Even if it's none out of nine, vmin

always in a state of hopeless love and painful partings.

"Where have you been, Taehyung? I was looking for you. Are you doing well?" These are words Taehyung has never heard, even when he comes back after leaving the city for a whole day.

No one cares enough about him. He's the middle child of seven children, never really paid attention to after he got into high school, due to his defect. Although, he wouldn't call it a curse anymore as it lets him get away with his exploration for land.

So, now that he's out of college, too, and is out on wanting to discover new places -- as a biologist, wanting to learn more. But, he isn't interested in marine biology, but more so in terrestrial biology -- but that isn't allowed.

He knows the law, but he finds it absurd that merfolks and humans can't live in harmony just because of some stupid war that took place a few decades ago.

"Ah, Tae, can you brush and braid my hair? Hoseok is refusing to," one of his sisters, Miyeon, asks him, and without a word he takes the brush in her hand and goes around to her back, and brushes, then braids it until done -- while listening to her complaining about how Hoseok is such a bad brother.

"I should ask you next time too!" she says, not even throwing him a thank you before leaving for her date, swimming out her window. Probably out to meet some guy she met in class.

Taehyung sighs, swimming to his bedroom -- thankfully he has his own and doesn't have to share with someone else.

He wonders if he should continue searching for actual land with people in them -- even if he wasn't born with the ability to change his tail into legs like most of the merfolk were, to step into caves and land within the sea itself, and also probably because of Atlantis that he learned about in history. That's probably why his parents don't give him attention either -- he's a defect. They don't want him nor can get rid of him.

His eyes close as he relaxes on his coral bed and thinks about land, imagines such a place, and all the animals he could find there.

He smiles as he thinks about actually finding terrestrial animals one day and studying them -- how interesting would they be? He's seen a few glances of birds when he's surfaced once during a field trip, and it looked way too cool to exist!

Tomorrow, he thinks, I'm definitely going to find a quiet land tomorrow.

And, as he'd promised to himself, he does, he gets so excited he almost jumps up into the air, but it soon dies down, knowing the cruelty of humans towards his kind, he quickly submerges back down and goes towards a land cave to surface, hoping to find a cool animal!

With a bright smile, he puts his arms over the rocks of the cave's ground to hold himself up without flapping his fins -- which was further in to the opening of it, so he was hidden from view.

It's dark -- and he really wishes he was born with the ability to turn his fins to legs when he hears something move -- it might be something that can kill him and eat him up, but dying that way sounds exciting and adventurous to him than scary. But, merfolks are friends with the sea, so the sea would help him out, right?

With that in mind, he tries to lean closer to look, but then all of a sudden, there's light, fire suddenly appearing and he swears he sees a dragon!

Eyes wide, he actually thinks it's best if he swims away -- hearing that dragons are creatures who protect human towns. If that's so, then they definitely wouldn't spare merfolks.

However, just as he's about to push himself back and dip back down, there's a voice.

"Wait!"

A lantern lights up and a person suddenly comes into view, dressed in a traditional robe, and Taehyung wouldn't say he's scared of the human, he would be if he was on land, but he's still in the sea, so he's calm -- and safe. He's safe, he repeats to himself. The sea keeps him safe.