What a strange coincidence, that on this storm-trapped cold night, when the poet cried from sorrow in his heart, a mermaid stranded on land also shed tears of longing.
The poet leaned forward and wiped the tear stains from her face, a long-unfamiliar comfort rising in his heart.
"Though our pain doesn't truly connect…" The poet, lonely for so long, sighed. "At least tonight, you're willing to shed tears with me."
---
The morning after the rain stopped, the landlord appeared outside the gate, her shrill voice calling the poet out, her narrow laughter barely masking the contempt in her dunning.
The poet wasn't worried that this overdecorated woman would deign to step down the mud-slicked stairs in her new kid-leather shoes and discover the mermaid secret in the semi-basement. But the months of back rent was now a hefty sum, and indeed a problem.
The poet could create the most magnificent beauty in his poems, but that beauty certainly didn't include rent.
After finally dismissing the landlord, the poet returned to the semi-basement with knitted brows, calculating how to manage.
Recently the mermaid's wounds had shown improvement, and the scales shedding from her tail were fewer day by day. Relying on collecting shed scales to cover daily expenses was already difficult, let alone such a large payment as rent.
The poet slumped by the tank's edge, face weary, paying little attention to the mermaid who'd swum over.
He just stared at the mermaid's tail, at the countless scales neatly arranged across it, brilliantly lustrous.
The mermaid, noticing his neglected gaze, quickly caught on. As a creature accustomed to the deep sea with extraordinarily keen hearing, she'd also heard the unpleasant exchange between the poet and the landlord. She now understood that mortals always faced problems different from those in the sea, and these problems required the exchange of mermaid scales to resolve—a contract, a ritual that existed only in the world of land.
Seeing the poet's expression darken like storm clouds gathering over the sea, the mermaid gave a faint smile.
She raised her fingers and scraped hard across one side of her tail.
Instantly, silver-blue scales scattered into the water, each surrounded by wisps of red like red velvet wrapping a gem. And with this, the mermaid gripped the tank's edge, her face pale, the translucent webbing between her fingers trembling.
It must have hurt—otherwise she wouldn't have held those bloodied blue scales up to the poet while forcing broken gasps from her throat.
But that was all.
Whether in pain or joy, she was always a quiet mermaid.
---
The shed scales bought the poet and mermaid the right to continue staying there, but the poet's spirits didn't lighten—especially when he saw the raw scrape on the mermaid's tail.
Without the protection of those jewel-like scales, the exposed pale scar reminded him of dead fish discarded at a market stall.
"You don't need to do this," the poet said as he applied newly purchased ointment to the mermaid's wounds. "I don't want to see you hurt again."
But was the mermaid's full recovery what he truly wanted to see? No—in truth he resisted that idea as well, because it meant she would return to the sea and never come back.
Of course, the poet kept these hidden desires to himself. The mermaid, likely unable to read the complicated heart of a mortal, simply smiled gently and lowered her eyes.
Black hair rippled in the water like untamed water grass, gently brushing against the ankles of swimmers.
---
Though the poet had warned the mermaid not to scrape off her own scales, reality rarely granted his wishes.
First the aging semi-basement was ruined by rainwater, destroying almost everything of use. Then a publisher's lawyer came knocking, threatening that if the poet refused to pay the advance for his unsold poetry collection, he'd be taken to court.
Within mere days, troubles piled up one after another, as if they'd conspired to arrive together.
But there was no help for it—the goddess of fate had always been this unreasonable, willful, and capricious.
These successive blows overwhelmed the poet, which also gave the jewelry shop owner's greed an opening. The man narrowed his long eyes and smiled falsely at the poet: "Young man, more people are finding these things on the beach now, so they're not worth as much as before."
The poet couldn't rebut this lie used to pressure the price—after all, the lie about finding mermaid scales on the beach had originated with him.
Now there was only one way to get enough money from the jewelry shop owner.
Bring more mermaid scales in exchange.
---
The human heart is a strange thing, the poet thought as he walked to the jewelry shop. It could first loathe and resist something, then gradually become accustomed to breaking its own rules, and eventually even feel it was only natural.
Like the heavy bag of mermaid scales in his hand.
At first, when he'd stammered and asked the mermaid for scales, he couldn't even meet her pure eyes, let alone listen to her pained gasps as she scraped row after row from her own tail.
Each suppressed gasp was like a blade piercing his sensitive nerves.
But humans could get used to anything, good or bad. After similar scenes repeated several times, the poet could watch the mermaid curl up in pain without flinching, and her hoarse cries blended with the distant sound of waves into background noise, easy to ignore.
This was perhaps the tragedy of being a mermaid who couldn't sing.
Unable to transform into enchanting song, her anguished cries couldn't even awaken basic compassion.
---
Yet another strange thing about the human heart was that it could simultaneously hold two completely opposite things—allowing the poet to become inured to the cruelty inflicted on the mermaid while also growing more devoted to her, caring for her with ever greater tenderness.
After every visit to the jewelry shop, the poet would first buy the most expensive ointment and the freshest live fish for the mermaid.
And the mermaid still trusted him as completely as from the start, accepting all the food he brought, never resisting when he applied medicine to her wounds—even when the pain drove her nearly too weak to surface, she still smiled at him.
That smile was frail and pure, free of any trace of resentment.
Just seeing it was enough to spark new inspiration in the poet's mind, and he would sit by the pool again, reading his newest poem to the mermaid.
No one else in the world would ever listen so attentively.
This reaction enchanted the poet. Whenever he gazed into her emerald eyes, he couldn't look away, as if his own soul were being drowned in that deep underwater realm.
"I originally thought I saved you," the poet murmured, pressing his forehead to the mermaid's brow. "But perhaps... you were sent by heaven to save me."
Otherwise, why would he, wandering by the sea in desperate straits, have encountered this stranded mermaid just when he could find no way forward?
The mermaid likely didn't understand these complexities. She only pressed her palm to the poet's chest—first a chill seeping into his skin, then gathering that warmth into her hand, holding it tight. Perhaps this was an amusing game for her, because the poet saw a soundless smile form on her lips.
So the poet smiled too, but then the mermaid let out a soft hiss, her face losing its brightness.
Her tail had too many raw wounds from scraped scales; the slightest brush against the tank's edge sent searing pain through her.
The poet steadied the trembling mermaid by habit, but his gaze couldn't help drifting to the water's surface, where red blossoms were blooming, vivid and savage.
A hidden voice whispered from deep in his heart: "As long as things remain like this, her wounds will never truly heal."
And then, this beautiful yet fragile mermaid would forever need him, listen to him, and never be able to leave him.
---
In the following days, the poet demanded even more scales from the mermaid.
Far more than he'd originally taken.
These scales not only rescued him from his various financial difficulties but also brought in a handsome sum, enough for him to wear custom-tailored clothes, dine at expensive restaurants, and rub shoulders with circles he'd never before been able to access, living like a respectable person.
Even the young women in town who'd never given him a second glance now teasingly bantered with him about poetry.
These changes certainly brought the poet pleasure, but none of it could be brought back to that dark, secret semi-basement. The moment he opened the door, he saw the mermaid submerged in the water, and the wounds on her tail would precisely remind him that she was the source of all these changes.
Meanwhile, the mermaid still smiled when she saw him—even if the smile was strained, it was genuine, without a trace of falsehood.
She truly had never doubted him.
So she never once refused his requests for scales, each time scraping rows of them from her tail with her sharp nails, with an absurd sort of practiced motion.
But pain was still pain, never numbed by repetition.
Watching the mermaid curl tightly in the water, her body temperature even lower than the water around her, the poet supposed that even cold-blooded mermaids must crave warmth—otherwise she wouldn't always press her cheek against his chest when he held her and comforted her, listening to his beating heart as if to absorb every bit of his warmth.
"It's okay, it's okay." The poet didn't know whether he was saying this to the mermaid or to himself. "Don't be afraid. Scales grow back after being scraped."
---
But the goddess of fate played the poet another cruel trick.
Whether because too many scales had been scraped and the pain—both physical and emotional—had exceeded what the mermaid could endure, the scales no longer grew back. Her once elegant, luminous tail was now crisscrossed with outward-gaping gray-white scars, ugly and glaring.
And her beauty was fading rapidly along with her vitality.
The poet couldn't remember the last time he'd seen the mermaid swim freely in the water. For many days now, her gaunt face lay propped against the tank's edge, gazing up at the small window in the ceiling, too weak even to catch live fish swimming slowly past.
This was not a good sign.
One morning, the poet saw the pool floor carpeted with silver-blue scales, their crystalline luster pooling into a dazzling display. But these hadn't been scraped off by the mermaid—they had fallen from her tail of their own accord.
She couldn't even hold on to the scales that grew on her own body.
Like the rose beside the tank that hadn't been replaced in so long, its withered petals falling from the stem that had lost its vitality.
The poet tried many remedies, all in vain. The scales on the mermaid's tail dwindled day by day, and before long almost none remained, leaving only a bare, scarred tail—the skin stretched taut and gray, then covered in layer upon layer of terrible wrinkles, much like the withered webbing between her fingers.
This mermaid was no longer beautiful.
Near the end, the mermaid, her vitality nearly spent, lacked even the strength to surface. She lay motionless at the bottom of the pool, neither eating nor drinking, only occasionally opening her mouth slightly—not to make sound, but to release a series of fleeting bubbles.
The poet finally had to face the truth: this mermaid he'd saved was dying.