Chapter Eight

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“Hello, classmate, please don’t hang up yet… I am Ren Ping, the liaison officer of the Galactic Guardians Union. I’d like to invite you to become a reserve member of our union—”

“Beep, the spam call has been disconnected.”

“Annie, is it? A new call came through. “Congratulations! You probably don’t know your entrance exam results yet. I’m from Fran Star’s—”

“Beep, the spam call has been disconnected.”

“Hello, this is…”

As soon as the rankings were released, Annie’s personal communicator never stopped ringing. Those organizations that had been watching from afar finally made their move, trying to lure this extraordinary human genius away from Hailan Star.

She wasn’t a merfolk, had no inexplicable sense of racial belonging, and came from humble origins—she was perhaps the easiest of the top ten to poach. With Annie’s results, even if she failed to become a Starsea Warrior in the final selection, this achievement alone would guarantee her a bright future.

The communicator rang endlessly, but its owner remained unmoved.

It wasn’t until a hand picked up the watch that had fallen to the ground and silenced its sounds and vibrations. Lin looked up and saw a pale figure sunk into the sofa, surrounded by various e-readers and heavy ancient tomes.

She was buried under a soft blanket, the warm yellow fleece a contrast to her snow-white hair.

The average height for human women in the universe was 170 centimeters; Annie was a little shorter. She was curled up, and only now did Lin notice—somewhat belatedly—that this was the first time Annie had rested in six months.

In all that time, he’d never actually seen the little monster sleep. When she set her mind to do something, she became relentless—reminding him suddenly of the shattered crystal trophy, the blood-stained words “Outstanding Student,” forever engraved at the base of the cup.

Lin came back to himself to find he had unconsciously adjusted the blanket to cover the strip of her lower back that was exposed.

“Teacher…”

His hand froze in midair.

“Shouldn’t you take this opportunity to kill me?” Her voice was lazy and hoarse with sleep. Annie turned over, looking up at him. “Or maybe take out my chip while I’m sleeping, install some counter-detection program in my watch… Not come over and tuck me in.”

Lin gazed at her for a few seconds and said, “What if you happened to wake up while I was doing all that?”

“Then I’d have every reason to fight back.” She responded with no mercy, then laughed. “Teacher, you almost treat me like one of your students. And in earnest, too.”

Lin felt a tightness in his chest.

For these six months, she truly had been his most dedicated student—diligent, sharp, hardworking. When Annie was immersed in her studies, she seldom mentioned the agreement between them.

Neither had forgotten how they’d met, nor the purpose behind their association, but the routine of teacher and student had become a kind of anesthetic in Lin’s life, almost making him forget that all-consuming fear.

“What’s so bad about it?” Lin lowered his eyes and fastened the communicator to her wrist. “What’s so bad about being my student? What’s so great about having children, that you’d go so far as to insult the beliefs and tenets of the merfolk? The oceanic races value spiritual connection above all. Even if you forced someone, you still couldn’t bear a child.”

What was he saying?

Annie wasn’t really listening, her gaze fixed on his mouth. After a moment, she replied to the last thing she’d caught: “Who said I was the one who wanted to get pregnant?”

Lin sighed in exasperation. “You can already transform into a female merfolk, do I still need to explain this to you? You’ve done thirty thousand questions on oceanic history—”

Annie reached up, grabbed his uniform, yanked him toward her, and silenced that mouth that never knew when to stop.

Lin only managed to press her shoulder.

She hadn’t tied her hair; the snow-white strands fell to her shoulders, mingling with the young man’s soft, wave-blue hair. Annie bit down on her teacher’s pale lower lip, and he immediately clenched his grip on her shoulder. Was this resistance? Annie felt the merfolk’s nails tear through her clothing and pierce her skin, drawing thin lines of blood.

But true merfolk resistance could have torn her to pieces.

Her teacher was no longer that sickly, dying invalid.

As she covered his mouth, her forked tongue slipped into his mouth. Annie wrapped her arms around his waist, her form swiftly shifting into that of a female merfolk.

Her hand cupped the nape of Lin’s neck, long nails brushing the snowy coral at his ear. The milky, translucent cartilage transmitted the faintest sensation. Lin tensed completely, pulling away from the kiss: “Let go—”

The rest of his words were drowned in the rush of water.

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This was Lin’s bedroom—a pool deep enough to truly swim in, separated from the living room by a single door. It was Annie’s first time here. She clutched his hand as they sank to the pool’s bottom, her voice breaking into bubbles that floated upward and scattered.

Annie’s lips never left his, and somehow she’d learned to use her forked tongue to tangle with his lips. Lin stared at her—Annie now appeared entirely of his own race, even a few silver scales flickered at the corners of her eyes, flashing with emotion.

Sounds underwater were muffled and heavy. Suddenly, she said, “You promised me. I’m only collecting on it now.”

So many words caught in his chest, suffocating. Although they were underwater, Lin felt as if he were being bound. He looked at Annie, and could only think: this little debt collector.

Annie said, “If you don’t kill me, you’ll have to face me. Will you open yourself to me? Lin… teacher…”

“Shut up.” He said it, closing his eyes and lowering his head. “Don’t call me teacher. Don’t speak. Don’t say anything.”

So she really closed her mouth, becoming the most dedicated of mutes, using her beautiful, slender tail to coil around his—like a lovely water serpent forming a prison at the bottom of the sea. Her imitation was flawless; even the friction of the scales felt so real that Lin could almost believe—Annie was a merfolk.

She…

Lin’s thoughts wavered, and for a moment it felt as if the world had turned upside down. Her mimicry had fooled even the merfolk’s instincts; another lustrous silver tail began to respond to her movements, every brush of their overlapping scales drawing shivers up his spine.

His nails dug into her shoulder—not Annie’s soft human skin, but the tough hide of a female merfolk. His playful scratching could only leave the faintest red marks. He grunted softly, “…First time I’ve seen you so obedient.”

Annie’s hair brushed his ear, carrying a gentle jasmine scent.

She took his hand, her slender fingers threading through his, and said, “This is serious, you know. My voice just makes things harder for you.”

Sure enough, as soon as she spoke, Lin instinctively tried to pull away. The merfolk’s nature wouldn’t let him be intimate with an outsider, but Annie gripped his fingers tightly, forcibly locking them in place.

“You have to listen.” She said, “I don’t plan to study you just once. Before I take the Starsea Warriors’ exam, I want to understand you completely. If I can’t hear your voice, that would be a real problem…”

Lin exhaled, the word “study” clearing his muddled mind a little. He asked, “Why are you so determined to take the exam? Didn’t I tell you? The only outcome in the hunting ground is death. Every participant lives on the edge. Do you want power, or profit?”

“Mmm.” Annie didn’t hesitate much. “But there are so many races in there, and all kinds of mutants, and warriors enhanced with gene serums. I might easily find someone I can have a child with.”

She said it calmly, her pale pink eyes honest and candid, as if it were nothing at all.

Lin stared back at her.

The blue eyes of the merfolk gazed at her, unfocused for a long moment. Her tail tightened around his, and then, suddenly, the previously gentle male rebelled violently, his nails scratching through her palm and all the way up her forearm, blood scenting the water.

Annie reached out to touch him.

But the moment she grasped his hand, her teacher wrenched away, every scale on his body screaming resistance and pain. Lin tried to steady himself on the pool’s lamp but knocked over a glass ornament on the cabinet instead. Reacting with panic, he covered his mouth as his stomach spasmed, as if he would vomit blood.

“Teacher.” Annie hadn’t expected things to turn so suddenly. He looked like a fish that no longer knew how to swim.

She tried to help Lin keep his balance.

But his reaction was the same as last time—the merfolk’s instincts were roaring, condemning him for kissing an outsider. He threw Annie off with force, snapping, “Get away from me.”

Annie stopped in the water, watching him. They were at the bottom of the pool; he hadn’t vomited, but his lips were split and bloody from biting them.

“You monster…” Lin wiped his mouth, breath still ragged and voice hoarse. “You… a lunatic with nothing but goals in your head, damned breeding maniac. You have no humanity at all.”

“So, if I lied to you more skillfully, would you feel better?” Annie’s tone held no mockery, only a statement of fact. From beneath her beautiful merfolk guise, a slender tentacle slipped out, gently prying open the fingers of the hand he’d clenched so tightly he was almost hurting himself.

The more familiar and intimate the disguise, the more it revealed a stark sense of inhumanity.

His voice trembled slightly, frustration and hatred tangled together. He shook his head and laughed bitterly—not at Annie, but at himself, for indulging someone like her.

The feeling of something stuck in his throat, of nausea, wouldn’t go away. Lin flung off Annie’s tentacle, not wanting to be touched. “I shouldn’t have hoped we could get along. I should have hated you forever, should have found a way to get rid of you.”

With that, he swam up and out of the pool, threw on a coat, and left.

It was already March, but the spring nights of District 8 were still bitingly cold, the sea wind harsh. Annie drifted up after him, lying on the pool’s edge to watch his silhouette vanish. After a while, a tentacle reached out of the water, grabbed her e-reader, and flipped through the thirty thousand oceanic questions she’d answered.

“I know why he can’t accept it.”

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She had etched those questions deeply into her mind; her understanding of the oceanic races had transformed entirely.

Annie propped her chin in her hands and sat quietly for a while. “But love is hard to simulate. What I don’t know is how to love my teacher as a merfolk would… I’ll have to study that a little more.”

—

Lin cooled off for several hours outside.

Phrases kept spinning through his mind, interrogating himself. Like, “Why are you so indulgent with her? Don’t tell me you actually see her as your student?”

She was no model student. She could not only turn into a female merfolk with a forked tongue, but also force a kiss—for that matter, he shouldn’t have gone along with his student’s forceful kiss!

Lin pressed his forehead with his hand, feeling his brow throb. Another thought surfaced, sharp and relentless: “You’re not really thinking of keeping your promise, are you? That was just a stopgap! What you ought to do is get rid of her, even kill her. Stop dreaming of peaceful coexistence or hoping she’ll grow a conscience.”

Echoes of his father’s angry voice resounded in his ears: “How could I have such a weak and useless son?!”

His head ached even more. Lin pressed his brow, closed his eyes, and murmured, “So stupid… Fooled by her face again.”

He wouldn’t trust Annie anymore.

He had to treat her as an enemy, or at least as a villain. Lin rebuilt his psychological defenses and prepared to return home at dawn.

This was teacher’s housing provided by the school. Annie couldn’t afford a dorm room, so she’d moved in and paid half the living expenses—but whether she was really broke, or just wanted to monitor him every morning as soon as she opened her eyes, Lin suspected it was the latter.

He opened the door with his ID; the smart home system chimed softly. The living room was dark, only a small screen glowing. Annie lay on the sofa in a bath towel, staring at the display—a habit she said was to save on electricity.

Lin didn’t know what expression to wear and went to wash up and change clothes.

Annie was reading the school’s “Detailed Rules and Notification for the Starsea Warrior Selection,” while two small tentacles hugged a hard copy of “The Love Manual,” which she chewed through at a noticeably slower pace.

Human discourse on love was so vague and abstract, it made Annie’s understanding difficult.

But she had learned something. When her teacher entered, she moved the screen aside and watched Lin’s profile quietly in the gloom, so silent that even her breathing was inaudible.

Lin turned, and his nose bumped into her forehead.

It caught him completely off guard. Before he could yelp in pain, Annie covered her head, her eyes shining faintly in the dark. “Ow…”

Lin didn’t move for a while, then asked, “Did you take the wrong medicine?”

Annie nodded. “Maybe I did—I took a human secret medicine called ‘if you act cute, you can get a male to mate with you,’ and it’s nearly killed me.”

Lin sneered. “Not strong enough if you can still spout nonsense.”

Annie reached out and wrapped her arms around his neck. “Teacher,” her pale eyes came close, her delicate, lovely face magnified before him, “I’ll love you properly.”

Lin: “…”

He felt even more suffocated and stifled, turning away so as not to look at her. He said quietly, “Let go. You’re disgusting.”

Annie released him, leaning against the doorframe. “In ten days, I’ll be leaving for the selection trials.”

Lin brushed his teeth, rinsing away the last traces of blood in his mouth as if he didn’t care at all about the chip in his head. If Annie blew him up directly, he’d probably only say, “Ah, I’m done for. If this monster takes a liking to any of you next, good luck.”

Annie continued, “The notice says there’s a thirty percent fatality rate. Before I die, can I sleep with you, teacher?”

She folded her hands under her chin, closed her eyes, and lowered her head, pretending to make a magical girl’s wish. “That’s my heartfelt wish. Otherwise, I’ll die with regrets.”

“…Did you think that up with your lower half? You’re still a novice at deception, Annie.”

“Wow.” She peeked at his expression with one eye. “How did you know?”