Mermaid Effect 《人鱼效应》 Chinese BL Translation by: 黑猫白袜子

Chapter 6

Honestly speaking, Rand felt that the fish was a bit strange. He frowned and poured some of the remaining saltwater into the bowl in an attempt to make up for the deficiency to no avail.

He found some extremely tiny fish scales in the water from the bottle. Those fish scales were very transparent, but they reflected a faint blue gleam when illuminated by a certain angle of light. Rand noticed that there were many traces of scales falling off from the wound of the fish.

Maybe it was because of the discomfort in the bottle that made the fish lose some scales. Rand feels that the blue thing is probably the illusion caused by these scales.

Rand shrugged his shoulders. He lifted up the salad bowl and consciously placed it on the island table. The lighting of the kitchen fell on the back of the fish through the water surface, The backlighting on the surface layer looked like a layer of mother-of-pearl on the fish's moving and twisting gray body.

(TN: Mother-of-pearl or nacre is like the metallic sheen on the inner part of a shell, look it up if you want a better image in your head, too tired to think of any avid descriptions.)

Rand looked at the fish uncontrollably for a while. On the reef, he thought it was just a dully colored fish, but now it seems that it was actually not so ugly, he thought. Despite this, Rand felt a little regretful, he really didn't know how to raise a strange saltwater fish. Maybe when he woke up from his bed the next day, the fish will have already died from the "seawater" he had mixed. Rand felt a little jittery. He really didn't know what he was thinking at the time. Looking at its current state, perhaps if he had left the fish there back then, its survival rate would be a little higher.

"No matter what, little fellow," he said, lowering his head to the fish, "I hope you can get better soon."

The fish swims in a circle around its salad bowl enclosure, its eyes were just like glass beads, as well as the circular markings appear to be looking at Rand.

Rand reached out and tapped on the salad bowl. The stainless steel basin made a dull watery sound, and the fish swishes its tail. At least it seemed normal now.

Rand left the kitchen and began to tidy up the carpet.

"This is such a good day."

Rand said to himself.

The whole room was still filled with that smell. Rand plugged his nose. He felt that he might have had a bit of an issue because after smelling this scent for a long time, he actually felt that the thick fishy smell seemed to resemble that of fermentation. It was a kind of scent close to a viscously sweet and unctuous rotten fragrance.

He used paper towels to absorb the majority of the moisture out of the carpet, sprayed some air freshener, and finally dried the surface of the carpet with a hairdryer. While he was doing these things, he could occasionally hear the splashing sound of the fish when it turned around in the salad bowl.

The salad bowl is too small for the fish, maybe he should go buy a fish tank.

⁠—This is the last thought Rand Sievers had before going to sleep that night.

In the dark, the clock is ticking away.

The fishy ocean smell that had originally already faded from the room suddenly thickened once more. Just like what Rand saw before going to sleep, the fish still swims slowly in a circle around the salad bowl, but the difference is the blue fluorescence that appears on the edge of each scale on its body which Rand thought was the middle of a circular pattern markings on its body, and the red eyeballs swiveling behind the transparent film.

A gray little thing⁠— furry-skinned, slender tail, four small paws⁠— a mouse, now rushed out of its den and noisily entered the kitchen.

Rand had always been a clumsy man. When he searched for the salad bowl and sea salt, the pre-prepared rolled oats were taken out of the cupboard by him and then piled up on the kitchen counter.

The mouse was attracted over to it. It deftly climbed onto the kitchen counter and concentrated on gnawing through the wrapper of the rolled oats, but it was definitely not presumptuous. From a distant place, there was the occasional sound of a car hurtling past. It stopped, its whiskers went forward, single-mindedly focused on its surrounding environment.

The smell becomes thicker.

A layer of blue fluorescence appeared from the edge of the salad pot.

The rat's whiskers were trembling and it seemed to sense something. Soon, it gave up the food in front of it, and after a short pause, it suddenly scuttled over to the brink of the cooking counter.

A slender tentacle shot out and directly penetrated the mouse's eyes.

The corpse of the mouse slammed onto the tabletop, its dead body was like an empty leather bag. The slender, fluorescent thing slowly came out from the edge of the salad bowl, its body was as soft that it completely covered over the mouse's dead body.

After a while, it slowly climbed back into the salad bowl.

The tabletop of the cooking counter is completely empty and unusually clean.

(TN: I'm too tired to think of anything too creative but uh... Poor mouse? Also, our fish gong is free from the water bottle and has upgraded(?) to salad bowl!)