I woke up aching all over. The bed wasn't exactly comfortable, and the cold hadn't helped either. I cracked my neck, twisting it left and right to loosen the stiffness. Light slipped through the moldy window sill. The rain must have stopped sometime during the night. My sorry excuse for a sleeping bag had done little to keep out the chill. The sun had never made me as happy as it did this morning.
I walked over to the front door, tried to open it, and it fell off completely with a loud thud. Well, it wasn't like I could get robbed here—though I wasn't so sure about wild animals. I yawned, stretched my arms, and took a moment to finally look around. I hadn't had the chance to really take in the island's beauty last evening, but in the daylight, it hit me. It was magnificent. The green of the jungle and the blue of the ocean popped even more after the rain. It was like watching a movie in HD—only better.
The storm hadn't done much damage, though there wasn't really much here to destroy except for the coconut trees, which nature had built to be sturdy. Off in the distance, I spotted a few coconuts lying on the ground. I walked toward the sandy area, picked them up—twelve in total—and somehow balanced them all in my arms as I carried them back to the house. From afar, the house actually looked beautiful, just like the pictures Dad had shown me years ago. But up close, it was easy to see how worn down it had become over time.
I decided to take a tour of the area and discovered a metal tank-like structure perched on a bamboo frame, with a furnace underneath it. A tube ran from the large tank to a smaller one on the side. It must have been some sort of water distillation system. I also noticed a wooden walkway at the back of the house extending out toward the sea.
Back inside, I realized there was a section of the house I had completely missed the night before. What looked like a solid wall actually turned out to be a sliding door. Behind it was a bedroom—a surprisingly nice one, with a proper bed, plush mattress, pillows, and blankets. A glass door in front of the bed opened onto a porch that led straight to the walkway over the quiet part of the ocean.
While exploring a bit more, I found a toolbox and even more of Dad's research papers.
I spent the entire afternoon fixing the front door. It wasn't perfect, but it stayed upright, and that felt like a win. Afterward, I took a bath, made some beans and rice, and settled onto the bed with Dad's papers—flipping through pages filled with sketches and notes about the sea creatures he had spent his life chasing.
According to Dad's research notes, the merpeople were nothing like the whimsical creatures depicted in folklore. They weren't half-fish with glittering scales and flowing hair. They were more... biological. Real.
He wrote that their legs were joined together by a thin, flexible membrane—something like webbed skin. This membrane fused their limbs into a powerful tail when they were in the water. But what fascinated him most was the fact that the skin could detach, allowing them to separate their legs and move like land-dwelling humans when they were outside the water.
It was still unclear whether they had full control over this transformation or if it was something their bodies did instinctively when exposed to dry air. Either way, it blurred the lines between human and aquatic life in ways I never imagined possible.
Dad's notes went on to explain that the females of the species were far more aggressive than the males. Territorial. Distrustful. They were described as harder to approach, harder to study, and nearly impossible to communicate with.
He theorized that their mating rituals involved the female selecting her mate based on a series of challenges—testing strength, endurance, and even beauty. He'd written the word beauty with a question mark beside it, like even he couldn't quite believe it himself.
The last page held a faded, grainy snapshot.
It showed the dark ocean at night, with what looked like the faint outline of a human face just breaking the surface—barely more than a shadow. But it was there. A pair of eyes staring out from the waves.
Beneath the photo, Dad had scrawled:
"You can catch a glimpse of them if you're patient enough. They're shy. Elusive. But they come out at night—especially during the full moon, when the ocean is calmest. They're drawn to firelight and music. Don't ask me why. But they are."
I couldn't believe he knew all this. Had he really seen them? Had he actually caught one? The aquarium tank in the basement suddenly felt far less like a relic and more like evidence.
I leaned back in my chair and stared out the window. The sky was already darkening, the last sliver of sunlight melting into the ocean. The moon had already begun to rise, bright and full, its reflection shimmering on the water's surface.
I stood and made my way to the living area, lighting the old oil lamp on the table. My lunch from earlier had gone cold, but I didn't have the energy to relight the fire, so I ate it cold and retreated to the bed.
Under the soft yellow glow of the lamp, I flipped through more of Dad's notes, the rhythmic crash of the ocean filling the silence around me.
It wasn't long before my eyes grew heavy and I drifted off.
That night, I dreamt I was underwater.Not drowning. Just... floating. The ocean stretched endlessly around me, dark and infinite. But I wasn't afraid. A strange sense of peace wrapped around me, like the sea itself had claimed me as its own. I could smell the salt. Feel the cool currents brushing against my skin.
With my arms stretched wide, I let it pull me deeper, surrendering to the vast, quiet deep.