“Stop looking. There’s no water!”

A surge of fierce alarm shot straight to Ashalina’s head. She said in a low, sharp tone: “You’ve had more than enough! There’s nothing left!”

A’qing paid her no heed whatsoever and kept searching, even crawling on the ground with no regard for his dignity.

Ashalina finally lost all patience. She grabbed him and hauled him upright, shouting at full volume: “A’qing! Snap out of it! You drank it all! There’s no water! There’s nothing left!”

A’qing’s eyes were blank.

He looked at Ashalina, then at A’long who had come running at the sound, and finally his gaze fixed on the dark stretch of water beyond the fishing vessel.

“Water… there’s water out there…” He started drifting toward the edge in a daze. “There’s… so much water out there…”

Ashalina yanked him back with a single grab, and in a cold, hard voice called out: “A’long! Rope!”

A’long stared blankly at A’qing, feeling as though this was a stranger wearing the face of someone he had known.

“A’long!” Ashalina shouted again. “Get the rope! Now!”

“Ah… oh — yeah, on it!” A’long snapped back to himself and quickly dug through the bags to find a rope. Working together with Ashalina, they bound A’qing firmly in place.

A’qing still retained the last shreds of his awareness. In a cracked, pleading voice he begged: “Let me go… I’m so thirsty… Big Sister, I can’t stand it… I really can’t take it anymore… I need water…”

Ashalina’s eyes reddened. She bit her lip and said nothing, pulled the rope tighter, tied the other end to a door handle, then without a word stripped away the life jacket getting in her way and checked his body for wounds.

Bai Youwei sat in her wheelchair just outside the cabin doorway, watching all of this.

The young man’s body was exposed to open air — dark skin, a solid, well-built frame, appearing healthy and uninjured. No obvious external wounds were visible.

Ashalina refused to accept it. She turned him this way and that, examining him repeatedly, muttering: “How can this be… there’s no reason for this… there’s just no reason for this…”

Bai Youwei asked A’long: “A’qing was with you the whole time. When you were attacking the mermaids, did he come into contact with any particular part of one? A fin, a scale, its teeth or claws?”

“I don’t know…” A’long looked utterly lost.

When they were fighting the fish monsters, everyone had been scrambling just to survive. No one had the spare attention to watch what anyone else was doing.

A’long seemed unable to accept that his companion had been harmed. He asked Ashalina uncertainly: “Big Sister… A’qing’s going to be all right, isn’t he? He’ll get better, won’t he?”

Ashalina bit her lip and said nothing. The pain in her eyes was impossible to conceal.

“Does A’qing have any wounds?” Bai Youwei asked.

“None.” Ashalina closed her eyes briefly, forcing herself through a deep breath to hold her emotions in check. “Only his hands… just some small cuts from broken bamboo shards, barely even bleeding. How could this happen…”

To prove her words were accurate, she turned A’qing’s palms up for Bai Youwei and A’long to see clearly.

There were a few thin lines of dried blood across his palms — nothing that could even be called a serious wound.

But then Ashalina herself froze.

“What is it?” Bai Youwei asked with a furrowed brow. “Is something wrong?”

Ashalina hesitated, then lightly pressed her fingertip against A’qing’s palm. When she lifted it, a thin film of viscous residue clung to her fingertip.

She brought her fingers beneath her nose and sniffed — and caught a familiar, foul, fishy odor.

Ashalina went rigid and turned to look at A’long. “Did either of you touch the fish monster directly?”

“No…” A’long shook his head frantically. “Maybe it rubbed off on the railing, and then A’qing’s hand accidentally touched the railing… Big Sister, is the slime on the fish monster toxic? Because I got some on me too!”

He held out his own hand as he spoke — the back of his hand and his forearm both showed the faint sheen of the viscous slime.

“Perhaps the slime’s toxicity only takes effect when it contacts an open wound,” Bai Youwei said. “Either way, we need to find a way to wash the slime off our bodies right away. Any wounds should be bandaged as quickly as possible to prevent further infection.”

Wash?

Out here, how? Every drop of water they had brought was now inside A’qing’s stomach.

The seawater below the boat was inexhaustible, of course — but was it safe?

—