FOUR DAYS HAVE passed since the revelation was passed down to their hands, and neither Victor nor Bastian have visited me since. Their mixed reactions to the fact that I am not refusing Jeonghan’s selfish and cruel plans of using someone and making them dance on the thin loose thread of life in an abyss created by death is fathomable. It is unsettling- how I have muted down on my thought process and started thinking a little ambitiously rather than in the way I was before- confident, considerate, and conscious of my actions. 

I glance down at my hands now and then between the process of cleaning and arranging the stock and sigh disappointedly when I observe the scales growing prominent. I’ve tried it all: taking a dip in the bathtub, staying under the shower for two hours, keeping myself hydrated, and swimming in the sea bed with the siren for almost a day. Apart from observing my siren side coming to life, I see no trace of hope of remaining human. 

If Aven sees my distress, he pretends not to have noticed it. He rarely bothers me and has mellowed down a bit in his sadistic tendencies. 

“Mama, look! She has fins on her hand!” The little girl proclaims. She barely reaches up to my knees, an adorable little thing. Her green eyes reminded me of the sea beside a lighthouse, gleaming like emerald under light, a reflection of her excitement. I smile and crouch down to her level. I take note of the little wooden rabbit in her grasp and her tight hold on it. Her mother gasps upon seeing it. Ready to scold, she lunges ahead, but I jump right in with sweet talking. 

“Oh dear, you found out! It was supposed to be a secret!” I gasp. “Could you be blessed by goddess Warena?”

From somewhere afar, I hear Aven snort in response. My lips twitch, but I remain composed. “You mean they are real?!”

Oh dear, won’t you like to know.

Shut up. 

“What do you think?” I say, flaunting my arms in the air. The glimmer in her eyes grows tenfold, and the unease in my chest finally settles down. My smile widens so does her excitement. “Mama!” she squeals. “She’s a siren!”

I gulp. “Shh…that’s supposed to be our secret. You don’t wanna be claimed by the ocean now, do you?”

The innocent girl shakes her head fervently. “I wanna! I wanna be the ocean’s so badly!”

I sigh and pat the girl’s head before speaking in a more relaxed but wistful tone. “You don’t mean that, sweetie. You don’t ever mean that. The ocean is crueler than you think.”

The child is taken aback by my words, but she is quick to deny my claims. “No! If that is the case, the ocean wouldn’t have been merciful to us!”

“Sweetheart,” the mother starts, sparing me a stare immersed in pity. “She is right. The ocean is mostly cruel, especially to some people.” She gathers the kid in her arms and takes away the wooden sculpture from her arms. “Please pack this, Clara,” she smiles softly, “ and I am sorry.”

I shake my head and put the business smile back in place. “It’s fine. Fret not.”

The woman puts a hand on my shoulder and presses firmly on the skin, offering me a crumb of 

comfort through physical touch. I grip the hand and push it away gently. “I’ll bill it now.”

I head over to the register and write down the bill. The carbon paper beneath the bill presses keenly on the blank paper under it with every scribble of numbers I make over it. 

I tear off the bill and hand it over to the lady, but the child grabs it in her grasp. Her eyes are guilty and hesitant to meet my own, but when she looks, she seems sad. She holds my gaze for a few seconds before breaking it and hiding her face on her mother’s shoulder. 

I think I hear her sniffle, but I cannot be sure. The mother smiles softly at her child, and the sight tugs at something dark secured within the darkest corner of my heart. I sigh softly and coo at the child. 

“Let your beliefs protect you, my dear.” 

The lady nods and approaches the door. Her timid steps grow hesitant when she reaches for the handle, and she turns, the same soft smile from before playing on her lips. “The tattoo looks great on you.”

Unsure of what to say, I simply resolved to nod and wave. I reflexively grab my wrist and fiddle with the bracelet. Bastian returned it the last time he had visited, a final token of love perhaps.

My eyes droop sadly, and I shake my head to ward off the negatives from my mind. Come on, Clara, Cameron wouldn’t appreciate this side of yours. 

Aven appears in my eyesight, holding an unboxed carton belonging to the shop. The veins on his forearms bulge with the weight he carries. His skin, previously translucent in colour, changed to a comparatively normal tone while mine grew paler with time. 

I observe the man roaming in the room, searching for something. His eyes lit up in realization. He strolls across the room to where Cameron’s poster is pasted and crouches down. Aven throws a few things behind him and emerges victorious, holding a pair of scissors in his grasp. 

Oh, so he wanted to open that. Less work for me, I guess. 

I turn around and open the door hiding my home from the customers to grab myself a glass of water. I return with another and wordlessly hand it over to Aven, who busies himself with arranging the antiques. I take a look around while he sips the water contently and nod to myself in approval. Aven is certainly not new to this kind of work. 

If the stories are true, then Aven and other sirens who lurk in the deep in hopes of finding themselves easy prey might have once been human. 

It has me wondering for a while whether Aven, too, had a past that he likes to treasure in his heart. But why does it seem like he doesn’t remember any of it at all? Does being part of the ocean erase your memories? Does that mean I will forget Cameron?

I don’t want to. 

Cameron is the only part of my life that gives me hope. Without him, I don’t think I would’ve reached this far nor have enjoyed any of it either. I wouldn’t have met Bastian, Victor or- I look at Aven standing beside me, reaching out to me with the empty glass, who has been reduced into a plaything for his shadows.  He raises an eyebrow, never voicing his thoughts. For once, I find myself wishing that I had earned myself the power of telepathy. 

I glance away. Without sparing him another glance, I grab the glass, thus effectively breaking the shadow spell. The darkness falls like grains of salt on a beach and merges with the floor, disappearing entirely. And they re-emerge later in the wake of my dreams alongside Cameron’s image. 

He is small- my baby brother- he crouches by the corner of the bedroom, his head tucked between his arms, covering his ears, desperate to hide away, to not hear, not react.  The screams inside the room grow progressively louder, and so does the child's shudders of fear. I wish to move, I desire to make the muscles of my leg shift, to pull, do anything, just to reach my brother who is on the verge of tears. In the background, I hear my angry shouts and screams, begging the man to stop crying. 

But the man, my father, was not someone who listened to others, not when he was sober, and never when he was under the influence. 

Cameron sobs, shifting further to the corner, urging himself to blend in with the wall, perhaps the shadows, and I cannot do anything to help the boy. I can only watch, even when it is the last thing I wish to do. 

There is a sudden rush of light in the room, followed by haste footsteps. Before my eyes, my younger self, haggard and angry, gathers the boy in her arms and walks out of the room, pushing away the man who reaches out to both of them angrily. She sprouts curses at him, tears streaming down her face. And I might be insane to not know that I am crying as well. 

The scene shifts abruptly- before me, there are no longer empty beer and alcohol bottles alongside white powders and used syringes. Instead of them, there is sand- a lot of them. It covers the entirety of the floor. The man is frozen still on his place, but there is a wild glimmer in his eyes- a rare kind of emotion stricken only at the sight of a new package of drugs delivered before his home and at the sight of our mother of whom we know nothing about now. 

The wind picks up, and I can finally move. I breathe raggedly and fall into the sand, tired by this much. Why these memories? What are you trying to prove?

“Yvonne? Have you finally come to see me?” The man asks the void. The familiar voice of the sea and the hum of the wind cause me pain, and I glare at the figure walking away from me towards the sea. If all this is vividly presented, then- I swiftly turn my head to the other side. Two figures merged into one- a girl cradling a sleeping boy in her arms- stare at the man with vacant eyes. Aha. 

Grandma always said it before: what the mind forgets, the heart remembers. What the mind remembers, it surfaces. 

The older people are, the wiser their minds are. 

As I am observing the duo, to be precise, the girl who looks as though she barely reaches the age of twelve, a low hum emerges from the sea. It picks up a rhythm, a lullaby to the crazy man and a serenade to the lonely girl. The man, happy for the first time in years, rushes to the sea, where she awaits him, arms wide open and a predatory grin dancing on her lips. 

I laugh a manic sound. Tears are cascading down my own cheeks as well, but they are not shed for the man, but for my brother. Oh, you poor thing. If you knew what your sister had done, would you ever forgive me?