–What shall we do with the drunken sailboat♪-
Down in the deep, deep ocean, where no human ever dared to go, there was a castle; bright and huge, amazingly shimmering in the few sunrays that cut through the water. In its endlessly labyrinth-like alleys a crab was running in panic, sweat pearling on its forehead if it had one.
“Yabai. Yabai. Yabai.”
It cursed, scanning the environment for something until it found a familiar, purple colored fish.
“Matsuken!” the crab shouted, grabbing the fish’s tail when he reached it.
The fish stiffened and turned.
“Oh-chan” the fish tried to smile, but it didn’t come quite naturally.
“It’s still Maestro Ohno for you” he scolded, “Where is Ninorielle?! The time for her singing-lesson is almost over.”
“Fine, so she could easily skip it.”
“Funny. Tell me where she is.”
“Ah, you know, you go down there straight, you turn left first, then sharply right, three times left, take another right turn, go straight, then you walk through the golden door, having passed that area you have to swim northwards, after that you take another left turn, turn left again at the pink anemones, finally you swim southbound and maybe you’ll find her then.” Matsuken ’s bright smile turned immediately into a rictus when he noticed Ohno ’s non-changing mood.
“… Do you see me laughing? Ha. Ha. Ha.” He replied with the most serious expression a crab could have. “I know she’s always with you so she is near, isn’t she?”
The fish sighed.
“Ohno, you know her, she manages to sing everything perfectly without even practicing. Why don’t you just leave her alone?”
“She’d be far more amazing if she exercised a little. By now even you should know, that being a princess, she needs to care about the people of the kingdom which she will probably do great one day. Furthermore, a princess should be able to impress with her flawless voice if not with her beauty and if the king got scent of her trips to the surface- … Don’t tell me she went again… No, she didn’t…”
The fear in the dark brown fisheyes told Ohno that he was right.
“She went up to the surface again?! I’d be dead meat if the king knew” the crab whined.
“It’s your entire fault! Incredibly stupid fish! Help me finding her before the king becomes suspicious!”
“Why shall I-OUCH!”
Ohno tweaked him before Matsuken could finish his protests which lead the small, purple fish to follow him.
Ninorielle was the only daughter of the king and as such she was supposed to take over her father’s throne and rule over the mermaid folk one day. But due to several reasons, she didn’t feel like she would ever be able to assume such a huge responsibility. It was not just that she was not as beautiful as a princess is actually supposed to be. Having a far too flat breast, and an almost non-curvaceous body, she was often mistaken for a boy. Even though her plain black hair gives her a unique look, other mermaids in the sea keep mocking at the princess. (Not that Ninorielle would even care about what other people were thinking about her, she actually didn’t give a shit on that.) Besides her unique look and her quirky charisma, she was also anything else than interested in staying in the boring sea. She got fed up even staying in her father’s castle. Ninorielle already saw too much of that area. The short grown mermaid was more curious about the humans’ world, with the people living up there, walking on “legs” (as she heard they were called).
Leaning on her favorite stone, she watched a little sailboat drunkenly rocking from wave to wave.
Nino knew she should be at her singing-lesson by now but after all a singing voice couldn’t make it up for lacking beauty. Why does a princess have to be pretty anyway? It’s neither a thing to learn nor to achieve with your own strength.
For the princess, it was hard to find true friends among the other mermaids. They we’re all like Mimura-kun. She had asked him for a date but he rejected, stuttering something about ‘unsexy’ and ‘Yamada’. Well, she didn’t get the Yamada part, but just by the mention of her unfeminine body she got somehow pissed and her mood for mocking ‘Oh-chan’ was blown away. Right now, she didn’t even want to see her best friend and partner-in-crime Matsuken.
The only thing she wanted to watch at the moment was the little boat, which was shaking its passenger from left to right. It was questionable who was navigating who.
“That human surely doesn’t know how to sail. I’ve never seen such a tiny boat coming till here” she laughed, watching the human trying to get control of it. The human’s pitiful situation caused Nino bursting into laughter and her depressive mood about her rejection almost forgotten.
“Kuuuuuh~” she cheered when suddenly a bigger wave threw the sailing boat over with the human being hurled into the water. She waited for the human to come up and grasping the hull in desperation. But the human kept her waiting.
Being a little worried by the time passing by, she dipped under water, recognizing that the human was sinking like a stone. Without thinking she swam in a hurry into the human’s direction. Nino finally caught him and brought him to the surface where he’d be able to breathe.
Being arrived above the sea, she wondered what she should do with the apparently unconscious man. “Damn, I’d never thought that hooking a man would be more fun!”
“Maybe I should take him to the beach” Nino said to herself (with shimmering eyes –comparable to a starry night sky- having an excuse for finally getting closer the human world).
The little mermaid swam in full speed, the beach practically pulling her (thank Neptune that radar traps didn’t exist on water). With some difficulties she heaved the human to the dryer area and watched his features while catching her breath.
‘How cute, he looks almost like Mimura-kun’ she thought, taking softly a wet strand of hair out of the man’s face. ‘His hair is a bit shorter though, I wonder how it might look when it’s dry’
Nino couldn’t take off her eyes, trying to imagine how the human would look being awake. She dreamed of the guy walking on his two legs (even though his left one was hurt, they were beautifully shaped), with his hair freely dancing in the wind, laughing- he surely had a nice laugh. Nino started to hum a soft melody, expressing the warm feeling spreading in her chest.
Her fingers traced along from the amazingly strong collar-bone to the soft skin on his neck and finally, she kept her fingers hovering above the plushy lips. They were beautiful, really. How’d they feel? And without further thinking, just following her instinct, she leaned over him closed her eyes and-
It tasted salty, probably the ocean water he swallowed when he drowned. But they were unexpectedly hard. Really hard.
With a frown she opened her eyes. Nino recognized deeply disappointed that she actually didn’t kiss these plushy lips she longed for… Instead of those, she kissed an angry looking crab.
“Oh-chan!”
“Maestro Oh-chan! Uh, I mean, Maestro Ohno!!” the crab corrected.
“Princess! Really! You should be careful with your image! It’s not just that you skip class regularly; you’re actually spending more time over the surface than you ought to, besides that you are strongly obsessed with human artifacts and by now, you’re even in contact with a human being! Just imagine what would happen if your dear father knew what you’re doing! It’s our duty to avoid him getting a heart attack! Not to imagine how to get out of the situation if the human would actually see you-“
The crab was ranting wildly, running back and forth, not noticing how Ninorielle slipped back into the water, approaching her bosom buddy the fish.
“Matsuken, you’re such a bubblehead! You couldn’t have kept him away a bit longer, huh? I almost kissed that handsome looking human~”
“Yeah, I saw that. How disgusting. I’ll never get that kind of mermaid-thingies. Urgh Urgh”
“Well, Neptune didn’t make you to understand that way of showing tenderness…poor lil’ fishie.”
“Shut up you mischievous little brat or I’ll call my cousin! He’s a piranha. You know, he would be very pleased to taste a bit of a virginal flipp-“
“HEY! ARE YOU LISTENING?!”
After some rumbling, Ohno forced the little mermaid back into the deep ocean before the human would awake and see her (wonder he didn’t already at the noise they made).
Nino throw a last glance at the human (‘Woah, even his profile is pretty’) and went with a heavy sigh back into the deep sea, returning to her father’s castle.
