Can a selkie mend his broken heart?
After a car accident results in the loss of his family, memories, and empathy, Lee Kangmin finds himself trapped in a colorless world. Once considered a miraculous recovery case of retrograde amnesia, he is now on...
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• Ariadne •
For the last time, no. I won't marry him, Mother! I exclaimed through the telepathic bond. When I'm ready, I'll find a husband.
You don't have forever, Aria. We may live for centuries, but it would mean the world to me if I knew you were in safe hands should anything happen to me, she replied without looking up from the bountiful harvest of leafy greens in her arms.
We arrived in South Korean waters shortly after I was born. We came from the busy town of Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands, where my biological father lived. It took some time for my mother to adjust to our present, and she was still adjusting, and accept that Scotland was no longer our home.
The South Korean selkie were not as welcoming of us as I previously expected. To them, my mother was the traitorous human sympathizer. Her half-shifted form was proof that nothing good could come from interacting with humans.
The bottom half of her body was that of a seal's, reminiscent of a mermaid's tail, whereas the top was completely human. My eyes wandered down until they gazed upon the jagged scar that ran from her waist to the bottom of her tail. It was an imprint of my mother's past and what she deemed to be my future if I didn't live as the God of the Seas, Llyr, intended.
As if she noticed I was in deep thought, she turned around and caught me leering. My eyes quickly darted away and instead of continuing to lecture me, her mouth turned up into a sad smile that said it all. She regretted the decisions she made in the past and even though she did her best to push past it like it never happened, the memories would be forever etched in her partially shifted body and her mind like a resistant plague.
And I, the half-breed, was no better, as I spent most of my time in my human form. Ruminations of "the rain doesn't fall far from the clouds" spread like wildfire. I hated it here, but I hated being underwater. Nothing could compare to the sun's rays on my flesh or the first inhale after rising out of the seas.
Aria, Mother addressed me once more. Her soft, hazel eyes landing on my own. You spend a significant amount of time with him. Why are you so against the union? Do you not trust him? Do you not trust me to have your best interests at heart?
It's not that, mother. Raen is a friend.I could never see him as anything more than that. It would be like marrying the brother I never had.
Mother rolled her eyes in annoyance, unamused. Adria and Seirus were friends before their marriage and they're still happily married. If I thought the marriage wouldn't have worked, I wouldn't have arranged it. We don't have many options here. I know you're aware of how our people treat us, and you should be grateful to have someone like Raen. Like Adria and Seirus, you can grow to love him. You must. There is no other option.
