More than five hundred years ago, merfolk still couldn’t transform their tails into legs. So how did they eventually learn to grow legs and come ashore?
There was no way it could have happened like in The Little Mermaid, where a sea witch exchanged a pair of legs for her voice.
Ever since Li Leyou learned from Laom that merfolk couldn’t turn their tails into legs, the sky had already collapsed on her once.
But considering how often her world had been turned upside down lately, it was already in such a sorry state that there wasn’t much left to collapse. So, surprisingly, she didn’t find the news as difficult to accept as she had imagined.
After all, even if her dreams had been shattered, she still had to eat when she was hungry.
Thinking about it carefully, there wasn’t much point in going ashore anyway. She would still be completely unfamiliar with the land, while at least there were familiar fish in the sea.
The only downside was that she couldn’t eat cooked food.
Li Leyou slowly tore apart and ate the tuna Laom had brought her. It took her more than two days to finish it, and the remaining scraps were eventually eaten by the small fish around the reef.
Every time she took a bite of tuna, she comforted herself.
It’s okay. It’s okay. Not everyone gets to experience what it’s like to be a mermaid.
The fact that she could accept the devastating news of never being able to go ashore so quickly probably had something to do with how delicious the tuna was.
If she could keep eating tasty fish in the future, perhaps giving up cooked food wasn’t completely unbearable.
Li Leyou had lived around this reef for several days without seeing another mermaid. After Laom had suddenly appeared that day and brought her the tuna, he never came again.
—Actually, he had secretly come to see her three times. He simply never showed himself, so Li Leyou had no idea.
The first time was at dusk.
He hid in the water nearby and saw Li Leyou lying on a wooden plank, listlessly tearing apart fish meat. She would eat for a while, then suddenly stare blankly into space. At one point, she even looked at the sunset and whimpered a few times before continuing to eat.
She can still eat, so she won’t die.
The second time was in the morning.
He secretly watched her from behind a reef. Li Leyou was lying on a rock, gnawing fiercely on the remaining half of the tuna. She kept muttering:
“What am I afraid of? If you’ve got the guts, kill me!”
It seemed as though she was arguing with thin air. She even picked up several palm-sized shells and repeatedly smashed them against the reef while yelling, “Ahhhhhh!”
Not only can she still eat, she’s full of energy. She should be fine.
The third time was at noon.
Laom saw her swimming strangely through the water, twisting her body and wagging her tail in an awkward manner. She was holding a piece of tuna skin and using it to attract passing fish, waving it around like a tiny flag underwater.
Whenever a school of small fish came closer, she would deliberately spin around and laugh as they foolishly chased after her.
She eats well and even has the energy to play. She should be fine.
Reassured, Laom turned around and returned to the Coral Sea.
Li Leyou had no idea that he had come by or secretly watched her several times. As she watched the little fish gathering around the tuna skin, all she could think about was how unfortunate it was.
If these tiny fish, barely the length of my little finger, could be deep-fried with some chili, salt, and Sichuan pepper powder, wouldn’t they be delicious?
Unfortunately, they weren’t very tasty raw.
It wasn’t that she thought about food all day.
It was just that, now that she lived in the sea, what else was there to think about besides what she would eat every day?
Going to class, studying, deciding whether to pursue graduate school or an internship after graduation, finding a job, wondering whether she should get married and buy a house…
A mermaid living in the ocean didn’t need to worry about any of that.
After only a few days of living in the ocean, she was already starting to adapt.
As the great Dostoevsky once said, human beings are despicable creatures who can get used to anything.
And that was certainly true.
She had even begun to let her natural instincts take over. She took off the dress she had been wearing all this time, leaving only her bra.
She even considered copying The Little Mermaid and using seashells to cover herself, but eventually gave up because they simply wouldn’t stay in place.
The pile of miscellaneous items on her wooden plank grew larger and larger. She had already made three fishing spears alone.
Because there was so much stuff piled on the plank, she no longer slept on it at night.
At first, she had been afraid of the seawater.
Now she was used to soaking in it.
And once you got used to something, you naturally became careless.
That morning, when Li Leyou woke up, she discovered that the tide had carried her away from the shore once again. She was floating in the middle of the vast ocean, completely unable to tell which direction she was facing.
Fish were naturally capable of navigating through the ocean, but this half-baked mermaid had no such ability.
All she could do was stare at a sea turtle swimming past with her sleepy, confused eyes.
A sea turtle? If I follow it, will it lead me to shore? Sea turtles usually go to the shore too, right?
With her pitiful knowledge of the ocean, Li Leyou made a guess.
Just like when she used to get lost and simply followed other people, she swam after the sea turtle.
—And ended up going even deeper into the ocean.
Next time I sleep, I need to tie myself to a reef.
Having no other choice, she decided to call for backup again.
She hadn’t called Laom like this for several days, and he had also had several days of peace.
He should come this time, right?
Laom did indeed hear the familiar call.
But he didn’t move.
Li Leyou called out across the endless sea for a while. Just as she was beginning to feel disappointed, she suddenly spotted a blue-green tail in the distance.
She was about to call out when she realized it wasn’t Laom.
It was Anla.
Anla, who had nothing better to do every day, swam around her twice.
“Why are you calling Laom again? You’re not his mate. He won’t come.”
Li Leyou glared at him.
“Did I call you? Why did you come over when you’re so free? And what are you babbling about? I can’t understand you. Can’t you learn another language like your brother?”
Still, at least he was a living creature she could communicate with.
So after complaining, Li Leyou tried to explain.
“Anla, do you know which direction the shore is? The shore, you know? This is the water, and this is the boundary…”
“What? Why are you twisting around like that? Did a jellyfish sting you?”
Anla flipped her over in the water to check whether she was itchy somewhere.
Li Leyou, who had suddenly been turned upside down in the water, was speechless.
Then Anla’s attention shifted.
“Why is your tail this color? I’ve never seen anything like it. Did the color fade?”
Anla was at the curious, easily distracted age of adolescence, so he immediately became interested in studying Li Leyou’s tail.
“Hey! Have you got no manners? Don’t just touch me! Take your hands off!”
Anla returned to the Coral Sea in a great mood. When he saw his brother, Laom, he casually greeted him.
“Laom!”
“Why do you smell like Li Leyou? What did you do?”
Laom stared at him, making Anla feel a little guilty.
But he quickly puffed out his chest proudly.
“That wandering mermaid called you again today, so I went to teach her a lesson for you!”
“I beat her up. She definitely won’t call you again!”
Anla proudly took credit for his supposed accomplishment.
In reality, he hadn’t beaten her at all.
He had simply found it fun to chase her around for a while and had driven her toward another shallow reef area.
She had actually seemed quite happy about it.
It was like playing chase with his friends, and Anla considered it a game.
But of course, he couldn’t tell his brother the truth.
Otherwise, Laom might think he was taking the wandering mermaid’s side and playing with the one who kept annoying him.
Then what if his brother got angry and beat him up?
Unfortunately, Anla didn’t realize that lying wouldn’t make his brother happy either.
Instead, Laom beat him up again.
“Why did you hit me again?!”
Anla felt that his brother’s temper was getting stranger and stranger.
Following Li Leyou’s scent through the seawater, Laom swam toward another shallow reef area near the shore.
It was quite far from the reef where he had previously taught her how to catch spotted fish.
Anla had no sense of restraint when he got carried away.
Did he hurt her badly?
Considering that Li Leyou could even get injured by a reef, Laom felt that the situation might be serious.
But they were already very close, and he couldn’t smell any blood in the water.
“Ahhhhh! Help! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!”
Laom immediately sped up and rushed to Li Leyou’s side.
She was frantically shaking one hand.
A large lobster was clamped onto it.
Her other hand looked as though it desperately wanted to help, but she didn’t dare get too close. Instead, she waved it around wildly at the side, looking extremely busy without actually accomplishing anything.
Laom had stopped getting pinched by lobsters when he was only two years old.
With two fingers, he simply pried open the lobster’s enormous claw and tossed it aside.
He was about to inspect Li Leyou’s hand when she suddenly screamed again.
“Don’t throw away my lobster!”
It had taken her so much effort to catch that huge lobster. She couldn’t let it escape!
Laom’s body reacted faster than his brain.
He immediately reached out and caught the lobster again.
Li Leyou held up her swollen hand, hissing in pain as she stared at the lobster with a vengeful hunger in her eyes.
“Give it to me! I’m going to eat it right now!”
Laom broke off the lobster’s claws before handing it to her.
Otherwise, he suspected she might get pinched again.
“Are you hurt?”
Laom quickly looked her over but didn’t see any serious injuries.
Anla had claimed that he had beaten her, but aside from the injury caused by the lobster, she didn’t seem to have any other wounds.
“Yes! My hand is hurt, my tail is hurt, and I even lost two scales!”
Li Leyou had always been the type to announce to the whole world whenever she suffered even the tiniest injury.
So the moment Laom asked, she immediately lifted her tail and showed it to him.
There was a small, barely noticeable wound on the lower part of her golden tail, where two scales had fallen off.
But it didn’t look like Anla had caused it.
“I was swimming along just fine when that lobster suddenly rushed out and clamped onto my tail.”
She had been caught completely off guard. Her tail hurt, so she instinctively reached out to grab the lobster.
The lobster tore off two of her scales before clamping onto her hand as well.
Laom looked at her golden tail, then at her, and was stunned once again.
A mermaid’s tail was incredibly tough. They could even smash through reefs with their tails, and powerful merfolk could destroy human ships.
He had never heard of a mermaid losing scales because of a lobster.
Li Leyou hugged her tail anxiously.
“Laom, will these scales grow back after they fall off? They won’t stay bald like this forever, right?”
She actually thought her tail was quite beautiful and really didn’t want to become a mermaid with a bald patch on her tail.
“…They’ll grow back.”
Laom wanted to tell her that new scales would grow within a few days, but considering how fragile Li Leyou was, he wasn’t sure how long it would take her.
Seeing that she still looked worried, he gently turned his tail over, exposing the area beneath his side.
“I was injured here before too. All the scales fell off, but they grew back.”
It had happened when he was young, after humans had captured him and rumors about mermaids had spread among them.
Those humans believed that mermaids possessed special abilities and that their blood and flesh could cure illnesses, so they had cut away a large piece of flesh from his body.
The wound had taken a long time to heal, but it eventually recovered completely. Unless someone looked closely, it was almost impossible to tell the difference. Only upon careful inspection could one notice that the scales in that small area were slightly uneven.
“Your wound is very small. The new scales will grow back neatly,” Laom reassured her.
Merfolk cared greatly about their appearance. Even someone like Anla was very particular about his scales.
“That’s good, that’s good.”
Li Leyou sighed in relief and patted her chest.
Then she grabbed the lobster and twisted it with all her strength.
It didn’t budge.
A live lobster was surprisingly difficult to twist apart.
Embarrassed, she handed it to Laom.
“You do it. I’ll give you half of the lobster.”