He and It Chapter 20: The King’s Pearl (20)

Chapter 20: The King’s Pearl (20)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: KarateChopMonkey

At night, Jiang Mian’s skin was still hot, he kept sweating, and the skin on his ankle bone was itching so much that he had to scratch it twice every now and then, even after applying ointment, and he had slept too much during the day, and now he was unable to sleep, lying in bed and tossing and turning like pancakes.

After taking two sips of the cold congee, he couldn’t drink any more, and the meal packet was not even bitten into the core, so he put it aside.

Jiang Mian couldn’t force it, but felt sorry for the waste, and sent it to the fresh room for storage.

This wasn’t normal… This was abnormal.

The other people could say that Jiang Mian was overwhelmed by the friendship he had built with the mermaid, but he couldn’t be called a fool. Jiang Mian could fully perceive that he was undergoing some kind of transformation, since the day before yesterday, or earlier — from the moment he touched the mermaid, this change had already happened. It was irreversible, irrecoverable.

The passionate sparks between him and Raperth; his hot and cold, hot and burning, cold and icy illness; his incomparable affinity for mermaids; the lightness of the fog he felt in the dense, dense fog that ordinary people found difficult to navigate; and now, how long it had been since he had eaten, still not feeling thirsty, nor hungry.

And, the way he and Raperth often spoke and acted together; the careful hints Raperth gave him; the way he learned mermaid language so quickly that he could smell it on mermaids in a way that no one else could; and the way Raperth hadn’t said “human” in front of him since a certain time. It was all about “us”.

Jiang Mian never doubted his identity, he was Jiang Pingyang’s son, and given Jiang Pingyang’s situation and origins, how could he adopt a baby with problems and raise it to adulthood?

——But, these traces of life, again, were very present and prominent beside him, constantly firing alarms at his sensitive instincts: you’re not an ordinary person, there must be something special about you that is hard to find.

If my identity is not ordinary, the Institute’s biannual medical examinations, how did they not detect anything… 

Jiang Mian was suddenly stunned.

When he thought about it, the medical examination, with Jiang Pingyang’s permission, he basically didn’t have to be there in person, and the blood samples used for the examination were also personally passed by his adoptive father and never handed over to others.

The more he thought about it, the more wrong it was, Jiang Mian turned out of bed and was about to reach for his clothes, he had to go—

The sound of singing, from under the door, lightly squeezed in, like smoke, like fog, fluttering in Jiang Mian’s ears.

Who was singing, was it Raperth? But how could his voice come into my room, I… 

Jiang Mian’s thoughts escaped, and his eyelids had begun to get heavy, dangling one above the other.

No, I slept for a long time last night and for a long time in Raperth’s arms in the afternoon. I was still in high spirits just now, I shouldn’t be sleepy so soon now, I still want to go… Look at my… Medical examination file… 

The outstretched hand dropped soundly, Jiang Mian fell on his side on the bed and gradually snored softly.

The door slowly opened, a large amount of water mist along with the arrival of the male mermaid, the room spurts flooded in a sea of clouds of thick lilac.

Raperth’s fishtail lapped the waves as he carefully squeezed through the door while leaning low to avoid brushing against the room’s furnishings, which were too small and delicate for him.

Wet marks blotted across the carpet, and when the mermaid’s tail fins swept past, the dripping water evaporated quickly, leaving no trace.

He coiled around the side of Jiang Mian’s bed, tenderly touched Jiang Mian’s stomach, and exhaled another low and gentle sound wave to brush over Jiang Mian’s body with it.

[Little liar,] the male mermaid gazed sultry, [You’re not hungry at all, just wanted to avoid me, and lied to me that you were hungry.]

After saying this once, he felt reluctant and was about to lower his head and take the human words and repeat them quietly in Jiang Mian’s ear, but not before Jiang Mian was disturbed by his exhaled breath and slightly tilted his head, and his soft and hot ear brushed Raperth’s lips.

Raperth, “…”

The mermaid stiffened from the strands of hair to the tip of his tail, his fins dully stubbed in the air, his eyes opened, his blank pupils staring into the void.

Raperth vaguely remembered that the mermaids who were closely linked to their mates once told him that the first time they met the lips of their lovers was like being killed by electricity without pain, like being molten by lava without burning.

Until then, he had always scoffed at such unrealistic descriptions and suspected that the other man was showing off at his own expense, but right now, his lips were just brushing against Jiang Mian’s ear, and an intense fondness and longing had twisted and shivered Raperth’s soul, leaving him struggling with the choice between prostrating himself on the ground or pinning his mate to his body.

“Little liar,” he murmured, chest rumbling, a hunger for food in his tone, lips brushing sheepishly over Jiang Mian’s ear with every word he spat out, “lie to me.”

The mermaid’s pale face surged with a red tide, beautiful eyes shining, dark as night, as if lit two never-ending golden lamps. He watched Jiang Mian’s symptoms carefully and found that Pearl’s condition wasn’t good, this temperature was completely abnormal, unless his heat had come early… 

At once, Raperth became anxious, and he tentatively picked up a piece of fish and put it on the tip of Jiang Mian’s nose and shook it.

In his sleep, Jiang Mian wandered in the arms of the waves, once again smelled the sweet and tempting aroma. This made him unconsciously secrete a lot of saliva, his throat rolled one after another, to make the swallowing action.

It smells good, it really smells good.

The body drove the brain to recall the sweet yellow fish, the fatty and rich blood and flesh, the delicacies and delicacies that belonged to him alone… Jiang Mian’s lips couldn’t help but twitch a little, tightly closed between the eyebrows, appearing in a trance retrospective look.

But, although I want to eat, I’m not hungry yet?

This was a strange, strange thing, Jiang Mian’s brow gradually shrunk up, twisted into a knot. The food was good, sweet, and made him want to grow a few mouths to eat it; however, his body was telling him plainly that he couldn’t eat it, and the excess food would just clog up his stomach pouch until it roamed upward into his esophagus.

The feeling was so unbearable that Jiang Mian wrinkled his nose and was hesitating with anxiety when he heard a voice in his ear that seemed to be persistently calling him a liar and saying that he had cheated him.

Liar? Calling me?

Jiang Mian choked in anger, and he was about to slur his retort in his sleep when a piece of slightly cold meat came curtly to his lips, enticing him to open his mouth and chew with his teeth.

Well, he opened his mouth, chewed a little, swallowed the fresh, cold, perfect gravy, and chewed two or three more times before his stomach gave a warning of protest, signaling how full he was and no longer needed the delicious, but extra food.

Jiang Mian held it in his mouth, overwhelmed, letting the meat move around. The voice in his ear stopped calling him a little liar, it became gentler, more coddling, kept persuading him, telling him ‘it’s okay to take just one bite, you can eat if you want, no need to think about anything else’.

…I want to eat, but I’m not hungry.

The waves gently rubbed against his cheek, not cool, but hot enough to make him panic and pant. His skin flushed. 

Forget it, I won’t eat, don’t get next to me, I’m so hot.

The wave disobeyed and hugged him tighter, Jiang Mian became more and more irritable, and his ankle bone was even more itchy. He struggled a few times, only to feel like he was firmly bound by a large python, the more he tried to get out, the more tangled he became.

No, really hot, living like a small fire in cooking, or by the steam of boiling water smoked through the whole body, even the icy food was nearly cooked by his lips. Let go, don’t coil around me… 

The waves just stubbornly guarded the spot and refused to retreat.

I want to breathe, thought Jiang Mian in a blur of consciousness, My nose is so dry, like a fever, each exhale is like a fire, I want to breathe, you, you… 

“…Don’t you hug me!”

Jiang Mian blurted out, sitting up abruptly from the bed, dizzy from the heat, his pajamas already wet with spring-like sweat, straining against his skin like impermeable plastic bags, imprisoning him so much that he couldn’t catch his breath.

“Cough!” Jiang Mian choked and coughed, a head down, hazily spit out of his mouth a ball of chewed raw fish blood, even though there was little moisture, the fish rolled down, or dragged a light-colored trace on his clothes.

Jiang Mian’s mouth full of fishy breath, stunned.

It was then that he heard movement beside him and jerked his face around to see a stiff behemoth, dark and heavy pressed against the side of the bed, a pair of golden eyes like burning starlights, raging with a light that Jiang Mian couldn’t see clearly.

“Raperth?!” Jiang Mian lost his voice and shouted, “You… what are you doing here? I…”

The male mermaid’s palm lingered with water, he had backed away a lot, just with cold water on the side of Jiang Mian’s face, from the moment Jiang Mian began to struggle, he knew things weren’t good, the early arrival of the heat period interrupted all his plans, no matter what, he had to be here to take care of his partner.

Still, there was a look of panic in his eyes, just short of screaming in his mind and whipping his tail furiously.

Raw fish blood condensed on Jiang Mian’s tongue, surprisingly vivid and palatable mellow and sweet, compared to the fine meals he ate in the past twenty years, which have become straw paper paste, tasteless, bland and dry.

The facts in front of him are heavier than Tarzan, Jiang Mian stared blankly at the mermaid King, his mind turned, many of the things he couldn’t think of before, now all strung together in this moment.

“The one who fed me last night was also you?” Jiang Mian asked in a shaky voice.

Raperth silent, half a long time, he nodded invisibly.

——That was why he didn’t feel hungry after a whole day, just because he finally ate what he really needed.

Jiang Mian’s face was stiff and his brain was racing, in other words, he wasn’t allergic to raw fish, but Jiang Pingyang had to falsify his allergy record and advise him never to eat cold food; his weak and sickly childhood, walking in the crowd, he always felt out of place; the blood sample of the medical examination, Jiang Pingyang’s cover-up, his silent sigh of relief… 

And, that afternoon twenty years ago, he was ignorant, saw the pool, and stuck his head in like a demon, which led to Jiang Pingyang’s frightened, angry, and extraordinarily harsh reprimand, followed by the “water disobedience” that has been with him for years.

Jiang Mian opened his mouth.

“I am…”

The light in his eyes brightened and faded, and he said only two words, and then couldn’t continue.

He guessed it.

Raperth lowered his head, there was no more need for any roundabout concealment, and whispered, “You are a… hybrid mermaid.”