"2016.7.17, night.
Our third day in the sea off Iceland.
Rhine conducted a radar search in the captain's cabin, and there is still no whereabouts of the mermaid. I doubt very much whether the mermaid can survive in such a cold water temperature, but Rhine insisted that he had searched for the mermaid here last year.
According to known records, mermaids belong to tropical creatures, but I don't want to let go of even a little hope.
I'm so eager to see a real mermaid.
I hope that my nickname can continue the great biologist's unfinished exploration of this mysterious creature. "
I picked up a pen and wrote in my diary, looking at the small round window of the boathouse in a strange way.
It was dark and gloomy outside, and I could only see the warm reflection of the desk lamp on the glass of the window, and my thin outline in the reflection. With black hair, black eyes, and an extremely pale face, he looks like a drug overdose addict.
I smiled. Rhine said I was paranoid sometimes, and maybe I was.
As I wrote this sentence, the tip of the pen suddenly scratched the paper deeply because of a sudden restlessness. At this moment, there was a burst of exclamation from outside——
"Desaro, my little Wallace! Come out, there is something underwater!"
My hands trembled suddenly, my body reacted faster than my mind, and I rushed to the captain's cabin with a stride, and happened to collide with Rhine who came out, he opened his arms and hugged me violently, pointing The screen of the deep-sea camera monitor excitedly said: "Wallace, look, I told you that there are mermaids here, you should have believed me earlier!"
When I opened my eyes wide and focused on the moving shadow on the screen, I lost my breath for a moment. It was an incomparably clear streamlined outline, clearly different from sharks and dolphins in that there were no fins on both sides of his upper body, but a pair of two limbs that were spread out like humans.
It was, indeed, a mermaid.
"Quick...cast the net quickly! Rhine, what are you waiting for!"
I almost jumped up as if waking up from a dream, and punched Rhine's chest, but he grabbed my wrist and laughed: "You think I'm as dull as you? This mermaid has been confused by our shark-catching scent Otherwise, why don't you think it escaped?"
"You bastard!"
I immediately rushed to the deck like lightning, and saw that the sailors on the ship had already changed their equipment and dived, spreading the net under the water. There are luminous buoys on the fishing net, and when they are scattered on the sea, they are like stars scattered on the sky. They submerged under the undulating sea surface as the sailors dived, and my heart was also ups and downs, and my nerves were tense as if they were oppressed by water pressure.
This will be one of the most astonishing discoveries in the history of human biology.
Thinking of this, I couldn't help but stiffen my back, stood on tiptoe and stepped on the mast, wishing I could dive down with those sailors and bring that mermaid up.
"Wallace, relax - don't fall into the water!"
Rhine smirked behind me, my calf tightened and was wrapped around his arms, and I was so frightened that I almost responded to his joke, I fell forward, and he quickly grabbed the back of my neck, two The individual fell to the deck at once. My ass was almost pressed against his face. Fortunately, my weight is relatively light, otherwise his proud nose bridge would have been completely broken.
"Dude, you don't have to be so eager to kiss my ass, do you?"
I moved my body and got up, narrowed my eyes and gave him a narrow smile. Rhine just stood on the deck indifferently, and grinned: "From a biological point of view, the shape of the butt is very good, and it tastes good. This is another great discovery tonight besides the mermaid. .”
"Your knees are not too hard." I kicked his knees, revealing a mouthful of white teeth.
In the next second, the sound of splashing water under the boat immediately took all my attention. I squatted beside the mast intently, watching the sailors drag the luminous fishing net and put it on the hanger. The fishing nets are intertwined, and a wet silhouette is clearly wrapped inside, writhing like a captured shark.
When the hanger was raised, his long tail leaked from the fishing net and hung down in a graceful arc.
The only mermaid ever discovered in human history is the red-tailed mermaid in the Indian Ocean, but this one is different. Its tail is black, but it is not always pure black.
I don't know if it is because of the reflection of the water surface, showing a ray of cold blue like the center of a firework, but a little bit of red at the end, the red is shocking, like blood on a sharp knife.
For some reason, my eyeball suddenly felt a little painful like being stabbed, and a trace of ominousness also grew in my heart. I vaguely recalled the legend that Mr. Shinichi, a senior who has studied mermaids for fifty years, told me when I visited Okinawa a few years ago.
It was a creature known as the "Night Fiend". The tail was blue-black with a tinge of red, just as I had seen it before. He told me with cautious panic on his face, saying only that it was a creature more terrifying than a tiger shark. This fear does not lie in his attack power, but in the strange power it carries.
He warned me that if you encounter this kind of mermaid, you must not bring it ashore and treat it like a red-tailed mermaid, otherwise unimaginable bad luck will befall you.
"Evil from Hell". He described it that way.
But I'm not Japanese, and I don't understand Japanese culture. I don't know much about the meaning of this word. I can only guess that it is roughly the same as Chinese evil spirits and Western demons.
As for how terrible it is, in that conversation, Mr. Shinichi did not tell me, but ended with a secretive hiss. As if to avoid my questioning and visits for me, when I went to Okinawa the next year, it was the news of his death that turned me down. This puzzle will remain in my memory forever.
At this time, this legend really appeared in front of me.
Regardless of Mr. Shinichi's warning before, the mermaid itself is already a temptation close to death for me, a paranoid mystic biologist.
When it was put on the deck and put into the water tank, my heartbeat seemed to be still. With the assistance of the sailors, I squatted down carefully, injected an appropriate amount of anesthetic into its tail, and dared to touch the curve of the fish's tail after the injection. The cold and thin scales on the fish's tail feel different from all fish. They are smooth and thinner than the skin of a dolphin, even... close to the texture of human skin, like a human leg wrapped in a film.
I was taken aback by this thought, and my hand inadvertently touched the end of the tail, and immediately I felt a tingling pain in my belly. I was surprised to find that there are barbs on its tail, and the triangular tail fin is as sharp as a real blade. The blood dripped from between my fingers on the scales, and disappeared in an instant, as if it had been sucked away.
The mermaid suddenly struggled, and its tail bent towards me in an incredible arc, like a boa constrictor trying to wrap itself around my ankles, and even a few sailors couldn't hold it back.
I fell down on the deck all of a sudden, froze in place, and froze as if in a daze.
"Stupid boy, are you stupid?"
Rhine dragged me up from the ground, pulled me aside, stepped on the tail of the fish that was attacking me, and injected the remaining anesthetic into it neatly.
"Don't! That's the dosage for the shark. Excessive dosage may kill it!" I screamed, and saw that the fish tail quickly calmed down, and hurriedly broke away from Rhine's arm, and pulled the fishing net from him. off the body.
My hands trembled uncontrollably. The excitement, excitement, and fear mixed in my memory made my movements very slow. When the fishing net was pulled off his head, revealing his whole body, I trembled all over. Suo took a step back to gain a foothold.
This is the first time I have faced a living mermaid for real.
He is completely different from the corpses in the collection and the skeletons in the photos. If you don't look at the fish tail and sharp ears, he is a human at all.
He was lying there with his body bent, his face on one side, his hair (although I don't know if it should be called hair) strands of wet hair hanging down his neck, he couldn't see his face, only the sharp line of his jaw . Judging from the profile, it may have a good human face, but of course, this is not my concern.
My eyes stretched down, and the undulating muscles on his back stretched and stretched, shaped like a bowstring ready to go, full of the power of a beast in the water. I even suspected that he would suddenly jump up and bite me like a shark.
This is a mermaid that looks like the half body of an adult man.
I used to think that mermaids are genderless and only change sex like eels when they mate. At this time, this paradox completely crushed my conjecture.
My gaze involuntarily went to its lower abdomen, and there was actually a protruding thing there, but it was wrapped by scales growing down from the external oblique muscle, and a small gap was exposed at the pubic bone.
That should be similar to the reproductive structure of dolphins, which only show erections during mating, the same as the columnar reproductive organs of humans.
But do mermaids have the same reproductive system as humans? Do they reproduce similarly to humans
The curiosity in my heart couldn't be restrained, so I took out the flashlight on my back, planning to do a simple inspection right here. However, just as my flashlight passed over his head, and just when he bent down, he suddenly moved, only a small ups and downs, but I immediately bounced off my body vigilantly, and Rhine stood in front of me, Prevent it from attacking suddenly.
But he didn't make any big movements, just raised his head slightly, and the wet hair slipped a gap from his face, allowing people to see half of his face. Under his eyelids, there is a layer of fine hair similar to eyelashes, but it is light-colored like a fishbone, while the pupils are dark, bottomlessly deep, like an undercurrent floating in the deep sea, without focal length. empty.
But I knew very clearly that he was staring at me, even looking at me.
I felt the creeps. Based on the experience of biologists, I can't be more sure that that kind of look is... looking at me as prey.