A Siren's Call

A Siren's Call (1/2)

Chapter 7

Part One

Content Warning

Mentions of familial abuse.

Suicidal Hong-er

Qi Rong's ugly ass

Read at your own discretion.

Hua Cheng calmly drifted along the shoreline. But while his movements were calm and deliberate, his mind was in utter disarray. He only appeared so composed because the beach was his safe space. He'd walked across those sandy shores more times than even he, an avid thalassophile, could count.

A soft breeze swept through his messy hair, yet to be brushed out today, and tinged on the wet bandages across that wretched right eye of his. Today, it wasn't blood that stained the bandages. That must have been the only blessing he could count for this day, though he would readily exchange tragedies. His mother's life was easily worth a beating; it never killed him after all. Yet fate was cruel, and he wasn't given that option before she was taken from him.

Really, it was his mother that should have been crying. She lived a fine life with a loving husband and two sons until she was cursed, cursed to give birth to Hua Cheng, and everything went downhill after that. It was as if she offered her life energy as a catalyst for her child and grew incomparably ill after giving birth to him. Never in his years had Hua Cheng seen that invalid woman able to stand alone. Yet she still loved him till her last breath.

Hua Cheng's father, on the other hand, lost his mind. Who wouldn't when his wife's well-being was exchanged for that abominable child she bore?

Hua Cheng had older brothers, but they hated him just as much as their father. And while they would never say anything that would upset their sickly mother, they knew who was responsible for her condition, and they loathed him for what he did to her. Hua Cheng hated to agree with them, but he hated himself too.

Sometimes they would even go as far as to lock him out of the house when he inconvenienced them. And by 'inconvenience', he meant bleeding out onto the floor. In all fairness, someone had to clean it (even if that person was Hua Cheng), and it stunk up the building, disturbing their mother.

And he not only didn't contribute to the household, but Hua Cheng also took from it. China was xenophobic. They were already highly discriminated against for either marrying or being born of a foreigner. With that stacked against them, work was hard enough to find without Hua Cheng's existence as a demon child. The only logical thing to do would be to throw him out, no matter how much he or his mother cried for him to be let back in.

That was what Hua Cheng's er ge¹ would do, and he wholeheartedly agreed with his brother. It was only practical, after all. But Hua Cheng was selfish. He knew he weighed them down but continued living on for so long. Too long, in his opinion.

[1] Er ge means second brother. Lan Wanji was also called Lan Er Ge at some point, so I assume you all know this, but it wasn't in Heaven Official's Blessing, so I thought I should include it.

When the men would come home from their jobs to find the breath escaped from the only person keeping their dysfunctional household together, Hua Cheng had no doubt that they would send him to join her.

So now, Hua Cheng wandered the beach with sand between his toes. He had been rather disoriented before and had forgotten his shoes at his house. Not that a dead child needed shoes anyways.

He glanced up at the beautiful pink and orange blend in the sky. The last one he would ever see.

Not too bad for a last. Nothing was horrible, per se. It truly was the optimal scenery. Hua Cheng just wasn't in a state to appreciate it.

While it was still low tide, waves began to lap at the abandoned dunes, devoid of pedestrians or beachgoers. It may have only been sunset, but the chilly temperature kept any sane person locked up in their home. At least this way, no one would jeer him while he was in the act of killing himself.

Hua Cheng lay down on the shore with the ebb and flow of the sea at his feet and waited for the water to take him. He'd always had an affinity for the ocean—if he had to die, he'd rather it be there. It was either that, or he let the rest of his family beat him to a pulp, the latter being much less pleasant. The ocean was at least tranquil (even if salt stung at his burning wounds scattered all over his skin). Besides, Hua Cheng was a petty person. He would never give them the satisfaction of killing him.

Some time passed, and the freezing waves had only climbed to Hua Cheng's shoulders when he felt something wash up on his ankle. The waters were almost numbing to his senses, so he'd barely noticed anything at all, but when he picked his head up, what he saw wasn't litter. At first glance, it might have looked like a white plastic rod stuck in some seaweed had floated over. But what was really there, Hua Cheng could only describe it as a nightmare, so the narrator has to take over for him.

Long verdant hair strands sprawled out and ascended to the water's surface while the creature's pale fingers wrapped around his ankle underwater. Then, that /thing/ rose, revealing its cadaverous body and pallid face. Cheek and chin bones jutted out unnaturally, and sharp ribs projected out of sickly white skin. If not anemic-looking, it was terrifying. One couldn't tell where skin ended and bone began. And in those emerald eyes shone nothing but animosity and hunger.

Hua Cheng would've screamed, he tried, but all he managed was a watery gurgle after the creature pulled him into the depths of the sea. Hua Cheng couldn't do anything but choke and squeeze his eyes shut as he got dragged deep and far out. Water rushed by him so fast he stung all over his body.

It had been a long time since Hua Cheng feared death. Any day, he would wake up on the side of the road, sticky with his own blood, subdued that he had woken up in the first place. And it wasn't as if he'd never thought of killing himself before. He was constantly hounded to do so by his siblings and the cruel neighboring children that claimed to have been mortified to have ever seen his hideous face. And today, he had laid on the beach intending to drown out of sheer necessity to stick it to his godforsaken family.

That was it. Hua Cheng wanted to die just as he had lived: a middle finger to the world around him. He wasn't even in control of the circumstances of his death now. That was why Hua Cheng was so alarmed. It wasn't much, but he was glad he was able to figure out that much before he died.

At least, that's what he thought.

Consciousness slowly crept back into Hua Cheng, and he opened his eyes to see the bright moon above his head. Judging by the angle, it was either around three in the morning or nine at night... And he was still breathing... If he had to go through the traumatic experience of being drowned, couldn't he at least be given the satisfaction of death?

How the hell was he alive anyway? If anything, Hua Cheng thought that would be what finally killed him. Was he immortal, or did some divine being gain too much gratification from his suffering to let their entertainment die so soon?

Hua Cheng sat up with a killer headache, slightly miffed. When he looked around, he realized he was surrounded by water on a small, wooden fishing boat. He had been laid out quite delicately except for his head and neck scrunched up against the side. His logy arms trembled under his weight as he pushed himself up, and his chilled and dripping wet schmattes adhered to his skin which he noted was even paler than usual.

Where was he?

The boat rocked under him, and the moon above reflected against the calm, midnight black plane environing him.

No matter how hard Hua Cheng stared at the horizon line, there was nothing between the water and the sky.

Nothing and no one.

A twitch tugged at the corners of Hua Cheng's mouth upward in a peculiar manner.

Even if he survived that creature, there was no way Hua Cheng could remain extant there for long. It shouldn't take much for him to starve. He hadn't had a proper meal in ages, and with how he was damp and shivering, he burned up energy. Whatever had been holding him over until now surely wouldn't last long.

He could finally rest without disturbance now.

"Ah, you're awake!" a voice chimed, and Hua Cheng jumped out of his skin.

It wasn't that the voice was scare-worthy, but he had no idea where it was coming from. No matter how hard he concentrated, there was no direction that the voice came from. It was simply...there in his head. And even if there was a direction, it was just as impossible for anyone to be out in the ocean.

"Sorry, did I scare you?" This time, the disembodied voice was accompanied by a finger lightly tapping his shoulder from behind.

Hua Cheng whipped his head around to see a man with his head propped up on the side of the boat and the rest of his body hanging out. With most of the other's body concealed, Hua Cheng's eye naturally focused on what was in front of him.

The man's skin was dripping with water and fair in color, but not bone white like he had seen on that creature earlier. Long, dark hair draped the man's shoulders and was pulled into a half-bun with a charming, golden hair fixture. His face was well-sculpted with dark eyebrows, shining amber eyes, and a lovely complexion only accentuated by the moon. The sole errant anomaly would be the two translucent fins sticking out from the side of his head, and, somehow, they didn't stand out too much and instead added to the captivating factor the mysterious stranger had.

Someone had to have saved Hua Cheng from that creature. Was this him?

Hua Cheng couldn't stop himself from staring...staring and wondering how the man wasn't freezing without a shirt. That is until he realized that there was nothing but a few hair strands covering his eye.

He tried to run, suddenly remembered he was on a cramped boat, and accidentally stumbled back, falling over the boat's bench.

But before he could topple over and fall into the water, a hand grabbed him by his shirt collar and kept him steady. The two stared at each other until Hua Cheng hurriedly tucked his head into his hands, forcing the other to let go.

"Are you okay? Are you hurt somewhere?"

Hua Cheng shook his head.

"...Does that mean you /are/ okay or that you're hurt?"

"...I'm fine..." Hua Cheng's shaky voice sounded slowly. As expected of anyone with a moral compass and common sense, that wasn't enough to convince the man. He tried to reach over farther to raise Hua Cheng's head, but he shied away. "Don't look at me!"

"I thought I covered all of your wounds earlier, but if you're still hurting, let me know so I can help you." He reached out again, and once more, Hua Cheng evaded him.

For a brief moment, Hua Cheng took the time to realize that his body had been caked in seaweed underneath his clothes. It was an endearing gesture but entirely unnecessary. How was that even supposed to help him?

Still, Hua Cheng couldn't help but feel more inclined to give a proper answer to the person that saved his worthless life. "It's not that... It's just...something you shouldn't see..." he mumbled.

"I've seen wounds before."

"No, not..." Hua Cheng huffed. He'd never met anyone so insistent on seeing what they shouldn't. Then again, he'd never encountered anyone that didn't know about his condition before.

Everyone in his village knew about his blood-red eye, striking and unnaturally colored. Of course, he gained attention! And on top of that, what happened to his mother was a clear sign that he was cursed! The only people that dared to touch him were beating him up, and even then, they never looked at him directly. Hua Cheng almost didn't blame them. He can't bear to look at himself, either.

"You shouldn't see /me/."

"How come?"

"I'm ugly."

The man scoffed as if that were an unacceptable answer. "Says who?"

"Everyone."

Swifter than before, as if he had only been toying with Hua Cheng earlier, the stranger grabbed his chin and forced his face to the moonlight. "Well, I think you're rather adorable, so who cares what they think?"

And to finish his clarifying statement, he booped Hua Cheng's nose.

Hua Cheng blinked, and despite his body temperature, a peach blossom pink tinted his cheeks at the gesture, and he stood staring in bewilderment at the 'person' before him.

Not only were the man's words baffling. He also unconsciously revealed his lower body while reaching over.

First of all, this man had no clothes on whatsoever.

Second, Hua Cheng concluded that he wouldn't need them if they didn't fit on his lustrous blue tail.

Under the dark sheet overhead, even the vast ocean surrendered its pigment and mirrored the cloudless sky on its surface. But the man's tail—both defiant and bold—shimmered under the moonlight in all its vivid glory, an irradiant splash of color in a monochromatic sea of still waters.

The man caught his gaze and dipped back behind the side of the boat, only showing his face. "Listen, this is hunting season. Stay away from the water for now, and don't go anywhere near the beach alone. Now, do you have any idea where you live or how to get you back home?" Having his identity exposed, the man began to wrap up their conversation.

Unfortunately for him, Hua Cheng was far from done conversing.

"Are you a merman?" he asked.

"What's a merman?" The man scrunched his brow with the offended frown of being called a foreign word. He appeared genuinely confused, enough to temporarily forget his previous question, at the very least.

"Like a mermaid but a man," Hua Cheng elaborated.

The man averted his eyes, scoffing once more as if Hua Cheng had insulted him.

Where he was from, no one was so ignorant as to not know the name Xie Lian. To be called a mermaid, a crude and classless beast, was only a few levels above a sea cucumber and an offense he'd never faced. Most would kill the offender without a second thought, but this was a kid and a human kid, at that! And for him to genuinely mistake the Crown Prince of Xianle for a mermaid proved that further. It would be odd and alarming if the boy knew of him anyways, so he forced a calmer reply than whatever he would have originally provided.

"No...but we're similar, I suppose..."

"So, what are you?"

The not-merman hesitated to answer for a few moments. "...A siren..."

Oh, a siren? The creatures that seduce sailors to death by song? That was one of the furthest things from what Hua Cheng was expecting, and the fact that he was still alive was a bit curious. Nevertheless, he continued probing.

"You helped me earlier, right? What was that thing?"

"That... /That/ was a mermaid, or whatever, it was male. I don't keep up with human terminology." ...So, mythology and folklore were not to be trusted. Then again, the sailors that told those stories smelled almost as bad as Hua Cheng's father when he came home red-faced, beer in one hand and belt in the other.

The siren scratched his cheek before adding, "and he's my cousin..."

"...Oh..." His voice rang clearly in Hua Cheng's head, so how did he hear that a siren was related to a mermaid?

Later on, Hua Cheng would come to know that mermaids and sirens were physically compatible enough to have children, no different than wolves and coyotes. And with this in mind, he'd also learned that the siren's aunt had eloped with a mermaid, and their freaky love child was what tried to eat him.

But back in the present, the siren was uncomfortable with the topic of conversation and coughed into his fist despite not using his voice that whole time.

Hua Cheng might have been seeing things, but the man's entire body rippled. It was almost like dropping a pebble into the ocean as he watched the following crests curl in such a way Hua Cheng felt dizzy looking at him. He winced and put a hand to his head as his mind struggled to accept the reality before him.

A look of realization flashed before the siren's eyes. "Ah, sorry!" Through a throbbing mind, Hua Cheng heard a sound resume. He hadn't noticed it before and blocked it out, but it was clearly there—a soft ticking sound.

At first, it could be mistaken for water dripping onto something to make that noise. But if one paid attention, they could tell it was coming from the siren as he lightly clicked his tongue in rhythm.

As the undulation of the other's body slowed to a stop, the hand on Hua Cheng's head slipped before his red eye, and because he was so worked up about having someone new to talk to, he asked, "how come you're doing that?"

"Because I need to make sound to keep up the illusion, but hearing my voice could hurt you," Xie Lian answered. If this kid heard his voice, it would be worse than a death sentence. Not only would his brain melt, but he would also end up drowning himself as he attempted to cling to whatever beauty he saw before him (it was idiosyncratic, and sirens had no way of knowing what they saw) while begging to hear more of Xie Lian's sweet death song. But this kid didn't need to know the finer details.

"Yes. Without it, I actually don't look too different from my cousin, Qi Rong." Hua Cheng couldn't help but think that was disrespectful to the siren.

The man before him was gorgeous. Even if the appearance was a farce, Hua Cheng had never been saved before. When people saw him getting beat up, they would turn their heads, and maybe some would even watch. But this man saw him in danger and went out of his way to help. He had a kind heart and beauty of the soul, something many others lacked. Having never experienced such grace before, Hua Cheng couldn't help but idolize the siren. Seeing him compare himself to that damned chimera was almost enough to evoke a protest from the child, but before he could think of the appropriate words, a feathery voice in his head disrupted his thoughts.

"We're getting off topic. Your parents are probably wondering where you are by now. You need to go home."

Hua Cheng shook his head. "I killed my mom and don't have a home." He wasn't lying. He'd been the one to sap her life away, and she was the only reason he'd held on so long. Without her, Hua Cheng was no different from a lonely scrap of driftwood following a current.

"..."

"My father and brothers will kill me if I go back." That was also true.

"..."

"If I don't stay with you, I'm as good as dead." That was probably true, but Hua Cheng knew his cursed tenacity well; he was durable, irritatingly so.

"...You..." The man brushed Hua Cheng's hand off his eye to sweep his hair to the side and rest the hand on his cheek. "What's your name?" Hua Cheng was shocked enough that he didn't even cover his eye again.

He cared for that? Hua Cheng expected the only person ever to show him this much undue kindness to swim away after he showed signs of his leeching. But to have him inquire his name, supposedly to call him that...

Not only that, but he was unsure of how to answer. If his hukou page² were still intact at this point, it would say 'Hua Cheng', but no one ever called him that, so he never registered it as his real name. His mother called him 'Honghong-er', but did she deserve to be stripped of the one privilege of a special sobriquet he could offer? It would be downright disrespectful to his mother to have the next person he meets call him that. And if his Asian heritage amounted to anything, it would be the ingrained behavior to one: not piss off his parents, and two: not fuck with the dead.

[2] A hukou is like the earlier version of Chinese birth certificates, and everyone in a family has their own page.

If he could avoid angering the only relative of his to not hate him (especially a dead one), you can be damn sure he'd do everything within his limited power to guarantee that it didn't happen. Superstition had been sown into his very being, and Hua Cheng knew that if he were his mother and became a malicious spirit, he would be his first kill. He didn't want to augment the potential revenge against him by his late mother.

But back to the original question, Hua Cheng genuinely couldn't find an answer, so he decided to make one up.

"I'm the third son, so I'm called San Lang."

Well, he /was/ the third son. It was just that no one called him that.

"San Lang..." The man's voice marinated in Hua Cheng's head as the boy silently cherished an oh-so-rare moment of joy. To have someone other than his mother refer to him as anything but a demon child was like finally giving something potable to a thirsting man lost at sea. And here the siren was, speaking that name into his head so carefully and intimately with his hand on his cheek...

Hua Cheng might have been lucky, after all.

Xie Lian saw San Lang's eyes light up at his name being called. For a moment, he was reluctant to burst the boy's bubble by continuing. "...You can't come."

Hua Cheng's bubble was indeed burst. "Why not...?" he uttered in what was almost a whining tone. Hua Cheng never whined, and he never asked for anything. But this...someone who cared, this man, he needed him.

Forget ever going home. This man had saved him, looked into his eyes, and touched him with his bare skin. No one but his mother dared to do any of those things. But this wasn't one of those situations where Hua Cheng was merely replacing his mother and couldn't acknowledge them as two separate people.

His mother was caring and soft, but she lacked physical strength, and he knew she didn't have half of the enterprise when it came to helping random kids about to be mauled to death. The siren before him, however, took care of it all, seemingly by himself too.

Hua Cheng didn't want to be left all alone again. After he saw his mother dead, he'd never expected to have anyone else willing to be this close to him. Now this stranger showed up as everything he'd ever prayed for in life and wanted to leave him.

If that happened, Hua Cheng would jump off the boat.

There was no point in life without his savior. He might as well get it over with.

"You would drown."

...You think that would change whether you bring me with you or not? Hua Cheng almost laughed out loud.

"I'm willing to make that sacrifice." He deadpanned.

It's not even that Hua Chen wanted to die that badly. It's just that he had grown so tired of living the way he was. Every day was a carbon copy of the last. With his injuries, every breath felt like he had inhaled fiberglass. Vomiting blood and having his head cracked down on with blunt objects, getting kicked awake and startled, never having a moment of peace, all of it had become his norm. Hua Cheng had walked on broken bones, and he was so goddamn tired. Nobody cared about him. At best, he was a pest.

Dying in the arms of someone that /did/ care would be the best ticket out of his hellish life, in his opinion.

"Well, this gege would be very upset if something were to happen to you, so no." The man gave into his gheegle and firmly pinched Hua Cheng's cheek between his fingers as if his words hadn't completely shaken the boy before him. Hua Cheng's eyes began to water at his words, but the siren merely attributed it to the pinching, and the rubbing became slightly more tender.

"And who are you to deprive me of such a cute face, hmm?"

Meanwhile, the child had been robbed and benumbed of his mental facilities, falling into utter stupefied petrification.

All his life, he'd been told that it never mattered whether he lived or died. It was either that, or they blatantly told him to kill himself. Now someone was looking at him and telling him that his life mattered. That /he/ mattered. And this came from the person who had gone out of his way to save his unworthy life, but if his savior deemed his life adequate, /enough/, then wasn't it? Who was Hua Cheng to disregard his savior's appraisal?

If this man believed his life to be of value, then maybe it was.

Hua Cheng raised his gaze to the man in front of him and saw his blank eyes reflected in the brighter brown of the siren, still kneading his cheek and admiring his red eye. He kept staring, eyes gleaming with mirth. Hua Cheng blinked himself out of his stupor.

His face was getting hot, but with the siren pinching at Hua Cheng's skin like that, it was inevitable for his face to grow red. If not by the natural reaction of blood rushing to an offended area, then umbrage. But this man had saved his life. If he wanted to squish his cheeks, really, who was Hua Cheng to stop him? He owed this man his life; the least he could do was take the chagrining pinching to bring him small delight.

And delighted the prince was. While he didn't usually take to children, he'd met this kid under unique circumstances. Firstly, San Lang had been assaulted by Xie Lian's unruly cousin. Second, San Lang seemed to have a rather depressing outlook hidden under the shock and curiosity of being rescued by a siren, and Xie Lian was genuinely worried about leaving such a child alone. Besides that, the prince couldn't help an odd feeling of responsibility and possessiveness in his heart. San Lang's family didn't want him, so he was pretty much free game at this point, and Xie Lian had already established amicable relations...

"How about this, I'll come visit you," he assured, staring directly into the boy's red eye. "But it would be dangerous for both of us, so you'd better be careful."

It was hard to say why he was doing this for a kid he'd met not long ago.

In all fairness, said kid was utterly helpless, vulnerable, and weak, but regularly leaving his palace would be difficult, never mind Xianle! And coming to the surface on top of that? His parents would think he got caught in a current and hit his head!

Then again, San Lang was awfully adorable and had no other support system in his life. The prince was, well, royalty as well as an only child. He'd never had anyone rely on him before, so this pitiful kid was quite appealing to him.

"You're just saying that..." San Lang muttered, averting his different colored eyes filled with the guilt of not believing the siren that saved him.

...Who hurt this kid? Really. Xie Lian wanted to know. It wasn't every day he wished to hurt people. Qi Rong had already served as a warm-up. If Xie Lian saw San Lang's family, the siren knew that he wasn't above dragging them into the water. And wasting food was taboo (as was eating children), so Xie Lian would probably hand them over to his personal attendant, Mu Qing, and his mother. They needed the food more than he did, anyways.

But snapping himself out of his macabre fantasia, San Lang's expression showed internal conflict, some part distrust, and some part disbelief, not to mention that he wanted to follow Xie Lian into the water. He wasn't even bewitched! Was death so much better than the life he would return to? Who crippled his trust?

Xie Lian took his hand off San Lang's face and held his hands for comfort. "I'm not just saying this. I will."

Hua Cheng's expression brightened at that, but in a shameful part of his heart, he couldn't believe the words. Even if the siren does come, how long will it be before Hua Cheng inevitably bored the siren to the point that he up and leaves? It might be better to save himself the grief and...—

The siren squeezed his hands. "Really, I will."

...Well, it would be a waste to die before he even found out, right?

The two took to a random route, and the siren started pushing the boat. Of course, there was a sparse chance that the direction they'd chosen was towards where Hua Cheng's village was, but they weren't trying to bring him back there. After what they did to him, Hua Cheng decided that instead of dying in a way unsatisfactory for them, he would live in a way that was unsatisfactory for them. Which was just a lot of words for saying that he would do his best to live a life of success solely for the purpose of being petty.

He spoke with the siren (finally learning his name) the whole way to land but managed to gloss over his mastermind plan. Instead, they talked about other things.

"If you're a prince, then where are you from?"

"Xianle."

"Xianle? Sounds pretty."

Xie Lian smiled. "It really is."

"Is it far?"

"Not particularly, just underwater."

⋯

"If you're a prince, do you have a lot of servants?"

"I do."

"Where are they?"

"Around. Still eating or otherwise."

"Oh, what do sirens like to eat?"

"..." Xie Lian didn't answer that. This boat hadn't come from thin air, after all.

⋯

"How come you speak in my head?"

"Because speaking out loud would hurt you."

"But how do you do it?"

"...Magic?"

⋯

"So, mermaids are like the lower class? I can't tell the difference between you two."

"There are plenty of differences."

"Like what?"

⋯

That was the last question Hua Cheng had gotten to ask. It was sunrise now, and they were approaching land. And Xie Lian was still speaking... Hua Cheng didn't mind, though. His voice was pleasant, and he would listen for hours more if given the chance. That being said, he was even a bit disappointed that it was over.

"—And even though you can't really see unless I show you, sirens have spikes on their spines. They're retractable, venomous, and are actually pretty helpful when—" Xie Lian felt his tail brush up against the sand and finally realized that they were no longer in the broad ocean he'd been so accustomed to. The human world, which he had always instructed to stay away from, was so close now.

To Hua Cheng, though, the pier they were nearing was less of a knee-buckling shock and more of an auspicious coincidence. He at least now knew where he would be sleeping that night.

They left the boat in the water under the pier because while Xie Lian's tail touched the seabed, the water wasn't so shallow that a fishing boat would ride up against the sand. It was still almost four meters down. It was just that Xie Lian's tail was long, nearly the length of four San Langs.

The separation was protracted and trying on Xie Lian's part, but San Lang was so precious clinging to him that he couldn't find it in him to be vexed.

But to Hua Cheng, it was short. So short. He could sew himself to Xie Lian's body and be happy. The only thing keeping him from doing so would be his lack of experience, materials, and permission from the siren.

Eventually, Xie Lian was able to coax Hua Cheng off of him with the reminder of his return and the caution of him being spotted with the sun out. No matter how selfish Hua Cheng was, he would never put his savior at risk for his own desire to hold him forever, so he let go and watched the siren swim away. It was only then that Hua Cheng realized that the other had likely brushed off any questions about his attendants because he was unaccounted for that whole time.

Xie Lian was an important person, a prince. How could people not be looking for him by now?

Compunction welled up inside Hua Cheng, but he steeled himself with the promise that for every sacrifice the siren made, he would return tenfold. And later, he would.

As it turns out, the seaweed smothered over Hua Cheng's body had some unique properties. Despite getting dragged out into the filthy ocean with a thousand injuries over his body, he never got an infection. Or pneumonia. This was helpful, especially when he couldn't bear to leave the spot under the pier where the siren had left him for a solid seven hours.

Hua Cheng rarely stayed in one place for long. Even his parents' room he would eventually leave because he knew it was a sin to lay in his mother's arms for so long, the very same woman he had damned from the start of his life. Either that or Hua Cheng knew his father would be coming home and didn't want to be thrown into a wall. And when he was out in the village, he was even less prone to linger, lest he was seen by a rabid dog gang of grown men who always seemed particularly inclined to beat him up.

At some point, Hua Cheng reasoned to himself that Xie Lian wouldn't come back when he could be spotted while the sun was out and convinced himself to find a proper wrap for his face. And food, maybe, if the opportunity presented itself.

Hua Cheng ended up coming back to his newly found latibule only an hour after he left it. He couldn't bear to be away from it any longer, even knowing just how unlikely Xie Lian's prompt return was. He'd even turned down a dinner invitation from an equivocally pleasant jiejie that saw him crouched down, barefoot in a grimy alleyway ingurgitating a very stolen and very stale bun. He kept the offered coat, though.

Hua Cheng found the whole interaction startlingly abstruse. She had inquired if his eye was covered because of an injury, and she called him 'a cute little kid' too.

Hua Cheng may have been biracial, but it wasn't something about him that presented itself forwardly enough to be distinguishable without knowing beforehand. That was why she helped him.

One hundred kilometers ago, something like that would have never happened. It wasn't such a far distance that everything had changed, but the people's perspective had, and the people's perspective is what made you. Hua Cheng had learned that lesson too young.

In his old village, Hua Cheng was a walking curse, but here, he was a pitiful kid roaming the streets without a home. The juxtaposition was almost comical.

Another smile quirked at Hua Cheng's lips.

Call him insidious, but he was already thinking about how easy the city would be to hoodwink. His face was too well-known where he used to be to pull such tricks, but he knew he could pull it off. Hua Cheng had already stolen a pair of sandals, a bit of food, a notebook, and a pencil without rousing suspicion.

Why would an illiterate street rat need a notebook and pencil? To draw.

His whole life, Hua Cheng had been told he couldn't do anything right, and with that kind of mindset, yes, he had been unmotivated to do much of anything. But with his dogged will to stick it to everyone who had said anything of the like, damn it, he was going to try, and he was going to enjoy it. Before, Hua Cheng hadn't had anything interesting to draw, but if the past twenty hours of his life had been anything, it was inundating.

First, his mother died. Then, some monster of the depths dragged him out to sea. After that, he met a pretty siren that defended him. And now, Hua Cheng was in a new city, sitting directly next to the glittering marmoris. What wasn't there to draw?

Hua Cheng hadn't hesitated in the slightest when he put pen to paper and got to work.

Word Count 6043