Infatuation of a Merman

Chapter 10-Eclipsing Fears

I stared at myself in the mirror while holding onto a kitchen knife.

The handle felt cold in my hand, as if it were warning me to drop it before I did something fatal. But I was completely safe. There were medical supplies in front of me, and no one was home to see my possible blunder. That horny cat was still frolicking with Julian, and I bet that Kiraize was lost somewhere due to the vague instructions that Pietra undoubtedly gave him on how to return. Good riddance.

I slowly lifted up the hem of my clothing, causing an uncomfortable feeling of disgust to swell within me as I stared at the fish scales. They weren't on my ribs before. It only appeared after I had returned to land from being kidnapped. I didn't even know what their purpose was. Who knew, maybe it was just there for decoration.

A hysterical giggle escaped from my throat. Decoration? I doubted it.

Its presence was a cold reminder of the fear that I had been force-fed while visiting the fish. But most importantly, it was just plain unnatural. It was a flaw on my body; a big, fat sign that I was different from the rest, that there was something wrong with me. And I needed to get rid of it.

The tip of the kitchen knife bit into the skin above the scales. A trail of blood trickled down from the wound, bisecting the moon perfectly in half with scary precision.

I pushed the knife a little further, causing myself to hiss in pain.

Keep going. Just keep going.

Something fell to the floor with a thud. The unexpected sound caused me to flinch and involuntarily thrust the knife deeper into my side. But before I could quickly remove the knife from the shallow wound, someone else did it for me. The knife clattered to the ground as I was shoved against the wall by a very masculine body.

Then I panicked.

I tried to push him off, but his hands had locked my wrists against the wall. So instead I shot my knee up to kick him where it would hurt the most. Unluckily, through some superhuman reflexes he was able to parry my knee to the side with his leg. He took a step closer, pressing up against my body and preventing me from using my legs to deal him any serious damage. And just when I was about to bite him to death, my hysteria had calmed down enough for me to recognize who he was.

And as futile as it seemed, when I saw that it was Kiraize, half of myself still wanted to go through with this life or death struggle. But the look in his eyes culled that insane ferocity down into submission.

His teeth were clenched while he glared at me with unconcealed rage. I didn't notice when, but at some point in time he had put my wrists together so that he could restrain them with one hand, leaving his other free. And with his other hand, he wrote words in blood.

'What in Linra's Descent are you doing?' He used his sharp nails to scrawl the words across his collarbone, using his skin as a canvas and his blood as ink.

For some reason I couldn't answer him. So I swallowed down the lump in my throat and forced my gaze away from his accusing eyes. But after a couple of loud heartbeats, his cold fingers gripped my chin and forced me to look at the new words he had written onto his skin.

'Are you trying to die?'

"I wasn't," I said, forcing the words out.

Kiraize sneered and glanced purposefully back at the kitchen knife on the floor.

I looked down at the scales on my ribs. "I just wanted to get them off."

My words seemed to stump him as he stopped writing. Instead, he brought his free hand toward the white scales and gently placed his fingers on them, causing my blood to stick to the tips of his fingers. I tried to squirm away, but that just drove my back further against the wall.