Where was there any suitable land? Somewhere flat enough for this lanky human to lie down and rest, with no one else around…

‘Lucky as ever.’

The man clearly had fate on his side, destined to survive no matter what. The princess, who had swum while biting her already-healed fingers again and again to let the man drink her blood, found a suitable piece of land before exhaustion could take her.

A place where no creatures lived, with enough flat ground for the man to lie down.

It was a small, rugged uninhabited island, unremarkable enough that only birds stopped there for brief rests. But for a human who needed solid ground to breathe, it was a far better refuge than any stretch of ocean.

The princess arrived at the island safely.

‘Too…heavy!’

She immediately ran into her first obstacle. Dragging the man out of the water proved far more difficult than she had expected.

Since she could not fully leave the water without air, she had to push the man toward the shore using only her upper body and two arms. The unconscious, limp human male out of the water weighed, without exaggeration, as much as a sea elephant.

In the end, the man ended up half on the sand and half in the water. Every time the waves crashed, the back of his head went under, but that was the best she could manage. The princess gasped and retreated back into the deeper water, letting out a sigh of relief.

‘When is he going to wake up?’

With that done, she started to grow bored. The princess turned her now-perfectly-healed finger over, trying to estimate how much blood the man had swallowed. However much it was, he should have been waking up by now…

“…Ugh.”

Just then, a groan came from ahead. The man, who had been writhing and moaning in a voice like metal scraping against rock, suddenly curled his body inward and broke into a loud, hacking cough.

What a racket. The princess watched with curiosity as water shot out of his nose and mouth with each cough.

“Hgh, hk… cough, ugh! Kh.”

After coughing up every last drop of water, the man lay there gasping and spent, then cleared his throat. He looked around, pressed his arms against the ground to push himself up, and heavily dragged out his legs that had been submerged the whole time.

“D*mn it.”

With a low curse, the hair plastered to his face fell back. The man swept his face with one large hand, then gathered his sopping, drooping hair and wrung the water out of it. He tilted his head and slapped one ear hard, then gave the other side the same treatment before pinching his nose and bearing down with his face.

The princess had no idea what that was supposed to accomplish. Did all humans do things like that when they woke up? It did not seem particularly refined.

Whether or not the watching mermaid was confused, the man who had diligently cleared even the water from his ears, Zikrat, struggled to lift his body that felt like a lump of iron. Having sprawled on the shore in his soaking wet state, his body was covered in sand from head to toe.

‘D*mn orcas.’

Zikrat ground his teeth as he recalled, one by one, the orcas that had sent shuddering booms through the hull, the ominous sound that had driven itself into his ears, the chaos that had erupted right after, and the ice-cold water. 

He had tried to grab onto the wreckage of the ship and swim, but the cold of the seawater had stiffened his body and drained his strength until he finally sank. That was the last thing he remembered.

And yet, it seemed that those meant to live found a way to survive. Though who knew when that luck might turn.

Zikrat pulled off one boot and tipped out the water pooled inside, then let out a sigh.

“Where the hell is this place?”

It seemed the current had swept him onto an uninhabited island, but even at a glance, this small island offered no means of survival. Beyond the sand surrounding it, there was nothing but large and small rocks and sparse weeds, and there seemed to be not a single animal to hunt, let alone another person.

He had no idea where he was, and all around him stretched a vast, open sea with not another island in sight. It looked like his next death was not far off. Zikrat muttered in despair and pulled off the other boot, turning it upside down. Water poured out.

Then, in a flash, he raised his head again. Something that had jutted into his field of vision caught his eye once more.

“…An angel?”

At a distance close enough to reach with a running leap into the water, there was a presence like a vision.

Zikrat stared blankly at the radiant figure shimmering beneath the clear sunlight, then narrowed his eyes and squeezed them shut. He could not tell whether he was seeing things or had arrived in heaven.

Splash. A clear sound of water reached him, like a wake-up call. It worked like a signal, and Zikrat snapped his eyes wide open. The being, beautiful enough to take a moment to fully comprehend, was still right there.

Pale pink hair that made one flush just to look at, and eyes like the finest opals set into their sockets. Skin that glowed with a soft luminescence like ground pearl, framing features in perfect harmony…

‘Hello.’

And a voice that made his mind go hazy. D*mn. Zikrat struggled to drag his gaze, which kept wanting to drop toward the pink strands clinging to her chest, up to her luminous eyes.

Splash. The sound of water came again. The half-submerged, bare beauty had lifted one hand and given a small wave. It felt unreal, like watching a sculpture carved by a master artist to hold back secret desires suddenly come to life.

Zikrat stared at it blankly, then reached a conclusion. He had clearly arrived in heaven.

…Or so he mistakenly believed for a brief moment.

Had he lived even a slightly more virtuous life, he might have lingered in that happy delusion a while longer, but unfortunately, Zikrat was a man far removed from virtue. He was an outlaw and a plunderer.

It did not take long for Zikrat to realize there was no way he could ever set foot in heaven, and without hesitation, he raised his fist and smacked himself across the cheek. That finally brought him to his senses.

“Who are you?”

Zikrat rubbed his stinging cheek and defaulted to formal speech for the time being. He could not bring himself to believe that a woman swimming bare in the middle of the ocean, with nothing around but this small rocky island, who had greeted a strange man first, was a normal human being. But there was nothing wrong with being polite regardless.

That aside, could she do something about those… Zikrat desperately fixed his ill-mannered eyes on the woman’s forehead and asked.

“Could it be, that you are the one who saved me?”

For this unnatural situation to make any sense, that had to be the answer. Zikrat tossed his now-drained boots carelessly onto the ground. He had no desire to shove his sand-covered feet back into them just yet.

‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’

She had greeted him just fine a moment ago. Zikrat glanced at the woman again in the growing silence.

…She really was an absurdly beautiful woman, no matter how many times he looked. If he had more education, he might have been able to put it into longer words, but unfortunately, he was a man whose schooling had ended at the basics. 

And his grades had not been particularly good at that. Though it probably would not have made a difference no matter how much he had learned. No praise in existence could adequately describe a creature that beautiful, strange as it was.

He found himself pathetic for having thoughts like these in the middle of losing his fortune, his crew, and everything else to those beasts, stranded alone in the middle of the ocean, but he could not help it. This was a matter of human instinct, beyond gender. 

Whether a saint who had spent his whole life in celibacy and prayer, or a notorious womanizer who had met more than a hundred women, anyone who laid eyes on ‘that’ would surely freeze up like an idiot and think something dim-witted like ‘is that an angel, a fairy.’ Could be a goddess, or whatever else.

So there was nothing strange about reacting this way. Zikrat consoled himself and broke the lengthening silence.

“Give me some kind of answer. I just barely survived and I’m in quite an anxious state right now.”

He meant it, so the words came out a bit blunt. Fortunately, a reply came this time.

‘That’s right. I saved you and brought you here. And you can talk to me normally. The way you’re speaking right now sounds incredibly awkward.’

Caught. Zikrat scratched the back of his neck for no particular reason. He rarely had occasion to use formal speech, after all. Having come out of the seawater, the salt was drying on his skin and making him itch.

“Thanks for that. My tongue was starting to get goosebumps.”

‘Goosebumps on your tongue? Goosebumps? What does that mean?’

“Just means it felt that way. Anyway, I’m alive thanks to you. Though I don’t know how much longer that’ll last.”

He knew it was a pointless thing to say, but he said it anyway. As he had said, he was in quite an anxious state.

In every direction, there was nothing but open sea he could not drink, the island had nothing but rocks and weeds, and all he had was wet clothes, his boots, and a body tired enough to drop dead. Still, having someone to talk to was at least something to be grateful for.

“Not expecting much, but is there anyone else who survived besides me?”

‘No. They all died.’

Not that the answer would have conjured hope where there was none.

‘You must have seen it too. You stayed afloat the longest.’

“Yeah… I did.”

D*mn. He had still held out some hope that at least one other stubborn soul like himself might have made it, but it was a pointless wish.

Zikrat thought back to the moment the ship had been smashed and capsized. He had tried to stay calm and respond as best he could, but in a shipwreck, there was nothing to be done. 

The hull had been breached and the ship had tipped onto its side, so he had not even seen the faces of most of the crew, and even the ones who had surfaced and tried to find a way to survive with him had gone under one by one before long.

They had not been the closest of companions, but they had shared a ship all the same. And to end like this. Not even swept away by a storm, but caught up in a bunch of d*mn orcas…

If he made it out of here alive, he would switch trades and take up whale hunting. Zikrat rubbed his face roughly and lifted his head.

“And the ship, completely destroyed?”

‘It was.’