Sea (바다)

1: 'Begin'

"It's so blue."

His eyes widen in amazement as he stares into the heavens, a smile forming on his lips. It's just as his brothers described it to him. A blue brighter than anything that he has ever seen in his life.

Laughter echoes from somewhere far away. 

Is that what humans sound like? They sound so... happy. 

The smile on his face grows bigger as he enjoys the tinkling sounds of human laughter carried to him by the warm summer breeze. On closer inspection, the source of the human voices came from a huge and magnificent vessel in the distance.

Ah! That must be what Jin-hyung called a "ship". It's enormous! 

He recalls one of the many of his eldest brother's journeys to the surface. Of the massive "ships" that glide elegantly on the ocean's surface, carrying large numbers of humans in its many cavernous chambers. This was something that he has heard all his life from the mouths of his two elder brothers, Seokjin-hyung and Namjoon-hyung. And now that he is finally 240 lunar cycles old, he can finally venture out to the surface on his own.

He spends time lazing on a rock, absolutely loving the warmth of the "Sun"- as Namjoon-hyung had called it, on his lightly tanned skin while observing the noisy fish swimming in the sky. They all have some kind of odd plumage covering their bodies as they swam in small schools and sometimes even alone. There are even some bobbing on the surface of the water, diving every now and then into the sea to catch a meal. 

Surface fish are so weird. They don't even have scales on them! 

The thought of that makes him give out a slight giggle.

Everything on the surface seems so bright and saturated compared to below the waves, where his home and everything he ever knew about before this day is. However, there was one thing that can never be compared to anything back home and fascinated him the most: 

Humans.

They are so vocal about everything. Their faces contort into funny shapes and their eyes secrete salt water when they feel sad, they walk on land with quirky appendages called "feet", they build towering homes that seem to touch the sky and so many more things that he can't even begin to describe. But what he likes the most is the sound their mouths emit when they feel happy: laughter. 

It sounds so melodious to his ears that he can't get enough of it.

~~~

"TaeTae~"

The soft, familiar voice awakens him from his daydreams. He turns around to see his playmate, Jimin, next to him. Jimin gives him a smile and points upwards. He looks at the sky and sees that the sky which was a bright blue a few hours ago, is now set aflame in a multitude of colours as the Sun begins to set. 

Forgetting the uninvited guest next to him, he just gazes upwards in wonderment. "Taehyungie~ It's time to go. You promised that you'd return to the palace when the big ball of light in the sky disappears-" 

"The Sun," he corrects Jimin. 

"What?"

"That big ball of light is called the Sun," he explains. 

"Okay... When the Sun has disappeared, you said you'd go back to the palace and go to my place afterwards. You promised me~," Jimin whines, his lips pouting.

Taehyung chuckles. "It seems that I did promise such a thing. Forgive me, Jimin-ah. It accidentally slipped my mind. Cheer up." 

Jimin turns his back to him, apparently sulking. "Come on, Jiminie~ I promise I won't forget a promise to you ever again." He pulls Jimin towards him however much the latter seems to resist him. 

"Don't you think that you're being a little hypocritical?" Jimin replies saltily, his back still turned away. 

"Where in the Pacific did you learn that word?" Taehyung questions, amused.

"You taught me, you blobfish," Jimin shoots back.

That comment caused Taehyung to break out into a hearty laugh. Huh. I've never laughed like this before. I sound a lot like those humans. It feels amazing though. 

Jimin just stares at him in bewilderment, his normally small eyes currently enlarged as big as sea urchins, almost as if he just saw an octopus squirt ink all over Taehyung as the latter struggles to reclaim his composure. As the laughter subsided, Taehyung hears Jimin ask him in a subdued voice, 

"What was that?"

He smiles. "That is what humans call laughter." "You sounded so- so..." Jimin's words trailed off. "Happy? Jovial? Euphoric?" Taehyung suggests eagerly. "Yeah... those things, whatever they mean." Jimin replies, a little bit starstruck. 

He loves seeing his playmate with those glimmers in his eyes, something uncommon in his people. They, the merfolk have never been keen on expressing their emotions so openly the way Taehyung does it, let alone have words to describe what each and every one is. They just feel it and move on.

However, Taehyung was never like the others. He was always expressing himself in so many ways that people like he, Jimin, could never comprehend. At first, one would think that the three Princes of the great Cheong-Geumseog Kingdom should act like any merfolk would but that was never the case. They were all very eccentric in their own ways. Always so expressive and curious with the surface.

Even then, Taehyung would "take the cake"- as humans say it (Jimin could never understand the matter with humans and their obsession with overly sweet confections) being as he was the most eccentric. Where his brothers just showed curiosity with the surface, his playmate would go even further, asking question after question in his quest to learn about everything there is on the surface and how it works. He even went as far as learning the human vocabulary and expressions on his own (in which some Jimin memorised from his many interactions with Taehyung) and for these things Jimin admires Taehyung. 

It takes a lot of confidence to do so and Jimin wishes that he could have some of Taehyung's confidence that seem to exude out of him.