The Mermaid Princess

Translation by Defade
-A brilliantly colored light that burns a fruitless flower.
Did its despaired screams reach God?
-1-
Morning dew enshrouded the coast.
A postman walked at a sedate pace. His breaths were colored white. Every now and then he’d stop and readjust the strap of his huge backpack with an “omph”.
“My my. This is just going to worsen my leg injury….hmm?”
A huge shadow loomedover him. He thought that it was a mountain at first, but when he squinted his eyes, he realized that something huge was draped across the coastline.
The moment he saw the black shadow, his body sprung to alert in fear of Shades. The postman’s reaction was understandable. Recently, people kept disappearing from the city, and rumors say that it was caused by a Shade.
The postman squinted hiseyes. The black shadow did not move. And there aren’t any Shades this big in the first place.

When he closed in, he saw a huge ship.
The mast was broken, and the boat itself fared no better. Perhaps it was destroyed by a storm. The presence of a few cannons confirmed its identity as a military ship.
“I can’t believe that such a huge boat could crash into the reefs…”
The black and huge shadowmade sinister creaking sounds. It’s not a Shade, but this is pretty scary in itself. At that moment, he felt like he saw something moving inside the ship. The postman froze. Finally a Shade, huh?
Following the instructions taught to him by his friend, the postman slowly backed away. Don’t run. Don’t show your back. Don’t avert your eyes…the effectiveness of the methods was questionable, but that’show he was taught to deal with a Shade. His right foot still hurt, so it’s impossible for him to run anyways.
When he backed away 3 steps, he heard a strange sound. Almost like…a cough.
The postman stopped. He heard the sound again, and this time it was clearly a cough. A child’s cough.

It only took him 15 seconds to make up his mind. 60 seconds to start walking. His heart was set within thatamount of time. There’s no way he could leave a child alone.
The ship must’ve witnessed quite a ferocious storm, as evidenced by its torn insides. A huge hole opened on the left side, and was filled with sand. I can get in like this. He stepped in cautiously.
It was dark inside the ship. However, sunlight filtered through the cracks here and there, and brightened the room enough for him tonavigate. Seawater was still dripping through the ceiling, so he walked carefully across the wet floor. The passageways were filled with the stench of the sea.
He heard another cough.
He made his way towards its source. He walked through the corridor, opened the door, and looked left and right in search of the voice’s owner in the messy rooms. He was in a room deep within the bowels of the ship. Heheard a cough from within.
The postman peeked inside.
A cough.
What he saw were fragile limbs that seemed like they could break at any moment. Pitiful rags. Two black eyes that peered fearfully at the postman.
A young girl was there.
-2-
“Hmph, we couldn’t get any proper information.”
Weiss complained from his place on the table. Nier continued eating his fish, showing no signs of whether heheard Weiss or not. Weiss is the kind of being that talks whenever he likes, paying no heed to whether his input is needed or not. Since he has nothing else to do during lunchtime, he talks even more than usual. Nier was used to it, and got into the habit of sidestepping Weiss’s inquiries every now and then while eating.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Ah.”
“How long are you planning to stayhere?”
“I wonder.”
“How are you going to find the Shade?”
“I’ll start thinking.”
It’s been three days since they heard of the continuous disappearances of Seafront’s townsfolk. They investigated the incident on the bounds of Shade invasion, but couldn’t find any useful hints. At the end of the day, all they had was some nonsense like “they were attacked by a mermaid”. If that’s all there is,...