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“My heart is pierced by Cupid, I disdain all glittering gold…”
Shouta paused in pulling in his nets as a melodic, cooing song broke the stillness of the morning. He looked up, squinting over the gently lolling ocean to find its source. A slow ripple in the water to his left grew as it approached his boat. The top of a head broke the surface as the song continued.
“There’s nothing can console me…” Shouta’s boat tipped slightly as a pair of thin arms emerged and pulled the upper half of the merman up from the water. The merman crossed his arms and rested his head on them as he sang on. His voice wasn’t as sweet or clear as the legends would have insisted, but there was a nasal, raspy twang to it that gave it an alluring personality of its own. “But my jolly sailor bold…” The merman’s smile was all bashful flirtation, head cocked at a coquettish angle that made his golden hair tumble down the side of his face as he locked luminous green eyes on Shouta.
Shouta snorted. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, beastie,” he said, bracing his foot against the side of his boat and grunting as he pulled his nets in the rest of the way, “but I’m no one’s ‘jolly’ anything.”
The creature started, seeming taken aback at being addressed off-hand like that. His head tilt became more curious than inviting, smile fading into a pouting frown. There was an almost insistent tone to his voice as he began the odd shanty over again, as if protesting that he was a delight to be heard and Shouta was making a mistake dismissing him so readily.
Shouta ignored him, settling in to sort his catch into the waiting buckets instead. The waters hadn’t been overly kind today, he thought with a frown of his own, but it would be good enough for the time being. Near the bottom of the squirming mass Shouta just barely missed grabbing a puffer fish by its spiny tail, pulling his hand back just in time. He grimaced, pulling a rag out of his kit and using that to grab it instead. He made to throw it back, but as he raised his arm he noticed that the merman’s hungry eyes had snapped away from him and onto the twitching fish instead. Shouta raised an eyebrow.
“Do you want this?” Shouta asked. As he held it up the merman brightened, flickers of his true face showing under the glamour. The merman’s mouth stretched wide across his face, his unfettered grin revealing a sharklike double row of razor-sharp teeth. His eyes took on a sheen of oxblood red, matte bluish pupils widening delightedly as he saw the puffer. “Here.” Shouta flung the fish underhand, sending it through the air several feet away. The merman darted away in a flash, catching it in spindly sharp-nailed hands before it even had a chance to touch the water. “Enjoy!” Shouta called after it. He quickly sifted through the rest of his catch, using the merman’s distraction as his opening to slip away.
As Shouta was preparing his boat a few days later, he heard a hollow rattling sound as he moved one of the buckets he used to sort his catch. Looking in, he saw a small mottled brownish yellow and white drawstring pouch sitting at the bottom. Shouta picked it up and turned it over in his hands curiously. It took a moment for him to recognize it as the skin of a puffer fish, de-spined and sun-dried into a squishy, pliant leather. Shreds of the work rag he’d used to toss the puffer to the muerman had been braided together and punched through the skin as the tie. Shouta tugged it open to find the source of the rattling: the bones and spines of the puffer, picked completely clean of meat and scrubbed to a pristine white. Shouta snorted, smiling a little in spite of himself. He tied the bag to his belt, sure it would come in handy for something.
As he did, he heard a sharp delighted-sounding chirp and looked up just in time to see a flash of golden hair darting behind the rock wall of a nearby tide pool. A pair of wide-pupiled red eyes peeked back out moments later as if the merman was trying to gauge if he’d been seen or not. Shouta smirked but pretended not to notice, finishing his preparations and setting off onto the water instead.
The merman’s gift proved itself quite useful; the additional attention that followed along behind it was somewhat less so. The merman seemed to take Shouta’s acceptance of the gift as an invitation to keep him company while out on the water. Shouta didn’t mind the merman’s presence as such; he would have even ventured to say that music was a nice addition to long days. It would have been a tolerable if deeply strange new arrangement between them if it wasn’t for his increasingly empty nets. He supposed he should have expected the smaller fish to flee in the presence of a large predator, but hindsight, no matter how acute, wasn’t going to pay his bills.
“I don’t suppose you would want to take a break from scaring fish out of my nets to scare them in instead,” Shouta sighed, scraping a clump of kelp out of his net and pitching it back into the water. The merman gave him a crooked grin, taking the net and wrapping it around himself. He wiggled his eyebrows meaningfully as he tossed the reel rope back into Shouta’s hands. Shouta snorted out a sharp chuckle. “Pretty sure you aren’t edible, beastie,” he said. “I suppose you might go for a good price in the market, but to be honest I don’t want to meet the kind of person who would buy you.”
The merman paused mid-pout at having his flirtation rejected yet again, blinking in surprise. He pulled the net from around himself as a thoughtful expression passed over his face. Then without warning the merman dove headfirst down into the water, dragging Shouta’s net with him. Shouta grabbed the side of his boat in one hand and the reel rope in the other, trying to prevent both it and himself from going overboard.
There was a long, almost ominous lull of stillness over the water. Then there came a kind of boiling ripple on the water’s surface, starting at a distance and coming closer at a breakneck speed. Shouta realized that it was a kind of fish stampede, all kinds schooled together and pushed to the surface under the weave of his net. The merman surfaced at the head of it, arms straining as he dragged the crammed-full net back to Shouta’s boat. In one fluid heave the merman swung the full net up into the boat at Shouta’s feet. More fish than he had caught in the last two weeks put together tumbled out for him to inspect. The merman barely paused for breath before snatching up Shouta’s spare net and diving back down again. Shouta scrambled to make room, throwing the sellable fish into his buckets and ditching the rest overboard. The second net full was just as impressive; put together the catch was enough to keep Shouta well paid and well fed for weeks. The merman hung on the side of the boat, panting, as he watched Shouta pick through the fish.
“We might make a fisherman of you yet, beastie,” Shouta teased. The merman seemed too tired to perk up the way he normally did, but he still flashed Shouta one of his too-wide grins. Despite his initial misgivings, there really was something sweet about the expression, Shouta thought musingly. The merman nodded to him, then reached an arm out to steal back a decent-sized sea bass before sinking back under the water to eat it.
The merman’s catch ended up being just as lucrative as Shouta had estimated it might be. With so much stock he was able to charge lower than his usual prices and still made more on the one market day than he usually did in the better part of a week. He couldn’t help feeling somewhat indebted to the merman for his unorthodox but highly effective assistance. He might have reclaimed a single dinner in recompense but that hardly seemed like enough. Shouta wondered what he could even have to offer a creature like the merman that would be both equal and desirable.
As he walked among the other market stalls, his attention was caught by Nemuri Kayama’s display of crafts and jewelry made from shells and other shore debris. As he looked the selection over, a bracelet made of thin cord woven around shark teeth sparked a sudden idea. Merfolk were notorious for their love of shiny items and ornamentation; it stood to reason that his merman was the same. And Shouta just happened to have a large amount of puffer spines lying around that would fit the bill for a flashy bit of jewelry quite nicely.
“Do you have time to make something like this for me?” Shouta asked, gesturing to the shark tooth bracelet. Nemuri looked up from the macrame hair band she was weaving in her lap, smiling slightly as she saw him.
“I’ve got time if you’ve got money,” Nemuri said. Her smile turned slightly smirky. “And from what I’ve been hearing, you’re doing pretty well these days, huh?” she added, nodding down the market row towards his now-closed stall.
Shouta shrugged, face heating slightly. “Not bad,” he agreed.
“Fair enough. The teeth for one like that will take some time to gather up, if that one isn’t up to your standards,” Nemuri said, setting her project aside as she got to business.
“I’ve got something else, actually,” Shouta said. He pulled out the small cloth bundle of spines he’d retrieved from home and set it down in front of her. She opened it and her eyes widened.
“Not teeth, but they are pretty,” Nemuri said, gingerly picking one up between two fingers.
“They’re puffer fish spines,” Shouta explained. “A, uh, friend gave them to me.”
Nemuri didn’t bring attention to his awkward stumble, though he was sure she had noticed it. Instead she just named a price and a time to pick up the finished piece before wishing him a good day and getting back to her work.
Shouta sat in his boat, tense with anticipation as he waited for the merman to come meet him. Usually it seemed like he barely had a moment alone on the waves before he heard the telltale musical murmuring that heralded his strange companion’s approach. Now that he was waiting for it, of course, it seemed to be taking ages.
After what felt like an interminably long time the merman finally emerged, humming merrily to himself. He curled up over the side of the boat and moved to take ahold of the net at Shouta’s side, but Shouta stopped him.
“I have something for you,” Shouta said. “Um. Close your eyes,” he added, trying to ignore the heat in his cheeks as he said it.
The merman cocked his head, eyebrows knit in confusion, but did so. Shouta pulled out the bracelet and tied it around the merman’s wrist, securing it with multiple tight knots to keep it from coming loose. The merman peeked open one eye as he finished, and let out a sharp noise of surprise as he saw the gift. He pulled his arm in close to his face, marvelling at it, before turning wonderstruck eyes on Shouta.
“I wanted to thank you for your help the other day,” Shouta said. He could feel himself getting redder by the moment but there was a giddy lightness in his chest at seeing the merman’s delight. Before he had time to say anything else, the merman planted both hands on the side of the boat and surged upward to kiss him.
Shouta was too stunned to react at first beyond the involuntary shiver that went through him at the chill of the merman’s lips against his own. The merman’s kiss left an odd electric tingle on his lips, a pleasantly dangerous numbness like licking a battery. Shouta leaned in for another taste of it, his hand coming up to cup the merman’s jaw.
The merman pulled away first, his arms tiring faster than Shouta would have liked. The merman rested his chin against the side of the boat, fingers reaching out to idly tangle into the weave of Shouta’s net. He tugged at it, smiling and raising a questioning eyebrow. Shouta snorted, grinning back.
“So that’s the deal now, huh?” he teased, shaking his head. “Fine, go on. If you find something else down there that you want to wear, let me know.”
The merman let out a trilling noise that almost sounded like a cackle of triumph before diving back into the water, net in hand.