She loosened the rigging by two notches.
The amount of wind catching the sails decreased, and the ship's speed dropped visibly, changing from cutting through the waves to drifting along with them. The course didn't deviate; it just slowed down.
The reason was simple.
The breathing of the man on her lap was so even that she didn't want to interrupt it.
Ophelia looked down. Klein’s head was tilted against her leg, his right cheek pressed against the outside of her thigh. His mouth was slightly open, and his exhaled breath brushed against the fabric over and over, warming that small patch of cloth. His brow was still furrowed, but not as deeply as when he had first lain down.
Three days and six hours.
This man really treated himself like a disposable resource.
The sound of the waves against the hull was rhythmic, a push and a pull with a short pause in between. Combined with the slight swaying of the deck, the ship truly felt like a cradle. Klein slept soundly, turning once in the middle. The back of his head brushed against her leg as he shifted directions, and he continued sleeping without waking once.
Whether it was the credit of the new "pillow" or the cradle, it was hard to say.
She didn't dwell on it.
Time passed bit by bit.
The clouds in the southwest hung lower, their grayish-white edges trimmed with a ring of dark yellow—the characteristic light before dusk. The color of the sea changed as well, turning from grayish-blue to leaden gray. The further they went into the open sea, the darker the water became.
The frequency of the pulsing patterns on her left wrist increased by another notch.
They were close.
Ophelia looked up.
It was time to wake him.
She looked down at Klein’s sleeping face.
She hesitated for two seconds.
It wasn't that she was reluctant—she was calculating. How far it was from here to the target area, the ship's speed, and how many more minutes she could let him sleep.
The calculation was done.
About fifteen minutes of sailing left.
She loosened the rigging a bit more.
The ship slowed further.
It didn't buy much extra time, but it was enough. Enough for his breathing to become a little more steady.
Then, she couldn't delay any longer.
Fifteen minutes later, Ophelia tightened the rigging.
The ship's speed picked up, and the swaying of the deck grew more pronounced. With her left palm facing outward, she sensed the activity beneath the water. The density was more than triple what it had been half an hour ago. Looking down from the hull, the water layer between fifteen and thirty fathoms was teeming with things—swimming, crawling, or just hanging motionless.
That was when the singing reached them.
It came from the direction of the target point. Across two nautical miles of sea and wind, it shouldn't have been clear. But the sound had incredible piercing power, delivering every note into the ear with excessive clarity.
The melody was soothing, the tone crystal clear—a quality no human voice could achieve. It was too pure, so pure that every note was perfectly smooth without a single rasp, as if polished from crystal.
It was completely different from sirens.
A siren's voice was a hook that reached into your mind, snagging your desires, your fears, and your softest spots. Those who heard it would lose their ability to move, jump into the water, and drown with a smile.
This wasn't that.
There were no hooks in this song. No lure, no coercion, no attempt to interfere with the listener's mind.
It was simply beautiful.
Pure, clean, and beautiful.
But Ophelia's brow furrowed even tighter.
The cleaner something was, the more one had to be on guard.
Her right hand left Klein’s forehead and tapped his cheek instead.
“Wake up.”
Klein’s eyelashes fluttered.
She didn't wait for him to wake up naturally. She raised her left hand, and golden battle qi surged from her palm, spreading along the ship's hull—a thin but dense battle qi shield covering everything from the top of the mast to below the waterline.
The singing was shut out.
The moment of isolation was distinct. It was like someone had closed a window—the sound outside was still there, but it could no longer enter.
Klein’s eyes opened.
It took only a second for him to focus—faster than before. The sleep had indeed been useful. First, he saw Ophelia's chin, then the tight line of her mouth, and then his hearing caught up: some sound was being blocked by the battle qi shield, muffled as if through thick glass.
He sat up from her lap.
“How long?”
“The singing started less than a minute ago.” Ophelia withdrew her hand from his face. “You should see for yourself.”
Klein rubbed the back of his head, stood up, and walked to the railing.
The sea at the target point was changing.
Concentric ripples spread outward from a central point. They weren't caused by wind or waves; something beneath was rising. The spacing of the ripples was very regular, their frequency matching the rhythm of the song from moments ago—this thing was floating upward while singing.
He glanced down at Ophelia’s left hand.
The patterns were pulsing violently. It wasn't the slow rise and fall from before, but a dense, high-frequency tremor. However, Ophelia's expression showed no sign of pain—only vigilance.
The surface of the water broke.
There was no dramatic pillar of water, no surging waves. A figure emerged from the center of the ripples. The process was quiet, the water sliding naturally off its body.
Human torso. Fish tail.
The upper body was female in form. Her skin appeared a pale greenish-white in the sunlight—not a human skin tone, but not the sickly pallor of deep-sea creatures like sirens. Her long hair clung wetly to her shoulders and back, dark and nearly black, with the ends spreading out in a small patch on the water's surface.
The fish tail began below the waist, the scales arranged neatly—too neatly. Klein saw it immediately; like the scales of that blue-backed fish, they were as uniform as if measured with a ruler.
A generated entity. Not a product of natural development.
She—this creature—looked up and met the eyes of the two people on the ship.
Klein noticed her eyes. They were very clean, with grayish-green irises, very similar to a human's. But in those eyes was something Klein recognized—bewilderment.
Not an animal-like void, but the confusion of "Where am I?"
There was no hostility. No aggressive posture. Very little defensiveness. She drifted on the water, the song having stopped, and just watched them quietly.
Then she spoke.
She used human language. Her accent was a bit strange, and her articulation was as if she were using her mouth to speak for the first time, each syllable lingering on her tongue a beat too long.
“Hello.”
A pause.
“Excuse me, where is this?”
Klein and Ophelia exchanged a look.
The deck remained silent for three seconds.
The sea breeze blew past, and the lingering notes of the song outside the battle qi shield had completely faded. The cognate organisms beneath the water were still swimming, circling the ship in rings. And this generated entity, extracted from a siren and never meant to exist in this world, was waiting for their answer with pure eyes.
Rate on N.U.
