What? Hyungwon clicked out, confused and uncertain and wounded by the leader's words.

Stay, Hyunwoo clicked out again, and there was no hesitance in his tone, no room for Hyungwon to argue or protest, but he was too upset to stay quiet.

You're taking them with you? Hyungwon clicked out, flicking his tail toward Jooheon, Changkyun, and Minhyuk and ignoring the soft clicks they sent his way in an attempt to soothe him. But not me?

Stay, Hyunwoo repeated, a little firmer this time. There was warning in his tone, but Hyungwon ignored it again.

Why not me? Not enough? he clicked out, and that feeling from before resurfaced, the feeling he got when he thought of his parents or being left behind. Cold.

Bigger prey, Hyunwoo clicked, and the warning was now accompanied by agitation at having been questioned. Need more of us.

But not me? Hyungwon repeated, tail flicking almost on its own. How many hunts had he waited? How many hunts had he known he wasn't strong enough or good enough to be taken with?

Changkyun is fast, Hyunwoo clicked out in reasoning, clearly making an effort to justify his choice in an attempt to calm Hyungwon down. Minhyuk is older. Jooheon is strong.

It was true that Jooheon, despite not being as strong as Hoseok or Hyunwoo, was indeed strong. Stronger than Hyungwon, for sure. But to have that fact produced before him felt like a stinging betrayal.

Not me, Hyungwon filled in, feeling that strange coldness seeping down farther within him along with a foreign sense of panic, as though the darkness around him were somehow growing darker, as though it were becoming unfamiliar.

Stay, Hyunwoo clicked again, but gentler this time. Watch the cave. Protect our home.

Be safe, Hyungwon clicked, not because he wanted to but out of necessity. He always wished for them to be safe before they went off. It just hurt more this time because he'd be the only one waiting for them.

Upset, Hyungwon swam off into the farthest part of the cave, ducking into a crevice that was about twice the width of himself. Something about the alcave made him feel safe, like he was surrounded and enclosed. He could hear clicking from the front of the cave, Jooheon trying to reason with Hyunwoo and Minhyuk arguing that someone should stay behind with Hyungwon, but that made him more upset. He knew Minhyuk was worried that he wouldn't be okay on his own, that he would lose himself, and while he might have appreciated Minhyuk's care at another moment in time, it just reconfirmed his own weakness.

Go, he clicked from the back of the cave, listening as the clicking from the other end cut off abruptly.

Then, after a long moment, he heard the soft goodbye clicks from his choir as they left the cave to head for higher waters; due to their eyes and other features, they couldn't go all the way up to the Above, which was why they waited in middle waters and used their voices to lure prey deeper. Hyungwon knew this only from the stories of others, and it seemed that he would continue to rely on their stories rather than his own. He had no stories to tell from simply sitting in the cave by himself, only a tale of a coldness that perpetuated beyond reason.

--

Hyungwon swam aimlessly for several phases, returning to the cave when he'd tired himself out enough to stop thinking. He knew that if he let his mind run, it would only create darkness within his heart, and there was already too much darkness without six other tails faintly illuminating the cave.

Even so, his head was full of questions he had no answers to.

Had Hyunwoo really thought he wasn't good enough to join them?

Or had he left Hyungwon behind because he trusted him to protect their territory?

He doubted Hyunwoo would give him any answers when they got back. He'd been stupid to argue with Hyunwoo in the first place; doing so would have been seen as a threat to the leader's authority. In a fight between Hyunwoo and Hyungwon...

Hyungwon knew he wouldn't be the victor. He wouldn't even survive, if Hyunwoo bothered to take him seriously at all.

A quarter cycle had passed, and Hyungwon flicked around the cave anxiously, awaiting their return and looking forward to the time when they could all eat happily and forget Hyungwon's unseemly behavior.

A child, he'd been such a petulant child about the whole thing. Hyunwoo was the leader; he made decisions that were best for the group. If he'd left Hyungwon behind, then it had been for the group's benefit, and that should have been justification enough for Hyungwon.

He flicked his tail in agitation and did another lap around the cave, keeping his mouth shut as he clicked his teeth together. Why weren't they home yet? Didn't they know how solitude bred darkness?

He immediately felt guilty for thinking of himself when they were all busy with the hunt, and he swam another lap full of more nervous clicking before he left the cave. He stayed nearby, not wanting to miss the sounds of their return, but the cave felt too small and confining for his growing anxiety.

A soft high-pitched chirrup came out of his throat unbidden, and he flushed in humiliation, hating the loneliness and desperation behind the note. He flicked his tail, and a nearby school of fish scattered, there one second and gone the next.

He swam a little farther out from the cave, resolving to burn off a little bit of his nervous energy, and he winced as a sharp pang of hunger speared at his stomach. He'd need to eat soon. They'd all eat together once they returned from the hunt.

Hyungwon followed a fish for a while before he was drawn to a small disturbance in the water not too far away. He twisted around several rock formations and swam along the coral before his dim vision picked up on the silhouette of a large fish that was slowly descending toward the ocean floor. He flicked his tail, sending a small current of water toward the fish and expecting it to take caver from nearby predators, but the fish ignored his signal and continued its descent.

Hyungwon swam closer, his tail only barely illuminating the immediate area, but once he was nearly upon the creature, he could make out a tail not unlike his own. He clicked three times quickly in a questioning hello, and when he got no response, he swam close enough that he could reach out and touch the siren.

Hello? he clicked again, a growing sense of dread inhibiting his movements. Once he was certain that the siren wasn't responsive, he slowly set his hand over the siren's face, running his fingers along the protuberances and valleys as his only way of identifying them.

When his fingers traced the nose, he jerked back, surprised and immediately alarmed.

Changkyun? he clicked, moving closer and running both hands over his face. Changkyun, answer me!

Why had Changkyun been drifting through the water on his own? Where were the others?

Anxious clicks sounded from Hyungwon's throat without him even realizing it, and he began tugging Changkyun closer to their cave. He was afraid that, in Changkyun's unresponsive state, he might plunge straight down into the coral and end up with a lot of cuts. The blood could attract larger predators as well, and although sirens had many evolutionary advantages, it was best not to pick fights with other creatures, not while he was on his own. Not when he wasn't strong enough to even take on a hunt.

The whole swim back to the cave, Hyungwon kept up a constant stream of clicking, calling for Changkyun again and again, trying to get him to respond.

Hyunwoo! Hyungwon clicked once the cave was in distance. He was hoping Changkyun had just gotten separated from the rest, that they were waiting for him and that everything would be okay-

He was almost back to the cave when he sensed it, a microscopic disturbance in the water, and his head snapped back to Changkyun, his clicks faltering for a moment as he tried to identify the shift in the water.

Again, a tiny disruption, so small that Hyungwon might have missed it if he hadn't been waiting for it, and his heart shuddered as he figured it out.

Sea foam.

His clicks resumed, twice as distressed as before as he set Changkyun down on the ocean floor and circled around him anxiously, clicking and looking back toward the cave and checking on Changkyun. After a moment of waiting, he darted toward the cave, hoping to find his brethren, but the cave was as empty as it had been for several phases now. Disheartened, he rushed back to Changkyun, swiping his webbed hand through the water to break up the bubbles as Changkyun began disappearing before his eyes, his tail and skin slowly giving way to sea foam.

Shrill tones escaped Hyungwon's throat as he keened over Changkyun's fading body, the wailing pitches scaring away all the creatures in the nearby area. An unnatural silence settled near the cave, broken only by Hyungwon's sounds of grieving, and altogether too soon, Changkyun's body was gone and Hyungwon was alone once more. There was nothing to testify that Changkyun had been there save for a few last bubbles of sea foam that began to dutifully make their way toward the surface far above.

Alone once more, Hyungwon couldn't stop the cries from scraping against his throat. His friend, his brother, his family...gone. Dead.

Dead, he clicked out helplessly to anyone who would listen, but there was no one to pick up his clicks and no one to click back to him. Changkyun...

Eventually, his high-pitched shrieks subsided, more as a result of low energy than diminishing grief. Losing a member of a choir was heart wrenching, an unshakable bond instantly shattered. Was it really so long ago that they'd been tumbling through the ocean, nipping at one another playfully?

Hyungwon shuddered, collapsing to the ocean floor next to where Changkyun had lain, careful not to disturb the imprint he'd left behind.

At least the sand remembers you, Hyungwon thought, feeling cold once more. A pang of regret hit him, regret that sirens didn't leave anything behind, regret that Changkyun would only ever continue to dwell in his memories. Hyungwon cursed the transience of their kind, cursed the loneliness they endured and the darkness they surrounded themselves with.

It took a bit of time for Hyungwon to process Changkyun's death, to come to terms with the end of a life, and that's when the new questions began filling his head.

Where are the others?

How did Changkyun die?

Why is no one coming?

Obviously it had something to do with the hunt, but it didn't make sense to Hyungwon's grief-ridden mind. Changkyun was the fastest swimmer out of them all; how had he been the one to die? What had they faced that he couldn't outswim?

Unless, of course, the others hadn't outswam it. Unless Changkyun had been killed as he fled, and the others hadn't been able to flee far enough for hurting them to have been necessary. Unless the others had been captured, and Changkyun had been injured and in the end killed because he'd slipped through their fingers.

Hyungwon narrowed his eyes.

The two-legged ones.

He'd heard stories when he was young about sirens being captured by the two-legged ones from the Above, about creatures that ensnared and speared at sirens. Creatures that ate sirens as a delicacy, in some stories, and creatures that kept them as trophies in others.

Why? Hyungwon had asked as a child. Why do they catch us when there are other fish, prettier fish, tastier fish?

Because, his mother had told him, two-legged creatures are obsessed with conquering things.

But why us? Hyungwon had repeated. He understood territory and necessary fighting between species to preserve the hierarchy and to secure resources, but sirens – like most creatures of the deep-sea – didn't take trophies.

Because the only thing two-legged ones are obsessed with more than conquering is themselves, she had replied.

The message had been cryptic back then. Even now, Hyungwon couldn't be sure he understood her meaning, but he'd garnered that there was something about sirens that two-legged creatures viewed as similar. Clearly not the tail, given their moniker. So what exactly about sirens did the two-legged creatures see themselves in?

He didn't know the answer, but he knew without a doubt that it had been nothing worth killing Changkyun over. He knew the others would have never left Changkyun alone, not on his first hunt, and they never would have let him be injured if they could have helped it. That meant that they were either captured – to be trophies or food, if he believed the stories – or dead.

Neither eventuality was promising, and both left Hyungwon alone on the bottom of the ocean floor.

If he thought about that fact too long, he could sense panic bubbling up in his stomach; a vast ocean felt familiar when swimming with friends, but everything was different when there were no tails swishing alongside his own.

You wanted to help, Hyungwon thought to himself gripping his head with his webbed fingers. So help.

But what can I do?

He pushed himself off the sand and meandered near the mouth of the cave, but he knew there was nothing for him there. No one to wait for, no one to come home to. Without his choir, it wasn't much of a home at all.

Perhaps prompted by the stories from his childhood, a separate rumor began circulating in his mind, an improbable tale that Hoseok and Changkyun had often spouted. More than likely a story Hoseok had made up to tease Changkyun, and yet...

They say a creature lives at the bottom of the trench.

Unlikely. Hyungwon knew of many deep-sea creatures, but he knew of none that could survive in those conditions.

They say it can grant wishes.

Just a child's fantasy. A creature that could fulfill wishes surely couldn't exist.

And yet...

Hyungwon had nothing. He had no one. If the rest of his choir weren't dead, if they'd truly been captured alive, then he needed to find them and help them, and...

His mind circled back to the immutable truth.

Not enough.

He wasn't strong enough, he wasn't cunning enough, he wasn't fast enough. He never had been. That was why Hyunwoo had chosen the others for the hunt. That was why Hyunwoo had left him behind.

Not enough.

He wasn't enough, and he knew that. And he knew that it was a silly tale for fools and children, but if there really was something down there at the bottom of the trench, something that could grant wishes, something that could make him enough to help his choir...

Hyungwon left the cave behind and began swimming for the trench.

--

published 4/2/21

2527 words