* Long-Planning Romance / Childhood Friends Turned Lovers / Secret Crush Becomes Mutual / Reunion After Years Apart
Jiang Shubai has been single for years and is known throughout the Border Patrol Bureau as a hopeless loner. One day, she finds a mermaid by accident. Her supervisor says, "I don't trust anyone else with him. Take him home with you."
A few days later, she's forced to share a home with him. He's handsome and refined, but stubborn to a fault, convinced she's the girlfriend who seduced him and then abandoned him.
Jiang Shubai: "You've got the wrong person. I don't know you."
"It's enough that I know you," he replies, giving her a good-morning kiss.
Hoping to get to the bottom of this bizarre relationship as soon as possible, Jiang Shubai leaves on a work trip.
But for some reason, the once-affectionate young man suddenly turns cold. They get in touch less and less, until he stops messaging her altogether.
A colleague laughs. "Long-distance relationships do tend to cause problems."
When his phone is switched off and she can't reach him, Jiang Shubai rushes home in the middle of the night.
The mermaid has built a nest out of her clothes and is lying there with his neck arched, murmuring to himself. When he sees her return, he clings to her neck, shedding pearls as he cries, "How can you not love me?"
It'd be too much of a lie to say she doesn't love him, so she might as well eat him up.
But who could have guessed that after she had her fill, the mermaid would run away!
[Little Bonus Scene]
The honeymoon comes before the wedding.
During the merfolk's festival, Yu Zhou takes Jiang Shubai back to the place where he grew up.
Countless elaborately dressed merfolk, both men and women, deliberately swim past them.
They wear unusual clothes and dazzling styles, adorned with all kinds of rare treasures, shells, and crystals. They look especially beautiful, and Jiang Shubai can't help taking a few extra looks.
After nightfall, the young man dodges a kiss on the side of his neck, his eyes rimmed red.
His voice trembling, he tries to sound fierce: "If you take me in, you can't keep any other fish!"
Jiang Shubai chuckles.
Once a fish is caught in a net, it can never escape.
You and me, both.
Tips:
1. Set in the future. The story takes place during a migration after a natural-disaster apocalypse.
2. Technological progress has focused on survival-related fields like urban development and medicine, while everything else has stayed much the same.
3. Content warning: male pregnancy. The merfolk are inspired by seahorses and sharks, and lay eggs.
4. More to come...
Theme: When you meet someone you love, let yourself love them wholeheartedly.
