Before Aqua could answer, the sun dipped below the water, and in a glow of light that blinded Dawn, her legs transformed into a beautiful turquoise tail.
Gaping, the mafia boss stared at the large fish tail flicking on the rocks. Aqua took the opportunity to escape with a large splash.Cold water rained over Dawn, and he covered his eyes to prevent salt from getting into them. Spluttering, the shocked man looked to the sea. He couldn’t see anything, as if the mermaid who saved him earlier was only his imagination.He was still alive, and the gunshot wound from earlier had disappeared. There was no doubt about it. That wasn’t a dream. Dawn had been saved by a mythical creature with a turquoise tail.“Dammit!” he cussed silently and looked up. That was the bridge he jumped from.Without a way up or any hint of where his saviour had gone, Dawn weighed his options. His shirt was torn, and Ricardo was probably still trying to find his body. It was too risky to return. There was no saying if he would be shot upon sight by Ricardo’s dogs.Rumble…It had been a while since Dawn had felt hungry. There were only a few instances in his life when the mafia boss knew what hunger felt like. Under the care of his father and family, Dawn always had his meals on time. Today was an exception for many things.Before the lost mafia boss could decide what to do, something rippled from beneath the sea.Flinching in surprise, Dawn thought his heart would stop when a head floated just above the surface. He couldn’t see the colour of the hair in the dim lights, but something told him it was the same mermaid from earlier. She hadn’t completely left for some reason, even after he threatened to shoot her. What a strange creature. Are all mermaids like her?Plop!The mermaid tossed some items onto the rocks beside him. He had no idea what to make of them, but when his fishy saviour did not move, he cautiously bent to pick them up.There was an assortment of snacks, from biscuits and chips to soggy boxes of Twinkies. Dawn grimaced at the sugar overload, but he couldn’t complain. This wasn’t a five-star restaurant. It was better than starving. Besides, he wasn’t an ingrate.Aqua watched in satisfaction as the human ate her offerings. They were food she salvaged over the week from her private stash near the pier. She often stole it from seagulls who stole it from unsuspecting young humans. They were things she enjoyed eating, but for the sake of this human under her care, she would share them with him.Rumble…This time, it wasn’t coming from Dawn’s stomach. The mafia boss paused and looked over at the drooling mermaid. When did she come up from the water?Propped up with her arms on the rock near him, the mermaid stared at his snacks longingly. Although Dawn had no idea where she found these snacks, it was obvious she wanted some.Offering the newly opened packet of Oreo cookies, Dawn waited for the mysterious creature to accept it. At the same time, he studied her curiously. There were so many questions to ask. But most importantly, he wanted to know why she chose to save him. He wasn’t a good person in the eyes of society. There was blood on his hands, and she obviously did not want to expose her existence to anyone.Once a webbed hand reached over, Dawn quickly used his other hand to grab her wrist. Now that he had caught her, the mafia boss did not intend to let her swim away without answers.Alarmed that the human had tricked her, Aqua began to struggle. However, the man who had recovered from a life-threatening injury was stronger than a mermaid like her. She should have listened to her mother’s advice. Now, he was going to rob her of her heart scale!Protecting the rainbow scale in the middle of her chest, Aqua splashed water at Dawn with her tail and squirmed as hard as she could. When that did not work, she bit the hand that had a hold on her wrist.Taken aback by the fierce struggle, Dawn yelped in pain as the mermaid clamped down on his hand with her sharp teeth. However, he did not release his hold on her. Instead, he grabbed a cookie and waved it in front of her. The trick worked on his German Shepard. Maybe it would do the same for mermaids.“There, there… I promise I won’t do anything. It’s really for you. Stop biting me, will you? I just wanted to talk. If you promise not to swim away, I will let go of your hand.”Thinking about it, the bite turned into a nibble as Aqua thought about it. The cookie was too tempting, and eventually, the naive mermaid caved to temptation. Besides, she was hungry. If he tried anything funny, she would splash water on him and swim away again.Sighing in relief when the bribe worked, Dawn watched as the mermaid reached for the soggy cookie and crammed it into her mouth with a big smile. Well, that removed one of his worries. Mystical creature or not, this half-fish was only as smart as a rock. Only dogs and children could be bribed with an Oreo cookie. This mermaid was clearly not very smart if she was over the moon with a soggy biscuit. Besides, he still had his hand on her.“More!” Aqua demanded after swallowing the first cookie. She was so hungry after a long night. One cookie wasn’t enough.Dawn thought about it. He could give her the rest of the snacks. However, he needed answers.“I’ll only give them to you if you answer my questions. No lying.”Blinking in confusion, Aqua tilted her head and looked at Dawn as if he had eaten something strange.“I’m not lying. I’m swimming.”…Was this mermaid for real? Dawn had never met anyone with such a strange understanding.“That’s right. You’re swimming. Mermaids can’t lie, after all. They’ll turn to bubbles the next day if they do.”When Aqua heard that, she laughed loudly and jumped out of the water onto the rocks beside Dawn. Then, she flipped to her side and lay her head on his lap, looking up at him with mischievous eyes.“Human is wrong! Mermaids can lie. I won’t become bubbles.”Ah… what was he thinking? Why was he trying to interrogate an overgrown goldfish? There was probably nothing else in her head apart from soggy biscuits at this point. However, he still needed answers before letting her go.“Why did you save me?” he asked, loosening the grip on her wrist a little but not letting go completely.Again, this question. Aqua frowned. This human must really be dull in the head. Maybe he drank too much seawater earlier and hurt his brain.“When it is a full moon or new moon, mermaids can save someone with their tears. We can only do it three times in our lives, and it was my first time. I can still save two more people before I lose my tail forever. You should be more careful. Falling from the sky can hurt. You didn’t even bring the air rock or wear black clothes with funny fake tails.”Huh? What was this mermaid talking about? He was wearing black when he tossed himself over the bridge. Also, air rock? Talking to her made his head hurt. For some reason, he felt like he was communicating with someone in the psych ward. However, her answer told him everything he needed to know. She wasn’t a threat to him. If anything, he was lucky that she was there. If not for her, he wouldn’t have a second chance at life to correct his mistakes.“What’s your name?” he asked. Then, Dawn regretted it. Mermaids might not have names or know what it was.Surprisingly, this was a question the overgrown goldfish knew how to answer.“Aqua!” the mermaid beamed. “My name is Aqua! Nice to meet you. What about your name, human?”Unsure what compelled him to answer, Dawn decided to give her his title instead of his name. They sounded the same anyway.“Don,” he said. “You can call me Don.”“Don…” Aqua repeated the name several times like a child tasting candy for the first time.The mafia boss watched Aqua’s expression under the dim light from the bridge above with interest. She was quite the beauty, even if she was a little mad.“Why did you fall from the sky, Don?” Aqua asked curiously. “Were you fighting with another human? You almost died.”At the question, Dawn’s expression turned cold. That’s right. Thanks to the mermaid's existence, he had almost forgotten about the traitor. However, her question reminded her about the things he needed to do.“You can say that,” Dawn chuckled coldly. “I have to repay the favour.”Rumble…Two stomachs growled in unison, and Dawn grimaced. Maybe revenge could wait.“We should get food first. What do mermaids normally eat?”As far as crazy first dates went, this had to be Dawn’s worst first impression. However, he reasoned that more crime wouldn’t hurt his criminal record. Aqua didn’t have to discover that this yacht did not belong to him. He usually committed graver crimes like murder and money laundering, but he wasn’t against dining and dashing when the situation called for it. He was a mafia boss behaving like a ruffian, which was humiliating. However, pride won’t fill his stomach. Food did.Together, they finished Aqua’s stash of snacks, and Dawn told her his plan.“If you know any boats that don’t have people, we can go up there and take some of their food.”Aqua knew what boats Dawn was talking about. She often dodged them from beneath the water, and sometimes, she would smell very delicious things coming from them. Occasionally, if she waited beneath them, the humans from those boats would throw food down into the water. She d
Dawn did not know much about cooking. However, he knew some basics. It wasn’t difficult to follow the instructions behind the frozen food packaging. Besides, those gentlemen did not seem like they were professional chefs. Most men were only good at using the microwave and grilling meat.Aqua rolled around on the sofa and looked at the strange box that talked while Dawn cooked. She could smell all sorts of strange scents as the human busied away. Those new smells made her stomach unhappy, and Aqua lost interest in the talking box.Sniffing the air, the mermaid watched the human she saved, removing strange things from cardboard boxes. When he tossed the cardboard boxes, she gasped in alarm at the waste of edible material.“What are you doing? Why do you throw those away? It can be eaten!”Startled at the outburst, Dawn turned around. Aqua flailed on the couch with a panicked look on her face. He followed her line of sight, and it landed on the fro
Pizza was a strange human food. It was a lot of things at once, and Aqua had no idea what to make of the flavours that burst on her tongue. Most importantly, this thing called cheese stretched when she pulled it. She had never eaten anything like it before. Not only was it fun, but it was also tasty.“Do you like it?”Chewing happily, Aqua nodded. Dawn ate his pizza and watched as the mermaid stretched the cheese until it broke. She was like a child trying to see how long she could stretch the mozzarella before it snapped. He didn’t mind. However, they had to eat and leave quickly.“You can finish the rest of the food,” he told her. “I’m going to shower and find some clothes for you.”Nodding absentmindedly, Aqua continued to eat. She wanted to know if the cheese had a limit. So far, she could only stretch it as far as half her arm. Maybe if she tried hard enough, it would reach the end of her arm, and she could slu
It wasn’t very different from driving a car. When Dawn figured out where the steering and the throttle were, he turned on the engine. The key was still in the ignition where the original owners had left it. However, the boat refused to budge after a certain distance of moving. It took Dawn a while to figure out why.The anchor was harder to locate than the mafia boss thought. These boats were engineered to be advanced and had no manual anchors to throw overboard. Instead, there was a button in the cockpit to retract it.Once that was resolved, Dawn was finally able to move the boat. He didn’t want to run into any of Ricardo’s goons who might be searching in the area, so he ran along the city coast until he reached the end of the pier. These boats couldn’t dock in shallow waters, so he had no choice but to disembark at a different end of the same pier.Stopping the boat was easier than starting it. Dawn slowed the speed and dropped the anchor af
It was close to noon when Dawn decided to exit the highway. It was to a small town he had never heard of before and about a hundred kilometres from the pier he was shot at. It would be a great place to find what he needed and swap to a different car in a more isolated spot. Besides, the Cadillac was starting to run low on fuel.There weren’t many cars in this small town. Most people would be at work, so the mafia boss decided to visit the most way-out hypermart to buy what he needed. For now, he needed to stock up on more food, drinks and some clothes. He didn’t have a lot of money on him even after robbing the fishing yacht. Rich people did not carry with them a lot of cash.The hypermart staff were busy restocking shelves, and housewives were buying their daily necessities, some with young children strapped to their backs. Nobody had time to pay attention to Dawn, so he grabbed a trolley and threw the food he needed into it, along with a carton of water.
It felt weird. Was it raining, or was there a school of fish passing by?Aqua cracked open an eyelid sleepily and noticed that colourful sparkles were dancing before her eyes. She had no idea what they were, but they looked pretty. On instinct, she reached out to touch them, but they slipped past her fingers and went behind her.Bleary-eyed, the mermaid woke up and noticed that something was different. She couldn’t move when she tried to flick her tail. Instead, pain shot through her foot when it hit something solid.“Hng!” Aqua bit her bottom lip and reached for her tail when she noticed something horribly wrong.There was a long fabric covering it, but Aqua could feel it at once. She didn’t have scales beneath the fabric, and even her webbed fingers were un-webbed now.“Huh?”Beside her, Dawn watched the mermaid wake up in confusion. Instead of saying anything, he let the bewildered creature recall last night’
The sun had gone down by the time Dawn found a suitable place to rest for the night. It was rather far from the highway in the middle of nowhere. The dirt road and off-beaten trail told the mafia boss that not many people came by. He parked the sedan a little more to the side so that any trucks passing through in the middle of the night could do so without problems.The drive was less boring ever since Aqua woke up. Ever since he started teething, Dawn did not remember being fed by anyone. However, at twenty-seven, the mafia boss experienced what it was like to eat out of someone else’s hand. Aqua insisted on feeding him while he drove because it was too dangerous to drive with only one hand on the wheel. Besides, she had a very convincing reason for doing so.“I want to see a lot of human land before I return to the ocean,” the mermaid sighed as he killed the engine and wound down the window.The night breeze was cool, but Aqua’s legs had alre
The sun rose as it did the previous day, but Dawn woke up to the sound of someone humming a tune he’d never heard before. It took the mafia boss control not to reach for the gun he’d hidden in the front of his hoodie on instinct.Unaware of the death flag she had just avoided, Aqua continued humming a familiar tune. Watching her tail transform into legs at the crack of dawn for the first time, the mermaid wondered if she would ever get used to it. She took the chance while Dawn was asleep to study her new body parts.Legs were very different from tails. Their bone structures felt more rigid and were not covered in protective scales. Instead, she had a layer of very fine hair on them. More importantly, her anatomy in the lower half was slightly different.Dawn did tell her that if she needed to relieve herself in the middle of the night, she should do it outside. However, Aqua had no idea how to walk. She watched humans do it all the time, but i