“You know why cousin Eirin is acting weird, don’t you?”
The twins confronted their elder sister a week later as she combed her hair in her chamber, before her singing practice. After registering and observing their cousin’s behavior for days, they finally hit a wall. So, Princess Hin and Prince Tsun calculated the perfect time where their sister would be alone.
The mermaid did not turn their way.
“Whatever do you mean? Eirin is always acting oddly, is she not?”
They frowned, their speech and movements mirroring each other without a second of delay.
“We know she spoke to you about it.”
Princess Kei glanced at the duo, wondering how two things so small and adorable could act so daring when their tails hadn’t even grown much.
“I see you two followed her.”
Though Hin showed a small hint of guilt, Tsun crossed his arms. “We had to. Father was sobbing because she is never here to take her messages.”
Kei sighed, putting her comb down at last before she turned to them. “Well, if you have already seen for yourselves, there is no need to hear it from me, is there?”
“But we can’t still understand her motives! We are lacking data,” Tsun spoke with an annoyed and frustrated tone, behaving like his age for once.
“And if we can’t understand, we cannot find ways to help,” Hin complemented, her voice carrying some concern.
Princess Kei smiled, her sentiments going toward her cousin. Unless she told them the truth, Kei would never again know peace. Much less Eirin.
You cannot blame me for your own carelessness this time, cousin.
“If you must know, Eirin finally got punished by the stars and found a human who is immune to her song. Since her pride got deeply hurt, she is doing her own research on how to get the human’s trinket. You both know how obsessive she is with that collection of hers.”
The twins exchanged glances, puzzled. Even with that simple gesture, Kei felt unsettled.
And she had every right to be.
“If all cousin Eirin wants is the human’s useless trinket—”
“Why are they courting?”
The moment Hin finished speaking, Princess Kei’s smile soured on her face, bringing with the new bitterness a headache and a deadbeat heart as her blood froze within her veins.
“They are what now?”
Before the twins could explain themselves, Kei’s door banged open.
To the image of a wheezing, shaken, desperate, and breathless King Taon.
“E-Eirin…wh-where…pr-problem…!”
Their father could barely speak a word, let alone put two sentences together. And for King
Taon himself to be that out of breath, he didn’t have a problem. He had a catastrophe.
One he would have Kei solve it.
𓇼 ⋆.˚ 𓆉 𓆝 𓆡⋆.˚ 𓇼
Okihiro watched as the mermaid laughed and rubbed the dog’s belly, trying to hoist the sails for the fourth time so he could prepare to leave.
But I don’t want to leave just yet…
He glanced at the empty metal bucket, wondering if Tomi-san would find it too weird the fact he hadn’t caught a single fish since the week started.
Tomorrow…tomorrow I will fish more, definitely.
As Okihiro was lost in his own thoughts, he was suddenly attacked by seawater—a straight shot right in the face.
After the burning stopped and he wiped his eyes with his shirt, the man looked around in time to see the mermaid getting back into the boat, her gaze deprived of any guilt and shame.
「Not me.」
He only stared at her.
「Who, then?」
Within a heartbeat, the mermaid pointed at Okirin—the animal who was, at that moment, extremely focused on chasing his own tail.
Eirin was not even trying to hide her laughter anymore as she pointed and gloated. What would the man do to her? Throw
water at her? There was nothing he could do for retribution, and they both knew it.
She was, however, very mistaken.
For Okihiro hadn’t had his lunch that day. So as Eirin gave her back to him and continued to play with Okirin, she didn’t see Okihiro go to the cabin and return. All she heard were his footsteps approaching, and by the time she looked up, it was already too late.
Okihiro broke two eggs on top of her head, yolk and white mixing together as they slowly ran down her face and hair.
The mermaid blinked, the egg’s stench revolting and nauseating.
...what trickery is this?
She was this close to knocking him out with her tail, when she heard a sound.
Okihiro managed to hold in for about five seconds before he burst in laughing. The sight of the silver-haired mermaid looking at him with such a dumbfounded expression was simply so hilarious, he couldn’t even control himself. She probably didn’t even know what an egg was, did she? [she did not]
And as the man laughed, the only thing Eirin could think was—
Were humans always capable of producing such a beautiful sound?
The egg running down her head, alongside its terrible smell, had been forgotten. Again and again, Okihiro’s laughter echoed in her mind like a sweet and warm tune, one that made her heart race and her body feel warm.
Yet the man confused Eirin’s blank expression as killing intent, making the laughter die in his throat.
「Sorry. Wait here.」
As he rushed to get a cloth to help her clean, the princess took her hand to her chest. To her racing heart that would not calm itself.
What is this…? Can humans also use their voices to charm us?
The answer never came to her.
Alas, something else did.
"Eirin!"
She immediately turned at the sound of the familiar voice, spotting Princess Kei in less than a second. Millions of thoughts rushed to her mind at that moment as her racing heart finally stopped, the warm feeling being replaced by dread and panic.
“W-why are you here? How did you find me? Did Risei—”
It was not her cousin’s reply that silenced Eirin. With only a few thrusts of her tail, Kei reached the boat with terror-stricken eyes. And as her voice faded in her throat, the princess of Pearls found herself shaking.
“She's here.”
Those two words were enough to knock the wind out of her lungs. To drain all blood from her body, to replace it with ice shards that sank deep into her bones.
Kojin Okihiro arrived in time to see Eirin jumping into the ocean, with the red tail of a second merfolk disappearing before he could get a better look.
Princess Eirin glanced back one last time, signed to him with rapid, shaken movements before she too disappeared beneath the water.
「I won’t come for a while.」
「 You, sail elsewhere.」
Okihiro never had time to give his own reply, the wet cloth on his hand feeling heavier than it should.
He finally hoisted the sails, turning the boat toward the city. The place he had to return every day, where his bed was, where his work was. A place he had never been able to call home, yet the only place he could return to, nonetheless.
And as he sailed back to the bustling and noisy city, Okihiro kept recalling. Not the mermaid’s final words to him, but the fear burning in her gaze. The second tail made of bright red scales. The sensation of the wet cloth in his hand and the gelid emptiness that embraced his heart.
Because, at that moment, Okihiro realized he knew nothing about the mermaid who visited him almost every day. And that if one day, for some reason, she decided to stop coming, he had no means of contacting her. Much less on how to find her.
The only thing he knew was how he always had to go back to the city and return the boat to its rightful owner.
And how he really wished he hadn’t.
More than he ever did.
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