Seul

A ray of sunlight breaks through the ocean’s darkness to Seul’s head, knocking him out of his dream. He wakes up, lazily shoving away the cluster of seaweeds by his side, burying his head more profoundly in the pillow and pretending that the startle didn’t just happen. He gives up after a few more failed attempts. The dream isn’t coming back, neither is his sleep, and the comfort of not facing the world awakened.
For all its worth, Seul doesn’t hate the sea, he just doesn’t like being very conscious of it. His first breath was under the sea, engulfed by the calmness underwater, and the sea shall it be where he breathes his last. It’s a part of nature, a cycle that Seul isn’t so fond of but has no reason to resent. And yet, sometimes he finds himself zoning out, sauntering away from the corals and the seabed, up through beyond the faltering water surface, tracing the sunlights for the place where it dances directly on the residents’ skin.

The merpeople call the land up there the up-above as if they’re afraid that any name more interesting may trigger their offspring’s curiosity. They aren’t completely wrong, the term does sound stale enough to smother any wish for exploration. Still, it doesn’t work, at least for Seul. He has a mind of his own, and he knows that a rancid name can’t prevent him from acting to his heart’s desire.

Seul has a word he prefers, it's poetic, and it rhymes with birth, like a suggestion about the land up there is where the capturing desires are born, be it yearning, excitement, love, or the other thousands of unnamed emotions that he can barely share heart-to-heart with the merpeople. The Earth.

The merpeople don’t know much about the Earth, they don’t even question it. It’s passed down, generation to generation, that the humans walking up there are of a different species. And if there’s anything Seul’s sure about his kind, it’s that ever since their first bubble, they’ve been taught not to give a second damn to those who don't share their blood, no matter how similar the blood can be.
That is to say, Seul doesn’t know where his wonders about the Earth started – probably after the fever he had when he just had the mere basic awareness of the world around him, which, according to his parents, almost sent him to a one-way trip to the fish cemetery at the darker sea but he bravely made it through the roughest patches to grow up and become the beautiful young man he is now.
Seul doubts that there are parts of this story his parents insist on keeping secret for the sake of convincing themselves of their son’s sanity, the parts where his sickness managed to wreck his sanity for good, filling his head up with bizarre imagination and questions, making him a fish what always wants to be out of water.

Regardless, he likes to think of himself as a free-willed explorer, born with a unique desire and trailing on his seabed of life as a melodramatic loner. He shall live through it all with only one desire, to wander to where no merperson ever thought of seeing, and to indulge himself in what no merperson ever dreams of feeling.

For Seul, the Earth is where his wishes are realized, and although it's alluring, it's a dream that forever stays unspoken inside his heart. Merpeople don't have feet to walk on the land or bodies that can endure the absence of water for too long. Most of them don’t have the ears for his wandering thoughts, either.
Yet, he keeps it up, in the hope that one day he may find the solution for the obstacles and can walk on Earth like any of the humans up there. He knows the Earth must be the right place that's worth all of his efforts and thinking, partially by instinct, and mostly by the fact that there’s only the sea and the land in this world, and the sea has disappointed him with its repetition of water, fish, coral, and sand, for ages.
Whatever is going on up there is more diverse and alluring, even at the rudimentary level of Seul’s limited observation, his occasional resurfacing, watching humans’ ships float by, observing their behaviors from a distance, and imagining he’s one of them.
Seul lets the water around him glub, and looks again, for the tenth-or-how-many-ever time, at the blinking surface above, feeling the warmth from the sunlight dying as they sneak through the thickness of the sea. Not many of them reach this depth and even fewer land where Seul’s lying. He always wonders what it’s like to be up there, for once, bathing in every one of the lights ever cast by the sun. The thought comes to him in a quick moment, then drifts away within the underwater currents.

The feelings about the Earth, to actually be there and take in everything there, have soon been a topic Seul learns to keep for himself. The merpeople are benevolent and understanding, but they aren’t capable of thinking beyond the water surface, higher than the waves, further than the wind. They said if he wanted to feel the sunlight, all he had to do was to emerge and stay on a rock in the middle of the sea.

It won’t be the same, Seul can tell, although he isn’t sure what exactly to expect. But it must be different, being in the middle of the sea inundated by the sun for several moments, and actually walking on land, marinated in the direct sunlight, with a pair of feet, roaming around the coast, indulging in the softness of the sand, listening to the unfiltered wind and staying there without thinking of dehydration as a deal breaker or death threat.

Seul sits up, letting the underwater current mess with his hair, seeing it flow all around him. He can’t help a burst of soft laughter as another infrequent ray of sunlight falls on the several strands of hair that happen to be there, making them shine like a bizarre mixture of gold and obsidian. It’s also thanks to the seawater, he knows, but he lets himself go wild in a very short second, thinking of how it may look if he were up there, under the direct sunlight, feeling the land out of the sea as if it was his real life.

Shinichirou

Shinichirou is a prince, and he never hates anything like he hates being a prince.

He knows the royals have their duties and protocols. He’s fully aware that they’re nurtured by the blood of the peasants, fed on the tax of whoever standing lower than them, and live their pathetic lives off the sweats and tears of anyone who isn’t entitled to have the slightest hope of putting their ass on the most uncomfortable chair in the world, also known as the motherfucking throne.
That doesn’t mean he has to give it the second fucking damn of his fucking bloody damned life.

Shinichirou wants to be free and he is locked in a goddamn cage. Freedom isn’t for princes, and he is a prince by birthright, as much as his parents are a king and a queen by warright, being the only side with some crap left in the massacre for the throne. But they had a choice to behead their siblings for the power and they made it, they have what they asked for. Shinichirou doesn’t. Nobody ever asked him if he wanted to be a royal, or even to be born at all. 
A prince, to him, is like an actor at best, chained and nailed to a stage called royal duties, soon to be history. He has to play whatever role shoved to him at birth, read whatever script he never consented to, in the hope of a vaguely passable ending where he doesn’t get killed in a protest or a kin-slaying spree. There was even less freedom and happiness than a street jester, who, if he looks at it with less predicament and self-awareness, tends to die at a very young age of famine, protests, or the effects of the nobles’ jousts for slaying their kin, or whatever reason causing a peasant’s death.

Shinichirou knows that he’s having it better than the peasants, and yet, he doesn’t want to gnaw on the thought that he’s but a spoiled brat weeping for his gold-clad royal ass while many people have to eat their children to survive the brutal reality. His parents aren’t the best rulers: they’re good at snatching power, as much as they’re terrible at providing for their people, their son included.

“Your Highness,” his tutor’s call interrupts his train of thought, making Shinichiro groan and look up.

It’s a pretty summer day, and he isn’t enjoying it, being locked up in his study with a tutor who's probably too terrified to call him by his name. She isn’t to be blamed, for sure, nobody in their right mind wants to put their lives at stake by not addressing properly to a royal jackass. His tutor is trying to survive, as much as any lowborn out there. 
Still, Shinichirou has to try to refrain from sighing as he hears the title voiced out, vividly and arguably the only sound to startle his ears. He hates being a prince, he hates the palace, he hates the tutor who’s been acting so carefully he’s found no reason to be mad at, causing his storming rage to echo back inside of him, now having nowhere to unload itself but his already deranged head.
It’s that moment when he realizes the gentle and fresh wind gliding through the curtain over his window. Shinichirou can’t help relating it to the voice of his tutor. He looks up, also seeing rays of sunlight dancing through the stained glass window pane. It’s warm and bright, and it annoys him to, again, think of how his bloody tutor seemingly has an uncanny resemblance to their background.

This woman’s been the longest tutor that can put it up with him. He doesn’t even know where she’s from – her redhead, brown skin, and strange accent suggest that she’s a kind of refugee. She’s been there for almost a fortnight, and she hasn’t even scowled or raised her voice with him yet. Many others have done that. Many have lost their heads as a result. He just stops caring, and now he’s feeling like shit.

“What?” Shinichirou glares at her, deciding to keep testing her patience. “If it’s about the reading, then I’m giving you the same darn answer. I don’t fucking read it. I’m not fucking interested”

“No,” the tutor shakes her head, her eyes staying on Shinichirou worriedly, and suddenly it makes him mad at himself. There’s concern in her voice, far more than the amount Shinichirou’s parents and himself ever give him combined, and yet he's replying to it with blatant profanity. “Not the books,” she continues, “although it’d be your loss not to read them. There are interesting things, such as–”

“Like I give a damn,” Shinichirou sneers.

“You may. It’s the critical hour of your father’s victory, I daresay,” the tutor says gently, bowing a bit. “It takes people days and months, and His Majesty only needed an hour. His destiny, victory or defeat, all were decided by his move in this hour. He made the right choice to attack the Eastern tower and turned the table–”

“Like. I. Give. A. Damn,” Shinichirou snaps at her, cutting off her trailing conversation. “It happened when I was a baby. Fresh out of the womb. Like it does me any favor.”

“It’s history, Your Highness. People should know history.”

“Not me,” Shinichirou sniffles. “History is a lie written by the winners. Lies that don’t affect my life. You should keep all the bullcraps to yourself, woman.”

His tutor doesn’t budge at his harsh words, still. She moves forward and closes the book, surprising Shinichirou a bit to see her put away all of the reading materials. “We’ll talk about it on another day,” she glances. “You’re acting worrisome. Are you alright, Your Highness?”

“Why do you even care?” He stares up at the tutor. “You're paid to obey, not care.”

“Because you’re bothered,” she chuckles, “and I’m curious. What can bother a prince like you?”

Her comment makes Shinichirou scoff. She may have struck him now and then as someone with wisdom, and it turns out she’s the same as every single shithead ever crossing paths with him. She thinks Shinichirou has it easy, because he’s the motherfucking prince, who’s the heir to the motherfucking throne, provided that he isn’t killed in any motherfucking clashes of powers. How naive. How bovine.

“How about a goddamn thousand bullcraps?” Shinichirou sneers, throwing her a pitiful glance. “You think a prince shouldn’t be sad, because apparently he has too much for his own good, don’t you?”

“I don’t,” his tutor remains calm, “everyone has the right to feel sadness. Even you.”

He chortles ironically. “Right.Wise words. Unbelievable. Why haven’t I thought of that before?”

“You’re bitter,” the woman blinks, “because you’re bothered. I daresay it can be cured.”

“By what?” Shinichirou raises an eyebrow and smirks.

“By a stroll in the garden, perhaps.”

“Like a stroll in that pretty little royal garden?” Shinichirou laughs. “How old do I look to you? Five? Them fucking strolls are for toddlers, and–”

“There’s a broken wall at the end of the garden, you know,” the tutor says, her voice remaining calm, but she cuts him off like a knife through butter.

Shinichirou senses a bizarre surge of iciness running through his spine. His tutor sounds like the wind from the window, and suddenly the wind becomes too cold for a normal day of summer.
She continued, and doesn't really care about Shinichirou’s sudden change of feeling. “It's behind the oldest oak. They’ve known of its existence, but they’ve never fixed it.”

“Because there’s no need,” Shinichirou replies, “it faces the sea. No ship can go there, no one emerges from the sea, and,” he pauses for a quick scoff, “they think no one wants to leave this palace.”

“But someone does, doesn’t he?”

“Someone may,” he nods.

“Maybe you should check it out, Your Highness,” his tutor says. Shinichirou doesn’t need to look to tell that her glance is soft, but he still can’t help feeling a goosebump about all of it, “to see what the sea may have to offer.”

“What the sea may have to offer?”

Shinichirou raises an eyebrow, “what does it even have to offer?”

“If you don’t see it for yourself, how would you know?” The woman stands up. She takes the books with her and then proceeds to walk away. It isn’t afternoon yet, meaning Shinichirou’s studying hour isn’t supposed to end. And yet she puts a halt to it and leaves as if it was her normal routine.

Shinichirou is left inside the room, quivering among pieces of puzzles, indulging himself with unworded questions. Nothing about it seems normal to him, but at the same time, all of his senses are alert the way it’s never been before, standing up and spiking on his nerves. There’s something that his tutor wants him to see, and there’s only one way to find out.
He won’t know it until he sees it for himself.