Ocean's Descent ||| Woosan (Ateez)

19

Wooyoung spent most of the truck ride bent in half over his tail. He hated the restriction placed upon him. It was so cramped and the water was getting stale, to the point where it was starting to make him sick.

And if it wasn't the water, it was the crazy old man that spent more time talking to himself and watching Wooyoung's move than anything else.

He had no idea how long he spent being jostled around, but his anxiety spiked again when the truck finally came to a stop.

The merman sat up and watched as several men came and started rolling the tank back. His stomach dropped a little when he realized it was nighttime. He glanced at the sky, looking for the stars he had taken the time to study. A few managed to poke through, but there were so many lights elsewhere that most were hidden from view.

But to Wooyoung it felt like they were hiding from him.

He didn't get a lot of time to look around before the tank was suddenly turned on his side, forcing him out with the rush of water and sending him rolling across the ground.

A few of the men stopped him with their feet, then bent over to roll him onto another blanket before hoisting him up.

Wooyoung tried to find out where they were taking him, but all he could make out was white walls and bright lights.

"Let's get him in the main tank to give him time to acclimate. That pitiful thing was just a means to keep him alive for the drive. We must keep him in water as much as possible." The old man said. At least he knew what he was talking about...

It was only a couple of minutes before the group stopped and someone reached it to cut the ropes binding Wooyoung's limbs. He had half a mind to try and fight back, but he knew there was no point. So he let them pull the rope away.

Once more, one side of the blanket fell away and Wooyoung found himself suddenly rolling into more water.

This was so much better than the last time though. It was perfectly salty and he could instantly feel and taste how fresh it was.

He immediately flicked his tail to head toward the shadows, only to be met with a dark blue wall. It must have been designed to blend in with the water... Wooyoung let out a small whimper and ran his hands over it to try and find a gap or a hole or... anything.

Then he turned and noticed the schools of fish all around him. He swam forward to try and greet some, but they all flitted away from him, leaving him utterly alone.

Wooyoung clutched his stomach and moved over to a large rock formation to hide behind it. Now that he had been in here for a few minutes, his body was starting to process that this wasn't the water from his home and it made him shake a little in pain. He would be find after a few days, but his tail was noticeably duller at the moment. Although that could also be from the barbed net he had been trapped in.

Wanting to learn a little more about the place he was trapped in, Wooyoung placed a hand on the rocks in front of him to slowly pull himself forward to peer around the rock.

Just by watching the fish he could see that his space was limited. There must be another clear barrier keeping all this water in like what had held him on the way here. He noticed a few zebra sharks and stingrays gliding around, completely unbothered by anything else in the tank.

That is, until the men who had taken him dumped in a bucket of dead fish. It sent most of the bigger fish into a frenzy as they went to feed. Wooyoung's own stomach grumbled with need, but he wasn't going to give the humans the satisfaction of figuring out what he ate.

No matter how good the fish looked...

Even though it was against his better judgement, Wooyoung found his hand reaching out for a piece of fish that had drifted toward him, but a shark came by and snatched it away.