Chapter 6: Mama

Xiu froze for a moment, then his thin lips parted, slowly uttering a single word:
“Stupid.”

Wen Chu: “…Oh.”

He lowered his tentacles.

Now Xiu didn’t find him annoying, but stupid instead.

After that kiss, he had successfully obtained ten days, four hours, and eight minutes of lifespan. At least he wouldn’t die in the short term.

Wen Chu thought about it and was still happy, so he leaned against Xiu’s fingers again.

Xiu looked at the little jellyfish that kept sticking to him and remembered an important matter. “By the way, we are not lovers now. Don’t say nonsensical things in front of the narwhal anymore.”

Wen Chu’s clinging motion paused.

He asked with genuine sincerity, “Then is there still a possibility for me to become your lover? What should I do? I want to keep kissing you.”

Xiu: …

Xiu endured the shame and said, “I can let you kiss me, but it’s impossible to have a further relationship with you. I am a siren, you are a jellyfish. Even if I were to really look for a lover, I should find another siren.”

“A siren cannot be with a jellyfish.”

“Oh…” Wen Chu said slowly, “Is it because of reproductive isolation?”

Xiu nearly lost his balance while swimming. He stopped abruptly. “Who taught you all this?”

“Different species have reproductive isolation, the doctor said so.” As Wen Chu spoke, he looked at Xiu, even more puzzled. “Do you really want to have a baby?”

Xiu’s lower body was a sapphire blue fish tail. He had a slender figure, and including his tail, he was at least over two meters tall. The scales on his fish tail were smooth and sharp.

The scales started from Xiu’s lean and powerful waist and spread downwards, making it impossible for Wen Chu to see Xiu’s sexual characteristics. But judging from Xiu’s upper body, he thought the other should be male.

He was also male. Two males couldn’t have a baby, so reproductive isolation shouldn’t be a problem, right?

“Shut up. I don’t want one, and I can’t have one,” Xiu directly squeezed the nonsensical jellyfish into a ball.

“A lover is a complex and important relationship. It cannot be established so casually. It requires a long period of getting along and understanding to confirm that the other person is compatible with you. It’s not something that can be determined by a simple kiss, and it has nothing to do with procreation. Understand?”

Wen Chu didn’t understand, but he felt that if he didn’t understand soon, he would be kneaded into a jellyfish ball by Xiu, so he slowly said, “Oh…”

Xiu’s reaction was so strong.

Could it really be because they couldn’t have offspring?

Wen Chu fell into a dilemma.

He only knew about human mating; he didn’t know how mermen and jellyfish mated.

Because he was thinking seriously, the jellyfish slowly released the tentacles wrapped around Xiu and went limp, looking listless and dejected.

Xiu looked down at the jellyfish, and after a long moment, he sighed helplessly.

“Jellyfish,” he called to Wen Chu.

His eyelashes were also a very pale platinum blonde. When he looked down, it made his transparent blue eyes look even more divine and dazzling. Xiu was undoubtedly extremely handsome, just that he rarely showed expression, as cold as a statue.

Now, a hint of imperceptible helplessness and embarrassment flashed across this cold statue.

“Stop overthinking. Didn’t I already agree to let you kiss? Just be good and don’t cause me any more trouble.”

Whether what Wen Chu said was true or false, he couldn’t just watch Wen Chu die.

Since it involved the progress of his mission, Wen Chu immediately threw the matter of offspring to the back of his mind. “I’ll be good. I’m the best.”

“Words are no proof,” Xiu flicked his bell. “First, no more spouting nonsense in front of the narwhal.”

Xiu calculated the time. It would take at most two hours to get to the shallows from here. Even with the time to find the parrotfish, it would be a day at most. After that, the narwhal should leave.

“If you can last for two days without spouting nonsense, I’ll let you kiss,” Xiu added.

“Okay!” Wen Chu agreed readily.

After agreeing, he asked carefully, “How long is two days?”

Xiu: …

“Two days is two sunsets. Do you know what a sunset is? It’s the scene we saw on the surface of the sea just now.”

“I understand,” Wen Chu was full of motivation.

He looked at the light screen in front of him and said happily, “Then I can still live for ten sunsets. I can wait two days for you.”

Xiu paused, didn’t say anything, just grabbed the jellyfish and quickened his swimming speed.
.
The narwhal waited in place for a full two hours.

For the first hour, she could still comfort herself by saying it was because Wen Chu was unconscious and the situation was serious. But by the second hour, she couldn’t help but start to doubt whether Xiu even remembered to come back.

Finally, when the sun had set and the ocean was pitch black, she saw Xiu from a distance.

And the transparent jellyfish, the size of a basketball, in Xiu’s hand.

The narwhal asked in astonishment, “Where’s Wen Chu?”

Why did he go out and come back with a different jellyfish?

“I’m here.” The jellyfish in Xiu’s hand waved its tentacles at her in a very human-like manner.

Before the narwhal could speak, Wen Chu continued like pouring out beans, “Xiu and I are not lovers. We just kissed, so we can’t be considered lovers. I was wrong before, don’t believe what I said.”

Narwhal: ?!?!

Xiu: …

Xiu’s hand holding Wen Chu tightened. He looked at the jellyfish, which was clearly trying to take credit, and wished he could go back ten minutes and knock out the version of himself who had blindly trusted Wen Chu.

Why did he believe a jellyfish’s nonsense again and again??

The narwhal, on the other hand, looked at Wen Chu, then at Xiu who was holding him.

She was colorblind and couldn’t see colors, so she couldn’t tell whether the marks on Xiu’s neck were ripples from the seawater or something else.

But looking at Xiu’s obviously unnaturally red and swollen lips, she fell silent.

“Um…” the narwhal observed Xiu’s expression and said carefully, “Actually, I’ve seen many fish in the aquarium. I’m quite knowledgeable.”

“I, as a whale, do not discriminate against interspecies romance.”

Xiu: …

Wen Chu: ovo?

He couldn’t clear his name even if he jumped into the Pacific Ocean.
.
Because Wen Chu had suddenly fainted, they had been delayed for quite some time. Xiu didn’t stop to rest but had the narwhal lead him towards the shallows.

Although the narwhal was puzzled as to why Wen Chu had suddenly grown larger, she attributed it all to mutations after the nuclear power plant leak and didn’t ask further.

And although Wen Chu had grown quite a bit, he was still a small jellyfish and couldn’t keep up with Xiu and the narwhal’s pace at all.

After falling behind several times, Xiu, with a cold face, picked him up and threw him… onto the narwhal’s back.

“Why can’t I be on you?” Wen Chu asked Xiu, who was behind them, while desperately clinging to the narwhal as they sped forward.

“I’m very light. It won’t take you much effort to carry me.”

Xiu said coldly, “Because you’re annoying. Why do you have so many whys?”

Alright, he was indeed very annoying.

Wen Chu shut his mouth. Just as he was thinking of staying quiet, he suddenly noticed the narwhal was winking at him.

A fish rolling its eyes was a somewhat startling sight. Wen Chu quietly crawled over and asked her, “What’s wrong? Are you tired?”

The narwhal lowered her voice, “Lord Siren cares most about the fish in the sea. Ask him about the parrotfish, and he’ll be willing to talk to you patiently.”

The two of them couldn’t even find a topic of conversation. It was making this fish anxious.

“Okay, thank you,” Wen Chu understood and quietly crawled back. “Xiu, I have one last question.”

Xiu: “Ask.”

Wen Chu repeated the narwhal’s words, “Why are you looking for the parrotfish?”

As expected, this time Xiu didn’t say he was annoying, but paused and said, “…Her child asked me to find her.”

“Some of the automated fishing boats in the coastal waters are solar-powered and have not lost power yet. They are still fishing back and forth. But because no one is harvesting, the fishing nets are crammed with dense fish carcasses.”

“The parrotfish originally lived in the coral reefs of the shallows. As the coral bleached, she had to take her child to find a habitat in the deep sea. It was then that her child was caught by a fishing net. At the last moment when the net closed, she pushed the little parrotfish out through a gap in the net, and was caught herself.”

“I’m going to the shallows this time at the request of the little parrotfish, to rescue his mother from the fishing net. Even if it’s just a corpse, I have to bring it out.”

Wen Chu couldn’t help but ask, “Then what about the little parrotfish? Why didn’t he come with you?”

Xiu said calmly, “He followed his mother’s words and swam towards the deep sea, looking for a safe haven. When I met him, he was crushed to a pulp by a collapse in the underwater mine. He is dead now.”

Wen Chu fell silent.

Xiu let out a cold scoff. “Don’t randomly teach little kids to pry into stories. He gets upset after hearing them.”

Don’t think he didn’t see Wen Chu and the narwhal whispering.

The narwhal shook her head, her long horn creating a small vortex in the ocean, pretending she didn’t understand.

Xiu looked at the motionless jellyfish on the narwhal’s back, then looked away. “Narwhal, tell him about the Arctic. He really wants to go there.”

The narwhal was taken aback.

She opened her mouth. She had a thousand words to say about the Arctic, but at this moment, she couldn’t find any adjectives.

After a long while, she finally said, “That is my home.”

With this as an opening, the fifty-year-old narwhal began, her voice hoarse and old:

“Actually, I was caught and taken to an aquarium when I was two. My memory of the Arctic is not that clear. But I remember, every year when the herring gathered with the warm current, the dense schools of fish were like a tornado. Orca pods would come and slap them with their tails to break them up, feasting on them. I followed my mother, not having to worry about the herring separating us.”

“Walruses would also rest on the floating ice with their young. There were often polar bears around—they loved to steal the walrus pups.”

“There were long periods when the sun never set. There were deep blue glaciers everywhere, and the seawater was clear and cold, with Arctic krill and jellyfish darting through.”

“There were also long periods when the moon was always up. You could look up and see the aurora, like silk ribbons hanging in the sky… Under the aurora, Atlantic white-sided dolphins would leap out of the water. My mother was teaching me to stay away from Greenland.”

If a fish could make expressions, the narwhal would want to smile now.

She was no longer young and thought she had long forgotten what the Arctic looked like. But now, even though her eyes were cloudy, the time in the Arctic was still vivid in her memory.

It was as if she had never left, still the two-year-old little narwhal following the pod.

“I miss my mama,” the narwhal finally said in a small voice.

Narwhals are extremely difficult to keep in captivity. She was the only successfully captive-bred narwhal, once featured in headlines of major media outlets and had her picture taken with countless celebrities and influencers.

But a whale doesn’t care about these camera flashes. As a whale, all she wanted was the deep waters of the Arctic, or the trail of an Arctic tern flashing across the sky.

To be able to eat her fill every day and sleep by her mother’s side.

Wen Chu clung to the narwhal’s body. He pondered for a while, wanting to ask many questions, but in the end, he felt the current situation wasn’t right and temporarily swallowed his questions.

He patted the narwhal’s head with his tentacles.

“You can go back to the Arctic,” Wen Chu said firmly. “You wait, I’ll plead with Xiu more. I can give Xiu a lot of lifespan…”

“I can hear you,” Xiu said expressionlessly. “Jellyfish, don’t you think you should say such things behind my back?”

Wen Chu let out an “ah,” and slowly turned around, facing away from Xiu.

He didn’t understand why he had to face away, but he was obedient.

Xiu was so speechless he almost wanted to laugh.

Xiu and the narwhal had been moving at full speed. While they were talking, Wen Chu had followed them back to the shallows.

The narwhal would be beached if she got too close to the shore. Plus, it was already dark, the coastline was long, and the fishing nets were hard to spot. Not only would it be difficult to find the fish, but they could also easily get trapped in the nets. Xiu and the narwhal decided to rest for the night.

Wen Chu was picked up by Xiu and brought into the white coral reef. Xiu gently put him down, found a few large pieces of seaweed from the surroundings, and stacked them up as a cushion. He said to the jellyfish, who had clearly been preoccupied since hearing the two stories, “Go to sleep. We have to be busy tomorrow morning.”

Wen Chu climbed onto the seaweed cushion, still wincing and retracting his tentacles from the coral underneath.

So hard.

He looked at Xiu. “Then where are you sleeping?”

Xiu flicked his tail, resting his massive tail on the white coral reef next to him, and casually picked up a piece of coral to use as a pillow.

“I’ll be right next to you. Sleep peacefully.”

Xiu thought Wen Chu was still sad because of the stories and comforted him awkwardly, “The stories in the ocean are all like this. You don’t have to be too sad.”

Wen Chu didn’t say anything. He directly snuggled into Xiu’s arms.

The transparent jellyfish leaned against Xiu’s chest and asked carefully, “Can I ask one question before I sleep?”

“Go ahead.”

“Ma… ma, what is that?” Wen Chu did his best to imitate the pronunciation of Xiu and the narwhal.

Both Xiu and the narwhal had mentioned “mama.” This fish not only saved the little parrotfish but also raised the narwhal. Wen Chu was really curious about what kind of existence this was.

Xiu looked at the懵懂 (muddled/ignorant) jellyfish in his arms, paused for a long time, then said slowly, “A mama is… a mother that every fish has. A mother is…”

He got stuck.

Turritopsis dohrnii are creatures that reproduce asexually. When they grow to a certain stage, they will split off polyps from their bodies. These polyps grow up to become new jellyfish.

He didn’t know how to explain “mama” to a jellyfish that had no concept of kinship.

“A mama is… the fish that takes care of that fish as it grows up, the one that gave that fish life. All fish can be mamas, as long as they have children,” Xiu explained with difficulty.

“Oh.”

Wen Chu looked at Xiu’s chest, then at Xiu’s lips, and then at his lifespan panel.

He logically came up with an answer: “So you are my mama?”

Xiu almost lost control and crushed the coral under his hand.

“I am not. Only females can be called mama,” Xiu flatly denied.

“Is that so…” Wen Chu said, while secretly using his tentacles to latch onto Xiu’s chest again. “Then was I good tonight? I didn’t say you were my lover.”

Xiu: …

He would rather Wen Chu just said he was his lover. Now he didn’t even dare to think about what kind of image he had in the narwhal’s mind.

The familiar sticky, numb sensation came from his chest again. Xiu shivered and reached out to pull Wen Chu off.

“Not good,” Xiu said coldly. “Don’t sleep clinging to me. Don’t you have your own cushion?”

“The cushion is hard,” Wen Chu said, aggrieved. “The coral underneath is hard, so it’s still hard with a cushion.”

He didn’t feel pain, but he still felt uncomfortable. Xiu’s chest was soft, firm, and resilient from exercise, very suitable for a jellyfish to sleep on.

Xiu scoffed at him, “Delicate.”

Being disturbed by Wen Chu like this, the bit of indescribable pity or other feelings he had also disappeared. Xiu picked Wen Chu up and casually tossed him onto the tip of his tail. “The most I can do is let you sleep on my tail.”

Wen Chu hugged Xiu’s tail. The siren’s scales were cold.

“It’s cold,” Wen Chu said.

Xiu’s chest was warm. He still preferred Xiu’s chest.

Xiu flicked his tail impatiently, making the jellyfish sway on his tail. “Stop complaining. At least you’re still alive. This bunch of coral died to be your cushion and you’re still complaining that it’s hard.”

“Died?” Wen Chu was shocked. “Were they alive before?”

“What else? These corals are all built up by individual coral polyps. Like you, they belong to the phylum Cnidaria. They were colorful when they were alive. Only after they die do they turn into this patch of white.”

As Xiu spoke, he looked at the almost endless expanse of snow-white coral around them, then looked down at the transparent jellyfish with the orange-red core and said maliciously, “You are surrounded by dead coral.”

The jellyfish trembled at his words.

It was because Wen Chu wanted to try nibbling on a scale to see if it would increase his lifespan, but ended up hurting himself instead.

Xiu, however, misunderstood Wen Chu’s trembling.

In the middle of the night, the shallows were dead silent. Amidst the endless white bones of coral, the golden-haired siren looked down at the jellyfish clinging to the tip of his tail.

The moonlight was so bright, reflecting the murky blackness of the seawater.

Xiu sighed softly.

“Forget it. If you’re scared, just come over and sleep.”

__

Author’s Note:

Chu: I dunno, I bit him once and he agreed to sleep with me QuQ