Mermaid Fishing
Demian settled into his chair, gazing at his sister Juliana as she watched him from within the mirror.
“That really caught me off guard. For a second I thought you might have noticed my presence.”
-She did notice. She didn’t see me directly, but she sensed my existence among the reflective surfaces. And from what we heard, it sounds like Rowell could pierce straight through me if he truly set his mind to it.
Though Demian had been absent, Juliana had observed everything through the mirrors, so she had heard the conversation between Rowell and the others as well.
“They really are something else. I was told that not only would they fail to detect any presence, but even a fairly skilled mage wouldn’t realize this was a magical item.”
He lifted the necklace as he spoke. Laplace’s Eye. It was a powerful, exquisitely crafted artifact capable of shifting a person’s consciousness into a dimension within reflective surfaces such as mirrors or water. Yet the spells and mana sealed inside it never leaked outward.
The fact that they had not only perceived the power dwelling within the necklace but had even detected Juliana’s presence inside the reflection made it easy to imagine how startled she must have been.
-More importantly, shouldn’t we switch soon? I want to speak with Rowell and Princess Aegina too.
“Just those two?”
-…Brother.
“I know. I know. But after what just happened, don’t you think suddenly changing places would be dangerous?”
At Demian’s observation, she gave a small nod. He wasn’t wrong. They might have grown somewhat numb to it because of their old memories of Rowell and their recent meetings with Anak, but those two had already stepped beyond the bounds of humanity.
If they treated them with the same casual familiarity they had shared back in their academy days, keeping their secrets would become nearly impossible.
-…But Anak looked so confused.
“That’s a good thing. Sometimes keeping a man at a slight distance isn’t bad at all. It makes him freshly aware of your presence.”
-That wasn’t the expression he was making. He did seem a little hurt, I suppose, but far more than that, it was the face of someone quietly relieved.
“……”
Demian could offer no rebuttal to his sister’s analysis. After all, he had seen that very expression on Anak’s face himself.
-We’ve only just reached the point where things feel natural again. What if it turns awkward once more?
“That’s exactly why I told you last time we should just tell him everything honestly! The mood was perfect, the timing was ideal!”
-I already said that wouldn’t work!
Watching his sister’s face grow heavy, Demian decided not to push the matter any further. The day of the Yellow Sage’s visit was drawing near. He knew all too well that the greater her hope became, the more her anxiety and unrest grew alongside it.
“…All right. You can talk about that part yourself later.”
He did not say the words aloud, but both of them understood the unspoken phrase: after the treatment is complete. He sincerely believed in his sister’s recovery, and she knew his heart on the matter, yet neither of them dared delve any deeper into the subject.
“For the time being, though, I’ll stay in control.”
-…Understood. I suppose it can’t be helped. No matter how careful we are, there will always be subtle differences. Just don’t say anything unnecessary to Anak. And no emotional displays either.
“Got it. I understand.”
“……”
“…Anak, are you all right? Are you feeling seasick again?”
Aegina asked with genuine concern after spotting me standing silently in a corner of the deck. The waves were only mildly choppy, so if I were getting seasick even in conditions this calm, there would have to be something seriously wrong. Yet both she and Rowell were truly worried.
“No. It feels a little awkward, but my stomach isn’t upset or anything.”
Of course, a certain sense of alienation was unavoidable.
“Is something bothering you?”
Rowell’s question left me at a loss for how to answer. It wasn’t that nothing was weighing on my mind, but it wasn’t the kind of thing I could speak about. Besides, I felt a strange resistance to even admitting that anything was bothering me at all.
“I guess thinking about the old days isn’t exactly comforting.”
“You really did struggle quite a bit at the beginning.”
“Yeah. I realized far too late that I just needed to float a little above the deck.”
Everyone else had been perfectly fine, so it had taken me an embarrassingly long time to figure it out.
“If anything, I suppose I should be a little grateful to the monsters that attacked us back then.”
It had been a small boat, so monster assaults were frequent. During one of those counterattacks I had floated into the air for a moment, and that was how I discovered the cure for my seasickness.
“Still, it’s a miracle we never sank.”
“True. Now that I think about it, if they had attacked from below instead of the sides, we would have been in real danger.”
“Exactly. And they even announced themselves with a splash, almost like a warning… Huh?”
As I reminisced, I noticed a familiar spray of water rising far in the distance, just like before.
It couldn’t be. Could it? But of course it was. The timing was almost comically perfect.
“It’s a Cyrion.”
The splash wasn’t particularly large, so I hadn’t been overly worried to begin with (honestly, there was no need to worry regardless of what it was). And if it was only a Cyrion, there was even less reason to pay attention.
These creatures—half fish, half lion—hunted in packs, but they wouldn’t attack a vessel of this size. Most likely some large creature had passed overhead, and they had simply poked their heads above water out of curiosity.
“Now that I think about it, Anak, what happened to those sea monsters you contracted with before?”
“Nearly all the contracts were severed. They were probably eaten by higher predators.”
There had been little reason to summon them and we had never formed a deep bond, so I felt no particular regret. Still, looking back now, the fact that the contracts had ended around the same time felt slightly strange.
Of course, their habitats were all in nearby waters. If some major environmental shift had occurred, it wasn’t impossible for them all to have been affected together.
“Are there monsters capable of eating hydras?”
“I’m sure there must be.”
Hydra-type monsters were usually about half the size of this ship, which placed them near the top of the local food chain, but that didn’t mean they were invincible. Large shark packs, medium-sized monster groups, krakens, or colossal beasts like Helmut or Hwale could all pose a genuine threat.
“You’re not thinking of cooking with hydra meat, are you?”
I realized how careless my joke had been the moment I finished saying the word “cooking” and noticed Rowell’s eyes flicker.
“Now that you mention it, we haven’t had any seafood dishes lately.”
Aegina, hydras aren’t seafood!
“Since they live in the water, I wonder if their texture is different from giant lizard. If I made a soup with ice herb…”
Watching Aegina’s eyes sparkle as she seriously contemplated an entirely new recipe, I prayed we would not encounter any hydra-types on this voyage. O gods above, whatever monsters we must subjugate in the Parerin Archipelago, please do not let us end up eating them.
Feeling a pang of guilt, I glanced at Rowell. He was subtly shaking his head at Bagloros. It seemed the chimera had asked whether they should catch a hydra.
“All right, everyone! Let’s get started!”
While we were talking, a group of sailors emerged onto the deck from the far end. Each of them carried an abnormally long fishing rod.
Not only Aegina, who had been lost in thought, but the rest of us watched them in silence. They clearly intended to fish, yet simply casting a line and waiting was nothing new to them. Their unusual excitement felt out of place.
“Find your spots!”
They quickly dispersed, claiming positions along the edges of the deck. One started toward us but, upon noticing our group, veered off to a spot a little farther away. This was only possible because Rowell and Aegina had their faces concealed and we were being treated as honored guests of Julian.
Otherwise, even with some differences in degree, moving about the ship so freely would have been difficult.
“What exactly are they trying to catch?”
“Who knows? Can they even catch anything while the ship is moving this fast?”
Fishing normally involved stopping in promising waters and waiting patiently. I was genuinely curious what kind of fish would bite a lure while the vessel was cutting through the waves at speed.
“Maybe they’re trying to catch monsters?”
The pack of Cyrions that had surfaced with a splash had already vanished, but the possibility remained. Perhaps instead of hauling them up, the sailors scored points based on whether the creatures took the bait, turning the whole thing into some kind of game.
If the bait only attracted ordinary fish, the monsters would be small, and small monsters posed no threat to a ship of this size.
A moment later, however, the sailors who had been fiddling with their rods pulled something from their pockets. Small, gleaming yellow, and disturbingly familiar. I had to blink twice.
“Is that… a gold coin?”
Yes, I wasn’t imagining it. They were threading half a gold coin onto the end of each line.
“Gold coins.”
“They’re using gold as bait?”
We were thoroughly bewildered. No matter which nation minted them, gold coins held nearly identical value. It wasn’t that one gold coin was worth hundreds of silver coins; rather, gold represented a unit rarely used in daily life. People carried silver coins of equivalent worth and kept gold pieces rare.
Yet here they were, attaching those rare coins to fishing lines. What in the world could you catch with gold? And unless divers were waiting beneath the waves, what possible use could currency have underwater?
Nevertheless, the sailors attached the coins as though it were the most natural thing in the world, then cast their lines in wide, glittering arcs into the sea.
“Excuse me,” Rowell said, approaching the nearest sailor while I was still debating whether to observe longer. “May I ask what you’re doing?”
“Ah, we’re mermaid fishing.”
“Mermaids?”
We struggled to process the unexpected answer. Mermaids. Of course they existed—not the man-eating sirens or the scaled fishmen monsters, but the intelligent beings who had built their own kingdoms beneath the waves.
We had never seen those kingdoms ourselves, but during our previous journey we had encountered one or two mermaids. They were highly cultured and wielded powerful magic that allowed them to command certain sea monsters through their own unique sorcery. But fishing for them?
When he noticed our puzzled expressions, the sailor added an explanation.