Chapter 7: The Three Life-Saving Pearls Were Given to Someone Else

I lifted my hand and tossed a smooth pearl onto the shore.

I’d just found it on the ocean floor and picked it up to play with.

But they looked at it as if it were the rarest treasure in the world. They scrambled toward it on hands and knees, fighting one another for the pearl.

I paid them no more attention.

With a sweep of my tail, I leapt into the air.

I traced a perfect arc, then slipped quietly into the unfathomably deep water.

I never looked back.

Behind me, the three men wailed in anguish.

So what?

The deep sea was quiet. The current was gentle.

As for the rotting regret they’d left on shore—

They could spend the rest of their lives learning to live with it.

Afterword: Lục Thâm’s Point of View

“A Thâm, the water’s so cold…”

I heard Huỳnh Huỳnh’s voice again.

I scrambled up from the cold floor of the lighthouse and lurched to the window, staring at the pitch-black sea.

Outside, there was nothing but the howling wind and enormous waves crashing against the reef.

No silvery-blue tail. No wife.

The phone lit up in a dark corner. Its vibration sounded like a summons to my death.

It was the hospital.

“Mr. Lục, Lâm Mộng Vũ’s numbers have gotten worse again. The energy from the three pearls is damaging her organs. If we don’t intervene…”

“Then let her die!”

I screamed into the phone like a madman, tears instantly spilling onto the back of my hand.

“Make her vomit up the pearls! Give Huỳnh Huỳnh back to me!”

The person on the other end was frightened by my outburst and hung up at once.

I slid to the floor, spent, and clutched my hair in agony.

Karma.

This was all karma.

Three years ago, I had been so sure of myself. I trusted science and dismissed my family’s rules as feudal superstition.

I thought Huỳnh Huỳnh was jealous and making a scene over nothing.

I had fed every life-saving pearl her mother left her to Lâm Mộng Vũ with my own hands.

I had even smiled and told her:

“Mộng Vũ is in poor health. A few extra pearls will help build her strength.”

How could I have done that?

How could I use the life of the woman I loved most to indulge my ridiculous pity?

I would never forget that full-moon night.

The tide had risen to Huỳnh Huỳnh’s knees. I watched as her fair legs slowly turned translucent, cold scales spreading across them.

There was no anger in her eyes. No wild, furious screaming.

Only a stillness as dead as ash.

“If no one on land loves me anymore, then I’ll return to the deep sea.”

Those words had been flaying me alive, night after night, for the past three years.

Mạnh Tự and Phó Lâm had both gone completely mad.

Phó Lâm kept trying to drown himself in the bathtub, saying he wanted to find Huỳnh Huỳnh. Mạnh Tự spent all day slashing at his legs, saying he wanted to carve himself a mermaid’s tail.

They had been committed to a psychiatric hospital.

Only I remained by the shore, like a walking corpse with no soul.

I looked down at the crisscrossing knife scars on my wrists.

For three years, I had searched every old book I could find and tried every folk remedy.

Someone had said that after a tidecaller became a creature of the deep, the scent of blood from the person she loved most might awaken a fragment of her human memories.

I believed them.

Every day I drew my own blood and let it drip, still warm, into the cold sea, begging for just one more glance from her.

Tonight was another full moon.

I carried a bucket of blood that was still warm and staggered toward the reef where she had once waited for me.

The sea wind cut my face like a knife, but I felt no pain.

“Huỳnh Huỳnh, I was wrong…”

I knelt on the rough pebbles and slowly poured the blood into the sea. The dark blue swallowed the bright red at once.

“I’ll give you my blood. I’ll give you my life.”

“Could you come out and look at me just once? It’s me, A Thâm—the A Thâm you loved most…”

I slammed my forehead against the hard reef. My head split open, blood ran down my face, and my vision blurred.

Suddenly, the raging sea went strangely still.

Moonlight broke through the clouds and spilled across the water.

Amid the surging waves, a beautiful figure rose from the sea.

She sat on a reef a hundred meters away. Her long hair fell like seaweed, and her silvery-blue tail reflected the moonlight with a sacred, icy gleam.

“Huỳnh Huỳnh!”

My heart clenched. I scrambled toward the water.

But as soon as it reached my knees, the Sea God’s invisible wall hurled me back again.

I rolled several times across the beach. I didn’t care about the pain shooting through my body. I could only stare at her.

She was even more beautiful than she had been as a human.

She also seemed more like a lofty god now—untouched by the mortal world, cold to the bone.

She tilted her head slightly, her deep blue eyes quietly fixed on me.