Chapter 327: You Thought This Was a Cliché Story, Didn't You?

As if she'd heard Jhin's shout, Kokkoro stopped in her tracks and looked up toward the floor above.

Then she simply stood there in place, seemingly waiting for him to come to her.

He didn't hesitate for even a second and bolted straight down the stairs. But right at the very first turn of the staircase, he ran into a white ghost lunging at him head-on. Luckily, a sharp kitchen knife wreathed in cold light sliced it clean in two just in time. Otherwise Jhin might have died on the spot, killed by a ghost's attack under the rules.

His steps faltered for a moment. Jhin gave Sachi a grateful nod, then picked his pace back up. Shielded by the two kitchen knives in her hands, he made it safely to Kokkoro's side, so overcome that for a moment he couldn't get a single word out.

"I've waited a long time for you… challenger of the riddle."

He dug his fingernails hard into the flesh of his thigh to force himself calm, then asked her, "What do you mean, challenger of the riddle? Do you know where Kyaru is?"

"She… found, in her own way, the same answer as every challenger before her." A flicker of disappointment crossed Kokkoro's pale pink eyes. "So… I want to know your answer."

Jhin understood. This person wearing Kokkoro's face was not like his girlfriends. She was some existence borrowing her appearance to put questions to him.

"I don't even know the question. How am I supposed to give you an answer?"

Kokkoro's gaze settled on the pocket holding the scissors and the bedsheet. "Haven't you… already been working out the answer?"

Could it be that my question is how to save Kyaru?

In other words, the answer she chose was wrong—or was it just not the answer this existence wanted?

What do the scissors and the bedsheet mean?

Jhin's mind raced, running back over everything he'd seen these past two days, until his memory came to rest on the fifth rule that had appeared not long ago.

He truly hadn't seen any blood in this world. Apart from this cloth Kyaru had left behind, there was nothing. When he'd taught that foul-mouthed Kendo Club captain a lesson, he'd beaten him black and blue and still hadn't seen a single drop of blood—even though he'd stomped on the man's nose more than a dozen times.

Something was clearly off. No matter how tough the guy was, it was impossible for him not to get even a single nosebleed.

If the bedsheet is meant to remind me about blood, then what about the scissors?

To test his theory, Jhin pulled the scissors from his pocket and, without hesitation, drew the point across his palm, opening a wound. Blood immediately gushed out like a babbling stream.

It didn't drip to the floor under gravity. Instead it drifted slowly and gathered in the palm Kokkoro held out, empty and cupped. She began, in a low voice, to tell a story—a story about a mermaid.

A mermaid who fell in love with a prince struck a bargain with a witch, drinking a magic potion to trade her tail for legs. But before she could even reach the prince, his father—the king—took a liking to her and forcibly sent soldiers to imprison her in his bedchamber.

At first the prince didn't know that the mermaid who had saved him at sea was being held captive by his father. Not until the shell spirit by the shore relayed the mermaid's tragic plight did he suddenly realize that his savior was suffering.

Rage burned in his elegant eyes. The prince strode into the emperor's magnificent bedchamber, every corner of it decorated in gold, and there he witnessed a scene that shattered his heart.

His father was pinning a beautiful woman with long golden waves of hair beneath him, ignoring her pleas as he tore away her thin garments.

"Father!" The prince's voice made the whole palace tremble. His eyes seemed to hold a broken heart as he demanded in a mournful tone, "Why are you doing this to her? She is the one who saved my life!"

"What!? She is the one who rescued you?" The emperor was stunned, his gaze darting back and forth between the two of them.

"That's right. She was the one who saved me from the deep sea, away from that cursed seawater."

"My heavens… what have I done…"

The prince walked over to the still-shaken mermaid, and with perfect gentlemanly grace, draped his expensive coat over her. Then he took her slender right hand and asked her with deep feeling, "Will you… will you become—"

"I will!" Before the prince could finish, the mermaid blurted out the words she'd buried in her heart. They looked at each other and smiled, each having gotten the answer they wanted.

And so the mermaid witnessed the wedding of the prince and a Viking pirate. The sight of the two grown men sharing their vow of a kiss made her so sick she threw up right there in front of everyone. She returned to the sea, tore the witch to pieces in her fury, and then vanished, never to be seen again.

Holy—! It's a damn gay-panic bait-and-switch!

Jhin had figured it for some clichéd love story, and the twist at the end nearly snapped his back. He stared with a strange look at this existence before him, which had used the old "I have a friend" excuse to tell him a story, and asked cautiously, "Does this story have anything to do with the riddle?"

"Of course!" Kokkoro suddenly raised her voice, then, realizing she might have gotten too worked up, coughed twice and answered with feigned composure, "You need to prove it to me… to the riddle's answer."

Prove what? Prove I'm not into guys?

A coin machine congealed from Jhin's blood slammed heavily onto the floor. Kokkoro pointed at the coin slot. "Let me see whether you can really fish her back out of the sea foam."

So that's what it meant, that memories are currency…

He gave a soft laugh and calmly walked to the coin machine's side. Over twenty coins were stacked into a tall tower—there was no doubt about it, every one of them was made from his memories up to this point.

Jhin picked up a coin and dropped it in. The memory of his very first meeting with Kyaru vanished, but in his mind her voice rang out.

[He looked so cool standing there on the ring.]

The coins went in one after another, and her voice sounded with each one.

[Maybe from the very moment I met him, my luck already turned good.]

[Is this kind of happiness really something a child abandoned by the mermaids is allowed to have?]

[I wonder if I hurt him when I bit him.]

[In the end… this kind of happiness only lasted two days. How wonderful it would have been if I'd met him sooner.]

[I so wanted to go sunbathe on the beaches of Sirelvia with him, to go on a date in the deep woods of Moonlight Grove…]

[If this world is destined to be destroyed, I'd gladly use my own life to call the mermaid back—as long as… as long as he can go on living.]

The last coin dropped, and all of Jhin's memories were wiped clean. Sachi, standing behind him, vanished too. He reverted to the state he'd been in when he first arrived in this world.

"Do you still remember why you came here?" Kokkoro asked, gazing at his now-clear eyes.

He shook his head, watching a thread of morning light falling upon him. Kokkoro let out a soft sigh and wore a disappointed expression—but then she heard him say, "I feel like if I follow that way over there, I'll be able to see what I want to see."

The direction Jhin pointed was a stretch of rocky shore, and there, a black-haired mermaid, wide-eyed and innocent, gazed at the world beyond the sea like a newborn. Then she sat down upon a reef, flicked her tail, and softly hummed a tune.

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