If Melissa had to pinpoint the instant everything tilted, it would be this.

  It wasn’t the day she first met Lionel, the afternoon he waved her over and pulled her into conversations with the confidence of someone who never knew what being unwanted felt like. It wasn’t even the moment he introduced her as his friend.

  She remembered the night he almost died.

  Lionel was three years older, basketball captain, the charming boy that made teachers laugh at their own rules. Despite coming from a modest background, he fit anywhere, like the world had been designed with him in mind.

  Melissa didn't fit anywhere.

  At fifteen, she was already preparing for medical school. It wasn’t some burning passion or childhood dream; it was simply because a Le Bleu never squandered talent, never chased danger, never deviated from the plan.

  Her path had been set before she was even born. They called it freedom.

  All it had ever done was isolate her.

  And then there was Lionel.

  He was the first to see her, not as the too?smart curiosity teachers admired and peers avoided.

  He saw her. Melissa.

  She often spent holidays at Lionel’s house because, just as often, her parents were busy with some international conference. She had travelled with them when she was younger, but as she grew older, she declined most of it. It did not help that Melissa’s weird, mixed international accent made it hard for her to blend in anywhere. She tightened her grip on the book she held in her hands, written by them.

  Melissa was flipping through its pages when the door swung wide.

  “Mel! You’re here!”

  Something small and fast launched at her like a human projectile. Oof.

  “Red—!” Pain leaped across her ribs as an eight?year?old nearly launched her off the daybed. “Ow. That’s it. Rib’s broken. I hope you’re happy.”

  Natalia, all bright crimson eyes and untamed energy, just grinned at her like she hadn’t nearly knocked the air out of her lungs. She scrambled up onto the bed, peeking over Melissa’s shoulder at the open anatomy book.

  Her grin stretched wider. “I heard you can fix a broken rib, right, right, sis?”

  Melissa nudged her glasses higher. “My parents can. Complicated. Way above a fifteen?year?old’s pay grade.” She flipped a page for emphasis. “Apparently.”

  Natalia flopped right onto her lap and stayed there.

  Like she owned it.

  Like Melissa was some kind of human chair.

  Children.

  Melissa groaned but didn’t push her off. She repositioned her book, absently wrapping an arm around the little girl, and frowned.

  Natalia felt too warm.

  “But brother says you’re a genius.” Natalia stared up at her from an upside?down world.

  Melissa’s lips twitched. “That’s because Lionel is an idiot who thinks anyone smarter than him is a genius by default.”

  “That's why I always wanted a cool, smart big sister." Natalia giggled. "Can you braid my hair?”

  “…No? That requires skill.” Melissa raked a hand through her own messy waves, short and untamed.

  “What? But you can control water!”

  “Water is liquid, fluid. Hair is messy, and annoying.”

  “I think your hair’s pretty.” Natalia wriggled behind her and began weaving strands together. “If it were longer you’d look like a mermaid.”

  A dreamy sigh. “I wanna be like you when I grow up. Everyone likes you. Big bro definitely likes you.”

  Melissa definitely wasn’t blushing. “Lionel? Please. I have standards.”

  “Eh? Then who do mermaids like?”

  The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “I don’t know, sailors? Oceanographers?”

  Natalia stumbled over the word, laughed it off and said, “But you are pretty and Gifted. You can do anything. Lionel always says so.”

  Melissa opened her mouth, then thought better of it. She left Lionel’s house that afternoon with the heat of Natalia’s small hands still clinging to her skin.

  Kids always run hot, she told herself, and pushed it aside. Didn’t care enough to dwell on it.

  Until Natalia’s Gifted power erupted that night.

  Until Lionel almost died in that fire.

  Hospitals had a way of making the world feel smaller.

  Melissa had spent enough time in them with her parents to know they all looked the same. No matter how much antiseptic they used, it never could scrub away the feeling of despair or death.

  She hated hospitals and never wanted her future anywhere near one.

  Lionel lay in the bed, still as death. Shattered ribs, charred skin, bones splintered beyond what his own Gifted recovery could handle. His family couldn't afford a Gifted healer. The doctors had done what they could.

  Natalia stood beside her. She was not crying, and that was the terrifying part.

  Melissa had seen her throw fits over burnt toast, wail over scraped knees, laugh so hard she toppled off Lionel’s back. She was a force of nature. Now she was silent.

  Natalia pressed against Melissa’s side, fingers knotted in the wool of her coat. Her dimmed crimson eyes weren’t sad, but empty, as if she was still trying to convince herself this wasn’t real.

  Melissa knelt and gently unhooked those fingers. “He will pull through, little sis.”

  "Will he live?"

  The question turned her mouth dry. She didn’t understand emotions the way she understood anatomy. She could break down the human body into equations and nerve endings. She could fix it. But this wasn’t about equations. She couldn’t—

  If Lionel died—

  Melissa took a deep breath. “He’ll be okay, Re—Natalia.”

  He would be alright, and she would make sure of it.

  She pressed two fingers to Lionel’s temple and let her magic flow. Water was a delicate art, more sculpture than hammer, worlds apart from fire that scorched or earth that crushed.

  Water required control.

  Her parents insisted she wasn’t ready; healing required patience, discipline, and years of supervised mistakes, years she did not have. But Lionel would lose his legs if she surrendered to doubt.

  Natalia sat small and hollow in the corner, and Melissa’s resolve hardened. Her father’s lectures and the hours spent watching him work rushed back, techniques she was never meant to attempt this soon. She forced herself to recall every detail.

  She had to remember.

  She had to get this right.

  Temperature first: heat bred infection. She siphoned the fever from scorched flesh, then coaxed the blood back into proper channels so swelling could retreat and the starving cells could breathe again.

  Bones came next. She traced each splinter, wrapped it in liquid scaffolding, and held the fragments steady. Gifted healing would soon finish the job, but only if every line matched the original blueprint. With the gentlest nudge she roused osteoblasts, redirecting calcium and ions from nearby tissue to knit the fractures.

  Beneath the shimmer of her water Gift, shards fused, microscopic bonds slowly reformed. She worked methodically until her knuckles cramped and her mana flickered.

  A toe twitched.

  Her breath snagged. Behind her, Natalia’s fingers closed around her wrist.

  “Did you…?”

  “I hope so.”

  Night pooled against the windows by the time they stepped into the corridor. Two men in dark suits swept past, Secret Service pins glinting at their lapels. Power rippled around them.

  What were they doing in a suburban hospital? Were they searching for Natalia?

  Melissa braced herself but the men strode on without a glance. She breathed out a sigh of relief.

  “Can I stay with you, Mel?” Natalia clutched Melissa’s coat. Her parents were three thousand kilometres away on a mining contract, and Lionel still fought for every heartbeat.

  “Of course you can. Until your parents come back tomorrow.”

  Melissa didn’t know if Lionel would wake up whole. She would return each day to guide the healing, ward off infection, sculpt the bones until they were strong.

  She didn’t know if she’d done enough.

  But for now, that would have to be enough.

  Lionel lived, but something in him didn’t come back.

  The limp was a scar she saw every time he walked away. She told herself not to dwell on it, but a voice always whispered:

  What if?

  So she buried herself in books, in research, in the precision of medical science. Clinical logic didn’t accuse her of failure. It reclassified it.

  It made him the anomaly.

  It made the world the problem.

  It let her pretend she had never been powerless.

  Her parents had been right. She wasn’t ready. She wasn’t enough.

  She and Lionel drifted. It wasn’t intentional, at least at first. A missed call. A message she meant to answer. Conversations cut short, until reaching out felt like trying to hold sand in her hands.

  Then one day, he was just gone.

  She didn’t chase after him. Maybe she should have. But prodigies didn’t have time for childhood. They leapt from questions to conclusions before they had time to enjoy the in-between.

  While other kids scraped knees and rode bikes, Melissa memorised cellular structures. While they argued over playground rules, she sat in auditoriums, taking notes on theories meant for people twice her age.

  There had been no room for burnt toast tantrums, for Natalia’s unfiltered joy, for Lionel’s reckless grin.

  Childhood?

  Melissa let out a dry laugh. Silly thought. She was twenty now, with connections of her own, nothing like the effortless bonds of childhood or the easy trust of adolescent friendship.

  She had learned how to be valuable. That was the first lesson, wasn’t it? The unspoken rule of survival: be useful, be competent, be wanted, be attractive.

  Scientifically speaking…

  Her fingers slipped through her azure hair. It was longer, softer. Yet, she still couldn’t braid it.

  It was a stupid thing, a childish thing. But as that realisation settled, tears pricked at her eyes.

  Natalia had been right all along.

  She was a mermaid.

  Not fully of the sea, not fully of the land. Caught between worlds, skimming the surface but never sinking deep. Always in motion, never still long enough to belong.

  But once, she had stopped. Once, she’d been pulled ashore, laughing and alive, surrounded by people who didn’t care about her grades or her Gift, only that she was there.

  And she had let them slip away.

  She had told herself she belonged somewhere.

  But the people she had belonged to were gone.