He and It Chapter 21: The King’s Pearl (21)

Chapter 21: The King’s Pearl (21)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: KarateChopMonkey

 

Jiang Mian’s brain was boiling like a fire, and he could barely breathe as he tugged anxiously at his soaked pajamas.

“Why did you keep this from me?” His throat felt like it was on fire, a fire that came with such force that he couldn’t resist it, “You called me a liar, but you…”

He thought again of Raperth’s hesitations, his ambiguous answers, amidst his desperate sweating, the drops of water sticking to his eyelashes in locks, his hair damp against his face.

He didn’t have Raperth’s exaggerated sense of smell, but by now, Jiang Mian himself could faintly smell an oddly sweet aroma brewing beneath his hot skin.

Burning with anxiety and wanting nothing more than to rush out of this unbearable feeling, Jiang Mian said to Raperth without thinking, “You’re lying to me, is there more?”

The male mermaid arched his spine in injury and flinched backwards as if he had been struck hard on the head. Raperth closed his eyes and drew a long, shuddering breath.

Mermaids could easily tell if a person was happy, sad, honest and unadulterated, and this was the simplest of gifts. People’s sweat and body movements would betray their innermost thoughts, whether it was the speed of their heartbeat, the rise and fall of their body temperature, or the slow pace of their breathing. Raperth could read any living thing he wanted to understand, but there was only one person whose reactions would make him nervous.

That person was Jiang Mian.

“I didn’t… want to lie to you,” said the mermaid, carefully curling his tail and shrinking his massive body. Though his instincts were growling at him in desperation, roaring about how hard it was for his mate at the moment and how much he needed to take care of him, the urge to nest almost broke him, “but your situation is… well… dangerous.”

He tried his best to release the scent of relief and calm as he explained to Jiang Mian, “You were raised by… a human… you are convinced you are a human. If I took the liberty of telling you… who you really are… your mind… would be confused… you would…”

“What else?!” Jiang Mian interrupted him angrily while ripping the annoying pajamas from his body, “What else are you hiding from me, tell me, tell me everything!”

Jiang Mian’s bones and legs were weak, his arms and legs were hot and numb, and he struggled for days to get out of the shackles, and his voice took on an angry sobbing tone.

Raperth couldn’t bear it, but didn’t dare to pick him up and coax him at this time, so he quietly reached out and tore a slit for Jiang Mian from behind.

“My soulmate…” Raperth said the words he had longed to say, “It’s you.”

Jiang Mian pulled down his soaked pajamas and hit Raperth on the back of his hand several times, not allowing him to get close to him. His chest was heaving with anger, “Then I… What’s wrong with me?”

“You’re going through a heat… here it comes.” Oh, Raperth hastily and pitifully retracted his hand, “You’ve been postponing it for too long… and it’s been building up inside you… too long… and the encounter with me triggered it quickly. So we… when we touch… it feels… like an electric shock… like burning.”

“Then…”

“You need food… nesting… a safe environment.” Raperth immediately picked up just as Jiang Mian spoke, looking at him invitingly, “Don’t worry… There’s no one left, who can hurt you.”

At his last words, Jiang Mian’s brain, which was about to roll away, seemed to skim with a hint of unpleasant realization, but he was too restless and uncomfortable at the moment to think about every word Raperth said.

“You… get out.” Jiang Mian was both ashamed and annoyed; soulmate, hot flush — these terms clearly explained Raperth’s perverse behavior when confronted with him, including his clingy possessiveness, the burning look in his eyes whenever he looked at him.

He had always thought that it was a mermaid’s natural straightforwardness and openness…  Now it seemed to be just another “I treat you as a friend, you treat me as a suitor” cliché?

Raperth was shocked, [What?]

In his haste, the mermaid’s sound waves echoed through the air in fear, and he hurriedly cut back to human language, “You need to be cared for… nested… and your fever will only subside if you build a bond…”

[You… get out!] Jiang Mian switched to mermaid language, sweating profusely, and narrowed his eyes indignantly at Raperth, “I can build my own nest, I can take care of myself!”

Raperth’s fins exploded in total panic, “Little one… you can’t…”

“I can learn!” Jiang Mian raised his voice, “I don’t want you to stay here, I’m hot!”

The male mermaid looked at him in frustration and sadness, Jiang Mian’s scent rampaging through his olfactory sac, booming like a thunderstorm, fleeing him with fire, eager to push him out the door.

Yet what hurt more than the rejection was that he was afraid. Pearl was afraid of himself, but also of the unknown heat period and what changes it would bring to his body. Too hasty, or too soon, if the speed of revealing the truth could be a little more gradual… 

In any case, this was his fault after all. If he could have resisted the temptation to engage in prolonged contact with his partner, then perhaps tonight wouldn’t have been the moment when the fever hit.

“Okay,” Raperth said sadly, “I’m… out. I want you to be… happy.”

The fog rolled back, the splash slowly receded with the mermaid, the door closed, and peace returned to the room as Jiang Mian shoved his sweaty pajamas off the bed and into the trash, suddenly feeling tired and bitter and wanting to cry uncontrollably.

In all fairness, Raperth was just an unlucky person who was affected by the incident, and Jiang Mian was full of anger that he couldn’t get out, just because the real culprit that made him angry was long gone.

Jiang Pingyang had been lying to him, his adoptive father, the last family member he thought he could rely on in the world, had actually been lying to him. Jiang Pingyang always said that Jiang Mian was a baby abandoned on the beach, fatherless and motherless, and he saw that he was alone, so he adopted the child and named him Jiang Mian.

But all this was not true… Was Jiang Mian really allergic to the Institute’s water, or did Jiang Pingyang put something in it? Was he really allergic to raw and cold meat, or did Jiang Pingyang deliberately keep him away from the mermaid’s diet?

Thinking of that night many years ago when he vomited and had diarrhea because he had mistakenly eaten raw fish and had to curl up on the emergency room bed, sobbing and convulsing in pain, Jiang Mian clenched his teeth, unwilling to let the tears that he couldn’t stop come out.

“He lied to me, and you refused to tell the truth…” He sucked in his nose, fought through his body’s aches and pains, and reluctantly climbed out of bed. He didn’t know what nesting was and how to do it. He could only rely on his instincts, dragging the quilt laboriously onto the carpet and letting the bed be a support behind it.

Then he opened the closet again, crying while yanking out the soft fabric inside, wearing many times the woolen jacket, including the necessary thick blanket in winter, etc., to prop up a small nest in the quilt. In fact, there was a scarf left by Jiang Pingyang in his closet, but Jiang Mian only glared at it with hatred and closed the door, refusing to accept it.

Jiang Mian sobbed as he burrowed into this nest and shrunk himself into a ball, but how could this be called a nest? It was rudimentary and unstable, so Jiang Mian crawled out again with great difficulty, turning out many dolls and pillows left behind as a child and stuffing them into the sides with difficulty.

That’s it, he thought defiantly, no one had ever taught me how to build a nest anyway. I’m not a real human, I’m not a real mermaid, I’m nothing, nothing counts, no one has ever been willing to say a word of truth to me. I built my nest like this, whoever wants to laugh at me, let them laugh all they want!

Raperth wandered anxiously back and forth in the corridor, and leaned over the door, and couldn’t stop scraping the door with his nails, he didn’t dare to scrape too deep, otherwise the noise would be harsh and would make Jiang Mian more annoyed.

“Little one…” He whimpered lowly, ear fins drooping decadently, “Little one… don’t shut me out… let me in and take care of you…”

After using human language, he continued in mermaid language and then pleaded, [You are my mate, how can I leave you? Let me take care of you, feed you, I need you to be happy… Please, please allow me to do this, Pearl, I…]

Hearing voices in the room, Raperth hovered on his hands and knees and rapped on the door in a panic, “Are you crying… little one? Let me in… can’t I be good to you? I beg you!”

Jiang Mian cried louder, in fact Raperth had always been good to him, he was a gentle and sweet being. But was this kindness because he was the mermaid’s destined soulmate, or was it out of his own?

Jiang Mian huffed, “You’re only being nice to me because I’m your so-called soulmate!”

“Nonsense!” Raperth bared his fangs and distinguished in a fury, “I didn’t find out who you were until the day you asked me for advice… I then knew you were a half-blood mermaid!”

He spoke aloud and immediately softened his tone, “I’m sorry… I shouldn’t have been mean to you. Let me in… let me take care of you, okay?”

Jiang Mian shrank into the nest, his joints swollen and aching, his whole body weak. He felt thirsty, hungry and thirsty, but this hunger and cold wasn’t out of his body, but something from a deeper level that nagged at him almost never-endingly.

“You could’ve been honest with me…” He murmured, covering his face, feeling as if he were alone, walking on a field of ice covered with coals, the sky terribly cold and the earth terribly hot.

Raperth’s voice was low, lost and muffled from behind the door, “I was afraid. I’ve seen the cubs that were adopted by the different races… and many of them… unable to figure out who they were… banished themselves into the abyss and never came back. I was afraid that you, too… will be pulled by two identities and… in the end… forget who you are.”

Jiang Mian closed his eyes and just wept silently, without making a sound.

He knew that the weak used to use dark trickery to harm others because they had no other means, as Fabian, as this seemingly large and lofty, indestructible Sigma; but for the strong, honesty was their nature, and since they had already controlled the power of destruction, there was no need to lie to others.

Raperth said he was afraid… Was this proof that he has lost that power in front of him?

This fact strangely soothed him, causing him to unconsciously begin to adjust the pace of his breathing and his heartbeat to gradually calm down.

Jiang Mian sniffled, his voice as faint as a gnat, “…Come in.”

Raperth’s ear fins twitched sharply, and he was instantly elated, flinging the scales of his fish tail to a rustle, his eyes suddenly glowing.

But instead of rushing in, he opened the door first, carefully plowing a pattern into the panel with his fingernails.

The vapor filled the room and Jiang Mian, slightly better off, muttered, “What are you… What are you doing?”

“Making a mark.” Raperth replied earnestly, drawing a small man with little skill, then awkwardly wrapping a large fish around the man, calling it a mark, but actually more like a doodle, “During a heat… we mark the entrance to the nest… so that no other fish… will disturb.”

He held down his excitement and waited until he had concentrated on the drawing, then turned to look at Jiang Mian.

Oh Abyss… His mate, his lovely pearl, who smelled like the sum of all the good things in the world, was now like a small fish pursued for three thousand miles by a school of hungry sharks, huddled in a tiny nest, his hair disheveled, his body burning red, his eyes puffy from crying.

Little one, how did you get yourself into this state?

The mermaid swam over heartily, he held back the waves, controlled the moisture on the ground, all dry and cold skin, sniffed Jiang Mian.

In theory, the best place to spend the hot period is in the cave of the sea cliff, with soft seaweed, sponges and fish skin to build a small couch to rest, and then piled around the fatty food. But since this was Jiang Mian’s chosen nesting site, Raperth couldn’t go against his wishes.

He looked to his right and left, first took the pillows off the bed, and then went to another room, also searched for many unused clean pillows, first rubbed them one by one, so that they were tainted with his scent, and then stuffed them next to Jiang Mian, for him to build an overlapping, large as a cloud of pillow fortress, and then picked up Jiang Mian, carefully placing him in the middle.

Jiang Mian opened his eyes wide and looked at Raperth’s busy figure going back and forth.

The mermaid didn’t stop working, the nesting instinct overwhelmed everything and made him vow to make a satisfactory nest to make his partner comfortable, warm and safe.

He then followed Jiang Mian’s previous template and collected many pillows and toys, large or small, and planted them in the cracks of the pillow fortress, making sure that Jiang Mian could reach them as soon as he reached out. But selfishness led him to throw away all the fish-shaped pillows in anger, because Jiang Mian could only hold him.

While passing by who knows whose room, the male mermaid unceremoniously broke into the room, swung around and yanked away the other party’s wireless projector, which, according to his absorbed memories, could be used to magnify something interesting for Jiang Mian’s relief.

Finally, Raperth stood at the edge of the fort, he scooped up the sad Jiang Mian, wrapped him in a thin, soft blanket, then, burrowed into a large pile of pillows with him, leaving Jiang Mian snuggled in his arms like a little koala, going from an unhappy little bread roll to one that was starting to get happy.

Raperth kissed Jiang Mian’s temple comfortingly, and rubbed his cheeks fondly into his own scent.

[Good boy,] he cooed, [Are you better, is it still hard? Don’t be afraid, I’m here, I’m right here.]