Traitor's Song

18. Tainted Love

The cave that Taehyung called home was half submerged in the water and half above it. Jimin swam after Taehyung as he entered the shallow water inside the cave. Taehyung was ahead of him a bit, grabbing up a flashlight off the rocks to flick it on. Was this seriously the only light the other lived by when the sun set?

Jimin watched as Taehyung hauled himself out of the water with his arms, making it look absolutely effortless. Jimin had more trouble with it. His fingers slipped across the slick surface of the rocks as he tried to haul his body out of the water. Taehyung turned with the flashlight to see Jimin struggling.

"We'll have to work on this..." muttered Taehyung as he put the flashlight down to reach out his hands and help Jimin up out of the water.

Once Jimin was on the pile of drier rocks, Taehyung picked up his flashlight again and wandered over to the darkest recesses at the back of the cave. There he had a blanket and pillow on the ground next to a small stash of food and a fire pit that was currently out. The way that the blanket and pillow were situated made it so that the other could gaze outside while he laid there.

"How long have you been this way?" asked Taehyung. "At least above the surface? Are you new to the surface?"

"It's a long story," said Jimin, "And we're not here to hear about my story anyway. I thought I was here to hear your story."

"Fine," said Taehyung as he moved to grab a can of food, "But first, are you hungry?"

"Nah, I'm fine," said Jimin even though his stomach growled. He hadn't had anything since the sandwich spread Jin had fed them last night after they arrived at his country home.

Taehyung nodded, bringing the can up to his mouth and using one of the razor sharp teeth in the back of his mouth to pierce it enough to pry it open with a metal spoon. He then moved to sit cross-legged on the ground, putting the flashlight beside him. Jimin moved to sit cross-legged on the ground across from him.

"So as I said, I am half man half siren. My mom was a siren and my father was human," said Taehyung as he slid his metal spoon into the can. Jimin saw in the dim light of the flashlight that it looked as if it were some sort of chunky soup. "My father apparently used to be a painter. He would sit on the shore and paint the sea. One day he went out swimming, and that is when he met my mother. She lured him in, and instead of killing him she fell for him."

"Why do sirens kill?" asked Jimin, interrupting Taehyung who already seemed to be zoning out staring at the malformed lump of potato he spooned out of the can.

Slipping the spoonful into his mouth, Taehyung gave the question a good honest thought before shrugging his shoulders.

"I don't know. It's part of a siren's programming. Keeps order, I suppose, so humans can't ever have full control of the land and sea. I know some sirens who kill for fun, others who hide away their entire lives in fear of accidentally killing someone, and even others who have a killing competition as it were. Whoever has the most human kills is revered as the best siren...it's ridiculous."

Taehyung swished the disintegrating potato about in his mouth before swallowing it; his golden eyes touched bronze where the sadness seemed to be pooling.

"But anyway...back to my parents. If you hadn't noticed, I refer to them in the past tense. Their love didn't last long. When my mother kissed my father, it allowed her to become a human for a short window of time. Neither her or my father knew that catch, and spent that first night together thoroughly in love. It was the night I was conceived. Nine months later - when my mother gave birth to me - my father died. He died the same day I was born. It was like my life was exchanged for his. Come to find out, a kiss from a siren is poison to humans. Every kiss my mother gave him poisoned him just a touch more until his body just couldn't hold out. My mother...she turned back into a siren right after my birth. The hospital that she gave birth to me in saw it and..."