Chapter 2 - The Deep Sea Awakening
*Ugh... hurl... ah... sob...* The sounds of violent retching and muffled cries echoed through the silent, heavy pressure of the water. Fan Li lay prone, her hands pressed firmly against the seabed, feeling as though her very stomach was trying to turn itself inside out.
*What time is it? Where am I? Am I even still alive? Are my organs still intact?*
A deluge of questions flooded her mind, yet none found an answer. The agony she endured—a torment that hovered precariously between life and death—had dulled her senses. Her vision was a blurred smear of colors, her hearing was muffled as if wrapped in thick wool, and her brain had entirely lost the capacity to track the passage of time.
Fragmented memories flickered through her consciousness like a broken film reel: the trip to the beach with her father. Diving into the surf. Because she had never once choked on water and possessed swimming skills that rivaled a wild fish escaping a net, she had strayed far beyond her father’s watchful gaze. Then, an invisible force had coiled around her legs, dragging her ruthlessly into the lightless depths. She remembered the fleeting glimpses of strange marine life, the light fading into a bruised purple and then total blackness, the temperature plummeting until it bit into her bones. The onset of a paralyzing deep-sea phobia. The sensation of her soul drifting from her body. And finally, the mercy of losing consciousness.
It was only after an indeterminate amount of time that the acute pain began to recede. Like a patient emerging from the haze of anesthesia in a cold recovery room, Fan Li felt utterly drained, her head spinning in a dizzying whirl. Within her chest and abdomen, a roiling nausea—reminiscent of a toxic reaction to an overdose—continued to simmer.
She twitched her eyelids. As her vision slowly adjusted, the world before her phased in and out of focus. Gritting her teeth, she pushed against the ground with her palms, attempting to prop herself up, but her arms shook uncontrollably. Her bodily functions were clearly malfunctioning. As she lifted her head, her forehead collided with a jagged branch of protruding coral. The sharp sting sent a fresh wave of vertigo through her, and from the soft corals below, a startled juvenile green short-finned leatherjacket darted out, its tiny body a blur of motion.
Fan Li held her breath, instinctively waving a hand at the little fish. The creature paused for a heartbeat, staring at her with its pouting, puckered lips, before flicking its tail and vanishing into the gloom, leaving a trail of tiny, shimmering bubbles in its wake.
*Bubbles?*
She spread her fingers, digging them into the fine silt of the seabed, and tossed a handful upward. The sand did not fall immediately, nor was it whisked away by a breeze; instead, it drifted like a celestial scattering of flowers, swaying and descending with the grace of falling snowflakes.
The realization that she was still deep within the ocean hit her like a physical blow. Her arms gave way, and she nearly collapsed back into the silt.
Then, an object entered her field of vision that truly stole what little breath she had left.
It was a powerful, upright teal fluke.
The tail was perfectly streamlined, the upper lobe of the caudal fin significantly longer than the lower, with distinct notches on both the top and bottom. Roughly sixty centimeters from the fluke were two small anal fins, and further up, a pair of pelvic fins. At this moment, the entire tail was swaying from side to side with agonizing slowness.
Fan Li stared at it, her eyes widening to a degree that even the most dramatic starlet could never hope to achieve.
*That... that is a shark’s tail!*
Her survival instincts screamed at her to turn and flee. Yet, a stray thought surfaced through her panic: human flesh wasn't actually that palatable to marine predators. Humans weren't on the menu for the ocean's most ferocious carnivores. To survive a shark encounter, one shouldn't make sudden movements; one should simply drift away slowly. Excessive panic would only pique its curiosity, leading it to take a "test bite" to see what sort of strange creature she was.
One bite from those jaws would be enough to end her life, or at least ruin the rest of it.
Fan Li turned her body with glacial care, moving her arms in a gentle, rhythmic motion, trying to twist herself away from the shark...
Only a few seconds passed before her progress was halted.
A pair of hands reached from behind, encircling her wrists in a gesture that felt disturbingly like a light embrace. The fingers were pale and slender, yet the knuckles were prominent and the backs of the hands possessed a rugged, bony structure—unmistakably the hands of a man.
*Thank God, a human,* she thought, a surge of relief washing over her. *I must still be in a safe zone.*
"There's a shark! Run!" Fearing he might not understand Chinese, she scrambled to add in English, "Shark! Run!"
Then, a deep, resonant baritone vibrated against her ear.
The language he spoke was unlike any tongue found on Earth. It was ethereal yet lingering, each syllable heavy and vibrating as if emanating from deep within his throat. Fan Li couldn't comprehend a single word, yet she caught the inflection of a question at the end: "Hmm?"
Just as she was wondering how to communicate their language barrier, a massive, spectral dictionary manifested within her mind. An invisible hand flipped open the heavy, brown stone-like cover. Every word the man spoke transformed into strange runic symbols, spelling themselves out in her consciousness before being struck by a bolt of mental lightning that flipped the book to the corresponding Chinese definitions. Though the grammar was clunky, she understood the gist of his words:
"So frantic... that doesn't seem like your style. Or is it that you find me terrifying? Do you think I’ll eat you... hmm?"
Fan Li looked around, searching for any sign of a physical book. The dictionary had definitely appeared only within her mind.
*What is this? Some kind of internal subtitle group?*
She turned her head and was met with the sight of a neck whiter than an albatross’s breast, and a collarbone framed by a deep-V, long-sleeved silk tunic. It was a magnificent collarbone, deep enough to hold water.
Lifting her gaze further, she locked eyes with a pair of crystalline, water-blue orbs.
The shark was nowhere to be seen. In its place stood a young man with broad shoulders and a lithe, powerful frame. His eyes were like sheltered bays, his brows like rugged canyons.
His face was hauntingly familiar. She was certain she had seen him before.
The rhythmic surge of the current acted as the ocean’s wind, tugging at his hair and the hem of his clothes, turning his every movement into a slow-motion cinematic shot. He looked down at her, a faint, knowing smile playing on his lips. His eyes were saturated with an infinite, drowning tenderness—a look so soft it felt like a trap.
"You've been gone for a few months, and your foreign language skills have improved. So, after being apart for so long, you didn't miss me at all?"
Perhaps because the ocean’s natural filter was inherently melancholic, the stray locks of hair brushing against his brow, cheeks, and pointed ears lent him an ethereal, desperate beauty. His lashes were long, casting soft shadows against his porcelain skin. His long, straight hair was a shimmering silver-gray, tied loosely at the nape of his neck with a strand of seagrass, rising and falling in the current like fine silk.
Receiving no answer, he let out a soft sigh. With the breath, a few transparent bubbles escaped his lips.
"Little fool, are you scared senseless?"
The beauty of his voice was one thing, but the unhurried composure, the seduction, and the indulgence in his lazy tone were quite another. Fan Li had been a "good girl" her entire life; this was the first time she had ever been addressed with such intimacy by a member of the opposite sex. The dictionary in her brain actually slowed down its translation speed.
She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
"My apologies. It seems I’ve mistaken you for someone else; after all, your face looks quite unfamiliar." Despite his words, he didn't sound the least bit apologetic. He reached out with an air of casual familiarity, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear, his voice still carrying the slow, melodic cadence of a lover. "Miss, please forgive my rudeness. Shall we start over? My name is Xing Hai."
Xing Hai waited for a response, but when none came, his smile widened slightly. "Miss, your heart is racing, and you’re sweating quite a bit. Is it because you’re hiding a little secret? Are you nervous?"
This uncanny ability to sense her heart rate and perspiration reminded Fan Li instantly of that transfer student from her middle school. Just as she was marveling at the coincidence, she noticed a specific detail: just like that boy, this man had a small beauty mark on the left side of his nose!
Moreover, the reason he looked so familiar was that he looked exactly like an adult version of that transfer student!
*Is this... a horrific underwater reunion with a mysterious classmate?*
Suddenly, a shrill voice called out from the distance behind her, breaking her train of thought: "Fan Li! Fan Li!!"
It seemed someone was calling her name. Fan Li wrenched herself out of Xing Hai’s light hold and turned around. Her first instinct was that she was hallucinating—swimming toward her was a mermaid.
This mermaid possessed a striking red-and-black tail, bisected by a thin, glowing line of fluorescent cyan. A thick, brown braid rested on one shoulder, her hair adorned with so many starfish that it looked like a golden galaxy draped over a palm tree. She waved at Fan Li, calling her name with boundless energy. However, because she was swimming so fast and not watching where she was going, she slammed headfirst into a coral reef. She didn't seem particularly bright.
Fan Li rubbed her eyes, but the scene remained unchanged. She pointed at the mermaid and turned to Xing Hai, her voice trembling. "She... she has a t-tail... Fish tail, mermaid, scary!"
To her surprise, Xing Hai’s reaction was entirely nonchalant. Then, as if a sudden thought had struck her, Fan Li looked down at her own body.
She saw that shark tail again.
It dawned on her then—the tail she had seen earlier wasn't a separate shark. It was Xing Hai’s tail!
This man wasn't human at all; he was a half-human, half-shark merman!
Even though this "merman shark" was aesthetically breathtaking, as if plucked from a romantic fantasy film, she still felt her head swim. Her heart felt as though it might burst from the sheer impossibility of it all.
Seeing her staring so rudely at his tail, Xing Hai didn't seem offended. Instead, he offered a small smile. "Do you like boys of the Shark Tribe?"
"Shark... Tribe?" Fan Li struggled to repeat the foreign term.
Hearing her odd pronunciation, Xing Hai’s expression seemed to hit a pause button. The smile slowly bled from his face, replaced by a cold, frosty mask. "Stop pretending to be a human. Haven't you been swimming just fine all this time?"
Fan Li froze. She looked down at her lower half and was struck dumb with horror. Her legs were gone. In their place was a long, powerful fish tail of deep emerald green, covered in subtle, translucent scales. As she shifted her hips, the tail swayed naturally from side to side, creating gentle ripples in the water.
She reached down and ran a hand along the scales. They were cold and hard. The final thread of her sanity snapped.
"Oh my god!!!" Fan Li recoiled as if she had touched a corpse. She clutched her head, wishing she could just ram it into the reef and wake up from this nightmare.
By now, the clumsy mermaid had paddled over, dazed but persistent. She grabbed Fan Li’s arm. "What is wrong with you? You were just reading the newspaper and then you suddenly freaked out, turned around, and vanished! You scared me and my mom to death..." Where the mermaid should have had ears, there were instead a pair of fins matching her tail's colors, also separated by a fluorescent cyan line. These ear-fins twitched slightly in sync with her emotions.
Overwhelmed by shock, Fan Li suddenly became eerily quiet, repeating the girl's words like a broken record. "News... paper? Your... mom?"
"What's wrong?" The fluorescent girl waved a hand in front of Fan Li’s face. "Why have you gone catatonic? Don't scare me... Did you see some bad news in the paper?"
"What newspaper?" Xing Hai asked, looking up.
"The *Red Moon Sea Morning Post*. Fan Li was reading the headline, and then she turned pale and bolted."
"What else could it be? Likely some dull political news about the Dictator visiting the Red Moon Sea. Hardly enough to scare someone senseless," Xing Hai remarked, though his eyes never left Fan Li’s face, observing her every micro-expression.
Fan Li desperately wanted to know what had happened between the moment she fainted in the surf and the moment she woke up here. Why was her reality so different from what this fluorescent girl was saying? Where in the ocean was she? Why did she suddenly have a tail? Where was her father? How could she get her legs back and return to the surface?
*Could it be... that I caught some mental illness from that transfer student and I'm just hallucinating?*
"I'm not sure either. My friend here usually loves reading the paper; maybe she really did get worked up over some current events," the fluorescent girl said, scratching her head before tugging at Fan Li’s hand. "Anyway, Fan Li, whatever you saw, we can talk about it later. We need to hurry up and register!"
Fan Li looked around. Not far away stood a bench that looked like it belonged in a park, but instead of trees and grass, there were soft corals and sea anemones swaying in the current, reminiscent of a wheat field in a spring breeze. Hundreds of tiny fish darted through the branch-like corals. The sound of the water was crisp, and the light filtering from above was ethereal, like a gentle rain during a change of seasons. A lionfish drifted by with arrogant flair, its fins fluttering like tattered banners, occasionally flashing as it moved through the water. The ecosystem here was breathtakingly vibrant, teeming with life that stretched to the edge of her vision, where the fish and coral dissolved into blue silhouettes.
The scenery was natural, yet the layout of the coral and the pebble paths were clearly the result of careful planning. At the end of the path, the shadows of buildings loomed.
*An underwater civilization actually exists.*
As she breathed, she felt organs opening behind her ears. Trembling, Fan Li touched the base of her ears. Sure enough, there were two long slits. Reaching further in, she felt something leafy and filamentous. The sensation was so bizarre it sent a wave of goosebumps down her spine. There was no doubt—those were gills.
Comparing the fins of the three tails present, Fan Li noticed that Xing Hai’s fins were more numerous, his tail longer, and his muscular definition and presence were vastly different from hers and the other girl's.
As he had said, he was of the Shark Tribe. He was clearly on a different level from ordinary sea fish.
Seeing Fan Li staring so unabashedly at the boy’s tail, the fluorescent girl felt a flush of embarrassment. She turned to Xing Hai with an apologetic look. "Um, thank you for looking after my friend. She’s usually not like this... she’s just a bit off today. I... I’ll take her now..."
"It's fine," Xing Hai replied, though his gaze remained fixed on Fan Li.
Before being dragged away, Fan Li remembered a crucial piece of information and called out: "Xing Hai."
"Yes?"
Fan Li had used the name of the middle school transfer student.
Xing Hai knit his brows. "What did you say?"
Fan Li repeated it. However, Xing Hai’s expression remained solemn and utterly confused. "I don't understand. What are you saying?"
It seemed she had mistaken him for someone else. But could there really be this many coincidences?
Fan Li shook her head and followed the fluorescent girl as they swam away.
Xing Hai stood still, watching them depart. His eyes were cold, his brow furrowed with a heavy gravity, looking like a completely different person from the man who had just smiled so tenderly.
