After finally breaking free from the golden-tailed mermaid who had been clinging to his tail, Laom swam more than ten meters away, still shaken. He warily watched Li Leyou, who was spinning around in place, completely dizzy.
Li Leyou: That was way too fast. I’m so dizzy… YUE!
Nearby, Anla was still laughing wildly, practically turning into a bubble-making machine.
He had already forgotten his earlier unpleasant encounter with Li Leyou. Swimming over to his brother, he continued teasing him.
“What happened, Laom? Why are you so flustered? Couldn’t you beat her? Or is she really your mate?”
“Of course not.” Laom answered without hesitation.
He flicked his long tail and added, “She’s a wandering mermaid. What were you two doing just now? She said you were trying to hurt her.”
“Of course I wasn’t!”
At most, he had only wanted to scare her. If he had really wanted to catch her, he would have done it long ago with his speed.
Anla defended himself, “She was acting strange, so I wanted to drive her away.”
Laom disagreed. “Even Asa didn’t say she should be driven away. Don’t do unnecessary things.”
Anla loved arguing with people just for the sake of it.
“You really don’t think she’s strange? She smells like a human, only speaks the human language, and can’t understand merfolk.”
“What’s strange about that? I can speak the human language too,” Laom said.
“…You’re different.”
Anla’s confidence immediately weakened.
When they were young, their tribe had lived in the Stone Reef Sea, closer to areas frequented by humans. As humans became increasingly active on the ocean, the mysterious merfolk gradually came to their attention.
Over the course of several decades, there had been multiple cases of merfolk being captured by humans.
Laom himself had once been captured.
He had been kept in a fish tank as a rare exotic pet and lived in the human world for more than a year.
Eventually, he took advantage of the kindness of a noblewoman and escaped back into the ocean.
That was when he learned the human language.
Because of Laom’s experience, their entire tribe had developed a deep hatred of humans.
After Asa led them to the Coral Sea, any human ship that approached their territory would be met with a storm that swept over and sank it.
“Whatever. I don’t care anymore.” Anla pointed at Li Leyou, who had finally recovered and was watching them.
“But seriously, you don’t know her? She’s been shouting your name this whole time.”
“Perhaps she heard about me from her tribe,” Laom replied.
The ocean was vast, and their tribe was certainly not the only merfolk tribe in existence.
Laom was the only merfolk they knew of who had been captured by humans and successfully returned to the sea. They called him a lucky survivor.
Perhaps this strange mermaid had heard of him because of that.
What are these two talking about in that incomprehensible merfolk language?
Li Leyou stared anxiously at Laom, trying to summon him over with sheer force of will.
Unexpectedly, it worked.
Laom hesitated before swimming toward her.
“You can’t call me like that,” he said.
“Call you like what?”
Li Leyou thought for a moment.
“You mean, ‘mo ye ka ha nie laomu’?”
She noticed the discomfort on Laom’s face when he heard the phrase. Even his tail started moving faster.
“Yes. You can’t say that.”
Can’t say it? Why not? You were the one who taught me to say it! And now suddenly I can’t?
Fine. Then she would say it!
“Mo ye ka ha nie laomu! Mo ye ka ha nie laomu! Mo ye ka ha nie laomu!”
Laom: “…”
Although Anla was always arguing with his brother, he could tell that Laom was genuinely getting angry.
He immediately defended his brother, baring his teeth threateningly at Li Leyou.
“Stop shouting, or I’ll bite your tail off!”
Li Leyou couldn’t understand what he was saying, but the threatening tone was obvious enough.
She immediately hid behind Laom.
“Help! Help!”
The more Anla tried to scare her, the closer Li Leyou pressed herself against Laom.
In the end, the three merfolk became trapped in a ridiculous cycle:
Anla chased Li Leyou.
Li Leyou chased Laom.
Laom fled from Li Leyou.
At first, Anla had only wanted to help his brother escape.
But when he realized that Li Leyou was chasing Laom around, he found the whole thing hilarious. He deliberately frightened Li Leyou, driving her toward Laom just so he could watch the chaos.
Once Laom realized what his brother was doing, he escaped from Li Leyou’s clingy grasp, turned around, and immediately started fighting with the troublesome Anla.
The situation changed so quickly that Li Leyou had no idea why the brothers suddenly started fighting.
She assumed Laom was simply defending her because Anla had bullied her.
So she immediately started cheering.
“Go! Hit him! Hit him! Laom, hit him harder!”
Better yet, knock his teeth out.
She had noticed earlier that Anla didn’t have that gold tooth yet.
“She keeps provoking you, and instead of hitting her, you hit me?!” Anla shouted furiously.
Laom was taking the fight seriously this time, smacking Anla so hard that his head was ringing.
Eventually, Anla covered his head and retreated from the battlefield.
He angrily swam away from the two of them, cursing under his breath.
Once only Li Leyou and Laom remained, her eyes immediately lit up and she moved closer.
Laom, however, cautiously backed away.
He was still there because—
“You haven’t promised me that you won’t say that phrase again.”
He had already realized how troublesome Li Leyou was.
Afraid she wouldn’t agree, he copied Anla and threatened her.
“If you say it again, we’ll fight.”
The smile on Li Leyou’s face immediately disappeared.
“You’re going to hit me?!”
She was absolutely devastated.
You were the one who taught me to say it! Now you’ve forgotten me, you’re pretending you don’t know me, and you’re even threatening to hit me!
The last time she traveled through time, she had a house to stay in and delicious food to eat.
This time, she had turned into a mermaid, was eating raw fish, and couldn’t even find her way around the ocean.
And now even Laom was treating her so coldly.
If this had been their first meeting, and he had always been a stranger to her, maybe she could have accepted it.
But she had experienced how deeply Laom had cherished and cared for her before.
How could she possibly handle such a huge difference?
Rationally, she knew it was normal.
Emotionally, she simply couldn’t accept it.
“Waaah… Why are you like this? Aaaaaah!”
She cried as she thrashed around in the water.
Laom watched from nearby, completely baffled by her sudden reaction.
Earlier, when Anla had bared his teeth at her, she had merely pretended to be frightened.
Yet when Laom had only given her a verbal warning, she had cried like this.
Does he really look scarier than Anla?
“Fine! Whatever! You don’t remember me anymore anyway. Go away! I hate you the most now!”
Li Leyou refused to look at the familiar yet unfamiliar Laom and swam away in a random direction.
Laom watched her back.
Only after that dazzling golden tail disappeared into the water did he finally turn and swim toward the Coral Sea.
Along the way, he kept thinking about the strange mermaid.
He couldn’t shake the feeling that she was unusually close and dependent on him.
Yet when he searched his memories for any indication that they had met before, he found nothing.
Then he remembered the strong scent of sadness that had surrounded her when she swam away.
Why was she so sad?
But perhaps now she wouldn’t randomly shout his name anymore.
Li Leyou swam straight ahead for three kilometers.
When she finally surfaced and looked around, there was still nothing but endless ocean.
She regretted leaving.
I should have asked for directions first. I should have found out where the coast was before swimming away.
Should she turn back and ask for directions now?
Whether it was embarrassing or not didn’t matter.
There were no roads in the ocean, obviously, and therefore no road signs either.
After swimming in circles for a while, she couldn’t even tell which direction she had originally come from.
Fine.
Forget her pride.
She needed directions.
Laom hadn’t even returned to the Coral Sea when he heard the wandering mermaid calling for him again.
Laom: “…”
He stopped in place.
A few tribe members returning from a hunt passed him and greeted him.
“Laom, do you have a mate? She’s calling for you. Why aren’t you answering?”
Laom: “…”
Merfolk could hear sounds from extremely far away in the ocean, especially the calls of other merfolk.
So when a wandering mermaid kept calling his name, practically every merfolk in the surrounding waters could hear her.
When the third passing merfolk asked him a similar question, the young mermaid finally turned around and swam toward the direction of the voice.
When Li Leyou saw Laom’s head slowly emerge in the distance, she felt a little embarrassed.
She cleared her throat.
“Um… I wanted to ask, which way is the coast?”
“…”
Laom stared at her.
Bubbles floated up through the water between them.
“Why are you so far away? I can’t hear what you’re saying. Come a little closer.”
Laom didn’t move closer.
Instead, he remained at a safe distance and simply raised a hand, pointing in a certain direction.
“Oh, that way? Thanks!”
Li Leyou glanced in the direction he had pointed.
When she turned back, she found that Laom had already disappeared underwater.
“Wait! Don’t go! I’m not finished asking!”
Afraid he would really leave, she immediately opened her mouth and called out:
“Mo ye ha—”
Before she could finish, Laom surfaced from much closer.
This phrase he taught me is actually pretty useful.
It’s practically a summoning spell. Whenever I say it, a mermaid appears.
I just have no idea what it actually means.
“Good thing you didn’t leave. I still wanted to ask, how far is the coast from here?”
After asking, Li Leyou thought about it.
That was probably difficult to answer.
So she rephrased the question.
“I mean, how long would it take to swim from here to the coast?”
Laom glanced at the sun, which was already beginning to sink toward the west.
“I could swim there by the time the sun sets.”
Oh, so it’s not that far.
Li Leyou nodded.
Then he added:
“You could swim there by the time the sun sets tomorrow.”
Li Leyou: “…”
Are you insulting my swimming speed?!
Fine, fine! I swim slowly. I’m basically a turtle in the ocean.
But I can catch fish! Are you scared now?!
Li Leyou suddenly dove toward Laom and deliberately reached for his tail.
Laom fled at lightning speed.
Before leaving, he called back one final warning:
“Don’t call for me again. I won’t come back.”
“Why are you running so fast? I didn’t even get to ask what that phrase means!”
Li Leyou grumbled.
She followed the direction Laom had pointed and continued swimming.
All the while, she muttered to herself.
“You sat beside my bed in the middle of the night and grabbed my hand without warning, and I didn’t even run away from you. Now you’re running away from me this fast? What goes around comes around! Just you wait!”
After swimming for a while, Li Leyou suddenly stopped.
A moment later, she weakly resumed swimming.
There was another question she had thought of earlier.
That Laom—the man who had lived for more than five hundred years and was approaching six hundred—had once told her about his lover from his youth.
And that lover looked exactly like her.
Could that person have been me?
If so, it would explain why Mr. Laom had always called her Li Leyou instead of some other name.
She had thought he was simply old and confused, calling her by the wrong name.
So would she become Laom’s lover in this era, only to die young?
How did she die?
Why didn’t I ask more carefully back then?
Now it was too late.
There was no one left who could give her the answer.
It felt like this:
Before an exam, a pile of answer sheets was sitting on your desk.
You thought they were useless and never bothered to look at them.
Then, after entering the examination room and receiving the test paper, you suddenly realized that all the answers had been hidden in those books you’d ignored.
But now you were already in the exam room.
There was no way to go back and check.
Is this what life is?
The correct answer has already appeared on the road ahead, but because I didn’t notice it when I passed by, I have to spend the rest of my life guessing whether I’m right or wrong.
My extraordinary circumstances have actually turned me into a philosopher.
Li Leyou suddenly wished she could find a piece of paper and a pen somewhere in this vast ocean so she could write that sentence down before she forgot it tomorrow.
Of course, after swimming several more kilometers, Li Leyou realized that compared with paper and a pen, what she really needed was a compass.
Because she seemed to have gotten lost and drifted off course in the middle of the ocean again.