The first time Lina saw him, he was drowning.
3am. Monsoon. The sea was screaming at the rocks behind her house in north.
Lightning hit and there he was. A boy with a silver tail, bleeding, eyes open but lungs full of water.
She dragged him onto the porch because her grandmother said: "never let something die on your doorstep."
He coughed, choked, and whispered her name.
"Lina."
She’d never told him her name.
*Xiao Jin*. Banished merman. Cursed.
Save him, and he gets 7 tides on land. After that: back to the sea, or turn to foam.
Unless... someone loves him back. Then he can stay. And die in 3 days.
He didn’t tell her that.
He was wrong on land. Too pale. Too quiet. Too sharp.
But he learned her.
7:10am: tea. Two sugars.
1:30pm: nap, one foot hanging off the bed.
11:47pm: writing stories in a notebook she hid under the mattress.
He read them.
All of them.
"Stop looking at me like that," Lina snapped on day 3, catching him.
"Like what?"
"Like you’re memorizing me to take me with you."
He didn’t deny it.
Because he was.
By day 4 he was following her to the market. Waiting outside her bathroom. Sleeping on the floor in front of her door.
"Good boy," she said once, patting his head after he washed dishes.
He closed his eyes and almost cried.
That night he pressed his forehead to her bedroom door and whispered:
"Say my name again. Just once."
She heard him. She didn’t answer.
*Tide 6*. The sea came early.
Waves smashed the windows. Salt burned her throat.
Xiao Jin was in the bathtub, convulsing. Scales crawling up his legs. Gills tearing open at his neck.
"Go," Lina begged, holding his hand.
"I can’t," he hissed through pain. "If I go back, I’ll forget you. The sea takes memories first."
"Then stay and die."
"Then let me take you with me."
His eyes went black. For one second he wasn’t Xiao Jin. He was the ocean.
He grabbed her wrist, hard enough to bruise, and pulled her toward the door. Toward the water.
"Lina. Come. We’ll be together forever."
She slapped him.
He blinked. The black cleared. And he let go.
"I’m sorry," he whispered, bleeding from the mouth. "I’m so obsessed with you it’s making me cruel."
*Tide 7*. Dawn.
He couldn’t walk. She carried him to the shore.
His tail was back. Beautiful and terrible.
"Write me in your story," he said, voice breaking. "So I’m not nothing."
"Don’t you dare leave me," she said, crying now. Angry.
The wave came.
It took him.
3 days. Nothing.
She ate alone. Washed two bowls and only used one.
She wrote the ending: _He drowns. She survives._
On day 4, she woke up to wet footprints.
To warm rice porridge on the table.
To Xiao Jin, on his knees in her kitchen, human. Shaking. Skin red and raw like he’d been flayed.
"Curse broke," he rasped. "Because you chose me over the sea. Because you slapped me and didn’t follow."
He looked up at her, eyes wet.
"It hurts now. Feeling things. Loving you hurts."
She should’ve been scared.
Instead she dropped to her knees and kissed him.
Salt. Blood. Porridge.
"I’m obsessed too," she admitted against his mouth. "With your stupid face. With how you watch me sleep. With how you almost dragged me to die with you and then stopped."
He laughed, broken. "Good. Be obsessed back. So I don’t disappear."
He stayed.
Scars on his wrists where the scales used to be.
Nightmares where he still hears the tide calling.
And Lina. Always Lina.
A year later, he still sleeps on the floor outside her door.
"I like guarding you," he says.
She kicks him awake every morning with warm rice porridge.
"Poisoned?" she asks, smirking.
"Only if you’re in it," he answers, and steals a kiss.
She published the story.
_Drown with me_.
It ends with a merman who chose to bleed for 3 days instead of forgetting,
and a girl who chose to run into the sea, and then chose to pull him back out.
And on stormy nights in North
if you listen,
the waves still whisper her name.
Lina.
Like a prayer. Like a threat. Like love.
_the end_ 🌊💙
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