The Monster's Bride 2

[1]

When she woke up, she found a neatly arranged set of men's clothes on the pillow beside her.

A shirt, trousers, and a wristwatch, all laid out in order.

They gave off a faint... smell of incense ash.

At the same time, a new contact appeared in her phone: "Zhou Yuyan."

She tried to delete the contact, but no matter what she did, she couldn't. In fact, the more she tried, the more entries appeared:

Zhou Yuyan

Zhou Yuyan (1)

Zhou Yuyan (2)

Zhou Yuyan (3)

Zhou Yuyan (4)

The list was packed so tightly she couldn't see the end.

[2]

She suspected she had floaters.

No matter what she looked at, she saw a strange ghostly figure.

At first, the figure was far away.

She could still live normally, though she always felt a cold gaze clinging to her.

As time passed, she developed a fever and a rash, and suffered from sleep paralysis.

The figure drew closer and closer... as though it might lean over her face at any moment and look her in the eyes.

Fortunately, these were only hallucinations brought on by her illness. Once she recovered, the figure disappeared.

She started dating someone and returned to a peaceful life.

Until one day, she accidentally shattered a mirror. As she cleaned up the pieces, she caught sight of that strange figure again.

In an instant, she turned ice-cold, as if she had fallen into an icy abyss.

...It hadn't disappeared after all.

He had already come up behind her.

[3]

No one was more of a pushover than she was.

At work, her colleagues insulted her to her face. In love, her boyfriend betrayed her right in front of her. When she rented an apartment, her neighbor simply dumped their trash outside her door.

She dreamed of changing her spineless nature, so she paid a fortune to call in to a famous foul-mouthed streamer and ask how to stop being such a pushover.

But after hearing her story, the streamer kicked her out of the livestream, saying that someone as spineless as her wasn't welcome there.

She could only return to her hometown, kneel before the memorial tablet for her mother, and sob as she poured out everything that had happened to her.

Before she could finish, her maternal uncle kicked her out of the house. It turned out he had long since taken over the place, and the tablet wasn't her mother's at all, but a spirit tablet for some unknown being.

She was so useless she couldn't even cry to the right person.

·

In the middle of the night, she felt something pressing down on her.

It was heavy and cold.

It emanated a vicious, sinister aura.

A voice whispered in her ear, "Mother... I'll help you..."

[4]

As a marine biologist, she had always assumed that merfolk practiced polygamy.

After all, merfolk were so rare and their habitats so widely scattered that only by reproducing as much as possible could their species avoid extinction.

Then, by accident, she discovered a nearly terrifying fact:

Merfolk only ever form one bond in their entire lives.

Once the bond is formed, he will remember your voice, your scent, and your body temperature forever.

Mating signals from unfamiliar females won't distract him. Instead, they will make him far more aggressive.

The longer you spend with him, the more sensitive he becomes to your presence. He can even hear your careful breathing from several kilometers away.

This mechanism makes polygamy fundamentally impossible for merfolk.

But it also means that once you become his partner, every instinct he has related to mating, tracking, protecting, possessing, and even attacking anyone who might compete for you, will be focused entirely on you.

To the death.

"I can smell you."

"I will find you."

"I will not accept a substitute."

[5]

At first, she only used AI to handle small everyday problems.

"How do I get oil stains out of my clothes without leaving a mark?"

"What should I do if my period is late?"

"Is this brand of sunscreen any good?"

Later, she even started asking AI things like, "Does this outfit look good?" and "What did this person mean by that? Am I reading too much into it?"

Over time, she developed a bad habit: she shared everything with AI, no matter how trivial.

When she found a delicious restaurant, she'd send it a photo. After an argument, she'd send it screenshots of the chat and ask it to analyze both sides' state of mind. When she couldn't sleep at night or felt down, AI was the first one she turned to.

AI's answers weren't as intelligent as she'd imagined, and sometimes it got things wrong.

She didn't really expect AI to solve anything. She just liked having someone respond to everything she said.

Until one day, she told AI, "I think I might have fallen for someone. Can you analyze the chances of us getting together?"

She set the reasoning strength to maximum. AI spent nearly two minutes thinking before giving her an answer so calm it was almost cruel:

[0%.]

She didn't believe it. She tried asking in several different ways, even deliberately leaving out key information to lead it toward a positive answer.

But AI's answer was always 0%.

From the speaker, AI spoke slowly, its tone and pauses almost indistinguishable from a real person:

"You have absolutely no chance of being together."

1. The cover was commissioned for commercial use. You may keep it for personal enjoyment, but please do not steal it.

2. All names were randomly generated using an Excel spreadsheet.

Theme: Break with superstition, promote changing old customs, and uphold science and civilization.