To be fair, his family treated me with nothing but kindness. Even his mother, conscious in her hospital bed, expressed concern for how I was adjusting. I could summon no unkind word for them—perhaps it took such a family to raise someone so gentle and foolish.
The problem was me.
---
Setting aside my instinctive restlessness, my body was in open revolt.
The skin on my legs dried and flaked in layers, healing far slower than it cracked. Every tear took flesh with it, the pain piercing. That was when I finally abandoned my wishful thinking and admitted the truth: no matter how human they looked on the outside, my legs still carried the nature of a mermaid's tail.
And the environment far from the sea was a blade, peeling the scales from my tail minute by minute.
I bore it in silence—even in sweltering weather I wore thick trousers, taking advantage of his attention being focused on the hospital to guard this secret that could not be revealed. Every visit to his mother, I forced a smile. And in the stabbing pain, I was suddenly jolted into the realization that this was precisely the agony described in the tale of my famous predecessor.
Every step felt like walking on knives.
How pathetic. Fairy tales are usually three parts fiction to seven parts fabrication, not to be trusted—and yet this particular detail happened to be true.
After some time, I could endure no more and urged him to take me back to the coast. But my usually accommodating lover hesitated, and the look on his face told me everything. I swallowed the excuses I'd been composing.
This was another deadlock with nothing owed on either side. Merfolk couldn't escape the sea's pull; humans were equally bound by the land's demands.
But in the end, I fled. When the wound beneath my knee revealed bone, I abandoned him in the maelstrom of his own life and ran.
Just as he was only an ordinary human, I was only an ordinary mermaid. The courage to sacrifice everything for love, like my famous predecessor—I didn't have it.
I returned to our seaside apartment and waited. Every evening I went alone to watch the sunset until the sea healed my legs, leaving only an ugly scar below my knee. Then he finally came back, dragging his suitcase.
He was still smiling, but the exhaustion in that smile couldn't be hidden.
And the origin of every crack between us might be traced to that simple exhaustion.
Life looked the same afterward. But I'd lived in the ocean long enough to know that even the calmest surface can be hiding a monstrous wave beneath.
The signs? Trivial arguments, misunderstandings, silences.
I won't rehash those awful confrontations. I never intended to find a clear account to steal. The petty frictions of daily living admit no right or wrong.
Even now, I must speak fairly on his behalf—he'd tried his best. But he was only one person. When his mother, gravely injured and dependent on big-city medical care, needed her only son's financial and physical support, and I, a mermaid disguised as a human, absolutely refused to leave this coastal town with its proximity to the sea—what could he do? Who could have done better?
Should he uproot his aging, ailing parents and move with me to some strange coastal metropolis and start over? He was only an ordinary man. He couldn't bear that choice.
I had no right to resent his inability to understand why I couldn't leave the sea.
Without revealing my identity, "I can't leave the ocean" was a flimsy, almost laughable reason.
But such is the helplessness of this world. I could only watch, awkward and useless, as the gentle warmth was ground out of him by a hopeless life—just as the outgoing tide reveals razor-sharp rocks.
His nature remained kind. Even in our worst moments, he worked to keep the sharp edges hidden, frustration and sorrow tightening his face like a bowstring on the verge of snapping. It made me think of a friendly whale I'd met long ago, who swam with me across many oceans, a good companion. One day, missing the receding tide, it was stranded on a beach. Though whales can breathe on land and survive for a time, without water's buoyancy their own weight would eventually crush their organs—a slow, agonizing death.
And I could only hide behind the rocks, watching this tragedy unfold, watching my whale friend struggle and fade.
Whether human or mermaid, no one could help.
I did not want to see such a tragedy repeated. If I could have pushed the stranded whale back to sea, I would have.
After our next fight—the last one—I told him I was going home. The fool, even then, looked confused and concerned: "But your home is right here."
I smiled. "It was. Not anymore."
Just like that, our romance ended—abruptly, like its beginning. Then I chased him out with a flimsy excuse, entirely ignoring the fact that I was the one leaving.
He wouldn't hold that final selfishness against me. I was confident of that, even at the moment of parting.
The wind rattling the half-shut window brought me back. I exhaled and realized I'd been lying on the hard floor for a long time. It was fully dark now—no light at all, a state all too similar to that first typhoon night when we'd lain side by side on these same boards.
But this time, I was alone.
Honestly, though I'd spent the day reliving old memories, I didn't feel them deeply. My heart was like the moonlit surface of the black sea—only faint ripples. I suppose merfolk are naturally a detached race, raised in cold water. We may occasionally surface to touch the warmth of the sun, but returning to the dark, empty deep presents no difficulty.
Although I still hadn't decided what to steal, I had at least resolved another question.
I'd never understood why the Immigration Committee imposed that strange rule on returning merfolk. But after living on land, watching the entangled fates of lovers under neon lights, seeing my ex's pain and indecision, I finally understood.
If a mermaid still feels owed by the one left behind on shore, a thread of attachment remains in her heart, and she can no longer swim freely into the depths. Her soul will always yearn to return to land, torn between the sea and the shore, and like a stranded whale, she will suffer and dry up and die.
So before leaving, you must steal one thing from your former lover—a way to sever the bond cleanly.
Fair enough. I accept it. I never lived in a fairy tale where love conquers all. This love of mine was like the evening light over the sea—beautiful and useless.
It couldn't save him. And it couldn't save me.
---
For the next few days, I gave serious thought to the life-or-death question of what to steal. I didn't just brood indoors; I often went to the beach, sitting in that ice cream shop, eating cranberry shaved ice, watching the tide, watching the clouds, and watching him come back to the apartment to pack a bag of his things, slowly passing by the shop.
We first met here.
So here was where we'd say goodbye.
He looked a bit gaunt—like that bouquet of roses battered by the typhoon, no longer as whole, but the original outline remained. Still a good-looking young man. And this good-looking young man stood a few paces away, gazing at me for a long time—long enough for all the shaved ice in my bowl to melt—before breaking into a serene smile.
"Goodbye."
In that moment, an impulse surged through me: I wanted to steal that smile. Tuck it into the deep ocean where no one else could see it.
But I couldn't steal that. No one should lose their smile forever just because a youthful love failed—that wasn't something he owed me. To take it by force would be too unfair.
So I smiled back at him, my best smile.
"Goodbye."
Though I knew in my heart that unless he someday suffered a mishap at sea and sank into the depths, we would likely never see each other again in this life.
Still. It was better to part with a smile than with bitterness.
After his figure vanished at the end of the street, I returned to the apartment and opened every drawer and every box, inspecting carefully.
Honestly, I didn't care what he'd taken. I was just… the tiniest bit curious.
The result was disappointing. He'd only taken clothes and work documents. The furniture we'd bought together, the gifts we'd exchanged, even the engagement ring he'd never found the right moment to give me—he'd left it all behind.
I'd probably become numb to all this by now. I put the ring back in the drawer, my heart as calm as before, already beginning to rationally calculate how to dispose of this apartment full of things before my return to the sea.
Mid-thought, my stomach growled, and I went into the kitchen to boil some noodles.
But when I reached for the seasoning, I realized the bottle of sea salt was gone.
My hand froze in midair.
And then I was shaking, sliding down the wall, ignoring the pot of noodles turning to mush behind me, as a grief I'd never felt before swept over me like a tsunami, violent and unstoppable, washing away all my calm, all my detachment, leaving behind nothing but the devastated, waking howl of loss.
Until that moment, I hadn't fully understood: he and I were truly through.
He'd taken my salt.
From now on, there would be no warm man to wrap his arms around me from behind as I cooked and whisper in my ear, "Add a little of that sea salt—it's the taste of your home."
I curled into a ball on the narrow kitchen floor, sobbing.
Tears fell and fell, each one carrying immense grievance and bewilderment.
Neither of us owed the other anything. So how—how could it end like this?
But many questions in this world have no answers, including mine. Only the waves outside kept rising, their sound unable to drown my hoarse crying as it echoed around this cage of a kitchen—helpless, weak, with no end in sight.
---
A few days later, I terminated the lease on that little apartment. Everything inside was either shipped back to him, given away, or simply left for the landlady.
Just as a mermaid asks for nothing on land except her lover, a mermaid returning to the sea needs only the one thing she's stolen. Everything else can be left behind.
I'm ready. Soon I'll return to the deep ocean—that cold place with no shaved ice, no roses, no rings, where even salt crystals dissolve beyond reach.
It doesn't sound pleasant. But it's a far better ending than dissolving into sea foam like my predecessor.
At dusk, the tide going out, I stand barefoot on the sand, feeling its soft fineness one last time, fling my arms wide to the cool sea wind, and let the faintly salty breeze lift my hair.
Before me lies the mouth of the bay, the open ocean beyond, and the purple twilight melting along the horizon.
That is the homeland I'm returning to.
It's also what I stole from him.
Yes. I once shared this purple dusk—the distinctive beauty of my homeland—with him. Now I must steal it back and take it away.
In the days to come, he may meet other women. They might share bowls of cranberry shaved ice, he might give them pale bouquets of roses, propose with a ring set with a purple gemstone.
None of that concerns me. That's his future, beyond my control.
But I'm not that generous. After living on land for so long, I've acquired this human flaw called jealousy.
So I'll steal from him the most beautiful sunset of all. He once promised to watch it with me forever. This is the one thing he owes me for the rest of his life.
From now on, no matter how perfect the woman he meets, no matter how he declares his love, whenever he comes to the sea, the evening sky will greet him only with rain and grey clouds—denying him and any other woman the sight of so magnificent a purple sunset on this particular shore.
I'm sorry. This belongs only to us, and I can't leave it on land.
One last glance over my shoulder at the twilight-soaked coastline, and before the tide reaches its lowest ebb, I shed my human form forever.
My tail reforms, I dive into the ocean, and dissolve into the sunset glow—never to return.
Author: Willow Page