The year is 1926 in this retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid”, and Joseon (present-day Korea), is under colonial Japanese rule. Su-a Heo is a handmaiden who spends her days working and swimming in the sea. Her work is her whole life, until one day, when she discovers a wounded independence fighter named Uihyeon Kang washed up on the shore. She nurses him back to health, only to lose her ability to speak in a botched murder attempt by Uihyeon’s comrade, Haesu Song. As she travels to the capital, Gyeongseong (present-day Seoul), to get revenge, she finds herself growing more and more intertwined with a strange, brave new world and the people within it.