The Little Mermaid umm Merman

Thursday

"Oh fuck," he grumbled and slouched in his chair for a few moments, pouting. Then he brightened. "The contract says 'maid', right? I can't do it! Wrong gender, dearest sister!"

Jiang YanLi smiled evilly. "I remember a bet you had not too long ago where you won a hundred dollars...."

"You can't be serious," Wei WuXian sat up straight. "No. Absolutely not."

"For cross-dressing and successfullly passing as a woman," she continued loudly over his objections. "Your waxing appointment is set for one o'clock. You have a fitting for your new tail and bra at five. And the make-up artists will be here tomorrow by eight AM sharp for your test run. Don't be late."

"What do I need a new tail for?"

"Mermaids don't have black tails." Jiang YanLi smiled her evil smile again and left his office.

"I am not wearing a pastel tail!" he yelled at his sister's retreating back.

***

Wei WuXian was, surprisingly, no stranger to body waxing. He'd been a competitive swimmer in high school and college; waxing was simply an edge. A painful one, to be sure, but merely an edge. He laid on the massage table wearing only a pair of speedos. "Don't touch anything inside my swimsuit," he warned his esthetician, Consuela. "In fact... you don't really need to wax my legs, do you?"

"You'll fit into your tail better," he was told.

Shit. The pain was nothing. He knew pain. It was a good friend of his since the day his parents died.

His dad, Wei ChangZe, was a simple man: secretary and best friend to Jiang FengMian, the CEO of Lotus Pier Hotels and Resorts. Together, they had taken the idea of the Jiang family's hotel, The Lotus Pier, from a single hotel to over a dozen in half as many years. While they couldn't compete on a global scale to the Marriotts and Hiltons, they were able to capture the business of the world's elite in some of Asia's largest cities, at least.

His mom, Hope Tsangse, was a bit more complicated. She was a Chinese American whose ancestors had been in the country since before the American Civil War. Long enough that no one in her family spoke any of the Chinese dialects, nor had any knowledge of which part of China they came from. Hope, wishing to learn more about her ancestors' culture, found herself entranced by a 'family' who was bringing Chinese culture and language to their brethren in the States. Their leader, BaoShan SanRen, encouraged her to change her name to CangSe SanRen, using the more appropriate way to spell her family name. As part of her search for her culture, the newly named CangSe SanRen earned a certificate in teaching and promptly found a job in China teaching English as a second language. A year and a half later, she was married. Her son, Wei Ying, English name William, was born only five months after the wedding. And four years after that, there was a train accident.

Wei Ying (to be called Wei WuXian because the Jiangs were old-old-money and still used birth names and courtesy names), was fostered by his father's friend, Jiang FengMian. It wasn't the happy life he had lived with his own parents, but it also wasn't as bad as it could have been. Yu ZiYuan, his foster mother, made sure to bring him to orphanages at least once a month to do charity work. So he could see the stark difference between growing up an orphan there and growing up as her foster child in her luxurious house.

At least, his foster siblings made life bearable.

Swimming made life enjoyable. The only pressure was the water resisting his arms and legs as they propelled him across the pool. He couldn't hear anyone yelling over the splashing water and his breathing. Aches and pains (from being hit when he either wasn't quite good enough or was too good) were soothed by the cool water.