Stop Thinking Chapter 46: Extra 9: What If… 【Merman X Young Prince】3 (Peach Blossom Moon…)

Chapter 46: Extra 9: What If… 【Merman X Young Prince】3 (Peach Blossom Moon…)

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: Karai

Ruan Yu never expected that his clever plan would backfire so spectacularly. While tales in the strange story books were never to be taken seriously, the one about merman courting both males and females was indeed true. As a result, his initially rejecting actions became an invitation.

With one plan failing, Ruan Yu quickly devised another, hoping to soften the merman’s heart with fake tears. He covered his eyes with his sleeves and pretended to cry.

Sure enough, the merman couldn’t bear to see the young mermaid distressed. His movements hesitated for a moment, as if he wanted to let Ruan Yu go. But then he remembered something and grabbed Ruan Yu’s wrist with gentle force, pulling it away from his face. He stared at Ruan Yu’s eyes, dry and tearless, lost in thought.

This merman seemed much more intelligent than Ruan Yu had imagined. The hesitant and questioning tone of his fake cries even added to the effect.

The merman’s thin lips twitched, almost forming a smile. His humane expression, with a hint of a smile, stunned Ruan Yu into silence, even halting his fake crying.

Though the merman hadn’t done anything too objectionable, his relentless embraces and kisses were enough to make Ruan Yu tear up. His lips were genuinely hurting, already chapped from the constant exposure to water during their journey. They couldn’t withstand such persistent kissing.

Ruan Yu was surprised at how calmly he was handling the situation. Logically, being taken advantage of by a strange male creature should have instilled extreme fear and anger. But both emotions faded quickly, especially when he saw the merman’s strangely familiar face. It felt as though he was meant to be in the merman’s embrace, despite how illogical it seemed to Ruan Yu.

He even began to suspect that the merman might be using some enchantment.

Now it was the merman’s turn to feel wronged.

The merfolk knew nothing of enchantments; they weren’t truly mythical creatures. Mermen and humans were merely distinctions between “sea people” and “land people.” But Ruan Yu didn’t know that.

Therefore, despite blushing and feeling dizzy from the merman’s advances, Ruan Yu didn’t give up futile resistance, at least muttering “no” constantly.

…while foolishly and pitifully sucking on the merman’s smooth fins.

His eyes were wide with tears, looking at the merman with a pleading gaze, silently begging him to end it. But the merman just stared at him as if his eyes could shoot flames, showing no intention of sparing him.

…As a result, Ruan Yu endured the merman’s antics for quite some time.

Luckily, the merman knew how to pamper the delicate young mermaid. As soon as he saw real tears, he stopped, using his tail to gently encircle Ruan Yu along with his makeshift nest, softly patting him with his fins to soothe him to sleep.

After enduring so much turmoil from falling into the water until now, Ruan Yu was physically and mentally exhausted. After being comforted by the merman for a while, his eyelids grew heavy like lead. He reminded himself not to sleep too deeply, keeping one eye open, but he couldn’t help but drift off, drooling in the merman’s embrace, occasionally making small movements either kicking or hitting the merman’s face with his arms.

Fortunately, his small arms and legs didn’t hurt anyone too much. Whenever the merman was disturbed, he patiently straightened out the young mermaid’s limbs and hugged him again.

That night, Ruan Yu slept as peacefully as he did in the palace. There was no helping it; that’s just how he slept, resembling his mother’s favorite pet piglet who never grew up.

Perhaps due to thinking during the day and dreaming at night, Ruan Yu dreamed repeatedly of the merman. Or more accurately, he dreamed of a human man who bore a striking resemblance to the merman. What was even stranger was the scenery in his dream.

At the beginning of the dream, Ruan Yu found himself in a lake, with houses of various shapes and sizes not far from the shore. They seemed expensive but were oddly shaped, neither completely houses nor completely palaces. In the courtyards, there were several strange iron creatures that looked almost human, running around aimlessly. In the dream, Ruan Yu was so scared that his tail curled up and he held his breath, afraid of attracting the attention of those strange creatures.

That’s when the merman appeared.

“He looked entirely human, wearing shamelessly revealing clothing that accentuated broad shoulders, narrow waist, and long legs. Walking towards Ruan Yu, he lightly parted his thin lips and called him ‘Ruan Ruan’. Ruan Yu cautiously submerged into the water, only revealing a pair of round eyes to scrutinize him. But despite his vigilance, the inexplicable familiarity and intimacy from the dream flipped over multiple times, utterly unreasonable. Ruan Yu nearly couldn’t contain the bizarre impulse to wag his tail like a puppy and cuddle up to the man…

Then the dream abruptly ended.

Afterward, Ruan Yu intermittently dreamt of various other scenes, all related to that merman.

Too strange…

When Ruan Yu woke up, the sky was already bright, the palm-sized light at the entrance of the cave glaringly white. The merman had already woken up, sporting a stern expression as he affectionately rubbed against Ruan Yu with his fishtail, his black pupils filled with an unmistakable admiration and infatuation, several times more intense than yesterday.

Like Ruan Yu, he had also spent the night dreaming. In his dream, he was a human, and the little mermaid had indeed become a real little mermaid, not only unafraid of him but also clinging tightly to him, even actively snuggling into his arms.

Reflecting on the dream, he couldn’t help but lift Ruan Yu’s skirt, bending down to peer at the silver-pink tail that appeared in his dream. Since waking up, he had checked it many times. The tail hadn’t grown out yet. No matter, he would check again later.

“What… what are you doing?!”

The merman didn’t know that lifting skirts was something a gallant would do. He did it openly, only to be grabbed by the fin on his ear, his face turning red with shock and embarrassment as Ruan Yu pulled him upwards.

It was like a fiery-tempered young wife scolding her husband.

If it were yesterday, he wouldn’t have dared to twist the merman’s fin, but after waking up, he somehow felt assured that the merman wouldn’t harm him, and his courage grew significantly.

The merman’s lips curled slightly. Despite the mermaid’s soft and gentle complaints, he didn’t get angry. Instead, a tender itch arose in his heart.

“Don’t secretly lift it again, understand?”

Ruan Yu was on the verge of tears. He wanted to put on some pants, but the merman wouldn’t let him. He would use his arms and tail to restrain Ruan Yu’s limbs, rendering him helpless.

The merman flicked his fin, remaining silent.

Ruan Yu suspected that he understood but was pretending to be ignorant. He pursed his fleshy lips and was about to continue his protest when the merman forcefully approached, silencing the latter half of his words.

The thin, crimson tongue, longer and thinner than a human’s, stirred thick, sticky sounds in Ruan Yu’s mouth. At the same time, the merman tried his best to mimic the human’s speech, though it was blurry and hard to understand, Ruan Yu grasped it instantly.

Because what the merman said was, “Ruan… Ruan Ruan…”

In that instant, Ruan Yu’s hair stood on end, his eyes widened in disbelief.

Not out of fear, but a subtle, fateful entanglement of strangeness and astonishment.

He suspected the merman had the same dream as him last night.

This could also explain why the merman suddenly became keen on lifting skirts but did nothing after lifting them, just looking inside with a blank expression and expectation…

Of course, they couldn’t communicate due to the language barrier, making it difficult to verify.

Ruan Yu tried hard to gather the remnants of the dream and successfully found a name.

“Gu… Gu Xiuhan…?” He hesitantly whispered. The man in his dream was called that.

The merman’s language was too different from human language, so these three syllables didn’t sound much like the merman’s real name.

In their language, his name meant “cold, ice”, sounding like a subdued melody to human ears.

But in any case, the merman immediately liked the name the little mermaid gave him.

Because he liked anything the little mermaid gave him.

“Han…” The merman imitated the pronunciation of the human again, simultaneously pinching Ruan Yu’s tender cheeks, forcing him to open his mouth.

And bit by bit, he devoured Ruan Yu’s saliva.

The small nest made up of stacked old clothes was soon ruined by the merman’s nudging and rubbing, making a mess. Some of the thinner fabrics were shredded by the merman’s sharp claws and bone fins.

As a result, the merman was driven into the water by the tearful little mermaid to search for more suitable nesting materials as compensation…

With the help of waterproof silk from the mermaid clan, the merman gradually gathered a lot of human goods and transported them to the cave with the efforts of the entire clan. He knew that the little mermaid was delicate and loved fine things, so most of the items were high-quality.

There were various clothes, bedding, utensils for dining, silver chopsticks, precious spices like salt and pepper to prevent the little mermaid from getting tired of seafood, desserts to improve the taste, notebooks for her pastime, and even a few matches, an oil lamp, and plenty of dry firewood to illuminate and warm the cave for Ruan Yu.

The damp and dark sea-eroded cave gradually transformed into a small home by the merman.

Ruan Yu didn’t really want the merman to gather things for him because he still held onto the hope that the merman would send him back to the palace. Every day, he racked his brains, using every method he could think of to convey the words “send me home” to the merman.

At first, the merman pretended to be ignorant, pretending not to understand, but gradually, he tore apart the disguise. Because he couldn’t bear the thought of the little mermaid “wanting to leave him”. Every time he saw Ruan Yu trying to express that idea in any way, a corrosive pain and panic surged in his chest, urging him to want to brand the little mermaid as “already belonging to him”.

So some things became more and more excessive.

The most obvious manifestation was that the clothes the merman found always got damaged quickly. Sometimes, when the merman couldn’t wait and Ruan Yu resisted, he would tear the clothes into pieces with his claws. Sometimes they weren’t torn, but they were too dirty, almost soaked through, and couldn’t be cleaned with seawater, so they had to be thrown away.

The merman knew exactly how to slowly erode Ruan Yu’s bottom line, each time going further than before, eating up the soft and tender sweet dumplings, wanting to squeeze out the filling.

Gradually, Ruan Yu allowed himself to be spoiled by the merman, who at first seemed fierce and domineering but was actually like a loyal guard dog. His temper became more and more willful. When bullied, he would cry and hit the fish, even though the merman’s muscular body, bronzed like brass, was harder than Ruan Yu’s fist… but at least that’s what it meant.

As for whether Ruan Yu liked being treated like this by the merman…

In fact, even he himself couldn’t say for sure.

Logically, he shouldn’t like it.

Both of them were men, their communication wasn’t smooth, their appearances were vastly different despite the merman’s handsomeness, and being forced to do things all day long… There were too many reasons not to like it.

But…

Perhaps it was related to those strange dreams. The meeting with the merman seemed to trigger something. Gears turned, and old memories, like disturbed sand on the seabed, swirled up.

Dreams related to the merman kept intermittently intruding into Ruan Yu’s every night’s sleep, and they felt so real, as if they had occurred in a time and space that Ruan Yu couldn’t reach, as if there was another world where they met, got to know each other, and became familiar.

That kind of feeling was indescribably mysterious. It made Ruan Yu unable to firmly refuse the merman. Moreover, even if we remove the influence of the dreams… Ruan Yu was probably still going to be firmly held by the merman. It was just a matter of sooner or later.

The little prince, as precious as gold and jade, with a heart and ears as soft as each other, was born to be nibbled away at his bottom line, half reluctantly and half voluntarily consumed by the stubborn and shameless villain merman.

 

 

 

 

 

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