kept talking.
“Can you believe that creature ordered me to study books, guard him, and shoot venom at animals? How could a mere human be so outrageously rude to one who protects the sea’s royal bloodline!”
Dong-dong snorted with indignation, practically steaming with outrage.
At that moment, a sharp voice crackled through the earpiece microphone she was wearing.
― That mudskipper-looking guy can hear everything, so stop gossiping and get the fish in the car already, would you?
“Eek! You heard that? How dare you call the prince a fish! What kind of rudeness is this?”
― Hey, Mun Dong-dong. As long as you don’t say it out loud, I can’t make the fish hear me.
“Shut up! You mudskipper!”
― You insolent Mun Dong-dong.
“You’re even more insolent!”
Dong-dong huffed and yanked off the earpiece microphone.
Neoul asked, “Who were you speaking with? Who is the one who calls me a fish?”
“Please do not take it to heart. It is only the nonsense of a foolish human.”
“I have heard it and let it pass.”
Neoul answered as though he truly did not care at all. Yet after a moment’s thought, he still found it irritating and frowned a little.
“However… please tell that person that I am not a fish. If I am a fish, then are humans mudfish?”
“…!”