Archive of Our Own

PART I

For many, many years, Hyunjin had lured sailors from their ships and women from the shores where they waited for their men to return. He had watched them lean over the rails, smiling dreamily as they stepped willingly into the dark and reached for the hand he offered them. It had always been that way.

But a few full moons ago, her voice had reached him for the first time. The shape of it was nothing like his own. It was not beautiful enough to make sailors lose their way or widows forget who they were crying for. It was weak. Tired. Nearly breathless. The sort of sound the sea should have swallowed without notice. Yet somehow, he had been the one moving blindly toward a voice that sang to no one but the stars. He watched her from beyond the reach of the lighthouse, where the water remained untouched by its pale, revolving eye. He could barely see her, only a silhouette resting against a stone near the water. There was nothing remarkable about her. Nothing that should have kept him there.

Still, he watched.

The waves were dying at her feet, her gaze fixed upon the horizon as though she were searching for something only she could see. The night kept her to itself, revealing the shore a little at a time. When she finally stood, the song simply stopped. She brushed the sand from her clothes and turned toward the lighthouse. Before leaving, she looked back at the sea. At him. Or close enough that, for one foolish second, Hyunjin believed she had seen him. He stayed still, hardly daring to move, almost entirely submerged. Only his black eyes remained above the sea’s surface, and when the lighthouse beam swept across the water, he sank before it could reach him. Down there, light meant nothing, and sound came apart. Her voice should have disappeared with everything else. But it did not.

The last note followed him all the way down.

PART II

Of course, Hyunjin came back.

Every night, he hid in the dark and watched the human from afar. He could not have put into words why he needed to hear her pitiful voice again. Worse still, he could not understand why the sight of her stirred none of the familiar excitement of the hunt. Sirens were not kind creatures. They were hunters, always searching for something new to toy with. There should have been pleasure in watching a lonely human offer her sorrows to the moon. There should have been anticipation in wondering how she would taste. Instead, he only listened.

For months, the tide carried him back to the lighthouse and its keeper. Night after night, he listened as her voice grew thinner, surrendering one faint glimmer at a time. Still, when dawn began to pale the horizon, she would rise and return to the tower. She walked as though something unseen had laid its hands upon her shoulders and never let go. Sometimes, with her hand resting against the door, she would turn toward the sea. By then, he had already disappeared beneath it.

Until one morning, she did not leave. Her song had ended a while ago, and dawn was already spreading over the sea, washing the last of the night away. But she remained against the stone, her knees pulled close to her chest, looking at the water. Hyunjin waited for her to stand. She always did. Even on the mornings when her body seemed too tired to carry her back, she eventually rose and returned to the lighthouse.

But not this time.

Her gaze moved slowly across the sea. She looked between the rocks and the white foam left behind by the waves, stopping at every shadow that still had not disappeared with the night. It took him a moment to understand that she was not looking at the horizon. She was looking for something in the water. She was looking for him. He should have sunk beneath the water. Every instinct told him to disappear before the growing light stripped the darkness from around him. Still, he remained there, almost entirely beneath the surface, watching her eyes pass over the water. Her gaze passed over him once, and for a moment, he thought she had missed him. But then her gaze came back, slower this time, until it stopped exactly where he was. She went still.

This time, he could not pretend the darkness had tricked him. She was looking directly at him. She stayed that way for a moment, staring at the place where the darkness had failed to hide him. Then she stood and walked a few steps into the shallows. The water closed around her ankles, but her gaze never left him. Hyunjin watched her come closer, and for a while neither of them moved. Finally, she raised her hand. It was a small, uncertain movement. Her arm stretched toward him, though there was far too much water between them for her fingers to ever reach him. Still, she held it there, as though the distance were something they could pretend did not exist.

Hyunjin stared at her open palm.

He had never used his voice on her. Whatever made her reach for him, it had not come from him. He had offered his hand to countless humans before her. He knew the hunger in their faces when they reached for it, already dreaming beneath the influence of his voice. Their bodies had belonged to him before their hands ever reached the water. She kept her hand there for a few more seconds. Then, when he made no move toward her, she slowly let it fall back to her side. She turned toward the lighthouse and left him alone in the water.

Hyunjin stayed there for a long moment, watching the place where she had been. He tried to understand why he had not taken the chance. To have her. To possess her. To pull her beneath the water and finally silence that pitiful voice that had been haunting him for months. It would have been easy. Easier than hunting. Easier than waiting for another ship, another careless hand reaching toward the dark.

And still, he had done nothing.

Not because he had spared her. The thought alone felt wrong, almost insulting. Sirens did not spare. They took, and took, and took again, until the sea was full of cries and supplications. Hyunjin had understood long ago why the sea tasted so much like tears. But when she had raised her hand toward him, Hyunjin had only stared. No song. No spell. No hunger clouding her eyes.

Just her hand reaching across the water.

And him, unable to move toward her.

PART III

The following night, she was there, as always. And as surely as the moon rose over the water, Hyunjin found his way back to the small cove. For the first time, she was not singing. She sat closer to the water than she ever had before, so close the waves almost touched the hem of her dress before pulling away again. Her gaze was fixed on the sea, but there was no fear in it. No wonder either.

And he wondered if, again, it was an invitation. If she was silently asking him to take her. The thought should have pleased him. Sirens lived for offerings like this, for humans who stepped too close to the water and mistook enchantment for love. It should have been easy to swim toward her. He would not even have to open his mouth, or let the song do what it had always done. She was already offering herself to him.

But he did not move.

And neither did she.

She only sat there, small and silent beneath the moon, as though she had already left herself somewhere behind and was waiting for the rest to follow. When her eyes found him again, she greeted him as though he were an old friend, and something twisted inside him. No one had ever looked at him that way before. Not with eyes that were still their own. Angry with that human, who did everything except run from him, who stole from him the very nature of what he was, Hyunjin did not stay until sunrise for the first time. He swam away angrily, back to a place where he could no longer see her.

Yet, he came back.

Every night.

Only to be greeted by that human again, as though he were not a creature made of hunger and salt and all the terrible things the sea had swallowed. As though he had not spent centuries dragging people beneath the waves. His anger slowly turned back into frustration, then restlessness. And soon enough, into something far worse. The strange, sickening feeling that whatever lived inside her was not entirely unfamiliar to him. So every night, just like the first time she had greeted him, Hyunjin left before her hand could finish to wave at him.

This went on for a few more weeks. Most nights, he did not really leave. He only sank where she could no longer see him, staying beneath the water and stealing a glance from time to time. And when she finally walked back to the lighthouse, Hyunjin left too.

PART IV

That night, Hyunjin arrived later than usual. On his way back to the lighthouse keeper, he found an old fisherman alone on his boat and lured him beneath the water. There was something reassuring in watching his face slowly change into fear when he finally understood what was happening. When the song left him. When the dream broke. And as Hyunjin dragged him deeper, he wondered if she would beg for mercy too.

By the time the lighthouse came into view, the moon was already high in the sky, though the clouds kept most of its light to themselves. Hyunjin swam slowly toward the shore, searching for the keeper’s silhouette. At first, he saw only the rocks, the pale beam of light, and the water breaking itself against the sand. Then he saw her. Her body lay where the sea could still touch it, the waves washing over it again and again, as if trying to drag it back.

Something uneasy formed in Hyunjin’s stomach. It was strange, feeling unsettled by a body when he had left one of his own beneath the waves only moments before. When he could still taste the fisherman’s blood on his tongue. Somehow, the tide seemed stronger that night, carrying him toward her faster than usual. He slowed when he was only a few meters away. Even from that close, he could barely distinguish anything. The lighthouse beam swept somewhere far behind her, leaving the shore in darkness.

He moved closer again and reached for her hand. The one that was always greeting him. He could not bring himself to take it. The consequence of that movement felt too heavy, too final, as though the moment his fingers closed around hers, something would be decided between them. So instead, he only touched it.

Barely.

His fingers brushed against the back of her hand, light enough that the sea could have done it for him. As soon as their skin touched, she sat up abruptly, pulling herself from the sand as though the contact had woken something in her. Startled, Hyunjin drew back into the sea, toward the dark, toward the only place where he could still hide from her. They stayed there for a moment, measuring each other in the dark.

Then the lighthouse finally turned its pale eye toward them. For one brief second, Hyunjin caught the shape of a faint, exhausted smile on her face before the light reached him and forced his eyes shut. Slowly, he looked past her, toward the tower behind her. For the first time, he did not disappear. He did not wait for her to decide what would happen between them.

Hyunjin raised his hand and pointed toward the lighthouse.

Go back.

She understood his order. A shiver passed through her body, and for a moment, Hyunjin thought she might ignore him. But then she turned away from the sea and walked back toward the warmth of the tower. Like every time, she looked back before reaching the door, expecting him to be gone already. But for the first time, he was still there. Not hidden beneath the water. Not somewhere her eyes could not reach. He stayed where he was, watching her cross the distance back to her own world.

She raised her hand again.

This time, only to wave.

Then she closed the door behind her.

Each step that had brought her farther from the sea had soothed something in him, though he did not know what. He only knew that, for some reason, watching her return to the light felt better than imagining her sinking into the dark with him.

PART V

When the sky turned black once more, Hyunjin was still unsure whether he wanted to see her again. Whether he should have come back at all. But there he was. Hyunjin sat at the very end of the rocky breakwater, where the sea broke itself against the stones. Hidden from view, he kept his back pressed against one of the cold rocks. A small crab crawled over his hand, and Hyunjin watched it without really seeing it.

His mind was on the shore.

He was still trying to understand her, to understand why she was so adamant about following him into the deep. For weeks now, she had not sung. At first, Hyunjin had thought she was choosing silence. That maybe she had grown tired of giving her voice to the moon, to the stars, to whatever empty thing she believed was listening. Then he wondered if it was not a choice at all. Her voice had been fading long before it disappeared. Night after night, it had grown thinner, weaker, until even the sea seemed to carry it carefully, as though it might break before reaching him. Maybe there was nothing left for her to sing with. Maybe the song had not ended because she wanted it to. Maybe it had simply died in her throat. The thought made something in him twist. He did not know which answer was worse. That she no longer wanted to sing, or that she no longer had the strength to.

And after a while, he wondered if there was truly any difference between the two.

He was still lost deep in his thoughts when he felt a light pressure on his shoulder. Slowly, he turned around and found himself almost face to face with the keeper. Panic caught him before he could think. He jerked back, away from her, back toward the edge of the rocks, where the sea waited below. He had never been that close to her before. Close enough that, for one brief second, he could almost distinguish the shape of her face.

Almost.

But the night kept most of her hidden. All he could see was the mess of her hair, tangled by the wind and falling around her face, and what little he could make of her features was not twisted by fear.

Such small things.

And still, for a fleeting moment, the dark around him did not feel as empty as it should have. Because this was not like the others. No song had brought her to him. No spell had emptied her eyes. She had crossed the rocks on her own and placed her hand on his shoulder as though touching him had been her choice to make. Hyunjin did not know what to do with that. After a few seconds, she spoke to him. But all Hyunjin heard were sounds. Small, fragile noises shaped by a mouth he did not know how to understand. And though her words meant nothing to him, he found that her voice was easier to bear when she was not singing.

Almost pleasant.

She waited after that, as though she expected something from him. An answer. A sound. Anything. But there was nothing Hyunjin could give her. Not because he did not want to, but because he had never spoken to anyone. He only sang, and she was speaking a language that meant nothing to him. His voice had never been made for conversations. So he only stared at her.

The keeper seemed to understand that nothing would come from him. After a moment, she pointed at him, then raised her thumb. Hyunjin tilted his head. She repeated the gesture.

Was she asking if he was alright?

For a moment, he did not know what to do with that either. No one had ever bothered to ask him anything at all. Let alone how he felt. He thought about it for a few seconds. How was he?

Cold, he supposed. Inside and out. He did not want to think about it any longer, so he only shrugged. Then he pointed at her feet. He could smell the blood coming from them. She must have hurt herself on the rocks. Again, she said something he did not understand, and again, he only pointed back toward the shore. There was no point in coming all the way to him if she ended up wounded before even reaching the water. She looked down at her feet, then back at him. After a moment, she stood and started walking toward the sand. Hyunjin could not help the small smile that pulled at his mouth when he realized, once again, he had not needed his voice to make her obey him. Then she turned back. She lifted her hand and gestured for him to come to the shore too.

His smile faded.

Because she did not need to be a siren either.

PART VI

From then on, they met near the sand. Hyunjin still kept his distance. He did not feel comfortable around her, not really. He remained on guard, always aware of his own mouth, of the voice waiting somewhere behind his teeth. That night, she was eating something he had never seen before. Small red things, soft and clustered together like the eggs of some strange sea creature. When she held one out to him, it broke slightly between her fingers. A dark juice slipped down her skin, too thick and shining in the weak light. Hyunjin watched it run along her hand. It reminded him of blood before the sea took it. Of the thin warmth left on his fingers after a body stopped fighting.

Maybe that was why he leaned closer, took it from her hand, and placed it on his tongue.

It collapsed too easily. Sweet first. Then sharp. Hyunjin frowned, confused by the taste, and the keeper watched him as though she had been waiting for that exact reaction. He swallowed, then let out a quiet, almost unwilling laugh. For a second, he wondered if he should bring her some of his meal next time.

The thought made his mouth curl. He doubted she would like it.

PART VII

Most nights, they did not bring anything to each other. They only met near the sand, where the rocks rose just high enough for her to sit above the water. Hyunjin stayed below, half hidden in the sea, his arms resting against the stone between them. Close enough to hear her when she spoke. Far enough to still leave whenever he wanted.

Sometimes, she spoke to him in words he could not understand. Still, he tried. Most of the time, he thought she only needed to empty herself of words. Perhaps it was easier to speak to him. He could not judge what he did not understand. Sometimes, he brought her things from the sea. Shells cracked open by the rocks, pieces of glass made smooth by the water, little rusted boxes taken from ships that had gone down long before she was born. They opened them together when the hinges were not too broken. Most of the time, there was nothing inside but black water and sand. Other times, they would find coins eaten green by the salt, buttons, broken chains, keys that would never open anything again. The keeper always looked at them carefully, as though even ruined things deserved to be held for a moment.

One night, the moon was full enough to turn the shore pale. She was sitting on the rock above him, her feet close to the water, moving them slowly through the dark surface. Her fingers followed too, drawing small lines that disappeared almost as soon as she made them. That was when Hyunjin saw her hands. Really saw them.

They were thinner than he remembered. Not only cold, not only pale, but sharp in places they had not been sharp before. Skin stretched too close over bone, fingers that looked too fragile for the rocks she climbed every night to reach him. He stared for too long. The keeper noticed. Hyunjin pointed at her hand, trying to make her look at it the way he was looking at it. He did not know the gesture for eating, he did not know how humans asked each other such things. He only knew that bodies were not supposed to disappear while they were still alive. She looked at him for a moment, then she reached for his hand. As if that was what he had been asking for.

Something in him snapped.

Hyunjin struck her hand away before her fingers could close around his. Too hard. Too sudden. The sound of it was small, almost swallowed by the water, but the keeper froze as though he had thrown something much heavier between them. For a second, neither of them moved. Then Hyunjin pushed himself away from the rock and sank lower into the sea. He did not look back at her face. He did not want to see if she was hurt. He did not want to know if she had mistaken his panic for cruelty. He only swam away, fast enough for the water to turn cold around him. Only when the shore had become nothing but a pale wound behind him did the thought finally come.

How long had she been disappearing under his gaze?

And how had he not noticed?

PART VIII

Hyunjin had not slept. All night, the image of the keeper’s hands had followed him through the dark. Those thin fingers. The bones pressing too clearly beneath her skin. The way her body seemed to be giving itself away, little by little, while she still sat there breathing. By the time the sun rose above the water, he was tired enough to sink somewhere deep and let the sea close over him. But there were more important things to do. He wanted to fill the hollow spaces beneath her skin. He wanted the sharp lines of her bones to disappear. He wanted to give her body something to hold on to. Not silence. Not cold. Not the emptiness that had been carving her thinner night after night.

Something else.

He knew that much, at least. Every living thing he had ever encountered needed to eat. But he did not know what she fed on. He thought of the small red things she had given him a while ago, of the way they had broken between her fingers, soft and wet and strangely familiar. So he dove deep, where the warmth of the sun could no longer reach him, and searched until he found a rusted box half-buried inside the broken ribs of an old ship. It took him a while to open it. It took him even longer to decide what should go inside. He found clusters of pale eggs clinging to the underside of a rock. He scraped them loose with his fingers and gathered them carefully, because they looked soft enough for a fragile mouth. After that, he hunted a larger fish, pried mussels from the rocks, gathered sea urchins, and tore long strips of kelp from where they swayed in the dark. Anything he had ever seen humans pull from the sea. Anything that looked like it might keep a body from becoming only bones.

When he had gathered everything that seemed useful to her, Hyunjin swam slowly back toward the shore. The sun had just begun to set, and he knew she would not come before nightfall. Because no matter what had been slowly killing her, every night, without fail, she had lit the lighthouse. Hyunjin had learned that much from below the water. He watched the windows beneath it, hoping to catch her silhouette moving behind the glass, but most of them stayed dark. No warmth. No candlelight. Nothing that looked like someone was living there.

The tower always woke while the rest of the house stayed dead. Only the lighthouse. As though it was the only thing she still remembered how to keep alive. Every night, it burned over the sea for the lost things passing through the dark. Ships, sailors, creatures that should have known better than to follow that light.

And still, no one had noticed when she became one of them.

PART IX

He had not meant to fall asleep. Hyunjin had only wanted to wait there for a while, his arms folded over the edge of their usual rock, the box kept beneath the surface beside him, wedged carefully between two stones. The sea moved quietly around his body, lifting him and letting him sink again, and after a while, the exhaustion of the day, of the night before, of the image of her thin hands still haunting him, became heavier than the water. His eyes closed without his permission. When he opened them again, the sky had darkened.

And she was there.

Sitting on the rock beside him, close enough that the hem of her dress almost touched his arm, close enough that he could almost feel her warmth. He recognized the dress, though he did not know why the thought stayed with him. The sea had licked at its hem too many times for it to look new, and yet she wore it again, as though there were very few things left in her life worth changing. For a moment, Hyunjin did not move. Her face was turned toward the moon as though she had been sitting there for some time, waiting for him to wake. Quiet as a ghost that had not yet decided whether it wanted to be seen. For the first time, Hyunjin had the chance to really catch a glimpse of her. Her shoulders were rounded and still, making her look smaller than she truly was. As though even holding herself upright had become too much.

After a moment, her gaze dropped to him, and the performance she seemed so used to giving began again. A fake smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, her spine straightened, and something in her face closed before he could understand what had been there. Hyunjin stared at her. After months of coming back every night to see her, after all that time spent trying to learn her, to understand the shape of her silence, the weight of her gestures, the strange sadness sitting inside her voice, he realized the only honest moments he had ever had with her were the ones she had not meant to give him.

Now, when she had thought he was not watching. And that morning, when she had held her hand out toward him.

Something in his chest tore.

He had wanted to be wrong. He had hoped he had misunderstood her gesture, that there had been something else behind it, something less terrible than the truth he had kept refusing to look at. But now he knew. She really had been asking him to take her. He did not know what to do. He did not know how to tell her he was sorry for the way he had reacted the night before. He did not know if sirens could apologize at all, or if his hands only knew how to take and hurt and drag things beneath the water.

Without lifting his head from where it rested on his right arm, Hyunjin reached for her with his left, moving carefully enough that she would have time to pull away if she wanted to. His fingers brushed the tips of hers, not long enough to hold, not firmly enough to claim anything, only enough for her to look down at the place where their hands met, then slowly back at him. For a moment, she said nothing.

Then she nodded.

He thought his chest should have felt lighter after that, but her smile was not warm enough, not wide enough, to erase the emptiness he could see in her eyes. Somehow, they reminded him of the abyss when it closed around him. No warmth, nor light, not even a sound. Only the dark pressing in from every side, and the stubborn beating of his heart in his ears. Hyunjin wanted to draw a real smile from her, so he pulled the chest from beneath the water and opened it. Then he reached inside and took out the cluster of fish eggs, the closest thing he had found to the small red things she had once given him and seemed to enjoy so much. But instead of smiling, she only looked at him in confusion.

The keeper looked down at what was placed in his hand, then back at him. She pointed at the cluster and slowly shook her head. Hyunjin glanced pointedly at her hand until she finally held it out to him, then carefully dropped his treasure into her palm. He pointed to her mouth, trying to make her understand what she was supposed to do with it. Hyunjin frowned. She lifted it closer to her mouth, as though she meant to do what he had asked, but stopped before it could touch her lips. Her nose wrinkled, and she shook her head again, more insistently this time. He stared at her, unable to understand what could possibly be wrong with it. It had come from the sea. It was fresh. He had even chosen it because it looked soft enough for her to eat. Maybe she simply did not like it.

That was alright. Hyunjin had brought plenty of other things for her.

He reached back into the box and pulled out the fish he had been keeping so carefully beneath the water, then held it out to her as his next offering. The shock on her face lasted only a second before it broke into real laughter, the fish twisting desperately in Hyunjin’s hand, still fighting for its life. Before he could offer it any closer, the keeper placed her hand over his and slowly lowered it toward the water. The fish slipped from his fingers the moment they reached the surface, disappearing between the rocks without wasting a second. Hyunjin watched it go, then looked back at her. She pressed one hand against her stomach and shook her head, trying to convince him that she was not hungry. His gaze dropped to the hand still resting against her body, to the thin fingers and the bones showing beneath her skin, and whatever patience he had left disappeared.

He pointed at her hand more vehemently this time, then toward her mouth, repeating the gesture until there was no possible way for her to misunderstand him. The keeper stared at him for a moment, then looked toward the lighthouse. She stood and began walking back across the sand, though every few steps, she turned around and gestured toward him, one palm held out as though pressing something invisible into place. Hyunjin frowned the first time. By the third, he understood.

She wanted him to stay, so he did.

He remained against the rock, his arms folded over its edge, watching the lighthouse door close behind her. The box rested beneath the water beside him, still full of everything he had gathered, and for a moment, he wondered whether she had only found a gentler way to leave him there. But before long, the door opened again. The keeper returned carrying something small wrapped in cloth. When she reached the rock, she sat back down beside him, held it up so he could see it clearly, then tore off a piece and placed it in her mouth.

Hyunjin watched her chew and did not look away until she swallowed.

PART X

As Hyunjin waited for her the following night, he could not stop an uneasy shiver from running through his body. The keeper had lit the lighthouse a while ago, and still, she was nowhere to be seen. His eyes remained fixed on the small window beneath the lantern room, the one he had come to think of as hers, waiting for a movement behind the glass, a passing shadow, the flicker of a candle, anything that would prove she was still there. She had turned it on. She had to be alright. He began swimming back and forth, trying to keep the cold away, and realized it had been a long time since he had felt it settle around him so completely. His gaze stayed on that window near the top of the tower, so far above him and yet close enough for him to imagine what might be happening behind it.

For the first time, Hyunjin wished he had legs. He would have crossed the distance between them, climbed all the way to that dark window, if only to make sure she was still there. To make sure she had eaten something. The hours passed, and still there was no sign of her. The sea was calm, the waves carrying barely enough strength to reach the shore before dying quietly against it. Not even the wind disturbed the water, and the whole coast seemed trapped inside the same silence, as though the night were holding its breath with him. And he wondered whether she thought of him too when everything else fell quiet. Finally, the sun began to rise. The light went out, and Hyunjin let out a breath of relief.

At least she was still there.

One day kept bleeding into the next, each one no different from the last, and God, it was enough to die of sadness. And yet, every evening, he swam back to the shore, his heart full of hope that he might see her again, only to find nothing but the emptiness she had left behind. His only consolation was the light she kept burning, proof that she was still there. Until one night, the light came late. The moon was already high in the sky when it finally appeared, and by then, the apprehension inside his chest had grown almost painful. And suddenly, Hyunjin understood what the keeper had tried to tell him that night, when she had pressed a hand against her stomach and shaken her head. Nearly twelve nights had passed since he had last seen her, and somewhere between one empty evening and the next, his own hunger had disappeared.

His worry slowly turned into frustration, because she had given him a light to look forward to even during the darkest nights, and now it felt as though she were taking it back. Hyunjin had tried to return to the way things had been before her. He knew the cold, the loneliness, and the dark. He had once known how to live inside them. At least there had been the thrill of the hunt then, and hunger had always been waiting to guide him toward the next thing he could take. But now she was gone, and he was left with nothing. All the thoughts and feelings he had deliberately ignored and buried deep inside himself were rising at once, flooding his chest until breathing itself became difficult.

He wanted legs so he could climb to her and drag her back to the shore. He wanted a voice made for something other than luring and killing, so he could scream at her to give him back the life he had known before her, no matter how pitiful and meaningless it had been. To erase every trace of light she had left inside him, so the night might feel like home again, and he might forget there had ever been anything to lose. His stomach seemed to rise all the way into his throat, as though his insides were gathering behind his mouth, ready to tear themselves free. And with the desperation of a man who had known nothing but cold, then been given warmth, only to be thrown back into the void, Hyunjin struck the rock in front of him.

Pain split across his hand. For the first time, Hyunjin saw his own blood. A strange fascination took hold of him as he watched it slip between his fingers and fall into the sea, disappearing into the water as easily as though it had always belonged there. Hyunjin should have known better. For many, many years, he had lured every lost soul he found toward the very bottom of the world. For centuries, sirens had been damned creatures, cursed to take innocent lives in the hope that one of them might finally fill the hollowness inside their own. So how could he have dared to believe he might save her, when everything he had ever been made to do ended in death?

He wanted to scream out his frustration and his pain, but all his voice knew how to do was sing. The thought of using it to draw her back to him was horribly tempting, because if she refused to come willingly, he could always make her. But he never would. Not to her. Not when she had been the one to show him what kindness looked like.

There was nothing else for him to do but wait, and trust his keeper to find her way back to him.

PART XI

As Hyunjin moved restlessly through the water, waiting through yet another night, his mind wandered toward everything that had been in front of him for months and that he had never truly understood. He realized then that the saddest thing about disappearing was how quietly it could happen. It did not always begin with a final breath torn into a scream, or with a body sinking beneath the water. Sometimes, it began much earlier, with an appetite that never returned, a room left in darkness, and all the small pieces of a life slowly abandoned until there was almost nothing left except the habit of breathing. It could even begin with a voice quietly singing to the moon.

Or with years spent swimming alone at the mercy of the tides.

The moon had begun to sink, and somewhere behind him, Hyunjin felt the soft warmth of the first sunlight settle gently across his back. Almost at once, the lighthouse lost its glow. He should have left as he had every morning before, but even when the lighthouse went dark, his body made no move to follow the tide away from the shore. After so many lonely nights, each one colder than the last, Hyunjin finally thought he saw something move behind the window he had been staring at for days. Perhaps he was losing his mind. Perhaps it was only a lie, an hallucination his own thoughts had conjured to give the waiting an end. The movement behind the window was enough to stir hope inside him, sudden and almost painful after so many empty nights, and before he even realized it, Hyunjin was already swimming closer to the shore.

Then the door opened, and when his keeper finally stepped into the morning light, a smile pulled at his lips before he could stop it. She was finally there, slowly closing the distance between them, and with every step she took, the smile on his face faded a little more. Something was wrong. He could see it even from afar. They might not speak the same language, and they might never have shared a single word they both understood, but over time, Hyunjin had learned to read the curve of her shoulders, the hesitation of her hands, and all the small movements through which her body revealed what she tried so desperately to hide. He had become fluent in a language she did not even know she was speaking.

Her feet dragged through the sand as though each step asked more of her than the last, while her eyes kept avoiding his. Her hands worried endlessly at the sleeves of her dress, twisting the fabric between her fingers, loosening it only to catch it again a second later. Her whole body seemed to move reluctantly, folded slightly inward, as though she were trying to take up less space with every step. There was no hesitation in the direction she had chosen, only a terrible heaviness in the way she followed it. When her feet met the water, her eyes finally lifted to his, and Hyunjin hated what he found there.

The morning light was less forgiving than the moon had ever been. It revealed the hollows beneath her eyes, the colour drained from her lips, the way her skin seemed stretched too tightly over a face that had grown thinner in his absence. Even the softness of her features looked worn away, little by little, as though exhaustion had been quietly erasing her while no one was watching. She looked like someone who had spent too long fighting herself in silence and had finally run out of strength to pretend she was winning. There was no fear in her face. No relief either. Only a tiredness so deep it seemed to have settled beneath her skin, inside her bones, somewhere no amount of sleep could ever reach.

And for one terrible moment, Hyunjin saw his own face looking back at him. He knew, deep in his bones, why she had come, and a sudden, vicious part of him despised her for it. She could not ask this of him. She had no right. It was cruel and unfair. Hyunjin swam backward without taking his eyes off her, but when she continued walking deeper into the water, he stopped. He gestured sharply toward the shore, ordering her to turn around and go back the way she had come.

He did not want to see her anymore.

She could not do this to him. She could not make him realize how sad, how lonely, how cold and empty he had always been, only to take away the little hope she had left inside him. How cruelly ironic it was. Only a few days ago, he had wanted to sing until she had no choice but to come to him, and now he would have given everything he had to send her back into that stupid lighthouse. Frustration kept rising inside him, pressing against his ribs, because there was nothing he could do. His song had no power here. It could draw her toward the water, but it could never make her return to the shore. His eyes began to sting, and his chest rose and fell faster with every breath.

He needed to leave.

He shook his head and turned his back on her, but before he could swim away, her voice cut through the last thread of night still clinging to the coast. He stopped moving, caught between the selfish need to swim away and erase this moment from his soul, and the unbearable urge to return to her. Slowly, Hyunjin turned to face her again. Whatever remained of that selfishness vanished when he saw the look on her face. The desperation in her eyes, the silent plea she no longer had the strength to hide, held him there, unable to look away. He had tried to help her. In every clumsy way he knew, he had fought against the darkness slowly swallowing her, but none of it had been enough. There was nothing else he could do. Nothing, except the one thing he had always known how to do. He closed his eyes as he reached for her, as though refusing to witness the moment might keep it from truly happening. When the soft lapping of the water around her reached his ears, Hyunjin opened his eyes again.

She was looking directly at him, her face calmer than he had seen it in months, and he clung to that expression as though it could make what he was about to do easier to bear. He could not ask her to stay simply because she had made him believe there might be something more to hope for. He could not ask her to continue suffering so that his own loneliness would hurt a little less.

For centuries, Hyunjin had offered his hand to humans who no longer knew enough to refuse it. But this time, he did not move any closer. He only held it out and let her decide whether to close the distance that remained between them. Slowly, her fingers closed around his, the water curling gently around her waist, and something inside him broke when he realized that this might be the last warmth he would ever feel. Before allowing his own fingers to close around hers, he searched her face one last time for any trace of fear, doubt, or regret, anything that would give him a reason to let her go. But all he found was certainty. The quiet conviction of someone who believed she had reached the limit of what she could endure.

Then, as slowly and gently as a creature like him could, Hyunjin pulled her against him, never allowing his gaze to leave hers, ready to loosen his hold at the slightest sign that she had changed her mind. But she only nodded and held on to him more tightly. Pressed against each other, their hearts seemed to beat in unison, one rhythm passing through both of them. Slowly, Hyunjin began to sink, waiting before allowing the water to rise above her shoulders. One of her hands slipped from behind his back and came to rest against his face, her fingers moving softly over his skin as though she were trying to remember him. She whispered something to him, and his heart ached. Still, he smiled at her as best he could, because he was sorry too. He wished he could have offered her something better. A shore she wanted to return to. A reason to keep the lighthouse burning. A life that did not hurt her so much. But this was the only mercy he knew how to give.

When they finally slipped beneath the surface, the cold closed around them with a sting, and Hyunjin paused once more, giving her one final chance to pull away. She was still looking at him. She smiled as she released the breath she had been holding, the last of its bubbles rising past her face toward the surface. He was not the one drowning, but it hurt all the same. Because when her heart finally fell silent, his would continue beating. He would still have to swim through the same dark waters, return to the same empty coast, and look toward a lighthouse that would never burn for him again. There would be no tired voice singing beneath the moon, no figure waiting on their rock, no thin hand reaching toward his.

Hyunjin had spent centuries alone before her, but he had not known what loneliness truly was until he had been given something to miss. Soon, the warmth held between their bodies would disappear, and the sea would be cold again. Only this time, he would remember that it had not always been. And as he carried her with him to where even the light could not reach, not once did she look away from him.

Not once did her eyes stop being hers.