Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio
When she realized that the villa was empty, Sihwa was in a complete blur. She knocked on her own head, thinking that she had not yet woken up.
The villa was really empty, though… And the noise from before seemed to have disappeared overnight without a trace.
The wealthy and powerful villa owner, the girl who was gloomy all day, the chef in his official attire, the cleaner, and the security guard had all disappeared as if they had never even existed.
The things in the villa did not disappear, including the big television. It was still beautiful and neat, waiting for the return of its owner at any time.
Sihwa was at a loss. It wasn’t because she had feelings for the family, but because of the unconcluded Korean drama. The unknown ending had left her restless.
However, through watching these Korean dramas, she had learned a lot of social common sense. Although they weren’t necessarily correct, she has indeed learned them.
Maybe they were just out temporarily? For example, maybe the went to visit their relatives.
With expectancy, she waited patiently for their return.
One day passed…
Three days passed…
The owner of the villa and the others had still not returned.
Because there was no one to do the cleaning, the clean swimming pool gradually filled with fallen leaves and became murky Now, when Sihwa woke up every morning, she had to endure the annoyance of getting rid of the leaves stuck in her hair.
Soon after, it started snowing.
The pool became very cold, and there was always a thin layer of ice at night. In order to not be completely sealed beneath the pool’s surface by a thick layer of ice when she was asleep, Sihwa would break the thin ice every day.
Everyone from the villa still did not return.
She had to think of other possibilities––for example, they went to a warm southern resort, just like how rich people usually did. They might remain there until spring came before they returned, or they might even return after summer came.
The pool water was getting more and more turbid.
She had long wanted to leave, but the reason she stayed was that she wanted to know the final ending of the mermaid named Sihwa in the television series. Although, according to the routines of these television series, the male and female protagonists would eventually get together. There was the occasional series that had an absurd plot. Either the male or female protagonist would be suffering from cancer, only to have the couple separated by life and death…
After watching more of such television dramas, one would realize that they all followed the same pattern, so they were really easy to anticipate. She just wanted to see the ending, though––she really wanted to––and it was now one of her obsessions.
She thought about taking the risk of leaving the pool to enter the house so she could continue the show. She had seen how the girl operated the television, but when she saw her own fishtail, she knew it would not work. She didn’t know where the girl had stored the glimmering disc, and the glass door of the villa was also locked from the inside, so she was unable to open it.
The snow was getting heavier as time passed, and the ice in the pool was also getting thicker and thicker. It had come to the point where she would accidentally bump her head against the layer of ice when she woke up.
She finally decided to leave the pool that she had been in for a very long time. She was nervous that, one day, she would be frozen into the ice with the pool water.
The process of her leaving was almost the same as how she came. The opportunity came when the tide rose. She got out of the pool and pushed the courtyard’s door open, rolled out onto the reef rocks, then jumped back into the waters.
The salty sea water once again surrounded her. It was strange, yet familiar.
Even after a long separation, the white whale did not leave her side. It lingered around the area nearby, and soon after it heard Sihwa’s call, it came to her side, affectionately licking her cold face and warming her with its body temperature.
Sihwa sleepily hugged it. Her eyelids became heavier and all she wanted was to sleep. When she was still in the swimming pool, she would always wake up from the cold, or from the fear that she would be frozen into a block of ice in her sleep.
I’ll just sleep for a short while. I’m just resting my eyes, Sihwa thought. The moment she lowered her head, she immediately fell asleep.
Even though the white whale sounded like a canary, no matter how it tried to call out to her, Sihwa just wouldn’t wake up. She continued to mutter half-baked Korean and her body was as cold as ice.
The white whale carried her and swam down to the depths of the sea. There was no light, and it was a place with no sun all year round. It was always a bottomless pit of darkness, and the fish inhabitants were all ugly and scary looking.
There were occasional light spots in that depth of the sea, but any smart and intelligent creature would not be tempted to approach. Behind those spots of light could be a bloodied mouth full of fangs.
The darkness was no obstruction to the white whale. Its biosonar system guaranteed that it could find its way, even in absolute darkness.
The white whale carried her and continued down, swimming towards the deeper depths.
Finally, its sound waves encountered an extremely wide obstacle and were all reflected back. It then emitted sound waves in a different direction, but they were also partially reflected. The white whale knew that it had arrived at the bottom of the sea with Sihwa.
The seafloor, that should have been darker, was not as dark as it had imagined.
There were a few serpentine-like, dark red lights on the bottom of the sea, which was the entrance of an inactive volcano. The lava was slowly seeping out of the earth’s crust, only to be extinguished by the sea water and solidifying into volcanic stone. It slowly sealed up the crater of the volcano. The solidified, molten lava would then be pushed aside by the new gushing lava, or the lava would find a new exit after a small underwater earthquake.
Abundant geothermal resources could be found where they were at now, and there were strange underwater creatures living around them. Their appearance was so strange; they could challenge the human imagination. Basically, none of them had eyes, and their vision had already degraded to a dispensable degree. Most of them had not been seen by humans, as humans could never reach such a depth without riding in heavy duty, submersible equipment.
The white whale carried Sihwa and swam over the lava countless of times, letting the seawater that was heated by the lava caress her body. It also carefully protected her from falling off, so as not to be burned by the lava.
The outlet for the lava was blocked again, and lava with bubbles started gushing out from the deep depths of the earth as more of them gathered underneath the solidified lava. They had to find another new outlet. When the lava found a point of thin, fragile crust, a new small crater appeared with a slight underwater earthquake.
During the tremors, there was a temporary disturbance in the sea currents.
Sihwa felt the tremor in her sleep and finally woke up.
When she moved, the white whale knew that she was waking up, so it slowed down and suspended itself in the middle of the sea.
Where… is this place?
She tried to open her eyes and look at the darkness around her, but she could not see anything.
The white whale told her that they were in the deeper parts of the sea floor and right below them was hot lava.
It was not until the warmth enveloped her that she realized how cold she was. She had almost died.
She had been in the cold for too long in the swimming pool. Even if she was an elfin, she was unable to withstand the cold day after day.
It was the white whale who had saved her.
If it hadn’t have been for the white whale, she might have become the first elfin to freeze to death… or probably die by dumbness.
In her dreams, she dreamed that she had become the heroine of a television series. She had taken the place of the ugly mermaid who she despised and played out her own ending.
But when she woke up, she had forgotten all about that ending.
When the white whale took her to the surface and returned to the world under the sun, she decided to name herself Sihwa.
