At one individual’s signal, the orcas began circling the ship and disrupting its course. The ship lurched in confusion at the sudden appearance of the whales.

The ‘game’ was far more intense than she had expected. The way they stirred up rough currents and pressed close to the ship, threatening to ram it before pulling back, was clearly not something they were doing for the first time. The princess, who had been wagging her tail out of habit at the excitement she felt all around her, gradually sensed something was off.

‘Isn’t that too rough?’

The moment she thought, at this rate they’re actually going to hit it, one individual hurled its body into the side of the ship.

Thud. The impact was strong enough to feel even underwater. Then again, boom. Two orcas rammed the bow of the ship at the same time. The impact was even greater than before, and the water surged as the ship lurched and groaned loudly.

That’s not a game, that’s an attack. The princess quietly slipped out of the pod and watched the situation from a distance.

She had no particular concern for what happened to the ship, but she worried the orcas might get hurt. Even a princess who lived without a care in the world still had a heart for the kingdom’s people. She just kept it tucked away and never showed it.

More than anything, if the ship broke apart and what started as a prank escalated into a real incident, it would be a disaster. Word would surely reach the palace, and if she was not careful, her secret escape might get exposed.

‘If they catch me this time, I’ll have to dig a new secret passage!’

That was out of the question. Do they have any idea how tedious and time-consuming that would be? The princess decided she needed to step in for her own safety, or rather for the safety and order of the kingdom, and swam back toward the front. 

They say this is the age when you go wild with play and throw caution to the wind, but even so, this has gone too far. The princess rejoined the pod and called out, playing innocent.

‘Hold on, friends. I’m asking because I genuinely don’t know, but is this how the game is supposed to go? It seems way too rough.’

Up close, the orcas were agitated to an unusual degree. It was not simply the excitement of having fun, it was rage. Before the princess even had a chance to feel puzzled, one individual cried out.

We don’t normally go this far either. We just tease and scare them. Another whale called out right after. Remember it clearly. That ship, that marking. The orcas’ fury poured out one after another. Putting it all together, it came down to this.

Not long ago, the humans on that ship had killed an orca that was simply swimming by, and discarded it like trash. The grief that spread like a tidal wave was a mix of mourning and a thirst for revenge for a fellow orca killed for a human’s amusement.

She had barely a moment to understand their feelings before the princess turned her head in surprise at the thick, raw smell of blood spreading through the water.

Thwack. Thwack, thwack. The humans, furious at the orcas disrupting their course, were fighting back. Small, swift weapons she could not identify were rapidly wounding the orcas.

The Kingdom’s people are getting hurt. The princess held back no longer and let her abilities show.

The orcas, who had been in a panic, recoiled at the sudden wave of healing. The power of purification and healing that applied to all living things was a trait unique to the mermaid race. Among them, only royalty could wield that power without direct contact.

The orcas recognized the princess’s identity in an instant. It was genuinely puzzling how they identified her so quickly given how many royals there were, but the princess did not press the matter and ushered the orcas to safety.

But the moment of shock passed quickly, and the hot-blooded orcas, apparently deciding they now had a powerful backer, insisted they had to finish their revenge and charged at the ship again.

Thud, thud. The headbutts came with even greater force. The orcas threw themselves at the ship again and again, heedless of the bullets, and the ship could not hold out for long and began to groan.

It’s breaking! Someone cried out with glee. Starting from that, the crack that had formed in the side of the ship spread in an instant into a gaping hole, and the ship, which had been barely maintaining its balance, tilted and lost it entirely.

‘This is a disaster.’

The princess let out a groan of dismay at the shipwreck unfolding before her eyes. She had wanted an exciting little escape, but she had never intended to set off something this enormous.

‘But I was just watching, wasn’t I?’

Already fully exposed, the princess gave up on the disguise and everything else and revealed her true form, then pulled back to a distance and thought hard about how she could naturally remove herself from this whole situation.

She had broken the teaching about not carelessly overusing her abilities, but that was purely out of a sense of royal duty. Kingdom’s people were hurting and suffering at the hands of humans, and turning a blind eye to that would be an even worse offense.

……That was the excuse she would try, but no matter how much she thought about it, the conclusion did not change.

This was a genuine disaster. She had broken the house arrest order and escaped, hidden her identity and played with the orcas, and then openly used her abilities while messing around near humans. She had so many reasons to be scolded that her head actually felt strangely calm.

By then the tilting ship had capsized completely. The orcas, having achieved their revenge, leaped and thrashed with joy, and the humans screamed. The princess listened to the different cries erupting from all sides and felt deeply unsettled. 

What was she going to do about this situation?

Sneaking out in defiance of the house arrest order was nothing new, so that alone would not come as a shock, but if they found out what had happened after she snuck out, she would surely get an earful from the butler, her older siblings, and her parents, one after another.

The fallout from what she had done for just a moment of fun was far too large. Ugh, what a headache already. Bubbles gurgled out from between the gills along her sides. No matter how much fun something was, she absolutely hated dealing with the aftermath.

Meanwhile, the humans who had been clinging to broken pieces of the ship and struggling to keep swimming were losing their strength one by one and beginning to sink. The princess drifted along, quietly following the sinking humans and observing them, while one corner of her mind kept fretting. Ugh, what on earth was she supposed to do about this situation……

Unlike her head, her chest kept thumping and fluttering. Not from fear, but from excitement.

That was understandable, since this was her first time seeing humans this close. They were all a bluish, suffocating shade of near-death, but it was a remarkable experience all the same.

Right, agonizing over it was not going to solve anything right away. The princess turned her full attention to the scene unfolding before her and quivered her tail fin with delight.

That was when it happened.

‘That one looks a little different.’

Among the humans, each strange and varied in appearance, one tall and slender human who had fallen from the surface later than the rest caught the princess’s eye.

It was the difference between comparing a deep-sea anglerfish to a blue sea slug, if one were to put it into words. The former were the other humans, and the latter was the man she was looking at now.

So not all humans look the same. She had assumed they all did, since most of them looked like deep-sea fish, but there were individuals with different appearances after all.

‘Is he a rare type even among humans. A mutation?’

The princess watched with fascination as she followed the flailing human.

He stood apart not only in appearance but in his will to live. Unlike the anglerfish descendants who had given up on everything and sank in misery, he held his breath and thrashed his arms and legs, straining to push himself upward.

But the sea was indifferent to land creatures. The man finally expelled the breath he had been holding in a violent burst and went limp along with the bubbles.

His long hair, dark like seaweed, rippled and spread through the dark blue water. This too set him apart from the other humans, who had cut even their natural adornments down to something short and unremarkable. The princess reached out and ran her fingers through the drifting hair. Despite how it looked, the texture was not particularly pleasant.

The princess rubbed it against her own hair, which was smooth like the skin of a cephalopod, and learned that human hair was coarse and stiff. Probably because they lived on dry land.

Up close, the human looked even better than he had from a distance. He did not have a gentle face, but the dark hair and bronzed skin, rare among mermaids, were attractive. 

She kept finding her gaze drawn in particular to the mark on the right side of his full lips. The short line, looking like something sharp had been dragged across it, was a scar of the kind you never saw on mermaids.

Had he drawn it on himself on purpose as decoration? If so, this human was someone who knew well what suited him. She liked the scar, which made him look strong.

The princess stroked the human’s dark, sharp eyebrows and the thick lashes that grew from them with curiosity, then quietly plucked one out. The dark, dense hair was stiffer and more pointed than the hair on his head. She turned the eyelash she had pinched between her fingertips this way and that, then soon grabbed hold of the swaying dark hair.

She knew she should not do this, but she did not want to turn this human into a corpse at the bottom of the sea. Whether she went back now or later, she was going to get scolded and locked up either way, so she might as well stay and have more fun before returning, and more than that, an interesting idea had come to her.

‘This human is lucky.’

The princess wrapped the dark hair around her hand and pulled him up, then brought her lips to the human’s mouth. Pure energy flowed in through his slackly parted lips, and a little while later, the human’s heart, which had been about to go out, began beating again, and the man’s slack face crumpled in pain.

Blub blub blub. 

The man, who had started struggling again, spat out bubbles and cracked his eyes open. A glimpse of teal caught the princess’s eye and she felt a rush of admiration.

Wow, I just saved a land creature who was one step away from becoming a corpse with just a few seconds of kissing.

Having only ever used her abilities on fellow mermaids and other kingdom’s people before, the princess felt anew just how strong her innate power was, and kissed the man again. She felt proud of herself, but she also felt proud of the human for surviving so well.

The princess held the man and swam upward. His ribcage was as thick as that of a well-maintained mermaid, which made holding onto him and swimming up quite a struggle, but she managed to break through to the surface successfully.

By then the man had passed out again and hung limp in the princess’s arms. She had probably swum up too fast. The princess bit down hard on her own finger to draw a little blood, pressed it to the man’s lips for the immediate effect of her ability, and looked around at her surroundings at her leisure.