Chapter 001
“Rinca, you little brat, where the hell did you go?”
“Enough. I’ve called the knights, so you lot surround the harbor for now. She might’ve slipped onto an empty ship, so search the boats too.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Young master, there’s talk of a pirate ship showing up nearby. The lord says to return at once…”
“What? Damn it, things just got complicated. You lot keep chasing Rinca. I’ll send knights toward the pirate ship.”
“Understood!”
Rinca, who had been holding her breath until the sound of the group of men scattering in different directions faded, let out a quiet sigh.
Carefully checking for any lingering presence, she silently slipped out from behind a crate.
Her short, unevenly cut bob, hacked with scissors, swayed near her neck.
‘Macard, that lunatic. Mobilizing the navy just to catch me?’
He called her his only friend! Said she had no one else to rely on but him, running his mouth like that.
She couldn’t let herself get caught like this. Not when she didn’t even know what the people chasing her wanted. Why follow them and risk whatever they had planned?
Rinca gritted her teeth and straightened her knees.
The pirate ship Macard’s subordinate just mentioned.
It was the only ship that could get her out of this harbor. And Rinca was one of the few who saw that ship drop anchor yesterday.
‘The Cather navy must’ve started chasing the pirate ship, and they’d know it by now. They’ll definitely leave in a hurry.’
She wanted to leave this port town, but Rinca had no plans to enter the water. Floating around on the sea? She really didn’t want that, but now she had no choice.
She hated the idea of going into the sea…
The good thing was, the people chasing her thought Rinca couldn’t swim. For all her 17 years in this port town, she’d insisted she could never go into the sea, so they’d never suspect it.
This was her last chance.
Just this once, she’d go in. If she escaped this town, she’d head somewhere without a sea.
Rinca thought of the house where no one waited for her anymore.
An empty house. But everything she cherished was still inside.
But if a lunatic who’d mobilized the navy was after her, that house was probably already surrounded.
“You can breathe in the water. You’re a —.”
Rinca stopped her thoughts and ran toward the sea. And then,
she dove into the water.
“—Haa.”
Good thing she cut her hair.
The sensation of cold water wrapping around her body was vivid.
Slowly opening her eyes underwater, her orange pupils seemed to soak in the deep blue sea, gradually turning bluer.
With that, the dark underwater world became as bright and clear as on land.
The foam rising with each wave’s movement.
The flow of water brushing her fingertips and the whispers of the coral reefs.
And truly, it felt as natural as breathing on land, with oxygen flowing in and out of her body.
‘Now’s not the time.’
There was no time to be distracted by her first experience of the sea.
She swam through the water to the deep valley where the pirate ship had anchored. Rinca roughly squeezed the water from her hair and wrapped her soaked outer clothes around herself.
Pressing the silver scales sprouting from her barely covered neck with her palm, she spotted the food supplies the pirates had stacked.
It looked like they’d loaded most of the heavy crates already.
‘This doesn’t leave me many places to hide!’
Step.
As Rinca hesitated, the sound of unfamiliar footsteps began approaching.
At the same time, the sound of cannons firing toward the sea echoed from the distant harbor. They were probably just for intimidation, but to the pirates, it’d be a crisis.
There was no time to hesitate.
‘Become invisible, become invisible…!’
Someone might say wishing wouldn’t make her invisible.
But for Rinca, who’d just come out of the seawater, it was possible. Becoming “invisible” for a short while was nothing.
She’d even saved a human crushed under rubble, on the brink of death.
This much, she could definitely do…!
Her coral-colored eyes, wet with seawater, squeezed shut, and a silvery glow shimmered from her neck.
Her body began to glow like it was bathed in moonlight, then slowly turned transparent, as if a veil had formed around her.
Just as she completely vanished, the pirates appeared.
“Are these sacks the last ones?”
“Yeah. The captain really splurged on flour this time.”
“Can we carry them all at once? Let’s finish this quick.”
While the men gathered the sacks, Rinca carefully moved toward the direction they came from.
‘Eek.’
Pirates were supposed to have sharper senses than most, so she couldn’t afford to be noticed!
With the thought that getting caught here would be the end, Rinca made her way right to the ship.
The sound of footsteps and muffled voices came from just ahead several times.
“Still not done moving them? Why so slow?”
“The sacks aren’t tied properly. Got something in there?”
“Take this one. Or this one? Just take both.”
Thud!
Timing it with the moment they tossed a bundle of thick ropes down from the ship, Rinca climbed onto the pile of sacks on the ground.
Just don’t notice this sack is heavier, please!
At that moment, a man from the ship looked down and said,
“No time for games. The Cather navy’s started moving. Looks like we’ve been spotted.”
“Here?”
“No idea. I thought this strait was out of the navy’s sight.”
The navy.
They really mobilized the navy.
They weren’t after the pirates, she was certain they were looking for her. They’d said to search every ship in the harbor, and now they’d even found the pirate ship.
But Rinca was already hidden, and if she could just get past this busy area, she’d make it onto the ship.
“Move it up.”
“Pulling now.”
Despite her worries about the weight, the pirates lifted the entire pallet of sacks and began loading them onto the ship.
Unable to sense the invisible Rinca, they carried her along with the sacks into what seemed like a storage area.
As soon as she touched the floor, Rinca flattened herself and rolled into a corner, letting out a short sigh.
“—is calling.”
“Again?”
“On land—”
A few pirates shouted, and with a creak, the door closed, leaving Rinca’s surroundings completely silent.
She stayed quietly hidden for a while longer, only letting out a loud breath once her invisible body returned to normal.
“Hoo…”
As if it had never happened, her dark blonde hair and pale skin were back. The silver glow from her neck had faded into ordinary skin.
“But they say pirates throw stowaways into the sea…”
She’d hidden on a pirate ship on a whim, but her goal was to reach land without a sea. Getting thrown back into the water was absolutely not an option. Because…
“Rinca, be careful of the sea. A half-mermaid is prey for sea monsters.”
Rinca was a half-breed, born between a mermaid and a human.
And a half-mermaid couldn’t survive in the sea.
* * *
Rinca Marybell.
She grew up with her single mother in the small port city of Cather.
They said her mother came to Cather one day, holding a young child.
Though it was never said aloud, the townspeople and Rinca herself assumed her father had passed away.
But…
“Mom…”
It happened when Rinca was eight years old.
In the tiny port city of Cather.
Where mermaids had all become legends, Rinca got drenched by a bucket of seawater and ran home in a panic.
But silver scales had already begun sprouting on her soaked body.
From her thighs and sides to her neck and up to her left cheek.
The scales, smoothly covering half her body, were lukewarm like seawater and shimmered.
The young Rinca ran to her mother, crying…
“I was going to tell you when you were older.”
Rinca’s mother, Soyna, gently hugged and comforted her, telling her the long story of her father.
In short, her father was a mermaid, fell in love with her mother, and Rinca was born, but he had to return to the sea.
Thanks to the gems and pearls he left behind, raising Rinca alone wasn’t too hard for her mother.
But that wasn’t the important part.
“Rinca, listen carefully. If you go far along the western sea route, there’s a vast, deep ocean. And in it sleeps a dangerous sea monster.”
“A monster…”
“And that monster will wake from its long slumber and rise to the surface to devour anything that’s half-mermaid, half-human.”
“Half-mermaid, half-human… that’s me! Waaah!”
She didn’t want to die as monster food in the sea.
To Rinca, who cried that she wanted to live a long life, her mother said to always be careful of two things.
First, the sea. As she just explained, you never know when the monster might awaken.
Second… people.
Even though she didn’t have a fish’s tail, Rinca could breathe underwater, but that wasn’t what made her special.
“What did you just do?”
Once her scales appeared, she was different from humans. Not only could she breathe underwater, but hidden scales would sprout, and she could use spirit speech.
Like when she wished to become invisible and her body briefly disappeared, this power was only usable for a short time when her scales glowed.
Since she’d avoided seawater her whole life, only Rinca and her mother, Soyna, knew her secret.
Well, now Macard, the heir to the Cather family, knew too.
The problem was when she softened and helped him after he got injured. She should’ve held back!
Luckily, it seemed he hadn’t figured out she was a mermaid. That’s how she came up with the idea of escaping on this pirate ship.
Brushing off the flour clinging to her now-dry body, Rinca slipped out of the sack.
“Why is this place so huge…?”
And the pirate ship’s storage area in front of her… was far too vast.
