---
It was a clear, full-moon night, but the bright moonlight couldn't reach the poet's eyes. He wandered aimlessly through this sleeping town, circling many times without knowing when to stop.
Until someone stopped him.
It was the jewelry shop owner. He'd come to propose a deal— and the commodity was the mermaid.
The poet froze, wanting to leave, but the jewelry shop owner's portly body blocked the narrow alley, turning it into a dead end with no way out.
"You and I both know that hiding a mermaid is a serious crime," the jewelry shop owner said, his face still wearing a professional smile even while delivering a threat. "And the mermaid scales you sold me are evidence."
A shrewd merchant was always skilled at finding dubious business opportunities. He'd long since found a wealthy noble buyer for this precious merchandise, and knew exactly when to set the bait and wait patiently—and when to tighten the trap and deliver the killing blow.
Before such an experienced hunter, the poet never had any room to negotiate.
Especially now, when the jewelry shop owner could offer a generous price for the deal—including a city apartment, the publication of a new poetry collection, and a teaching position at an academy of letters.
After all, a living mermaid was worth far more than scattered scales.
---
"But if she dies, she'll be worthless," the jewelry shop owner's voice murmured near the poet's ear, intimate and enticing, carrying a bewitching quality. "Mermaids kept on land too long will always lose their scales. Curing this isn't hard, but it's very expensive. You needn't worry—once she's sent to the city, her new owner will hire the best physicians to treat her."
The poet, who'd been numb for so long, suddenly looked up, his eyes flashing with an extraordinary light. "You mean, this is what's best for her?"
"Of course." The merchant clapped the poet's shoulder, and his smile changed—no longer a professional fake, but the genuine delight of a deal about to close. "This is what's best for her."
---
It was already deep into the night, but the poet's steps were much lighter on the way back.
Following this seaside path, his gaze could cross the harbor to the gulf where he'd first found the mermaid.
The poet still clearly remembered that first encounter—every detail remained sharp in his mind, not blurred by time.
A stranded mermaid, her long tail immersed in the repeatedly surging tide, her wounded body wedged among sharp reefs, stripped of the strength to struggle. Hearing his footsteps, she'd lifted her head and gazed at him weakly.
With just one look, he'd seen stars and oceans in her emerald eyes.
But those stars were about to fall, and that ocean was about to dry up. The owner of these beautiful eyes would be sent far from the sea to an inland city, where no one could read her thoughts, and the ocean would become merely a memory in a distant dream—leaving the prosperous yet lonely city as her final destination.
This is what's best for her.
All the way back, the poet repeated this phrase to himself, treating it like a reliable mantra to calm his mind, not daring to pause for even a moment.
Only this way could he avoid remembering that his original intention in saving her had been to prevent this beautiful creature from losing her freedom and becoming a plaything of the powerful.
---
The poet opened the door. The room was dark as always, with only the moonlight shimmering on the water's surface.
But the scene before him was slightly different.
The mermaid, who'd been submerged at the pool's bottom for days, had surfaced again, resting on the tank's edge, her emerald eyes glowing luminously in the dark, locking gazes with the poet.
Even though her submerged body was covered in wounds, dreadfully scarred, her face bathed in moonlight was still soul-stirringly beautiful.
Drawn by that beauty, the poet walked to the tank's edge, placed the white rose he'd picked on the way back into an empty bottle nearby, and then brushed her cheek with the back of his hand.
So soft. So cold.
"You're so beautiful," the poet murmured. After long hesitation, he told her of the fate ahead. "After tonight, I'll send you to the city."
He paused, then added softly, "This is what's best for you."
Hearing this, the mermaid gripped the tank's edge with both hands, her entire arms trembling. It was clear this movement had nearly exhausted what little strength she had, but she still struggled to push herself up a fraction more, just enough so that those emerald eyes could meet the poet's gaze.
Unlike the desire-less look in the mermaid's eyes before, this time the poet saw an emotion entirely unfamiliar—something called grief.
That grief flashed by, no more than a tiny meteor in a vast night sky. Yet this single spark ignited the poet's entire being, and he couldn't help but embrace the mermaid, pressing his warmth against her cold.
He kissed her.
In that brief instant, a flood of emotions burst forth, submerging the poet's soul entirely. For the first time, he felt how small and cramped human language was—even the grandest poem couldn't capture a ten-thousandth of what he felt in that moment.
So overwhelming, yet so contradictory.
And this feeling kept building, surging outward—first overflowing his finite soul, then pressing against his very body until cracks appeared, with countless streams pushing through the fissures, rushing, hammering, and finally converging into a trembling cry.
It was also a cry of pain.
Because the mermaid's fingertips had pierced through his left chest and extracted a beating heart.
---
When the mermaid stepped out of the pool, she'd just torn away the withered webbing between her fingers.
The dying poet lay on the ground, his body cracked like the fallen bottle beside him. But his gaze wasn't on the bleeding wound in his chest—he was watching the mermaid's legs.
They were long and nimble, no different from any ordinary human's. Before the mermaid left the pool, the withered, wrinkled skin on her scale-less tail had split open, and she needed only to run her fingertips along the cracks to peel away large sheets of dead skin, revealing the legs beneath.
So the shedding of scales was no fatal illness—it was as natural and harmless as a snake shedding its skin or a cicada molting, merely a necessary process for a mermaid's tail to transform into legs.
The poet stared at those legs, trying to speak, but only blood frothed from his open mouth.
The mermaid looked down at him, the corners of her lips curving up slightly.
The poet recognized that smile—it was the first one she'd learned from him, full of pure delight and satisfaction. Except then, she'd just finished eating a live fish, and this time, she held his bloody, dripping heart in her hand.
"Thank you," she said.
Her voice was elegant, her tone pure—even this single "thank you" was celestial music.
The poet's ragged breath caught. Whether it was this impossibly beautiful sound or the revelation that the mermaid had been able to speak all along, he couldn't tell.
The mermaid simply sat on the tank's edge, legs dangling, looking down at the poet from above, softly explaining everything.
Mermaids had once lived only in the distant deep sea, using their enchanting songs to lure ships, dragging countless sailors to the dark ocean floor and gnawing them down to bones. But over time, humans developed defenses—more sophisticated methods to block mermaid songs, more advanced technology to capture mermaids and trade them as lowly goods.
The mermaids refused to accept this. They were never stupid or weak creatures; when faced with vicious enemies, they fought back with greater ferocity and cunning.
"But humans, like mermaids, are natural-born liars," the mermaid said, sweeping the hair from her face with a light laugh. "Your words are even more bewitching than mermaid songs."
Because humans possessed hearts that were too complex—hearts that could endlessly produce warmth and lies, along with rich emotions that mermaids could never comprehend. This made them skilled at scheming, mighty and flourishing.
And mermaids had no hearts. That was why they were cold, emotionless, and too bluntly sharp to defeat the deceitful humans from land.
After countless defeats, the mermaids came to understand that they couldn't control humans through song alone; the only ones who could control humans were themselves. To survive, to fight back, mermaids were willing to sacrifice much—including their deep-sea homeland and the scales on their tails—just to set foot on land and blend silently into the human world, becoming one of them.
"If I was to become one of you, I first had to find a perfect heart to fill my hollow chest." The mermaid smiled, her gaze softer than the moonlight. "But eating the hearts of sailors wasn't enough—they were too crude and ignorant, not clever enough to be interesting."
What she wanted was a perfect heart.
The heart's owner had to be a first-rate liar—capable of deceiving not only others but also himself. At the same time, this heart should hold all manner of contradictory yet abundant human emotions, including greed and sacrifice, malice and kindness, guilt and pride, reason and delusion, humility and arrogance, loneliness and crowd, love and resentment...
Even among humans, finding such a heart was no easy task.
The mermaid had sacrificed much for this—including taking the enormous risk of stranding herself on shore, scraping away scales that could have fallen off naturally, and, to preserve her singing voice as a weapon, feigning muteness and never uttering a sound.
Thanks to the Creator's grace and mercy, she'd finally succeeded. While the poet thought he was raising a perfect mermaid, the mermaid was also raising a perfect heart.
And at this very moment, that heart was in her hands.
The mermaid brought the heart to her lips and bit into it, streams of red trailing from the corners of her mouth and staining her dark hair—like crimson flowers blooming in the dead of night.
Watching her devour his heart, the poet suddenly recalled the fish he'd once fed her.
So every meal of hers had been a deliberate hunting rehearsal—because mermaids were born hunters, whether their prey was humans on land or fish in the sea.
And the poet had been her target from the very start, just like those sailors dragged to the ocean floor, with no escape.
Even without uttering a sound, she could still sing her bewitching song, letting its silent melody merge seamlessly into their days together, luring him step by step into the abyss, only realizing at this final moment that the so-called mermaid's song had always been a tangled embrace of beautiful illusion and cruel lies.
The poet coughed violently, more blood frothing from his lips.
The mermaid had finished the heart. She slipped from the tank's edge, crouched beside the poet, just as he'd once done for her—reaching out to stroke his cheek, wiping the blood from the corner of his mouth.
Her palm was no longer cold. It pressed warmly against his cheek, which was rapidly losing its heat, her movements gentle and careful.
"Thank you," the mermaid repeated. Then she began to sing.
Though his vision was fading, the poet could still hear clearly that the melody's lyrics were his own poems—the ones he'd written for her.
This was the mermaid's repayment. She would weave his poetry into songs and sing them to the world.
And the legends about the mermaid's song were all true—their enchanting voices carried bewitching magic that could make any listener fall under their spell, trapped forever by that transcendent beauty.
This included the poet, who was now but one step from death.
Immersed in this perfect song, his blood-stained face wore a rapt smile as he quietly breathed his last breath.
When the song ended, the mermaid bent down and picked up the white rose, now stained red with blood. Like any ordinary girl in town, she tucked it into her hair, then stepped over the poet's body and walked out without looking back.
She had come from the deep sea, and now she would walk into this vast land.
END