When Lansi woke again, the sun was already sinking in the west.
"Why does my nose hurt?"
He wrinkled his nose and asked in confusion.
The two mermaids had stayed on the island.
"Illusion," Winsor replied calmly, leaning against a rock. After answering, he turned another page of the book in his hands.
Lying face down on the beach—of course his nose would hurt.
Lansi had slept for a long time. While he slept, Winsor had dried all of Lansi's belongings under the sea breeze and sunlight, then neatly packed them back into the suitcase.
He knew Lansi's personality well. Even if those things were no longer useful, Lansi would never throw them away.
"What are you reading?"
Lansi rubbed his nose and walked over curiously, peeking at what Winsor held.
To his surprise, Winsor was holding a wrinkled old book titled Moby Dick.
"Where did you get this?"
Lansi was puzzled. He didn't remember packing any books.
"Picked it up," Winsor replied without a trace of shame.
"It's kind of weird seeing you read that," Lansi remarked, glancing at the cover.
"Oh?"
"Well... it's about humans hunting whales, and you're, uh, a mermaid," Lansi said gently.
Moby Dick tells the story of a paranoid captain obsessed with hunting a ferocious white whale after losing his leg to it. In his madness, he drags his crew across the oceans in pursuit of vengeance. In the end, they finally encounter the whale. The captain fights it in a final battle, and everyone dies—except for one sailor.
In this world, both in intelligence and rarity, mermaids were like that legendary white whale.
So watching Winsor read Moby Dick felt oddly like the whale in the story was reading a book written by humans about itself. Lansi couldn't help but wonder how the story would change if told from the whale's point of view.
Winsor reached out, patted Lansi's head, and sighed.
"Sometimes, I really wonder how your brain works."
So strange.
Lansi: "..."
Winsor tucked the book back into the suitcase, zipped it closed, and said,
"Let's go back. You haven't eaten anything today."
"Go back?" Lansi frowned. The thought of going back to that noise made him hesitate. "I don't want to."
He finally had a chance to relax. Why go back and torment himself?
"Winsor, you've never had grilled fish, have you?"
The idea popped into his mind. If he loved grilled fish so much, it should appeal to mermaids too. He could use that to distract Winsor.
"I'll make you grilled fish!"
Without waiting for a reply, Lansi enthusiastically got to work.
Winsor had wanted to refuse, but seeing Lansi so spirited, he hesitated and didn't stop him.
Step one in grilling fish: make a fire.
Catching fish was easy for a mermaid—it only took minutes. But the real challenge was starting the fire.
As the saying goes, everything is difficult at the beginning. Lansi hadn't expected that his dream of being a master fish-griller would be threatened by the simple task of fire-making.
He'd once watched Wen Yu and the others make fire. From Lansi's perspective, it had looked easy. They just rubbed a stick into a wooden base, smoke appeared, and voilà—fire.
So, having no real experience, Lansi was convinced it was just that easy.
Winsor propped his cheek on one hand and watched as Lansi squatted down and began furiously spinning a small stick into a piece of wood. His face turned red, tail swishing wildly behind him, but still—nothing happened.
Winsor glanced at the horizon. The sun would set soon.
"Forget it, Lansi," he said. "Let's just eat the fish as is."
"No way. I need grilled fish!"
Lansi stubbornly blew on his webbed claws, sore from all the rubbing, and then dove right back in.
"Just a little more! I'm almost there!"
Winsor sighed.
"You said that half an hour ago."
"I don't want to go back!" Lansi grit his teeth. "Even if I do, not until I see fire!"
Winsor: "..."
He didn't have the heart to tell Lansi that even seasoned survivalists might spend hours—or all night—trying to start a fire this way.
A lighter would've been much easier.
The scraping of stick on wood continued.
Eventually, Winsor gave up watching the stars overhead and turned to look. Lansi was still grinding away with dogged determination.
That kind of persistence made Winsor sigh. It gave him a whole new understanding of just how stubborn Lansi could be.
Winsor was suddenly glad he'd taken Lansi away from the coral grave. Otherwise, with that kind of grit, who knows what trouble Lansi would've caused trying to escape?
Finally, Winsor got up and walked over, stopping Lansi.
Lansi looked up and complained,
"What am I doing wrong? Why won't it work?"
Winsor couldn't help chuckling. He glanced at Lansi's swollen, reddened hands.
"Doesn't that hurt?"
"It's fine," Lansi said. "It'll go away soon."
His tone dropped a little.
"I just wanted you to try grilled fish. It's really good."
Lansi genuinely wanted Winsor to taste it.
In his mind, Winsor had lived underwater his whole life and had never eaten cooked food. He wanted to introduce him to something uniquely human—and maybe share something from his heart, too.
Winsor felt a wave of warmth. He gently took Lansi's hand and kissed the back of it.
Lansi froze.
The white-haired mermaid in front of him looked startled.
Winsor chuckled and quickly changed the subject:
"You were turning the stick too slowly. When you stopped, the hot spot cooled down before it could ignite. That's why it didn't work."
"Really?" Lansi blinked. "Winsor, how do you know? Haven't you lived underwater your whole life?"
"That's my secret."
Winsor lightly nudged him aside.
"Go gather some dry branches and coconut husks. I'll help."
"Okay!" Lansi nodded and eagerly ran off into the island's interior.
Once he was gone, Winsor stared at the stick in silence.
After a moment, he sighed and shook his head. A few strands of his silver hair transformed into tiny tentacles, spinning the stick rapidly.
Who would've thought the day would come when he'd split his tentacles just to make a fire?
Raising Lansi had truly pushed his powers into uncharted territory.
Soon, a curl of green smoke began to rise. Winsor adjusted the coconut husk and gently fed the flame until a spark caught. Then, with more dry leaves, he finally lit a small bonfire.
"Wow!"
The fire glowed brightly in the dark. From the distance, Lansi spotted it and rushed over with a bundle of dry leaves in his arms.
"You're amazing!"
He dropped the leaves and stared at the fire in awe, like Prometheus discovering fire for the first time. Overcome with excitement, he hugged Winsor tightly and exclaimed,
"How did you do it?"
Winsor quickly returned his hair to normal and patted Lansi's head. Then he kissed Lansi's forehead.
"Secret."
"We can finally eat grilled fish!"
Lansi tossed the firewood aside, grabbed the fish he'd caught earlier, and ran to the shore to clean it up.
"You take a break, Winsor. I'll do the rest!"
Winsor raised an eyebrow, but in the end, he let Lansi try.
After clumsily cleaning the fish, Lansi skewered it on a stick and held it over the flames.
Winsor watched the whole process, silent.
He had a bad feeling. This was going to end badly.
And he was right.
Grilling the fish was a disaster.
Halfway through, the fish slipped into the fire and nearly put it out. Later, the outside was charred black, while the inside was still raw.
"Fairy tales are full of lies. So are TV dramas," Lansi muttered stubbornly. "But want to try a bite?"
Winsor was silent. He looked from Lansi to the burnt object in his hand and said flatly,
"No."
"No mermaid has died from grilled fish," Lansi declared, then bravely took a bite.
What filled his mouth wasn't the savory, smoky flavor he imagined—but pure bitterness, like eating charcoal.
He tried not to let his face show the horror as he looked for a way to salvage it.
"I think I'll grill another one. It'll be better this time."
"No, I—"
Lansi didn't wait. He reached for another fish. But before he could move, he heard Winsor's voice cut off suddenly.
Lansi turned around.
Winsor was lying on the beach, eyes closed, face pale, as if he'd suddenly passed out.
"Winsor?"
Panic surged. Lansi dropped the fish and scrambled toward him.
"What's wrong? Don't scare me—I won't give you grilled fish! Winsor???"
…
On the mainland, inside the Doomsday Laboratory—
After a wave of dizziness, Wen Yu opened his eyes and found himself still lying on the examination table.
Three days ago, he and his companions had been rescued and brought back to the mainland.
Doctors said the three survivors needed full-body scans to rule out any hidden problems. They'd been separated and run through test after test.
Wen Yu tried to get up but realized there was a strange device on his head. Instinctively, he reached up and yanked out the wire.
"Colonel!"
A nearby doctor rushed over in alarm. "That's part of the exam! Please wait!"
Wen Yu felt too weak to resist. He lay back down and frowned.
"What's this thing?"
"It's a new diagnostic scanner invented by Dr. Mougin," the doctor explained. "The exam's almost finished. Just lie still a little longer."
Wen Yu didn't like it, but he didn't fight back.
"Honestly, it's a miracle you three survived," the doctor said. "Caught in that storm, stranded on a deserted island… incredible luck."
"Lucky," Wen Yu replied coldly, then fell silent.
The doctor paused, clearly hoping for more, but Wen Yu's tone shut him down.
Five minutes later, the progress bar filled up. The doctor removed the headgear and helped Wen Yu sit up.
"You're all done, Colonel."
Before leaving, Wen Yu asked casually,
"What does this machine check?"
"We don't know. Dr. Mougin just asked us to collect the data."
The doctor packed up the equipment.
"Carl and Rose did the same scan. Probably routine."
Wen Yu said nothing more. Still feeling weak, he returned to the medical bay.
Half an hour later, in a dark room deep within the Doomsday Lab, Mougin adjusted his glasses and smirked as he studied the machine.
In the center of the room, a projection flickered to life.
Though blurry, the image clearly showed a white mermaid lying on the edge of a lifeboat under a starry sky.
The video was short. After a few seconds, it ended.
When the lights came on, a group of doctors sat in tense silence.
No one dared to speak first.
After a long pause, Mougin finally broke the silence:
"Don't worry. This was extracted directly from the memories of Wen Yu, Carl, and Rose. It's no illusion."
"If this is real…"
Mu Ran smiled slightly, pushing up his black-rimmed glasses. His voice was calm but carried an undercurrent of excitement.
"If this is true, then what we encountered on the Queen Mary... wasn't a hallucination, nor a product of hysteria caused by extreme environments."
The other researchers exchanged glances. One older scientist with gray hair leaned forward, finally breaking the silence.
"You're saying... mermaids really exist?"
"Not just exist," Mu Ran replied. "They've evolved far beyond what we imagined. We believed we were dealing with some deep-sea mutation or unknown marine species, but this..."
He tapped the side of the monitor.
"...this suggests high intelligence, advanced mimicry, emotional response—and memory transmission. Traits not found in any marine species we know."
"But if they're that intelligent," another scientist asked warily, "why haven't we discovered them before? Why reveal themselves now?"
Mu Ran narrowed his eyes.
"They didn't reveal themselves. We stumbled upon them. And from what we saw in the memory fragments—" he paused, then continued, "—they may not have been pleased by the intrusion."
The room went quiet again. Then the gray-haired scientist muttered, "So what do we do now?"
Mu Ran gave a thin smile.
"We continue gathering data. Carl and Rose still have overlapping memories. I've already requested access to their logs. And as for Colonel Wen Yu..."
He glanced at a separate monitor, where Wen Yu's name flickered next to a list of encrypted data logs.
"...I have a feeling he knows more than he's letting on."
Outside the lab, Wen Yu walked slowly back to his quarters. The corridors of the Doomsday Laboratory were cold and sterile, humming faintly with fluorescent lights and ventilation systems.
As he passed a window overlooking the ocean, he paused.
In the reflection, he caught a faint shimmer in his eyes—an unnatural glint, barely perceptible.
His heart sank.
He had hoped it was just a dream. That the strange songs, the flashing memories, and the warmth of a white-haired mermaid calling his name had been hallucinations.
But deep down, he knew better.
Something had changed in him.
And they would come looking for him soon.