Archiving

Klein didn't answer immediately.

The light patterns on the surface of the inscription stone were still flowing slowly. The translated line floated steadily on the stone's surface, not a word more, not a word less.

The smell of the sea.

He looked down and sniffed his own cuff. He smelled nothing—nothing remained on his clothes except for a hint of washing soap and the scent of potions permeating the workshop. There was no so-called "fishy sea smell."

This meant that the "smell of the sea" the sea folk mentioned wasn't literal salt and brine.

She was talking about something human olfaction couldn't capture.

A thought flashed through Klein's mind. Ophelia. The sea folk's reaction at the docks yesterday—how she had suddenly stopped struggling halfway through to stare at Ophelia with such intense, focused interest.

Klein didn't rush to a conclusion. He took a different approach.

"The smell of the sea you mentioned—do other people have it too?"

The inscription stone ran, sending the message out.

The sea folk’s ear fins tilted slightly. Her gray vertical slit pupils moved away from Klein and swept toward the door—the direction of the hallway, the way everyone had come from the docks yesterday.

Then she spoke. The inscription stone received it, and the translation surfaced:

—Yes.

One word. But she didn't stop. A string of high-frequency vibrations followed closely, and the stone chased the translation:

—The one with the golden hair. Very beautiful.

Klein almost laughed.

It was Ophelia, as expected. And the evaluation "very beautiful"—Aphros had had a similar reaction when she first saw Ophelia.

Interesting. The aesthetic systems of these creatures born from the concept of the will of the deep sea were actually communal. And the standards were quite uniform—they both took an immediate liking to Ophelia, not even mentioning anyone else.

But that wasn't the point.

"How do you feel about her—the person with the golden hair?"

The inscription stone encoded the question and sent it out.

The sea folk didn't answer right away. Her gray vertical slit pupils returned to Klein's face. Her coiled tail swayed slowly in the water, the edge of her tail fin brushing past a few shed scales on the bottom of the tank, pushing them into a corner.

She opened her mouth. But what came out wasn't the answer Klein wanted.

The inscription stone translated:

—You haven't answered my question.

Klein blinked, momentarily taken aback.

—Why do you also have the smell of the sea on you? And it's even stronger than when I first saw you yesterday.

When those lines surfaced on the inscription stone, Klein's brain short-circuited for about zero point three seconds.

Stronger than yesterday.

Yesterday was at the docks, with a whole night in between.

What happened during that night—Klein's memory automatically replayed a frame: Ophelia's fingers hooked around the back of his neck, her golden hair scattered across the pillow, and the fine scales on her contaminated left arm glinting coldly in the dim light—

Alright. No need for more replays.

The reason was clear. He and Ophelia had been intimate last night, for quite some time and at a very close distance... technically, a negative distance. Ophelia's residual sea monster pollution—no matter what the transmission medium for that "smell" was—it wasn't strange at all for it to rub off on him during that level of physical contact.

And the description "stronger than yesterday" also matched up.

Klein cleared his throat.

How should he explain this?

He couldn't exactly tell a sea folk, "Because I did things last night with that person you think is beautiful that only a husband and wife would do, so her scent rubbed off on me."

He chose a phrasing that was logically plausible.

"She is my partner. We live together and have a lot of contact, so her aura lingers on me. We've had even more contact since yesterday, so the smell has grown stronger."

The inscription stone translated it. The wording was automatically encoded into the sea folk's vocal patterns, and the string of composite sound waves spreading from the stone sounded much more pleasant than human language—carrying the soft popping sounds of bursting bubbles.

The sea folk tilted her head.

Something shifted within those gray vertical slit pupils. Klein couldn't tell if it was understanding, confusion, or suspicion.

But her nostrils flared—a very slight twitch, as if she were sniffing the air again.

Then she nodded.

The movement was small; her chin just tucked down slightly before returning. It was the kind of nod that leaned toward belief despite some lingering doubt.

But Klein felt that flaring of her nostrils was somewhat meaningful—as if she were saying, "You say contact, but this concentration isn't something you get from ordinary contact."

However, she didn't press the issue, so he took it as the topic being settled.

Klein struck while the iron was hot.

"Now it's your turn to answer. That golden-haired person—what do you feel when you look at her?"

The inscription stone sent the message.

This silence was longer than any before.

The sea folk leaned her upper body forward slightly, letting her arms down from her chest to rest on her coiled tail. The focus of her gray vertical slit pupils became unfocused, not looking in any specific direction—back into that state of searching through her own mind.

The water in the tank swayed gently. Her tail fin unconsciously spread and closed, tapping against the bottom. Her finger webbing also expanded—the translucent membranes between her five fingers stretched out fully, looking like a slowly blooming flower in the water, before gradually closing back up.

She was using her entire body to contemplate the question.

Then she spoke.

This time, the inscription stone was a beat slow. The amount of information contained in that string of high-frequency vibrations was larger than before, and the decoding took longer.

The translation surfaced line by line:

—Very close.

A pause. Followed by a longer output.

—Like... kin.

Klein's finger stopped on the corner of the inscription stone.

"Kin."

A sea folk born from within a siren, who had never had any contact with Ophelia, used the word "kin" to describe a human knight.

Because Ophelia carried the pollution of a sea monster.

This connection itself wasn't unexpected. But the weight of the word "kin" was heavier than he had anticipated.

The inscription stone was still flashing. The sea folk wasn't finished.

A new translation surfaced:

—Also very majestic.

Klein's finger remained still.

"Majestic."

Not "powerful." Not "terrifying." "Majestic."

Majesty was a word with hierarchical implications. It meant that the subject being described occupied a clear position higher than the speaker within their cognitive framework.

—Makes me want to...

The light patterns for the last few words were brighter than the ones before, with a higher vibration frequency. The inscription stone seemed to endure a greater signal intensity while translating these words—the elemental flow ran across the stone in a band of light two shades brighter than usual.

—Submit.

By the time this word surfaced on the inscription stone, the sea folk in the tank had already closed her mouth.

Her gray vertical slit pupils were half-lidded, the slits narrowed to the thinnest width Klein had seen all day—not out of wariness, but in a hard-to-describe state of restraint that occurred naturally when mentioning a revered subject.

Even her breathing slowed, the frequency of her gill slits flaring and closing dropping below the baseline Klein had been observing.

Klein slowly placed the inscription stone back on the table.

The moment his fingers left the stone, a thought flashed through his mind—not a conclusion, but a pure intuitive pulse that he hadn't yet had time to interpret:

The nature of the pollution on Ophelia might be even more complex than he had always estimated.

And—he would need to talk to her about this later.

Klein sighed soundlessly and reached out to archive the translation records on the inscription stone.