Mermaid Care Diary - Chapter 4

Chapter 4

The Mermaid stared straight at me.

It seemed to be confirming something.

A few minutes later, I repeated my old trick, stuffing the pill into a fish’s belly and tossing it in.

This time, the Mermaid didn’t throw the medicine back out.

With great reluctance, it swallowed the pill along with the fish meat.

I looked left and right, and after making sure it had truly eaten the medicine, I spat out the pill I had been hiding under my tongue.

Ptooey, ptooey, ptooey!

This stuff was really bitter.

When I looked up again, the Mermaid had its hands pressed against the glass, staring at me in stunned silence.

Its glazed eyes were wide open, a picture of pure disbelief.

I put my hands on my hips.

“What? Never seen a human play a fish for a fool before?”

The Mermaid was genuinely angry now.

With a sweep of its massive tail, it knocked over several innocent Sea Turtles passing by.

It turned its back on me, refusing to eat even the food I threw in afterward.

Its tail flicked back and forth; it looked quite agitated.

“You still have to eat.”

“If you don’t eat your fill, where will you get your strength?”

I couldn’t tell if the Mermaid was listening or not.

Once I had changed out of my lab coat and returned to the monitoring room, the Mermaid’s ear-tips twitched. After confirming there was no human presence, it slapped the water, swept up a fish, tore it to pieces, and ate every bit of it.

It turned around and even took a cautious lap around the glass. Then, while it thought no one was watching, it finished off every scrap of food I had thrown in.

A Mermaid with a huge appetite, a stubborn streak, and a habit of saying one thing while doing another.

Every two weeks, I conducted a physical exam on all the animals in the lab.

Today happened to be check-up day.

The lab was filled with a chorus of wails and howls from various animals.

I had given the Mermaid a brief check-over yesterday, but professional matters were best left to the professionals.

Old Song stared at the oversized Turkey in shock.

“What kind of new species is this? A fire-pig?”

“And what’s this?”

He pointed at the Capybara, clearly on the verge of a breakdown.

“Don’t tell me this is a Capybara. Isn’t this just a giant water barrel?”

Old Song put on his mask and said solemnly, “I need to check if you’ve been putting bulking agents in the lab’s air.”

“These animals are different from ordinary ones, which is why they were sent here for research. It’s normal for them to be a bit larger, right?” I tried to argue my way out of it.

Old Song picked up a syringe, preparing to draw blood.

“There has to be a limit to how much you spoil them.”

However, when the blood test results came back, other than the Turkey being slightly obese, all the other animals were perfectly healthy.

Old Song read the report over and over in disbelief.

“I told you, I practice scientific feeding.”

Scientific feeding that produced a whole pen of pigs.

Standing before the last animal scheduled for a blood draw, Old Song found himself in a predicament.

He tried to get the Mermaid to swim over voluntarily, making “pspsps” sounds for a long time, but the Mermaid ignored him completely.

I looked at Old Song with sympathy.

“It’s a Mermaid, not a dog. Watch me.”

“Hey.”

I took out a syringe and waved it in front of the Mermaid.

“Come over here for a blood draw.”