You had a wonderful, long sleep, and woke up from your slumber full of energy.
You stretched lazily on the natural bed formed by a pile of green seaweed.
Hmm… wasn’t it a bit too soft?
Much softer than the bed you had arranged with your own hands.

Something wasn’t right.
The moment you opened your eyes, you realized this wasn’t the nest you had personally arranged, but another, very unfamiliar cave.

You looked down at yourself, only to discover you were sleeping in a giant clamshell, just like a real mermaid, you thought, your mind wandering inappropriately.

Small holes had been carved into the edge of the clamshell, with large, lustrous pearls stuffed inside.

The light here wasn’t great.
Although it didn’t affect your vision, it did affect your mood.
You could tell that for the moment, there were no other creatures in the cave, just a single strand of your platinum-blond hair floating silently before your eyes.

You felt like a doll that had been captured to play the part of a mermaid.

You glanced around.
Your wrist brushed against something.
Picking it up, you saw a brightly colored conch and a slightly twisted iron box.
These were clearly the conch and earrings you had placed in your nest.

Behind the clamshell was a stone wall.
The seawater within your sight was a deep, dark color.
The exit from the cave was likely somewhere outside.

You felt a sense of aversion to this environment and were eager to confirm your suspicions.
‘I’ll leave as soon as I find the exit,’ you thought, and with a flick of your tail, you left the clamshell.

Your tail had developed perfectly.
It had grown by more than half a meter.
Your pelvic fins hadn’t grown much, but their color was paler, with a slight translucence.
The scales from your waist to your hips were a faint purple, transitioning naturally to blue in the middle of your tail, which then shifted back to a layer of purple at the fin.
Even in the dim environment, you could see the luster flowing across the scales.

But because of your current inexplicable predicament, a bit of anger was rising within you, and you were in no mood to admire your transformation.

The scent in this cave clearly indicated that its owner was someone else.
This smell…

You opened your mouth and took a sip of seawater, slowly filtering it out through the gills hidden beneath your ears.
A faint saltiness, a fishy smell, a slight bitterness, and a coldness.

The information you gathered told you that this was not your territory.
This was a different sea.

And the temperature difference in the water was obvious; you were in the deep sea.

The years of being frozen had been too long.
Since waking, you had developed a fondness for warm nests and rarely dwelled below the mid-layers of the sea.
Who had brought you here while you were sleeping?

You floated slowly in the water, your translucent, light-blue ear fins gently fanning.
You followed the clues, moving gradually upward, tracking the most distinct scent in the cave, bit by bit discerning the useful information you needed.

A moment later, you confirmed your suspicion.
This cave was filled with the scent of an unfamiliar male.

An unfamiliar male, possibly one of your own kind, had very rudely packed you up and taken you back to his nest within his territory while you slept.
This act was far too offensive!

You frowned in displeasure.

Mermaids had no gender distinction.
Only upon meeting a partner they liked would they transform into the gender that would attract the other.

Before awakening your Mermaid genes, you were a young, single male.
For many years, you had lived as your original self.
As your features were gradually optimized and your hair color changed by your Mermaid genes, your chest remained flat.

To be abducted to a strange male’s nest—you considered this an insult and a provocation.
You flicked your tail and rushed out of the cave, furiously searching the surrounding area, but found nothing.

Should you leave directly as you’d originally planned, or should you find the other party and beat them until their teeth were scattered across the ocean floor?
Your mind was a stage for a dramatic back-and-forth.

But, this was the first male you had encountered since waking up, a potential kinsman.
After a moment of bewilderment, a faint glimmer of hope sparked within you.

Could it be a kinsman who had woken before you?

Had they found you while you were transforming, and fearing for your safety, temporarily brought you back to their nest?

Your rising anger subsided slightly at this speculation.

Your firm resolve to leave immediately now wavered.

You decided to wait for the other to return to the cave.

‘I’ll wait and see,’ you thought.

The wait felt exceptionally long, yet it also seemed as if not much time had passed.
But you were getting a little hungry.

You had just woken from a very long sleep and hadn’t eaten anything yet.
But as far as you could see in the nearby waters, there were hardly any tasty fish.
A tiny, transparent, lightbulb-like fish swaggered past you.

Perhaps it was certain it wouldn’t be eaten by you, or perhaps it was too small to have much of a brain.

You took a bite of the lightbulb fish, chewed… gulp… the texture of food was gone from your mouth before you even got to a second chew.
Hard to say what you thought of it.

Maybe you shouldn’t wait after all.
The moment this thought appeared, a dark shadow with a mass of freely waving tentacles came into view at the edge of your vision?

Hiss!

The mass of tentacles saw you too, and waved even more cheerfully, then swiftly swam right in front of you.

Above the tentacles was the upper body of a male.
He had broad shoulders and stood a head taller than you.
His chest looked firm, his skin wheat-colored, his features rugged, with a smooth jawline.

‘He looks very masculine,’ was your assessment.

What fascinated you most about him was, completely unlike a Mermaid’s tail, a cluster of tentacles.
Your gaze unabashedly scanned him from head to… well, to the tentacles.
Black, thick tentacles.
One, two, three… eight in total.

You couldn’t help but blurt out:
“Squidward!”

In the sea, communication between your kind was more akin to a short burst of sound waves.
Anxious about having brought you back to his nest, Adonis had been watching your reaction closely.
He immediately caught the frequency of the sound waves you emitted, but he couldn’t understand them.

At this moment, you had no idea that in this strange new world, you were illiterate.

Your gaze felt like a physical touch to him.
You stared at his tentacles for so long, so long that you watched as the eight black tentacles turned pink right before your eyes!

He was!

A color-changing Squidward!

Your stomach rumbled.

The next second, all eight pink tentacles were held out in front of you, offering all sorts of fish you had and hadn’t seen before.
They all looked delicious.

Squidward’s actions showed no malice, but he just didn’t seem to understand you.
Having not spoken for a long time, your desire to communicate suddenly flared up.
In short, you became a chatterbox.

“What species are you?”
“I don’t mean to be racist, it’s just that I’ve never seen anything like you!”
“Are you a mutant?
Are we considered the same species?”
…
“Squidward plays the clarinet, can you?”
“Hiss, is the reason you can’t understand me because our species are too different?”

With every question you asked, you could see the sincere attempt in Squidward’s eyes to understand, but he couldn’t give any answers.
After a long silence, he pointed a tentacle tip at himself and slowly said:
“A-do-nis.”

“Ado-ni-s?” you repeated, understanding that he was introducing himself.
So you said, “Alright, Squidward.”

You swallowed the tender fish meat in your mouth, tossed away the bone, and grabbed a soft, glutinous squid.

Squidward didn’t eat a single bite of food; he gave it all to you, silently cleaning up the scraps you made.
His hospitality was excellent.

At this moment, you genuinely believed, at least for now, that Squidward was probably not a bad fish.

Occasionally, when you reached for food, you would touch one of his tentacles.
That tentacle would then perform a color change right before your eyes.
You mischievously touched it on purpose, and the tentacle would turn from black to pink, pink to black, a black-and-pink gradient.

Squidward saw through your intentions but still obediently let you play.
In the end, his face turned red, yet he showed no sign of refusing your touch.

After slurping up the last bite of squid, you felt a bit too full.

Perfect.
The swim home from here would help you digest.

You patted Squidward’s arm and gestured wildly at him, then flicked your tail and swam a short distance away, pointing towards the surface to indicate you were going home.

The moment you moved, Adonis hurriedly followed behind you.
He didn’t know if you were dissatisfied with the nest he had prepared.

Aside from simple body language, it was difficult for you to communicate.
Given the language barrier, he guessed you probably didn’t understand that he wanted to court you.

He just subconsciously followed you closely.

And you thought Squidward was pretty smart, understanding that your gestures meant for him to lead the way.

‘The intelligence of octopuses seems to be quite high.’

Adonis did indeed understand your intention now.
He first looked at you with an honest expression, then tentatively extended a tentacle tip, wrapping it around your wrist.
Tiny suckers made direct contact with your skin, and that section of the tentacle tip turned pink again.

The touch of the suckers was very careful; you felt no discomfort.
You just followed the pull and accelerated towards the surface, wanting to get back to your own waters quickly.

And so you didn’t see Adonis’s other tentacles curl up happily.