Help! My Bargain-Buy Crybaby Merman Won’t Stop Making Noise - Chapter 3

“Thank you.” I smiled at him.

He swished his tail, looking rather pleased with himself.

After putting away my bracelet, I picked up the chopsticks again and held out a piece of salmon.

He looked at me but made no move to take it. Instead, he obediently opened his mouth and waited to be fed.

I brought it closer. He bit down.

The next second, his eyes flew wide and he jerked backward. His eyes reddened almost instantly.

He covered his mouth with the back of one hand. His throat bobbed as if he wanted to spit the food out but didn’t dare.

Tears trembled in his eyes, then finally spilled over.

Perfectly round pearls dropped into the pool.

Diplomatic relations between land and sea had never been more strained.

“What’s wrong?” I caught his chin between my fingers. “Open.”

He looked at me pitifully, then obeyed, opening his mouth and sticking out the tip of his tongue.

A merman’s mouth was a little different from a human’s, beautiful in an almost alien way.

The tip of his tongue was faintly red from the burn.

That was all?

The seller had said he never cried, but he seemed awfully delicate to me.

Perhaps the unfamiliar sensation of being burned had simply frightened him.

I waited for the rest of the salmon to cool before feeding it to him. He seemed to enjoy it.

When he finished, I looked at the tag on his ear.

531.

I intended to release him once his wounds healed, so there didn’t seem to be much point in naming him.

But I didn’t like calling him by a number.

“Wen Lan,” I said. “That’s what I’ll call you from now on.”

He tilted his head, probably without understanding. Then he swam slowly to the edge of the pool, rested his chin on the tiles, and looked up at me.

“Wen Lan?”

So he could talk.

I suddenly remembered the digital handbook saying that merfolk needed extra fresh water.

I brought him a glass, but he resisted with all his might, turning his face away and refusing to drink.

Once again, I contacted customer service.

They told me merfolk in the wild obtained most of their fresh water through their food.

Live fish, in other words.

If the fish wasn’t fresh enough, their freshwater intake would be insufficient. But to merfolk, water meant seawater. Until they learned that fresh water existed, it would never occur to them to drink it.

Now I understood.

I fetched a glass of ice from the refrigerator and poured the cubes into my palm, holding them out to Wen Lan.

He came closer and raised both hands from the water.

But instead of taking an ice cube, he gently clasped my hand. Keeping it cradled between his palms, he bent his head and carefully took a cube between his lips.

His lips brushed my palm. It tickled.

Crunch. Crunch.

The crisp crack of ice between his teeth carried clearly. He would have been perfect for one of those sleep-aid videos.

He looked delighted. The cold seemed to soothe him.

One cube remained in my palm. Meltwater warmed by my skin trickled along its creases.

Wen Lan noticed and, apparently unwilling to waste a drop, lowered his head. The tip of his tongue swept up every trace.

He even followed the wet trail to my arm and pressed a light kiss to my skin.

The ice had chilled his mouth. His tongue and lips were cool.

My fingers curled.

At last, he took the second cube between his teeth and squinted happily.

I handed him the glass. He ate every piece of ice inside.

“Wen Lan, do you like it?” I asked.

He tilted his head and thought for a long time.

Then realization lit his face. He flipped over and dived to the bottom of the pool.

When he resurfaced, his hands were full of pearls. One by one, he dropped them into the glass.

“Like?”

He pointed to his own eyes and gazed at me expectantly, their ice-blue color bright and clear.

“Like?”

His tail swayed gently.

I picked up the glass and gave it a small shake. The pearls clicked together.

Did he think like meant something beautiful and glittering, like ice, pearls, or his eyes?

It seemed the merman had misunderstood the word entirely.

Under his hopeful gaze, I shook my head. “That isn’t what it means.”

Wen Lan looked devastated. Even his tail drooped listlessly behind him.