I shoved Varen away and collapsed in a heap. I lay flat on my back against the deck, dragging in ragged breaths.
A shadow fell over my head.
When I cracked my eyes open, I saw Varen and Margon above me, their faces full of worry.
The two men were practically bumping foreheads as they peered down at me, both on the verge of tears.
Because of that, the one who had just come back from the brink of death didn’t even get a chance to feel miserable.
I pushed myself up unsteadily and sat down. The place where I was sitting was the fishing boat we had ridden all the way into the deep sea.
When I turned my head, I saw Maril with both arms draped over the side of the hull. The moment our eyes met, she let out a sigh of relief.
“Prince Ceryl. Thank goodness you’re alive, truly!”
It had only been a brief moment, but I had just seen hundreds of memories flash past like a lantern procession.
On top of that, my oxygen had been cut off for a while, and my mind still felt fogged over, as if filled with mist.
I swiped a wet hand across my face and asked Maril,
“The one who saved me from the sea just now...”
“Yes, it was me! I saved you!”
Maybe she had smacked her mermaid tail in excitement, because seawater splashed up behind her back.
Varen naturally pulled me into his arms and bared his teeth at Maril.
I let out a small laugh, patted Varen’s cheek, and asked where the spirit had gone.
“Varen, the spirit? Did it really leave?”
The dark storm clouds that had filled the sky and lashed us with savage rain were gone.
The water pillars that had been surging up without warning had vanished as well.
The sea was calm again, just as it had been when we first set out, and the boat rocked gently on its surface.
At my question, Varen’s blue eyes sharpened. His keen gaze turned once more toward the horizon.
I followed the direction of his eyes. The sea looked peaceful, but my chest still thudded uneasily.
Then the spirit’s voice came from somewhere impossible to place.
Its deep voice was calm, like softly rolling waves.
‘Human, you have revealed the truth.’
That was what the spirit had said while forcing me down into the sea.
Reveal the truth.
As a result, I had gone all the way to the edge of death.
And I had glimpsed the memories of the Ceryl sleeping inside my body.
‘Lavier... yes. I knew you were no ordinary human, but Lavier has returned.’
I clicked my tongue shortly and glared at the empty horizon.
The spirit seemed to have seen the same thing I had seen.
It infuriated me, but in the end, things had gone exactly the way the spirit wanted.
Just then, Varen took my soaking-wet hand. He laced our fingers together and sent his voice out toward the distant sea.
‘It does not matter what Ceryl’s name is. What matters is that a Dravergh trusts this one.’
At that, the sea rose and swelled in time with the spirit’s laughter.
‘Kuhahaha, a Dravergh and a Lavier. A well-matched pair.’
At the spirit’s words, the stiffness in Varen’s face eased just slightly. He even flicked a glance at me.
Even after being battered by that brutal storm, he was still visibly affected by hearing that the spirit thought we suited each other.
I shook my head and looked out toward the sea at random.
“Hey, Spirit. So are you going to help us or not?”
‘Hmm. Yes. If it is with a Lavier, then perhaps...’
Without giving a clear answer, the spirit sent a sudden favorable wind toward the land.
The boat began to move smoothly.
I was just about to raise my voice and demand a straight answer when something suddenly popped out of the sea and landed in the boat.
It rolled across the deck to my feet.
What had fallen there was a white conch shell.
Without thinking, I bent down and picked it up.
‘Dravergh. Only once.’
The spirit’s voice seemed to resonate from inside the shell.
I handed the conch to Varen.
A warm favorable wind blew once more, filling the sail wide. Then a voice, warmer now, like the sea breeze itself, echoed in both my head and Varen’s.
‘Young dragon, that distant peace of the past you spoke of. Show it to me. Let the Dravergh and the Lavier of this new age unfold it.’
Varen clenched both hands tightly and nodded with conviction.
The warm wind dried my wet hair.
***
I leaned my upper body over the bow and stared ahead of the boat.
The sight before me was so astonishing I couldn’t look away no matter how long I stared.
What was pulling our boat back toward land was a pod of dolphins.
Every time they leaped over the surface, a tiny rainbow bloomed.
The dolphins themselves were fascinating and beautiful enough, but their swimming skill was even more impressive.
When Maril had dragged the boat, it had been as rough as riding some kind of amusement contraption.
These gentlemanly dolphins, on the other hand, glided smoothly over the waves and gave us an unbelievably stable ride.
More than anything, though, there was another reason all my attention had been stolen by the sea-dwelling magical creatures.
“Piiik! Piiik!”
“Oh, really? So Dolsuni came in first place in swimming?”
“Piiiik!”
“Ohhh, really now. The fastest and smartest dolphin in the world, huh?”
What I heard with my ears were the cries of magical creatures.
But I could understand every single thing they were saying.
It didn’t feel like dragons or spirits speaking directly into my head.
I could just understand them instinctively.
It felt as if we were simply chattering away in different languages.
“Piiik, piiiik!”
“It’s okay. Big brother doesn’t like sardines. You eat them all, Dolsuni.”
“Piiiik, piiik!”
“Mackerel too... huh? Humans can’t eat jellyfish.”
Dolsuni, the one leading the group at the front, had asked if I liked sardines.
When I said I was fine, Dolsuni offered me mackerel instead.
When I refused that too, Dolsuni asked in disbelief whether I didn’t even like jellyfish.
“Piiiik?!”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m sure that sharp sting tastes great to you, but humans don’t have any detoxifying ability.”
“Piiik...”
It seemed jellyfish venom was a sharp, delicious delicacy to a dolphin’s palate.
The moment I said humans couldn’t eat it, Dolsuni drooped in disappointment.
I started chuckling and thought of another magical creature.
Rami used to catch crickets and offer them to me too.
It seemed recommending whatever tasted good to their own palate was simply a trait shared by all magical creatures.
I was in the middle of chatting happily with Dolsuni when someone suddenly grabbed me by the back of the neck and hauled me upright.
“Lord Ceryl, if you keep that up, you’ll fall into the sea again.”
Margon’s worried expression looked strangely familiar.
In the memories of Ceryl I had just seen, Margon had worn the same face.
The only difference was that his beard had grown thicker now.
I burst into delighted laughter and waved him off.
“Margon, do you think growing your beard out a bit is going to make you look manlier?”
“Huh? What are you talking about all of a sudden?”
“Well... I guess giving up on being handsome really was the right call.”
I had tossed out the joke, remembering what Leobin said, but Margon only tilted his head in confusion.
I was just about to tell him that I had seen Leobin when—
this time Varen yanked me back hard into his arms.
As if he had no intention of letting anyone take me away, he wrapped both arms around my upper body and even glared at Margon.
Before the tension between them could flare up again, I pushed at Varen’s chest and forced some distance between the two men.
Varen looked down at me with a wounded expression.
“Ceryl, you said you have no such relationship with that male. You said he’s only a companion.”
“I think there’s some kind of misunderstanding...”
“Then why are you kissing him? Do humans kiss their companions too? This is why every other male is—mmph.”
This was one of those situations where direct experience would work better than a hundred explanations.
So I immediately kissed Varen and blew air forcefully into his mouth, the way I would during rescue breaths.
Margon quietly gagged to himself and turned his head away.
Varen, meanwhile, kept his eyes wide open and looked at me as if asking what exactly I thought I was doing.
I repeated the same action several times, then pulled my lips away.
“I just blew air in like this. He couldn’t breathe, so I gave him rescue breaths.”
“Why would you do that with your lips...”
“I didn’t even mix tongues. Really. I only do that with you.”
I stroked Varen’s cheek and soothed him for quite a while, but his sulky pout showed no sign of disappearing.
In the end, I had no choice but to kiss him again.
And this time, unlike rescue breaths, I gave him a proper kiss, one that clearly involved wet flesh tangling together.
For all his sullen expression, Varen tilted his head and accepted the kiss.
The arm around my waist tightened hard.
The dragon’s distinct heat and saliva flooded my mouth. His chest, pressed against me as he held me, rose and fell rapidly, as if trying to pour even more warmth into me.
Then—
splash.
A small wave broke over the deck and drenched us both.
The kiss snapped apart. Varen and I turned at the same time toward the side where the water had come from.
Maril, who had been diligently following the fishing boat, was glaring at us with her pretty face flushed bright red.
“Eek, you firewood! I’m the one who saved Prince Ceryl! So why are you the one kissing him?!”
Varen instantly pulled me behind his back.
Then he bared his teeth at Maril with a low growl.
“What are you doing, fish stink? Ceryl got soaked. What an ill-mannered sea-dwelling magical creature.”
“What? Did you just finish saying that? You dare insult a sea-dwelling magical creature in the middle of the sea? Want to be drenched through and through?”
“Do as you like. I can just carry Ceryl and fly.”
“Oh, really? You could barely even fly properly in that storm!”
“...You can’t even make a storm.”
As the two magical creatures’ argument dragged on, I headed back toward the bow.
Lovely Dolsuni, who kept making tiny rainbows pop into existence, told me we were almost there.
I tried to ignore the quarrel, but Maril seemed too furious to let it go. Her voice kept rising.
I deliberately kept my eyes away and awkwardly scratched my cheek.
Even when a mermaid saves the prince, some other bastard still steals the kiss in the end.
Looks like fairy tales and fantasy are the same after all.
Comments