After Raising a Beautiful Merman - Chapter 3

The next morning, a call from my father woke me.

Lu Zhuo had already gone to make breakfast.

I answered without thinking.

What I got was a lengthy demand that I get married.

I hung up expressionlessly.

A second later, the man’s information and contact details arrived on my phone.

I skipped right over them.

In a foul mood, I got out of bed.

From a distance, I saw sunlight spilling over Lu Zhuo’s silver-white tail beside the dining table, making it sparkle.

My gaze traveled upward, over his inverted-triangle torso and beautiful face.

The only pity was that his full muscles were hidden beneath an apron.

Then again, it lent him a bit of a househusband air.

A charm all its own.

In an instant, my restless irritation was strangely soothed.

I walked toward him.

But Lu Zhuo didn’t seem to hear my flip-flops kissing the floor.

Usually, he would look at me with bright eyes.

Displeased, I moved closer.

These subtle changes in Lu Zhuo filled me with fretful unease.

It felt as though something in my grasp was slipping quietly off course.

That made me feel insecure.

When I was only a few steps away, Lu Zhuo turned his head.

He smiled. “Good morning, human.”

Me: “…”

The dark circles beneath his eyes were conspicuous.

Suddenly, I couldn’t bring myself to say anything harsh.

Instead, I instructed him sternly, “Wait for me at home. Don’t fill your head with nonsense.”

With that, I turned and went straight to sit in the dining room.

In the corner I couldn’t see, Lu Zhuo stood rigid, a troubled expression on his face.

The comments swept past in a torrent:

[That vile random extra is still trying to stop the male lead from recovering his memories?]

[LMAO, she’s greedy. She still wants to sell his tears!]

[(Curses the random extra 10,086 times, then skips happily away)]

[Male lead, don’t listen to her. Just stick to your plan. She’s only human—are you saying you can’t beat her?]

[Exactly. Get your memories back soon, and you can meet your destined female lead. She’s ten thousand times kinder.]

For some reason, my right eyelid kept twitching all day.

I lived by the principle that a twitching left eye meant money was coming, while a twitching right eye meant superstition, so I paid it no mind.

But the moment I got off work, I ran into the blind date my father had mentioned downstairs from my company.

He claimed he was there to pick me up after work.

I didn’t need to think to know that my father had given him my personal information.

The man looked refined. He was probably a teacher, too.

I sighed and decided to put an end to this problem once and for all.

After messaging Lu Zhuo that I wouldn’t be home for dinner, I went to attend this ambush of a date.

I had assumed he would at least be someone capable of normal conversation.

Only after we truly sat down to talk did I learn that the gulf between two human beings could be this vast.

Patronizing lectures, male chauvinism, and a fetish for docile little wives—all concentrated in the same man.

A single hour felt like half a lifetime.

Enough.

I said enough.

Could Earth please stop playing the game where it combined sperm and egg to create a colossal idiot?

By the end, I was so disgusted that I couldn’t even eat.

I used an alarm as an excuse and left.

On the way home, I stared at my silent phone and sank into thought.

Something was wrong.

Why hadn’t Lu Zhuo replied to my message?

A powerful premonition rose in my heart.

The instant the taxi stopped, I sprinted home.

I opened the door.

The apartment was pitch-black.

I froze.

An enormous wave of panic swept over me.

It felt as though I had returned to the day my mother died.

It had been an evening just like this one.

I opened the door to my home.

What awaited me was news of my mother’s death.

Five years later, the feeling of having been abandoned by the whole world flooded back into my body.

My fingertips trembled beyond my control.

Nearly paralyzed and drained of strength, I slid to the floor.

I had possessed very few things since childhood.

Lu Zhuo was one of the few I had briefly been allowed to have.

But now…

He was gone, too.

Remembering his strange behavior, I gave a self-mocking laugh.

The cold floor grew slightly warm beneath me.

Little by little, I came back to myself.

Then a familiar voice sounded behind me.

I whipped around.

Lu Zhuo was hopping back in furtive little bursts like a thief, ducking this way and that.

Only when he stood in front of me did I finally react.

Relief at having escaped disaster and fury struck me at the same time.

He had run away.

Even if he had come back, he had still truly done it.

What had he experienced outside?

Was he still a merman who belonged to me alone?

I didn’t know.

Before I could even examine what this pathological state of mind meant, I seized the flyswatter in a rage and struck his tail.

Why his tail?

Because that was where Lu Zhuo feared pain the most, and hitting him there produced the strongest reaction.

Lu Zhuo flushed red all over.

“Zhuang Nian, don’t be angry. I only wanted to go to the sea…”

My head buzzed.

Maybe it was my imagination, but Lu Zhuo’s body seemed to be growing hotter.

Red to the ears, he dodged away. “Don’t touch me like that. I feel strange… so hot. I feel like I’m burning up.”